An Overview of the History of Western Astrology

Episode 280 features a lecture by astrologer Chris Brennan where he gives an overview of the history and transmission of western astrology over the past 4,000 years.

The talk begins with the ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian astrological traditions, and then traces the development of astrology through the Hellenistic, Medieval, Renaissance, and modern periods.

This is based on a lecture that Chris has been giving at conferences since 2006 about how Uranus-Neptune conjunctions have historically coincided with periods in which there is a major transmission and revival of older forms of astrology, which are then synthesized with whatever the prevailing paradigm is at the time.

Part of the purpose of the talk is to contextualize some of the current trends in our own time period, and the recent revival of older forms of astrology.

Chris recently appeared on The Strology Show podcast with Kirah Tabourn to talk about the recent revival of traditional astrology in modern times, and that episode would be great to watch after this episode of The Astrology Podcast if you would like some more information about the traditional revival.

This episode is available in both audio and video versions below.

Timestamps

Here are some timestamps for topics covered at different points in the episode:

00:00:00 Intro

00:02:36 Mesopotamia

00:07:44 Invention of natal astrology

00:16:21 Egypt (Decans)

00:20:58 Conquest of Alexander the Great

00:24:23 Emergence of Hellenistic Astrology

00:32:04 Thema Mundi, Rulerships

00:36:19 Aspects

00:37:42 Houses

00:39:08 Planetary Joys

00:41:45 Elements and Zodiac

00:43:00 House significators

00:44:48 Core of the New System

00:47:00 Roman Empire in the 2nd Century CE

00:47:42 Transmission to Persia and India

00:51:40 End of Hellenistic Tradition

00:54:20 Expansion of Islamic Empire

00:55:17 Early Medieval Astrology

01:01:30 Four Traditional Branches

01:05:34 Transfer of Light

01:06:51 Late Medieval Astrology

01:12:10 Renaissance Astrology

01:17:12 Late Traditional Astrology

01:23:30 The Astrological Recession

01:29:06 Rebirth in 20th Century

01:33:12 Modern Astrology

01:43:00 Revival of Traditional Astrology

01:54:33 Uranus Neptune Conjunctions

01:59:30 Chart of historical timeline

02:05:03 Value of Studying the Tradition

02:10:40 The Current Revival

02:15:40 Contributions of Each Tradition

02:21:58 The Hermetic Nature of Astrology

02:26:25 The Future

02:32:34 Further Reading

02:36:10 Concluding remarks

Watch the Video Version of This Episode on the History of Astrology

Here is the video version of this episode on the history of western astrology:

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Transcript

A full transcript of this episode is available: Episode 280 transcript

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