The History of Horoscopes
Horoscope comes from the Latin horoscopus, which is in turn derived from the Greek ὡρόσκοπος (horoskopos). This is translated as “observer of the hour”. In the early 11th Century, the Latin word was still widely used to refer to this practice of charting the stars. It was only during the Early Moder
n English era that the anglicized horoscopes was used.
In essence, a horoscope is a map of the heavens during a particular period in time. It is also called an astrological chart, a celestial map, a sky map, a star chart, a cosmogram, a vitasphere, a radical chart, a radix or a chart wheel.
While the exact history of horoscopes is unknown, the methodology behind it – astrology – has been around for ages. Astrological doctrines have been found dating as far back as the Babylonian era. They developed a system of omens around the 2nd millennium BCE. Horoscopic astrology began during Alexandrian conquests around 1st Century BCE. This is when early Babylonian astrology mixed with Egyptian traditions. It spread from Alexandrian Egypt to the ancient world into Europe, Middle East and India.
As the centuries progressed, astrology’s more scientific counterpart astronomy became the center of attention. Astrology faded in the background as a shadow of a new science. During the 11th Century, Persian astronomer Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī was among the first to clearly differentiate the semantics of astronomy and astrology.
In the mid-20th Century, interest in astrology and horoscopes has once again come to light with thinkers like Afred Witte and Reinhold Ebertin pioneering the use of astrological midpoints. Vedic astrology has also been strongly used in India and parts of Asia. In the early 1990s V.K. Choudhry created the Systems’ Approach for Interpreting Horoscopes to help those who are trying to learn the art of predictive astrology called Jyotish.
While horoscope are now also used for entertainment – seen daily in newspapers and weekly in magazines – it is heavily rooted in a serious science that branched out into Astronomy. Horoscopes still remain a solid tool for generating good insight on the past, the present and the future.
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