The Zodiac and the Gospel
The Zodiac and the Gospels:
More on how to integrate Astrology and the Zodiac into our Christian life through the Gospel.
This will be the first part of a series exploring all of the signs, but for now, I will discuss the Zodiac itself.
St. Basil, Doctor of the Church, (d. 379), wrote, in the 6th homily of his Hexaemeron:
"It is because it is absolutely necessary that all lovers of great and grand shows should bring a mind well prepared to study them. If sometimes, on a bright night, whilst gazing with watchful eyes on the inexpressible beauty of the stars, you have thought of the Creator of all things; if you have asked yourself who it is that has dotted heaven with such flowers, and why visible things are even more useful than beautiful; if sometimes, in the day, you have studied the marvels of light, if you have raised yourself by visible things to the invisible Being, then you are a well prepared auditor, and you can take your place in this august and blessed amphitheater.
Come in the same way that any one not knowing a town is taken by the hand and led through it; thus I am going to lead you, like strangers, through the mysterious marvels of this great city of the universe."
We focus upon the Zodiacal constellations because they are the ones that can be seen from all over the populated areas of the world, and they are the ones that St. Paul likely had in mind when he paraphrased Ps 18: "Their sound hath gone forth into all the earth: and their words unto the ends of the world." These are also the stars - along with the easily visible planets of our solar system - classically believed to influence our inclinations. Watching the visible cosmos for signs is not unlike watching weather patterns - the ancients relied on both sets of patterns and influences to plan their seasonal labors.
How does the Zodiac function? To understand the motions of the stars, we first have to have a basic understanding of the Earth as a sphere, and surrounding it, the Heavens as a second, much larger sphere. If we imagine that larger sphere as spinning once a day, from East to West, clockwise when facing North, we can imagine the rotation of the stars. Then, there is the ecliptic plane: the imaginary plane containing the Earth's orbit around the sun, through which, in the course of a year, the sun appears to travel. Upon this plane, lies the Zodiac: a sequence of twelve constellations that lie next to each other, one right after the other. This band of constellations, roughly 16o wide and angled 23.5o relative to the Earth's equator, is where we can watch the Sun and Planets travel throughout the year from anywhere in the world.
The fact that these constellations can be seen from anywhere is important, because:
Psalm 18:2-5: The heavens shew forth the glory of God, and the firmament declareth the work of his hands. Day to day uttereth speech, and night to night sheweth knowledge. There are no speeches nor languages, where their voices are not heard. Their sound hath gone forth into all the earth: and their words unto the ends of the world.
The Zodiac as we know it, including its constellations, is very ancient. It was known not only to the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, and Babylonians, but to the ancient Israelites and to those who literally worshiped these particular stars. IV Kings (II Kings in Bibles with Masoretic numbering) speaks of the battles between them and our Israelite ancestors:
IV Kings 23:4-5 "And the king commanded Helcias, the high priest, and the priests of the second order, and the doorkeepers, to cast out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels that had been made for Baal, and for the grove, and for all the host of heaven: and he burnt them without Jerusalem, in the valley of Cedron, and he carried the ashes of them to Bethel.
And he destroyed the soothsayers, whom the kings of Juda had appointed to sacrifice in the high places in the cities of Juda, and round about Jerusalem: them also that burnt incense to Baal, and to the sun, and to the moon, and to the twelve signs, and to all the host of heaven."
The above passage is an important distinction. Christians, like our spiritual ancestors, do not worship the stars or give them power over us - or over God. The Christian astrologer treats the influences of the planets as just that - influences which the native can navigate in a way of their choosing. With students I often use the metaphor of a weather forecast - astrology is just the weather of the stars. Much like extreme weather, Astrology can be beautiful, magnificent and draw one very close to the Lord. The mechanism of the stars and planets is perhaps one of the most sublime expressions of Divine Logos that we can witness just by looking up. In the coming weeks I will explain how the gallery of zodiacal constellations relate to the Gospel story, starting with Virgo.
Stay tuned!
