Astrology is not officially recognized as a religion. However, some people may feel spiritually connected to this religious system. A strong spiritual connection can be found at the heart of many beliefs. As a result, the subject of religion is frequently one that must be approached with caution. Astrology is more appropriately classified as a branch of science or philosophy. Unlike religion, it does not have a place of worship. Astrology is based on the concept that special connections exist between the stars, planets, and their combinations.
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Is astrology related to God?
The Bible's texts that forbid astrology can be read in many different ways. It's easy to become perplexed by the debate. As a Christian, I feel that astrology information should be handled with caution and with honesty. I've witnessed the accuracy and profound insights that astrology can provide to others, and I believe it should be utilized with caution, much like a counselor treads softly on some themes until the client is ready. As a therapist, I use astrology with clients to help them better understand themselves and others. Astrology may disclose a lot about our personality, actions, emotions, and soul goal. Anyone who reads about their sun sign traits with an open mind cannot deny that those features usually exist within them and are accurate.
Astrology predates both astronomy and psychology as one of the oldest disciplines. It was not made to cause harm to people or to glorify God. God advised humans not to place anything in the outside world above their relationship with him, which includes astrology. The Bible's references to the occult warn us not to rely solely on psychics for all of our answers.
People have a tendency to ignore God and place their whole trust in psychics and mediums, which the Bible warns against in several chapters. They were advised that it is a tool to be used sparingly and only when absolutely necessary, and that they should never reject God and rely only on an astrologer for answers. “Astrology is fact,” said Edgar Cayce, a Christian mystic, “yet there is no greater power over man than his own will.” God gives us free will to make our own decisions, and Cayce felt that the planets' energies influence our inclinations, dispositions, and drives. Cayce was a fervent Christian who went against the grain of traditional Christianity and dedicated his life to helping others.
Is it a sin to believe in astrology?
God instructed the Israelites to abandon all Canaanite practices of divination (including astrology), fortune-telling, and sorcery, according to Scripture. The Lord deemed these practices to be an abomination (Deuteronomy 18:9-12).
‘The prophets are prophesying lies in my name,' the Lord said to me. I didn't send them, and I didn't give them any orders or talk to them.' They are prophesying to you a deceitful vision, useless divination, and their own deception.
The astrologists and sorceries were put to shame in Daniel's book when they failed to interpret the King's dream.
The magicians, enchanters, Chaldeans, and astrologers then came in, and I informed them about the dream, but they couldn't tell me what it meant.
We witness a servant girl possessed by the Spirit of Divination in Acts (Acts 16:16-24). Paul exorcised the wicked entity from her. She was practicing fortune-telling and had made a lot of money for her proprietors as a result. Demons were providing her uncanny insight into other people's lives.
Some of these issues were also faced by the Israelites and members in the New Testament church. Anything related to these “divulging practices” was to be removed from the church, according to Paul.
Many new Christians came forward, confessing and disclosing their practices. And a group of people who had dabbled with magic gathered their books and burnt them in front of everyone. They counted the value of them and discovered it was fifty thousand silver pieces. As a result, the Lord's word grew in strength and influence.
They acknowledged their transgressions and set fire to all of their possessions. And it was through them that God was able to continue his work.
Participation in Zodiac sign believing means participating in astrology, which the Bible forbids and God views evil throughout the Bible.
Is astrology related to the Bible?
“Job 9:9 reads, “He is the Creator of the Bear and Orion, the Pleiades, and the southern constellations” (cf. Amos 5:8).
A Jewish individual is not to worship other gods, according to Deuteronomy 17: 27 “or the moon, or any of the heavenly hosts,” and so on. The main point here is that minor divinities were thought to be linked to astral bodies. Reading the stars revealed the interplay of divine beings.
There is a lot of zodiac iconography out there. The lion, the bull, the water-bearer, and other biblical motifs are all common. Animals with astrological connections glide through the pages of prophetic literature.
Is there an astrological purpose to the Bible as a whole? Joseph had a dream in Genesis 37:9 “The sun, moon, and eleven stars prostrated themselves before me.” For Philo, a first-century Jewish sage, this signified Joseph was a prophet “As a result, he is classified as the twelfth, completing the zodiac circle.”
What's wrong with astrology?
The scientific community has dismissed astrology as having no explanatory power for describing the universe. Astrology has not been shown useful in controlled research and lacks scientific validity, hence it is classified as pseudoscience.
Is it good to believe in astrology?
Whatever astrology claims, there is no substantial proof to back it up. Astrologers believe that changes in the motion of planets will affect your personality, but NASA has discovered a slew of new planets in addition to the recognized ones.
What religion does astrology come from?
The Chinese calendar, which is related with Chinese astrology and ancient religion, is the basis for the zodiac's history. Taoism was one of the religions that impacted the zodiac. Constellations and space are used in Taoist beliefs to identify a person's “future.” This is relevant to the zodiac because, according to Chinese astrology, the placements of objects in space can influence a person's future. They used the sun to determine how all of the zodiac signs would function in relation to the dates and periods.
A yin-yang symbol is frequently incorporated in the middle of various zodiacs, which represents any two opposing principles in the cosmos and how everything works. The religion Taoism is the source of the yin-yang. It's one of Taoism's most well-known symbols, which holds the notion that “a man is a microcosm for the universe.” The yin-yang is linked to the zodiac because it is used in conjunction with the five components of the Zodiac to read the ten stems, which are used to tally days, months, and years. The yin-yang influences the traits of the 12 zodiac animals when they are combined.
Buddhism is another example of how religion and the zodiac are linked, with one tradition claiming that Buddha invites all the animals chosen for the zodiac. This is significant in Chinese culture since this religion, which has had the biggest religious impact on China, is practiced by the majority of the population. The influence of religion has had a significant impact on how the zodiac is structured and what it has evolved into.
Who created astrology?
Jones stated, “This is possibly older than any other known case.” “It's also older than any of the written-down horoscopes from the Greco-Roman period,” he said, adding, “we have a number of horoscopes written down as a kind of document on papyrus or on a wall, but none of them as old as this.”
The discovery was presented in the most recent edition of the Journal for the History of Astronomy by Jones and StaoForenbaher, a researcher at the Institute for Anthropological Research in Zagreb.
Forenbaher told LiveScience that the crew was working near the entrance of a Croatian cave in 1999, a site well known to archaeologists and residents of the surrounding hamlet of Nakovana who simply named it “Spila,” which means “the cave.”
Nobody realized at the time, however, that the cave featured a part that had been locked for over 2,000 years. Forenbaher's girlfriend (now his wife) dug under the rubble and discovered a broad, low passageway that ran for over 33 feet in the dark (10 meters). “The unique King Tut experience, arriving to a spot where nobody has been for a couple of thousand years,” Forenbaher said of passing down the passageway.
When Forenbaher entered the cavern, “there was a very thin limestone crust on the surface that was splitting under your boots,” indicating that “nobody had gone there in a very, very, long time,” he added.
The researchers eventually discovered that it had been blocked off in the first century B.C., presumably as a result of a Roman military effort against the locals.
The archaeologists discovered a phallic-shaped stalagmite, as well as countless drinking containers deposited over hundreds of years and something more. “These very small bits and pieces of ivory came out in the course of that dig,” Forenbaher explained, “and we didn't even recognize what we had at the time.”
The group got to work. “It took years to piece them together, find more bits and pieces, and figure out what they were,” Forenbaher explained. They ended there staring at the ruins of the world's oldest known astrologer's board.
Archaeologists aren't sure how the board got inside the cave or where it came from. The Babylonians developed their own version of horoscopes around 2,400 years ago, which is where astrology began in antiquity.
Then, around 2,100 years ago, astrology went to the eastern Mediterranean, where it became popular in Egypt, which was ruled by a dynasty of Greek monarchs at the time.
Jones explained, “It gets transformed very much into what we think of as the Greek style of astrology, which is really the present type of astrology.” “The Greek style of astrology is the foundation of astrology that spans the Middle Ages, modern Europe, modern India, and beyond.”
The ivory used to produce the zodiac images dates back to 2,200 years, just before the advent of this new kind of astrology, according to radiocarbon dating.
The location of the board's manufacture is unknown, though Egypt is a possibility. They believe the ivory came from an elephant that was slain or died in the area around that period. Because ivory is such a valuable commodity, it would have been preserved for decades, if not a century, before being utilized to make the zodiac. These signs would have been adhered to a flat (probably wooden) surface to form the board, which could have featured other features that did not survive.
It could have been loaded onto a ship sailing through the Adriatic Sea, a vital trade route that the cave overlooks. Illyrians were the people who resided in Croatia at the time. Despite the fact that ancient writers had a negative view of them, archaeological evidence reveals that they interacted with surrounding Greek colonies and were a vital part of the Mediterranean civilization.
An astrologer from one of the Greek colonies may have visited the cave to make a prediction. A consultation in the cavern's flickering light would have been a powerful experience, if not particularly convenient for the astrologer.
Jones commented, “It doesn't sound like a very practical site for performing horoscope homework like calculating planetary placements.”
Another hypothesis is that the Illyrians acquired or stole the astrological board without fully comprehending its use. The board, along with the drinking containers, would have been presented as an offering to an unknown deity worshipped in the cave.
“This astrologer's board could have shown up as an offering along with other exceptional items that were either bought or robbed from a passing ship,” Forenbaher speculated. He noted that the drinking cups discovered in the cave had been chosen with care. They were made in another country, and only a few cruder amphora storage vessels were discovered with them.
“It nearly appears that someone was bringing out wine there, pouring it, and then discarding the amphora away because they weren't good enough for the gods, or to be deposited in the shrine,” Forenbaher said.
The phallic-shaped stalagmite, which may have formed naturally on the site, appears to have served as a focal point for these offerings and rituals held in the cavern. Forenbaher cautioned that all stalagmites appear phallic in some way, and it's difficult to know what significance it had to the cave's inhabitants. “It had to mean something significant,” he remarked.
“This is a spot where goods of local importance were deposited with some type of supernatural power, transcendental being, or whatever.”
Do Muslims believe in astrology?
Individuals like Abd al-Jabbar are responsible for the first traces of Muslim individuals and, as a result, an Islamic position against astrology. This viewpoint varies from that of persons like Abu Mashar, who sought to justify celestial creatures' causal effect on terrestrial biological forms. The inclusion of historical documents such as Kitab al-Daraj, which prove the prevalence of astrology in early Islam, adds to this. Yet, even before these individuals/texts, historians and theologians like asAl Hashimi strove to defend the importance of astrology in shaping Islamic believers' religion through thinkers such as Masha Allah. Al Hashimi studied at the possibilities of the influence of stars on one's morality and religion in general, quoting Masha Allah as authority. Masha Allah is also used to support the belief that the Prophet Muhammad was born as a consequence of a planetary conjunction, or the coming together of celestial objects, effectively implying that the Islamic prophet was born as a result of astrological events. The underlying attitude of both Masha Allah and Al Hashimi in pointing to the planets, stars, and other heavenly entities as the principal way by which divine authority is exercised, i.e. how God emits power over all life forms, is where they share similarities. Individuals like Al Hashimi received so much criticism that they suggested that astrological claims could be computed without interfering with religion. Despite this, Al Hashimi's analysis suggests that astrology was present in early Islam. Despite the fact that astrology is not generally permitted in Islam, early Muslims relied on the sun and moon to predict key things like the direction of Mecca, Ramadan fasting times, and the beginning and end of each month. Even while early Muslim astronomers concentrated more on the planets and their energies, they continued to employ the customary zodiac symbols originating from Hellenistic astrology. They employed astrology and the positions of the planets to forecast people's health and happiness. Global plagues were predicted by eclipses in Libra, Aquarius, or Gemini, while starvation and sickness were predicted by comets or shooting stars.





