The Astrologer of the Nineteenth Century (1825)
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Fascinating work.
Many are rightfully dismissive of the modern sun-sign based astrology found in cosmo or your local paper.
However, in the East astrology (in the form of Jyotish, and used the sidereal vs tropical zodiac) has been in use for thousands of years and is quite a mature discipline.
I do see it as more descriptive vs explanatory. Many of the professional astrologers don’t claim that the heavenly bodies are directly responsible for material phenomena. However it is hard to deny the coincidences when you start looking more closely at the charts, and looking at related charts to see the similarities across family members/spouse/close friends.
I think works like this do a disservice by moving astrology away from what is basically glorified statistics / data science and into the bucket of disciplines like necromancy and the like.
personally I find no harm in psychology and symbols. Certain religious authorities over time however, really would not give up on vilifying all parts of it, with vigor. In the modern times these old arguments seem silly. Does the author here really want to "hollywood" up the "sinister" aspects of this old boogeyman?