Astrology: A Very Long History

I'll admit, I've never been that interested in astrology.  When I was younger, I thought the whole thing sounded silly.  Even now I don't take it too seriously, but I do find the concept behind it more interesting.  Over the years I've come across a lot of things that have piqued my curiousity about it, whether it be personality profiles based on it, or accurate predictions made with it.  I'm also intrigued by how ancient people such as the Maya were able to make such a complex and accurate calendar based on astrological observations.  I've been thinking about it more lately because I've been thinking about cycles of time (I wrote about that the other day).  I also know that the sun and the moon effects us and the earth itself.  So with all that in mind, I've been considering how other stars and planets may effect us also.

No one is denying that stars and planets move through the sky.  But not everyone thinks the movement of the stars and planets has any real effect on us or society.  It occurred to me though that belief in astrology may be the oldest 'religion' (for lack of a better term) there is.  Typically, you can trace the origins of a religion to someone.  But, you can't really do that with astrology.  You can trace the various types of astrology back to specific regions, but you can't really trace it to any one person.  It's almost as if astrology in one form or another is as old as recorded history.  It's like it was just sort of 'there'. So where did it really come from?  Who was the first astrologer?  Who was the first person to notice all the movements of all the heavenly bodies and record what they thought it all meant?  And why did they think it meant what they said it meant?  How many different people figured it out?

I figure it began by one of two ways:

• It was taught to early man by an angel, demon, or alien.
• Someone merely observed how the stars moved at night, then recorded whatever events occurred afterwards and associated the observed movements with what events occurred (or didn't occur).

Now let's just assume for a moment that the latter is true.  Are the movement of heavenly bodies actually connected to the events that occur?  Or are they merely unrelated events that someone erroneously connected to the movement of stars?  What if there really was no connection between the movement of the stars and what events occurred?  

What if there was no connection, but a connection was created and entered into the collective sub-conscious. What if the collective sub-conscious causes events to happen in a certain way at a certain time based on the position of the stars?  In other words, what if the movement of the stars have nothing to do with the events that occur, but thousands of years of belief in astrology have resulted in people unconsciously causing the events to occur anyways?  Could it be so embedded into the collective subconscious that even people that don't know anything about astrology still unconsciously contribute to causing events to happen based on the position of the stars?  Is this why religions such as Judaism, Islam, and Christianity condemn astrology?  Are these religions trying to free the collective subconscious from the belief that the movement of stars has some real significance?  Are they trying to tell us that our lives aren't dictated by the positions of stars?  Are they trying to break the cycle?

But then I'm also reminded of how the sun and moon effect us.  So I begin to wonder again if the other stars and planets can have a subtle effect on us to.  

I'm still not sure what I believe.  But it gives me something else to ponder.