ASTROLOGY

• The first major new history of astrology ever published.• Comprehensive coverage from the earliest known records from Ancient Babylon (over 4000 years ago), to the present day obsession with horoscopes.• Horoscopes are hugely popular today with an estimated 200 million people worldwide regularly reading their horoscope.• Author is a respected expert on the occult.Astrology is a means of interpreting the influence which the positions of certain heavenly bodies have upon the earth and human beings. The earliest records are those of Babylon, which were designed to help its kings understand the will of their gods. It then became a way of making sense of the world as people saw themselves as integral parts of a vast but puzzling whole. Medicine, politics, religion, the sciences, all had astrology woven into their fabric, and the best minds of the Middle Ages and early modern period engaged themselves in its study.Controversy, however, thereafter hastened its decline as a science until the twentieth century saw its return in the highest circles of the Third Reich and a number of postwar democracies. This book traces astrology's checkered history and notes that modern research suggests it should be taken much more seriously than people usually suppose.