Derek Parker - Parkers Encyclopedia of Astrology: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Astrology

Derek and Julia Parker are familiar names to anyone interested in astrology. Since 1970 their many books have introduced innumerable readers to the subject, many of whom started to study astrology by using them, and have subsequently become professionals. Julia started life as an art teacher and dancer, Derek as a journalist and broadcaster; they became interested in astrology in the 1960s, and besides their numerous books on the subject (including The Compleat Astrologer and Parkers Astrology) they have also written books on dream interpretation, mythology, magic, the theatre, and travel. Julia has written two novels, and Derek a number of biographies.

By the same authors:

The Compleat Astrologer
The Compleat Lover
Derek and Julia Parkers Love Signs
The Compleat Astrologers Love Signs
How Do You Know Who You Are?
A History of Astrology
The New Compleat Astrologer
Life Signs
The Future Now
Parkers Astrology
The Sun and Moon Signs Library
Love Signs
Parkers Astrology Pack
Parkers Prediction Pack
The KISS Guide to Astrology

PARKERS

ENCYCLOPEDIA

OF ASTROLOGY

DEREK AND JULIA PARKER

To Chester Kemp and Angela Priestman,
with love and gratitude.

INTRODUCTION

This is a book for everyone who is interested in astrology for those who are attracted to it but have never studied it; and for those who may be expert in calculating and interpreting a chart, but have never thought about the long and fascinating history of the subject.

Anyone simply interested in their star signs will find the subject easily explained here, without any jargon just what it means to have the Sun in a zodiac sign but also how you have a rising-sign, a Midheaven, and the Moon and planets also scattered about your birth-chart. You can check whether its really true that Scorpios are mad for sex while Virgos arent in the least interested.

But the encyclopedia contains much more than the usual book aimed at laymen, because if you want to look further you can discover here what it means when a planet has a trine aspect to another; what a trine aspect is, and how it works. What is a polar sign? What is precession? a critical degree? a planetary hour? Almost every question you can ask about astrology is answered here so the book will be useful, too, to the student astrologer who needs quickly to find what orb is allowed a sesquiquadrate aspect or in what sign Mars is exalted.

There is in these pages much to fascinate those who are not in the least interested in how (or even whether) astrology works here you can trace the history of the subject over the past 2,000 years and more. You can read how Nostradamus wrote his famous predictions, how the astrologer Thrasyllus ruled Rome under the Emperor Tiberius, how and when Ptolemy wrote the first great astrological textbook and how 1,500 years later William Lilly wrote the first one to be published in English. On one page Jean-Baptiste Morin is hiding behind the bed-curtains to note down the precise moment when the Dauphin of France consummates his marriage, on another Simon Forman is busy calculating the charts of his female clients not only to help them, but to find out whether hell be successful in seducing them. In one century Pope Paul III sets up a university of astrologers and employs Luca Gaurico to work out the most propitious moment to lay the foundation stones of his churches, and centuries later here is Cardinal Wolsey employing an astrologer to read the mind of his employer, King Henry VIII.

The spread of astrology through the world can be followed here, too from Greece to Rome via an astrology school on the island of Kos; from the East to the West as the textbooks of Albumasar are translated into English by Adelard of Bath; how astrology travelled to the new lands of North America, and how after the invention of printing the burgeoning astrological almanacs brought the subject to the ordinary people for many years, the two books most commonly to be found in every home were the Bible and the current almanac.

Then there is the long association between astrology and medicine for centuries it was improper and usually illegal to practise medicine unless you had studied astrology. And, just to annoy the sceptics, the equally long association between astrology and astronomy how for a millennia one word described both professions, and how even the great Kepler kept his horoscope book and published annual almanacs.

After two centuries in the doldrums, some aspects of astrology are now once more being taken seriously; courses in its history are being taught in universities, biographers have looked at the lives of Lilly, Simon Forman, John Dee and others, and work has at last begun on examining and codifying the countless astrological manuscripts in European libraries which throw an often extraordinarily new and illuminating light on social and intellectual history. Can anyone afford to ignore all this with a disdainful sniff? Or is it worth at least dipping one foot into the fascinating sea which this book surveys?

Derek and Julia Parker
Sydney, 2007

A

Abano, Pietro d (ca.1250ca.1317) Italian astrologer, philosopher and doctor who studied philosophy and medicine in Paris before opening a practice in Padua. Admired by R EGIOMONTANUS , he was described as a great master of astrology and astronomy, and published translations of A BENEZRA . He was summoned twice to appear before the Inquisition accused of magical practices, was acquitted the first time, but died before the second trial ended. He was found guilty but since he was dead, escaped the stake. His body was ordered to be exhumed and burned, but friends had removed it from the grave and it escaped that ignominy.

Abenezrasee A BRAHAM BEN M EIR IBN E ZRA

Abiathar Crescas (fl.15th c.) Court astrologer to King John I of Aragon (135095). He was also a surgeon, and restored the Kings eyesight.

Abraham bar iyya ha-Nasi (10701136) Also known as Savasorda. A Spanish Jewish astronomer and philosopher with a keen interest in astrology who in his Megillat ha-Megalleh claimed to have calculated from scripture the exact time for the advent of the Messiah.

Abraham ben Meir ibn Ezra (10931167) Also known as Abenezra. An enormously well-respected Jewish literary critic and commentator on biblical texts, philosopher, and writer on astronomy and astrology who travelled widely in Europe and the Middle East. He published an introduction to the subject as well as an extremely thorough exegesis on contemporary Arabic astrology. Among his published works are Keli ha-Neoshet (a treatise on the ASTROLABE ), Sefer Hateamim or The Book of Reasons, a survey of Arabic astrology, and Reshith Hochma, or The Beginning of Wisdom, an introduction to astrology.

Abraham Zacuto (ca.1450ca.1510) A Jewish rabbi, astrologer, astronomer and mathematician, for some time Royal Astronomer to King John of Portugal. He taught at the University of Salamanca and elsewhere. He published several books on astrology, but his main achievement was the development of the ASTROLABE .

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