piety

The Business of Astrology

May 1, 2024 by admin

This was originally published on my Substack here.

There is a psychic/astrology storefront near my office. Some of my students have used her services and suggested that I check it out, as a lark. I have yet to do so.

Adam Grant recently devoted a Substack post to destroying any last remaining shred of credibility of astrology. Not only is astrology a bunch of malarky – as the science proves! – but it is a “gateway drug” to other strange and unmoored ideas. I’m not sure about the “gateway drug” bit (more on that below), but I totally agree with the rest. Even as entertainment, I recoil at the idea of giving my money to a charlatan.

Yet if I am being completely honest with myself, I also am afraid of what she will say. Who knows what kind of odd and potentially disturbing thoughts she will give me? I rationally know that I should not feel this. Yet, there is, perhaps, something seductive about the idea that someone can tell your future, combined with the belief that your fate is intertwined with the movements of the heavenly bodies. Whatever drives that feeling, I know that many others share it. Even in our scientifically-centered world astrology is a billion dollar business.

The practice of astrology is, of course, ancient. So too is criticism of it. Like today, most politicians and intellectuals throughout antiquity thought astrology to be, at best, a dubious activity. At worst, it was a way to manipulate the masses to oppose the State. At the same time, these same intellectuals largely subscribed its basic tenets.

Astrology is grounded in three basic beliefs. First, that time has quality. That is, moments of time are intrinsically different. Second, that this quality is linked to the movement of the constellations and the planets. Of special interest to astrologers is where the constellations are in the sky and the planets in relation to them. Third, that the there is a connection between the quality of the time as indicated in the heavens and what happens here on earth. This connection is sometimes referred to as the doctrine of correspondences. (The later theologian Emanuel Swedenborg would later apply this idea to his own spiritual and religious world.) The truth of these propositions was hardly questioned through antiquity, or for that matter, until the early modern period.

The nature of the correspondence was, however, a topic of ancient debate. Was the movement of the astral bodies (in which, according to some, were embodied the gods themselves) the cause of events, or signs of the future? This philosophical problem, of course, is at the heart of all future-telling activities: Are signs of the future deterministic and unalterable? One of the more famous ancient examples that leans toward determinism is that of Oedipus, whose family tried to do everything they could to alter a bad reading of the future only to discover that they facilitated that very outcome. Jewish and Christian intellectuals in antiquity never denied that there were meanings in the movement of the stars but they did largely shun deterministic interpretations. The future could be foretold but knowing its course could also be altered, especially (when bad) through acts of piety.

As with dream interpreters, there were learned and less-learned astrologers. Expert astrologers would have known not only how visually to recognize what was happening in the heavens but also how to compute the movement of the constellations and stars. One Hebrew manual from Late Antiquity, Sepher Ha-Razim, describes how one can ascend through the seven firmaments of heaven, what one will see at each level and how one should respond. According to its preface, the angel Raziel originally gave this information to Noah who learned from it the movement of the constellations and what they mean. Sepher Ha-Razim is not an astrological manual as we might usually understand the term since it does not detail the correspondences between the quality of time and the meaning of events. It does, though, link astrological phenomena to adjurations of angels and the firmament in which those angels reside. For example, if a man wants to win the heart of a rich woman (the manual entirely assumes a readership of men), then during the full moon he should invoke the angels of the first firmament by putting a piece of tin inscribed with an adjuration into a flask containing one’s sweat and bury it on her doorstep. The manual assumes a ritual expert who has many abilities, including at least some facility with astronomical observations, the names of angels, and scribal skills.

The rabbis very rarely mention astrologers, and when they do, they use a Greek loan word and reduce the position to a pedestrian and frequently incorrect predictor of the future. Despite frequent Roman claims that astrology is “Chaldean”, and thus originally practiced in Aramaic, rabbinic literature never uses an Aramaic or Hebrew term that we might translate as astrologer. The astrologer, even more than the dream interpreter, is mocked, even if the rabbi acknowledges that he (always he) does have the power to accurately predict the future. Even the rabbis never seem to condemn them outright or reject their expert knowledge and it is likely that other Jews did not have scruples about consulting them. Whether there were specifically Jewish astrologers (as there may have been dream interpreters) is unknown.

Christian authorities had a dimmer view of astrologers. Already beginning in 357, Roman imperial legislation astrologers get lumped together with soothsayers, diviners, augurs, seers, Chaldeans, and wizards – anyone who consults one is liable for the death penalty. (How often, or even whether, this was ever enforced is a different question.) The teaching of astrology was banned in 373 and in 409 all astrologers throughout the Roman Empire were to be banished unless they “transfer their faith to the practice of the Catholic religion and never return to their former false doctrine.” While the legislation becomes increasingly severe over time, it is quite possible that astrologers continued to work, with some catering to Christian customers. (For more on Christian astrology, see this excellent, open-access book.)

Astrology is a nice example of the complicated intersection between science, theology, philosophy, “official” religion, and actual human practice. That practice is often driven by deeper, ubiquitous psychological impulses. Scientists, philosophers, theologians, clergy, and lawmakers can work around the edges of those impulses, but our desire to know the future and to feel connected to a world beyond ourselves is here to stay – and thus too, the market for astrology and astrologers.

The Business of Astrology on Substack

April 17, 2024 by admin

I just made my first substantive Substack post. You can check it out here.

Shabbat in Carthage

February 20, 2024 by admin

While teaching my undergraduate course on The Ten Commandments this semester, I came upon the following passage in a sermon that Augustine preached in Carthage in 401:

And you, you despise him who is equal to the Father and one with the Father. You are told to observe the sabbath spiritually, not in the way the Jews observe the sabbath in worldly idleness. They like the free time to spend on their frivolities and extravagances. The Jew would do better doing some useful work on his land instead of joining in faction fights at the stadium. And their women would do better spinning wool on the sabbath than dancing shamelessly all day on their balconies. (Sermons on the Old Testament, 9.4)

The twin accusations at the heart of this passage – that Jewish abstention from work on the Sabbath was lazy and that the Jews observe the law in a fleshly rather than spiritual manner – were common in antiquity. As I am now (hopefully) finishing up my book on lived religion in Late Antiquity, though, the specifics piqued my interest: On the Sabbath, the Jewish men would go to the stadium and the women dance on balconies. How are we to understand such testimony?

In her comments on this passage in her magisterial book, Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism, Paula Fredriksen observes that here, as elsewhere, it is difficult to know whether Augustine is mentioning something true about the local Jewish community or whether he is simply fabricating or repeating slanders (pp. 306-12). He repeats both observations elsewhere in his writing (On Psalms, 32.2; 50.1; 91.2). On the one hand, by depicting Jews as doing things that Christians would have regarded as shameful (especially the women exposing themselves, even properly dressed, to public eyes), the reports perhaps too conveniently support his charge that Jews are carnal, as opposed to the more spiritual Christians. On the other hand, it is reasonable to think that at least some Jewish men did go to watch the fighting at the stadium. (This reminds me of funny piece by Shalom Auslander some years ago about going to a hockey game on the Sabbath.)

The dancing women are more puzzling. At least later, in Morocco, Jewish houses were distinguished by their windows and balconies; Muslims tended to avoid windows in order to maintain privacy. I wonder if there is a hint of that practice from much earlier, complete with a whiff of scandalous behavior. This would not account for the dancing, of course. Could Jewish women have gathered on their balconies on Shabbat and danced, out of joy or in order to pass the time? Why not?

Sacred Time: A First Stab

January 7, 2022 by admin

I have not posted very much over the period of COVID. This was due in part due to the predictable psychological effects of living under COVID (maybe a mild case of “languishing,” as the press has called it). More importantly, though, it is because I have been hard at work on a new book that focuses on the lived religious experience of those in Late Antiquity – the time (second to seventh centuries CE) of the formation of Judaism and Christianity as we presently know them. The reading, writing, and working out of my ideas has not left me with the mental space and emotional energy that usually drives my blogging. I do hope, though, that this post will help to get me back into the habit of doing so.

I have been finding one particular chapter of the new book extraordinarily vexing to write. This is the chapter on “sacred time,” on trying to understand how people in Late Antiquity understood the timing of their rituals and festivals. Part of my process for developing ideas is to present them to public audiences and talk about them when they are still rough, after which I often substantially revise my thinking. Over the past couple of years I have had little opportunity to do this, but was, finally, able to discuss a version of this chapter with a group at Brown University, the Cultures and Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean seminar. After reflecting on that conversation, I have begun to rewrite the chapter. Below is my latest draft of the beginning of the chapter (stripped of the notes). I’m not yet sure whether it will work and survive the writing of the rest of the chapter (again), but I would be interested in reactions. Does it make you want to read further?

It would have been hard, anywhere in the Roman Empire, not to notice the Kalendae Ianuariae. The kalends – the first day – of the month of January had been observed as a festival by Romans for centuries, and over time had become a raucous, multi-day festival. In the fourth century, the Greek rhetorician Libanius, writing in Antioch, observed that the three day holiday, capped off by a day of revelry, was so joyous that on the fourth day, as people began to return to work, they “prayed to see the same festival again.” It was one of the few Roman holidays so pervasive and important that even the rabbis, who studiously avoided mentioning nearly all Roman and Christian holidays, speculated about its origin and meaning. The bishop John Chrysostom, writing shortly after Libanius, himself devoted a sermon to the holiday, sputtering in anger at his congregants who seemed to have participated widely in the “demonic” celebrations, and emphasizing that Christians do not need special holidays, and should, in fact reject them: all of time now is a continual feast, he argued, in which one day is not more “sacred” than any other.
We will return later to the Kalendae Ianuariae, but for the moment, it is worth thinking about the many complex issues that it raises. Everybody knew that timing was no less important than space and method for communicating effectively with invisible beings. John Chrysostom might cavalierly dismiss the importance of sacred time, but even he knew that there was no chance he could convince his congregants that time was now entirely uniform. The problem, though, was how one could actually identify a propitious moment: What actually made one period of time more sacred than another? Was sacred time baked into nature itself and made visible in such signs as the rising and setting of the sun; the movement of the planets; and phases of the moon? Or was it sacred because some commanding body – the Roman Senate, a city council, God – said it was? Moreover, how did one person’s sacred time, such as the Roman Kalendae Ianuariae, layer onto other and competing sacred calendars, such as that of the rabbis? And what was at stake, not only theologically but also in the exercise of power? For motives that are not entirely pure, groups throughout history have struggled to control the calendar and its holidays.
Today, when we think of sacred time, we normally think of dates on the calendar, whether a particular day of the week or holiday, marked especially by official days off from work. This was also true in antiquity. Like today, people in antiquity were constantly reconciling multiple calendars, especially the festival calendars of Roman imperial authorities, municipalities, and their spiritual leaders. Scores of such calendars from Late Antiquity survive, often inscribed on stone or prepared in codex form for individual rich patrons. These festivals would be most palpably experienced in the closing of the law courts (which was, like today’s closure of government offices and services, the way holidays were officially recognized), gatherings – often accompanied by free refreshments – and noisy and sometimes spectacular processions. These were, perhaps like our own official festivals, complicated affairs that intricately linked notions of the sacred with commerce and projections of power and authority.
People in antiquity, though, also experienced sacred time in ways that were less connected to the calendar. Sacred time was an inherent part of the natural order, which also made it visible. The cosmos, and the motion of the planets, were visible signs of time, if only one knew how to read them. Sunrise and sunset, so often dramatically distinguished from the flow of the rest of the day, were clearer. The moon, particularly the full and new moons, was also a visible marker of time. Birth, death, and menstrual cycles – often hard breaks in the course of an individual’s life – could hold private significance, for individuals and families. It goes without saying that extraordinary weather events and other natural events, such as earthquakes, were also seen as irruptions of the sacred into the undifferentiated flow of profane time.
How people actually experienced and understood sacred time – how it actually worked in practice – is among one of the more difficult dimensions of ancient religiosity to recover. While some representations of time survive in inscriptions, calendars, and zodiacs, these artifacts can only indirectly reveal how people actually experienced time. The often-polemical writings of the elite too are informative, but they frequently obscure the more direct experience of sacred time. As we have come to expect, almost nothing survives from antiquity that shows how the non-elite – and especially women, children, and slaves – experienced time. Nevertheless, a careful and critical investigation of the fragments that we do have, bolstered with some informed speculation, can help us to bring into better focus the basic contours of how sacred time “worked” in Late Antiquity.