Astrology - Fate and Destiny in Early Judaism and Islam - History of Jewish & Muslim Astrology

astrology and monotheism have had a let's call it complicated relationship through the ages at times in open conflict and and others able to achieve something of a detent of the complicated reasons for this one likely stands out if fate or destiny are governed by forces other than god what does this do exactly to the concept of god's sovereignty indeed it can almost seem to make god's sovereignty while redundant thus concepts like luck fate and destiny they sit uneasily next to more orthodox theology for instance the anglo-saxon concept of fate or weird the wanderer states weird bith fool arad fate is inescapable resolute steadfast even becomes our modern word for something uncanny or strange well weird weird becomes weird in this episode of esoterica we yes we and not some strange royal academic we we're going to discuss the role of astrology in early judaism and islam that we you ask well this episode's special because i'm joined by esme lk partridge who'll be covering astrology and islam especially in the thought of al kindy you may remember esme from my episode on the stellar rays where i heaped praise on her commentary on just that text esme is an outstanding junior scholar and i'm thrilled to have her here on esoterica you can learn more about esme and connect with her in the description below so i'll be handling astrology in early judaism roughly through the talmudic period and esme is going to pick up with astrology in the islamic world of course this won't be an exhaustive history but it will hopefully prove to be a solid introduction to the discussions surrounding astrology in early judaism and roughly from the 8th to the 14th centuries in the islamic world if you're interested in magic hermetic philosophy or mysticism make sure to subscribe here to esoterica also if you want to support my work of making accessible scholarly and free videos on topics and as a terrorism please consider supporting me on patreon or with a one-time donation your support makes esoterica possible and i really deeply appreciate it thank you so i'm dr justin sledge and welcome to esoterica where we explore the arcane in history philosophy and religion [Music] to better understand the uneasy relationship between judaism and astrology indeed the phrase for paganism or idolatry in rabbinical hebrew is avodah or star worship it may be helpful to get some insight into how the ancient israelites understood the heavens and the inhabitants therein in this worldview it appears that there was a kind of dome called the rakia which surrounded the earth within that dome teamed a multitude of quasi-divine creatures that we now call angels but early on were members of the celestial court along with the israelite god and his his consort yeah that was a that was a messy divorce these creatures were identified with the stars so this is the first point the israelites understood the stars as living creatures which could act or be worshipped from the roofs of homes indeed they could even be condemned to the neither world or sheol eventually the stars came to be understood as a kind of heavenly army with the israelite god being their commander-in-chief indeed the title adonai tsava's indicates this rank of divine generalissimo we even meet one of the leaders of this army as the quote sava adonai or the captain or prince of the army of adonai in the book of joshua during the siege of jericho of course being an army they do their share of fighting in the song of devorah among the earliest texts of the hebrew bible this celestial army is actually engaged in hostilities against the commander of the canaanite army and of course we find parallel notions in other ancient near eastern cultures as well the notion of the stars as divine beings can of course be found in many texts including the epic of gilgamesh we only learn a bit about specific celestial bodies in the hebrew bible the major stars and constellations probably include the pleiades or kima aish which may have been ursula mayor or perhaps the heidi's the masarot which could have been the pleiades or the hyades and casill which is very likely orion although the word also appears in isaiah and the plural for some reason we're not quite sure why i've also won if the kessel run you you know the one that was done in less than 12 parsecs might be related to this hebrew term for orion i mean there's indoor in the bible and that's also a place where some magic goes down oh yeah i should also mention if you're interested in magic in israelite society you want to check out the card above i've done a whole episode about just that topic also remember the word mazarot this may be a generic word for constellations in the hebrew bible but it's primarily mentioned in the book of job that word's going to matter a lot more in just a bit just to be clear these identifications are not quite well they're not certain but there's something worth noticing about all of these stars are these star clusters they're all typically associated with winter and they occur in a relatively small area of the night sky typically they're also mentioned in the context of rain as well which makes sense given that the winter is the rainy season in canaan or israel indeed that these stars are so important in the hebrew bible they're the primary ones that get mentioned and given the fact that they all seem to deal with rain may have something to do with fertility magic or weather magic more generally like in many ancient languages there's no separate hebrew word for planet in ancient hebrew there are simply stars or in the ancient greek world there are also those stars that wander hence our word for planet from the greek for to wander planets and of course there are the fixed stars so to speak the ones that don't wander around of the planets we learn of saturn or kiyun a planet long associated with jews and judaism here in a hebrew version of its assyrian name kevan venus is also known as the meleket hashemayim or the queen of the heavens and this is typically associated with the canaanite god asarte or ishtar in the wider ancient near eastern world perhaps the most famous star in the hebrew bible is mentioned at isaiah 14 12 in a prophecy against the babylonian crown probably against nebuchadnezzar where that monarch is cast down from their position of power there the monarch is termed quote helleben shachar or halel the son of the dawn this is a very complicated literary play between being both the one that shines and the one that's cast down into the pit of the neither world of course the reference here might be to the planet venus but when that word was translated to latin as well lucifer or light bearer this entire section becomes taken by christians to describe the fall of satan following his disastrous heavenly rebellion so that really got out of hand despite being established very early on in both egypt and babylon ancient kanan and israel more specifically seem to have imported very little in the way of astrology by the time of the babylonian exile in the 6th century bce indeed israelite prophets typically mentioned star gazers or hashem only in connection to babylon or chaldea and mention is mostly made to mock them indeed the prophet jeremiah warns to quote not be terrified of the signs of the heavens or the otochemim as the other nations are of course this is as much political as it is theological not that that distinction was really made in the ancient world or are now despite this astronomical knowledge would have had to have been imported in order to settle complicated issues in the jewish calendar in fact these issues proved amazingly difficult leading to various kinds of factions to adopt rival calendars like the solar calendar described in the book of enoch and perhaps the one that was adopted by the sect at qumran and represented in many of the dead sea scrolls indeed an early horoscope well specifically a kind of astrological physiogamy has been found in the dead sea scrolls themselves at q186 if you're interested in these interesting calendar issues astronomy astrology secret codes and even buried treasure in the dead sea scrolls make sure to check out my episode on that topic in the card above with the rise of the apocalyptic mode of judaism in its vast literature they would prove to be little room for predictive astrology indeed apocalyptic judaism was deeply deterministic but only determined by the divine will so we are pretty much unsurprised to see a systematic association of all forms of divination including astrology with the various fallen angels are the watchers in the book of enoch now this is all a bit ironic considering that the astronomical and calendrical sections of that very same book would have been impossible without sophisticated astrological knowledge in the ancient world this might however represent an early attempt on the part of jews to separate between predictive astrology and merely descriptive astronomy although that idea is a bit contentious the book of jubilees also has avram being called forth from his astrological observation to the worship of one singular god thus putting these two things in a kind of juxtaposition as jewish mythology develops however abraham actually becomes thought to have basically invented astrology with all the wise men of the world coming to consult with him similar ideas also occur in the talmud and as esme actually pointed out to me in a correspondence they also occur in quran surah 6 more on this idea as we get later into the rabbinical period this of course only reinforces the similar prohibitions on various though not all forms of divination in the hebrew bible again it's worth driving home that the hebrew bible condemns certain forms of divination apparently divination by cloud and by snake among others astrology is never really mentioned much less condemned as one of the forms of divination and of course other forms of divination like divination by the urem and thumim are well encouraged and allowed during the same period as the rise of apocalyptic judaism the sibilene oracles also seem to commend a jewish rejection of astrology and philo of alexandria also seems to see basically nothing other than folly in this practice as we see in his text on the contempt of life though he does note that the 12 stones and the breastplate of the high priest represent the the entire universe so yeah that's not the zodiac or anything though it is clear that josephus sees in the heavens portents of the destruction of the temple so again we have philo the sibylline oracles and josephus all taking rather different positions on how to interpret the sky if we should at all the new testaments also surprisingly silent on the practice of astrology though jesus does mention in the gospel of luke that the apocalypse basically would be accompanied by quote signs in the sun moon and stars and of course no ancient reader of the gospel of matthew would have been surprised that zoroastrian priests or magi followed a star to the infant messiah here the writer is likely politicizing against the jewish rejection of the messianic character of jesus while the jewish establishment has rejected him even non-jewish wise men could recognize the truth literally written in the heavens of course the relationship of early christianity and astrology would need to have its own episode r10 so stay tuned for that of course with the destruction of the jerusalem temple judaism underwent a major innovation shifting away from sacrifice to prayer and learning the major center of jewish life was eventually shifted following the baka revolution of 132-135 to the galilee and then to the academies of babylonia during this period oral traditions were first written down perhaps out of rabbinical fears following the genocide in palestine first came the mishnah in around 200 of the common era followed by the commentaries produced in both the galilee and around 400 and then the most important jewish text of all second only to the bible the mammoth commentary that came to be known as the gemara or the babylonian talmud redacted sometime between 500 or 600 of the common era of course by this time period hellenistic astrology had become dominant in the region and was a highly developed system of incredible precision and nuance for the rabbis of the major academies of surah and pumbadita the question of astrology was not whether it worked or whether it was real or not that was basically not in doubt the question however was one whether it were permissible to consult astrology at all the prohibition taking the form of ain sho alin bakal daim or not consulting the chaldeans and two to what degree exactly astral influence affected the people of israel the first question whether or not one can consult with non-jewish philosophers is in some sense easier to settle of course you can you just consult with the jewish astrologers now this question about whether the consultation of astrology at all is constitutive of consulting with the chaldeans is going to be a huge question in the entirety of the jewish practice of astrology in the medieval european context but that's going to have to be a future episode at this point at least the legal opinion seems to have been that while astrology had its origins with non-jews the practice of astrology was not forbidden to jews in fact it seems like basically all the rabbis consulted with or knew something about astrology in the talmud after all astrology is very much akin to something like mathematics or medicine in fact it intersects with both mathematics and medicine and like other sciences it was invented by non-jews but of course widely practiced by them that the belief in astrology was widespread and relatively orthodox is perhaps best on display in the numerous astrological mosaics and other artwork that adorned the synagogues of this period in this period astrologers are typically referred to in hebrew as kaldaim or khalda a in aramaic both terms for chaldeans while the more mysterious term it's tagnin or istagniyut for astrology is also common as well the transliterated greek terms astrologos and astrologia are also common especially in texts produced in palestine while most of the talmudic rabbis believed that astral bodies had a direct impact on earthly affairs they were often skeptical that such complex and mysterious astral bodies and their relations were or even could be interpreted correctly clearly they held that being born on certain days of the week led to certain personality characteristics and even the ruling power of a given hour could sway the tides of human fortune or psychological states all human beings though perhaps not all animals are connected to a certain star or mazal another opinion states that even single blades of grass have a ruling star or a masal that makes them grow now you may remember this word from earlier in the book of job and indeed masalot becomes one of the words for constellation in hebrew of course you've probably even heard people shout mazeltov at joyous celebrations in the jewish world such as at weddings mazal literally means something like star but more like astral influence and the phrase likely has a sense of may you be under the influence of a good astral power or may be under the influence of a good star or more simply just good luck i've always appreciated the fact that when something wonderful happens in judaism we still say yeah good luck with that i mean it's not like the jewish people have been through anything that may make them anxious about the future or anything this also introduces the central debate around astrology during this period of the relationship of judaism to that practice if israel had a special covenantal relationship with god then how could astral influence intervene upon that bond the typical attitude taken in the talmud was quote israel or there's no astral influence upon israel though just what this means has been variously interpreted as there's just no astral influence at all to only on israel's collective fate or that there is no mazal for israel but other nations are governed by mazal so astrological prediction still holds to even that mazel doesn't even bear on individual members of the jewish people of course other prominent rabbis held that the stars well basically determined things like wealth profession the amount of children one would have various kinds of psychological traits and various kinds of other conditions were basically faded by the masala however there does seem to be a pretty significant agreement on the idea that righteous deeds can undo even the power of the stars again in masala israel here means something like if you keep faith and you perform the torah the power of the mazalot can somehow be annulled clearly by the period of the talmud astrology was a well-established form of knowledge and practice though not without some degree of legal practical and theological controversy the redaction of the talmud in babylon in the sixth or seventh centuries is almost directly in the time period of the conquest of that region by the armies of islam in 630s and the 640s of the common era just as jewish astrology was basically an importation into judaism so too would jewish attitudes about astrology be deeply affected by developments in islamic philosophies in the centuries that followed of course jewish developments in astrology would continue from the safer yet sera or the book of formation composed in roughly this time period to the philosophical and legal debates of the european middle ages to the astrological magic of texts like the seifer raziel though those are all topics for future episodes while it is clear that hellenistic astrology permeated rabbinic judaism there can be no doubt that other traditions egyptian indian and mesopotamian astrology all played a role as well of course all of that would be taken up and largely synthesized in the islamic world and it's to that world that i want to turn to now again i'm very happy to welcome sma partridge onto esoterica to cover astrology in the islamic world between the 8th and the 14th centuries astrology entered the medieval islamic world through two main channels either directly through greek sources encountered during the arabic translation movement or through persian culture which was encountered during the conquests pre-islamic persia had an elaborate astrological system which was itself a confluence of hellenic and vedic ideas which were imported from india into pleasure under the reign of shakur the first in the third century here they were translated into path levi middle persian and from there on played a significant part in persian society at least at an administrative level it was this persian synthesis of greek and vedic astrology that the early muslims first encountered when they established settlements across the middle east fascinatingly the city of baghdad in iraq was actually founded on a date and time determined by a persian jewish astrologer of course baghdad was the center of much of early muslim scholasticism so even before we get into how they dialectically engaged with the art of astrology we know that it quite literally laid the foundations for a lot of their intellectual work a major concern of these early muslim thinkers was how and to what extent could astrology be incorporated within the islamic worldview this involved not only a reconciliation of ptolmiak technical astrology with quranic cosmology but also an assessment of the theological permissibility of practicing the science of the stars known as ilm al-nujum this is a term which initially applied to both astronomy and astrology it was not until slightly later that debates dealing with the nuances between the two really took place so in the 9th century the focus was more on how could the science of the stars broadly conceived be metaphysically compatible with islamic monotheism al-kindi was one of the first islamic philosophers to work in the house of wisdom in baghdad he wrote around 270 treatises with quite a few of these addressing cosmological and astronomical topics his systematization of astrology is rooted in an aristotelian although neoplatonized aristotelian cosmology and this is a really interesting worldview which you find in al-farabi sutrawadi among a myriad of other islamic thinkers and essentially comes from misreadings of plato and aristotle during the translation movement so in essence what al-kindie obtained from these translations was a neoplatonized aristotelian cosmology which might sound quite contradictory but it actually makes perfect sense when astrology and other arts are applied to it so alkindy based his theory of astrology particularly in aristotelian concepts of causality however he was also heavily inspired by notions found in the quran itself of particular significance here is surah al-rahman which is a verse praising the creation of god and how perfectly balanced and ordered the universe is there is a line in this verse which al-kindi draws on in his treatises on astrology this verse is judah which means and the stars and trees prostrate the concept of the stars prostrating is often understood simply to mean that they bow down to god submitting to the order of his creation this interpretation would be justified by the fact that the arabic verb yesterday can denote both physically bowing down but also obeying in a more conceptual sense al kindy raises this slight ambiguity here and points out that the cosmological implications of this can actually go much deeper in his treaties on the proximate agent of generation and corruption he invokes aristotle's four causes to explain the meaning of the celestial bodies bowing down to god he discusses aristotle's concept of the agent cause which is essentially the agent in any given operation which is subservient to the final cause and allows it to come about and to be actualized essentially the agent cause is what bows down and submits to the objective of the final cause alkindy explains how an agent cause can be either remote or proximate a remote agent cause is an agent which doesn't come into direct contact with its object while a proxima agent is one which does which essentially operates as a medium between the two now this all sounds quite abstract and if you're not familiar with aristotle might not really make very much sense but thankfully el-kindi uses a really interesting analogy to explain how this works and what the dynamic of the proxima agent cause is so he says that in the case of a shooter who is trying to strike a target with a bow and arrow the shooter is a remote agent because the shooter never comes into direct contact with the object that it's trying to shoot this is why he employs a bow and arrow now this bone arrow is essentially the proximate agent cause because it allows the shooter to come into contact with the object through this medium so it essentially allows the shooter to meet its objective of shooting the object but through a medium which comes into contact with that object while the remote cause cannot or the remote approximate agent rather al-kindi goes on to apply this to the celestial bodies now for al kindy god is absolutely one which is what we find in the islamic doctrine of tawhid now for al kindy as he explains in his treaties on first philosophy if god is absolutely one then god must have no generation and corruption and this means that god cannot come into direct contact with that which is generating and corrupting namely the physical world this basically creates a sort of quasi-deus theology in which god can't actually come into contact with his creations so he needs to employ a proximate agent in order to do that making him the remote cause the celestial bodies take the form of this proximate agent cause because celestial bodies can in fact have contact with the material world so the celestial bodies take on this role of the proximate agent whereby they act as a kind of metaphysical middle man this allows god's final causes to be acted out in the world but through this proximity medium the reason that the celestial bodies make for an ideal proximate medium is that they influence the way that the four elements affect earth so essentially what al kindy argues is that the motions of the planets are responsible for the changes in vibrations and heat and light and all of these other forces which affect how material elements change and what forms they take on in other words the stars and the planets mediate the unity of god tahid with the multiplicity of creation acting as a proximate agent that allows the divinity and transcendent unity of god which is inherently a temporal and eternal to come into contact through approximation with that which is contingent and material so although of course the stars and planets are themselves material they are the sort of more metaphysically perfect quality because they're closer to the eternity of god and we can really see the aristotelian influence here we think about how aristotle made the comment that the stars on the planet move out of a spiritual desire to imitate the prime mover they do this by moving in eternal circles so you've got this idea that the celestial bodies moving in eternal circles are about as close as you can get to the perfection of god whilst also being material so again we've got this idea that they conceptually mediate god and the world being the proximate agent that allows one to exert force on the other our kindy suggests that we can prove that the celestial bodies are approximate agent by looking at the sun al-kindi says that the sun and its light are essentially the proximate agents for the sustenance of life on earth now of course this life on earth is willed by god but it is through the light of the sun and what that provides us with namely health that we can actually go and survive and that will can be actualized so the sun in a very practical sense is that proximate agent for giving of life and of course the sun is a celestial body now for al kindy the effects that the planets can give off onto humans is not just limited to heat and light he comments that during the sun's rotation around the circle an amount of heat cold moisture and dryness appear in our bodies below them at every time now this also applies to more subtle psychological qualities he says that the earth's inhabitants receive certain types of psychological traits manners and desires according to their general mixture of elements caused by the passing of the circle celestial sphere and the individual mixture of each thing subject to generation and corruption so what this means is that all the different planets essentially give off different metaphysical vibrations or rays as he later goes on to call them which affect the condition of the human body and affect the ways in which it generates and corrupts and the way that the four elements within it interact and this can all be traced to the planets which essentially are what manipulate these elements in the first place now this is compatible with the islamic worldview in theory because it doesn't undermine the creative power of god it maintains that god is the source of all that occurs in this world the celestial bodies are merely introduced as agents which fulfill or bow down to his orders and this explains surah rahman according to al kindy the stars and planets are no more than proximate agent causes or instruments in the cosmic harmony set out by god as al-kindy makes it very explicit on several occasions they provide the order according to the creator's will we also find this belief held in early test fear that is interpretation and commentary on the quran commenting on verses which mention the stars and planets the 9th century persian scholar al-tabari suggested that the heavens can be understood as instruments for god's control over creation altabari explains this through using a really vivid metaphor of chords which express the arabic concept of aspergh meaning causality al-zabari says that there are chords all around us which connect the heavens and the material world and these chords he writes are finer than hair and stronger than iron and they are everywhere although they are invisible so it would seem that here al tabari is alluding to quite a similar concept to alkindis namely that the celestial bodies are responsible for causing things on earth through manipulating subtle vibrations of heat and light and other forms of energy which go on to affect the material constituency of all created things and therefore determine their nature i think this idea of ropes is really interesting this idea of ropes and cords because you get this really vivid understanding of god's actions being directly tied to that on the world but nonetheless through a medium which sort of links the two states of existence together namely eternity of god and contingency and temporality of the world below now in one of his more esoteric works alcindi takes this complex metaphysical system a step further in his treaties which is often known as on the stellar rays which only ever survived in latin not in its original arabic al-kindi goes on to say that as human beings with a fitzra that is a divine spark within us we can actually tap in to these stellar rays these vibrations coming from the stars and planets and we can actually manipulate them as proximate agents to suit our own objectives in explaining how human beings can effectively harness the stellar rays through drawing sigils making incantations and even performing animal sacrifices alkindy is basically elaborating on essentially a system of astral magic in which human beings are as i say tapping into these celestial vibrations and using them to meet their own desires and means now this does not necessarily compromise with islamic monotheism because it still asserts that the origination of these celestial rays still comes from god's will it's simply a master of human beings activating their own divine consciousness and divine power essentially to use these rays to meet their own ends that said the text references to things like sigils incantations and sacrifices clearly has undertones of magical practice and what would often be known as idolatry or shirk in islam and for this reason some critics have even argued that the text is actually forged and that it couldn't have possibly been written by al kindy because it seems to seems to push the boundaries of orthodoxy in ways which al kindy never really does before so this is a really interesting criticism to consider i mean most scholars have decided that he did write it just because the style in which it is written is so distinctively kindeen but that doesn't really explain how does this otherwise very orthodox islamic philosopher and theologian come to this elaborate system of what's essentially astral magic in any case we know that al kindy has some involvement with the practical art of astrology because in his catalogue of works we find a lost epistle addressed to his student zarnab titled on the secrets of astrology and how to teach principles of the star's actions it was around the time of abu mahar that the distinction between astronomy and astrology began to crystallize he sought to defend the latter art claiming that predicting the future through the activities and measurements of the celestial bodies doesn't go against the islamic credo but actually complements it he's inspired by the quran and it's several references to seeking knowledge for example lord increase my knowledge there is also a well-known hadith of anas ibn malik according to whom the prophet said that seeking knowledge is incumbent upon every muslim according to abu mahar applying the technical science of astronomy to predicting future events through astrology is simply an extension of this knowledge he says that the second science astrology is the fruit of the first science astronomy because the wise man if he knows the quality of the movements of the spheres and the planets and their quantity the result is that he knows what the power of those movements show and their states of the things in the world and if he does not know what the planets signify by their movements then the first type of the science of the stars has no result in other words merely observing the stars and planets is just a waste of intellection because you're only truly knowledgeable if you can seek ways to apply this knowledge to serve better ends and to improve your quality of life and for abu masha astrology is the perfect candidate for for doing that and for applying our observational knowledge now this view was not without its criticisms although it's generally ubiquitous among islamic scholars that seeking knowledge is a crucial part of being muslim there are limits as to how far this can and should go for example it's important not to supersede the knowledge of god and transgress the limits of our humility as human beings by transgressing our epistemic humility human beings are liable to playing god and trying to imitate god's omniscience this is exactly why ibn al-qaeda who is a 13th century islamic legal scholar was opposed to astrology now he argued that the occult sciences such as astrology and alchemy and other forbidden arts are forbidden precisely because they lay claim to god's omniscience and omnipotence even klim actually went as far as to deny the science of astrology itself altogether he provided over 30 examples in total showing how the movements of the sublunar sphere have no power over worldly events so he not only wanted to deny the legitimacy of practicing astrology as an occult art but also the science behind it the jurist evan taimir also rejected the practice of astrology although unlike ibn kaim he acknowledged that it had some scientific validity he makes it clear though that acknowledging that the science of astrology may exist in a metaphysical way doesn't warrant practicing it as an occult science and he says that there is a clear boundary between the two and we can understand this through a clear definition and this definition is that the science of the stars can be of two species computation or judgment the issue with judgmental astrology is that it's based on the premise that the superior movements are the cause of events in the world and that knowing the cause necessarily yields the knowledge of what is caused he says that this implies determinism outside of god's plans for the world and therefore constitutes a kind of unbelief in god's ultimate power he summarizes this in one of his legal fatwas where he says that the belief that one of the seven stars is in charge of one's good fortune or misfortune is a corrupt belief and if somebody believes that this planet is what administers him he is an unbeliever now this would of course be refuted by al kindy and abu mashad because they both make it clear that astrology doesn't take the place of god's will but is actually completely subservient to it in fact for abu mahar the powers of the planet are so passive that even human will is more powerful than what they're capable of ordaining he states that although the celestial bodies can affect man man is actually able to subvert them this is quite a similar premise to what we see in elkhindi's own stellar rays in the sense that man still has an element of control this notion that human beings still have a degree of control despite something being preordained for them is probably best understood on the terms of the muttazilite theory of predeterminism and free will according to them with tessellates god creates and to some degree predetermines all of the possible causes of a human life however these only exist potentially they are latent possibilities they are latent creations which don't come into actuality unless that human being chooses to do so so it's essentially down to the will of the individual human being to actualize or manifest these latent possibilities and ultimately their direction in life the muetasalites use this famous example of wood within wood there is the latent potential to become on fire but this potentiality of course only becomes an actuality if an agent actually sets fire to it so man is always capable of activating his own free will to determine which specific course his life will go down but this course is ultimately predetermined by god except in a latent form the role of the stars and planets essentially doesn't go beyond the provision of these latent potentialities they simply provide the material means for something to happen should the individual either actively do it or not go into any effort to avoid something happening so returning to al kindy the stars and planets are only ever subservient to god's will bowing down or submitting or prostrating to it rather than substituting it for another one or creating their own path of determinism as aristotle's metaphysics makes it clear an agent cause be that remote or proximate can never fulfill its own final calls or ends it's simply subservient to another and so in al kindly's understanding there is no need for astrology to necessarily compromise with monotheism because celestial bodies at no point take the place of god at least not in this system however the question of whether taking this further into an elaborate system of astral magic as al kindy appears to do in on the stellar race is quite contested one has to carefully weigh up the two axioms relating to knowledge and epistemology within islam where is the line between seeking knowledge and impersonating or trying to undermine god's knowledge does predictive astrology cross that line or is it simply the fruit as abu masho says of scientific astrology which helps humans live better lives and ultimately be better muslims the bottom line is of course perhaps that god knows best however the debates surrounding astrology's legitimacy in the medieval islamic world are certainly fascinating in their own right and pertain to bigger questions in abrahamic cosmology and theology the wonderful thing about doing education on youtube is that we can reach across the ether so to speak and really lean on each other for our respective expertise it was wonderful hosting esme and i really hope to bring more scholars junior and senior scholars to share their knowledge as obviously i can't be an expert on everything in the study of esotericism you'll find links in the description below for more on astrology and judaism including a really great source sheet from safaria with primary sources in hebrew aramaic and english i've also included esme sources as well so make sure to take a look at those and make sure to connect with esme you really want to follow her she's going to be and she already is a really amazing scholar of this material until next time i'm dr justin sledge and you've been watching esoterica where we explore the arcane in history philosophy and religion you

Channel: ESOTERICA

Views: 80,412

Keywords: astrology, al-kindi, judaism, islam, talmud, kabbalah, cabala, astrological, esotericism, western esotericism, occultism, mysticism, magick, hermetic, hermetic philosophy, occult lecture, alchemy, magic, sufism

Id: Qseo4QM-7H8

Length: 45min 3sec (2703 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 05 2021