Astrology

Astrology is the ancient art of interpreting the influence of the stars and planets upon earthly affairs and human lives. It rests on the conviction that the heavens and the earth are bound by correspondence and cosmic sympathy, the planets being not dead bodies but living powers — indeed the very gods, Sun and Moon and the rest.

Systematized in Hellenistic Alexandria into the form the West would inherit, it was a pillar of the 'technical' Hermetica. It also sharpened a great philosophical question: if the stars govern all, what becomes of human freedom? The debate over the stars and fate runs throughout the Platonist tradition, which mostly held the soul free above the turning spheres.