Cosmos
A Cultural History of Astrology

Nicholas Campion

An interest in astrology links the rulers of Babylon with Chaucer and Ronald Reagan, and with countless millions of people past and present. Its study attracted many of the best minds of the ancient and medieval worlds. The history of astrology, which was inextricably linked with astronomy and cosmology, is the history of intellectual and social revolution, and of the spread of ideas and of humanity’s changing views of its place in the cosmos. It has influenced writers from Plato to Jung and provided an essential part of the framework in which the men and women of the past lived. It offered a system of thinking that allowed people to make decisions and to make sense of the world.

 ‘It is the stars, the stars above, govern our condition.’

SHAKESPEARE, KING LEAR