The oracles are dumb,
No voice or hideous hum
Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving.
Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine,
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.
No nightly trance or breathèd spell,
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell. John Milton Hymn 19:173
Of course rumour has been impossible to ban, especially when the subject is the dictator himself. Of all the world’s megalomania, perhaps only Ne Win has ruled by astrology and superstition. The best example of this is the day he bankrupted the population. Without warning he cancelled most of Burma’s currency, replacing it with bank notes that added up to or included the figure 9. According to his chief astrologer, 9 was his lucky number. The Burmese weren’t quite so lucky. As most of them keep their savings in cash, most of them were ruined. John Pilger, Burma – Land of Fear, ITV 1996
The defendant on charges of grievous bodily harm might perhaps have chuckled when one of the jurors in his 1998 trial in Tyne Crown Court asked for his star sign. The juror told the judge that if he knew the defendant’s exact time and date of birth he would be able to draw up an astrological chart to determine his guilt. The juror – to his consternation – was discharged. Swordplay on-line, The Top Ten Mad Jury Moments #5
Astrology was fundamental for astronomy, but even more so for medicine at the time. All continental universities would have had a professor teaching astrology as part of the medical curriculum. Monica Azzolini, University of Edinburgh, specialist in Renaissance astrology & science
What you can see is there is a certain correlation between the aspects in the heavens and what happens on Earth. Helen Sewell, Alternative View II conference
Arriving to join Tycho the star-gazer was an impoverished German mathematician: Johannes Kepler. When Johannes Kepler arrived here in Prague in 1600 he was in dire straits: his two young children had recently died and he was in desperate need of a job. When he arrived here there was no procession, and there was no imperial greeting. I’m reasonably sure that amongst his possessions however he would have had one of these: horoscopes. Ironically enough, a man who would be greeted as one of the greats of science practised astrology. Michael Mosley, The Story of Science, BBC 2010
To accept astrology in the way that people took it in the Middle Ages, you have to accept the idea that the Earth is fixed in the centre of the universe. Dr Allan Chapman, historian of astronomy Oxford University
Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee. Isaiah 47:13
A physician without a knowledge of Astrology has no right to call himself a physician. Hippocrates
You know, I designed the Queen’ crest. I simply combined all the creatures that represent our star signs – and I don’t even believe in astrology. Freddie Mercury
Astrology has no more useful function than this, to discover the inmost nature of a man and to bring it out into his consciousness, that he may fulfil it according to the law of light. Aleister Crowley, The Complete Astrological Writings
After a duration of a thousand years, the power of astrology broke down when, with Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, the progress of astronomy overthrew the false hypothesis upon which the entire structure rested, namely the geocentric system of the universe. The fact that the earth revolves in space intervened to upset the complicated play of planetary influences, and the silent stars, related to the unfathomable depths of the sky, no longer made their prophetic voices audible to mankind. Celestial mechanics and spectrum analysis finally robbed them of their mysterious prestige. Franz Cumont
All Pretences of foretelling by Astrology, are Deceits; for this manifest Reason, because the Wise and Learned, who can only judge whether there be any Truth in this Science, do all unanimously agree to laugh at and despise it; and none but the poor ignorant Vulgar give it any Credit. Jonathan Swift
Astrology is framed by the devil, to the end people may be scared from entering into the state of matrimony, and from every divine and human office and calling. Martin Luther
We are born at a given moment, in a given place and, like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and of the season of which we are born. Astrology does not lay claim to anything more. Carl Gustav Jung
And most people say of astrology, ‘Oh, it’s harmless fun, isn’t it?’ And I should say probably for about 80% of the cases it probably is harmless fun, but there’s a strong way in which it isn’t harmless: one, because it’s so anti-science; you know, you'll hear things like, ‘Science doesn’t know everything’. Well, of course science doesn’t know everything, but because science doesn’t know everything that doesn’t mean science knows nothing. Science knows enough for us to be watched by a few million people now on television, for these lights to be working, for quite extraordinary miracles to have taken place in terms of the harnessing of the physical world and our dim approaches towards understanding it. Stephen Fry, Room 101
What do the bleeding stars in the paper predict? Forecast. Prophesy. Foretell … Monty Python’s Flying Circus s3e11: Dennis Moore, BBC 1972
What strange influence does the moon have on the behaviour of man? In Search of s2e5 … Astrology, 1978
We know our sign but little beyond that. What is astrology? Why do thirty-two million Americans express a belief in it? Simply put, astrology is the forecasting of events on Earth based on the relationship between the stars, the sun, the moon and the other planets. As above, so below. ibid.