The first astrologers aka the ancient wise ones lived and acquired knowledge at an unknown time and place believed to be Atlantis. And not having access to modern technological wonders that inquiring minds use today they employed their extrasensory perceptions to find truthful answers to the fundamental questions that have always preoccupied curious thinkers: what is life, who am I and why do I exist?
So, you won’t be surprised to learn that the answers they got to these profound questions are very different to those that modern day inquirers get.
Evolution has resulted in knowledge advancement and since the time of the first astrologers we’ve learned a lot, but we haven’t advanced spiritually and we haven’t advanced in our understanding of the natural world.
The first astrologers didn’t live in overcrowded, sensation-soaked cities like people today who live materialistic lives acquiring money and possessions and believing dubious religious teachings and scientific disinformation.
Rather, they had a deep spiritual connection to life and the universe and were very acute observers who noted that people born at the same time each year expressed common traits and characteristics. And in their search to explain this observable fact they turned their attention to the stars in the sky and celestial phenomena.
This required an understanding of astronomy and the first astrologers were astronomers.
Viewed from Earth the stars in the sky have fixed positions, but the Sun, Moon and planets are moving. And the apparent path that the Sun travels is called the ecliptic.
The Sun and planets move north or south of the ecliptic and the first astrologers discerned that the Sun’s position along the ecliptic determined the traits and characteristics of people born at specified times of the year.
They named the ecliptic the zodiac and discerned that it divides into twelve equal sections which they called zodiac signs.
The four seasons follow a continually repeating cycle and this requires a place in the sky to not only start the cycle but to determine the positions of celestial objects.
Living in the northern hemisphere it became apparent to the first astrologers that this place is when days and nights are equal and they chose the Vernal Equinox when winter turns to spring. The zodiac starts at this first point of Aries.
Further investigation by the first astrologers revealed more information of the highest spiritual value.
They perceived that the trend given a zodiac sign was more precisely specified by a sub-influence identified as a decanate. And then they discovered that souls acquire and develop intelligence and ability through evolutionary experience and that the planets and zodiac signs are God’s agents in this fantastic enterprise.
Then, having discovered this sacred and powerful information ensuring its preservation for posterity became their sole objective.
The communication of thoughts and ideas requires language, but the first astrologers knew that documenting their sublime knowledge using the words they spoke would be useless and ineffective.
They knew that future civilizations wouldn’t speak their language or understand the words they wrote. And they knew that the Earth is a hostile place where dangerous things happen so they had to safe-guard their sublime astrological and other knowledge from the destructive tendencies of dangerous souls and the ravages of time.
They knew that ensuring its safe and successful transmission into the eternal vistas of tomorrow would require some very smart and clever thinking.
They realized that the traits and trends of the zodiac signs and their decanate subdivisions could be explained by easily identifiable symbols. And that the brightest stars in the sky could be grouped to form images – heroes, heroines, animals and human-made objects – that described these traits and trends.
They realized that the astrological data secreted away in the unseen zodiac could be revealed by an appropriate and easily identifiable symbol placed in the sky.
So rather than employing words and sentences they uploaded their precious astrological knowledge into the sky as pictograph symbols where the sequence of the constellations coincides with the sequence of the zodiac signs and their 36 decanate sub-divisions.
These constellations that reveal the influence of the zodiac on life have existed since the solar system emerged 4.5 billion years ago. And God’s great astrology code – comprising the Sun, Moon, 8 planets and 12 zodiac signs – has been guiding developments here on Earth ever since life emerged about 3.6 billion years ago.
Human life emerged about 209,000 years ago and the first astrologers, at a time and place that pre-dates recorded history and is lost in the mists of time, discerned the code and gave the star patterns in the sky symbolic images that reveal the traits and characteristics of their corresponding zodiac signs.
They decoded God’s great astrology code and uploaded what they discovered into the sky as the pictured constellations. It’s been there ever since waiting for someone with the innate ability to understand the language of the stars to give it meaning, understanding and a contemporary interpretation involving physics, mathematics and altruistic spirituality.
So, thanks to the first astrologers and their contemporaries, we know that as the Sun, Moon and planets travel along the zodiac belt they move through the zodiac signs forming angular relationships and the astrology code that’s formed at a specified time can be decoded using their ancient wisdom.
Heirs to the ancient wisdom
History records that the heirs to the ancient wisdom were the Babylonians.
Around 5600 BC they discovered the astro-data that the first astrologers recorded in the sky. They used the constellations and kept accurate and detailed records of celestial events.
And history records that succeeding civilizations practiced astrology and added to its knowledge-base.
It’s known that the Greeks inherited their astrological knowledge from the Mesopotamians; and that they inherited theirs from the Sumerians. And it’s known that the Greeks added mythological stories to the constellations to clarify and enhance the meaning of their messages.
In the second century Ptolemy, in his book Almagest, listed 48 constellations, but by the 20th-century these had increased significantly and in the 1920s the newly formed International Astronomical Union charged Frenchman Eugene Delaporte with the task of creating a uniform sky. And the names that Ptolemy gave the 48 ancient astrological constellations exist to this day as part of the 88 official constellations presented by Delaporte in 1930.
But the use of Ptolemy’s constellations was not restricted to the Greeks. They have been used by other cultures like the Australian Aboriginals, American Indians and seafaring Polynesians.
The ancient Egyptians had their own constellations; as did regions in China, Mesopotamia, South America and India. The constellations were known to the native peoples of Siberia and Alaska. And the Aztecs and Mayan Indians had their own constellations. And now there’s evidence to support the claim that the astrological knowledge of the Babylonians was inherited from a very ancient source.
The Lascaux cave complex in south-western France was discovered September 12, 1940. The cave contains nearly 2000 painted figures – animals, humans and abstract designs – and their age is estimated at 17,300 years.
Near its entrance is a magnificent painting of a bull and hanging over the bull’s shoulder is what appears to be a map of the Pleiades, the cluster of stars sometimes called the Seven Sisters.
Today this region of the sky forms part of the constellation of Taurus the bull and researchers have suggested that the Lascaux paintings may incorporate prehistoric star charts and indicate a direct transfer of information for over 17,000 years.
Each of the officially recognized 88 constellations is a grouping of stars pictured as a mythological character, animal or man-made object, but only 48 have a proven astrological influence.
These 48 reveal the traits and characteristics of the 12 zodiac signs and their three decanate subdivisions (12 + 36 = 48). These decanate subdivisions are pictured by heroes, heroines, and animals such as bears, dogs and serpents. The whole ensemble represents a coordinated system of coded information.
The names that the first astrologers gave the planets are not known, but today all the planets, except Earth, are named after Greek and Roman gods and goddesses.
Mercury was named after the Roman god of travel; Venus after the Roman goddess of love and beauty; Mars was the Roman god of war; Jupiter was the king of the Roman gods; and Saturn was the Roman god of agriculture.
Uranus was named after an ancient Greek king of the gods; Neptune was the Roman god of the Sea; and Pluto, which is now erroneously classified as a dwarf planet by modern sky gazers, was the Roman god of the underworld.
Earth is an English/German name which simply means the ground.
In the ancient past the first astrologers acquired sacred knowledge which they called the science of the soul and stars. They understood its spiritual import and to safeguard it from contamination and abuse they uploaded it into the sky. Their skywriting reveals that astrology to them was not only a science but a religion that provided individual souls with moral guidelines for living.
Their astrological knowledge was based on fundamental principles which were subsequently added to – astrology is a progressive science – and in the 20th Century Elbert Benjamine investigated all the available data, checked its authenticity using the scientific method, and using Freud’s new age understanding of the unconscious mind and Einstein’s new age understanding of relativity rewrote the astrology text book for the budding Aquarian Age.
It’s available to you as the Hermetic system of astrology.
This article contains words written by Elbert Benjamine.
Astrology for Aquarius – sharing our knowledge
