kb/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology-9.md

title	chunk	source	category	tags	date_saved	instance
Astrology	10/10	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology	reference	science, encyclopedia	2026-05-05T09:17:04.565712+00:00	kb-cron

In India, there is a long-established and widespread belief in astrology. It is commonly used for daily life, particularly in matters concerning marriage and career, and makes extensive use of electional, horary and karmic astrology, a vertent who believes in reincarnation and in the idea they can read a person's karma in a Natal chart by studying in particular Lunar nodes and retrograde planets. Indian politics have also been influenced by astrology. It is still considered a branch of the Vedanga. In 2001, Indian scientists and politicians debated and critiqued a proposal to use state money to fund research into astrology, resulting in permission for Indian universities to offer courses in Vedic astrology. In February 2011, the Bombay High Court reaffirmed astrology's standing in India when it dismissed a case that challenged its status as a science. In Japan, strong belief in astrology has led to dramatic changes in the fertility rate and the number of abortions in the years of Fire Horse. Adherents believe that women born in hinoeuma years are unmarriageable and bring bad luck to their father or husband. In 1966, the number of babies born in Japan dropped by over 25% as parents tried to avoid the stigma of having a daughter born in the hinoeuma year.

=== Literature and music ===

The fourteenth-century English poets John Gower and Geoffrey Chaucer both referred to astrology in their works, including Gower's Confessio Amantis and Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer commented explicitly on astrology in his Treatise on the Astrolabe, demonstrating personal knowledge of one area, judicial astrology, with an account of how to find the ascendant or rising sign. In the fifteenth century, references to astrology, such as with similes, became "a matter of course" in English literature.

In the sixteenth century, John Lyly's 1597 play, The Woman in the Moon, is wholly motivated by astrology, while Christopher Marlowe makes astrological references in his plays Doctor Faustus and Tamburlaine (both c. 1590), and Sir Philip Sidney refers to astrology at least four times in his romance The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (c. 1580). Edmund Spenser uses astrology both decoratively and causally in his poetry, revealing "...unmistakably an abiding interest in the art, an interest shared by a large number of his contemporaries." George Chapman's play, Byron's Conspiracy (1608), similarly uses astrology as a causal mechanism in the drama. William Shakespeare's attitude towards astrology is unclear, with contradictory references in plays including King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, and Richard II. Shakespeare was familiar with astrology and made use of his knowledge of astrology in nearly every play he wrote, assuming a basic familiarity with the subject in his commercial audience. Outside theatre, the physician and mystic Robert Fludd practised astrology, as did the quack doctor Simon Forman. In Elizabethan England, "The usual feeling about astrology ... [was] that it is the most useful of the sciences." In seventeenth century Spain, Lope de Vega, with a detailed knowledge of astronomy, wrote plays that ridicule astrology. In his pastoral romance La Arcadia (1598), it leads to absurdity; in his novela Guzman el Bravo (1624), he concludes that the stars were made for man, not man for the stars. Calderón de la Barca wrote the 1641 comedy Astrologo Fingido (The Pretended Astrologer); the plot was borrowed by the French playwright Thomas Corneille for his 1651 comedy Feint Astrologue.

The most famous piece of music influenced by astrology is the orchestral suite The Planets. Written by the British composer Gustav Holst (1874–1934), and first performed in 1918, the framework of The Planets is based upon the astrological symbolism of the planets. Each of the seven movements of the suite is based upon a different planet, though the movements are not in the order of the planets from the Sun. The composer Colin Matthews wrote an eighth movement entitled Pluto, the Renewer, first performed in 2000, as the suite was written prior to Pluto's discovery. In 1937, another British composer, Constant Lambert, wrote a ballet on astrological themes, called Horoscope. In 1974, the New Zealand composer Edwin Carr wrote The Twelve Signs: An Astrological Entertainment for orchestra without strings. Camille Paglia acknowledges astrology as an influence on her work of literary criticism Sexual Personae (1990). The American comedian Harvey Sid Fisher is known for his comedic songs about astrology. Astrology features strongly in Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries, recipient of the 2013 Man Booker Prize.

== See also == Astrology and science Astrology software Barnum effect Glossary of astrology List of astrological traditions, types, and systems List of topics characterised as pseudoscience Jewish astrology Scientific skepticism Worship of heavenly bodies

== Notes ==

== References ==

== External links == Digital International Astrology Library (ancient astrological works) Biblioastrology (www.biblioastrology.com) (specialised bibliography) Paris Observatory