Alchemy and astrology are complementary disciplines. Sister sciences seen as the precursors to chemistry and astronomy, respectively, their practitioners also consider them arts. They posit a universe where consciousness and matter are one. Alchemy relied upon astrology; astrology does not need to incorporate alchemy.
Astrology is the older discipline; some of the oldest written astrological references are Mesopotamian and go back to approximately 1800 BCE (Britton and Walker 1996, p. 42). It is an interpretive art as well as a science. The science of astrology is the observation and charting of the sky. The configuration of the planets is an objective fact based on geometric calculations, set up for the day, minute, and location of a person’s birth. The universal element, the sky on a given day, is made personal through connecting it to earth through the time and location. This creates the wheel of the 12 houses of astrology, which determines exactly how the sky on a given day will...
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Acknowledgement
The seven basic alchemical stages defined by Edward Edinger in his book Anatomy of the Psyche are reprinted with permission from Open Court Publishing Company, a division of Carus Publishing Company, Peru, IL, USA. @1985 Open Court Publishing Company.
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Bader, C. (2014). Astrology and Alchemy. In: Leeming, D.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6086-2_51
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