ABSTRACT
Divinatory astrology, as a symbolic art which is necessarily both subjective and objective – and therefore neither alone – almost disappeared from view. In Mesopotamia, the principal original home of astrology, a deterministic and ‘objective’ view of fate did not yet obtain. Not only were chthonic omens potentially as significant as heavenly ones, but the latter were apparently not held to cause earthly events; nor were the events they signified necessarily unavoidable. In Greece at the time of the arrival of Mesopotamian astrology, there was already a divinatory discourse which must have constituted the context for its reception and understanding. From the earliest astrology to the present, then, two characteristics can be perceived whose coexistence seems paradoxical, but both of which should be kept firmly in mind. In practice, astrology is essentially divinatory, with an intimate relationship with the divine, the attendent humility, and a propensity to subvert all the painstakingly constructed and defended categories of subject/self/culture vs object/world/nature.
