ABSTRACT
All the schools or streams of astrology that follow have contemporary forms, albeit some more implicit or covert than others. Popular astrology can also, in its own way and within those limits, also involve the divination that we have identified at the heart of astrology proper. To summarize the discussion so far, astrology originated in the formative matrix of experience in which what we distinguish as mythic, scientific, spiritual, physical, divine, animal and indeed human itself were inseparable. In the modern sense of ‘scientific’, this programme began in the late seventeenth century with efforts by some practitioners to reform astrology in keeping with the new natural philosophy, particularly Bacon’s empirical and experimental programme. Archetypal/humanistic/transpersonal astrologers often try to claim scientific support in woolly ways that are easily disposed of by their critics, in which case they fall back on an inexplicable supernaturalism, often of ‘New Age’ provenance.
