Читать книгу Astrology For Dummies - Rae Orion - Страница 21

The zodiac arcs across the cosmos, huge and impossibly remote. Its symbolic equivalent, small and incredibly close, is the human form. About two thousand years ago, the Roman astrologer Marcus Manilius correlated each sign of the zodiac with a part of the body in a sequence that starts at the head with Aries and runs down to the feet, which belong to Pisces. Medieval art, both European and Islamic, includes many fine renderings of the so-called Zodiac Man, a figure that also appears in ancient medical texts. Indeed, medicine as it was once practiced looked to astrology not only for an understanding of disease — the Black Death that swept across Europe between 1347 and 1351 was widely blamed on a planetary conjunction and an eclipse — but also for cures. Throughout the Middle Ages (and beyond), medical students at the University of Bologna and elsewhere were required to study astrology.

I have concerns about medical astrology. I have seen cases in which astrological diagnosis has proven to be weirdly accurate. Still, it’s not a sport for amateurs. To make an accurate diagnosis through astrology requires serious expertise. I love this diagram anyway because it reminds us that the spectrum of experience represented by the signs of the zodiac is universal and lives in each one of us.