What is the difference between Astrology and Astronomy?
Ancient civilizations had notices that among all the objects in the sky (aster) most were fixed in position. Among them, however, a few big ones were moving (aster planetes = wandering star) and a few small ones would appear at random times (for example, aster cometes = star with hair). Because they did not know what caused them to move, some observers (certainly not all of them) thought that they were moved around by gods (and later, by angels) for the purpose of sending us messages. The decoding of these messages became astrology. As long as no one understood why the planets were moving (and why comets kept showing up unannounced), there was no conflict between astronomy and astrology. Some very famous astronomers were also astrologers. But there was a difference. Astrology was specifically determining the messages sent by the gods, using the planets. By extension, these messages could carry the key to understand a person by analyzing the position of the planets at key times in their
