I'm currently reading a book primarily about prehistory (Church of Birds by Ben Gagnon) and while it's mostly not about astrology, the author has things to say about the sky. It struck me, as I was reading, that the way in which people understand astrology has everything to do with distance.
Up until relatively recently, humans viewed the stars as being small things that were nearby. There are many places around the world that have understood their rivers as existing in relation to The Milky Way. For people who understand the stars as small and nearby, it's easy to see why the activities of the stars would be as much part of the ecosystem as the river. The effect of the moon on water is easily observed, so the idea that stars could also impact on the Earth isn't especially far-fetched in that context.
As a modern person experiencing the stars as remote and indifferent suns, I'm ambivalent about astrology. I find it hard to believe that something so large and distant could impact on me in more than very vague and general ways. However, imagining the stars as forces that seem much closer to hand, immediate and personal, gave me completely different sense of how astrology might have worked for my ancestors.
This is one of the things I love about books on prehistory - this opportunity to imagine life in radically different ways. It's a good antidote to rigid thinking and a good opportunity to stretch my imagination and try to make sense of things from unfamiliar perspectives.
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