History & development
Persian, Arabic-language, medieval Latin and Renaissance astrology form connected but distinct histories. Iranica documents Sasanian engagement with Greek and Indian works and later Arabic and Latin transmission. Scholars translated, combined and revised material; the label 'Arabic astrology' identifies neither one ethnicity nor one complete doctrine.
Mythology & symbolic world
Some Iranian traditions integrated celestial knowledge with Zoroastrian cosmology. Later authors worked in different religious settings. A planetary technique crossing languages does not imply that its users shared the same theology.
Provenance: where the rules come from
Choose a specific work and translation: a lot table, electional rule or timing method needs a textual attribution. William Lilly's Christian Astrology is an accessible Renaissance-era English witness, not a substitute for the entire transmission history.
How it is calculated
Choices that change the result: Select text and historical calendar; all medieval doctrines are not one preset.
Inspect your calculated data →Uses & use cases
- Compare how a rule changes between authors and translations.
- Reconstruct a historical chart alongside the astronomical knowledge available to its author.
Interpretation methods
Text-led reconstruction
State the selected author's vocabulary and sequence of judgement before calculating. Keep modern additions in a separate comparison.
For a lot, publish its day/night formula and the cited edition so another reader can reproduce the result without guessing the intended tradition.
Explore these reading approaches
Concepts in this tradition
Follow a term for its definition, word origin, evidence and connected ideas.
Disagreements & limits
- Lost intermediary texts leave genuine historical gaps.
- Modern accurate positions and historically reproduced tables answer different research questions.
Sources & evidence
Practitioner sources describe their own systems. Historical and astronomical sources support different kinds of claims. Reading exercises are editorial teaching examples.
- Astrology and Astronomy in Iran ↗scholarly historical synthesis
- William Lilly, Christian Astrology ↗historical primary text and edition information