Are there indigenous cultures that have/had astrology? Or is this a purely civilized concept?
1 Like
Woah. Interesting question. One of my mentors once mentioned off-hand that there were originally 13 signs, and that they were with moon cycles. The thirteen sign was “the healer.” The romans or some culture like that killed that off. I don’t know if any of that is true but it is fascinating.
Indigenous, yes. Check out the story of the star Sirius B and the Dogon people of Africa. Two French anthropologists in 1930 recorded four different priests tell them that Sirius has a companion star that one can’t see with the naked eye and it orbits Sirius every 50 years. This star has since been discovered and is named Sirius B. The Dogon also said there was a third star Sirius C but it hasn’t been found (yet).
A similar occurrence happens in the documentary Aluna when one of the Mamas (medicine person) of the Kogi tribe visits an observatory in Britain. The British astronomer has blown up and printed out a tiny portion of night sky that appears empty to the naked eye, but through the lens of his telescope after it has been magnified several times here are revealed thousands of stars within what was seemingly empty space. The Kogi man surprises the astronomer by pointing to a single star within the assembly, says what it’s name is, and explains that it is very important to his people.
These examples are not “astrology” exactly as we’d think of it with horoscopes and all that, but in an indigenous conception of the world there cannot really be made a distinction between astronomy and astrology and I hope these examples demonstrate the tremendous depth and familiarity some indigenous people have with the stars.