Really great episode of the BBC4 Radio program, on "Renaissance Astrology." It left me with several unanswered questions, but it was an excellent general introduction, setting things in context – which is what all good historical discussions do. You have ’til Wednesday to download, but the shows are available for computer-listening in the archives beyond the week sell-date now.

Oh, and what are my questions?

1) I am still fuzzy, beyond the general concept of mapping and congruence, how people believed it all actually worked. How did they believe that the position and movements of the planets made one decision more propitious than another, or affected your health? What was the mechanism?

2) The general outline traced was Ptolemy – Arabs – Renaissance. Surely astrology was a part of medieval European thinking? I understand the emphasis on the Renaissance, for that is really the beginning of the end, but what of the Middle Ages? Was it just more of what Ptolemy began?

2) Augustine was mentioned – and we know what he said about astrology – and then some questions raised at the end of the period discussed. But I wanted to know (naturally) more about the relationship of the Church to astrology during those 1600 or so years.