https://witchhuntshow.com/2024/01/03/the-astrologer-and-the-witch-trial-with-danny-buck/

The Astrologer and the Witch Trial with Danny Buck

..."Josh Hutchinson: How was #astrology perceived in early modern Great Yarmouth? And why was it important?

Danny Buck: There's the three elements which I find very interesting about how astrology was perceived. At one level, it's something that seems very [00:04:00] useful to ordinary people. We've got records going back as far as the 16th century of a man called William Wicherly, who admitted he did conjure in a great circle with a sword and ring consecrated, and Thomas Owldring of Yarmouth, who was a conjurer and had good books of conjuring, who people were going to visit.

Danny Buck: They were seeking to understand the future. And also search for lost property. For others it was actually a way of looking for their, using predictions, to look at their medical health. So find a diagnosis and seek medical treatment. As we're going to look at, for some people this element of astrology cutting into conjuring, the act of charms and raising spirits for advice is cutting into witchcraft, that you're not just looking to do a predictable science, understanding God's plan for the universe with the stars, but in fact actually asking the dead for [00:05:00] advice, or even devils. Finally, there were some people rather cynical about this, even by the middle of the 17th century. People who were thinking that astrology is nothing but a con trick, a way for illiterate peasants or gullible guests to seek lost things from someone who could tell them what they wanted to hear, probably closer to our idea of cold reading,someone who can speak the names of the constellations enough to seem educated or have some secret knowledge over the rest of them.

Sarah Jack: What was the golden age of astrology?

Danny Buck: This is a difficult question. Obviously, astrology has been something that we can go all the way back to ancient Mesopotamia, if not earlier. People have always looked to the stars and tried to seek meaning in them. We think of things like Halley's Comet being seen just before the Battle of Hastings as an ill omen for the Saxons. But the 17th century introduced a couple of elements that made astrology more accurate, or at least to [00:06:00] those who believed in it. Accurate clocks meant that birth dates would not be a vague day, but be put down right to the hour. Increasingly accurate telescopes and astronomical, as opposed to astrological, equipment was being invented that meant that stars could be understood in ever greater clarity and purpose.

Danny Buck: Think it was Bernard Capp who said that the last of the astrologers were the first of the astronomers. I think a very famous astrologer for the court in Poland, Copernicus, started off as the court astrologer. This meant that you could ask for a birth chart from an astrologer and you could put it down to the minute and therefore get what would seem to be an increasingly accurate diagnosis.

Danny Buck: But also, because of the printing press, astrology became ever more accessible to the ordinary person. The astrologer I want to talk about today, Mark Prynne, started his career with basically like a dummy's first guide [00:07:00] of how to look at the stars. Something, a brief of Moulsons Almanac. So again, as opposed to the full book, it's a brief, so it's been shortened and made more accessible for the ordinary reader, as opposed to the larger original, I think it's originally a 15th century French almanac.

Josh Hutchinson: What other products did astrologers create?

Danny Buck: The most obvious one is the element of prediction, which is by casting a chart. This isn't a particularly visual medium, but you can often see them survive in this period, often with a square with a circle inside, or some pattern of that, which is then used to reflect the houses of the stars and their positions and how that therefore interacts with the balance of the humours and health, as well as a person's personality."...