1) Astrology may well be astrolatry, BUT not because of geocentrism "of Babylonians" or of extra month in Pagan Greek calendar. ; 2) No, I am not a believer in Astrology
Link to Orthodox article "Astrology is Astrolatry"
1
I fully accept St Augustine of Hippo (unnamed in article, but it is from Confessiones, where he argues against his former Manichean loyalties) on Jakob and Esau. Or St Gregory on Aquarians but no fishermen in desert, or the other one or either of above on slaves born in same hour as princes.
I can add regretting having obeyed advice about getting communication trouble by retrograde motion of Mercury. Since it is close to sun it often goes retrograde, and if the thing were true, anyone taking an initiative to a talk or a new friendship during those periods would loose on it.
2
Trying to make astrology look ridiculous by making first astrologers look odd as being geocentrics is quite another matter. St Augustine, St Basil the Great (Hexaëmeron), St Ambrose (De Officiis, speaking of military value and of Joshua as example), indeed all Church Fathers of first millennium, not forgetting in second millennium St Thomas Aquinas and St Robert Bellarmine, with Pope Urban VIII were geocentrics too. The first heliocentrics were astrologers. Kepler made the horoscope of Wallenstein.
Copernicus, not Aquinas, was the one major Western scholar who first set out to look for in Ancient philosophy what he could not find supporting his own opinion in Bible or Church Fathers. Unless Marsilius of Padua was earlier, but he wrote about politics. Aquinas, for his part, systematically got his moral support from Church Fathers or from Roman Canonists. As well as St Louis IX of France. In Aristotle he sought only arguments for what he believed as a Christian anyway.
But such is not the history of heliocentrism. Copernic found in Aristarch, a Pythagorean (and hence probably a superstitious astrologer) what Sts Basil and Ambrose refused him.
3
An extra month was given in Grece about once in two years to make a year never equal to 365 days nevertheless approximating around it over the years (actually a bit less than that in a 19 year cycle still used both by Rome and by Constantinople to calculate Easter, though with different dates for Spring Equinox), but, that being so, astrologers back then obviously did not give a set date equal year from year about what date of what month the Pisces began, as we now say it begins 22 february, but the dates about this or that sign in relation to Hecatombeon or whateverwere recalculated year after year by observation and past observations.
4
Ruling your life by a horoscope is a sin. As in taking long term decisions or as in deciding what to belive, or as in deciding whom to marry or whether to marry or go to monastery. But using Lunar calendars for gardening or astrology for weather forecasts (the seasonal success of which, recorded in Erga kai Hemerai by Hesiod, made the reputation of astrology) or forecasts on female fertility (as was done in Spanish court, where some Queens only "met" the King those nights when procreation was probable) is not necessarily so. At least, such is the opinion of St Thomas Aquinas, which was told me by a Russian Orthodox communicating with the Jesuits where he was, and I later checked it in the Summa (II-II), Q "sins against faith", A "superstition". Later, however, Pius XII condemned it.
HGL
