The material world is a lens through which HaShem, Creator of the Universe, emanates specific energies. In our morning prayers leading up to Sh'ma Israel, we marvel at G*d's luminous creations, the Sun, Moon, and Stars:
"The Blessed G*d, Who is great in knowledge prepared and produced the rays of the sun, the Beneficent One that which He fashioned provides honor for His Name. Luminaries did He place all around His power! The leaders of His legions, holy ones who exalt the Almighty, constantly relate the honor of G*d and His sanctity. May You be blessed, HaShem our G*d, in the heavens above and on the earth below, for all the excellent work of your hands, and for the luminaries of light that You have formed, may they glorify You forever!"
Just as the prism refracts light into specific components of the spectrum, creating colors - so too does HaShem refract Divine Light into specific components of the energetic spectrum to be used as tools to accomplish specific tasks.
The model of the 12 Tribes around the Mishkan as described in BaMidbar (the Book of "Numbers"), Chapter 2, illustrates the energetic configuration that HaShem created as a model for our psyches and our souls. "As above, so below" - each person's individual Natal Chart is his/her unique "Blueprint" - a two dimensional representation of a three dimensional reality.
In this paradigm - YOU are the Mishkan. The array of Planets, Asteroids and theoretical mathematical symbols such as the Lunar Nodes as they appear around you, placed in the 12 Houses (each with their own modality/functionality) tells the story of the journey of your soul during this lifetime. Your challenges, your "Tikkunim" (attributes to "fix" during your lifetime) and the tools that you were imbued with at birth are all discovered, uncovered and illuminated during your personalized Natal Chart reading.
Jewish astrology can help a person identify his/her own karmic trajectories, life path, road conditions, vehicle strengths and limitations, and learn to identify and use G*d-given tools (your own Planetary placements) to accomplish your life tasks with clarity, joy, and assurance that the path you are taking is the correct one.
JEWISH ASTROLOGY: YESH MAZAL L'YISRAEL?
The abundant representation of astrological motifs in art,
artifacts, household items, ritual objects and assorted ephemera from Talmudic
times through the modern age suggest that astrology was a common component in
the lives of Jewish communities. The stars as a subject matter ranging from their
role in the Creation to their influence upon the inhabitants of the earth is
present in Jewish text via the Hebrew Bible, rabbinic literature of the
Talmudic era, the scientific writings of the medieval commentators, and within
Judaism’s mystical texts from the Sefer Yetzirah to the Zohar and the
works of the Hasidic masters such as the B’nai Yissachar in the 1840s.[1]
Both text and artifact show
astrology as a culturally normative component in historical Jewish communities,
despite the code of Jewish law, the Shulchan Aruch’s explicit ruling:
“One must not inquire of the astrologers and not consult lots,”[2] How are we to reconcile the
gap between lived realities and the Jewish legal text?
An examination of the astrologically-themed texts of the Hebrew
Bible, Talmud, Jewish mystical literature and the writings of the medieval
commentators reveal the dynamic tension between Judaism’s requirement to
calculate sacred calendrical/liturgical time via the luminaries and the
forbidden use of astrology for divinatory purposes. On the one hand, the rabbis
are unambiguous about the importance of celestial bodies for the practical calendrical
purposes of determining the proper and correct times of the new month,
commanded feasts, and other religious obligations. On the other hand, the
halachic (Jewish legal) rulings reflected an officially prohibitive attitude
against astrology, with rulings such as found in the Shulchan Aruch as
mentioned earlier, or the catch-all Talmudic phrase “Ein
mazel l’Yisrael”[3] used by today’s Orthodox
establishment to dismiss astrology as neither a “Jewish” subject, nor a subject
fit for Jews. Yet the
sages and the rabbis themselves within their own corpus affirm both the power
and efficacy of the celestial spheres. The rabbinic enterprise itself may have
even acted as a kind of rival esoteric system to the supernatural traditions of
the dominant cultures by creating its own differentiating innovations,
producing its own magicians and scientists and magical texts, and substituting
its own cultural/mythic archetypes for those of the prevailing Hellenistic
astrological system.
Astrology could not be ignored; the Talmud declares knowledge of
the luminaries to be Israel’s heritage and the means by which sacred time is
calculated and kept.[4] Neither
could cosmological knowledge be ceded to idolatrous nations, all of which
incorporated star-worship into their forbidden pagan practices.
The Talmudic-era rabbis used their powerful corporate identity,
personal piety, and superior knowledge exclusive to Torah scholars to triumph
over the esoteric traditions of the dominant culture which threatened their
authority. They institutionalized astrology in the Beit Midrash, which
accomplished two things: first, it denuded foreign esoteric traditions of any
legitimacy and condemned them along with their practitioners to the status of
permanent outsider. Secondly: it allowed them to demonstrate the superiority of
the Judaism’s own native esoteric traditions on their own terms. They did this
by developing differentiating identity-building innovations in astrological
knowledge, such as the doctrine of Jewish Planetary Days and Hours, the
substitution of biblical symbols and archetypes for their pagan counterparts,
and the creation of Jewish esoteric texts such as the Sefer Yetzirah.
Their heirs, the rabbis of the medieval era, developed an astral-magical Jewish
theology during the Middle Ages, a time which also saw astrology’s prominence
in medicine, time-keeping, sacred poetry, and messianic speculation. The advent
of modernity permanently severed the previously undifferentiated practices of
astronomy and astrology. Astronomy became a scientific subject, and astrology
was absorbed exclusively into Judaism’s mystical stream, eventually to be
subsumed to the Sefirotic archetype first by the Zohar, then by Lurianic Kabbalah
and finally by Hasidism.
Two thousand years of Talmudic Judaism and the evolution of halacha
(Jewish law) has run concurrent with Judaism’s mystical stream. Astrology is
the bridge that crosses that stream, and re-crosses, and crosses it again. From
an ubiquitous component of every known religious system of the ancient world to
a subject to be studied in the yeshivas of medieval Ashkenaz, from Joseph’s
dream of the sun, moon and stars to the zodiac paintings on the walls of
eighteenth century wooden synagogues of Eastern Europe, from the twelve tribes
whose encampment around the Mishkan (Tabernacle) in the desert below
mirrored the order of the constellations above to the twelve tribes on the
decorative clock on the walls of the newly remodeled Western Wall plaza in
Jerusalem, the zodiac and its components are part of our story as a people.
Understanding astrology’s role in Jewish life throughout history
is significant because it seeks to recover a rich and rewarding component of Jewish
cultural heritage. Striving to resolve the dissonance between prohibitions
against astrology in legal texts and the ubiquity of the artifactual evidence can
reveal clues as to how community rabbis might have weighed the influence of
folk life in regulating traditional communal norms. Balance and a healthier
perspective is restored by correcting the “text-only” bias in how rabbinic
astrologically-themed literature is read by post-modern traditionalists.
If Yosef
Hayim Yerushalmi at the end of Zakhor suggests the way to resolve the
tension between history and memory might lie in recovering what has been lost
and finding meaning in it, these ideas are a step in that direction.[5] Recovering Jewish astrology
and finding meaning – Jewish meaning – in an aspect of our heritage which can
and does provide insight into our own lives and therefore succor, is ultimately
part of our personal and communal healing.
[1] I omit the astrological work
of the American rabbi and Dean of the Kabbalah Center, Philip S. Berg
(1927–2003), as his claim to direct transmission of Jewish astrological
knowledge via Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag (the Baal ha-Sulam, 1886–1955) is vigorously
disputed among scholars.
[2] Shulchan Arukh (Yoreh De’ah) 179:1: אין שואלים בחוזים בכוכבים ולא בגורלות
[3] BT Shabbat 156a. All
Talmudic quotations are from The Babylonian Talmud (London, Soncino Press,
1938) unless otherwise noted.
[4] BT Shabbat 75a.
[5] Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor:
Jewish History and Jewish Memory, The Samuel and Althea Stroum Lectures in
Jewish Studies (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982), 101.
