What information about ancient astrology was available 20 years ago? It’s a hot topic these days, particularly among young astrologers.
What I said in my coverage of NCGR was that you could not get information about ancient astrology at conferences 20 years ago; obviously some translated texts existed, but there were not many, and they were not easy to acquire.
Now, you can walk into many discussions of astrological history, ancient techniques and ancient texts. Books are available in the conference bookstore, for purchase online, and many are available free online. This is providing astrology with classical grounding and a solid foundation in its history, the lack thereof was one of its great flaws since the revival of the 19th and 20th centuries.
“It was just beginning to happen twenty years ago,” said Robert Hand, in an interview today. “In 1990, people were beginning to study ancient astrology, but it wasn’t available at conferences.” Hand is considered a leading authority on the history of astrology. He was one of the early leaders of NCGR, and the co-founder of Project Hindsight, which was created to address the lack of available ancient astrology texts.