Tarnas, R. (1991). The passion of the western mind: Understanding the ideas that have shaped our world view. New York: Ballantine Books.

Ancient thinkers believed that one’s destiny and character were often determined by the movements and convergences of planets and other astronomical bodies. In light of the Christian focus on man’s freewill and the role of grace, astrology was therefore shunned. Aquinas, blessed with an ability to harmonize disparate philosophical traditions, proposed that while astral bodies could affect people’s lives, they still had the ability to choose their own destinies.

Though debate ensued within the church, astrology and astronomy remained influential. For example, Dante in his great poetic work, La Divina Commedia, integrated the thought of Aristotle and Ptolemy to depict the Christian Universe:

In the Commedia, the ascending elemental and planetary spheres that envelop the central Earth culminate in the highest sphere, containing the throne of God, while the circles of Hell, mirroring the celestial spheres in reverse, descend toward the corrupt core of the Earth. The Aristotelian geocentric universe thus became a massive symbolic structure for the moral drama of Christianity. (p. 195)

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