Where did horoscopes orignally come from?

Question

Where did horoscopes orignally come from?

Answer 1

Originiated from a poor clan of people who did not desire to work like others, so they devised a plan to scam the uneducated working class by predicting their future based on the stars.

Funny.

Answer 2

the egyptians

Answer 3

Bedlam Mental Asylum.

Answer 4

This is the genealogy forum.  You did not ask a genealogy question.  You asked an astrology question.  Horoscopes have nothing to do with genealogy research.

Answer 5

I think from the prostitutes of medieval times.........hence the name "hor" o scope.

Answer 6

Gypsies and Fortune Tellers

Answer 7

I hope I paid enough attention in History Class..

I think Pluto, Aristotles and Homer, came up with it first or was it the ancient Egyptians and Mayas ?

Answer 8

My guess is that they originated with gypsys.

Answer 9

Astrology has it's roots in the calendar (12 houses = 12 months). If you can figure out when the seasons change, when the seasonal rains will come, when, for example, the Nile river will flood, you now know when to plant, when to harvest, etc. This knowledge of the stars (calendar) was very powerful and a symbiotic relationship developed between the priests and the ruling class. The priests (astronomers) had "other worldly" knowledge that helped the king make decisions to rule successfully. It's not a big leap to assume that if the stars rule the seasonal rains then they must also rule our lives. So astronomy morphed into astrology and the court advisers (astrologists) were consulted whenever major decisions were to be made.

This is an example of what anthropologists would call "Latent and Manifest Functions." The Manifest Function (why we started doing something) was to figure out the relationships of seasonal events to the stars for practical purposes, such as agriculture. The Latent Function, the thing we do today but have forgotten why, is reading a horoscope, thinking that somehow the stars control our lives.