Customer Reviews

Kabbalistic Astrology: The Sacred Tradition of the Hebrew Sages

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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

The author clearly has a thorough familiarity with midrashic thought and style, and his symbolic connections are thought provoking and useful. I especially enjoyed his discussion of how numerous and how pervasively subtle astrological references are in the original Hebrew of the Bible, despite the common modern belief/fixation that the Bible generally condemns astrology. He also offers intriguing attributions of the constellations from the standpoint of the 12 ancient tribes. There's lots of nifty stuff you just don't see in the usual astrological texts. I like this book very much for the historically rich worldview it presents.

__An aside for technically minded astrologers only:__ Unfortunately, almost every time the author refers to an actual timed event, he mistates the facts. His errors are most noticeable when he discusses the Jupiter/Saturn conjunctions which occur approximately every 19-20 years. He either gets the year wrong or he places it in the wrong sign, or something. For one example of many, he claims that the May 2000 conjunction was in 23 degrees of Gemini, when in fact it took place at 23-24 degrees of Taurus. Since he devotes several pages to Jupiter/Saturn conjunctions and their importance to history, this is no small error.

The author claims to be using the constellations themselves rather than the signs in this system, which implies that he's using a sidereal zodiac, but a few pages later he talks about how 0 degrees of Aries is defined as occurring at the Vernal Equinox, which undoes his claim. Plus, even in a sideral zodiac the dates don't match his statements because his ayanamsha is sometimes apparently 30 degrees, sometimes apparently some other figure. By this I mean sometimes the dates or sign placements are okay, and other times not. He does not define or even mention any ayanamsha, though he does spend a bit of time talking about precession. Go figure, literally.

Still, despite this caveat about his calculations, I really do like this book and am pleased to own it. The stories are terrific.

The author shows some knowledge of Jewish sources in the book but seems to be totally ignorant of many others. One very telling quote is when he's talking about pairs in reference to the hour of mars on tuesday and he says "...will recognise that the Talmud considered even numbers to be unfortunate." If he could read the commentary that went along with the section he would have referenced the information on Zugos and where/why they are important. The amount of things that he left out that are elementary are a testiment to why I give this book such a low rating. Of course his Hermetic talk on Kabbalah rather than going to the Jewish sources is just another nail in the coffin.

The best book on Kabbalistic Astrology that I've found. Also has some very good general information. A must have for a serious student.