Roots of Lunar Astrology

Lunar Astrology is long time neglected area of our astrological interest. Great role of the Moon is frequently overlooked. As visible sizes of the Sun and the Moon are roughly the same, influence of the Moon exceeds influence of the planets by far.

Influence of the Sun in astrology is divided into planetary, zodiacal and terrestrial. Twelve Signs and twelve houses of horoscope are primarily of solar nature reflecting influence of the Sun orbiting Earth.

Lunar Zodiac as well as Lunar Houses, were recognized in Astrology of antiquity, refining lunar influence into much finer divisions. Earliest division of twenty-eight areas, or lunar mansions as they were called, can be followed back to early prehistoric times in China, mush earlier than even mythical emperor Fu-Hsi. This division appears in many cultures through the history like Hindu vedic, Arab traditions and Persian. Bible also knows twenty-eight divisions as mazzaloth or mazzaroth.
The sacred or royal arm of Antiquity was divides into seven palms consecrated to the seven planets and into twenty-eight fingers which were related to the twenty-eight lunar mansions and houses. There are more examples of even political correlations with twenty-eight satrapies of the Persian Empire and the feudal kingdoms and provinces of ancient China.
The twenty-eight mansions are fixed. beginning with 0º Aries and superimposed, as it were, on the twelve signs of the Zodiac. They are much less complex than the Houses, just as the solar Signs are more easy to examine than the twelve Houses of the horoscope.

In ancient China this Lunar Zodiac played a more important role than the Solar Zodiac. It must be never forgotten that the Chinese system is profoundly original and that it was formed in deepest antiquity, about twenty-five centuries, independently of the Babylonian system which is ours. The ancient Chinese linked their Solar Zodiac with the planet Jupiter who circles the heavens in twelve years, and the Lunar Zodiac with Saturn whose revolution takes twenty-eight months.

Hindu astrology seems much less original being nothing more than the combination of the Babylonian and the Chinese systems. They believe that individual develops around two force centers or chakras. The first - Pingala - is the cardiac lotus with twelve petals, transposition of the Solar Zodiac. The second one - the Lunar Ida - is the twenty-eight Mansion Zodiac. As the Sun and the Moon and two Zodiacs Solar and Lunar in macrocosm, similarly Ida and Pingala are the force centers of the development of the human fetus - future microcosm.

In the ancient Egypt the Lunar Zodiac is symbolized by Osiris who have lived and reigned twenty-eight years. His body was thorn into fourteen pieces same as number of the houses of the Moon increasing or decreasing. Typhon began dismembering him at the time of the Full Moon. Similarly the Moon is losing a piece of herself on each of next fourteen days.

It is obvious that in all these traditions Lunar system had almost the equal importance as the Solar system.