The Antikythera Mechanism and Astrology

The Astrology Podcast

Chris Brennan

Religion & Spirituality, Society & Culture, Philosophy, Spirituality

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 25 March 2024

⏱️ 238 minutes

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Summary

In episode 440 astrologers Chris Brennan and Sam Ogden discuss the Antikythera Mechanism, which is a complex mechanical device that was recovered from an ancient shipwreck, and how it may have been used for astrology. The Antikythera Mechanism was discovered in the year 1901 by a group of sponge divers who found an ancient shipwreck near a Greek island named Antikythera. They had found a Greek merchant ship that sank around the year 60 BCE, and divers were able to recover a number of ancient statues, pottery, as well as a corroded mechanical device with lots of gears. Over the past century a series of researchers have slowly reconstructed the device, and recently advanced X-ray scans have allowed scholars to look inside to see how it worked. We now know that it was a complex astronomical device that depicted the movements of the cosmos, and it was also a sort of mechanical calculator or computer that could compute positions of the planets in the past or future, predict when eclipses would occur, and more. The discovery of the Antikythera Mechanism is important because it is far more advanced than what was previously thought possible in terms of technology around the 1st century BCE, and similar devices were not reinvented in Europe until after 13th century. For our purposes as astrologers the most interesting piece is how the Antikythera Mechanism ties in with the history of ancient astrology, and that there is in fact some evidence the device was used for astrological purposes, as well as that there was at least one astrologer who is said to have owned a similar device. In this episode we situate the device within the context of the history of astrology, talk about its possible astrological uses, and also discuss how the mechanism may helps us to reconstruct the origins of Hellenistic astrology as a result of the planetary order depicted on the device. This episode is available in both audio and video versions below. Sam's Website http://www.brothermoonhealing.com Sources and Further Reading Alexander Jones, A Portable Cosmos: Revealing the Antikythera Mechanism, Scientific Wonder of the Ancient World, Oxford University Press, 2017. Tony Freeth and Alexander Jones, "The Cosmos in the Antikythera Mechanism," ISAW Papers 4 (February, 2012). Tony Freeth, D. Huggon, A. Decanalis, et al, "A Model of the Cosmos in the ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism," in Scientific Reports, 11, 5821 (2021). Tony Freeth, “Wonder of the Ancient World,” in Scientific American Magazine, Vol. 326, No. 1 (January 2022), p. 24. Timestamps 00:00:00 Introduction 00:00:17 Antikythera Mechanism overview 00:06:39 Alexander Jones’ book on the device 00:10:59 Discovery of the Antikythera Mechanism 00:19:54 Chart for the discovery 00:27:54 Reconstructing the device 00:30:40 Dating the shipwreck and Mechanism 00:34:00 Geography: Antikythera, Rhodes, and Epirus 00:40:00 Transmission of Mesopotamian astrology 00:44:58 Archimedes 00:50:45 Planetary order dating 00:54:53 Order of the Seven Zoned Sphere 01:04:53 Planets and other dials on the device 01:15:15 How astrologers may have used the device 01:31:25 Astrologer’s boards 01:48:42 Dimensionality in the cosmos 01:53:00 Ascent and descent of the soul through the spheres 01:57:00 Thema Mundi depicted on the Antikythera Mechanism? 02:19:38 Geminos and the Thema Mundi 02:24:13 Eclipse prediction 02:41:15 Posidonius and astrologers with devices 03:05:50 Astrologers in Rhodes: Thrasyllus and Critodemus 03:15:45 Sphere-making tradition 03:20:20 Loss of this technology; rise of astrolabes 03:27:36 Balbillus 03:28:26 Researchers of the Antikythera Mechanism 03:30:27 Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny 03:31:09 Planets moving clockwise in the Mechanism 03:32:39 Trade secrets 03:35:13 Origins of Hellenistic astrology 03:37:33 Stoicism, fate, astrology, and Mechanisms 03:39:00 Ongoing archeological discoveries 03:40:43 Sphere-making coincided with heyday of astrology 03:41:44 Human ingenuity 03:46:12 Sam’s work 03:48:44 Chris’ work and course 03:49:44 Addendum on planetary orders 03:55:36 Credits Watch the Video Version of This Episode Watch the video version of this episode on Antikythera Mechanism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g-QpzVSmb0 – Transcript A full transcript of this episode is available: Episode 440 transcript Listen to the Audio Version of This Episode Listen to the audio version of this episode or download it as an MP3:

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, my name is Chris Brennan, and you're listening to the astrology podcast.
0:03.4	In this episode I'm going to be talking with astrologer Sam Ogden about the
0:07.2	Anticathera mechanism and its relationship to astrology.
0:11.2	So hey Sam, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks so much for having me, Chris. Yeah, I'm
0:16.1	excited to do this with you today. So in this episode we're going to be talking about the
0:20.4	anti-cathere mechanism, which is a complex mechanical device from the first century
0:24.5	B.C. that was found in an ancient shipwreck. And this device was actually capable of calculating
0:31.2	the positions of the planets, as well as doing other things like predicting
0:35.4	eclipses and other things like that. So we're going to talk about the device today as well as its discovery and also discuss the relevance and possible uses of such devices in ancient astrology.
0:51.0	Yeah, so Sam, you have an interest in what I like to call like ancient astrological paraphernalia,
1:00.0	and you and I have been researching and working on an episode for a while now on ancient astrologers boards, which were like these wooden boards that astrologers would use in consultations in ancient times.
1:12.0	And I thought you would be good person. consultations in ancient times.
1:12.8	And I thought you would be a good person to join me so that we could research this episode
1:18.1	together and put it together because it's kind of adjacent in some ways to the Antica theory mechanism in terms of the different ways
1:25.1	in which astrologers potentially different tools that astrologers may have
1:28.9	used in ancient astrology? Yes definitely and the astrologers boards were much more, you know, crude forms of
1:36.8	of astrological, you know, calculations of charts and things and the anticathera mechanism is so much more complex, but yeah, I'm looking forward to getting into it. This is really an amazing, you know, mechanism and piece of technology so for sure yeah in a major discovery
1:57.8	so let me give a brief overview of the device and the circumstances surrounding it and then we'll get into a more detailed
2:04.0	discussion after that.
2:06.3	So the short version of the story is that in the year 1900, just over a century ago, a group of sponge divers one day discovered a shipwreck
2:18.5	by an island, an ancient Greek island that was named Antichetera, and it's still named Antichera. So at the bottom of the
2:26.9	ocean they discovered ancient statues, pottery, and a bunch of other stuff from this shipwreck that had occurred where for some reason this Greek merchant ship sank somewhere around the year 60 BC.
	...

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