Author: Campion, Nicholas

The first volume of Nicholas Campion's massive and authoritative cultural history of astrology in the Western world, The Dawn of Astrology (Continuum, 2008), covered the ancient and classical worlds. In this second volume, he examines the foundation of modern astrology in the medieval and renaissance worlds as the adaptation of ancient and classical theories of the relationship between humanity and the stars. Spanning the period between the adoption of astrology in the Islamic world and the subsequent transfer of Islamic science to Europe, to the rise of popular astrology on the web, Campion challenges the historical convention that astrology flourished only between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries. ? ?Campion examines the evidence for the survival of astrology in Europe following the collapse of the Roman empire, investigates the role of astral mysticism in the eighteenth-century "counter-enlightenment" and considers the rise of New Age, therapy-oriented astrology, in the twentieth century, particular through the work of the psychologist C.G. Jung. Concluding with a discussion of astrology's popularity and appeal in the twenty-first century, Campion asks whether it should be seen as an integral part of modernity, or whether it is part and parcel of the post-modern world.