Guided Pathway

Zodiac circles and medical analogies

While Christian authors resisted the “pagan” origins of Oriental astrology, they replicated its repertory of images and totem-like constellations. Saxl argues, however, that during the two hundred years between the 13^th and 15^th centuries, ancient cosmology experienced a transforming “revival in theory and practice.” What previously had been a merely “illustrative” or “metaphorical” use of images gradually led to an acceptance of their ancient meaning, as well as their inclusion in official practices performed by the state and the church: “The step from a metaphorical use to the practical application of the images is not the sign of a new superstition but an example of regressive evolution” (Saxl, vol. 1, p. 66). 

For example, Saxl suggests that #2 of panel B described in the caption as “Hercules as World master, his body parts divided according to the signs of the animal circle” from a 15^th century Greek manuscript in Paris, which was apparently copied from a Syrian model, is a late medieval illustration that “derives from a late classical picture.” “The man carries a club and has a cloth over his arm(…) Club and skin are the attributes of Hercules who was in fact worshipped as a cosmic god like his Persian counterpart Mithras (…) Nonnos in his Dionysiaca hails him as; ‘Starclad Heracles, lord of fire, prince of the universe’” (Saxl, vol. 1, p. 59). But Saxl doubted whether such ancient classical models already “interpreted the figure as a zodiac man, whether the fateful lines linking the stars with the limbs of the human body were already drawn or not” and presented such anachronic identification between the Microcosmic man and the Zodiac man as a “question to which… there is no conclusive answer (Saxl, vol. 1, p. 59).