Leonardo on Astrology

In his Notebooks, Leonardo does not discuss astrology except for two disparaging comments referenced from the index. In a section collected under the title Prophecies, he says

“all the astrologers will be castrated, that is the cockerels.”

This brief comment illustrates his disdain for the Nostradamus style of thinking, of speculation ungrounded in observation. A cockerel (rooster) makes noise without meaning.

This theme is expanded in a longer commentary on painting, available in full at http://people.virginia.edu/~jdk3t/LeonardosParagone.htm:

“As soon as the poet ceases to represent in words what exists in nature, he in fact ceases to resemble the painter; for if the poet, leaving such representation, proceeds to describe the flowery and flattering speech of the figure, which he wishes to make the speaker, he then is an orator and no longer a poet nor a painter. And if he speaks of the heavens he becomes an astrologer, and philosopher; and a theologian, if he discourses of nature or God. But, if he restricts himself to the description of objects, he would enter the lists against the painter, if with words he could satisfy the eye as the painter does.”

Leonardo was one of the first and greatest modernists, focussing precisely on what can be seen and describing it exactly. His anatomical drawings are celebrated for this exactitude of description. This contempt for astrology, philosophy and theology as failing to represent nature proved a prescient inspiration for modern enlightened empirical thinking.

So, applied to The Last Supper, these comments indicate that the embedding of the stars of the ecliptic is entirely empirical in intent, that the story of Christ reflects the natural story of the cycle of the year. His secret contempt for the superstition of the church emerges in the placement of the head of Judas in front of the heart of Peter, suggesting that Judas, the grasping thief who denied Christ, was the real inspiration for peter, first legendary pope of the Roman church, the sword-wielding fool who denied Christ but sought to exploit the messiah as the basis of institutional propaganda.

Robert, you're to be commended for bringing a case against your own theory. I mean that. I simply don't see how there is much room, after what you've said, to still think that LD had any intention of coding the stars of the ecliptic into his painting.

Hey guys. This one's new to me too. But one main point here is that regardless of whether or not LD practiced or enjoyed astrology is completely beside the point.

The deeper question is whether LD - as a learned man - knew and understood the history of Judaism and Christianity, the history that reveals that the 12 tribes were modeled around the 12 hours of night and day and the 12 signs of the ecliptic path of the sun - as above so below. The second function of myth is the cosmological function and many ancient societies modeled their social structuring based on mimicking the heavens above down below on the earth. And the 12 disciples are numbered as such in order to represent the 12 tribes of Israel, firmly keeping with this ancient tradition of as above so below.

If LD was learned at all in these matters - if so much as knew of Josephus and Philo's writings on this specific issue - then his including the 12 signs of the zodiac as the 12 disciples is simply a display of his knowledge about the underlying foundations of church dogma which are based in astrological symbolism pertaining to the zodiac, or simply "Mazzaroth" as described in the book of Job. The zodiac given in reverse order of the annual signs simply renders the precession of the equinoxes, so LD could have meant to display his knowledge about how the Christian mythos displays precession allegory all over the place as well. And he could have hated astrology and yet painted like this in order to take a shot at two things he disliked - the church and it's astrological symbolism which is ingrained into it's mythos. We should probably try to consider every angle when contemplating this possibility.

DWill wrote:Robert, you're to be commended for bringing a case against your own theory. I mean that. I simply don't see how there is much room, after what you've said, to still think that LD had any intention of coding the stars of the ecliptic into his painting.

No way, it is absolutely not a case against my theory. You DWill earlier expressed an understandable but invalid conflation between the zodiac and astrology. Leonardo's use of the zodiac here involves no astrology. It is just astronomy, just stars, just observation of the path of the sun against the galaxy, 100% empirical description. And that is all that I am claiming is in The Last Supper. No astrological symbolism or themes whatsoever. Leonardo was a pure empiricist, and he encoded the observation of the empirical star path of the sun in his painting in the exact same order from one to twelve that we still see in the night sky.

In my opening post I quoted an astrologer who had previously argued for correlation between the apostles and the signs. I included that just to acknowledge that this general theme of seeing the zodiac signs from right to left had been noticed before. But when you read the quote, that astrologer barely mentions stars, and is just speculating like a rooster, in Leonardo's rather memorable phrase. By contrast my claims here are 100% empirical with no speculative content as far as astrology is concerned. That is not to invalidate all such speculation, but rather to say that is not my concern in this argument.

There is however a clear religious symbolism, a critique of the church, in the congruence with the old belief that Jesus and the apostles are allegories for the sun and the signs. It is as though Leonardo is saying that the superstition of Christianity is redundant, but what is real is the annual passage of the sun through the zodiac. It is a natural approach that matches completely with his acute observation in other fields such as anatomy, and with his methods of concealing allegories, of which more anon. Putting the head of Judas in front of the heart of Peter certainly looks like a critique of the church.

Now we have the strange situation that some people say 'yes it is obvious why did I not see it before', and others say they can't see it after trying. Maybe the inability to see it is a mental blockage or a lack of familiarity with the constellations, but the correlations are very obvious, as I have explained here in several different ways.

The orbits of the planets are superbly mathematical. I find that a bit eerie in itself.

I know that Venus traces a pentagram? And Jupiter or Mercury, one of the two, traces a completely geometric shape coming into line every 28 years.

It is astronomy.....but it traces such accurate geometric shapes that it feels like astrology, if you know what I mean.

Penelope,

Can you elaborate on the geometric orbits?

Orbits are eliptical.

Take a look at this thread where we have been having fun with orbits. (yes. i said fun. *push up horn-rimmed glasses*)

http://www.booktalk.org/planetary-orbit ... t8576.html

of particular interest might be this link

http://www.wimp.com/earthyear/

which is a nice illustration of what our orbit actually looks like. All orbiting objects necessarily share similar orbits as their mass pulls against the sun, as well as all the other objects it pulls the center of the orbit slightly out of center, creating an elipse.

Objects on different trajectories are either ejected from the solar system, or collide with one of the stable orbits.

Sorry Robert, slightly off-topic here.

Robert Tulip wrote:Leonardo's use of the zodiac here involves no astrology. It is just astronomy, just stars, just observation of the path of the sun against the galaxy, 100% empirical description.

I get the difference between the zodiac and astrology. But is there any evidence at all that Leonardo was encoding zodiac symbolism into his paintings?

johnson wrote:

Penelope,

Can you elaborate on the geometric orbits?

Orbits are eliptical.

As Venus orbits the Sun, it would follow an elliptical orbit, but only from the point of view of the Sun. Because Earth also orbits the Sun, the two motions are combined, giving a different shape.

The orbits of Venus and Earth are almost a perfect 13:8 resonance, meaning that Venus does 13 orbits for every 8 of Earth. 13:8 is a succession in the Fibonacci Sequence, and the previous one is 8:5. Because of the time it takes for Earth to complete this orbit (8 years), Venus has moved in a sufficient manner to trace a pentagram with curved sides.

From the point of view from Earth, every planet has an irregular orbit, because we are coupling the motion of Earth to the motion of the other planet. Venus, due to its distance, has the most pronounced irregularity, and due to the very close resonance orbit, it traces an almost perfect geometrical shape. It's pure coincidence.
Source(s):
See http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en… for an image of the way the shape comes about.

"So, applied to The Last Supper, these comments indicate that the embedding of the stars of the ecliptic is entirely empirical in intent, that the story of Christ reflects the natural story of the cycle of the year."

Dwill, I read Robert's sentence above to SUPPORT his theory of the embedded stars in the painting. He is only negating Leonardo's interest in Astrology, not astronomy

gotcha.

Thanks, Penelope.