ASTROLOGIA MUNDA - Classical Astrologer Weblog

Book IV – Astrologia Munda
Introduction
astronomy and astrology. The best known of these was Kankah, 1 who came to
Baghdad during the reign of the Caliph al-Ma’mūn (754-775). This was the
period of Māshā´allāh 2
(c.740-c.815) who wrote several books on mundane
astrology; Abū Hafs 'Umar ibn al-Farrukhān al-Tabarī (d.c.815), and known as
Omar Tiberiades; Al Kindī and not least Abu Ma’shār.
Most of what we know of the Persian or Sasanian strand of Astrology as well as
the influence of the Indians is found written in or reported of by these
astrologers. I can’t emphasise enough the influence that this conjunction in time
and space had on the development of mundane astrology; between Persian and
Indian astronomical tables, history and cycles and the astrological framework of
Hellenistic astrology!
This is why William Ramesey’s contribution to mundane astrology is both very
interesting and enlightening and is perhaps the closest thing we have to a «text
book».
William Ramesey: the man and the times
We know little about the man William Ramsey except what he tells us in the
introduction to his opus Astrology Restored, of which Book IV (Astrologia
Munda) is only a part.
«I was born the thirteenth day of March, in the year of our Lord 1626, stilo Anglie, in the city of
Westminster, in the country of Middlesex Anglie.
My mother was by birth of England, as were all her predecessors; my father of Scotland and that
of an ancient family i.e. of Eighther-house, which has flourished in great glory for 1500 years until
these latter days, as the records there testify.
The original of our name was from the residence of his and my progenitors in the land of Egypt,
from the pleasantness of the soil where they inhabited, or of herbs growing thereupon, which
therefore had the name, Ramesey, in English being as much as to say, joy and delight, and this
was in that country which is called Goshen. From thence, they came into Germany under the
1 Among his books, there were Calculations for Nativities, about periods of time; Secrets of Nativities;
Conjunctions, a large book; Conjunctions, a small book.
2 Among his books are The Revolutions of the Years of the World [Aries Ingresses], On Conjunctions,
Religions and Peoples, and a Letter on Eclipses.
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