Jon Butler is the Howard R. Lamar emeritus professor of American studies, history and religious studies at Yale University.

Why did the Concord Monthly Meeting of Pennsylvania Quakers denounce Philip and Robert Roman in the 1690s for "professing the art of astrology" and giving "answers and astrological judgments concerning persons and things?"

Robert had an answer: neighbors "came to him to be resolved of their questions."

The boats that brought Puritanism, Quakerism, Catholicism, Judaism and Islam — all the old world religions — brought astrology and magic as well.

Keith Thomas's magisterial "Religion and the Decline of Magic" described an eclectic sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European spiritual landscape. Formal Christian life and practice intersected many varieties of "magic" practiced through horoscopes, magical cures, special waters, charms, fortune telling and especially, astrology. Popular almanacs almost always included the "anatomy of a man's body," with arrows pointing to those parts of the body associated with the 12 signs of the Zodiac, which charts the sun's path across the heavens.

Why? According to one English Puritan minister, the "anatomy" appeared in almanacs to answer questions like those that Robert Roman's neighbors asked him to answer in Pennsylvania. The boats that brought Puritanism, Quakerism, Catholicism, Judaism and Islam — all the old world religions — brought astrology and magic as well.

Christian orthodoxy was not so easy to separate from magical practice. What should one make of the English astrologer whose patients wore amulets inscribed, "Jesus Christ for mercy sake, take away this toothache?" Almanacs published across the American colonies regularly included the astrological "anatomy" without implying any conflict with Christianity. When the Virginia Church of England minister Thomas Teackle died in 1697, his library contained more than 200 works in Christian theology as well as books on astrology and magical healing. Marin Cureau de la Chambre's "The Art How to Know Men," for example, instructed readers how to decipher human passions through astrology, handwriting analysis (chiromancy), and forehead reading (metoposcopy).

Of course, Christian authorities customarily condemned astrology and magic. Some almanac makers did too. Samuel Clough wrote in his New York Almanac in 1703:

The Anatomy must still be in,

Else the Almanack's not worth a pin,

For Country-Men regard the Sign,

As though 'Twere Oracle Divine.

Little wonder that astrology and "magical" medicine still flourish in 21st century America. The questions that Robert Roman answered about "persons and things" are still with us. So are some of the answers.



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