Birth Chart

History of the birth chart

Origin

Babylon and Hellenistic Egypt; the ascendant and the twelve houses developed around Alexandria.

When

The oldest known personal horoscopes date from 410 BC; horoscopic astrology developed in the 2nd or 1st century BC.

Name

Greek hōroskopos, “hour marker”, the sign rising at the moment of birth; the word “horoscope” comes from it.

How it is done

The chart is drawn up from the date, time and place of birth; the sign rising on the eastern horizon is found from the time and place of birth.

The oldest known personal horoscopes were written in 410 BC in Babylon and Nippur. Horoscopic astrology, which rests on the sign rising on the eastern horizon at the moment of birth and on the system of twelve houses linked to it, developed in Hellenistic Egypt, around Alexandria, in the 2nd or 1st century BC. The Greeks called the rising sign hōroskopos (“hour marker”), and the word “horoscope” comes from it; Ptolemy used the term in the sense of “ascendant” in the 2nd century.

Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos, written in the 2nd century, was translated into Arabic in the 9th century and became the most influential source of medieval Islamic astrology. The works of Abu Ma'shar (787–886), born in Balkh, were translated into Latin in the 12th century and reached Europe.

A Turkish cousin of this tradition is the Ottoman “yıldızname”, the Turkish name for fortune books based on the belief that the positions of the planets influence events. In the traditional method, the abjad (ebced) values of the letters in the person's name and the mother's name were added together and divided by 12, and the remainder pointed to a chapter of the book; abjad is an old system that gives numerical values to the letters of the Arabic alphabet. Many manuscript yıldıznames are known from the Ottoman period, and a Risâle-i Yıldıznâme was printed in Istanbul in 1858. The Turkish TDV Encyclopedia of Islam notes that Islam considered such beliefs contrary to the principle of tawhid (the oneness of God). In modern Turkish, the word is mostly used for a birth chart drawn up from the date, time and place of birth.

Where does the birth chart come from?

The oldest known personal horoscopes were written in 410 BC in Babylon and Nippur. Horoscopic astrology, with the ascendant and the twelve houses, developed in Hellenistic Egypt, around Alexandria, in the 2nd or 1st century BC.

How was an Ottoman yıldızname calculated?

In the traditional method found in Ottoman manuscripts, the abjad values of the person's name and the mother's name were added together and divided by 12; the remainder showed which chapter of the book was to be read.

This section describes the cultural history of the practice; no fortune-telling method foretells the future. Origins of all types of fortune telling →