Why are celestial bodies associated with wizards and magic?

[Scarlet-Devil]

Been wondering this for a little while now. It's been some time, but do you remember how the icon for your spells in Baldur's Gate was a crescent moon with three stars? You search "wizard hats" in Google images and some 75% of the results are conical hats with a star-and-moon motif. Twilight Sparkle, the lovely lead protagonist of 'Friendship is Magic', has a symbol of five stars around a larger star, which in the show represents her special gift for magic.

Why? Where did this association come from, and when did it start? Does it have something to do with astrology?

[Gnoman]

For thousands of years, the heavens were a great mystery, and many believed that they wre the dwelling places of the physical manifestations of the spirts that they called upon for power. Thus, when invoking those spirits, a shaman would use the star patterns associeated with a specific spirit in the same way that totemic cultures sued the images of the animal spirit they were trying to call. Over time, this traditional association became a cornerstone of magic in general, which is probably how astrology came to be in the first place.

[Elemental]

I do believe that it stems from the ancient belief that the stars foretold the future.
As such, wizards, who are supposed to be wise (it's where the word wizard comes from), should be able to interpret the movements of the celestial bodies and the omens resulting.

[Ravens_cry]

Quit simple, if rather ancient explanation. The words mage, magic, and magician come from magi, ancient Persian astrologers who studies the stars for portents and signs as well as told people what time of year it was so they knew when to plant crops and such.

[Telonius]

Alchemists also had a bit to do with it. A lot of their notation and symbolism was based on symbols for the "heavenly bodies" (planets, moon, sun).

Without getting too much into real-world issues, during a good chunk of the Middle Ages, the Middle East was a real center of learning, knowledge, and research; especially compared with what a lot of Europe had available. The crescent appeared (and still appears) on several flags of the region starting from around the 14th century or so. So to the average European, if you saw somebody with knowledge that nobody else had, wearing funny clothes and dabbling in things that are close to (what you think is) heresy, you'd call that person a wizard or a sorcerer.

The "wizard hat" itself ... is a bit harder to trace. There are some suggestions that it might originally be based on some depictions of Odin (who wears a wide-brimmed hat when he's out wandering), but I haven't seen much to back up the claim. No idea if this is legit or not, but I did find one news item (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/1388038/Mysterious-gold-cones-hats-of-ancient-wizards.html) from 2002 that says...


The wizards of early Europe wore hats of gold intricately embellished with astrological symbols that helped them to predict the movement of the sun and stars...
Mr Menghin and his researchers discovered that the 1,739 sun and half-moon symbols decorating the Berlin cone's surface make up a scientific code which corresponds almost exactly to the "Metonic cycle" discovered by the Greek astronomer Meton in 432bc - about 500 years after the cone was made - which explains the relationship between moon and sun years.

If that's accurate, the "traditional" depiction might have some kernel of truth.

[pendell]

Well, for thousands of years stars were not believed to be flaming balls of gas. They were believed to be gods or angels. Remember the names of the planets: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and so on. They were named after gods because the ancients believed they really were gods literally in heaven above us, looking down on earth and exerting influence here. From this follows the association with astrology -- if Mercury was in the sky on your birth, you can expect him to be interested in who and what you're doing.

So if you're working with supernatural forces in that frame of reference, you're going to be working with stars.

It's a viewpoint that I, growing up in the 1970s, find hard to grasp. For me stars are real estate, places to go. When I look up at the moon it's not with an attitude of awe and reverence but rather of attempting to pick out the exact spot the Apollo 11 lander touched down on. It's an attitude the ancients would have found foreign, I think.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Dr.Epic]

Because space is the place?

[Knaight]

Without getting too much into real-world issues, during a good chunk of the Middle Ages, the Middle East was a real center of learning, knowledge, and research; especially compared with what a lot of Europe had available. The crescent appeared (and still appears) on several flags of the region starting from around the 14th century or so. So to the average European, if you saw somebody with knowledge that nobody else had, wearing funny clothes and dabbling in things that are close to (what you think is) heresy, you'd call that person a wizard or a sorcerer.

I'm not getting into the specifics of religion here, but I will point out that the historical context around early Islam demanded the development of a very good lunar calendar, and a way to know how to face Mecca at all times. Both of these involved use of astronomy, and both of them involved a lot of math. This includes heavy use of trigonometry, prior to the development of convenient books of logarithms and calculators - as such, the astronomers were educated, smart people. Education like that looks like magic to the much less educated.

The same thing was seen in China to some extent, significantly earlier. A command of time was necessary for religious reasons (again, not getting into these), that involved astronomy. Moreover, astronomy was practically considered magic, as the science - magic line was much blurrier at that point, and was attached to divination, alchemy, so on and so forth.

That brings me to astrology, which was very widespread, and of note in Ancient Greece. Divination of some sort or other was probably the most common magical belief, and was accorded a lot of respect worldwide. Greece took this very far, and in addition to oracles, oracular practices, and other forms of divination was astrology.

As such, across much of the world, celestial bodies were attached to magic, and this persisted to modern day. There are other attachments as well, but those involve actually getting into real world religion, which is banned on the forum.

[Eldan]

And, just to add another thing: in many early (and some later) cultures, the priest case was pretty much the only caste of society with much of an interest and the time and money to do much in the way of scholarly activities of any kind. So reading, writing, religious ritual astrology and other early proto-sciences would soon fall together.
Astronomy was important for many early cultures. Navigation, time-keeping and, such as with the Egyptians, predicting season changes and the best time for planting and harvesting.

[Shyftir]

The term magic comes from the group "Magi" associated with a (mythical?) figure known as Magus. They were the Wise Men of the Christmas story, and where known for something roughly corresponding to modern astrology. Hence the "following a star" concept. So the purported abilities of these people to do uncanny things led to their name becoming synonymous with arcane power, this in turn associated "magic" with the stars.

And now you know..... and knowing is half the battle.