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Early Modern England Encyclopedia
By Lovepreet Brar, inspired by
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The Zodiac Man is the image of a naked man, his legs and arm spread, labeled to show which zodiac sign has influence over internal and external body parts.
Astrology was an important discipline in the early modern period, used for understanding many things, including human medicine and behavior. Using the study of constellations in relation to the body, thinkers believed that the movements of the heavens produced hidden beams that affected human life. During the Middle Ages, various depictions of the Zodiac Man appeared in many kinds of manuscripts, including prayer books, calendars, and texts on astrology, philosophy, and medicine.
The origins of the group of constellations known as the Zodiac are hard to track as researchers have found multiple early sources that depict varying ideas of them. Scholars believe one of the earliest depictions of a constellation was on the walls of a French cave about 17,000 years ago. The prehistoric drawings display what European people would call the constellation of Taurus—an image of a bull, with what looks like stars over its shoulders.
Ancient Mesopotamia also recorded constellations that they observed in the sky. The Babylonians, who ruled the region in the second millennium B.C.E., developed a robust astronomical tradition and kept detailed records of the movement of celestial bodies. By observing these movements, the Babylonians generated the 12-part Zodiac still used today.
The Greeks built upon the Babylonian tradition, creating a list of 48 constellations total, including the twelve the Babylonians developed. They called the area of the sky
Greek medical practitioners sometimes conceptualized the universe as a giant human figure. The Zodiac Man helped people understand connections between earth and sky, and overall, the microcosm and the macrocosm. The concept of the correspondence between things of immense scale and things on a human scale remained important in the early modern period. Astrologers and astronomers also collected data between the events on Earth, what happened to people, political events, weather events, and celestial events like comets, etc., in relation to the Zodiac.
The first reference to the Zodiac Man being used to provide medical prognosis appears in the first century CE in which each zodiac sign corresponds with a plant, mineral, or body part. Medieval physicians found pragmatic daily use for these connections, such as helping guide them in the practice of bloodletting or surgery by avoiding certain body parts associated with celestial bodies at particular times, such as the full moon. The conceptual framework provided by the Zodiac Man also helped explain other illness and inform treatments as part of the early modern reliance on astrology as a science, not merely an occult discipline. Many people consulted astrologers for medical diagnoses, as the diaries of physician-astrologers such as Simon Forman demonstrate.