The Incredible Roots of Food and Astrology

This article was originally published for NCGR’s quarterly pulication, Memberletter in the mid-Autumn 2019 issue.

The relationship between food and astrology likely dates back to the dawn of civilization. As we learn in NCGR-PAA’s Level III, the earliest forms of astrology arrive parallel to agriculture’s emergence in the ancient world. From the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia and Egypt, to India, China and Mesoamerica, these four regions went on to develop great systems of calendrics and agricultural innovation. To the ancients, a successful growing season largely depended upon tracking the celestial cycles. In other words, life depended upon our relationship with the spheres. Read all about it in the back of the study guide. It’s fascinating stuff!

Western astrology employs the tropical zodiac, which adheres to the terrestrial seasons. Seasons, as we know, are vital turning points of the agricultural year. Each season has a cardinal, fixed and mutable sign. The cardinal signs initiate the new season, fixed signs are the continuous pure expression of the season, and mutable signs begin the fluctuation into the next season. These seasons cycle in our outer world every year, but they also show up in our lives – specifically in how we age. The seasons are so archetypally interwoven into our lives, that it’s no coincidence that the succession of the zodiac also follows this pattern and carry with them themes of agriculture.

Aries, the initial burst of life. This time of year in the northern hemisphere, the first hardy green shoots burst forth from the earth like swords, piercing the thawing soil. By the time Taurus season arrives, plush green vegetation abounds in its pure, supple beauty. If you’ve ever seen the forest floor on the first of May, you can see green for acres because the trees have not yet filled in. It’s no wonder Taurus happens to be a Venusian Earth sign. Restless Gemini parallels the now pollenating butterflies and bees, while the signs of our luminaries match the onset and peak of summer. Cancer and Leo seasons arrive during the maximum vitality of the northern hemisphere and the peak performance of nature. Everything is alive and therefore producing fruit – the very nourishment that sustains us throughout the cold Saturn-ruled months of winter.

Virgo is perhaps the most literal agricultural reference – the Virgin holding the sheath of wheat. Virgo is the period of peak harvest. It’s the time of year where the tomato plants are at their heaviest with fruit. The harvest extends into Libra season, but by then we have a more balanced schedule, which allows us to enjoy the fruits of our labor. Scorpio season prepares us to draw inward. A Mars ruled sign, we are cutting down the now dried stalks so that new growth may take its place next year. Libra and Scorpio season boast symbols of corn stalks, pumpkins and gourds. Sagittarius season brings the celebration season, and typically kicks off with the cornucopia – Jupiter’s fertile horn of plenty. This is a period of gratitude, abundance and bounty for a fertile year (and hopefully the next!)

Lastly, we enter the scarce winter season of Capricorn and Aquarius with constricting Saturn ruling rations. Historically we would have had to ration our grains throughout the winter. It was not a time to share bread with strangers, but rather conserve and protect the household. Pisces season brings hope. The days are now noticeably longer, and the Sun begins to return warmth to the Earth.

Why am I writing about the connection between food and astrology? This past year, I teamed up with Simon & Schuster to author my first book, Your Astrological Cookbook: The Perfect Recipe for Every Sign. By the time you read this article, my book will finally be available online and in stores. While writing this book, I walked the line between writing pop-astrology for a wider audience and subtly weaving in medical astrology theory. I thought about how at first glance, one might overlook the rich roots that astrology and cooking share, scoffing at the next thing “they” will combine with astrology to sell it. Yes, astrologers, we are in the mainstream again, and you see this kind of thing all the time. But I couldn’t help waning to explore this connection deeper. Books like mine just might be a gateway to the astro-curious, but writing this book turned out to be my own personal gateway. Studying medical astrology was always a speck on the distant horizon, but suddenly, it’s right in front of me. In writing this book, and especially now this article, I’m seeing how the connection between food and astrology represents the tip of the medical astrology iceberg.

Ancient Greece

Perhaps the earliest figures we can attribute to practicing astrology, herbalism and medicine would be Hermes Trismegestis, Asclepius and Chiron. These semi-mythological deities nevertheless inspired countless works to come, but they are indeed difficult to trace in time.  

The first ancient person who comes to my mind is Hippocrates, who famously stated, “let thy medicine be thy food and thy food be thy medicine,” and to whom modern doctors attribute the Hippocratic oath. Hippocrates lived from 460 - 375 BC, a period that only slightly predates the Hellenstic era of astrology. Though by Hippocrates’ time, astrology was already interwoven into Greek culture. Hippocrates is believed to have practiced astrology and taught it to his students, allegedly stating "He who does not understand astrology is not a doctor but a fool." In the ancient world, it was understood that if you wanted to be a doctor, you also learned astrology. Human dissection was illegal in ancient Greece and with no x-ray or MRI, the best window inside the body was an astrological chart.  

Nor were there pharmaceuticals in Hippocrates’ day. Nature provided the apothecarial remedies up until very recently in our human history. Medicine was concocted from food, herbs, roots, and even poisons. The word “pharmakon” refers to a substance with equal potency to harm or heal. In fact, Asclepius is rumored to use the poison from Medusa’s severed head to heal his subjects. Nature provided the ingredients to be consumed raw, cooked, distilled into tinctures, pressed into anointing balms or crushed into powder to create topical salves.

The art of diagnosis arose from elemental theory. Understanding of the 4 elements can be traced back to the dawn of mankind and across many different cultures, but the Greeks developed and expanded upon this theory over of the course of a few hundred years. Hippocrates applied the four elements to conditions of the human body, along with qualities of wet/dry and hot/cold (inspired by the seasons). Later, Aristotle would integrate elemental motions (fire and air ascend while water and earth gravitate downward) and the cycle of how the elements can evolve and transform into other elements – again, just like the seasons do!

Hippocrates’ system built the foundation of modern-day medicine and medical astrology as we still practice today. Galen would go on to expand upon Hippocrates elemental theory within the body and develop the four humors of the body.

I reached out to astrologer Patrick Watson who referred me to the second century AD with Vettius Valens’ Anthology. Patrick was quick to inform me that Valens associates tastes with each planet within the first couple pages of Anthology, Book I.

According to Valens, the Sun rules fruits, wheat and barley and is “yellowish, bitter in taste.” The Moon is “green in color and salty in taste.” He also mentions that the Moon rules the breasts, which by default must also rule milk and dairy – our very first form of nutrients (might this be another case for why the chart of the world, the Thema Mundi begins with a Cancer ascendant?). Saturn is “castor in color and astringent in taste,” Jupiter is “grey verging on white and is sweet in taste,” Mars rules iron and perhaps therefore “wine and beans.” Mars is listed as acidic, while Venus rules olives and is “very greasy in taste.” Lastly, Mercury is “blue in color, sharp in taste. I’m left intently curious about the blue foods that Valens was consuming… perhaps a pungent bleu cheese might be considered “sharp”?

Astrologer Chris Brennan pointed me toward Thessalus of Tralles, who lived during the first century AD. Thessalus wrote extensively about herbal pharmacology and their affinities with both planets and signs of the zodiac. In a letter to Roman Emperor Claudius, Thessalus describes a revelation he received from Asclepius about the planetary and zodiacal correlations with herbs, which was first transmitted to him from Hermes Trismegistus. This celestial-corporeal knowledge was expanded upon in his treatise, Powers of Herbs, in which he also gives recipes. (1) Interestingly, he refers to all plants of the Sun as “heliotropes.”

I asked astrologer Ryhan Butler about the medieval practices involving food and astrology: “In the medieval mind, the relationship between food and astrology isn't exactly direct, but facilitated through temperament theory which attributes different food groups or cooking methods to one of the four qualities. Patients could then be given a prescription diet, as it were, emphasizing these foods of this quality for so long to assist them in their path towards wellness. Of course, now with globalization and an increased/varied food supply it's easier for us in the modern age to take advantage of these ideas.”

During a dominant period of Christianity, the sole reason astrology even survived the Middle Ages of Europe at all is credited to medical astrology. Techniques like astrological prediction and horary threated Christian doctrines of free will versus God’s will. Practice the “wrong kind of astrology” in the open and one risked heretic status (or worse). However, due to the accuracy and success of medical astrology, everyone seemed to turn a blind eye to the controversy of its practice. Still at this point, astrology remains the most reliable window into the body. Fun fact: Leonardo DaVinci is the first person to attend secret human dissections and accurately draw the skeletal system – and it’s soooo taboo!

Medieval astrologers employed the ancient technique of casting a decumbiture chart – a chart cast for the moment someone takes ill. This chart would assist medieval astro-physicians in their diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of their patients. This technique is still used today. I asked Rhyan about the medicines prescribed by medieval astrologers. Weren’t they just using ingredients from the natural world like herbs, roots and foods to create tinctures? Yes. Ryhan reports they were using electuaries (syrups), infusions and decoctions to concentrate and administer the healing properties from plants.

Hermetic theory greatly influenced the roots of modern medicine with such axioms: "As above, so below; as within, so without." Since we are one with nature, we can utilize nature to bring the body back into harmony. Similarly, since the planets and zodiac signs also exist within the human body, we can find them in the natural world and utilize them toward our own wellbeing. Naturally, I turned to hermetic astrologer Gary Caton to see if he had any information for me. Gary sent me down the rabbit hole of Nicholas Culpeper and offered me this quote from his book, Hermetica Triptycha:

“Nicholas Culpeper (Capricorn rising) transformed the practice of medicine by publishing, both cheaply and in vernacular English, self-help medical guides of inexpensive herbal remedies for use by the poor. Culpeper’s extensive cataloging of hundreds of medicinal herbs and systematization of the use of herbal medicines represented important development toward the evolution of modern pharmaceuticals, and his works have been in print continuously since the seventeenth century."

Nicholas Culpeper published his first book in 1649 during a Saturn/Pluto conjunction in Gemini, opposite a Uranus/Neptune conjunction in Sagittarius. He was a radical because he recognized that having the information to heal oneself should be a human right. He further elaborated on why each herb treated each ailment, criticizing prior authors who dictated intake without explanation (thus keeping knowledge on the highest shelf only accessible to a select few). In Culpeper’s A Physical Directory, he proclaims, “the Liberty of our common-wealth is most infringed upon by three sorts of men, Priests, Physicians and Lawyers.” By liberating this information to be accessed by all, Culpeper remedied a major collective ailment of his time.

In Culpeper’s Complete Herbal, beans are now assigned to Venus (compared to Valens’ assignment to Mars). The Sun no longer rules the entirety of the fruit kingdom, but now Culpeper assigns strawberries and blackberries to Venus, mulberries to Mercury, barley to Saturn and wheat to Venus. In modern times, we have our trusty copy of The Rulership Book, by Rex E. Bills to help us navigate (I consulted this book heavily while writing Your Astrological Cookbook) which gives “fruits and fruit trees” to both Venus and Jupiter. However, if we dry the fruits, Venus and Saturn. Specifically, prunes are ruled by Saturn, which makes me cackle because Saturn invites elimination! I’ll never forget when NCGR’s president Armand Diaz told me that Mercury rules tofu because it takes on whatever flavors it touches (how mercurial!). Culpeper assigns garlic, mustard and tobacco, energizing plants to Mars. Bills agrees. They also agree that the watery nature of squash belong to the Moon. Nicholas Culpeper instructed his readers to use Mars plants to balance Venus ailments (and vice versa) and to use Saturn to balance the luminaries (and vice versa), although sometimes, a Sun medicine could be used to treat a Sun ailment.  

The Vedic lineage, too, possesses its own system of diet, healing and astrology known as Ayurveda. There are three “doshas,” or body types: vata, pitta and kapha. The doshas influence more than just physicality, but personality and disposition. They are seen as universal energies that express themselves through us. Ayurveda is over 5000 years old and is described in the ancient Sanskrit texts, the Vedas.

I asked Vedic astrologer Julene Louis to elaborate: “Each of the nine Vedic planets correlate primarily to one of the three doshas. Planets occupying and ruling the first house (and sometimes the sixth) are used to determine a person’s dosha. In Ayurveda, there are six rasas, or tastes, that have planetary correspondences. Within each taste, specific foods relate to the planets. These foods are used in Ayurveda as an upaya, or remedial measure to increase or decrease a specific dosha while having the opposite effect on the other two.” Makes me wonder where Valens got his information.

To sum up, the relationship between food and astrology has rich roots extending back to the dawn of civilization, the foundation of modern medicine and medical astrology, and the relationship still survives up until this day as astrological cookbooks like my own find their ways into our kitchens. My current project is collecting the birth data of celebrity chefs – maybe it will be my small contribution to our growing database, but it’s also feeding my curiosity about chef signatures in the birth chart.

In writing my book, I strove to recognize the properties of food as reflected by each sign’s ruling planet, element and modality. I aimed to strike a balance between what each sign might crave versus which ingredients each sign might benefit from the most to balance their temperament. In the introduction section of my book, you can find my own breakdown of the planets, their flavor profiles and some of the ingredients they rule. I feel like I’m only scratching the surface here, and it’s all very exciting.

1)    Magika Hiera - Christopher A. Faraone, Dirk Obbink Oxford University Press, Feb 13, 1997

Catherine Urban (NCGR-PAA IV) is a consulting astrologer from Cleveland, Ohio. She writes monthly horoscopes for BonAppetit.com and is the author of Your Astrological Cookbook – now available from Barnes & Noble or Amazon. Catherine will be speaking on Saturn in Aquarius at the NCGR-NYC Fall Conference Nov 23-24. Connect with Catherine on Twitter and Instagram @astrocatherine or visit her website, www.CatherineUrban.com