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90 Second Narratives

90 Second Narratives is a podcast featuring engaging true stories told by trained historians. Each episode includes a short story interwoven with expert analysis of the story’s historical significance. The concise length and storytelling format of the episodes make history accessible, dynamic, and entertaining. The subjects of the stories are diverse—spanning the globe and ranging from the pre-historic to the modern age. While individual stories stand alone, the episodes in each season are linked thematically and combine to offer comparative perspectives that illuminate connections from across the human experience. Every episode also includes recommendations for further reading. 90 Second Narratives provides a novel way to hear historians share the wonders of the past in their own voices.

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90 Second Narratives

Using Astrology to Plan Journeys

September 06, 2021 • Sky Michael Johnston • Season 8 • Episode 9

0:00 | 2:30

"What factors do you take into consideration before going on a journey? Do you have any sense of when is a good time for a journey? Or, a good time for a specific type of journey? In sixteenth-century Germany, people had a way of systematizing the good and bad times for many of life’s activities, including travel…"

So begins today’s story from Dr. Sky Michael Johnston.

For further reading:
Der Bawren Practica oder Wetterbüchlein

90 Second Narratives

Season 8: “Journeys”

Episode 9: “Using Astrology to Plan Journeys”

Sky Michael Johnston:

Welcome 90 Second Narratives. Today, Season 9 continues with the theme of “Journeys.” I’m Sky Michael Johnston and I’ll be sharing the story, “Using Astrology to Plan Journeys.”

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What factors do you take into consideration before going on a journey? Do you have any sense of when is a good time for a journey? Or, a good time for a specific type of journey? In sixteenth-century Germany, people had a way of systematizing the good and bad times for many of life’s activities, including travel.

The system they used relied on the calendar and the time of day and was animated by a belief in astrology. One popular sixteenth-century book informed its audiences that during the month of May when the sun was in Gemini, it was a good time to take a trip by land. The month of June when the sun was in Cancer, the book also advised, was a good time to work on the water. What if you were interested in hiking? September and Libra offered an ideal time for that kind of trip. But, if you wanted to hike during other times of the year, you might wish to do so during the hour of Jupiter, which also happens to be a good time to travel by ship.

While forms of astrology remain popular today, we have lost the universe in which this book was printed and originally received. Back then, the earth was still at the center of the universe and the heavens were understood to physically influence the material elements of the world. The universe was still a unified whole, and checking the travel conditions before a trip wasn’t merely a local question, it was a matter of cosmic scale.

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If you are interested in actually viewing the book I discuss in the story, you can click on the link in the episode description. It is in sixteenth-century German, however. If you want to learn more about the book in English, you can see an article I wrote entitled, “Printing the Weather: Knowledge, Nature, and Popular Culture in Two Sixteenth-Century German Weather Books,” published in the journal, Renaissance Quarterly.

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