What is Astrotheology?

Astrotheology is the study of the astrological origins of religion; how gods, godessess, and demons are personifications of astrological phenomena such as lunar elipses, planetary alignments, and apparent interactions of planetary bodies with stars. Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, and the ancient Egyptian religions are examples of faiths claimed to be derived from observations of the bodies on the celestial sphere. Examples of deities said to be created as astrological allegories include Yahweh, Ra, Horus, Osiris, Mithras, Zoroaster, Helios, Apollo, Lugh, and Quetzalcoatl.

The term astro-theology is used in the context of 18th to 19th century scholarship aiming at the discovery of the original religion, particularly primitive monotheism. In contradistinction to astrolatry, which unambiguously implies a polytheism frowned upon as idolatrous by Christian authors since Eusebius, astrotheology is any "religious system founded upon the observation of the heavens",and as such may include monotheism.

This refers to the worship of stars and other heavenly bodies as deities, or the association of deities with heavenly bodies. The most common instances of this are sun gods and moon gods in polytheistic systems worldwide. Also notable is the association of the planets with deities in Babylonian, and hence in Greco-Roman religion, viz. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The term astro-theology appears in the title of a 1714 work by William Derham, Astro-theology: or, A demonstration of the being and attributes of God, from a survey of the heavens based on the author’s observations by means of "Mr. Huygens’ Glass”.