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The history of astrology dates back thousands of years. As far as we know, astrology began as the portending of omens and natural phenomena from the positions or stations of certain stars or planets at different times during the year. Astrology was refined by the Greeks. It is from the Greeks that Renaissance and modern western astrology obtain most of their concepts. Astrology is an apparent relationship between the movement of the Sun, Moon and planets and life on Earth. In King Lear, astrology is used in a broader context and with a lot of effect. The first mention of the issue of astrology is in Act 1, scene II, by Gloucester: .
"These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us. Though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourg'd by the sequent effects. Love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide. In cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond crack'd 'twixt son and father. This villain of mine comes under the prediction; there's son against father: the King falls from bias of nature; there's father against child. We have seen the best of our time. Machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders follow us disquietly to our graves. Find out this villain, Edmund; it shall lose thee nothing; do it carefully. And the noble and true-hearted Kent banish'd! his offence, honesty! 'Tis strange".
As this indicates, Gloucester treats the troubles in the land and with Lear as omens of the recent eclipses. Eclipses are very powerful occurrences in astrology, portending great upheaval in the places where they can be witnessed. Visible, total eclipses of the sun are rare. Depending on their position in a particular chart, they can supposedly radically change the course of history. Eclipses are "harbingers of war and drastic change", and Gloucester sees this. This is Gloucester's way of saying that the acts committed by Lear, and the consequences already resulting from it, are tears in the natural order of things, and therefore deeply disturbing.
