Astrology and Jainism

   The Jainism which arose in India kept the respect for astrology characteristic of Hinduism. However the motivation for occupations astrology became other. Jains looked for in "science about stars" not an opportunity to reconcile with the life, and on the contrary, the way helping to eliminate sufferings of life, to become perfect and to leave a wheel of regenerations: it is necessary to comprehend laws of the world to learn to overcome them. Cosmological representations of Jains contain a large number of astrological elements. In Jainism Hindu ideas of time as a wheel ("kalachakra" - "time wheel") and the concept of similarity of a microcosm and macrocosmos remained.
   In Jainism it is considered that the world is eternal and invariable, however living conditions of its central part, at the level of the average world (Madhyaloka) are subject to rhythmic fluctuations. "Time wheel" has 12 "needles" - the centuries corresponding to zodiac signs; six of them treat "progressive", ascending (utsarpini) to a wheel half-turn, and six - descending (avasarpini). As the world has no beginning and is infinite, it passes incalculable number of times and will pass from blissful and happy time "good - good" the period to horrors and sufferings "bad - bad" and then again to return by the Golden Age.
   The Jainism kept a number of elements of brahmanism: belief in transformation of souls, the doctrine about a karma, about periodic appearance of prophets.

Literature

Карманный словарь атеиста / Ю.А.Бахныкин, М.С.Беленький и др.; Под ред. М.П.Новикова./ - М.: Политиздат, 1986

Д.Куталев Новая астрологическая энциклопедия

Websites

http://www.prosvetlenie.org/esoteric/3/24.html

http://www.gumer.info/bogoslov_Buks/Relig/Jablok/_10.php

http://istina.rin.ru/cgi-bin/print.pl?id=845&sait=3