"Astrology's from Heaven not from Hell": The Religious Significance of Early American Almanacs

Although the astrological content of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century almanacs has most often been characterized as offering an "occult" spirituality, this essay argues that almanac astrology could not have been practiced and would not have been popular without its connection to mainstream Protestantism. Almanac-makers, like natural philosophers, viewed the cosmos as a legible text through which God communicated. Astrology, a clearly organized system for explaining occurrences in the natural world, was a means toward that end. As used by almanac-makers, it did nothing to challenge and everything to promote British America's prevailing religious sensibility. For some almanac-makers, this was a sincere and intentional effort to instruct readers in spiritual truth; for others, it was merely a successful attempt to meet readers' expectations. Influenced by European practice, the American market for books, and an interplay between producers and consumers, the astrology at the center of early America's most widespread form of print was, as one almanac-maker put it, "a handmaid fit for bless'd theology."