Should Astrologers Predict Death? - Across the Horizon 17

The whole idea of an astrologer predicting death is a little weird. The question that often comes up, though, in this sort of situation is: Why would I want to know? What does knowledge do for me? Does it help me? If not, then what's the point? Knowledge doesn't just come with benefits and rewards; sometimes it also brings about pain. It can be hard to know where you stand on this issue because nobody wants to think about death being near - but ancient astrologers argued that you should not even do a reading unless you were certain someone wouldn’t die before a prediction had a time to pass.

In this episode of Across the Horizon, Christopher Warnock of Renaissance Astrology and Michael Beeson of Hacking Fate discuss the 17th Aphorism of Ptolemy, "Give no judgment as to the future life of an aged person, until the number of years he may live shall have been reckoned." – Abu Jafar al-Khazin “Ptolemy” (trans: JM Ashmand)