Cultural Influence of Astrology - The Seven Liberal Arts

The Seven Liberal Arts

In medieval Europe, a university education was divided into seven distinct areas, each represented by a particular planet and known as the seven liberal arts.

Dante Alighieri speculated that these arts, which grew into the sciences we know today, fitted the same structure as the planets. As the arts were seen as operating in ascending order, so were the planets and so, in decreasing order of planetary speed, grammar was assigned to the Moon, the quickest moving celestial body, dialectic was assigned to Mercury, rhetoric to Venus, music to the Sun, arithmetic to Mars, geometry to Jupiter and astrology/astronomy to the slowest moving body, Saturn.