Thank you all for being here. My project and as you can see calculating the length of life in

Western medieval astrology. So I'm going to talk about a little bit about what I intend to do and

I'm going also to give some context because I'm still in the beginning. So it is my research

addresses the astrological techniques for calculating the length of life and their correlation with the

concept of determinism. So it's quite broad and it is in this first stage it is more like a survey

of different techniques for calculating the span lifespan and it's focused on medieval texts both

Arabic Christian or Hebrew but I also look I will also look into Hellenistic and early modern texts

so it is quite broad because it is astrology and I'm sure most of you already know this but I think

it is also important to present some clarifications taken from some questions that people ask. So

first of all what is when I say astrology in the sense of pre-modern astrology what I mean is the

study of the correlation between movements of planets in heaven and events on earth. This was

in short the definition of astrology in the pre-modern period and the other thing and I'm

sure you also know this but it's always important to remember is that pre-modern astrology is not

necessarily related with contemporary astrology. There are many differences between them. The other

thing and this might be a bit strange is that pre-modern astrology was not necessarily an occult

or mystical discipline. It was more something that belonged to natural sciences or natural

knowledge if you prefer. So it was apart from the occult and mystical disciplines although it was

obviously connected with other kinds of study. For instance in the book horoscopes and public

spheres we can see that configuring astrology with the other so-called occult sciences is in

itself a way of distorting the understanding of the topic. So this is one thing that we should

keep in mind and again the same book. Sorry. Sorry. Not really helping. And again. Yes. So

also relating astrology closely to magic and other occult sciences is a modern configuration.

It's something that we should keep in mind because when we talk about astrology these days we always

talk about these things and we put astrology in the same group of other things which are obviously

related in a way but all of them have their different history and different rules so it

should be it should be more we should differentiate a bit more actually. And also as I said astrology

is more accurately configurated with mathematics, natural philosophy and even medicine. And in

another perspective the so-called esoteric discourse is not confined to a field. It is

transgressed and it is found in several areas of knowledge. So this is something that I should

understand. Astrology is also sometimes taken as an example as a field of study that brought

together scientists or people of knowledge if you prefer of different religions. So this is an

example that is taken from the paper Interreligious Transfers in Middle Ages. When astrology is

presented as one of the several scientific fields that bring together people of different

religions or as they say in the Middle Ages different nations. So for all this it is important

to see astrology as to see pre-modern astrology as an interdisciplinary field of study and as

something that is not only a practice because sometimes we think also of astrology as something

that people do which is true but it was also a way of describing the world. So in the pre-modern

societies with all their differences they would have the astrological system as a way of explaining

reality. So for them not only the horoscopes themselves but the way the world would function,

the way the world would act was described by astrological cycles, by astrological symbolism.

So it's not only a practice so to say. So and for this reason it is indeed because astrology that

the debate about these teams came to touch every field of human activity. So this is just to take

this out of the way. I think it's important. So after all this what is astrology? When I talk

about astrology what do I mean as I say? It is the connection between movements in heaven and

events on earth and in very thought astrology has four main applications. It was not just

horoscopes. It was mostly what we call now mundane astrology or revolutions of the world.

Revolutions in the sense not in the political sense but in the sense of cycles, things that

revolve and have a cyclic rhythm. And this was the most important application of astrology. It

would explain political changes, economic changes, all sorts of collective events. And also natal

astrology, the one that we now know of the horoscopes or personal horoscopes. So for people but