and Hi, my name is Chris Brennan, and you're listening to the

astrology podcast. In this episode I'm going to be talking with Jeffrey Kottick

about the interactions between ancient Western astrology and ancient Chinese astrology and specifically the transmission of Hellenistic astrology to China and to Japan, which is a research subject that Jeffrey is focused on over the course of the past decade.

So hey Jeffrey, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for having me.

It's a pleasure to be here.

Yeah, I'm really excited about this.

This is one of my first in-person interviews, so thanks for doing that that you're actually in town right now for a

conference right? A big academic conference and so the time was just really auspicious to do this.

Perfect, all right so let's talk first where should we start I mean my starting point I think for me would want to be your

PhD dissertation which you just finished a few years ago and what was the title of that?

The Buddhist astrology and astromagic in the Tang Dynasty.

So the Tang Dynasty being one of these Chinese dynasties that ran from the seventh century to the late ninth century.

Okay, seven century to late ninth century, so that's roughly like the early medieval period in the West.

And it's also the period of the early period of Islam and also the period when the early

Arab astrologers were operating.

Right, in Baghdad surrounding like the House of Wisdom

and other things like that?

The Abbasid Caliphate.

So it's the same period as Altabari and Abu

Mashar and so forth.

Okay.

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