On a sunny February afternoon at Magdalen, I took a stroll along the historic Addison’s Walk with Dr Michelle Pfeffer, a historian of science and medicine, and Calleva Postdoc researcher. Currently based at Magdalen, Michelle curated an exhibition at the Weston Library entitled Oracles, Omens and Answers, which explored the many ways humans have tried to access hidden knowledge – from stars to spiders. We talked about her journey into the history of astrology, her thoughts on divination today, and why Renaissance astrology was a lot harder than your daily horoscope might suggest.
This interview was originally recorded as part of the Addison’s Talks Podcast. Listen to the rest of the episodes here.
Can you start by telling us a bit about your academic background and how you ended up here at Magdalen?
Michelle: Sure! I actually started out studying English literature at university in Australia, but along the way I took some history courses and absolutely loved them. One of my favourites was on the history of medicine—we covered everything from hysteria to obstetrics. It was completely mind-blowing and made me realise, “I think this is what I want to do with my life.”
Around the same time, I studied abroad in the UK, including at Nottingham, and I remember visiting an old apothecary museum. I was 19, keeping a diary, and in it I wrote, “I think I’ve decided I want to be a historian of science and medicine.” And then in the same trip I visited Oxford and I say “I went to Magdalen College and I saw C.S. Lewis’s office. I want to come back to Oxford one day.” And literally now C.S. Lewis’s office is my office, which feels kind of like Chance!
Or Destiny? So, do you want to explain a little bit more about your research interests?
I focus on the early modern period and particularly on the role of astrology in academic and political life. For a long time, astrology was seen as a serious science—it was part of how courts functioned, how medicine was practiced, and how the future was understood.
But something shifts in the early modern period. Astrology gradually disappears from universities and public life. I’ve been really interested in understanding why that happened. People often assume it’s because science simply swept superstition away, but history is never that simple. In fact, I argue that our view of astrology today as “superstition” obscures how sophisticated and serious it once was.
So would you say we need a professor of astrology at Oxford?
I mean, I might be the closest thing to that already, so… yes. But Renaissance methods only, and you have to be good at maths!
Why Maths?
The way that you do astrology is by casting a horoscope. So, astrologers today can really reliably use a computer to do this kind of work, because it involves quite complication calculations, but in the past you had to do them yourself or ask an astronomer to do them for you. The calculations are really complicated, and they use a huge variety of instruments to make them – so yes you needed real training in maths and astronomy to be an astrologer.
What can astrology tell us about the past—and why do you think it matters today?
Well, if you lived in a world where people believed the heavens directly influenced life on Earth, then of course you’d invest in methods to understand and predict those influences. That belief led to extraordinary advancements in observation, mathematics, and instrument-making. In the Magdalen Library, we have some of the most beautiful and delicate objects related to astrology – works of science and art.
Tell us about your exhibition at the Weston Library—Oracles, Omens and Answers.
The exhibition explored how people across time and cultures have tried to uncover hidden information – whether about the future, the past, or even the present. We looked at astrology, tarot, palmistry, but also less familiar practices like geomancy, necromancy, and spider divination.
Spider divination?
Yes! My co-curator, anthropologist David Zeitlyn, works in Cameroon where it’s still practiced. The idea is that because spiders (or sometimes crabs, actually) live underground, close to the realm of the dead, they have special knowledge. People place symbolic objects above the spider’s hole – like, a stick and a stone – and ask a question like “Should I buy a motorbike?” If the spider moves the stone, it means yes; if it moves the stick, it’s no. It’s fascinating – and sometimes the questions are much more serious, like choosing medical treatment for a loved one.
Do you feel like there’s a connection, when you’re learning about people in history, that you find we often have a lot of things in common?
Oh definitely. Across time, people have asked the same kinds of questions: Am I making the right choice? Can I trust this person? What does the future hold? While historians often emphasize cultural differences, I find it incredibly moving to see how much we share. These divinatory practices show that across centuries and continents, people have wrestled with uncertainty in remarkably similar ways.
I think it’s really fun for me as a historian to realise because often historians want to talk about difference, we want to say everything is culturally specific, every context has a different experience but actually what I’ve learned is that actually we’re all pretty similar. We’re all just people.
Do you think we still use divining techniques now they’re just not so explicit?
Yeah, I think so. If you think about something like meteorology, the basic premise isn’t so different from traditional divination, you’re looking for patterns in the natural world and using those patterns to predict future events. That’s the fundamental idea behind many divinatory practices – whether it’s the sky, the ground, or the lines on a palm, these are all seen as carrying signs that can be studied and interpreted. In the Renaissance, astrologers often focused on major events like epidemics or extreme weather. They would collect data, analyze celestial patterns, and look for correlations with earthly events. In that sense, their work parallels many scientific forecasting methods today. Modern disciplines like meteorology, epidemiology, or economics all rely on identifying patterns and making extrapolations based on them. I mean the techniques are a little different obviously but the general principle remains the same.
So do you think that the rise in interest in astrology and divination techniques more widely is because things are feeling a bit more precarious now?
a lot of people turn to divination for comfort and historically if we look to times when divination became really really popular it’s often during times of great uncertainty, great turmoil, when people are feeling unsafe, when people really have very little sense of what even the next month might look like let alone the next year. We saw a significant surge in interest in astrology and tarot during the past few years, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Part of this resurgence is also due to technological shifts. For instance, many people are now using AI tools, like ChatGPT, in a way that resembles traditional forms of oracular guidance. It’s an interesting development – people are now turning to technology for more personalized, almost “bespoke” insight.
COVID was a particularly challenging time for all of us, it’s where everyone learned the word epidemiology. We suddenly found ourselves looking to professional forecasters to understand how the future might unfold, and in some cases, people turned to diviners for more personalized interpretations. While statistics and data offer a broad picture, diviners could provide individuals with answers to specific, personal questions: What does this mean for me?
Thanks so much to Michelle for coming on a walk around Addison’s with us. It was great to hear about her Exhibition at the Bodleian Libraries Oracles, Omens, and Answers, and to find out more about her journey to Magdalen, and the history of astrology.