An astrological interpretation is given in the article by Anna Spychalska-Boczkowska "Material for the iconography of Hieronymus Bosch's Triptych The Garden of Delights", in Studea Muzealne, Poznan 1966.
The article begins by exploring the iconography in a scholarly way. She points us to a painting by Joost van Cleve from around the time of Bosch, Salvator Mundi, in which Christ holds a transparent globe with a landscape shown within it, which she parallels with the griselle on the outer wings of the Garden of Earthly Delights. The article rather degenerates when she looks at the inner panels, where she finds all sorts of crab symbolism, which she associates with the astrological sign of Cancer. She links this to the Great Conjunction of the Sun and Moon which took place in the sign of Cancer on the sixth of June 1504. Sebastian Brandt wrote a pamphet about this in January of that year.
Anna Spychalska-Boczkowska concludes her article by making this point
"It is most probable that the Golden Conjunction of 1504 is the basis of the ideological concept of Bosch's triptych."How can intelligent people so delude themselves !
