I'm not posting on this topic anymore, but I did read James' last post which I thought was beautifully written and clearly expressed my feelings much better than my own few words of discontent. So, thank you, James. A true teacher is humble and open, realizing that often our best insights come from polite and respectful interaction with students and others in our field. O.K, maybe some of us are still learning this!!

James, Edgar Cayce is not a credible source because he was wrong too often. I could itemize a bunch of instances, but this is a thread about Pluto and Aries, and I don't need to derail it further.

If you have a problem with academics who disagree with you, I don't see that as a tenable basis for a conversation with you. You've actually got an ad homimem fallacy going. What I post stands or falls on its merits or lack thereof, independently of how you construe my forum persona. Ditto for your "rigidity" problem. What I write has merit or it doesn't, independently of what character traits you read into my posts.

And please don't get into some sort of slippery slope, such as "If you don't believe in Cayce you must not believe in astrology." Astrology does not require a loyalty oath. I've demonstrated my credentials, if not here, on the other astrology forums in which I participate.

Saying astrology is or is not a "credible source" makes no sense. There is good and bad astrology. You have to be a connoisseur of what you read.

If this does not make me a "true teacher," Therese, I will just have to get over it.

My feeling is that if someone has a strong argument to make, it will stand up to criticism. If the argument is not strong, then hopefully criticism will show where to strengthen it.

Let's get back on topic, please...

Michael, you don't need to convince me about the significance of astrological Pluto. I'm all in.

I am also convinced of the astrological significance of Chiron, which meets few of your criteria.

In terms of historical events, astrologers have allowed some leeway around a heavenly body's actual discovery date.

The discovery of Ceres i(on New Years Day in 1801) roughly corresponded with some major historical changes, like the Industrial Revolution's take-over of manufacturing in Europe and North America, and the Second Agricultural Revolution, which emphasized the application of scientific principles to farming. The American Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791, and the Napoleanic Code was adopted in 1804. (One of Demeter's ascriptions was "the law giver.)

The discovery of Ceres established the fame of Carl Friedrich Gauss as a mathematician, based on his predicting Ceres' orbit; as well as the application of mathematics to the discovery of new heavenly bodies.(Uranus previously had been identified as a planet with the aid of a telescope-- another astronomical first-- but it had previously been observed and deemed a fixed star.)

So does history make Ceres a prominent dwarf planet, or a mere asteroid?

Eris was discovered in 2005. Again, allowing for the same leeway accorded the traditional modern outers, this date approximately corresponds to the IAU's determination of a new category of heavenly body: dwarf planet.

2001: over 20,000 people die in an earthquake in Gujarat, India
2001: Al Qaeda hijacks 4 airliners and levels the World Trade Center towers.
2001: US invades Afghanistan
2002: the Euro enters circulation
2003: space shuttle Columbia disintegrates on re-entry
2003: US invades Iraq, kills Saddam Hussein
2004: Facebook is established*
2004: 230,000 people die in Asian Tsunami
2004: NAT0 and EU incorporate most of former Eastern Bloc
2004: Mars landing of robots
2005: YouTube and Reddit are founded*
2008: start of Great Recession
2009: Bitcoin launched
2010: Haiti earthquake kills 230,000
2010: Arab Spring
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_ ... st_century

Not bad for a dwarf planet named for the goddess of strife and discord!

*The emergence of social media during this period initially seemed like a great boon, but we are now learning how Facebook's algorithms contributed to social unrest, and real divisiveness between populists, vs. traditional conservatives and liberals. Among other problems.

So Michael: You want historical events to bolster Eris? You've got historical events.

Aries does not symbolize endings so far as I know. Scorpio, in contrast, has a strong association with death. Originally this was probably because Scorpions really can be deadly in the Near East; and the calendar month came at a time when the sun hits the midpoint between the fall equinox and winter solstice.

More soon.

Michael, continuing from my previous post:

I use both traditional and modern rulers in natal chart interpretation, but just traditional rulers in horary. So Mars isn't going anywhere.

Michael, I have (or used to have) some elementary tourist German, but even that is pretty meagre at this point. German-speaking countries are obviously in the temperate zone (not to mention portions at high elevations) which are nothing like the cradle of Greco-Roman mythology, let alone Babylon and ancient Egypt. Some of your translation is still in Dutch, which I don't read at all.

What I can say as someone with a lot of interest in how environments interact with people's belief systems is that the place to start is the regions of origin. In which case we are looking at Mediterranean climates and riverine desert societies like Mesopotamia. These climates are characterized by periods of drought (referred to during Demeter's grief sojourn) and winter rains or river floods in season.

Ancient Mediterranean agriculture was based on planting winter wheat and barley just prior to the autumn/winter rainy season. The grain sprouted with the winter rains. Interestingly, the Jewish holy day cycle (from another Mediterranean culture) includes a lot of prayers for autumn rain. Zeus/Jupiter was a rain god.

The "half-year" divided by lunar months is from the Latin author Ovid. The earlier Greek authors referred to a 1/3-2/3 split.

The proper English translation is not "robbery," but rape. Anciently Persephone's abduction was called "the rape of Persephone" and was an iconographic theme. Normally neither goddess was associated with the moon, which was given to the triple goddess Diana/Artemis, Selene (sometimes Hera) and Hekate. Hekate herself has a role in the recovery of Persephone, as a chthonic goddess.

Your footnote looks interesting, but I would need to learn the classical primary sources, not the secondary ones.

The father of Pluto would have been Saturn/Kronos. Pluto did get above ground occasionally, which is how he came across Persephone. Some myths about her have no reference to the bargain forged between Zeus/Jupiter and Demeter/Ceres, but simply refer to her as queen of the dead.

Demeter's Eleusinian mysteries spoke to the esoteric, metaphysical interpretation of the myth..

I can go into this more if you like, but you have reminded us to stay on-topic.

waybread wrote:I can go into this more if you like, but you have reminded us to stay on-topic.

Discussing the Hades and Persephone myth is no deviation from the topic, but quite relevant to it. Feel free to carry this on whenever you wish!

I am particularly interested in the myth's interpretation in the Eleusinian mysteries.

Comments on your most recent posts to follow soon.

Michael, I am not a classicist but I think that astrologers benefit from the study of mythology; and that, if we're going to do that, we need to look at the original primary sources-- in translation when we don't know the ancient languages. We need to look at what classical studies scholars tell us.

What we find are usually multiple versions of myths. Sometimes these seem to be variants of one another; but sometimes very different narrative themes seem to be grafted onto one another. Sometimes a myth is more stand-alone. A philologist could make more sense of them than I could. But what I try to do is set myths in their broader cultural and environmental contexts.

Starting with the Homeric Hymn to Demeter https://uh.edu/~cldue/texts/demeter.html we learn a couple of things about seasons.

In the opening, Persephone is out picking flowers with her friends. Homer itemizes them and they seem to be flowers that bloom in spring or early summer. Gaia, the earth personified, actually sets these out as a lure for Persephone at Zeus's request, to make her an easier catch for Hades. Persephone picks a narcissus (NB, Jungians!) the earth opens up, and she's captured.

[Just as a gloss, to me there is an inexorable quality to astrological Pluto-- the gods seem to align on profound-- unwanted-- trip to the Underworld.]

In Homer we have a version (1) where Persephone disappears in spring/early summer, and as time progresses, we're into the Mediterranean seasonal summer drought season. If you're familiar with this type of area, hillsides that are green in spring become parched and brown by mid-summer. Demeter, indeed causes a much more severe drought, in her grief. This is a kind of Mediterranean weather & climate Just-So Story. The rainless summer is caused by Demeter grieving for her daughter.

Hekate, a chthonic goddess whose lineage may predate Hades, emerges from the depths, bearing torches to light the search.

Demeter's search is reminiscent of Isis searching for Osiris.

Demeter pauses at Eleusis, which became the site of the Eleusinian mysteries.

After many entreaties, Demeter finally brokers a bargain-- not with Hades-- but with Zeus, in whose hands the matter always rested.

Persephone is to return in the spring, for 2/3 of the year. Here, we seem not to be dealing with summer drought, but with (2) the vegetation that emerges by the end of the winter rains. This would also make Persephone a metaphor for seeds planted in the ground in autumn.

Near the end of the hymn, right after the flowers begin to bloom, Demeter ends the drought and(3) grain is ready to be cut (winter barley, probably in April)-- which offers another metaphor. The harvest of the grain is the death of the grain plants.

Because the Eleusinian mysteries were to be kept secret, not much is known about them. But apparently the soul's descent to earth was a parallel with Persephone's descent to Hades. I. e., the earthly life is like hell, but one hopes for a good afterlife. There is some thought that the rituals involved hallucinogens, but this cannot be provden.

Here is another version of the myth from Ovid https://ovid.lib.virginia.edu/trans/Met ... #479128839

This one takes place in Sicily. At the end, Jupiter divides the year evenly between Pluto and Ceres.

I'm fascinated by this Long Thread. For me Simply I doubt Pluto is a Ruler of Aries because of the Nature of Aries.

Aries Types will run from a Fight if they see that they have NO Chance. But Pluto is more of a Death and Rebirth Type. They wouldn't run. They'd reform in a New Form..

Also Pluto is about Power thru Fear, but Mars is Power thru dominance.

H

mythology is not a credible source..

laying all the events from 2001 to 2010 at eris's doorstep with the discovery in 2005 seems very erroneous too, lol... further to that - the perception today is different then it was in 2005...

James, re: mythology, as I mentioned previously, you have to be a connoisseur of what you read. As with astrology, there is the good, the bad, and the ugly.

It also depends upon the uses you wish to make of myths. Some uses make a lot more sense than others.

Perhaps you are incorrectly imagining that I believe that myths are objectively true?

A major reason to study myths in connection with astrology is that they were the basis on which the characteristics of the different planets were assigned in ancient times. The myths pre-dated their assignment to planets. Myths are cooked into the rulerships of planets.

Astrological Mars is the planet of warfare and soldiers because mythological Mars (Greek Ares, Babylonian Nergal) were war gods. Astrological Mercury rules liars and thieves because the young god Mercury was a trickster.

Jungians are still into myth interpretation.

Also, in ignoring myths-- in their original forms (allowing for translations) we lose a lot of their meanings; meanings which have value in chart interpretation today.

Speaking of Persephone, in ancient Greece she was also called Kore, meaning a little girl, not a sexually mature young woman. This gives extra poignancy to her kidnapping and her mother's frantic search. If you ever want to use Ceres in chart interpretation, this kind of information is worth knowing, because Ceres has to mean more than some kind of junior moon.

Re: Pluto as possible ruler of Aries. Myths also have to be set in their cultural-environmental contexts.

Aries the ram (or lamb, actually) is our first sign because we essentially follow the Babylonian calendar. Their first month of Nisanu (cf. Hebrew Nissan) started just after the vernal equinox, and it means "new beginnings." [The "hired man" name comes from extra workers needed in spring lambing season.]

If you've ever seen wild rams butting heads, you get the Ram's association with battle. If you've ever seen a wild ram lead his small flock up a cliff and then position himself in front of them, on a rock facing outwards, challenging all comers, you get the association of the ram with raw courage. Very Mars.

I think the genius, if I can call it that, of Hellenists like Ptolemy was keeping the meta-narrative of myths intact, while putting them on a more "scientific" or Aristotelian footing.

Michael, I personally sometimes describe astrological Pluto as like the Phoenix, another myth. But hard Pluto transits never leave one with the pre-transit inexperience and naivete. We always retain the experience of metaphorical death via the ruler of the underworld.

Similarly, in a number of the Greek myths, Persephone does not happily re-emerge into springtime and roses. She remains underground as the fearsome Queen of the Dead.

James, in my earlier post, I said that for a modern planet to be considered to be a sign ruler, it has real work to do in a horoscope. It has to function as a house cusp ruler (lord.)

If Pluto works as the ruler of a house with Aries on the cusp, hey, let's use it. Have you tried this? Michael?

As I said earlier, I am not necessarily taken with linking historical events to a modern planet's discovery date. These tend to be heavily biased towards western history, ignoring events (or non-events) in other parts of the world. But because they are typically used by way of extracting meaning from a planet's discovery date, I simply wanted to show that Eris holds her own.

Of course, other dwarf planets discovered around the same time muddy the waters.

Wars, earthquakes, and the like have been going on since about forever. On reflection, I think one of the biggest new things to occur around 2005 was the launching of social media. As I mentioned, they initially seemed like a boon, but we are just now finding out how much strife they are causing. Facebook algorithms were specifically designed to feature content that aggravates people, because aggravated people spend more time with their eyeballs in contact with advertisements.

I also should have mentioned that Eris was involved in charts for the rapid spread of the Covid pandemic. From a hypothetical domicile in Aries, it squared that big slug of planets moving through Capricorn.

waybread wrote:Michael, you don't need to convince me about the significance of astrological Pluto. I'm all in.

Waybread, I am not trying to convince you of anything. Even if you would promote the Easter Bunny as the Lord of Aries, I wouldn't have any problem with that.

I was simply highlighting the fact that Pluto has the power to change the world's history in ways hard to match by Eris or most other celestial bodies (for that matter).

I am also convinced of the astrological significance of Chiron, which meets few of your criteria.

In terms of historical events, astrologers have allowed some leeway around a heavenly body's actual discovery date.

In fact, I was careful to only adduce instances from the very year of Pluto's discovery (with exception of the cyclotron, which was invented in the following year).

The discovery of Ceres i(on New Years Day in 1801) roughly corresponded with some major historical changes, like the Industrial Revolution's take-over of manufacturing in Europe and North America, and the Second Agricultural Revolution, which emphasized the application of scientific principles to farming. The American Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791, and the Napoleanic Code was adopted in 1804. (One of Demeter's ascriptions was "the law giver.)

The discovery of Ceres established the fame of Carl Friedrich Gauss as a mathematician, based on his predicting Ceres' orbit; as well as the application of mathematics to the discovery of new heavenly bodies.(Uranus previously had been identified as a planet with the aid of a telescope-- another astronomical first-- but it had previously been observed and deemed a fixed star.)

So does history make Ceres a prominent dwarf planet, or a mere asteroid?

Eris was discovered in 2005. Again, allowing for the same leeway accorded the traditional modern outers, this date approximately corresponds to the IAU's determination of a new category of heavenly body: dwarf planet.

2001: over 20,000 people die in an earthquake in Gujarat, India
2001: Al Qaeda hijacks 4 airliners and levels the World Trade Center towers.
2001: US invades Afghanistan
2002: the Euro enters circulation
2003: space shuttle Columbia disintegrates on re-entry
2003: US invades Iraq, kills Saddam Hussein
2004: Facebook is established*
2004: 230,000 people die in Asian Tsunami
2004: NAT0 and EU incorporate most of former Eastern Bloc
2004: Mars landing of robots
2005: YouTube and Reddit are founded*
2008: start of Great Recession
2009: Bitcoin launched
2010: Haiti earthquake kills 230,000
2010: Arab Spring
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_ ... st_century

Not bad for a dwarf planet named for the goddess of strife and discord!

*The emergence of social media during this period initially seemed like a great boon, but we are now learning how Facebook's algorithms contributed to social unrest, and real divisiveness between populists, vs. traditional conservatives and liberals. Among other problems.

So Michael: You want historical events to bolster Eris? You've got historical events.

Which cover the whole time period during which all the biggest TNOs were found. In those terms, it's a bit of a stretch to attribute all those events to Eris alone.

E.g., Gonggong is associated with conflict and destruction too.

Aries does not symbolize endings so far as I know.

When a new cycle begins, the old one ends at the same time.

Scorpio, in contrast, has a strong association with death. Originally this was probably because Scorpions really can be deadly in the Near East; and the calendar month came at a time when the sun hits the midpoint between the fall equinox and winter solstice.

More soon.

More soon.