Hello,

The Chaldean order of the seven traditional planets place Venus which signifies desire above Mercury which signifies reason. However, the ancient philosophers and occultists would have placed reason above desire. Could anyone enlighten me on this?

Thank you in advanced.

I'm not so sure about assigning an order to such things based on the Chaldean planetary order, but if a person were to do such a thing I think it would be important to distinguish between A) a naturally occurring order and B) an order that may for some reason be preferred.

Desire as signified by Venus does come before the desire to control desire through reason, as signified by Mercury. You need to have the presence of desire before you can control it. Considered that way, it does make sense that as you descend symbolically from the upper realms desire will first appear and then follows the urge and reasoning ability to control that desire.

When you say that ?the ancient philosophers and occultists would have placed reason above desire? you are entering into value judgments, stating that they considered reason to be preferable to and valued over desire - which has often been the position of ancient and current philosophy and religion. But such judgments concerning the hierarchy of values are different from symbolic illustration of manifestation.

Hi, Junaid

first, as you are aware, the chaldean order comes from the natural order of velocities and "distance" in the aristothelic model of universe.

so, the order is not determined by "reasoning" being better or worse than "desire".

second, to say that mercury is "reason" is not a good description of what mercury represents. A better planet for reasoning would be the sun, and even he is below mars, so would we say that "reasoning" is below "rage"?

I personally think this particular analogy doesn?t hold a lot of water.

Hi Yuzuru,

second, to say that mercury is "reason" is not a good description of what mercury represents. A better planet for reasoning would be the sun, and even he is below mars, so would we say that "reasoning" is below "rage"?

I did pause over this topic and found some things to think about. I would just take care to not get too carried away with it.

Mars is hot and dry: it cuts and divides. Venus urges union. Mercury, ever the match-maker, figures out a way to bring them together, the Moon brings it downward to manifestation. The Sun as a unifying consciousness, a principle of being, lies between the separation of Mars and unification of Venus, the outward thrust of Mars and the drawing within of Venus. I agree that Mercury is more than reason. It's more completely a principle of connection. That's why Mercury and Mars are so famously powerful and deadly in debate: They can indicate a strong ability to divide thought into its foundational elements and then bring those elements back together in an effective whole and express it to others.

You know, I think I could get delightfully carried away with this.






Oh, and since the Sun is between the two extremes of Mars and Venus it needs a helper. That would be Mercury, the little guy who is never more than 28 degrees away. That's why a combust Mercury in a natal chart isn't necessarily at all bad when it comes to the mind, reasoning and communication abilities of the native.

I don?t agree that mercury connects... he is a dry planet after all. mercury?s nature is much more like wind, wind move things, but not really connects them.

Mercury is without sect, or other polarities because he, like any merchant, works for the highest bid

and so are words, that can be distorted at either way you like them.

Mercury easily takes on the qualities of planets it's in contact with. Its domicile and exaltation rulerships are in mutable signs. The ability to change and to adapt to whatever one is in contact with is a key element in making effective connections. Insincere flattery is a time-honored technique.

Wind is a connective principle. The wind brings Mary Poppins, after all. Mercury's wind brings the diseased leaves of the neighbors tree's into my territory ? a connection is thereby made between me, those trees and the neighbor who does nothing about it. This has gone on every summer for years now. They are huge trees with a lot of diseased, dry, brown leaves. What mess. I would rather have Mary Poppins fluttering down.

Hello junaid,
I believe that many of the universal (general) significations of the planets were derived mainly from the configuration of the planets themselves rather than from the signs and houses, both of which must have come later in the astrological construct compared to the planets. Modern astrologers (or even classical/traditional astrologers) sometimes use signs and houses to find the rationale behind some of the planetary universal significations. Though this approach has merit, I don?t think that this was the approach that the ancients took. Signs were developed following the arrangement of the fixed stars (sidereal) or equal division of the annual path of the sun i.e. the ecliptic (tropical) ? both of which came later in the tradition. The house concept came even much later than the signs. Some of the universal significations of the planets ultimately will have been derived from the signs following the planets assignments as domicile and exalted rulers of the signs. However, I think that many principal associations of the planets should have been derived from the configuration of the planets themselves. As an example, I have seen in an astrological book which states that Mercury is changeable because it is the ruler of Gemini and Virgo whose signs are mutable (mutable = changeable) but the association of planets as domicile and/or exalted rulers of the signs came later. Although this could be the reason for the association of changeability to Mercury, the changeability of Mercury can be derived from the motion of Mercury itself.

When the ?first? astrologers look up to the heavens with their naked eyes, the planets would be the first that come under their scrutiny and hence, would be given certain principle significations. The most obvious heavenly bodies would be the luminaries i.e. the sun and the moon. They would have been given significations by this token alone. The sun reigns supreme during the day and moon seems to have more influence at night. Light and darkness, sun and moon, male and female, diurnal and nocturnal are just a few concepts that can be derived from the luminaries. As they are very conspicuous through their size and observable effects on earth, they naturally represent the most important area of life in human affairs viz. life itself! (as above, so below). The remnants of this are seen in the ways that the medieval astrologers use them as the starting point in determining hyleg (life giver). As it is in many significations, the medieval astrologers would also use at least a Lot and a house to represent life (so that we have planet level, house level and Lot level). In the case of hyleg, we have the ascendant (as house level) and the Lot of Fortune (a Lot level). The fifth point of life i.e. the pre-natal syzygy is actually a point where both luminaries joined by bodily conjunction and opposition.
Further observations of the heavens reveal five other wandering stars from among the thousands of ?fixed? stars. Judging by their motions, the ancients correlated the speed to the distance of their respective spheres and came up with the Chaldean order of the planets. Saturn being the slowest has the outermost sphere and the Moon being the fastest (speeds are relative to earth), gets the nearest sphere relative to earth.
If you look at the Chaldean order, the Sun is at the centre of the hierarchy ? making Sun the centre of them all! Not only Sun is so influential on earth (giving day and night and the seasons, etc.), it is also the centre of the wandering stars according to the Chaldean order. It also gives out light (and heat) which is vital for all living beings. Now, the soul is also vital for all living beings. Hence, the centre of the seven heaven spheres (Sun) is associated with the soul. As the sun is the centre of the seven heavenly bodies, it is only logical to use the sun as the base point in the Chaldean order. Hence, the planets that are above the sun in Chaldean order are called superior planets because they are superior to the sun (in position). Similarly, the planets that are below the sun in Chaldean order are called inferior planets because they are inferior to the sun (in position). The sun and superior planets are assigned to the male gender (yes, they were male chauvinists!) while the inferior planets are assigned to the female gender except for Mercury. Mercury is always the one assigned to dual nature due to its constant swinging motion around the sun. The concept of sect of the planets can also be derived from the motions of the planets but it is too long to discus here [see Porphyry ? trans. James Holden for more info]

Now to your question (desire vs. reason):
The three inferior planets and the sun were somehow correlated to the four ?parts? that make up a human (soul, reason, desire and body). As mentioned above, the sun represents the soul. The moon which is nearest to earth has the signification of the body of a human and also matter. Soul and body, spirit and matter, Sun and Moon. It is a co-incidence that the moon?s light is actually the reflected sun?s light. The soul is reflected in the body. The body is nothing without the soul as Moon is nothing without the Sun (Moon has no light of her own). Next, we are left with Venus and Mercury (desire and reason). Although the hierarchy of Chaldean order places desire (Venus) above reason (Mercury), this is not the way to look at it. Remember that the Sun (Soul) is the centre of the seven planets? So, their importance should be gauged from the soul (Sun) itself. Mercury is the one closest to the Sun (the ancients knew this somehow because it is very difficult to observe Mercury in the dawn/dusk due to its proximity to the sun). Following the Soul, reason is the most important ?virtue?. Hence, as reason is nearest to soul, so Mercury takes up the signification of reason as he is nearest to Sun (soul). Venus then takes up the signification of desire. Observe that Mercury and Venus are forever bound to the sun as their longitudes can never be more than certain distances from the sun. Hence, both reason (Mercury) and desire (Venus) should always be the ?servants? of soul (sun). When desire or reason runs wild, they corrupt the soul.

Inanna was the Sumerian Queen of Heaven and their planet Venus. She was also quite the fertility goddess, hence her association with desire. The Babylonians called her Ishtar.

The prototype for Mercury was the Sumerian god Enki who ruled speech and wisdom. The Babylonians called him Nebo.

Just possibly her powers were seen as more significant than his.

Thank you very much to everybody who contributed!

In the inititial post there was mention of ?the ancients?. Since then Astrojin wrote:

The three inferior planets and the sun were somehow correlated to the four ?parts? that make up a human (soul, reason, desire and body).

Did the Babylonian astrologers have four such parts in their philosophy? It sounds more Greek, so we may be applying later Greek thought to the Chaldean order. The Babylonians and the Greeks can too easily get lumped together as ?the ancients?. We probably can effectively combine their ideas for our own use, but we would do well to keep in mind which culture and era had which ideas and beliefs.

Following the Soul, reason is the most important ?virtue?.

Haven't we here left the Babylonians behind and become very Greek?

As the sun is the centre of the seven heavenly bodies, it is only logical to use the sun as the base point in the Chaldean order.

When the Chaldean order is applied to the chart houses Saturn gets to start out with the super-important 1st house. The Sun first appears with the 4th house around the midnight position, the Sun's lowest point of the 24-hour period ? so when applied to the Greek horoscopic system the Sun seems rather secondary. It is also given the more encouraging 11th house which is a position of rising, of growing, but it's not a position of culmination or being supreme.

The Babylonians didn't have the chart houses that the Hellenistic culture contributed to astrology. The Sun may have been the center of the Chaldean planetary order, but applying that order to the houses of the chart while keeping the Sun central starts to get pretty confusing. Mixing together Mesopotamian and later Hellenistic Greek culture becomes even more confusing.

Hello,

To Kirk,
Yeah. Sorry I didn't make myself clear. Most of the associations of planets to their natural significations that I outlined are Greek (it must be because it is so orderly and so Geeky! I mean Greeky). The Chaldean order is most definitely Chaldean (Babylonian) as it also gives the order of the days of the week. I would suggest that the Greek astrologers took many of the earlier concepts that appealed to them i.e. they took what they liked especially when there were clear explanations to the systems e.g. this Chaldean order which can be explained by the speed-distance correlation and then expanded them further. Ptolemy did this when he explained the assignments of the planets as domicile rulers of the signs. Other concepts include heliacal phenomena, fixed stars, etc. which the Greek astrologers took and then somehow used their own world/mathematical/philosophical concepts to modify and expand their astrological knowledge. The Greeks themselves did not have an indigeneous astrological system - hence, they must have borrowed from earlier tradition but then modify them to suit their system of philosophy creating a new form of astrology that somehow supplanted the Babylonian astrology later. I think the medieval astrologers also did similar thing. The Arabs translated what they had from the Greeks, the Medievalists translated what they had from the Arabs and the Greeks - modifications and innovations are bound to happen at each step.

Hi astrojin,

Thanks for giving us so much yet again! You are very generous.

As you've shown, we work with an accretion of techniques and philosophies. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that. I wanted to point out that we need to keep in mind that the blended system we work with can too easily lead us to blend long-passed eras and diverse cultures into a homogenous group called 'the ancients'. Likewise, I'm not comfortable with referring to past astrology as 'the tradition'. What 'the tradition' is depends on when and where you stop acknowledging the changes and additions, which I suppose relates to the issue of who does and who doesn't count as 'ancient'. But, I'm not saying anything particularly profound here. I will save that for another time.