Martin, you are right about 3:10, on "the length of life."

I was trying to show more generally that Ptolemy has very little to say about the thematic content of houses, including for topics like siblings and travel (3rd house matters) where we might expect some discussion, throughout Tetrabiblos.

Waybread wrote:

So we are missing 5 of the houses below the horizon, including the 3rd. This suggests to me that either Ptolemy found the 2nd through 6th houses to be mostly unhelpful in chart interpretation, that he found their content illogical, that houses were not entirely used or accepted in the 1st century, or that their mythical/religious content had no place in his rational scheme

I dont think anyone could disagree that Ptolemy seems to go out of his way to avoid references to the houses wherever possible.

However, I think you have missed some references to the houses 'under the earth' in Tetrabiblos. You have to dig really hard but there are a couple of oblique references to the 4th and 6th house in Tetrabiblos.

Firstly the IC:

Evening stations and position at mid?heaven beneath the earth, and furthermore, in the case of Mercury and Venus, by day evening settings and by night morning settings, produce souls noble and wise, but with mediocre memory, not painstaking nor fond of labour, but investigators of hidden things and seekers after the unknown, as for example magicians, adepts in the mysteries, meteorologists, makers of instruments and machines, conjurors, astrologers, philosophers, readers of omens, interpreters of dreams, and the like. Tetrabiblos Book II.3 p337 Translated by FE Robbins (1940)

The association of the IC being linked to 'hidden' or occult things is consistent with other hellenistic astrologers. I must check how Robert Schmidt translates this section. If 'anti-midheaven' is an accurate translation it would seem to question the notion of Chris Brennan that Ptolemy only used whole sign houses.

Ptolemy also makes an indirect reference to the 6th house. In matters of illness Ptolemy notes the need to consider the 6th house, saying:

"It is necessary to look to the two angles of the horizon, that is, the orient and the occident, and especially to the occident itself and the sign preceding it , which is disjunct from the oriental angle". Tetrabiblos Book II.5 p 253 Translated by FE Robbins. (1940)

Here Ptolemy follows the general hellenistic view that the 7th (occident) is weakening to the vitality of the native and indeed has links to death. The sign preceding it here is the 6th which is in aversion to the ASC (oriental horizon). The 7th is potentially more destructive to the native because it is angular. The 6th partakes of this destructive quality but because it is cadent it has less power to cause harm. Hence the association shifts from literal death to illness.

Mark

Mark wrote:If 'anti-midheaven' is an accurate translation it would seem to question the notion of Chris Brennan that Ptolemy only used whole sign houses.

Why?

Midheaven is just the term for the entire 10th house which may reasonably be whole signs, why not anti-midheaven for the whole sign opposite that? Ptolemy regularly refers to planets "in the midheaven" we can assume he means in the 10th house. Why would referring to the fourth as the 'anti-midheaven' suggest that the house is not a whole sign one?

For example we still have statements like
"Assume first that the beginning of Aries is rising, so that the beginning of Capricorn is at mid-heaven" Book III.10

- Midheaven is clearly the word for the 10th house rather than the actual MC point itself. Here Ptolemy appears to be using equal signs - or perhaps whole sign and considering the MC to be the zenith. Either way we have a full sign approach - clearly not a quadrant sign approach for example.

Of course none of this relates to the third house so consider it ripe for pruning as well.

As far as I know, normally the 4th is regularly called the 'lower midheaven' or occasionally as the "point opposite the midheaven". Anti-midheaven is probably no more weird or unusual than calling it the lower midheaven, but none of this suggests that whole/equal signs were not being used.

Mark, I think you're right.

Actually the various authors I've looked at have more information about the thematic content of houses if we dig for it. I didn't add it into my above posts (a) due to time constraints) and (b) because a lot of it seems more dependent upon the nature of the planet/s or sensitive points tenanting a house, rather than the topics independently encompassed by the house itself. In the example of 2:3, it looks like the 4th relates to occult matters. On the other hand, we could also read into this passage the association of Venus with indolence, and Mercury's association with astrology and mental activity.

Manilius gives the 3rd as simply "the temple of the moon" and says that houses are modified by "the various influences of the planets." (2: 960-70.)

Ptolemy's prefered house system is an interesting problem, because he just doesn't go there in any direct way. 3:10 on length of life has been read to suggest that, at least for this calculation, Mr. Pt calculated house cusps starting with the ascendant, as being "from 5 degrees above the actual horizon up to the 25[th] degree that remains, which is rising in succession to the horizon", and so on. This would be a sort of equal house system.

My own feeling is that Ptolemy says so little about houses, and uses so many other calculations to examine themes that we today ascribed to particular houses, that it would be tenuous to argue that he prefered any house system.

Signs, yes; and oftentimes in relation to the angles. But as some of us remind modern astrologers, a sign is not a house.

I think it is important to recognize that the Babylonians didn't use houses, and the Greeks and Egyptians didn't have horoscopic astrology until it diffused towards them, probably around 300 BC. It would be understandable if it took a while for astrologers living in a world of limited transportation and communication a while to systematize and sort out new materials, such as the thematic content of houses and the problem of house cusps.

Manilius (1st cent. AD), Valens, Ptolemy, and Firmicus Maternus were still looking at constellations off the ecliptic in addition to signs. Why no focus here on constellations?? I think we focus on houses because astrologers are more used to thinking about them today.

But then again, as you and Martin have shown, I might be hasty in my assessment.

Paul wrote:For example we still have statements like
"Assume first that the beginning of Aries is rising, so that the beginning of Capricorn is at mid-heaven" Book III.10

- Midheaven is clearly the word for the 10th house rather than the actual MC point itself.

No, this is actually one of the few places where we know for certain (again, from context) that Ptolemy is referring to the astronomical MC. In the tropical zodiac that Ptolemy espouses, the 1st degree of Capricorn will necessarily culminate when the 1st degree of Aries rises, irrespective of your location on earth.

Martin Gansten wrote:

Paul wrote:For example we still have statements like
"Assume first that the beginning of Aries is rising, so that the beginning of Capricorn is at mid-heaven" Book III.10

- Midheaven is clearly the word for the 10th house rather than the actual MC point itself.

No, this is actually one of the few places where we know for certain (again, from context) that Ptolemy is referring to the astronomical MC. In the tropical zodiac that Ptolemy espouses, the 1st degree of Capricorn will necessarily culminate when the 1st degree of Aries rises, irrespective of your location on earth.

Yes thank you for pointing this out Martin and for your help in demonstrating this to me by email.

Just a few more sources in pursuit of the early meanings of the 3rd house. A lot of horoscopes have been retrieved by archaeologists, ranging from papyrus fragments, boards, pottery shards, clay tablets, to even one scratched into the wall of the house. Some of these are in Demotic: the hyrbrid Egyptian language written in Greek characters. Usually these are given only in verbal form, so we can't tell how the astrologer visualized the horoscope graphically.

A lot of the early research was done by Otto Neugebauer, a Brown University mathematician and historian of math and science, and his associates. In the days before computer programs they calculated all of the planetary positions by hand , and found that most of the horoscopes actually did correspond to specific dates in Antiquity. They also did this for all of the horoscopes in Valens, with similar satisfactory results. Neugebauer's Greek Horoscopes is on-line as a Google book. I've got refs. on some other sources if anyone's interested.

Most of the archaeological horoscopes date from the 1st century BC through the 4th century AD, with a few earlier or later. Most are from Egypt. A few are tricky to date, because the Egyptians had their own calendar, which rotated.

The Egyptian year started with the rising of Sothis (Dog Star) and the flooding of the Nile Valley, had 12 months of 30 days (like degrees???) and then had an intercalculary 5-day periods. Notwithstanding:

Most of these horoscopes give no information on houses, being simple catalogues of planets and points (MC, PofF) in signs, sometimes with degrees given. sometimes they give sign rulers,decans, terms, and more detailed information. However, the "horoscope" or ascendant was extremely important, so you can work out a whole-sign house system from the signs. However, this doesn't necessarily mean that the astrologers were using whole-sign houses or any houses, because often the archaeological remains don't indicate, either way.

However, the Greeks and Egyptians named their planets and months after gods: The 1st Egyptian month was Thoth, after the Ibis-headed scribe, assimilated to Hermes/Mercuy. The 3rd month (Sept/Oct) was given to Hathor, and I think there could be a hint here of Hathor as the original goddess of the 3rd house, as per some previous posts.

After the Greek conquest, a Macedonian calendar came into use, and the month of Hathor (aka Hathyr, Athyr) was called Artemisios, which sounds a lot like the Greek new-moon goddess Artemis. Interestingly, apart from any lunar connotations both goddess were sometimes assocated with the rotation of the constellations around a north point in the heavens. Both Artemis and Hathor were also goddesses of childbirth. The 9th month becomes Dios [God?] and the 10th house, Apellaios [Apollo?] Over time, however, the Macedonian names replaced the Egyptian ones. The month names were shifted, probably because the Greeks were coalescing around a calendar starting at the spring equinox, so possibly the early connotations were lost. www.ortelius.de/kalender/egypt_en.php

Gotta run. More to follow.

IIRC, Artemisios & Apellaios are the genitives of Artemis & Apollo (literally, "of Artemis", "of Apollo"), Dios is the genitive of Zeus; that later gets adopted as "God".

Thank you!

What I lack in knowledge of Greek, Latin, and heiroglyphics, I just hope to make up with enthusiasm. Some of my material is from badly organized notes, and then I try to infill with some recent searches. One of these was learning that Greek calendars (of which there were many before they got standardized) were developed to mark festivals dedicated to particular gods, and so months tended to be named for the god/dess of the principal religious holiday.

Dios (cf."deity")=Zeus=Jupiter is a good call for the 9th house. We can also find assimilation of Jupiter to Horus, and thence to Apollo (Plutarch, Isis & Osiris.)

I think with the early house themes, we are looking at several possibilities, plausibly because two or three different systems were packed into the same house.

One really cool article is Neugebauer (1943) "Demotic Horoscopes." He reviews 4, and one which he dated to 18 AD, gives the houses as:

1. ascending sign.
2. House of the provision of life
3. the brother
4. the father
5. the child
6 [missing]
7. the part of the fate
8. provision of death
9. god
10 goddess
11. Psais [probably an actual identity for the "good spirit."] GR??
12. evil spirit.

Then all of them identify the MC as "the lake of the sky" and the IC as "the dwat" [Egyptian place in the afterlife or "lake of the dwat."] This is usually translated as "underworld", but Joanne Conman has argued that the dwat was the region of the sky around Orion.

"Underworld" seems like a Greek concept, but other sources have affirmed JC's interpretation. The "dwat" existed among the northern constellations. Apparently because they never sank below the horizon they were seen to have the imperishability associated with life after death. Our Orion was the Egyptian's Osiris, the judge of the dead.

I don't have all the pieces of this puzzle to hand, let alone assembled, but just a few more observations....

I realize that nothing sends informed astrologers around the bend more than someone conflating (a) constellations and signs, and (b) signs and houses. However, there is some evidence that the Hellenized Egyptians/Egyptianized Greeks did just that, as astrological houses were emerging into the new astrology.

http://www.experience-ancient-egypt.com ... osiris.jpg

shows one of the many stylized pictures of Osiris in the hall of the judgement of the dead. Other pictures show the goddess Hathor as a cow in a plot of reeds a bit further off, and/or a cow skin on a pole.

Keeping in mind that Egyptian astronomy and art depicted things in highly stylized ways, and looking up a chart of the northern night sky in winter:

We see Orion flanked by the brothers of Gemini, just as in the linked image, we see the sisters Isis and Nepthys. Below Orion is Canis Major, known to the Egyptians as none other than the cow-goddess Hathor. Not coincidentally the star Sirius is part of this constellation. The goddess Isis was also associated with Sirius. The rising of Sirius marked the beginning of the Nile flood, and was the start of the older Egyptian year. The cow skin is likely Taurus, cognate to the Egyptians' slain Apis bull. [Taurus doesn't form a complete bull in many depictions, just the front part.]

Ancient Egyptian lore on the soul's passage do refer to a place where the soul is given refreshments before settling in their heaven. To the east of Gemini is Cancer. This was a scarab beetle to the Egyptians; and also includes the major asterism Praesepe, "the manger." This is probably the origin of the association of Cancer with food, and was the constellation through which some ancient Greeks thought the soul entered the earth plane.

I find it interesting that the one Demotic horoscope doesn't refer to the second house as "the gates of hell" but as "the house of the provision of life."

I think it is an easy Greek transmutation of Isis/Nephys to their own male brothers (Castor and Pollux). Then right in the vicinity of the third house, we can take our choice for the Goddess: Isis (with Nephys as her post-mortem phase) or Hathor. Or both.

As I've tried to show above, astrologers in Antiquity seemed to compile materials even where they gave very different interpretations, rather than delete material that might prove valuable.

It might seem like a real disconnect to link brothers with the Goddess, but I think tying Isis/Nepthys into Gemini, and from thence to the Greek twins or brothers, with Hathor (Canis Major) close by does the trick.

Waybread,

Psais doesn't come up in the lexicon, but I've turned up a reference to it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shai It appears that it's a Greek transliteration of Shai, an Egyptian fate deity. The book referenced in the URL has scans of it available here: http://books.google.com/books?id=YxKlRx ... &q&f=false but not the page in question. That book would probably have references to primary sources.

There are more mentions of Psais here (might be all of them, actually :O) http://www.trismegistos.org/ref/ref_list.php?nam_id=949

I haven't looked at the whole thread, so I'm not sure if the Antiochus text's treatment has been brought up, where a system of 12 topics (mentioning the 3rd as the house of thea, along with "friends & the like") & one of 8 topics (mentioning the 3rd for siblings) are mentioned. Of course, there isn't an explanation for why those assignments are made, so that doesn't help us much, but I think jamming those two different assignments together at the start might obscure any justification for those assignments in the first place.

Good work, GR! Thanks for the references.

One of the problems I find with this sort of work (in addition to my language incompetencies) is that my mental habits were trained to be orderly. Sort of like those textbooks that give you the 5 categories of such-and-such, or the 4 fundamentals of this-and-that; with neat and rational divisions of non-contradictory subject matter. Our whole education system teaches us to think systematically.

I am trying to unlearn this habit to understand how ancient Egyptian religion worked. Where I see inconsistencies and disorder, they were apparently fine with a sort of junk-drawer of beliefs accumulated across places and historical periods. As mentioned above, Plutarch (ca. 50-120 CE, Isis and Osiris) explained these seeming incongruities as being mere manifestations of deeper principles.

Then we get the Greeks and Romans chiming in, trying to explain the foreign deities of their empires as "just like" a similar god/dess with which they were familiar. But the story just gets more complicated. Because there is always some slippage, yet the new meanings just get piled on. For example, Thoth, the Egyptian moon god and scribe, loses his lunar affiliation but gains the god Hermes/Mercury. Artemis or Selene or Hecate, Greek moon goddesses, jump in. Hathor, who did have lunar associations, becomes "just like" Venus becase Hathor was also associated with all kinds of pleasures. Sometimes Isis is the star Sirius, unless she's Virgo. And so on.

I had come across references to the Agathodaemon of the 11th house as the Egyptian god Kneph or Khnum. There doesn't seem to much much on Kneph (the breath), but Khnum was a very important ram-headed god who shaped human destinies on a potter's wheel. [A bit like Genesis where God makes Adam out of clay.] Apparently they became understood as the same god. Intriguingly, Khnum's worship took off around the time that the spring equinox precessed into Aries.

I understand that the writings of Antiochus of Athens were lost, but that they show up in later authors. Just curious as to which source you used for him. Also, can you elaborate on your last statement?

Waybread wrote:

I understand that the writings of Antiochus of Athens were lost, but that they show up in later authors. Just curious as to which source you used for him.

Robert Schmidt summarises the topic here:

Antiochus of Athens (probably late 2nd Century C.E.). Composed a Thesaurus and possibly an Introduction. These two books are lost in their original form, but they were extensively excerpted by Porphyry, Hephaistio, and Rhetorius. They are important because they contain explicit definitions of terminology usually assumed by other astrological authors, as well as other introductory matters. There is a later epitome of both these works that gives some idea as to their contents. Antiochus is frequently cited by later Hellenistic and Arabian authors.

Robert Schmidt put together a major piece of work on this in 2009 in his book Definitions and Foundations.

http://www.projecthindsight.com/products/tares.html

When Schmidt put out his Project Hindsight booklet on Antiochus in the late 1990's it was really only derived from the Rhetorius summary.

The book gives invaluable material on hellenistic astrology as Antiochus is essentially an astrological dictionary defining a number of terms. It helps clarify a lot of practical issues such as these astrologers views on aspects, houses, planetary phase, dignities, Master of the nativity. In short its very wide ranging.

The book also features Schmidt's opinions not just about the translation but his wider views on hellenistic astrology. For example Schmidt gives his view on how he thinks these astrologers approached aspect theory. This spurred Chris Brennan, Ben Dykes and Demetra George to work on an alternative aspect theory in hellenistic astrology which they assert is more plausible than Schmidt's view.

The book had quite a mixed reaction from the astrological community. For example here is Joseph Crane's review from Skyscript:

http://www.skyscript.co.uk/rev_df.html

To follow the book you need to become conversant with what one might call 'Schmidtology' . By that I mean that Schmidt has re-translated all the well established terms used in western astrology with new words. Hence the Latin terms for the signs are dropped. So the sign of Libra is translated directly into English as 'The Balance'. If you are starting from first principles this approach is quite logical. Languages like German have always translated the signs in this way. The planets are assigned their Greek rather than Latin names i.e. Helios, Selene, Hermes etc.

Schmidt seems to have changed his mind on the dignity of terms which he originally translated as bound. He is now calling them confine. Equally, after championing the term Zoidia for signs in his earlier Project Hindsight translations Schmidt has now adopted the term Image. For those unfamiliar to this approach it can make things heavy going at first. A lexicon to explain all this would have been handy. I have summarised a lot of the terminology below:

Zodiac Signs
The Ram for Aries
The Bull for Taurus
The Twins for Gemini
The Crab for Cancer
The Lion for Leo
The Virgin for Virgo
The Balance for Libra
The Scorpion for Scorpio
The Archer for Sagittarius
The Goat-Horned One for Capricorn
The Water Pourer for Aquarius
The Fishes for Pisces

Planets
Helios for the Sun
Selene for the Moon
Hermes for Mercury
Aphrodite for Venus
Ares for Mars
Zeus for Jupiter
Kronos for Saturn

Aspects
Figure for Aspect
Trigon for Trine
Tetragonal for Square
Diametrical for Opposition
Hexagonal for Sextile
Converging for Applying
Diverging for Separating
Configuration for Images in Whole Sign Relationship
Testimony for operative applying aspects (3 degrees for planets, 12-13 for Moon)

Other
Image for Sign
Place for House
Portion for Degree
Confine for Bound/Term

Nevertheless, If you are going to comment on early hellenistic astrology you really need this text. Dont be confused by the idiosyncratic reference to Volume 2. We are still waiting for volume 1 of TARES.

Mark