Therese Hamilton wrote: Robert Schmidt has emphasized this mystery, as there is no history of the development of the basic system of Hellenistic astrology. It just appeared "out of the blue" more or less. Schmidt suggests that it was the brain child of one man or a group of astrologers.

That's not Robert Schmidt. This is Professor David Pingree. His very, very famous definition of "horoscopic astrology".

Margherita wrote

That's not Robert Schmidt. This is Professor David Pingree. His very, very famous definition of "horoscopic astrology".

Do you have a reference for where David Pingree suggests that Margherita? I would be interested in reading it. I am aware Pingree had a very limited definition of 'horoscopic astrology' which has been challenged over the last few years by scholars such as Francesca Rochberg, Dorian Greenbaum and Micah Ross. In particular he didn't consider charts without an Ascendant degree or 12 house division as a horoscope whereas later researchers have rejected his definition of 'horoscopic astrology'. Hence Pingree almost suggests horoscopic astrology developed ex nihilo. In contrast the research of more recent academics like Francesca Rochberg, Dorian Greenbaum and Micah Ross emphasize a more gradual historical continuity with the roots of many hellenistic horoscopic techniques dating back hundreds of years.

Still, like Therese, I had thought of Robert Schmidt as the leading champion of the idea of a 'rapid development' school of helllenistic astrology. In particular Schmidt repeatedly expressed his theory that the he bulk of the development of the hellenistic tradition was the product of a single or small group of thinkers associated with the Middle Platonic Academy. Schmidt has promoted his idea as 'The System of Hermes'.

Therese Hamilton wrote:

Robert Schmidt has emphasized this mystery, as there is no history of the development of the basic system of Hellenistic astrology. It just appeared "out of the blue" more or less. Schmidt suggests that it was the brain child of one man or a group of astrologers. Others have suggested that the system was known by priests in the temples and was made public at a certain date. All we have is references here and there to Hermes, Asclepius and Nechepso and Petosiris.

I think the 'out of the blue' outlook has been losing ground academically over the last few years with mounting evidence against the Pingree/Schmidt view. In particular research suggesting a much more gradual development of many core hellenistic astrological techniques from its Babylonian and Egyptian antecedents.

Mark

Mark, I think you're right that many of the antecedents are to be found, by retrospectively examining earlier Babylonian, Hellenistic, (and Egyptian) sources. Researchers are intrigued by vacuums, and there is more scholarship coming out all the time with intriguing pieces to put into the puzzle of the origins of horoscopic astrology.

To take Therese's point, this doesn't mean that everything we would wish to know has been learned!

Therese, one book you might enjoy reading if you haven't yet done so is Frederick H. Cramer, Astrology in Roman Law and Politics. He doesn't uncover horoscope analysis during your black-out period, but quotes all kinds of Latin authors on astrology in Roman society through those centuries BCE when horoscopic information is sparse. He cites, for example, Roman authors critical of "circus astrologers," astrologers as foreigners, and European astrologers as introducing foreign ideas; suggesting a continuing Babylonian influence.

One wonders what passed for astrology at a Roman circus during the 2nd century BCE. We learn only that the astrologers were there.

I do see a thread like this one as allowing ideas, postulates, and questions to bubble up and mix. Nobody here is being tested on an exam, and some of us learn best by sending out trial balloons. If they pop, that's OK.

One of my current trial balloons (or clay pigeons) is that it took centuries for Hellenistic astrology to become standardized. We learn about different astrological traditions in considering Babylonian vs. Egyptian terms, Valens's palpable frustration with his more mystical source materials, and his unsynthesized juxtaposition of different techniques for calculating the same point. Firmicus Maternus hesitates to divulge religious mysteries, while writing a matter-of-fact astrological cookbook.

The astrologer/s who introduced our venerable system of sign rulerships had competition before the dust settled.

Deb

You wrote:

Graham, the prospect that originally the equinoxes and solstices were expected to fall in the middle of the signs is very strong[...] this fits with the VP sliding about 15 degrees to reach the first degree of Aries around the time that Ptolemy wrote about the matter.
There is not only no ancient text reference to suggest awareness of the VP at the end of Aries (rather than from the middle of it onwards); but astronomical reality would require the zodiac to be about 1000 years older than the historical reports [...] So that is the problem I am seeing with your proposal - a VP placement in the centre of Aries makes a lot of sense and has good support, a placement at the end of the sign doesn't.

I agree, sidereally. But Ptolemy was proposing a new tropical organisation of the rulerships, in relation not to divisions marked by the fixed stars, but to the solstice/equinox cross. He (and others, no doubt) was thinking (at times, at least) outside the box. Although he continued to use the names of the constellations to label those divisions (and it's easy to get confused because he chose to use the names in the sequence that they actually were in sidereally at the time, and may have been used sidereally or ambiguously before him), he was, surely, adopting a scheme fully disconnected from the stars.

Maybe one day something will turn up to show that the rulership scheme existed even as early as when VP was at 0? Tau/030? Ar, but that's not the point. In Ptolemy's system, those divisions had there own logic, independent of any sidereal-based position or division. Correcting the "error" to 30 Aries/0 Taurus would bring it in line with Ptolemy's scheme as set out in his chapter on the Houses of the Planets (even if this was a mistake, perhaps an "unconsciously deliberate" one). That's why I think it's a better correction, not because astrology was already established when the VP was really at 0? Taurus sidereally, of which there is no evidence, and which I agree may well not have been the case.

My point about 15? was really that from 15?, the previous and the next sign-cusp are equidistant, so if you just want to line up the solstice/equinox cross (and hence the 30? subdivions of each quarter) to sign-cusps, you can correct either way, theoretically. This is supposed to be tropical, it might be a new approach, you don't need to justify it by the stars or historical precedent at all.

As I've tried to make clear several times, it's not the constellation-derived names of the signs I'm interested in, but the rulership scheme in relation to the tropical year. Having (I'm trying to avoid using "put" here...) the first division from the VP ruled by Mars, the next by Venus, then Mercury, Moon etc, with the solstice between Mercury's and Moon's sections, does not have an inherent logic with respect to the solstice axis. Ptolemy's "mistaken" (unconsciously deliberate?) exposition of the "Houses of the Planets" does have such an inherent logic, as it arranged symmetrically around the solstice (antiscial) axis, making the solar and lunar halves (rulership scheme) correspond to the northward and southward paths (the solsticial/antiscial axis). The quote again:

17.?OF THE HOUSES OF THE SEVERAL PLANETS.
Since of the twelve signs the most northern, which are closer than the others to our zenith and therefore most productive of heat and of warmth are Cancer and Leo, they assigned these to the greatest and most powerful heavenly bodies, that is, to the luminaries, as houses, Leo, which is masculine, to the sun and Cancer, feminine, to the moon. In keeping with this they assumed the semicircle from Leo to Capricorn to be solar and that from Aquarius to Cancer to be lunar, so that in each of the semicircles one sign might be assigned to each of the five planets as its own, one bearing aspect to the sun and the other to the moon

Subsequent practice chose to ignore this bit of Ptolemy, this elegant arrangement, in favour of the standard skewed arrangement (vis-a vis the sostice axis) corresponding to Ptolemy's better-known assertion that the VP=0? Aries. This did indeed represent a "correction" from earlier sidereally-specified placings of the VP at 15, 8 and 5 Aries to have the VP at 0? Aries, and then leave 0? Aries on the VP for good. (It is the placings that were sidereal, 15>8>5, not necessarily how the significations or effects of the 30? divisions were construed, which may well have been partly or even wholly tropical).

I think this departure of subsequent practice from Ptolemy's "rulerships-around-the solstice" (even if it was a "mistake") is a pity. With my limited experience of tropical astrology, I find that Ptolemy's "mistaken" scheme works better. I thought and felt this well before reading the passage in Ptolemy (I'd seen it some time ago, and forgotten about it till the other day...). Also a pity that completely new names were not chosen for the signs, to avoid the confusion with the stars or with sidereal equal divisions, whihc muddles what we're talking about, and cramps our thinking.

These are just my problem only, it seems, but I'm not prepared to ditch them just because they're in some way heretical. I'll have to work it out on my own, but I do think we should be ready to think outside the box.

And anyway, I'm only agreeing with Ptolemy...

Graham

Paul

Thanks for your replies. Yes, we can agree to disagree, but I'd like at least to be understood! So another try:

Graham F wrote:

This still doesn't state that the rulerships are to be fixed as they seemed to have been sidereally at the time, with the first sign after the spring equinox point ruled by Mars, the first after the Summer solstice by Moon, etc. And I think it interesting that when Ptolemy did expose the logic of the rulership system (Ch 17), he "got it wrong" and put the solstice between Cancer and Leo, as I do find more logical.

Graham, I may be really misunderstanding some of your basic argument, but why do you suppose that the rulerships seemed to be sidereal in nature at the time? What evidence do you have that they were sidereal?

I meant that though the particular quote from Ptolemy in question, which Deborah gave (Ashmand I.25, Schmidt I.22), doesn't mention rulerships, or indeed sign-names, we know that elsewhere Ptolemy said, and subsequent practice has assumed, that the first sign starting from the VP was "Aries". Aries is the constellation-area that the VP was at the beginning of in Ptolemy's day, i.e. where it was sidereally. And Aries was, I thought, already deemed to be ruled by Mars at least a certain time before he wrote. It's the placement that is sidereal, not necessarily the astrological practice. That's all.

Once again you talk here, and earlier in some of the points I replied to in my previous reply, but also in the other thread, which I highlighted, as if Ptolemy 'places' the solstice somewhere in a pre-existing sidereally defined zodiac. But really that's not the case. It's not like ptolemy arbitrarily decided where the vernal point might go. These things are astronomical points which are measured. Rather than have the vernal point move into Pisces, he took the notion, basically, that so many of the qualities of Aries derive from the fact that the equinox is there, that he put aries on the equinox point (rather than put the equinox in aries).

In bold: yes, that's what I meant by "that was where it was sidereally". And (or therefore?) Ptolemy put it there tropically too. You're saying again that the characteristics of Aries pre-existed Ptolemy. OK. You also contested the suggestion that the rulerships were sidereally defined before Ptolemy. So you must believe that if he had been writing in 2000BC or today, he would still put Aries on the VP, not Taurus or Pisces. Fair enough, but I don't think so.

So if Ptolemy got something wrong, what he got wrong was a clear definition of why the rulerships are related to the seasons. Not the tropical zodiac itself, which is what you appear to imply.

Not sure what "the tropical zodiac itself" is, without the rulerships. If it's just saying that the VP is the best place to start the circle, I agree. My problem is with calling it Aries (for ever) and having it ruled by Mars, which looks like a carry-over from the sidereal situation at the time. Elsewhere Ptolemy says Spring is dominated by a dominance of moisture, not very Martial per se. But as per the quote I gave from The Houses of the Planets, Ptolemy did, quite literally, have a clear and coherent definition (even if it "slipped out by mistake") of why the rulerships are related to the seasons (via a symmetrical relation to the North/South solstice axis).

I wrote:
Not only do we have records like those you link to, but as I said, it looks like it was first designed for a time when the solstice was indeed between (sidereal) Cancer and Leo, making those "the most northerly", "at our zenith".

Paul:

Which, if it were true, would mean that the scheme of rulership, the logic of which Ptolemy talks about, derives from a time 30? (more or less) prior to where the vernal point was in his own time. Just working out precession to be 1? every 72 years, that's about 2160 years before he was writing. So about 2000 BC - so the same time would have passed between this, and Ptolemy's time, as between the birth of Christ and us writing today.
Considering we just don't have evidence of the rulership scheme anywhere near that far back (instead only within the couple of centuries or so prior to Ptolemy) there's really absolutely no need whatsoever to suggest that the rulership scheme existed 2160BC (or even earlier, but this at the latest) and that the logic for it was preserved for this time, not mentioned by others until a couple of millennia later.

Yes, but I did say it looks like it was designed for such a time, not that that anyone did actually design it at the time. I don't think this can be completely excluded, but it's highly speculative, and I shouldn't have brought it up here, it just confuses things. I've tried to clarify in my previous post, to Deb.

Hope I've succeeded a bit more in saying what I'm trying to mean ( I'm not expecting to convince...). If not, never mind!


Graham

Hey, Graham-- you write like a fellow Mercury retrograde, wanting to get all the puzzle pieces to fit before accepting an explanation.

Your discussion is really above my pay grade, but I would like to throw out some possibilities.

With the Leo-Cancer duo, we could be looking at a palimpsest of a Taurus spring equinox, and Gavin White's Babylonian Star Lore suggests cases where this was probably done with the exaltations and some of the planetary god-constellation affinities. We might be looking at some precursors of our rulerships with Innana (Venus) and Taurus, and Nergal (Mars) with Scorpio. If these became commonly accepted anchors, then the rest of the system might be adjusted to fit it.

But there are other options. In Hellenistic "science" weather/climate were often combined with astronomy/astrology. In fact, the star calendar was used to forecast seasonal weather patterns-- dating from Hesiod in the 8th century BCE. Ptolemy follows this venerable tradition in Tetrabiblos, where he devotes a lot of space to climatology (Cf. 2:11, including the climatic natures of the months of Cancer and Leo.)

When Ptolemy says,

Quote:
17. OF THE HOUSES OF THE SEVERAL PLANETS.
Since of the twelve signs the most northern, which are closer than the ?others to our zenith and therefore most productive of heat and of warmth are Cancer and Leo, they assigned these to the greatest and most powerful heavenly bodies, that is, to the luminaries, as houses, Leo, which is masculine, to the sun and Cancer, feminine, to the moon.....

Let's hold off on the solstice for a moment, and look climatically at the months that are "most productive of heat and warmth" in Alexandria, Egypt. http://www.holiday-weather.com/alexandria/averages/

We see from the linked temperature bar chart that the hottest months in Alexandria (today) are September, August, and July, followed by June. Possibly there's been a little climate change since 150 CE and I'm not sure how Mr. Pt would have measured temperature, anyway; but climatically I could buy into the months of Cancer (mostly July) and Leo (mostly August) back then being the hottest months assuming our same tropical zodiac.

So Ptolemy may be correct there-- climatically.

The month of Gemini (May-June) might be more logical to pair with Cancer in terms of its lead-up to the solstice, but June is a climatically cooler month. It is less "productive of heat and warmth."

Ptolemy's assignment of the luminaries to July and August could be arbitrary, yet as Deb's early date for rulerships suggest, secularist Ptolemy may have preferred a system that at least would be more to his liking than the alternative contemporary system of tutelary deities.

Another justification of the tropical zodiac occurs in Tetrabiblos 2: 10, on the stellar calendar's timing of climate events and their relevance for agriculture. Mr. Pt in this section refers to the ancient Egyptian practice of starting their calendar with the rising of Sirius-- which occurred in Cancer in the 2nd century BCE but closer to the start of the month of Leo than Gemini. Given the primacy of the sun in Egyptian life-- and afterlife-- there might have been another logic underlying Alexandrian Ptolemy's preference for the sun in Leo to head up the antiscia system of sign rulerships.

Waybread

I read Gavin White's book some years ago, I don't have it now. It's very interesting. I remember some of these points about the Leo-Cancer duo, related to a Taurus spring equinox, and the significance of Scorpio (the rising sign at sunset when Sun in Taurus. But these, and the question of Sirius as the start of the year, are sidereal (or "sidero-tropical") considerations, and I'm interested here in the relation of the rulerships to the fully tropical year and its ecliptic, structured around the solstices and equinoxes.

You mention exaltations. The possible association of most of the exaltations with what were originally the solstice and equinox points is very plausible, and I think White mentions that as well - or maybe I read it somewhere else, and found it quite convincing. If it's true, there now in the wrong places in the sidereal zodiac, but nearer their proper places in the current tropical one.

I think the weather associations in Ptolemy and others just show how the zodiac was already at least partly being interpreted tropically. Or was rather a muddle - they're not very convincing, at least on the surface, I haven't investigated them properly.

I'm not convinced by the argument about it being hotter in Egypt in late July, August and September than in June. Mainly because I think the tropical year, astrologically, is firstly about light (solstices and equinoxes), and only incidentally about heat. Also because I feel that even if Alexandria was a great place of diffusion of learning, astrology has a deeper and more universal validity than being a set of local correspondences can explain.

Fagan suggests that the images of the zodiacal constellations which we've inherited come not directly from looking at the sky, but from finding images for what was visible in the sky, when the VP was in early Taurus, by projection of what was going on the earth locally and seasonally (e.g. a plague of insects = Scorpio; flooding= Aquarius; lots of fish to catch= Pisces). I don't know how justified this is hisotrically, but it seems plausible.

And Ptolemy, in his explanation of the rulership scheme, specifically says "Since of the twelve signs the most northern, which are closer than the others to our zenith and therefore most productive of heat and of warmth are Cancer and Leo, they assigned these to the greatest and most powerful heavenly bodies, that is, to the luminaries, as houses[/quote]
I know, this is easy to dismiss as a msitake, but still, his reasoning is that the logic of light precedes and determines taht of heat. And like I said, a slip can be an unconsiously deliberate mistake. His logic (commen sense?) got the better of his preconceptions, I'd say.

Graham

Hi Graham,

I must confess I find your position somewhat hard to fathom. So please excuse me if I have missed your point. That maybe in part because your take on this is so singular. Alternatively, I am possibly being unintentionally obtuse.

One point you have made here and in the previous thread is that since the original Mesopotamian zodiac began around the 'star cluster' or Pleaides we should be looking at Taurus as the first sign of the zodiac.

However, historically this lunar zodiac developed hundreds of years before 12 twelve sign, equal zodiac around the 5th century CE.

In particular this was the so called MUL.APIN (Path of the Moon) which comprised 17-18 constellations or asterisms. There were no 12 sign/rulership scheme at this time.

Most scholars seem to believe the tablet recording this very early lunar zodiac dates from around 1000 BCE.

And at this time the only 'rulership system'' we can come close to is the exaltations used in Mesopotamian Omen Astrology. As you have yourself acknowledged many scholars have concluded the exaltations developed through seasonal observation of the planets. In that sense they may predate the formation of a 12 sign zodiac itself.

Graham wrote:

You mention exaltations. The possible association of most of the exaltations with what were originally the solstice and equinox points is very plausible, and I think White mentions that as well - or maybe I read it somewhere else, and found it quite convincing. If it's true, there now in the wrong places in the sidereal zodiac, but nearer their proper places in the current tropical one.

As I recall Gavin White suggests Jupiter may have acquired its exaltation in Cancer because the planet reaches its highest point in the ecliptic in the northern sign of Cancer. Equally, this is the highest point the Sun reaches in the Northern Hemisphere and is high summer. The reverse applies to the malefic Mars in Capricorn associated by the Babylonians with war, disease, foreign countries and the underworld where planets reach their lowest point in the ecliptic at 0 Capricorn. This is the lowest point the Sun reaches in the Northern Hemisphere in mid-Winter.

But if we are discussing the domicile rulerships known to hellenistic astrology it is surely a misnomer to link this to when the Babylonian lunar zodiac which began in the Pleiades when there simply were not domicile rulers and no 12 sign zodiac.

I would understand your position if you were arguing the ayanamsa of a sidereal zodiac could be traced from the Pleiades (Krittika). There seems to be some Indian astrologers who even today reject the use of Ashwini as the first Nakshatra and and still use Krittika as the starting point of the Nakshatras. This was the order of the Nakshatras before the fusion of the Nakshatras with the twelve sign equal zodiac in India. But of course this relates to the Indian lunar zodiac not the Luni-solar derived 12 sign zodiac. So that seems irrelevant to our consideration.

Alternatively, I suppose one could argue for Pisces as the first sidereal sign since the VP is there today. But by definition the vast majority of siderealists favour a fixed zodiac not one determined by the movement of the equinoxes and eclipses.

As for your problem on domicile rulerships in the tropical zodiac I think Paul and Deb have theoretically dealt with your issue as I see it.

On a practical basis though I find it difficult to reconcile how you can say you find the tropical zodiac working better but not its rulership system.

I think it would help a lot if you actually set out what alternative rulership system you propose instead for each sign. Otherwise your position will remain opaque and stratospherically abstract to me at least.

Mark

Mark wrote

I must confess I find your position somewhat hard to fathom. So please excuse me if I have missed your point. That maybe in part because your take on this is so singular. Alternatively, I am possibly being unintentionally obtuse.

I think a lot of this is my fault for not being clearer right at the beginning, and indeed starting a new thread entitled perhaps "Internal logic for the classical tropical rulership scheme", or better, "Internal tropical logic for the classcical rulership scheme". What's very frustrating for me is that I feel my main point is consistly being consistently ignored, and sidetracked into minor points of historical justification etc, that can't prove something, that there's no historical justification for it etc. (and my sorties are these areas are often just my attempted responses to someone else's objections).

I asked whether "Taurus" (i.e the Venus ruled sign in the lunar half, never mind what we cal it, because were' talking tropically, no connection to the constellations), rather than "Aries" (the Mars-ruled sign) would not be a a more logically justificable "sign" to place immediatly following the VP, as Fagan suggested. I wanted to know if only else had floated this idea.

I now think I have an answer ? Ptolemy did, but no one else. The link betwen constellation name and rulership is so strong that everyone has ignored Ptolemy's explanation of the internal logic of the rulership scheme (his attempt at explaining why) in favour of his more frequent, well-known and simple statements that Aries is the first sign (whihc I think he chose because it did indeed start at the VP, sidereally). His chapter on The Houses of the Planets, with a logical justification for giving the sign before the summer solstice to Cancer, the one after to Leo etc, is simply considered a mistake, if it's noticed at all (I would suggest it's a , a Freudian slip : a consciously deliberate mistake, what the French call an "acte manqu?", a "failed act", which Lacan and other psychoanalysts see as "inadvertently successful acts").

I'm interested in the logic of what Ptolemy said here, as it is more of less what I was trying to say. His explanation of the rulership scheme organises them symmetrically around the solstice (antiscial) axis - the rulerships were "dished out" by the sun and moon?:

of the twelve signs the most northern, which are closer than the others to our zenith and therefore most productive of heat and of warmth are Cancer and Leo, they assigned these to the greatest and most powerful heavenly bodies, that is, to the luminaries, as houses, Leo, which is masculine, to the sun and Cancer, feminine, to the moon. In keeping with this they assumed the semicircle from Leo to Capricorn to be solar and that from Aquarius to Cancer to be lunar, so that in each of the semicircles one sign might be assigned to each of the five planets as its own, one bearing aspect to the sun and the other to the moon

Ptolemy's explanation in that section fits very nicely with the gnerally accepted logic for the rulership scheme in terms of
- the sequence of orbital periods as seen from earth (the lunar half)
- the distance of the planets from the sun (in the solar half)
But no one (except me, it seems) wants to link this symmetrical scheme to the antiscial axis (the solstice axis), as Ptolemy does in the quote above (even if "mistakenly"...). No one seems to see the point of wanting the two symmetries to match up. OK; it seems obvious to me, I don't know what else to say.

Or maybe I should say that I I'm intimately persuaded, on a deeper level, that there is a spiritual dimension to astrology going well beyond historical linearity, and what the standard texts say. I believe, in particular, that the doctrne of some sort of melothesia, a "cosmic man" which astrology somehow reflects, has some validity and enriches astrology.

I'm sure many of you have seen diagrams of the the rulership scheme arranged to show a suggested link with the 6 principal chakra of many Indian spiritual traditions. I think the application of this to astrology may possibly be as recent as Yukteswar, since David Frawley (one of his disciples) gives it in his writings (yes, I know, Frawley's not much of a scholar, but many others have also written and spoken of it - Ray Grasse explains it better than Frawley):


The central channel around which the breath/energy/prana goes up and down these solar and lunar halves, some say in an interwoven arrangment like a caducee, others say up and down on either side, fits nicely with Ptolemy's explanation of the rulership scheme going up and down the solstice axis: up to it's most northerly point (in the N hemisphere) corresponding to the cusp between the domains of the two lights (specifically, to the start of the sun's domain), and down to the deepest part ot Saturn's two domains (the cusp Cap/Aq).

I know there are other more involved associations proposed, involving planets/signs/chakra. This one seems the simplest and the most appropriate, I find it helpful and I'm beginning to find it "true". Sorry if this all sounds too New-Agey to many of you, but I just don't believe/feel that the the Sun starts its upward course somewhere near one of the hips and goes to the opposite throat, and its down ward one from throat to hip (talking "energy centres" here, not bits of bone and flesh). It must, even if we want to take all this simply as a metaphor, go from bottom (the root) to top (to the "third eye" area) and back down to the root. (The top of the head is usually reserved for some sort of enlightenment, 7th chakra, off the scale, so to speak). I dn't feel that in the diagram above, the Moon should be up in the brow area with Mercury, the Sun in the throat with Venus etc.

That's the best I can do. If you don't see it logically, and you don't see it intuitively or "feel" that it resonates, then yes, it's easy just to write off Ptolemy's linking of the rulership pattern to the solstice axis as a mistake, reject as insufficiently supported Fagan's hypothesis of a Taurus start to the zodiac, and be satisfied with the skew of one full sign between the rulership axis and the solstice axis. And you can always meditate leaning 30? to the side.

Graham

Paul - just another point from your prevous post.

Quote:
Similarly, Curtis Mainwaring in an earlier thread re the straight and crooked signs (which are symmetrical around the antiscial axis):


I havne't double checked that thread, but the straight and crooked signs are symmetrical around the contra-antiscial axis. Is that what you meant? I don't know what Curtis' thoughts are on straight/crooked signs and rulership, or whether he'd be surprised. As I recall, rulership wasn't mentioned much or at all in that thread.

Yes, sorry, I was muddling with the antiscia. Straight and crooked signs are mirror images around the equinoctial axis and complimentary images around the solsiticial one. For the antiscia, its the reverse.

It's true that rulerships were not much mentioned specifically in that thread, but the sign-names were, you exlpained that the crooked signs went from Cancer through Sagittarius, the straight ones from Capricorn through Gemini. For most readers, the orthodox rulerships of those signs would be tacitly and implicitly assumed. I found it interesting (because my ears prick up when someone else also seems to me even vaguely to intuit what I do) that Curtis pointed out that this scheme (symmetrical around the contra-antiscial axis, i.e. coherent in terms of the cardinal points of the solar cycle) was nearly aligned with the rulership scheme.

This is what I've been trying to say all along: the orthodox rulership scheme is nearly aligned to the solstice axis, but it could do better.

Regarding the rulership scheme, you write:

For me, Ptolemy provides an explanation, but I see no reason to assume his explanation is correct, especially as the scheme predates him."

That seems sensible. I think that's what I'm doing too, we each take the bits of Ptolemy that make sense to us with our present knowlege and experience, and leave (at least provisionally) the ones that don't. But we should give the bits that don't make sense to us due thought before rejecting them, and maybe come back to them later for another look.

I should add again that the intiitial reason I was drawn to this idea of a tropical zodiac starting with Taurus at the VP, when I read Fagan's rather off-the-cuff remark that it "would be more logical", is that it seemed to me defintiely to work better, which I still find to be true, most of the time. But since astrology is (also, at least) divination, God/the Cosmos can surely choose to make up for our errors and misunderstandings, if we are sincere.

So we are probably all better off sticking with what makes sense to us. It's a pity for me that it's difficult to share these ideas, participate in discussions about charts etc.

Graham

Graham when you say:

I should add again that the intiitial reason I was drawn to this idea of a tropical zodiac starting with Taurus at the VP, when I read Fagan's rather off-the-cuff remark that it "would be more logical", is that it seemed to me defintiely to work better, which I still find to be true, most of the time.

Are you referring to when Fagan was discussing how to find out the sidereal Navamsha or what he calls Novien chart?

The sidereal VP is around 5 Pisces now.

The rulership idea has been explored thoroughly in the Gauqelin research and data, showing us that the sidereal zodiac is more accurate:
http://www.solunars.com/essays/realzodiac.htm

Thanks Graham

Graham F wrote:

Paul wrote: Graham, I may be really misunderstanding some of your basic argument, but why do you suppose that the rulerships seemed to be sidereal in nature at the time? What evidence do you have that they were sidereal?

...Aries is the constellation-area that the VP was at the beginning of in Ptolemy's day, i.e. where it was sidereally. And Aries was, I thought, already deemed to be ruled by Mars at least a certain time before he wrote. It's the placement that is sidereal, not necessarily the astrological practice. That's all.

I've emphasised part of my post in this quotation - what I mean is that whilst we can measure the rulerships sidereally, there's no reason to suggest that their nature is sidereal - in other words that they derive some meaning or foundation from the stars or the constellations.

You suggest that nowhere does Ptolemy etc. suggest that the rulerships be fixed, and that they seemed to be fixed sidereally at the time, but I'm trying to show is that if we just ignore the stars altogether, the rulerships aren't so much fixed to the stars but they're assigned to the zodiac - which we can define a number of ways, but chiefly either from solstices/equinoxes or from star patterns. Perhaps there is a philosophy, such as the Thema Mundi or something else, which allows us to link rulership to the signs.
Or perhaps it really is a tropical reference which begins the planetary orbits from the sign of the greatest declination, Cancer, and goes in order - Moon, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter Saturn.

You also contested the suggestion that the rulerships were sidereally defined before Ptolemy. So you must believe that if he had been writing in 2000BC or today, he would still put Aries on the VP, not Taurus or Pisces. Fair enough, but I don't think so.

I don't recall contesting any suggestion that the rulerships were sidereally defined before Ptolemy - if by defined you mean measured within a sign. What I believe is that some quality of Aries was linked to the fact that the VP was found there, coinciding with the civil new year. And likewise that the solstice is found in Cancer. Now I'm not contesting that these points were measured sidereally. What I would contest is that the rulerships were meant to be seen as static in the sky linked with the stars. I see no reason to think that at all.

What we know is that the vernal equinox was in Aries when the equal zodiac was envisioned and only since then do we have evidence of rulership. Why on earth would we push it to Taurus? That's my point. And if we did, what would change?

Not sure what "the tropical zodiac itself" is, without the rulerships. If it's just saying that the VP is the best place to start the circle, I agree. My problem is with calling it Aries (for ever) and having it ruled by Mars, which looks like a carry-over from the sidereal situation at the time.

I think this is a good example of what I personally find so confusing about your posts. Surely you recognise that the tropical zodiac is much more than the rulerships? Why would it be a problem calling the first sign Aries? Is that where the deal breaker is? What if I called it "Sign One"? Would this be better? Let's imagine I called it Taurus but gave it all the same qualities etc. as Aries. In what way would this just not be Aries with a new name?

But then if you want to shift the rulership the problem isn't in the naming convention. That's what gets confusing about some of your posts. It's almost as though your focus is on naming convention, but once you establish this, in many ways arbitrary change, you then want to push back the tropical scheme onto it again - which you've just changed. It once again assumes that either the rulerships are defined by a sidereal position, and that the tropical zodiac needs to update itself over time to account for that sidereal position - or else that the rulerships are defined tropically, but the tropical sign names need to update to match the positions of those planets as to where they were sidereally. But the problem I have is that you dont' give any compelling reason why either of those would be the case.

Let's ignore Ptolemy for a second, and imagine that we have a scheme of rulership which runs based on orbital period which we recognise as follows: Moon, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. Now we can, in theory, apply that anywhere. We can start from any sign. Maybe Aries.
But one way we can approach it is to recognise that Cancer is the point of greatest declination (north) of the Sun, and that the solstices and equinoxes have astrological value in defining the quadrants of the zodiac. If you're not a tropical astrologer you won't care about the declination of the Sun so much in defining anything about the zodiac, but if you are, you do. This seems a pretty sensible place to start the rulership scheme, so apply the first planet to this sign, the next planet to the next sign and so on. Or you might do it by the Thema Mundi. Or something else.

Ptolemy, much after the fact, describes what makes sense to him, but, describes it post factum. He is not originating the scheme. Whether the solstice point is in 15? or 0? of sidereal Cancer, the point is that there is a section of the ecliptic, defined by the solstice point in some manner, and that from this section of the eclitpic we begin our association of planet to sign. He may not be correct with this. Actually it makes sense ot me to do this, but I recognise it may make sense just from the Thema Mundi alone, or form some other scheme we don't know or haven't paid enough attention to.

Instead what you're doing is zeroing on one tiny part of Ptolemy's work, and either assuming he means that and everyone else is wrong, or else suggesting that he got the logic correct, and he himself was wrong in his conclusion.

But in order for us to change anything, to 'correct' for that, we have to assume that Ptolemy was exactly correct in that logic, and that he described what he felt perfectly, and that, more to the point, he originated the topic. But he didn't. He didn't originate it, so we can't just shift around what was there before him based on his attempt at an explanation. If he was the first to do this, it may make more sense. But he wasn't.

Notice we can read Ptolemy, keeping in mind we're not reading it in its original language, as being essentially a list, like saying the most northerly is Cancer, then Leo, and so the rulership is Moon, then Sun, in that order. And we follow the order the sun itself moves through those signs. He is giving a quick snapshot of things relating to warmth and light, to associate light producing planets with those signs, but we don't have to zero in on this explanation, exclude everything else, and imply he really meant the signs either side of the solstice are Leo on one, and Cancer on the other.

Yes, but I did say it looks like it was designed for such a time, not that that anyone did actually design it at the time.

But it doesn't look like it, that's my point. It looks like it was designed at a time when the solsitce/equinox points were more or less central in their signs. When you see it looks like it was designed for such a time, what you really mean is that it looks like Ptolemy may be describing such a time. But designed for such a time, and millennia later Ptolemy describing something which you can read as describing such a time are two different things. How we can verify for sure is to move beyond Ptolemy's description and actually see what was done and how it developed. We know that such a scheme doesn't exist during the time period you say it looks like it was described for.

I asked whether "Taurus" (i.e the Venus ruled sign in the lunar half, never mind what we cal it, because were' talking tropically, no connection to the constellations), rather than "Aries" (the Mars-ruled sign) would not be a a more logically justificable "sign" to place immediatly following the VP, as Fagan suggested. I wanted to know if only else had floated this idea.

I guess I just don't get why this would solve anything - unless you see the nature of the signs or the rulership as distinctly sidereal, so that Taurus retains what we say of Taurus but we just move it counter to the direction of precession. Precession brings the equinox to Pisces, but you're not even suggesting following that scheme, but instead doing the reverse, moving it forward to Taurus. And I really don't understand why still.

I now think I have an answer ? Ptolemy did, but no one else.

But he didn't. He linked rulership to the something related to the solstice. He didn't mention constellation. Keep in mind in Ptolemy's own time, the solstice was at roughly 0 Cancer, but what you're supposing is that he temporarily forgot and thought it was at 0 Leo, or he, somehow, ignored this fact and talked about a time when it was there - but just decided to ignore the fact it no longer is.

It's true that rulerships were not much mentioned specifically in that thread, but the sign-names were, you exlpained that the crooked signs went from Cancer through Sagittarius, the straight ones from Capricorn through Gemini. For most readers, the orthodox rulerships of those signs would be tacitly and implicitly assumed. I found it interesting (because my ears prick up when someone else also seems to me even vaguely to intuit what I do) that Curtis pointed out that this scheme (symmetrical around the contra-antiscial axis, i.e. coherent in terms of the cardinal points of the solar cycle) was nearly aligned with the rulership scheme.

But the rulerships weren't implied. I re-read the thread, and Curtis doesn't mention rulership either. I talked about the astronomical fact that the area of the ecliptic will rise either straighter or more obliquely from the point of the equinoxes. I didn't have rulerships in mind, nor did I consider that straight or crooked signs says anything at all about rulership - nor, that I can see, did anyone else. In fact it makes no sense to assume it does - what we talk about is signs but not rulership, no more than say the element or the bound rulers or whatever else.

I have no idea why you would jump to an assumption about rulership.