Skyscript Astrology Forum

Posted: **Wed May 30, 2012 9:04 pm**

Oh, yes, I see but Bonatti (8.2.11) also strictly follows his sources, Ab? Ma?shar and al-Qab??? in regard of the lot of death, and this is the same Dorothean one. I must admit I don't really understand the rationale for this lot, and I feel some discomfort with using it at all, but it seems to me probable that the formula has nothing to do with the in-sect light.

I agree: the Moon is always taken because of its connection with the body, and the search for the potential killers is another kind of perspective. Anyway, for the Killing planets Abu Ali pays attention to both light and the 8th sign of them ( but not only that), always looking to construct an almuten. Bonatti is the one who suggested to look at the 8th sign departing from the sect light. in my experience even not being so consistent I prefer to use both lights. But this has nothing to do with the lot of death

Clelia wrote:
However, I do not know of any author giving a different formula for Necessity but the one using Mercury!

Yes, that's the point! I'll show that most of Roman era and virtually all later astrologers counted Love from Fortune to Spirit and Necessity from Spirit to Fortune.

Wow, that will be amazing! I read in Firmicus the formula ASC+Fortuna-Spirit ( reverse) but I never took it into account, because the majority used the formula that we see in Paulus.

The topical treatment of friendship in ?Umar ibn al-?abar?'s translation of Dorotheus doesn't survive but it was clearly treated by him as two independent testimonies in Hephaestio (2.23.11) and the so-called Liber Hermetis (of which is only the first chapter is truly Hermetic, the others form a bricolage of various sources; it's chapter 21) prove. It this procedure Love was also utilized but unfortunately neither of the sources give us the used formula. Moreover, there is a passage in Hephaestio (3.6.11) where he discusses the inceptions at sacrifice that can also be Dorothean but it's not sure. As to time it remains untranslated, I'll give my version:
Hephaestio of Thebes wrote:
?and one must consider in which places the stars are, and their arrangement and appearance, as well as the four lots, those of Fortune, Spirit, Necessity and Love.

Fortunately, the formula for the Love used by Dorotheus (counted from Fortune to Spirit) can be restored from three later and again independent sources. These are: the Book of Aristotle by M?sh??all?h (3.12.3.3), a set of excerpts paralleled with the former work in Vaticanus gr. 1056 (16.6) and the nativity of Costantine VII (14.3). M?sh??all?h also casts Necessity into play (3.12.1.2), and Sahl, who fully reworked M?sh??all?h tells these four lots were among the ones al-Andarzaghar investigated regarding friendship. This, combined with the testimony of Hephaestio, reinforces the assumption that these four lots formed a group for Dorotheus, even if the very investigation of the topic of friendship originally lacked looking at Necessity.

This is further explicated by the scribe of Laurentianus gr. 28, 34 who appends a scholium to the Hephaestio text quoted above. Being aware of the problems regarding these four lots, he is considering which variant formula should be used for Necessity and Love:
the scribe of Laur. gr. 28, 34 wrote:
The fact that in every inception one must look at the lots of Fortune, Spirit, Necessity and Love means a difficulty: whether one should cast Necessity and Love according to Hermes Trismegistus or in the way Dorotheus studies the opinion of the Egyptians in his fourth book?

It's not a suprise that the scribe knows the Pauline formulae attributed to Hermes: they also appear in the lengthy list of the same manuscript which was edited (and translated) as a part of Olympiodorus 22, althought it did not ever form a section of the Olympiodorus lecture, and this is also a primary MS for Rhetorius (see below). The precious bits of information are that Dorotheus did deal with these four lots (or at least with Necessity and Love) together and and they were counted in the fashion of the old Egyptians, that is, of Nechepsos and Petosiris.

Though not in Dorotheus, whose surviving fourth book is clearly deficient, these lots are treated together in the fourth book of Valens (4.25) in connection with giving and taking over (ie. profections).
Yes, they are referred but I was not able to see the formula he used. ( I used the project Hindsight translation)

There are also some misplaced sentences in the unique MS of this section which instruct us to count from Fortune to Spirit for Love and from Spirit to Fortune for Necessity. These instruction may originally have been only sideglosses, nevertheless it must be admitted that their theoretical coherence makes it possible to accept these formulae as genuine. A further testimony can be provided from the independent Firmicus Maternus (7.32.45-46), who, though exchanging the formulae for Love and Necessity, substantially gives the same rationale.

So, as you are pointing out the right formula for Eros would be by day ASC+Spirit- Fortuna ( reversing by night) and for the necessity: by day ASC+Fortuna-Spirit ( reversing by night)?

Therefore I theorize that the original formulae of Nechepsos and Petosiris for Love and Necessity contained neither Venus nor Mercury but Fortune and Spirit, and these are used by the earlier astrological authors. I would also add that as I see the alternative (let me call them Pauline instead of Hermetic) formulae couldn't have appeared much before Paulus himself, and their career is mostly due to the fact that Rhetorius adopted them directly from Paulus.

On the contrary, the Pauline formulae appear first to us in Paulus in 378 or a little earlier, in his first, lost edition. He himself cites them from the All-Virtuous; it's only a scholium (and perhaps Olympiodorus from 564, but I'm not sure as sadly I don't have a copy of Olympiodorus) which attributes the authorship to Hermes Trismegistus, while Paulus himself could have also referred to Hermes, as he does, for example, concerning crises (34). That it was the very Paulus description which is later incorporated into his collection by Rhetorius (5.47) can be proved by the facts that Rhetorius knew Paulus so much that he even summarized his chapter about lots (6.29), and that neither of the chapters contains more information than Paulus. Curiously enough, in Rhetorius (at as we have it now) there's no reference to Hermes.

Despite M?sh??all?h's partial dependence on Rhetorius he seems to pay no attention to the Pauline lots, but later the original and the Pauline lots conflate in the way that Love and Necessity retain their original formulae but assume the Pauline name of being lots of Venus and Mercury, and in the same time the Pauline innovations (lots of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) are given unaltered, at least this is shown in Ab? Ma?shar and later listmakers. (One notable exception can be al-Rij?l who has a peculiar formula for at least Love; it's given as counted from Venus to Fortune in 4.10.) I don't think the Arabic authors were aware that they should attribute these lots to Hermes because this way they would probably have left the alternative versions like in the case of other lots of claimed Hermetic origin.

Finally, I would like to add a hypothesis about what could lead to the introduction of Pauline lots. There is a version for the lot of slaves reported by Hephaestio (2.20.4), attributed not to Dorotheus but to "others", and this is counted from Mercury to Fortune. This may draw back to Dorotheus himself since, according to al-Qab??? (5.9), al-Andarzaghar was already familiar with it, and M?sh??all?h also duly reports it (3.11.1.2), moreover, if we can believe to Ab? Ma?shar (Greater Introduction 8.4) it was known by Theophilus also. Then it must have been a Roman era lot, and so possibly could give rise to the idea of developing a full set of planetary lots which incorporated some names from the previously known ones (Love, Necessity and Nemesis) with updates and revised formulae

Do you infer that the lots were originally only four? Fortuna, Spirit, Necessity and Love? This is important!

By now, congratulations for your post and thank you for sharing your erudite investigation. God knows how much troubles I was spared regarding the Lot of Necessity and Eros due the present thread!
Many thanks again, Levente!

Posted: **Thu May 31, 2012 3:45 pm**

Clelia wrote:Anyway, for the Killing planets Abu Ali pays attention to both light and the 8th sign of them ( but not only that), always looking to construct an almuten.

I had to check this mubtazz method of Ab? ?Al? (and it's logical extension at Ab? Bakr) to refresh my memory. Some time later I'll begin to test these methods but probably I will need to familiarize myself with the mubtazz technique that I find theoretically and historically questionable. These mechanical methods are appalling for me.

Clelia wrote:Yes, they are referred but I was not able to see the formula he used. ( I used the project Hindsight translation)

Yes, Schmidt left these notes untranslated because they were bracketed in Pingree's edition as interpolations. They possibly are but the received text of Valens suffers from omissions and garbled sentences, thus every help with the interpretation is welcome. There are, for example, some other lots whose formula is missing altogether.

Clelia wrote:So, as you are pointing out the right formula for Eros would be by day ASC+Spirit- Fortuna ( reversing by night) and for the necessity: by day ASC+Fortuna-Spirit ( reversing by night)?

Well, I'd avoid using the word "right"; I'd rather say the "original formula of the Egyptian expositors" that can be gleaned from different sources.

Clelia wrote:Do you infer that the lots were originally only four? Fortuna, Spirit, Necessity and Love? This is important!

I think everything started with Fortune but as it seems logical to treat these four lots (and possibly that of basis) together somehow, I do believe they were discussed by Nechepsos, evidently in the 13th book. Nevertheless, there is another almost uniform set of lots, the "family lots" (father, mother, siblings, spouse and children) but I'm dubious whether this set really belonged to this stratum.

Family members as topics appear in the eight-topic system attributed to Asclepius (Imhotep, son of Ptah) rather than in the twelve-topic system attributed to Hermes (Amenhotep, son of Hapu): these are the semi-legendary figures whose oeuvre Nechepsos and Petosiris commented. But now I know that of the family topics only children were explicitly treated by Petosiris.

Besides N & P you can find the name of Timaeus who interpreted the notion of useful (chr?matistikos) places differently from Nechepsos, and claims this is the system Hermes intended. This seven-place system of Timaeus employs a similar rationale for ascertaining the useful places as the eight-topic system of Asclepius, that is, configuration with the ascendant is evaluated; moreover, the chapter about parents in Valens is admittedly from Timaeus, and if the distinctive vocabulary in another chapter about injuries also belong to him, it's tempting to assume that the topical discussions can at least partly stem back to Timaeus with a conspicuous addition from Petosiris in the chapter about children. (A late scholium to Paulus 25, however, explicitly infers Timaeus' name in the discussion about children.)

Thus, although it would an audacious argumentum ex nihilo to say that Petosiris can't have discussed family members but only children, it's at best an appealing hypothesis to attribute the systematic treatment of family and perhaps the pertaining lots to Timaeus.

Clelia wrote:By now, congratulations for your post and thank you for sharing your erudite investigation.

Oh, thanks

Posted: **Thu May 31, 2012 5:21 pm**

I had to check this mubtazz method of Ab? ?Al? (and it's logical extension at Ab? Bakr) to refresh my memory. Some time later I'll begin to test these methods but probably I will need to familiarize myself with the mubtazz technique that I find theoretically and historically questionable. These mechanical methods are appalling for me.

I do not have anything against the almuten method: students find it useful because they feel secure by counting, so it is okay in the first contact with medieval astrology. But if they think a little further the almuten is nothing more then one of the planets having dignity in a certain portion. We teach to look always at essential and topical dignity. So, sometimes the almuten is cadent and you have to go back and chose one of the other planets having dignity in the place. I think that the use of almuten is useless. It seems a story I learned of how to get a soup using a stone. The recipe is to put the stone and water in a pot over the fire. After you put soem meet, onion and salt. and it?s done! Why to put the stone, every body will ask

All of the sudden the student will see that the magic did not work at all. It is necessary only to think a little bit and you can get the significator without the construction of almutens.
And it is worse when we are asked to calculate the almuten over a cusp post ascensional or declining. I ask myself how they( medieval astrologers) can trut so much in their house division!

Clelia wrote:So, as you are pointing out the right formula for Eros would be by day ASC+Spirit- Fortuna ( reversing by night) and for the necessity: by day ASC+Fortuna-Spirit ( reversing by night)?

Well, I'd avoid using the word "right"; I'd rather say the "original formula of the Egyptian expositors" that can be gleaned from different sources.

I tried these formula before in my own chart, but I will check it out with the others. In my chart Fortuna and Necesity ( usign the way descrived above)will will fall in Aquarius( the 5th place) and the Moon squares them from a superior position, in their 10th. The ruler fall amiss and is in the radical 10th. It makes sense to me. My sons are my heaven and my
hell

Clelia wrote:Do you infer that the lots were originally only four? Fortuna, Spirit, Necessity and Love? This is important!

I think everything started with Fortune but as it seems logical to treat these four lots (and possibly that of basis) together somehow, I do believe they were discussed by Nechepsos, evidently in the 13th book.

I do not have any book from Nechepsos.

Nevertheless, there is another almost uniform set of lots, the "family lots" (father, mother, siblings, spouse and children) but I'm dubious whether this set really belonged to this stratum.

Family members as topics appear in the eight-topic system attributed to Asclepius (Imhotep, son of Ptah) rather than in the twelve-topic system attributed to Hermes (Amenhotep, son of Hapu): these are the semi-legendary figures whose oeuvre Nechepsos and Petosiris commented.

Yes, I this agrees with the material I have been studying!

But now I know that of the family topics only children were explicitly treated by Petosiris.

Besides N & P you can find the name of Timaeus who interpreted the notion of useful (chr?matistikos) places differently from Nechepsos, and claims this is the system Hermes intended

.

Nechepso says that the 8th place is conductive to business, but this is different from the supposed idea of Hermes, who admitted 12 houses and the useful ones are besides the Hour Maker and the MC, those trigonal or hexagonalwith the Hour Maker , like the 11th.Are we in the same page?

Next you says that Timaeus has a 7 places system...now I got lost!

This seven-place system of Timaeus employs a similar rationale for ascertaining the useful places as the eight-topic system of Asclepius, that is, configuration with the ascendant is evaluated; moreover, the chapter about parents in Valens is admittedly from Timaeus, and if the distinctive vocabulary in another chapter about injuries also belong to him, it's tempting to assume that the topical discussions can at least partly stem back to Timaeus with a conspicuous addition from Petosiris in the chapter about children.

Thus, although it would an audacious argumentum ex nihilo to say that Petosiris can't have discussed family members but only children, it's at best an appealing hypothesis to attribute the systematic treatment of family and perhaps the pertaining lots to Timaeus.

Posted: **Thu May 31, 2012 6:19 pm**

Clelia wrote:I do not have anything against the almuten method: students find it useful because they feel secure by counting, so it is okay in the first contact with medieval astrology.

All right, as a pedagogical tool it sounds acceptable but what about the uncertainties regarding how to count them: non-weighted or weighted, how many points you should assign to different dignities and so on?

To be honest, I try to avoid them because I understand they are rooted in the Ptolemaic notion of predomination (epikrateia) which is firmly based on his naturalistic, Aristotelian world view. To put it simply, planets have different types of familiarities (let's use this instead of Medieval "dignity") with signs and degrees, by domicile, triplicity, exaltation and term, to which one can add configuration. In these ways planets exert various types of influence on a certain degree, and this influence can be added up and eventually the winner takes it all. I don't want to explore the intricate history of victors here but this direct planetary influence sounds untenable to my 21st century mind, neither would I prefer to blend different types of rulership into a muddy mixture.

Clelia wrote:I do not have any book from Nechepsos.

It would be a sensation at Christie's if you had one.

To put aside jokes, it's Valens who refers to the lost 13th book of Nechepsos which evidently dealt with the lot of Fortune. Two more books are referenced elsewhere: the 14th on medical astrology and the 15th on astral magic.

Clelia wrote:Are we in the same page?

Sure. As Antiochus reports to us, there was some disagreement on which places should be considered useful and useless. Nechepso told the cardines and the succedents are useful, while Timaeus, referring to Hermes, asserted the ascendant plus the ones configurated to it, except for the 3rd one. This gives seven places (1, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11); and, as I said, a similar reasoning can be ascertained in the case of the Asclepian eight-topic system, where the places configured with the ascendant (3, 4, 5, 7) are allotted to family members. This is by no means the same, just the principle is similar.

Posted: **Thu May 31, 2012 7:42 pm**

Levente Laszlo wrote: right, as a pedagogical tool it sounds acceptable but what about the uncertainties regarding how to count them: non-weighted or weighted, how many points you should assign to different dignities and so on?

Good point! I absolutely agree. The differences are qualitative, even if having too much dignity in a certain point ?counts" a lot, but in another sense, not the numerical one.

To be honest, I try to avoid them because I understand they are rooted in the Ptolemaic notion of predomination (epikrateia) which is firmly based on his naturalistic, Aristotelian world view

.

Intrinsically Aristotle is not so different from Plato: he was a Plato? student for many years, since Plato?s death. And the idea of a predominator in a chart existed also in the Hellenistic system. Ptolemy suggested to count ( but not to differentiate points for each dignity!) in order to find the predominator. Now, to imagine that things happens in earth for the direct physical planetary influence is a rustic way of thinking and I totally agree with you. Ptolemy was a Cartesian author!

To put it simply, planets have different types of familiarities (let's use this instead of Medieval "dignity") with signs and degrees, by domicile, triplicity, exaltation and term, to which one can add configuration. In these ways planets exert various types of influence on a certain degree, and this influence can be added up and eventually the winner takes it all. I don't want to explore the intricate history of victors here but this direct planetary influence sounds untenable to my 21st century mind, neither would I prefer to blend different types of rulership into a muddy mixture

.

I totally agree. The difficulty is to sift the wheat from the chaff, pick good things from the Medieval astrology and discard the things we do not agree. This is especially difficult when you?re teaching. I like Medieval astrology: prediction results work better ( for me, at least) than using Hellenistic astrology, but it is not comfortable to follow some parts and not the others, specially because we are thought against being creative in tradition.

Clelia wrote:I do not have any book from Nechepsos.

It would be a sensation at Christie's if you had one.

That was the quote of the day

To put aside jokes, it's Valens who refers to the lost 13th book of Nechepsos which evidently dealt with the lot of Fortune. Two more books are referenced elsewhere: the 14th on medical astrology and the 15th on astral magic.

To think that there were so many books from Nechepso and are all lost!

Clelia wrote:Are we in the same page?

Sure. As Antiochus reports to us, there was some disagreement on which places should be considered useful and useless. Nechepso told the cardines and the succedents are useful, while Timaeus, referring to Hermes, asserted the ascendant plus the ones configurated to it, except for the 3rd one. This gives seven places (1, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11); and, as I said, a similar reasoning can be ascertained in the case of the Asclepian eight-topic system, where the places configured with the ascendant (3, 4, 5, 7) are allotted to family members. This is by no means the same, just the principle is similar.[/quote]

Skyscript Astrology Forum

Concrete interpretations of the Lots in classical sources?