Skyscript Astrology Forum

Iris wrote:In the chapter mentioned by John, Ben Dykes explains clearly and in detail that the opinions of the astrologers examined (Sahl, Masha'allah and Bonatti) or their ways of usage of the concept of "pushing disposition/arrangment" is not completely concordant, but basically it should mean that "a planet joins another planet, pure and simple" (where "join" means being in aspect).

With regard to Bonatti?s use of phrases such as ?receives the disposition of?, there are places where he may mean nothing more complicated than receiving an aspect from another planet, but I don?t agree that ?pushing arrangement? ? more commonly expressed as ?committing disposition? in later works ? can never mean anything more than aspectual connection.

There is a problem in the way that the word ?disposition? is casually interchanged by later authors, but the notion of a planet being able to commit its disposition or virtue expects some form of reception or essential dignity interaction. Some definitions are very precise, others seem a bit confused, but when the principle of disposition being committed is described, we might expect that one of the planets is either disposed by the other (so received by it), or ? more usually - in its own dignities and so able to arrange/dispose of its own affairs effectively.

I?ve given the definitions of three prominent authors below ? there are some overlaps and inconsistencies, but the definitions are clear enough to show that the term ?pushing/committing disposition/arrangement? means more than just aspecting.

Alcabitius, Introduction to Astrology, III (Warburg Inst., 2044, translated by Burnett, Yamamoto and Yano), p.99:

[Pushing nature]
[17] When a planet (A) applies to the lord of the sign in which it (A) is, or to the lord of its (A?s) exaltation or of another of <its> shares [i.e, dignities] then it (a) pushes the nature of that planet (B) onto it (B).
(*This is also called ?committing disposition and nature?, and is what we generally term ?reception?)

[Pushing power]
[18] When it (A) is in one of its (A?s) shares [i.e, dignities], and it applies to another planet (B), it (A) pushes its own power onto it (B).
(**This is also called ?committing disposition and strength? or ?committing disposition and virtue? or simply ?committing virtue?)

[Pushing two natures]
[19] If it is in one of its own shares and applies to a planet which also has a share in the place, then it pushes two natures together to it.
All this pushing is called ?reception?.

-- The italic comments are mine, but note the last comment above is in the text, not an addition by me "All this pushing is called 'reception''"

Sahl, Introduction, (Cazimi Press, 2008, translated by Ben Dykes), pp.36-39:

Ben?s translation from the original Arabic text reads:

Concerning the explanation of the pushing of strength
It is if the planet is connecting to the planet from its own house or its nobility or its triplicity.

• (The translation of the 15th century Latin texts adds an example):
  like if namely the Moon were in Cancer or in Taurus, and she would be joined to Jupiter or to another of the planets, and she pushed her own virtue to him: wherefore she pushed, that is, ?committed,? her own disposition from her own domicile and exaltation. The remaining [planets] do likewise when they push the disposition from their own domiciles or exaltations.

Concerning the pushing of arrangement
It is if the planet is connecting from its house or its nobility, then it is pushing on it its arrangement and its nature.

The Latin translation calls this section ?On the pushing of disposition and nature? and gives an example. I am using my own translation from the Latin here, which differs little from Ben?s, but I think that his inclusion of brackets, which are not in the original, has altered the intended emphasis.

• Of which an example is if the Moon or one of the planets was in Aries, and it would be joined to Mars; or it was in Gemini and it would be joined to Mercury. And the Moon, while she were in Taurus or in Cancer, she pushes both: virtue and disposition; and if she were not in these two signs, she still pushes disposition.

According to Ben this quote from Sahl is said to be of particular help in showing ?that pushing management does not require any dignity relationship. In other words, pushing management takes place in every connection? (ITA p.174). I wouldn't draw that conclusion myself. I think it is a clumsy example, but that it does demonstrate that a dignity relationship is required, whilst aiming to distinguish between pushing/committing disposition in the general sense of being received (as when the Moon is in Aries joining Mars), and committing strength/virtue (as when the Moon or any planet joins with another from its own sign or exaltation).

Compare with Bonatti?s definitions (below) which treat the committal of disposition as an intrinsic component of reception, telling us that a planet which receives another into its dignities ?commits its own disposition to it, even if they were enemies, from whatever aspect or from conjunction". He gives several examples (Treatise 3 Part 2, Chapter XIII):

?For example, the Moon was in the 3rd degree of Aries, and Mars (who is the ruler of Aries) was in the 8th degree of Gemini (or Cancer or Leo in front of her; or Aquarius, or Capricorn, or Sagittarius behind her), so the Moon was in some way joining to Mars by aspect, and he was receiving her from his house, and committing his virtue and disposition to her.?

?Or the Moon was in the said 3rd degree of Aries, and the Sun, who is ruler of Aries by exaltation, was in the 8th or 9th degree of Gemini - or Cancer or Leo before her, or in the eighth or ninth degree of Aquarius or Capricorn or Sagittarius behind her - so the Moon was in some way joining to the Sun by aspect, and he was receiving her from his exaltation, and committing his strength to her.?

?Or the Moon was in the said 3rd degree of Aries, and Jupiter, who is the ruler of the first term of Aries, and also a ruler of the Aries triplicity, was in the 5th degree of Gemini so the Moon was in some way joining to Jupiter by aspect, and he was receiving her from his term and triplicity, and was entrusting his own virtue and disposition to her, as if he was receiving her from house or from exaltation. This is the commission or transmission of virtue and disposition of the planets.?

As I said in the beginning of the thread when James asked the question I was having the same problem with the word "disposition" which I found in the Arab translation of Centiloquium which I was reading in the new brilliant translation by Giuseppe Bezza.
I had no time to read Bonatti during this week so my comments are related only to the word, latin dispositio, Arabic tadbir.
As mentioned above Dykes uses the same words as an aspect between peregrine planets - in ITA Moon in Virgo pushes disposition to Mars in Sagittarius.

Anyway later I had the opportunity to compare it with the definition given by Bezza in Commento al primo libro del Tetrabiblos (published 1990), which has a whole chapter dedicated to the applications and other virtues of planets. Bezza says, I'm translating word by word page 397:
Every levis star in its application to ponderus is "daffa' ie it pushes, excites, encourages and whatever is its condition in the circle of signs or in the places of diurnal motion arouses a pulsatio dispositionis (dafa a at-tadbir) which consists in arranging, directing, leading or even managing (daffa).
So it seems to me that Dykes and Bezza are in agreement about the nature of this application.

margherita

bonatti uses 'latitude' quite a bit in his book 8 on mundane astrology. i don't think i have ever seen anyone use latitude in helping to define the characteristics of how a planet might express it's energy. bonatti uses this (astronomical?) feature regularly.. here is an example in reference to saturn chapter 73 which is titled "On Scorpio, if Saturn were in it".

"Indeed if Saturn were in Scorpio, and his latitude were northern, it signifies a multitude of rains, and an overflowing of water, rivers, and their corruption. And if his latitude were southern, it signifies famine is going to come to men, and the oppressive market value of items of exchange, and especially of things born from the earth." page 935 benjamin dykes translation.

i am curious to know just what kind of latitude he is referring to here if anyone might have given this some thought.

here is a definition provided by solar fire software.
"There are three kinds of Terrestrial latitude: astronomical, geographic and geocentric. (1) Astronomical: the angle between the direction of the plumb-line and the plane of the Earth's equator. If the Earth were a homogeneous sphere without rotation, the plumb-line would point toward its center -- but the Earth is not an exact sphere. Deviation due to inequalities of the Earth's surface is termed Station Error. (2) Geographic: the latitude used in drawing terrestrial maps. It is astronomical latitude corrected for station error. (3) Geocentric: from a given point on the Earth's surface subtend a line to the Earth's center, and there compute the angle between this line and the plane of the equator."

in the 2014 aries ingress to washington for example saturn is given as 2 degrees 24 minutes + latitude.. i take + to mean northern but i am double checking on all of this with other members here. also i am not sure what latitude given in the chart analysis report is in terms of the 3 definitions provided above. anyone have any ideas? thanks.

i don't think i have ever seen anyone use latitude in helping to define the characteristics of how a planet might express it's energy.

He means celestial latitude, which is the counterpart of celestial longitude, in being the measurement north or south of the ecliptic. This link might help to clarify. It?s actually quite common for traditional authors to consider the effects of latitude in interpretation (from Dorotheus through to Lilly). I have mentioned to several software producers that it is valuable information to include, and know that Janus will be including the latitudes of the planets in their upcoming update.

But to return to the point about committing disposition. Margherita, a couple of times you have mentioned the diagram that Ben features on p.174, but this is not related to any of the historical references he gives, and I take that to be his own illustration of a point he wants to make, rather than him making his point on the basis of that diagram. I will meet with him in a few weeks so will be able to ask him about that.

In any case, without precluding the possibility that some terms were used interchangeably, with different expectation of meaning to different authors of different periods, we would have to ignore a great many authors who have offered an explanation of the term, to conclude that it has no specific meaning. In particular, this thread concerns Bonatti?s expectations, for which the best source of information is what Bonatti wrote himself. He actually makes a big deal out of the notion of how planets give/donate/commit disposition, and whether it will be received, or when it will be returned or given back. Sometimes he refers to ?disposition and virtue?; sometimes he refers only to ?committing disposition?, for which we have to decide whether he means the same or different things. It is clear enough that he generally intends to mean something specific. For example, in Consideration 9, he writes:

?[Sahl] believed that the Moon would carry what was committed to her, and if it was not committed to her, she would not carry anything to any [planet]. For the Moon, when she is joined to some planet who receives her, then the planet commits its disposition to her, and she carries it with her and commits it to the one whom she first encounters in one of her own strengths, and not to another. According to this a planet does not give something in a place in which it promised nothing.

In his third book, Bonatti outlines his view and that of Alcabitius whilst explaining what reception and commission of disposition means. He goes on to say (ch. XIV, ?Concerning the return of virtue?):

I myself have found some persons who seemed to me to be different from others, and these were of their own peculiar opinion, because they did not believe that the Return of Virtue or Disposition was anything, such as that tyrant Ycilinus de Romano4 and such as a certain astrologer of his by the name of Salionus, whom I believe agreed with him out of fear rather than because he believed that it was so. I believe that this was because Ycilinus had a certain brother of Salionus in shackles, concerning whom Salionus feared that Ycilinus would kill him. He said that the Moon and each light planet received the nature of that planet to which it was joined, and that each ponderous planet gave its own virtue to the swift planet whether it received it or not, and he held many other erroneous opinions.
(This is from Robert Hand?s ARHAT translation, which is easier for me to quote.)

Ben Dykes gives a very good explanation of the concept and Bonatti?s use of it in his introduction to his translation (pp.lxxiv-lxxvii), and the explanation he gives there is more reliable for understanding Bonatti?s work, than the one he gives in ITA: one reason being that what Bonatti describes as ?committing disposition? appears to align with the definition that Ben offers for ?pushing power? (p.167). I'm not so sure that most authors defined the terms and concepts as neatly and distinctly as we would have liked them to.

Deb wrote:
But to return to the point about committing disposition. Margherita, a couple of times you have mentioned the diagram that Ben features on p.174, but this is not related to any of the historical references he gives, and I take that to be his own illustration of a point he wants to make, rather than him making his point on the basis of that diagram. I will meet with him in a few weeks so will be able to ask him about that.

True.
Anyway Prof. Bezza many years before Dykes published his book gives the same definition. He talks about disposition saying " whatever is its condition in the circle of signs or in the places of diurnal motion arouses a pulsatio dispositionis " .
So it seems to me that the two definitions are in agreement and don't come with any specific domicile of any of the 2 planets.
Obviously I will happy to hear what Ben Dykes can add, let us know.

margherita

thanks deb! solar fire has it included in its software. i must have skipped over seeing it repeated as many times as i did reading bonatti, in what i read from dorotheus.. do you use it and if so, how? meanwhile i too am curious for any further elucidation on the way bonatti is using the term disposition that you might be able to find out from mr. dykes. thanks!

I can't say I've considered latitude much in my work, but lately I have wanted to make more use of it; or at least check out the principles given in historical texts more consistently. Lilly tells us, for example, that if a significator has a lot of latitude, it describes someone as more fleshy or fat, but with little latitude the body is smaller and leaner. I have checked that out a few times - it generally works, but not always.

To be honest, I can't imagine that Ben will have more to say about Bonatti's use of the term "committing disposition" than he has already written in the introduction to his translation of Bonatti's work - because he covers the issues in some depth there. But I will check. I imagine that he still considers those comments appropriate in regard to Bonatti's work, but with the fuller knowledge he has now, would have included more reference to the fact that earlier astrologers such as Masha'allah used this phrase without any emphasis of meaning, to simply describe the relaying of influence from one planet to another through aspect (I don't think the word 'disposition' should be translated as 'aspect', as it seems to be more about this sense of planetary virtue/influence, being committed -or given/ communicated- through the aspect).

So Margherita is right to endorse the view that it might (or very often) mean nothing significant at all, but I think it is also necessary to point out that it depends on the time, the author, and their expectation of us knowing their work well enough to know what they mean. (We get a similar situation with the way that when some authors talk about a planet receiving an aspect they don't mean anything more than being the planet applied to, but in other places where they talk about a planet receiving an aspect they mean something very specific in regard to reception being involved).

I wish I had more time to go right through Bonatti's text again but I don't right now; maybe - being alerted to the issues - you'll be able to take note of this as you continue your study, and let us know if you find any interesting examples.

The differences between commiting disposition and commiting virtue are from Sahl and can be easily found there. I wouldn't use Bonatti for the definitions as we have the original source so easily obtained.

thanks deb and yuzuru,

deb - i can't say i have seen anything using the latitude data yet, but it is premature to say as i have only started considering it. if i see something, i will share it.

yuzuru - it is interesting you say that. i was just reading the introduction to ben dykes book 'choices and inceptions'. perhaps deb will have something to say on what i am about to say here. she had an important hand with some aspects of this book. i can't find the spot in the first 60 pages which i have read in the past few days, but essentially - and i am putting it in my own words here - there is some question over just how much overlap happened with the astrological lore/techniques used by these astrologers from the deep past..

ben dykes seems to suggest sahl got a lot from masha'allah who got a lot from dorotheus..all the astrologers from the past are implicated in a statement like this. copyright didn't apply, LOL! obviously it is hard to know where the ideas of one start and end.. in bonattis book regular reference was made of abu mashar, to the point i thought it would be a good idea to read abu mashar directly and which i mentioned in my first comment. ben dykes makes another interesting comment that is good to know.. most everything he is translating is from latin.. we have yet to read any arabic translations which might shed more light on some of the use of these terms as i understand it... and, b dykes seems to be on a learning curve himself, and taking anyone along with him who opts to try to read the many translations that he is presently providing.. at some point their may be alternative sources from the arabic versions of these books that might give a better or wider perspective on the use of many of these terms that seem to have an element of ambiguity to them.

Nice to see you Yuzuru.

Having read over this thread again, I think I need to do some back-tracking and apologise for any confusion I caused with my earlier comments - I see I have argued too strongly against points I basically agree with and teach myself (!), and made the matter more complicated than it needs to be. My main concern, after working recently with Bonatti?s text and noting how he can use phrases differently (so we have to judge his precise meaning by context), is that we don?t automatically assume that he must mean something specific when he is using terms in a more casual sense and expecting the reader to understand the principle behind his words. Or that he means something general when he might mean something specific. So for example, when explaining reception, Bonatti says:

Whence a planet who receives another from these dignities, as I said, commits its own disposition to it, even if they were enemies, from whatever aspect or by conjunction.

His full definition, including my own explanation of the meaning of the word ?disposition? (published some years ago) is given on this link: http://skyscript.co.uk/reception2.html
The point I was aiming to make is that, sometimes, when Bonatti uses the phrase ?commits its disposition? he intends to convey the same principle that other authors might call ?committing virtue? or ?pushing power?. So although we should generally assume that references to planets committing or receiving disposition simply means the communication of influence by aspect, we have to be careful when projecting definitions and terminology of one author, from one period, onto another. Things get lost in translation, and there are subtle differences in the use of words that translated as ?nature?, ?disposition? and ?virtue? all of which can mean something specific, or might mean nothing specific at all in Latin texts. But in regard to the question that opened this thread, James wrote:

what is implied by a statement such as 'receives the disposition of' which is scattered throughout bonattis comments

And the simple answer should be, that generally this refers to the slower planet in an aspect receiving the application of a planet that applies towards it (unless the context of the passage suggests otherwise). Apologies again, for not making that clearer from the start.

To respond to your latest comment James ? yes, absolutely, there is a strong line of transmission by which passages in Lilly?s work can be seen to be 17th century English translations of passages in Bonatti?s 13th century Latin work, which are translations of tracts found in Sahl and Masha?allah, some of which are derived from passages found in Dorotheus. Even example charts were translated and passed along from one author to another, but this wasn?t seen as plagiarism ? it was about communicating knowledge of the works of respected authors. All of these authors (and others) have been tremendously important in the communication of technique; but each was also a practicing astrologer as well as a translator, so has been able to input into the development of the tradition with some of their own experience as well.

If I have left any other points of confusion please let me now so I can clear up any mess I made here.

thanks deb - and for the link which is worthwhile reading. a lot of this seems to be about reception and the different types of reception that can take place.

i am interested in asking a different question related to bonatti but i don't want to take advantage of your generous nature.. answer if you feel inclined.

it is a contradiction in my mind and this is how it goes; bonatti mentions a connection between the nature of saturn having an association to kings, perhaps given the superior circle of saturn to all the other planets..( i will find the passage if someone presses me.) i was reading b. dykes book 'choices and inceptions' page 83/84 last night where there are comments about when the moon connects to the different planets, what types of people connections they imply/support. when the moon connects with saturn it is considered a good time to connect or engage with farmers and the lowest people for example.. now this is supposed to be from sahl's elections. i can't quote the passages from bonattis mundane astrology, but i suppose the big difference is they don't involve setting up election charts and the section from bonatti didn't involve the moon in it all. it seems saturn can symbolize everyone from the lowest to the highest, depending on how one wants to perceive saturn. any thoughts on this perceived contradiction i am picking up? thank you!

Saturn can signify the highest or the lowest, yes (but not everything in between). The highest, because of its superiority as you suggest, by which medieval astrologers knew it to be the gravest and most authoritative planet, which is applied to by all planets, but applies itself to none (generally speaking); the lowest, because it also has a reputation for deformity and affliction. I know this sounds puzzling but you get the details of signification from the essential and accidental state that Saturn is in. If you read, Lilly's CA, vol I, for example, you'll note that when he describes the types of people signified by the planets, the noble attributes are given to well placed planets that are strong in dignity; the lesser desirable types and traits are signified when the planets "when ill" or "unfortunate". It might be worth you reading this part of my article on Saturn's signification, to see how both elements you describe fall within the remit of Saturn's theme, even though they appear to be very different expressions of it.
http://www.skyscript.co.uk/astrology_sa ... ml#mundane