Skyscript Astrology Forum

waybread wrote:Michael, what you have established is that you live in a world of wishful thinking,

Oh dear, you remind me of my ex...

not that you understand science as it is practiced by professional scientists today.

I understand it. But I am not buying.

Is it possible that the confusion

Um, whose confusion are you talking about?

is over a mis-translation of the German word Wissenschaft into the English word science? Although Wissenschaft is used to identify the physical, natural, and medical sciences in the German language; moreso than in English it carries the more generalized sense of any systematic body of knowledge.

Science is not a trademark. Wikipedia defines it as follows:

Science[nb 1]?is a systematic enterprise that creates, builds and organizes?knowledge?in the form of testable?explanations?and predictions?about the?universe.[nb 2][2]:58

I would say, astrology fits into this nicely.

Further:

Contemporary science is typically subdivided into the?natural sciences?which study the material world, the?social sciences?which study people and societies, and the?formal sciences?like mathematics. The formal sciences are often excluded as they do not depend on?empirical?observations.[3] Disciplines which use science like engineering and medicine may also be considered to be applied sciences.[4]

Astrology is both theoretical and applied science, in my view. Onky the latter coincides with its definition as a craft.

I have only a rudimentary tourist knowledge of German, but what I have defined as science is more akin to the German word Naturwissenschaft (loosely in English "natural science.") Not the Geisteswissenschaften or humanities and social sciences. I don't know what is the separate German word for "physical science" as this is understood in English to comprise physics, physical chemistry, astronomy, geophysics, &c; in contrast to the natural sciences comprised of botany, zoology, and microbiology, &c.

There are different classifications as a quick Internet search will reveal. A common one includes physics in natural sciences. (Not that this would matter much here.)

My thread is not about Wissenschaft in your generalized sense, but science as the term is understood by Anglophone scientists, such as chemists, microbiologists, and astronomers.

Actually, I got that. To summarize my position: Rather than submitting to the reductionist/materialist view of science (by excluding astrology from it), astrology should be used to reform and restore science to its original holistic form which includes and interconnects the physical and the spiritual. That's in fact what astrology does all by itself, therefore what it demonstrates and serves as a model for.

You have no idea when your dream world is likely to materialize.

True. But the more people share my dream, the sooner it will materialize.

To you, science does seem to be the be-all and end-all.

I would say, that's an exaggeration.

Otherwise you would be fine with defining astrology as something other than science.

While I don?t deny that "science" is written all over my natal chart, I hope I got across that my objection is not based on a misunderstanding of terminology but to fundamental considerations.

Graham wrote:

For example, I have never (and I have looked - please tell me if I've missed something) found any astrologer, ancient or modern, give a remotely convincing argument as to why Aries should be the first sign, for all eternity, in the tropical zodiac.

Its not going to sway you if you follow a sidereal zodiac but here is Ptolemy's explanation:

Of the four seasons of the year, spring, summer, autumn, and winter, spring exceeds in moisture on account of its diffusion after the cold has passed and warmth is setting in; the summer, in heat, because of the nearness of the sun to the zenith; autumn more in dryness, because of the sucking up of the moisture during the hot season just past; and winter exceeds in cold, because the sun is farthest away from the zenith. For this reason, although there is no natural beginning of the zodiac, since it is a circle, they assume that the sign which begins with the vernal equinox, that of Aries, is the starting-point of them all, making the excessive moisture of the spring the first part of the zodiac as though it were a living creature, and taking next in order the remaining seasons, because in all creatures the earliest ages, like the spring, have a larger share of moisture and are tender and still delicate. The second age, up to the prime of life, exceeds in heat, like summer; the third, which is now past the prime and on the verge of decline, has an excess of dryness, like autumn; and the last, which approaches dissolution, exceeds in its coldness, like winter. Tetrabiblos, Book 1.10, Claudius Ptolemy

That seems a fairly lukewarm endorsement of Aries as the first sign. Later in Tetrabiblos Ptolemy suggests any of the four cardinal signs could be used as the start of the year:

In book II Ch10 of Tetrabiblos Ptolemy discusses which of the four cardinal ingresses should be used as the chart for the year. Unlike the later Perso-Arabic astrologers that heavily emphasized the Aries ingress as predominant Ptolemy sees equal arguments for using all four cardinal signs as the beginning of the year. He therefore suggests casting charts for all the quarters of the year.

Now that we have described the procedure of prediction about the general states of countries and cities, it would remain to mention matters of greater detail; I refer to events that happen yearly in connection with the seasons. In the investigation of this subject it would be appropriate first to define the so?called new moon of the year.

That this should properly be the beginning of the sun's circular course in each of his revolutions is plain from the thing itself, both from its power and from its name. To be sure, one could not conceive what starting-point to assume in a circle, as a general proposition; but in the circle through the middle of the zodiac one would properly take as the only beginnings the points determined by the equator and the tropics, that is, the two equinoxes and the two solstices. Even then, however, one would still be at a loss which of the four to prefer. Indeed, in a circle, absolutely considered, no one of them takes the lead, as would be the case if there were one starting-point, but those who have written on these matters have made use of each of the four, in various ways assuming some one as the starting-point, as they were led by their own arguments and by the natural characteristics of the four points. This is not strange, for each of these parts has some special claim to being reasonably considered the starting-point and the new year. The spring equinox might be preferred because first at that time the day begins to be longer than the night and because it belongs to the moist season, and this element, as we said before, is chiefly present at the beginning of nativities; the summer solstice because the longest day occurs at that time and because to the Egyptians it signifies the flooding of the Nile and the rising of the dog star; the fall equinox because all the crops have by then been harvested, and a fresh start is then made with the sowing of the seed of future crops; and the winter solstice because then, after diminishing, the day first begins to lengthen. It seems more proper and natural to me, however, to employ the four starting-points for investigations which deal with the year, observing the syzygies of the sun and moon at new and full moon which most nearly precede them, and among these in particular the conjunctions at which eclipses take place, so that from the starting-point in Aries we may conjecture what the spring will be like, from that in Cancer the summer, from that in Libra the autumn, and from that in Capricorn the winter. For the sun creates the general qualities and conditions of the seasons, by means of which even those who totally ignorant of astrology can foretell the future. Tetrabiblos Book II. 10, Claudius Ptolemy.

As you have already mentioned the Thema Mundi its worth recalling it has a Cancer ascendant.

Mark

Graham F wrote: For example, I have never (and I have looked - please tell me if I've missed something) found any astrologer, ancient or modern, give a remotely convincing argument as to why Aries should be the first sign, for all eternity, in the tropical zodiac.

Hi Graham

I'm all for critical thinking too, but I don't think we should necessarily look for causal reasons to explain our astrology (not arguing that you say this) but instead we look for symbolic ones, which could be equally if not more important. But what was the convincing argument for why Aries should be the first sign, for all eternity, in the sidereal zodiac, which is more convincing?

Surely it doesn't matter much which one we use as the first?

Surely the whole edifice of tropical astrology is based on the dogma of 0? Aries=VP (and this can never be disproved).

Why are we calling this dogma? In what way is it different from the notion that there are 12 and not 8 houses, or signs, or that we even use the zodiac at all? I'm not sure why the focus here on the tropical zodiac.

I think the reality is that many people find the symbolic connection of the sun's declination as releavant to their notion of time and their association of meaning with that time - and for many, that is what astrology has at its foundation, the associating of meaning, and the recognition of that meaning, with moments of time.

Thank you Mark and Paul for taking the time to answer. As I remember from a previous post where I brought this question up, I'm having great trouble making myself clear. I'm sure this must mainly be the way I'm setting it out, but I do also think there is a real blind spot in astrology about this issue.

First, I don't consider myself to be a siderealist. I did only really get interested in astrology when I discovered Indian sidereal 15 years ago, and I then read a lot about it and took classes. I'd previously had a couple of general character etc readings from semi-professional tropical astrologers, and years ago an Astroflash reading, and although I have a very accurate birthtime (birth cert 13:35, military hospital, plus off her head my mother said, "about 2pm") they really didn't seem to be describing me at all. So I lost interest ? but a reading with Indian techniques from a French astrologer who didn't know me at all really made sense.

Second, I don't accept that Aries is the first sign of the sidereal zodiac, or that there needs to be a "first" sign. In Indian literature, there are definite records of the Pleiades having been considered the first lunar mansion, only later did the "first" one move through the Aries area to Ashwini, the current and apparently definitive "first" (the moving along hasn't been continued). The fact that Aries is indeed now considered "first", as per the (not so very old) classical texts and in practice, I think is probably another indication that much was borrowed from the Greeks, when the VP was already in early Aries, and/or the Greek zodiac had already been "corrected" to make it tropical.

The only place Aries being generally considered "first" sidereally makes a practical difference is in the calculation of divisional charts (harmonics), because of the way our computer programs are designed. I agree with John Addey that the most effective starting-point for harmonics, even sidereally, is the VP, or some other intersection of a great circle with the ecliptic (e.g. the intersections of galactic equator/ecliptic). Fagan calculated sidereal harmonics from 0? Taurus, but I don't find this any more convincing than Aries, sidereally.

Despite this interest in sidereal astrology, the elegance of the classical tropical approach, the emphasis on the annual cycle of light, and perhas the greater cultural resonance attracted me to look again at tropical. I noticed that in mundane work, comparing related charts straddling long periods of time, significant and appropriate "coincidences" just didn't show up in sidereal, because of precession not being taken into account.

For example (sorry, Mark, about the multiwheels), if you look at the 9/11 attack, the 1993 WTC bombing, Pearl Harbour and the Sibly chart (to a lesser extent, any chart for 4th July 1776) together, you get a couple of striking line-ups (particularly on the 4th July Saturn). You get alignments tropically which you don't get sidereally, and which are even more focused when you also look at the 9th harmonic chart (a hangover from Indian, to look at the H9 as a sort of second base chart). Ditto for the charts for the recent Paris attacks + preceding (September) LE + SE + foundation of the 1st Republic (widely used, not just by me and Wolfgang, as the founding chart for France post the Revolution, though others are also used, as Mark has pointed out). (9th harmonics don't add so much, in this French series.) I've also found that even over a person's lifetime, the moments of birth and death can show striking correspondences that get weakened sidereally by the 1?+ of precession.

I may of course be reading too much into these observations, but it's been enough to get me more interested in tropical. But having noticed (it seemed to me) that other people I know don't seem to be very well described by their tropical rulerships either, I wasn't happy about using them until I'd got things a bit clearer. (I'm not very interested in descriptions-by-sign, maybe because Indian uses rulers much more than signs, as I notice Morin does too ? I find it more interesting to see a configuration as dominated by say a negative, introverted Mars than to see "a typical Scorpio", to see someone as broadly "solar" rather than "a typical Leo".)

So I hesitate to spend a lot of time on tropical astrology if something might be amiss with the rulership scheme it's based on, or if it might be based on false premises. The classical rulership scheme has an elegant coherence and an obvious symmettry. So does the solar year, with its four quarters marked off by the four cardinal points (i.e. the antiscia / contra-antiscia axes). I've suggested this before?: try explaining the rulership arrangement to any non-astrology-savvy person (without mentioning sign names, as they'll have heard of those)?; then separately explain the equinoxes and solstices?; then ask them where they would put the latter in the rulership pattern?? It won't be be between Pisces and Aries, I'll bet, more likely between Aries and Taurus.

So why are they wrong, that's what I'm asking?? Why do astrologers know better?? Is it just because Ptolemy said "the sign which begins with the vernal equinox, that of Aries, is the starting-point of them all, making the excessive moisture of the spring the first part of the zodiac as though it were a living creature"?? But surely this is probably just because that's where the VP was (sidereally), or nearly, when Ptolemy was writing. When I first asked this question, I really thought someone would answer "Oh yes, X has clarified all that, it would be more logical to put it between Aries and Taurus (or even Libra and Scorpio), but that's wrong because...". But no, Cyril Fagan seems to be the only one to have ever even asked this question (in Astrological Origins).

As Mark quotes, Ptolemy goes on to say that Aries "is the starting-point of them all, making the excessive moisture of the spring the first part of the zodiac [?] The second age, up to the prime of life, exceeds in heat, like summer; the third [...] has an excess of dryness, like autumn", yet these are deemed to be ruled by Mars, Moon and Venus respectively. And this assertion that Aries is the starting point has subsequently been taken as true for all time, not just for Ptolemy's time when the VP was near 0? sidereal Aries.

As Deborah Houlding has written somewhere on Skyscript (I can't find it now), "the error" (i.e. of putting the VP at 8? or 5? Aries like Valens) was "corrected", and tropical astrology was then able to develop more coherently. But surely the "error" could have been corrected back to 0? Taurus, since the VP, disconnected from the constellations, no longer had to be anywhere near the constellation of Aries.

(Incidentally, I'm not questioning that "Aries" can be considered cardinal, even it was taken to be the sign preceding the VP: cardinal means "pertaining to a hinge", and surely the division leading up to a hinge is just as pivotal as the one falling away from it. In the diurnal chart, the strong angular houses are the ones leading up to the angles, not the ones falling away from them.)

I am not saying I'm right, or that Fagan is right, to think that lining up the symmettry of the rulership scheme with that of the antiscia/contra-antiscia is the obvious thing to do, but surely I'm not the only one to see the logic in the idea, and to wonder why it's never been considered, and whiy it should be otherwise. On the surface, it looks to me as though the rulerships scheme could be much older than the "VP early or 0? Aries" era, designed for an earlier epoch, and that the latter could have been superimposed on the former.

I have tried to persuade myself to drop all this, maybe try and study tropical without the rulerships or something. But then I keep reading things which reawaken my interest. For example, a while back (when he died) I read David Roell's Skeet Shooting for Astrologers. Roell doesn't question Aries as 1st sign-starting-at-VP, but he points up lots of things that suggest there's a problem.

He asserts, for example, that if you want to give a snap reading of a chart to impress someone, just describe to them the qualities associated with the sign in their 2nd house, it's ruler, the placing of that ruler and the aspects it receives. Or Charles Carter's refusal to believe that Hitler could have been a Libra, and must have been a Scorpio, that his chart makes much more sense that way (I know that the "minor" dignities come to the rescue here, for traditional astrologers).

Roell must surely also be right that we need to look beyond textual evidence for the origins of the zodiac?: there must have been an oral tradition long before things got written down, and ancient peoples have left us other clues, in iconography (and images of the four fixed signs as cornerstones of the zodiac recur well into the Christian era), in ancient monuments and in the landscape. His "theory of the Earth's primary zodiac", while still very sketchy and not drawing out its own full implications, ties in nicely with the line of thinking of Robin Heath in "The astronomy and astrology of the solar hero myth" here on Skyscript?:
http://www.skyscript.co.uk/sunheath.html

Viewed from where I live in Lyon in France, at the equinoxes (both of them...), the sun rises behind Mont Blanc. It's very striking and beautiful. The pre-Roman peoples settled here must surely have noticed this, and they may also have associated Mont Blanc, and other landmarks on the horizon, with particular gods, spirits or principles, as we know ancient peoples did. Stone structures like Stonehenge, or Carnac in Britanny, are now generally accepted as being arranged to pinpoint alignments at the equinoxes and solstices (perhaps for other purposes too). A particular area of the horizon could have become associated with both a certain spirit or god (later, a saint, as in the various St Michael's Mounts, etc), and with a certain time of the year when the Sun rose in that area, and subsequently with the part of sky seen to be rising over that area in the evening, probably initially at the full moon.

If they divided the horizon into six bands and associated each sixth with a god, which later became a planetary god, it's probable they would have used the same associations for the same area when the sun was heading up to the summer solstice and down to the winter solstice ? and when they projected these "rulerships" onto the sky, and more precisely the ecliptic band of sky, they would have got a zodiac, something like an "Earth's primary zodiac".

It would have been a symmetrical zodiac, the same segment of horizon (and hence of ecliptic rising over it) getting the same "ruler" on the way up as on the way down, as it would be if we placed the VP at 30? Aries/0? "Taurus" (or 30? Libra/0? Scorpio) in the rulership scheme, and not one step out of phase, as the Aries-based zodiac requires.

Well, that's much more than I'd planned to write, and this is going way beyond the title of the thread, but I hope you now see what's niggling me, and what I'm asking, and why I have a problem with 0? Aries =VP= start of the "1/6th Mars section" on the way up the horizon from Mont Blanc, opposite a "1/6th Mercury section" ("Virgo") for the same bit of horizon as the Sun approaches the autumn equinox on the way down. Mont Blanc looks just as beautiful whichever direction the Sun's heading.

Graham

Paul, Michael, I am not trying to be rude and I apologize if this is how my posts appeared.

I do wish to be perfectly clear, however. Whether we like or appreciate science today as educated scientists currently practice it is not my point. Whether science (Naturwissenschaft) might become more as we would wish it to become in the future is a different question than what it is now. On a different thread I might criticize contemporary science for its own cultural practices.

Again, science (in English) is not a synonym of empirical. Many disciplines are empirical that are not natural or physical sciences.

My specific point is that labeling astrology a "pseudoscience" is reasonable only if the physical and natural sciences are the reference point, in a binary belief system about knowledge categories as either science of pseudoscience. Astrology today is so far away from being a science, whatever it was prior to 1600 CE, that astrology's referent is not science. It is probably the humanities, or portions of the social sciences. In a liberal arts curriculum the major divisions would be science (and probably mathematics,) the humanities, social & behavioural sciences, and the fine & performing arts, although the humanities overlap with the latter two categories.

Nobody accuses art historians, ethicists, or musicologists of being pseudoscientists, because science is not their general knowledge category. I submit that astrology is more akin to the humanities, which is a perfectly respectable category of knowledge.

Regarding Wikipedia, I wrote on Dec. 7:

The Wikipedia excerpt in the OP was really only a departure point, not my main focus. There are many more opinion pieces on astrology as a pseudoscience out there, and I don't propose trying to edit them all.

Further, my feeling is that until astrologers themselves stop thinking of astrology as a science, it would be problematic to edit the Wikipedia entry in a way that would actually reflect how most astrologers would classify their field.

Graham,

The problem of the divergence between what we might call the "seasonal zodiac" (the zodiac organized around the cardinal cross as the onset of the four seasons) and the domicile scheme (the zodiac organized around the fixed cross) is an interesting one. After contemplating it for some time, it occurred to me that both are in fact based on an analogous symmetrical pattern:

At the same distance to both sides of a Solstice point, the Sun has the same declination, and days are of equal length. Such zodiacal positions mirrored across 0? Cancer and 0?Capricorn, respectively, are called antiscia in traditional astrology. If we look at the antiscia at 15? Gemini and 15? Cancer, specifically, we see the parallel to the domicile scheme with the Luminaries, the Moon and the Sun, set in the centre of Cancer and Leo, respectively, the way they are shown in Maternus' Thema mundi and, at least by implication, already in Ptolemy's scheme. Likewise do the antiscia at 15? Sagittarius and 15? Capricorn - where the Sun is equidistant from the winter solstice or his lowest declination - reflect the two expressions of Saturn in Capricorn and Aquarius as per the domicile scheme.

Furthermore, if we now mirror the zodiac across the spring Equinox, and specifically look at 15? Pisces and 15? Aries, we find two positions where the Sun again has the same distance from the ecliptic, but this time, in one case he is as far below it, as above it in the other. In other words, with the Sun in the former position, the night is as long as the day with the Sun in the latter position. The same relationship exists between 15? Virgo and 15? Libra, of course. Such points are called contra-antiscia in traditional astrology. They are of opposite nature - just like Mars and Venus as the rulers of Aries and Taurus (Scorpio and Libra) are opposites!

According to Boll, ancient Greek catalogues list Leo as the first sign of the zodiac. Interestingly, Blavatsky mentioned too that this sign was once seen as the beginning of the zodiac. Nowadays, we count the signs from Aries. I hope that I was able to show how the two schemes actually follow an analogous kind of symmetry. Analogy is the foundation of all the occult sciences.

Hope this helps.

Graham F wrote:The concept of a "skeptical community" as referred to in the video Paul links to is rather amusing, but nevertheless astrology could do with more critical thinking, as the lady with the funny hat attached (just) says. Even though I agree more with those who see it as firstly a system of divination, and thus not necessarily required to present "scientific" credentials.

Hi Graham-- I'll have to catch up later on Paul's links, but agree that "astrology could do with more critical thinking."

For example, I have never (and I have looked - please tell me if I've missed something) found any astrologer, ancient or modern, give a remotely convincing argument as to why Aries should be the first sign, for all eternity, in the tropical zodiac. The nearest seems to be that it was culminating in the Thema Mundi, so should be placed to start at the VP (!?), or that the start of spring is somehow "martial", or that most of the solar Leo is rightly placed in August as the weather is hottest and driest then (certainly not usually true where I live in central southern France, though the sea and large bodies of water are a bit warmer).

I am traveling now and my books & notes are at home, so this will be sketchy. I believe that Mark has given you the solid accepted Explanation # 2, by the great systematiser Ptolemy. Explanation #1 (numbered in chronological order) is historical and prehistorical.

The zodiacal constellations are ancient, although not always identical in Mesopotamian astrology to the ones we use now. There is some evidence that Taurus was recognized as an important constellation in paleolithic Europe. Gavin White's book on Babylonian star lore shows that the Babylonians named the constellation Aries (the sheep) after the time of year in early spring when lambing took place and extra workers were hired to assist with the flocks.

The spring equinox was marked as an important event for many northern hemisphere peoples, as it signified lengthening days, livestock births, and winter barley/wheat harvests, thus probably symbolized a time of promise. With precession of the equinoxes, the chronology was roughly:

Spring equinox in Taurus: 4000-2000 BCE
Aries: 2000-0 BCE
Pisces: 0-2000 CE

There is some debate over whether ancient people were aware of precession, but I am pretty convinced that they were. For one thing, temples and monuments oriented to the rising sun at the spring equinox would be visibly out of alignment within 300 years. In ancient Egypt around 2000 BCE, there was a shift in worship practices-- the ancient cow-headed deities and Apis bull were joined by an important ram-headed god, Ammon. Judaism emerged with a strong orientation to the shepherds like Moses and David.

I believe the Babylonians had set the spring equinox to about 8 degrees of Aries, yet as the millennium approached, 0 Aries was probably a reasonable place to set it (recalling that it would subsequently slip into 29 Pisces.) Yet 0 Aries made sense for only a relative moment in time.

Well, a change in the heavens wasn't just an academic question for ancient people, because their religions were pegged to astronomical events symbolized by animal deities. We can imagine an orthodox powerful priesthood facing a crisis when the equinox moved from Taurus to Aries, or Aries to Pisces.

Aries as the all-time first sign was clearly not arrived at by testing all twelve divisions within the classical rulership scheme and deciding which works best, but (it seems to me) on one retrospective interpretation of Ptolemy. It's more of the nature of a dogma, which must not be questioned if we want to go on to develop a body or system of thought. There is nothing wrong with dogma per se, but it should be recognised as such.

And maybe not in the way you mean "dogma," but I think religious dogma was at the heart of fixing the spring equinox to 0 Aries. In Christianity, the gospels talk about a deity who befriends fishermen, walks on water, multiplies loaves and fishes, and quells the waves. Yet in Revelation, we see the final and permanent Triumph of the Lamb. There's much more here, as Revelation seems highly pegged to some of the constellations.

For example, Christianity (at least in its Catholic form) is based on the dogma that Jesus resurrected, bodily. Over the centuries this in turn has produced, more or less by logical deduction supported by the odd observed miracle, a chain of unfolding theology, other dogmas culminating (so far) in the Assumption of Mary (1950). Though interestingly, perhaps Christianity could actually qualify as being based in scientific method as per Karl Popper, since it could theoretically be disproved: if Jesus didn't resurrect, the whole edifice collapses (as the devoutly Anglican C.S. Lewis admitted, and indeed asserted).

Indeed, and others before C. S. Lewis.

Surely the whole edifice of tropical astrology is based on the dogma of 0? Aries=VP (and this can never be disproved). You quite often read things involving circular logic like "The vernal equinox is at 0? Aries, because Aries is the first sign", or "the first sign is Aries, because it starts at the vernal equinox point". Nothing else in (tropical) astrology is so dogmatic, and so fundamental. The qualities and influences of the planets, the effects of rulerships and aspects, the division of the local sky etc can and have all been questioned, tested and argued about.

(For sidereal astrology, I'd see the many different ayanamsa as the dogmatic foundation.)

Graham

For sure, Graham. We could put sign #1 anywhere we want. In Judaism the new year begins in the autumn. The ancient Egyptians pegged it to the rising of Sirius and the onset of the Nile floods. Astrology actually doesn't need to number its signs at all.

Graham F wrote:The fact that Aries is indeed now considered "first", as per the (not so very old) classical texts and in practice, I think is probably another indication that much was borrowed from the Greeks, when the VP was already in early Aries, and/or the Greek zodiac had already been "corrected" to make it tropical.

As the zodiac originates with the Babylonians we can look further back than the Greeks. I think it's fairly established that the main reason that Aries is the first sign of the zodiac is that it's the sign the Sun occupied at the civil new year in Babylon, which coincided quite closely to the spring equinox. This natural beginning, which made sense to the Babylonians, was inherited by the Greeks when they took up the zodiac themselves.

I don't think it's a central tenet of the tropical zodiac that we refer to Aries as the first sign of the zodiac for all eternity but rather in recognising the importance of the sun's declination and the points on the ecliptic at 90? intervals along its axis which serve as the turning points of the sun and its declination and the symbolic relationship this has to our understanding of time and its meaning.

I noticed that in mundane work, comparing related charts straddling long periods of time, significant and appropriate "coincidences" just didn't show up in sidereal, because of precession not being taken into account.

Do you mean didn't show up in tropical? If not, can you elaborate on this more in how you use the zodiac yourself, sidereal or otherwise. It seems from your subsequent paragraphs that this isn't a typo, but if this is the case, I'm not sure why you target tropical as a zodiac which makes no sense to begin at 0 Aries - surely the same is true in sidereal.

So why are they wrong, that's what I'm asking ? Why do astrologers know better ? Is it just because Ptolemy said "the sign which begins with the vernal equinox, that of Aries, is the starting-point of them all, making the excessive moisture of the spring the first part of the zodiac as though it were a living creature" ? But surely this is probably just because that's where the VP was (sidereally), or nearly, when Ptolemy was writing. When I first asked this question, I really thought someone would answer "Oh yes, X has clarified all that, it would be more logical to put it between Aries and Taurus (or even Libra and Scorpio), but that's wrong because...". But no, Cyril Fagan seems to be the only one to have ever even asked this question (in Astrological Origins).

Many people have asked this question and attempted to answer it - Fagan being just one of them. Whilst we can find comfortable answers which may seems sensible, the reality is that we do not have any sufficient evidence to say anything intelligible about it's true origins at all. We can listen to theories and ideas of other astrologers, Ptolemy and Fagan included, but in the end we just don't know. Personally I don't find Ptolemy entirely satisfactory here.

So I hesitate to spend a lot of time on tropical astrology if something might be amiss with the rulership scheme it's based on, or if it might be based on false premises.

I think it's worth pointing out though that even prior to Ptolemy we see the use of rulership with the zodiac - including those who otherwise measured their positions sidereally.

On the surface, it looks to me as though the rulerships scheme could be much older than the "VP early or 0? Aries" era, designed for an earlier epoch, and that the latter could have been superimposed on the former.

The problem is a lack of evidence. We simply don't have any evidence of it.

I have tried to persuade myself to drop all this, maybe try and study tropical without the rulerships or something.

But wait, maybe I misunderstand your points here, but do you use the rulerships with sidereal? If so, why? Is it just because of Fagan, and what makes sense to you? Why is this better than because of Ptolemy and what makes sense to those who follow it?

and images of the four fixed signs as cornerstones of the zodiac recur well into the Christian era

I understand, but then we can say something like that the fixed signs stand in the centre points between the cardinal signs. Ultimately then we can observe something and project onto it our own prejudices and ideas which may have been alien to the people/person who created it in the first place.

Ultimately I think with so many of these questions, the reality is that we simply do not know - and not knowing is okay. It is infinitely better than finding a comfortable solution and pretending this is the truth. If we don't know, there's no shame or problem with this but it also encourages us to keep an open mind and to continue to search for solutions.

Graham, I would like to distinguish between measurement systems that are wrong, and those that are arbitrary.

Setting the spring equinox to 0 degrees Aries and basing the zodiac wheel upon it is perhaps best understood as an ancient system of measurement of both time and space.

If you ask me what time it is and my watch is running fast or slow, I will tell you the wrong time. On the other hand, were I to give you the correct time, it would be based on an arbitrary system that has to do with conventions about time zones, as well as clocks based upon 24 hours of equal length comprised of 60 minutes each, and with each minute comprised of 60 seconds. There is nothing inherently correct about GMT or Mountain Daylight Time in North America, other than that convention and historical precedent make them so. We could invent some other sort of clock time that was not entirely dependent upon base 60-- astrology's ancient planetary hours were just such a system.

For that matter, in addition to questioning why the tropical zodiac should start at 0 Aries, we might equally ask why your residence in France can be located according to global coordinates of latitude and longitude or the UTM system, why the compass bearing from your home to Paris is measured in portions of cardinal directions, why the distance would be measured in km (vs. miles or leagues,) and so on.

Starting the first sign at 0 degrees Aries has to be seen as a type of measurement that is arbitrary rather than wrong.

Any empirical numerical field of knowledge, be it astrology, science, social science, or humanities, will use units of measurement. These may be more numerical or more verbal. For example, if we convert the zodiac wheel from signs into simple sexagesimal numerical notation (i.e. the base-60 arithmetic system developed by the Babylonians,) we could skip signs altogether. What I would call 23 degrees of Taurus becomes a simple 53 degrees on the 360 degree circle. Or we could find another culture that identified zodiacal constellations differently, and use their system.

But we don't have to stop here. We could switch from a 360-degree circle and assign different degree widths, based on a decimal system. Maybe we want 100 or 1000 degrees. Or some other arithmetic base.

The point being that we need some frame of reference for any type of measurement, and it will be based upon convention. Perhaps another way to define convention would be a mass hallucination that grants reality to an abstraction that is not observable in a material way.

Yet science today is based upon exactly this type of mutual agreement upon widely accepted conventions. What is the temperature (in Celsius, Kelvin, or Fahrenheit?) How large is an area on the earth's surface? (Do we measure in hectares, acres, arpents, or square furlongs?)

Babylonian astrology originally was based upon planets in constellations. When Babylonian astrologers became increasingly proficient at predicting eclipses, they switched from constellations to 30-degree signs, as a way to facilitate their recording eclipse locations.

This decision was not objectively correct or incorrect, but it was arbitrary. A lot of scientific units of measurement are arbitrary as well, no matter how logical they may seem.

In this context, setting the spring equinox to 0 degrees Aries makes about as much sense as most of our units of measurement. (What year, month, date is it today? According to whose system?) Yes, some measurement systems seem more rational than others, but then rationality has not always been a society's underlying meta-narrative.

Graham, just one further note from the archives.

When astrology originated in ancient Mesopotamia, it did have an important observational and predictive component, specifically re: what we today would call an ephemeris. When would (or did) the planet Mars appear in a specific location of the sky, for example?

But what Mars or the other planets were supposed to do in particular celestial locations was not based on empirical research, but on even more ancient religious beliefs about the planetary gods as gods with particular domains and personalities. If an observation of Mars in a particular sector of the heavens was expected to bring warfare to the kingdom, this wasn't based upon empirical research into past astronomical records about Mars juxtaposed with human history. The planet Mars brought warfare because this was the nature of the war-god Mars (or Nergal, as the Babylonians knew him.) Nergal also ruled disease epidemics and scorching midsummer heat in the desert, which may be why he became an astrological malefic.

The first astrological texts from ancient Sumer identify the planets as gods. Linguistically, it is the same word. In Babylonian texts, sometimes a planet has an astronomical word and sometimes the name of the god, and sometimes these names are used interchangeably.

In terms of the OP, we could identify actual sciences that equally had religious or non-rational non-empirical roots, that later got into experimentation and more rigorous data analysis. Notably astronomy. Astrology never developed this transition into the hallmarks of science; and clung to Aristotelian models long after the other sciences abandoned them. So while I think it is a mistake to call today's astrology either a science or pseudoscience, I think one might more correctly call astrology a system of divination, a craft, or a candidate for the humanities.

Hello all

I'm really sorry, but I have clearly not been able to make myself understood.

I appreciate Waybread's reminder that arbitrary is not the same as wrong, I would say that choosing to put the VP, for all time, between the Jupieter-ruled section Mars-ruled sectiongoing "up" to the summer solstice, and the autumn equinox point between the Mercury-rules section and the Venus-ruled section going down is arbitrary, but not symbolically appropriate. Therefore, I'm wondering if it isn't wrong.

I of course agree that we could put the start of the year where we want, and call it what we want, but astrology (and most calendars) want a symbolically appropriate point. I Know that in Judaism it's around the autumn equinox ? that's entirely appropriate?; I was talking about how all this matches up to the symmetry of the rulership scheme, that's what bothers me. I quite agree that the spring equinox is a good candidate to start the year.

It would be symbolically appropriate to put the VP so that the symmetry of the rulership scheme corresponds to that of the antiscia/contra-antiscia arrangement (which Michael has clearly exposed), by placing the VP between the Mars-ruled sign and the Venus-ruled one on the way up, and between Venus's and Mars's on the way down. A planet at a given point would thus be reflected, by antiscia, to a point with the same ruler. It would be reflected across the contra-antiscia axis onto a sign with a complimentary ruler, i.e. of somewhat opposite qualities (Venus-Mars, Mercury-Jupiter, Sun or Moon - Saturn). I don't see how anyone can read Michael's explanation of antiscia without wondering why the symmetrical rulership scheme doesn't line up with the antiscial axis. (In horary astrology, the antiscial reflection of a planet is often considered to function as if it had the same ruler as that planet. - John Frawley. To me this reinforces the case for going the whole hog and making the rulership scheme reflect around that axis.)

Paul writes

I don't think it's a central tenet of the tropical zodiac that we refer to Aries as the first sign of the zodiac for all eternity but rather in recognising the importance of the sun's declination and the points on the ecliptic at 90? intervals along its axis.

Yes, that's what I mean ? I don't mind referring to it as Aries, its the symmetry of the rulership scheme, in relation to that axis.?

If this doesn't seem more symbolically appropriate to you, try the little test I suggested:

try explaining the rulership arrangement to any non-astrology-savvy person (without mentioning sign names, as they'll have heard of those) ; then separately explain the equinoxes and solstices ; then ask them where they would put the latter in the rulership pattern ? It won't be be between Pisces and Aries, I'll bet, more likely between Aries and Taurus.

To answer Paul: Yes, I did mean that the alignments, over time, seem to work in tropical, but not in sidereal (i.e. not with precession expunged).

Yes, I do use the classical rulerships in sidereal, and I find that it works. Its a dogma, if you like. I think I can justify it symbolically with relation to the galactic and super-galactic equators, when the right ayanamsha (very close to Krishnamurti) is used, which generate an arrangement resembling antiscia and contra-antiscia, with the cross passing between Cancer/Leo + Capricorn/Aquarius, and Aries/Taurus + Libra/Scorpio,but that's another story and I know this is controversial as people say you can't "see" those equators, they are subjected to very slight wobble etc. (You can't see the ecliptic, or the celestial equator either, and the VP also wobbles...).

In fact, I do find that Taurus should start zodiac, even in sidereal. Parlty because of Fagan's reasoning, and partly because I studide, with a teacher, the ashtakavarga system of the contemporary Indian astrolgoer Krushna. Krushna proposes the most effective system of "natural signifiers" for the houses, whihc he says are "the ruler of the sign in the 'natural' (Aries based) zodiac minus 6". What this boils down to, those of course he doens't suggest this, is that the natural signifiers of the houses are the rulerships of the signs starting from Scorpio - which is the first sign rising at sunset when the sun is in Taurus.

The rulership debate is not the same thing as in tropical, because in sidereal, the antiscial axis (which is unfortunately not often used) is fully disconnected from the zodiac, it moves around it. You don't have to choose one place to put it, as you do in tropical.

To be clear, and to "come clean", this is what I suspect happened (I know I can't justify this with sources, but it gives me a working model in my head): the zodiac developed sidereally, the rulerships were assigned/developed/revealed, who knows, around the time that the VP was near the beginning of the 30? sidereal segment marked by the constellation Taurus, around or before 2000BC, at any rate somewhere approximately between 4000 and 2000BC. In parallel, and perhaps more or less simultaniously, a tropical earth based division of the horizon (but Suns' rising point) and by extension of the sky was developing (megaliths, Machu Pichu etc). The two may gradually have become extended, the horizon measurement to include the ecliptic rising at given points, and the the sidereal to include (probably from the beginning, in fact) correspondences whihc were in reality tropical, and would no longer hold 4000 years later. Then Ptolemy principally, and others, codified what they could scrape together of a very old tradition, and wrote it down. This served as the basis for classical and medieval Western astrology, which may or may not have been consciously tropical. When it came to be conscious, in any case, the VP between Pisces and Aries was already so established that it was never questioned, and today, when reading of the basics of astrology, we are told that "Aries starts at the VP, so Aries is the first sign", or "Aries is the first sign, so the VP is at 0? Aries."

I can't believe that astrology was "invented" in Ptolemy's time, and in the few hundred years before, which would justify saying that the whole corpus was designed to have Aries at the VP. The old texts look too much like the traces of a much more complete and sophisticated system, and I also can't believe that the peoples who built Stonehenge and Carnac, and other early civilisations around the world, didn't have a fairly sophisticated "celestial science" (in the broadest sense of the term, not excluding what we call gnosis).

But as Paul says? (re the claim that rulerships were probably around before the 0? Aries general epoch):
"The problem is a lack of evidence. We simply don't have any evidence of it."
This is quite true, but I still haven't seen any convincing evidence that it's right to take "freeze" them where they were sidereally (more or less) in Ptolemy's time.?

But anyway (Paul again)?:

we simply do not know - and not knowing is okay. It is infinitely better than finding a comfortable solution and pretending this is the truth. If we don't know, there's no shame or problem with this but it also encourages us to keep an open mind and to continue to search for solutions.

Indeed.

Graham

Sorry for not getting your point, Graham.

Possibly because you are looking for logic in a system that emerged from religion?

For starters, what is the VP? (vernal, vertex, Vemus..... point ?)

Also, so far as planetary rulers of signs go, I take it that you are familiar with Ptolemy's explanation, based upon planets' spatial distance from the sun and moon, and temporal from the summer solstice. Ptolemy was a relative late-comer and a great systematiser, who showed little sympathy for astrology's religious roots. He pruned a lot of these out of the Tetrabiblos, while reinforcing his favoured Aristotelian concepts.

Vettius Valens, Ptolemy's Alexandrian contemporary, criticizes his predecessors for their impractical mysticism.

You are probably also familiar with the works of the pre-astrology Greek authors like Hesiod (Works and Days 2:383-404) And Aratus (Phaenomena) who placed a lot of calendric significance on the Pleiades, located within the constellation Taurus. However, this wasn't based on the vernal equinox, but the phenology of agricultural cycles and the Mediterranean shipping season. http://www.theoi.com/Nymphe/NymphaiPleiades.html

So far as I can tell, the tropical zodiac is comparatively recent. The Babylonian zodiac was sidereal. (Francesca Rochberg, The Heavenly Writing: Divination, Horoscopy, and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 128.) The Babylonians did not seem to recognize precession. although other ancient cultures did.

You are probably also aware that Babylonian astrologers didn't use houses, and their astrology was primarily what we would call mundane astrology, or omen literature. Initially it was based on constellations, not signs and degrees, which came in around the 5th century BCE as an improved means of predicting eclipses. We know from historical and archaeological evidence that there was no horoscopic astrology of the sort recognized by classical astrologers until the late 3rd century BCE. At that time, we see an amalgam of Babylonian, Greek, Egyptian, and possibly additional cultural astronomies.

By the beginning of the new millennium there is indirect evidence that precession was becoming a big religious problem. The Gospels and early Christian symbolism show all kinds of evidence that faith communities were trying to come to terms with the vernal equinox moving into Pisces. Revelation, however, definitively established the spring equinox in Aries.

According to Nicholas Campion, The Dawn of Astrology, p.216, Hellenistic astronomers tried to determine the location of the spring equinox, and 8 degrees Aries was favoured by Eudoxus (ca. 400 BCE) and Pliny. Ptolemy calculated it at 0 degrees Aries. Trouble was, others who adopted the "Aries point" didn't get the issue with precession, and thought the equinox had always occurred at 0 degrees Aries.

According to Campion, knowledge that the signs were being displaced from the constellations for which they were named due to precession was a major issue with astrology's late ancient critics.

So, hey-- it's all arbitrary. But so is connecting stars, calling them constellations, and applying pictorial images or myths to them. It is arbitrary to convert constellations into 30-degree signs. Our calendars are arbitrary. In this regard, sidereal astrology is also arbitrary because no constellation is precisely 30 degrees wide on the ecliptic.

Which perhaps partly explains why science is not the right comparable for astrology.

Further references available upon request.