Skyscript Astrology Forum

Hi Borealis,

I took another look at your suggestion last night and tried to use it as a basis to recreate the table of terms. Armed with a blank table and your instructions, these are the problems I had.

1) You suggest starting the method from another place rather than Aries to make it easier to follow. If we begin with Virgo as you do, to obtain the first set of terms, then we start off with (and follow) the order Exaltation > triplicity > house, as the text clearly states. However, if we do try to start from Aries, then the order doesn?t work ? the sequence would result in Jupiter leading the terms of Pisces as the house ruler. This could be overruled by Venus having dual rulership in Pisces if we allow Venus as one of the water triplicity rulers, but the order of the Scorpio terms only work if we eliminate Venus from this rulership and take Mars as the only ruler of the water triplicity.
To get the method to work by beginning with Aries, then we have to start off with triplicity > house > exaltation (and then follow through) to get the planets in the right places. I?m not sure about this, though I could live with it if it was the only problem ? especially because there is another way to read how to get those first set of terms anyway.

2) The bigger concern is that we end up with the same problem as before ? the logic used to establish the Libran terms is disregarded when we come to determine the Aquarian terms. With the Libran terms we begin with Saturn as the triplicity ruler, and you suggest that we don?t allow Mercury to take the next place as we only use one triplicity ruler. Your explanation goes:

It?s important to take note that Mercury is last here. The order used all along has been Exhalt, triplicity, house and no where does Ptolemy elude to the order as being exhalt, day triplicity, night triplicity, house. In Libra, we have started with triplicity and now must move through the order of the next two signs before ending up back on mercury.

Hence we move on to Venus, agreeing with the table which reads: Saturn > Venus > Jupiter > Mercury > Mars.

In Aquarius we begin with Saturn - a double ruler because it rules the triplicity and house, so therefore Mercury as the second triplicity ruler of Aquarius ought to be ignored (if it is not ignored here then why is it ignored in Libra?). This logic would require us to take Venus as the ruler of the second set of terms (exalted in Pisces), followed by Jupiter ? the same result as the approach I suggested earlier, but disagreeing with the table which reads: Saturn > Mercury > Venus > Jupiter > Mars.

So whilst I feel that this is an ingenious way to explain the table and worth exploring, it still doesn?t seem to solve the problem of those Aquarian terms! I?m becoming more convinced that nothing ever will, although I?d love to be proved wrong.

FYI,

I came across this photo of Alchabitius' commentary on the terms. It is taken from a 1502 edition of Alchabitius medieval text being sold on ebay, which states: "The title page to this very rare and well-preserved medieval text on astrology reads simply, "Alchabitius cum comento. Cum gratia et priuilegio." He appears to be using the Egyptian terms.

Here is a link to the page on terms: http://hometown.aol.com/tonylouis/alchabitius.jpg

Here is a link to the ebay site (I don't know how long it will remain posted):

http://cgi.ebay.com/1502-Astronomy-Astr ... dZViewItem

Related to this, we might be able to clear up the doubt that hangs over the last two sets of terms in Gemini. I would imagine that by far the majority of astrologers using this set of terms today are following Lilly?s instruction that the 4th place in Gemini goes to Saturn, and then the 5th goes to Mars. The explanations put forward in this thread agree with this and support Lilly?s arrangement for Gemini as being:

Mercury > Jupiter > Venus > Saturn > Mars

However, none of the translations of Tetrabiblos that we possess support this!

Ashmand, Robbins, Boll-Boer, Hubner and Schmidt have all translated the terms of Gemini to be:

Mercury > Jupiter > Venus > Mars > Saturn

As Robert Hand?s introduction to the PH edition explains: ?most of our knowledge of Ptolemy comes from translations of translations? (iv), but since ? to date - no translator has backed up Lilly?s proposed arrangement for the terms in Gemini, there has always been the concern that this might just be a typo on his part.
Deb

Deb,

Rather than do a long post here, I am providing a link with a discussion of the terms according to Ptolemy that addresses many of the points you have raised. Here is the link:

hometown.aol.com/tonylouis/Ptolemy.rtf



Tony

I came across this photo of Alchabitius' commentary on the terms. It is taken from a 1502 edition of Alchabitius medieval text being sold on ebay, which states: "The title page to this very rare and well-preserved medieval text on astrology reads simply, "Alchabitius cum comento. Cum gratia et priuilegio." He appears to be using the Egyptian terms.

You can find the whole 16th-c. edition of Al-Qabisi in the Bibliotheque numerique de la BNF in pdf format. It is a Latin translation of the Isagoge of Al-Qabisi with the extensive commentaries of John of Saxony (Johannes Danck). Just choose "Recherche", and fill "Auteur" field with "Al-Qabisi". There are other downloadable Medieval astrological texts too.

You can find the whole 16th-c. edition of Al-Qabisi in the Bibliotheque numerique de la BNF in pdf format. It is a Latin translation of the Isagoge of Al-Qabisi with the extensive commentaries of John of Saxony (Johannes Danck). Just choose "Recherche", and fill "Auteur" field with "Al-Qabisi". There are other downloadable Medieval astrological texts too.

Thanks. What a useful site!

Tony

Hi Tony

I?ve been meaning to sit down and write ?thank you for that link? for a few days now, but I?ve been a bit all over the place. It was good of you to have the foresight and take the trouble to capture that image. Also of course, thanks to you too Osthanes for pointing out that the entire manuscript is available online, and for giving us the link to that site with all those other goodies!

Although these are both the translations of John of Saxony, they seem to be two different versions, and it is clearer from the full-text reproduction that he only includes the Egyptian terms ? he doesn?t make any reference to the ?Chaldean? or ?Ptolemaic? sets. Lilly leaves the impression (p.103) that after Ptolemy set down ?his method?, the Greeks and everyone else were unanimous in applying it, but that seems to be far from the truth in Classical astrology, and this shows it wasn?t necessarily the case in Arabian astrology either.

Tony, thanks for making that word document available. I?ve looked through it this morning but I need to find some time later (maybe next week) to give it the proper ?crunch? test. That?s when I try to recreate the table from the stated principles ? have you tried that yourself yet? It?s the best way to find out if the theory really works because it shows the places where you need to start inventing new rules (or cheating) to get it to right. And you are not allow to look at the table when you do it

Because of the link to the 1583 text of Junctinus that Phillip posted in the notices section, I did manage to discover that at least one of Lilly?s sources had the table of terms exactly as Lilly as it, with the last two terms in Gemini ending in the order: Saturn, Mars. The table can be found on p.93 of the images found on this link (p.76 in the manuscript): http://fondosdigitales.us.es/books/digi ... age=212625

Lilly mentions this work in his bibliography thus:

Franciscus Junctinus Speculum Astrologi?, in two Tomes, folio, he comments upon the third and fourth of Ptolomey, and upon Sacro Bosco, was printed Lugduni, 1583.

I?m currently trying to collect other tables of Ptolemaic terms from historical sources, though it?s worrying how much some of them differ in details. The other table I found on the internet is the Latin translation of Plato of Tivoli available at http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/pdf/fah750pto.pdf (table is on p.20 of the pdf), which has substantial differences to what we find in any modern translation of the Tetrabiblos. It currently seems as if astrologers of the past were in exactly the same position we are in - they obviously had different ideas on what Ptolemy was trying to say

A unique position that makes it seem possible to correct errors? and maybe set down some logical...well at least suggestion, if not an outright revamping of what seems to be an error. ????

Granny

How the number of degrees of every term were determined?