spirlhelix wrote:And the function of blood is to distribute air to all the parts of the body, as Hippocrates was well aware. Below, he describes how (to the best of his understanding) a disturbance to the distribution of blood (air) caused an epileptic seizure.

Maybe, as I am reading all this, blood is fire and water. And the air is lead thru the blood, speeded at times (bile) and stagnated (plegm), leading to addaption or disease.

Hi, Annemieke!

Now you are nearing a topic of great interest to me (decumbiture). It is true that the sanguine humour is one which one which is said to indicate health. Even a melancholic or phlegmatic "type" can be described to be "sanguine" from time to time, usually meaning that they are happy and (at least momentarily) in a state of good health and energy. To refer to someone as momenarily "sanguine" is just a figure of speech, and an old one. But it demonstrates that the four humours can describe personality types, but their balance in the body shifts daily or momentarily; thus we can use them to describe momentary conditions or imbalances as well.

A long time ago, if you said someone was "humorous", you probably meant the balance of humours in their body shifted rapidly from one humour to another, causing unpredictiable (humourous) behaviors. Such behaviors probably were amusing or downright funny.

Yet according to the medical system of humours, even the sanguine humour (blood), although generally desireable, can be unhealthy when out of balance. For example, too much blood would be a problem. High blood pressure leads to a lot of health problems like heart attack or stroke. Nowadays, we use sophistcated medicines to treat this condition. Long ago, someone diagnosed with "too much blood" faced the treatment of bloodletting, which although not pretty, certainly would bring down the blood pressure.

And then there is the problem of "wind in the veins"; essentially, as far as I can tell, this describes pains. It would indicate an overbalance of air in the body. In terms of health, you do want air in you veins, but you don't want wind there.

Not enough blood would be another imbalance, leading to "poor digestion".
When we think about it, we need air (oxygen) to digest food, in whatever part of our body. The function of the blood is to bring "air" to each part of the body and to permit each part to "digest". Humoural medicine was keenly aware of this concept, as you can see from Hippocrates' discussion above.

Then there are more carefully articulated conditions where two humours predominate, one generally stronger than the other. These compound conditions are determined by the signs the morbificant (illness-causing) planets occupy.

I don't know what elements otherwise describe blood, but in a medical context blood (the sanguine humour) is air. I once had a chart for a man who collapsed in his kitchen; fell to the floor and lost consciousness. A big clue to what was wrong, from a chart of the time when he fell: not one of his planets was in air. Doctors misdiagnosed him and it took quite a while to determine the actual cause of his problem. The decumbiture chart showed it to be an injury to the throat/stomach area. Doctors eventually figured out that he had severe internal blood loss due to a bleeding ulcer, which caused lack of oxygen (air) to the brain, in turn causing loss of consciousness.

Regards,

Spirlhelix

Hi Spirlhelix

I find it highly interesting too. But it drives me crazy at the same time!
For some reason I cannot get it right with the humours. That is why I found this topic so interesting. But still I can not see the total picture.

Another way of looking at it is the way of Jean Carteret, a French astrologer, and it had always intrigued me very much. I will try to translate a piece of a Dutch book written about Carteret by George Bode, where he stumbled upon it and found a solution.

"At a certain moment he was very impressed by a sentence of Jungs book 'Man and his symbols': Matter and psyche are two aspects of one and the same fenomenon. Superficially from this comes that matter obvious is the visable side of the psyche. But if one stays in this stage, it becomes a formula and becomes a presence where you cannot go about. That never happened to Carteret, therefore was his analysing quality to good. His second association by the sentense of Jung was: matter and psyche are sort of the same, but matter is also energy.
Coming from this scientific fact, he then formulated: the energy in the matter can be seen als workable infinity, an infinity in action. And matter is a condition of limitation. So there is a couple of matter/energy and besides that there is also the psyche. But psyche also is invisible like energy. Psyche, which is an inner concept, asks for a fourth concept, that is to the psyche what energy is to matter.
The search for this fourth concept could start, a search which could take weeks, sometimes even months. But also sometimes only a blink of an eye.
The latter was wat happend here. Suddenly he thought of something from the psychiater Lacan about language. And apart from how Lacan meant that, he had found his fourth concept to use in a dialectic.
He formulated it about this: Matter is the 'condition' of 'limitation' from an 'infinity' in 'action' (energy). Psyche is just like energy an 'infinity' but a 'condition' of infinity. And language is is the 'condition' in 'action'.
Because the psyche is the oceanic infinity and the ocean does not move, while on the contrairy the rivers do. So the psyche is the condition of infinity of which language is the 'condition' in 'action'. So on one hand as a physical aspect of the world, there is the couple matter/energy: a condition of limitation and an infinity in action. And on the other hand, complemantairy of that and as a metafysical aspect, there is the couple psyche/language: a condition of infinity and a limitation that can work on that actively. The result of that, if maximum, is poetry and if this does not work then there is the language that totaly drawns in the actual unspeakable of the psyche, which gives the mystical."

Well this goes on for a while, but here my attention was caught. Because instead of poetry it seemed to me that it could also be the language of homeopathy. In homeopathy you have the pathology, the mindsymptoms, the emotions and the vital force.
So at first I tried to get the diagram right.
Vital force or energy = action + infinity
Pathology or matter = condition + limitation
Mindsymptoms or language = action + limitation
Emotions or psyche = condition + infinity
I don't know if the words for this are exactly how they where meant to be, because it is an English translation of a Dutch translation of the original French words.

But this kept getting around and around in my head, and finally I used the words spirit, body, mind and soul. And for action and condition I used active and passive, while for infinity and limitation I used potential and structure.
Spirit = active + potential
Body = passive + structure
Mind = active + structure
Soul = passive + potential
Or in one line: the body is the passive structure of the active potential spirit, as the mind is the active structure of the passive potential soul.

And although I was very happy with that for a while, it kept giving trouble when used over the ancient use of the humours. There is no problem with the body and soul because that would give:
Body = earth = passive + structure = cold + dry
Soul = water = passive + potential = cold + wet

But the problems came with the spirit and mind:
Spirit = fire = active + potential = warm + wet
Mind = air = active + structure = warm + dry
And fire being wet and air being dry was not how it should be, so I was very glad to have found this thread, although at this moment it only gives me a headache :-)

Regards,
Annemieke

Hi, Annemieke

Particle/Wave?

I have to really admire your interest in such matters! This stuff is not easy to understand or categorize.

The Quaternity?

Probably in order to do this subject justice, you would want to undertake a study the philosophy of the Greeks (who were known for "having a word for" just about any concept)! In fact, The renowned Greek philosophers were revered for the study of these subjects. Many of them re-interpreted these four terms to some degree, adding new distinctions or new categories which they felt better reflected the universe or the individual.

I'm not entirely sure you are going to find agreement between the great historical influences in this area of study: The Greeks had many distinct schools of philosophy which shaded the meanings of these words differently. In fact, how they explained these terms was often a defining feature which distinguished the schools from one another. Jung (not a philosopher, but borrowing many of the same terms), while referring to the more ancient systems, had some slightly unique twists on these topics as well.

One area of philosophy which I find of particular interest as an astrologer is Neoplatonism. This branch of philosophy contains models which account for the individual relationship between Man and the stars. I believe Neoplatonism (in a modified form) created a basis for much of Jung's work.

Best wishes on your study of these important matters!

Regards,

Spirlhelix