Skyscript Astrology Forum

Posted: **Sat Mar 12, 2011 2:29 pm**

Hi Astrojin:

It is my believe that the application and delineation of reception, mutual reception and mutual generosity can only be discerned by looking at all of the following concepts; pushing, returning and reception in all of its variants. I?ll be using MashaAllah?s Book On Reception (Works of Sahl & MashaAllah, trans. Ben Dykes, Cazimi Press, 2008), Abu Mashar?s Abbreviation and Greater Introduction (Introductions to Traditional Astrology, Abu Ma?shar and Al-Qabisi, trans. Ben Dykes, Cazimi Press, 2010) and Avraham Ibn Ezra?s Beginning of Wisdom (trans. Meira Epstein, Arhat, 1998).

I love this books!
As I wrote before, I was using the word reception to the fact that a planet receives the other, so, in the Aristotelian way, and Medieval astrology, the reveived planet gives the matter and the planet which receives it gives the motive.
You did a good thing reporting us to the doctrine, though.

In your example (Clelia) you have Mars in Sagittarius and Jupiter in Scorpio. Scorpio and Sagittarius do not aspect ach other (whole sign) and there is no connection via equal daylight, equal ascension or like engirding. Hence, there is no pushing and reception (neither strong nor weak reception). However, the example fits the definition given by Avraham Ibn Ezra i.e. Generosity. I would imagine that Jupiter is in Mars? house and Mars is in Jupiter?s house but they cannot connect with each other (not by seeing, not by hearing, no by telephone, not by email, etc.). Hence, they will be nice to each other not because they want to be nice to each other but because each has a silent understanding of not wrecking each others? houses![/quote
They do not need to talk to each other because it is enought to be the ruler of the domicile of each other to let thing happen. And I?d say that if one of them is doing something bad to the other, it is specially bad, since the second one do not see the first, so it is not able to be prepared to it.
In the same way I don?t thing that a planet is nice determining the affairs of the domicile it rules. It can be nice or not, it depends of his celestial quality and the house it rules.

.

Examples with questions:
1. Moon (8Sco) applying to Mars (10Cap). Moon pushes nature to Mars. Mars receives Moon. It seems that Mars receiving Moon is OK but would Moon push her nature when she is in her depression
?

This is another question: has the simple aspect effectiveness enought if it happens between planets that have nothing to do with each othe? The Moon do not rules Mars house, but Mars rules the Moon so she will act accodingly to Mars, and not the other way around.
But I think the aspect gives testimony and accodingly to Ptolemy, aspect is a dignity.

2. Moon (8Can) applying to Mars (10Sco). Moon pushes power, strength or virtue to Mars but Moon is pushing to her depressed sign. What does this mean to the power pushed by Moon
3Would she want to do the pushing? Mars ?rejects? Moon because she is in his enemy?s house (the reverse of reception). What would this ?rejection? do to the power pushed by Moon? Btw, both are proud where they are as both are in their domiciles. However, both are of the same sect and the aspect is the best aspect friendship (trine).[/quote
]

All you said are important things to think about!

Clelia

Posted: **Sat Mar 12, 2011 2:32 pm**

Tom wrote:
I was actually thinking the same thing. For example, you don't want reception between your 1 and 8 rulers if you can help it.
Why not if it abates all malice?

Are you sure, Tom? have you seem that happening in your experience?

I wonder if much of the "debate" on reception is even necessary. To divide it up into reception, disposition, generosity, etc is hair splitting in the extreme. One planet influences the other. If there is an aspect, it influences it even more. If it is mutual they influence each other. That's it.

I agree:-)

Clelia

Posted: **Sat Mar 12, 2011 2:40 pm**

Tom:

How do we quantify something like that?

We don't. These concepts are different in terms of qualification and not quantification.

Alchemist:

I totally agree with you. After this, it is only an issue of interpreting the combined influences and their effect on the affairs of the native.

Astrojin, this is very true: we don?t have a simple configuration being responsible for, for example, suicide, wealthy or lengh of life. We read in ancient authors, since Dorotheus, Ptolemy and Valens, a web of conditions as being necessary to point out in a direction or another when studying a native?s chart.

Clelia

Cl?lia

Posted: **Sat Mar 12, 2011 3:02 pm**

@Eddy, Yuzuru, astrojin:

"Gravitation, or gravity, is a natural phenomenon by which physical bodies attract with a force proportional to their mass."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitation

Need I say more? Instead of rejecting it outright, try to understand what I said. It's quite simple, really. At any rate, gravitation or pushing (call it what you want) is irrelevant to the concept of mutual reception that we're discussing here.

Astrojin: I really don't see how the concept of pushing that you tried to describe is really any different to what I said.

Posted: **Sat Mar 12, 2011 4:15 pm**

Clelia Romano wrote:But if we think that planets in traditional astrology are " beings" we can understand that being ggod to Saturn is bad to the native. It?s funny;-)

Or as Robert Hand put it: "What is bad for a planet is not necessarely bad for a native".

james

Posted: **Sat Mar 12, 2011 6:14 pm**

jerd wrote:
Clelia Romano wrote:But if we think that planets in traditional astrology are " beings" we can understand that being good to Saturn is bad to the native. It?s funny;-)

Or as Robert Hand put it: "What is bad for a planet is not necessarely bad for a native".
I liked that! They are beings also in Hand?s view;-))

Cl?lia

Posted: **Sat Mar 12, 2011 7:32 pm**

Clelia and Tom -

I do think the terminology is important and that's what threw most of us. Arguing that it's not leads us into the land of Noel Tyl-isms, where you can't figure out if a planet is peregrine, feral, or just plain unaspected by what it's called. All those things seem to mean the same to him and his devotees, but we'd argue that they have very different meanings, and in the tradition, they do.

Did anyone here learn that mutual reception, or any other reception, exists without an aspect? I didn't, which is why I didn't understand Clelia's description of generosity as mutual reception. And now we're saying that dispositorship is the same as mutual reception. A one-way reception is mutual reception? No aspect necessary for any of these?

I think it's a mistake to call all these different conditions by the same name. They describe different planetary states. And if we lump them all under 'mutual reception', almost everyone here is going to think of two planets in each other's rulership or exaltation in aspect to each other when hearing that term, even though that obviously isn't the case in this thread.

Not upset with anyone, but I do think it's important to keep the technical definitions straight if we want to know what we're talking about. Or possibly I'm the odd man out here, because from what I've seen, a mutual reception does not act the same way as a generosity, or a one-way reception, or a dispositor.

That's all.

Posted: **Sat Mar 12, 2011 8:01 pm**

Olivia wrote: Did anyone here learn that mutual reception, or any other reception, exists without an aspect?

I did. My teacher and mentor was a graduate of Jeff Mayo's school. Her principal text was Margaret Hone's Modern Textbook of Astrology, which gives this definition of mutual reception (p.144 of the original hardback edition): "...the term used when each of the two planets is found to be in the sign ruled by the other. This position brings them into relationship as if they were in conjunction."

Beginning with the earliest efforts of Project Hindsight, it has been a great revelation and delight for me to discover the intricacies within the tradition, especially with regard to reception. Traditional usages make for greater accuracy, specificity, color, texture, elegance, refinement, beauty, even poetry...and I agree that technical definitions matter, even where there appear to be differences among authorities, and in the midst of semantic argument.

Posted: **Sat Mar 12, 2011 9:58 pm**

I do think the terminology is important and that's what threw most of us. Arguing that it's not leads us into the land of Noel Tyl-isms, where you can't figure out if a planet is peregrine, feral, or just plain unaspected by what it's called.

I see your point, but I think we're on different tracks going to the same station. I agree that terminology is important and Tyl is an excellent example of what can go wrong when we muck up accepted terms. I recall a Tyl student, and it may have been on here, I'm not sure, who expressed surprise that peregrine meant anything other than unaspected. He or she was never exposed to anything but Tyl. So you're correct, for this reason we need to maintain consistency and specificity in terminology.

However there is consistency and specificity in terminology and there is Occam's razor. I was taught there can be reception, mutual reception etc without aspect and I believe it. I agree the aspect might make the influence stronger, but I think Saturn in Sagittarius and Jupiter in Capricorn is a mutual reception and I don't care that I disagree with Bonatti. Dante put him in Hell with the sinners not Heaven with the saints (yuk yuk). Furthermore if we can demonstrate some kind if difference between, generosity, disposition and reception then by all means use the specific terminology. I've only seen the assertions, never the facts and I think there is a good reason for that. It can't be demonstrated because we can't take an individual chart change a few things and claim this is how the native would have been, if things were different. Sure we can claim it, but can we prove it?

So I vote for keeping it simple. Mars in Taurus is influenced by Venus no matter where she is in the chart. The quality of influence will vary depending on the sign Venus is in - not the number of degrees they are apart.

Posted: **Sat Mar 12, 2011 10:31 pm**

Tom wrote:
So I vote for keeping it simple. Mars in Taurus is influenced by Venus no matter where she is in the chart. The quality of influence will vary depending on the sign Venus is in - not the number of degrees they are apart.[/color]

You can say this is splitting hairs though I don't think it is. Mars is going to be very differently influenced if he and Venus are 0, 60, 90, 120, 180, or 37 degrees apart.

One could argue that that's sign and that's certainly part of it, but aspect matters.

Posted: **Sat Mar 12, 2011 10:41 pm**

Olivia:

Did anyone here learn that mutual reception, or any other reception, exists without an aspect?

No I didn?t: at least an aspect by sign was traditionally used.
But what I said in my first post was not about mutual reception, I was talking about reception.
We understand that a planet is received by another every time it is the sign of this other one. Or am I using this word not correctly?
So, I began this thread saying: ? I was thinking about reception and I came to some ideas I?d like to discuss.
First of all, reception is basically rulership. If a planet rules a sign and is on another, there is a relationship based in reception between him and the dispositor of the sign.
The relationship of the ruler and the planet ruled is nothing more than a reception, mutual or not.
It happens a really deep relationship, since that the events in a house will depend of its dispositor.?

I was talking about reception, but perhaps we should use the name disposition. But this does not change the very concept, i.e. the fact that a planet action is determined by another one . And if this last one is changing houses with the second one, it would be called a mutual disposition.
I agree that we have to attain to terminology, but terminology has to reflect facts. And in this case the fact works exactly like a reception, give you the name you want.
Is there a difference between mutual reception and 2 planets disposing of each other but with not aspect? Certainly has, but the difference is in strength, since aspect gives an extra power.
Have we to call differently the relationship between 2 planets in mutual reception AND in aspect and 2 planets inconjunct but changing domiciles, besides the fact of strength? Is the effect different in quality?

That was my question.
And I asked it here because it bothered me. Remember that I said many times MAYBE, ?who am I to disagree from the ancient authors?, etc?
Logic seems to point out that both situations are reception situations even if you call differently.
If you read many authors from Dorotheus to Bonatti, passing by Omar, Montulmo and Schoener, you see that there are important disagreements in basic questions about ?for example life spam, hyleg, if planets can be used as a secondary Hyleg or helping the Alchocoden to give years, etc?I?m telling all this because the conclusion I reached was that we don?t have a simple formula.
Sorry if I apparently missed the point: I was trying to say that maybe ( again!) not all was explained.

I didn't, which is why I didn't understand Clelia's description of generosity as mutual reception.

I never say that.

And now we're saying that dispositorship is the same as mutual reception

.

I think it could be, if both planets receive the other.The result is the same.But I explained my point above.

A one-way reception is mutual reception? No aspect necessary for any of these? I think it's a mistake to call all these different conditions by the same name. They describe different planetary states. And if we lump them all under 'mutual reception', almost everyone here is going to think of two planets in each other's rulership or exaltation in aspect to each other when hearing that term, even though that obviously isn't the case in this thread

Since the beginning you jumped on the fact that i probably was saying that 2 planets that were not able to see each other were in reception.

Perhaps it would be necessary to change the name, but the idea of mutual rulership is the same and that precisely was the fact which let me think if a mutual reception prevent of all malice.

best
Cl?lia

Posted: **Sun Mar 13, 2011 4:21 am**

Hello,

To Alchemist:
We are discussing astrology not gravity.

Clelia:

First of all, reception is basically rulership.

NO it's not. Dispositorship, reception, mutual reception, mutual generosity are all different.

Tom:

However there is consistency and specificity in terminology and there is Occam's razor.

Splitting hair and Occam's razor? Perhaps we should not split hair and just say that aspects are all the same regardless of the types in the spirit of Occam's razor? Where do we draw the line?

Saturn in Sagittarius and Jupiter in Capricorn is a mutual reception and I don't care that I disagree with Bonatti. Dante put him in Hell with the sinners not Heaven with the saints (yuk yuk).

Then, you would be disagreeing with many traditional medieval astrologers. To discredit Bonatti because Dante puts him in hell is ...well I really can't comment on this! Dante himself might be in hell for all we know!

I was taught there can be reception, mutual reception etc without aspect and I believe it.

Abu Ma'shar, Sahl, MashaAllah, Bonatti, and many others would have disagreed. John Frawley is still wrong on this!

This thread has become one of those threads where we argue over concepts but we cannot even agree on the definitions. It is difficult to argue when we cannot come to terms with the terms! I'll end my discussion here. Thank you.

Skyscript Astrology Forum

Mutual reception: is that good?