Lady Ishtar's Book of Shadows, White Magic and Wicca Protection Spells. I see.

Martin Gansten wrote:Lady Ishtar's Book of Shadows, White Magic and Wicca Protection Spells. I see.

LOL probably the original source being Crowley's 777, at least in print.

Kenneth Johnson wrote:

I think there is a cultural context that is missing in these discussions.

When they call the Ninth House the House of the God, they are referring to the official religion of the Roman Empire, i.e. the cult of the emperor as a divine figure and to the Olympians.

When they call the Third House the House of the Goddess, they are referring to the so-called "populist" religions of syncretistic nature that were so common in Hellenistic Egypt and the Levant generally, and which centered around goddess figures such as Isis, Astarte, Cybele, and so on.

Thus the spriitual world of officials, rulers and lawgivers is contrasted with the spiritual world of the common people.

If I recall correctly Robert Schmidt has suggested the 9th has to do with orthodox religion, while the 3rd has to do with unorthodox religion and beliefs on the fringe of society. Robert Hand has certainly suggested this in his book on Whole Sign houses. Moreover, in his book Astrological Roots: The Hellenistic Legacy Joseph Crane also suggests that the 3rd house is to do with our private spiritual observances while the 9th is connected to spiritual practice in the public sphere. This sounds fairly similar to what you are suggesting.

I would personally like to see a lot more sources quoted directly before I could really accept this as representative of hellenistic astrology as a whole. The logic is fairly straightforward. The 3rd is linked to the Moon and therefore the home and common people. Equally the Sun in its joy in the 9th is linked to not just the Gods but Kings too. i concede Rhetorius does link the 9th to 'Gods and Kings'.

The problem I have here is the assumption that hellenistic astrologers all worked from the same religious and philosophical perspective. From what I can see they most definitely didn't. Hence we have Valens who seems inspired by Stoicism, Ptolemy following an Aristotlean methodology while Porphyry was a noted Neo-Platonist philosopher. On a religious basis we surely cannot assume there were no Goddess worshipping astrologers? These cults were very popular right into the late Roman period. So would such astrologers have identified Goddess worship as unconventional?

Still, the argument for private vs state religion is more compelling. Although we still see the 9th linked to dreams, prophecy, and divination. Plus as the joy of the sun in the 9th was also about awareness of the transcendent. Valens describes the Sun as 'the light of mind' and clearly suggests it is representative of the higher mind or nous. Moreover, the lot of spirit is linked to the Sun while the lot of fortune is linked to the Moon. This indirectly seems to undermine the view that the joy of the Sun/9th is not about genuine spiritual experience.

Mark

PS I love your book Mansions of the Moon: The Lost Zodiac of the Goddess.

Mark, Not sure what you think of my previous posts. I think you are correct about the diversity of interpretations of the houses in Hellenistic astrology, for reasons I have suggested (with some references.)

If we look at the locations of the few Hellenistic astrologers whose texts have survived, we do see a concentration in Hellenized Egypt, or in places like Sidon that were within its cultural realm.

As I tried to explain above, Egyptian religion by its very nature was highly diverse and syncretistic. A given attribute might be assigned to multiple deities, Diety A's attributes tended to overlap with those of Diety B, and Diety C might be traceable through time as changing significantly through different periods of ancient Egypt. You also find this in Greek and Roman beliefs and in the Bible, though to a somewhat lesser extent.

Today with our modern mentalities we sometimes expect the people of Antiquity to have thought in logical, sequential ways, as we hope to do. This isn't how ancient people conceived their beliefs. Rather, if a belief was seen to have merit, it was collated with other meritorious beliefs. As Plutarch explained in Isis and Osiris, the Egyptians saw no inconsistency because they saw their different myths merely as outward manifestations of a few more underlying truths.

The kicker in this is that we do understand from some of the ancient sources that some beliefs adopted into ancient astrology were considered sacred, privileged information. Thus we often see beliefs encrypted into more mundane sorts of narratives.

Also, sometimes the ancient astrologers gave "quick and dirty" delineations of the houses, but then if you read through how they used them in practice, the house meanings are clearly much more extensive than the simple list of attributes would suggest.

Just a quick run-down of one of the sources I have on hand on the 3rd and 9th, respectively:

Firmicus Maternus, Latin author of the 4th century AD (Bram translation). He actually gives five separate overviews of the houses in quick succession in his second book.

1. (2:14) 3rd, brothers & sisters. He doesn't list the 9th in this section. We could debate whether he intended an 8-house system in this section.

2. The additive nature of his astrology is shown soon thereafter in 2: xvi, because in here the 3rd house is Dea (or Thea to the Greeks) and the 9th house is Deus or Theos in Greek.

3. We get yet a third run-down of houses in 2:18, where he repeats Dea and Deus for the 3rd and 9th, but no mention of siblings.

With his 2nd house listed as "Gate of Hell, or the Anafora (rising up from the Underworld)" FM implies that at least some of the preceding houses were seen as under the ground. [Joanne Conman argues that the Egyptian Dwat was actually a celestial location, but the Greeks and Romans believed in an afterlife underground.]

4. In 2:19, we read that the third house begins at the 60th degree from the ascendant and stopes at the 90th. This is a clear indication of at least an equal house method, if not whole signs. Its contents include siblings and Dea, but for the first time FM mentions travelers. Here we also get a sense of the relation of the 3rd to the ascendant through a sextile aspect, which FM considers to be weak.

FM gives the 30-degree interval for the 9th house and its trine aspect to the AS. "It is also the house of the Sun God. In this house we find the social class of men. It also has to do with religion and foreign travel." I suspect the sun god here is Apollo (ruler of prophecy) but it could also be Phoebus. The Sun God reference may refer obliquely to Ra or Horus.

5. 2:20. The 3rd is "Dea or Brothers". The 9th is Deus.

With a cursory reading, I haven't come across any mention in Firmicus Maternus of the 3rd as the house of the moon. Possibly this was implicit, with the Sun God in the opposite house.

A good philologist could probably go through these sections for a clue as to whether FM might have been citing sources of different temporal or geographical origins. To my untrained anglophone eyes, this sure looks like a simple compilation from different earlier sources.

In 2:30, FM says astrology is a "divine science" requiring practitioners to communicate with gods and even to be a "priest of the gods." (Cf. 8:1.)

Then we could extend FM's itemizations considerably by looking at how he actually handles the houses in his cookbook, which follows.

For example, Mercury in the 3rd in a natal chart makes men ""priests, magicians, healers, astrologers..." Mercury in the 9th house? Not so good. These men are "quarrelsome, contentious, arguers...malevolent."

Venus in the 3rd gives a wife who is a "priestess or daughter of a priest." With Venus in the 9th, we find "constant attacks by some demon" and men who are "sordid and unkempt". If Venus is in this house by night, however, the native could be a holy man, dream interpreter, or temple attendant.

So obviously the planet in a tenanted house modifies it considerably in FM's astrology. But it is interesting the additional themes he draws into the 3rd house: vocation and marriage. Also, the 9th house is not necessarily fortunate, even without afflictions. We get a mix of very pedestrian, everyday astrology, as well as a hint of "divine science."

We could go through the other Hellenistic sources in this fashion, or spend more time with Firmicus Maternus. Regardless, I don't see the Schmidt, Crane, or Hand interpretations; at least not based on my superficial readings. For one thing, if someone is "on the margins of society" we have to define what that means. Social classes form their own subcultures, and the agricultural labour class would have had the largest number of people.

Private religion in Antiquity did exist in the household, for example, with Vesta as goddess of the hearth, and with the father as head of the family responsibile for certain rites. But this doesn't mean religion was private in the sense that people sort of made it up as they went along on an individual basis.

I'd like to hear more about what people mean by "state religion."

So far as I know, various deities were worshipped throughout the various empires of Antiquity. They typically had temples, rites, and special holidays dedicated to them. When the emperor became deified, he established a cult, as well. However, it was strictly forbidden to apply astrology to the Emperor, notably predictions of his death, to avoid political intrigue. (See T. Barton, Ancient Astrology, 44-49.)

Firmicus Maternus explained this ban in 2:30: the Emperor, being a god in his own right and even master of the universe, was not subject to the stars' positions.

Some sanctioned observances for particular gods were celebrated more by patricians; other by plebians. Some rights were more for women and others, more for men. Cities had patron deities, and some of them were goddesses. There were secret mystery cults for Demeter/Ceres and Orpheus, as well as public observances.

FM makes no mention of a state religion in Matheseos Libri VIII, so far as I can tell, although he subsequently converted to Christianity.

Good morning,

Waybread's next to the last post well summarises the subject much as i see it.

If we take horoscopic (horoscopos = Ascendant) astrology (exactly when, where and how it began are not yet resolved questions) as the opening of the brackets and the end of the Mediaeval period as closing them, we have two basic periods and three to four languages:

I. Heathen (diverse multiple theologies often with some central common concepts)

1) Hellenistic (ancient Greek)

2) Roman (Latin)

II. Monotheistic (Abrahamic patriarchal theologies)

3) Perso-Arab (some Persian, mostly Arabic)

4) European (Latin).

It seems to me that the Hellenistic period constitutes the essential frame of reference of (Western) horoscopic astrology. If, due to theological and / or political influences or by error, later authors depart from and / or suppress the Hellenistic techniques and delineations of astrological symbols, we are invited to carefully scrutinise such departures and, where warranted, to restore the basic Hellenistic values.

Even for those not averse to undertaking it, this task is difficult because Hellenistic astrologers were not in consensus on several items (ex. gr. calculation of pars fortuna in a nocturnal chart), and the original texts have been destroyed or lost, copied by hand with errors, mistranslated, interpolated by translators (example: Dorotheus of Sidon's books in Arabic) or even deliberated falsified.

An example of 'political influence' is the interdiction of astrological analyses of Roman emperors' charts mentioned by Julius Firmicus Maternus.

The Hellenistic Pantheon is of course the frame of reference corresponding to Hellenistic astrology. Of the 12 Goddesses and Gods most usually named as 'Olympian', 5 are female and another, Hermes, is often considered hermaphroditic. So, although patriarchal, Hellenistic civilisation had not yet reduced the Pantheon to One Unique (male) Divinity or perhaps Three of Them, all males. Manilius gives a list of divine sign rulerships quite favourable to the revered Goddesses. Mediaeval civilisation including astrology banned all of Them, ex. gr. Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, Beauty and Sexuality:
Best regards,

lihin

lihin wrote: I. Heathen (diverse multiple theologies often with some central common concepts)

1) Hellenistic (ancient Greek)

2) Roman (Latin)

II. Monotheistic (Abrahamic patriarchal theologies)

3) Perso-Arab (some Persian, mostly Arabic)

4) European (Latin).

What of the entire Persian empire with its multitude of religions and cultures? Not to mention India, which for some reason is nearly always left out of these sweeping generalizations. The history of astrology, and of its religious affiliations, comprises considerably more than the two opposite blocks that you imagine.

Many if not most of your posts look like thinly veiled complaints or attacks directed against the Abrahamic religions as the enemies of a reified 'heathen' tradition. Although I have my own reservations against those religions, Skyscript may not be the most suitable forum for such a, well, crusade.

I would just like to say that I have found that to recognise the 3rd place/house as that of the Goddess leads to a richer and more accurate delineation, in my experience.

I started studying traditional astrology with the medieval period where I learnt that the 3rd house signifies siblings, short journeys etc.
After reading earlier texts, initially Manilius, I found the connection to the Goddess and it was a revelation. Several charts I had been studying, including my own, made far more sense.

For instance I have the charts of two psychic mediums which show significant 3rd house activity. These are just two examples of many which illustrate the importance of not ignoring the Goddess and the spiritual significance of the 3rd house. Astrology seems impoverished otherwise.

Waybread wrote:

So far as I know, various deities were worshipped throughout the various empires of Antiquity. They typically had temples, rites, and special holidays dedicated to them. When the emperor became deified, he established a cult, as well. However, it was strictly forbidden to apply astrology to the Emperor, notably predictions of his death, to avoid political intrigue. (See T. Barton, Ancient Astrology, 44-49.)

Good point. Firmicus goes out his way to state that the Emperor is outside astrological effect. As a Roman citizen this was simply being pragmatic! Nothing got astrologers into more trouble than predictions regarding the life of the Emperor.

Like you I have seen very little textual support for the view proposed by Schmidt , Hand, Crane and now Johnson that Goddess cults would imply personal religion (3rd house) vs the state religion of Gods (9th house). The reality is that some state supported religion in Rome was Goddess centred. For example the vestal virgins worshipping Vesta. Equally, the cult of Bona Dea. Important imported cults such as those of Cybele (Anatolia) and Isis (Egypt) became some of the most important cults in Roman religion and their temples were important centres of both popular and public religion. I suppose one point that might support the view of Schmidt et al is that traditional official cults in Rome involved animal sacrifice and women were usually excluded from that. The cult of Bona Dea was a noteable exception. There was also the sense in which some mystery cults were restricted to women.

Overall though the discussion of the Emperor or Roman religion is probably culturally anachronistic as the associations of the houses no doubt date from the late 2nd or early first century BCE amongst most likely Greek speaking Egyptians. Egypt only became a Roman province in 30BCE so I dont think the Roman emperor was even a consideration for the early framers of astrology.

What we probably need to know is what were the social attitudes to religion and women in Ptolemaic Egypt? Can we assume similar attitudes to Greece in regards women and religion or did Egyptian ideas influence society too? From what I understand places like the newly established city of Alexandria were culturally diverse. Although founded by Macedonian Greeks, it had indigenous Egyptians, Jews and people from other parts of the mediterranean. In fact the city had possibly the largest Jewish population outside Judea. This must have made it religiously and culturally diverse. However, from what I have read the Greek speaking population kept itself quite culturally distinct and went out of its way to socially exclude indigeous Egyptians.

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

I dont propose to leap in with speculations here. This subject requires some serious research. More study of Ptolemaic Egyptian religion and attitudes to women might help us understand better the mind set of the early framers of horoscopic astrology. In particular more study of Alexandria as an intellectual centre of the Greek speaking mediterranean and a focal location for the formation of horoscopic astrology.

Mark

Good afternoon,

Those who carefully read my last post perhaps noticed 'horoscopic'. The connexions between Hellenistic and Indian astrologies are subject to various controversies that are in my humble opinion not germane to this thread. According to most authors on the subject, Babylonian astrology was not (yet) 'horoscopic' in the sense of Hellenistic.

Concerning Pantheons and theologies, the relevant questions here concern which are most suitable as a framework for horoscopic astrology, not their relative validity as such. Whether we like it or not, Babylonian, Hellenistic and Indian astrologies arose in 'polytheistic' Heathen cultural environments. Being able and willing to place ourselves into such mindsets and their perspectives contributes, methinks, essentially to our understanding of pre-Mediaeval astrologies in their proper contexts. The same applies to Abrahamic theologies relative to the Mediaeval period. A bridge between the two periods might be that the rather vague word 'God' used in the latter often seems to refer to the highly revered Demiurgos of Hellenistic times.

Since thousands of religions have come and gone in the course of human history whilst the celestial bodies have continually exhibited patterns quite similar to those observed today, my humble opinion is that astrological world views are indeed essentially more universal and more durable than theological ones. Theological squabbles seem to me out of place in an astrological context.

By the way, the Abrahamic religions since their inceptions declared themselves bitter enemies of Heathen religions and traditions. This happened much before our time. 'Crusade' is a purely Christian, Mediaeval notion.

Best regards,

lihin

Hello lihin

I neither have the time , inclination or intellectual credentials to enter into a debate on the history of world religion. I come to Skyscript to discuss astrology, its history and traditional techniques. I think most of us here are well aware that the perspective of monotheistic religions differ from those of polytheistic cults. This obviously did change the cultural milieu in which astrology operated. I would suggest though it would be more helpful if you moved away from religious generalisations and got involved in the more specific discussion going on here about the associations of the 3rd vs 9th house.

Incidentally, I somewhat take issue with your constant use of the word 'Heathen'. I think those religious outlooks are better described by the word 'pagan'. Not least because 'Heathen' was a term that defined these religions negatively in the context of being outside Judaism, Christianity or Islam. Pagan religion and philosophy had an existence outside the later definitions of monotheism. I also think the term paganism better incorporates the rich diversity of cults and philosophy under that umbrella term. Moreover, in contemporary Neo-Paganism the word 'Heathenism' has acquired a more restricted meaning and tends to refer to those adopting the beliefs of pre-Christian religion in Germany and Scandanavia. I think the word pagan is more general in application and less pejorative.

Mark

Good afternoon,

According to some etymological dictionaries, 'Pagan' derives from the Latin for 'peasant' and was (also) used in a derogatory way. Ancient Heathen philosophers can scarcely be termed 'peasants'.

Until now no-one has been able to state, as far as i can see, convincing reasons for excluding the 3rd house from the 'favourable' ones nor for revoking its Hellenistic title and delineation as 'House of the Goddess'.

Having begun this thread, my conclusion until now (always open to changes) is that the Hellenistic basic delineations of the 3rd house are more correct than the Mediaeval ones.

For me the 9th house is off topic in this thread. It is included in the lists of seven 'favourable houses' that exclude the 3rd.

Best regards,

lihin