Skyscript Astrology Forum

To say that Valens used only equal houses ignores his statement that when the MC falls in the 9th or 11th, then that topic (topos in Greek) also has to do with praxis.

Be careful Curtis, I never said that. Feel free to contact Riley yourself if you need his onion on whether that passage describes equal houses or not. In any event, I'm of the opinion that when translators translate, they make the text available to the scrutiny of others with knowledge of those matters and other experience to be pulled upon, they don't retain rights to exclusivity of opinion on whatever implications their translated works present.

Deb wrote:In any event, I'm of the opinion that when translators translate, they make the text available to the scrutiny of others with knowledge of those matters and other experience to be pulled upon, they don't retain rights to exclusivity of opinion on whatever implications their translated works present.

Then you agree that it depends upon what Valens was trying to do as to which house system he used? It is important to realize that when reading translations that semantic fields are often not exactly correct. I'm not saying that one isn't entitled to an opinion, only that if you have read the Greek that your opinion would become more definitive because you would know when the semantic fields are being stretched to make sense of something that is either in your own mind or if it truly originated in the mind of the author.

Deb wrote:(In a nutshell I would say that conceptually the distinction goes deep - do the houses and their meanings originate only from the principles of counting signs, or are they expected to be based on division of the celestial sphere by the angles, with meanings drawn from these and intermediate spaces according to notions of the power or weakness associated with proximity to, or distance from angles).

okay thanks deb.

the main problem i see is integrating 2 different axis - ascendant and midheaven.. as i understand it, a time factor( ascension like) is used to arrive at house systems like placidus which integrate the 2 axis.

however if one uses the ascendant axis only to define character, the importance of the ascendant degree and any planets in a close aspect to this degree will have great bearing on the character of the person as i see it. and the relationship between the signs remains intact.. this approach can be taken off the midheaven degree too, but it is in trying to meld these 2 axis together, especially in extreme northern or southern latitudes that creates extreme houses with a few signs intercepted, or one sign taking up a large chunk of zodiac space.. i suppose this is why i think looking at the ascendant and midheaven independent of one another is a better alternative then time based house systems.. the same means of how long it takes for the ascendant to reach the culmination degree is used for most types of primary directions too, but even when this is done - the 2 axis are treated as individual points in the chart and viewed separately..

James, there my be merits in what you suggest for astrologers nowadays, but this was of less concern to astrolgers in the regions where the techniques of astrology were developed; and where the symbolic associations of space are known to have been intertwined with the symbolic elements of passages of time.

Curtis, let me set out my own view in my own simple-minded way, without the knowledge of ancient Greek, but with the benefit of decades of exploration of astrological texts translated out of whatever ancient sources I could get my hands on. My interest is not to prove the merits of one house system or another, but to question the still widely spread assertion that the whole sign system is the original, the intentional and effectively the only system of house division employed before the influence of Arabic texts (all references that suggest otherwise to be dismissed, passed over lightly, suspected of being interpolations, or considered ?messy?).

For me to suggest that Valens only used equal house division would be conflicting with my interest of not seeing the complexities of ancient astrology simplified into a ?final solution? that we are not qualified to make. It would also be an act of insanity, given that I previously commented on his description of quadrant division, and my argument that this was not devoid of meaning for topics of life.

So what we have in Valens is two definite descriptions of house division methods, without clear understanding of how or to what extent they were employed by him. But certainly there is no reason to suppose that they were meaningless in any element of interpretation, for topics of life or not.

The equal house division correlates to descriptions offered by other important sources (Dorotheus, Ptolemy, Firmicus), whilst the reference to quadrant division is attributed to older sources by Valens, and also described in works such as those of Antiochus (dating questioned, on the assumption that such an approach was not used at that time) and Porphyry - this gives at least one demonstration of how the two descriptions offered by Valens might actually be two references to the same method of division: one being idealised the other aiming for greater accuracy. Perhaps, perhaps not. The passage in Valens is interesting in this regard, make of it what you will. I am not in a position to make an authoritative statement, and I don?t believe that ? at this point in time - anyone else is in that position either.

This is Schmidt?s translation of the passage from Antiochus Thesaurus I.46:

Each of these 12 places obtains as its lot the 5 pre-ascended degrees and the 25 post-ascending degrees, if the squares should occur through ninety degrees. But if they should occur with different numbers of degrees, divide the degrees of the square numbers equally into three third-parts, and you would know how many degrees each place of the zodiac has. For example, if the midheaven should be 96 degrees distant from the horoskopos, the setting will be 84 degrees distant from the midheaven, and the subterranean pivot will be 96 degrees from the setting, and the horoskopos will be 84 degrees from the subterranean pivot point. From these things you will learn what the twelve-turning has for the succeedent [places], by distributing equally to each place the degrees that are in addition to those of a proper square, beginning the addition from the degrees dividing the birth hour and the 5 degrees that have pre-ascended it.

PS - what I said before about Hand goes for Schmidt too. I appreciate that without his labour, it would not be possible to readily draw reference to passages like this. However, I beleive that I am absolutely qualified to contribute to discussion on the origin, development and historical employment of houses and their methods of division.

A most interesting thread! Deb, may The Force be with you.

You wrote:

My interest is not to prove the merits of one house system or another, but to question the still widely spread assertion that the whole sign system is the original, the intentional and effectively the only system of house division employed before the influence of Arabic texts (all references that suggest otherwise to be dismissed, passed over lightly, suspected of being interpolations, or considered ?messy?).

Exactly. Historical narrative sources are inherently messy.

A question that I find helpful in close readings of texts is to consider, what was the author's project? What was his motive, or what was he trying to achieve? Notably if he doesn't specify, we can look and see how he put together his text.

Valens was quite the compiler, and a conservative one, at that (in addition to writing a manual for his students.) Contradictions in his work seemed less important to him than retaining a record of different methods. Unsurprisingly we find topics described differently in different places. His editorial mindset is very consistent with Egyptian and Hebrew textual mentalities: conserve everything as potentially valuable.

Scientist and systematizer Ptolemy, in contrast, hardly used houses at all--he mentions just a few, and very sparingly; unlike the other Hellenistic astrologers who referred to sacred texts, adepts, and religious mysteries. It would be just a huge leap to suggest he used whole signs-- or any other (except in one case where 5 degrees into a sign seems important to him.) This makes me think that the origin of houses was originally religious and Egyptian (as Deb proposed in Houses: Temples of the Sky.)

My fledgling thesis is that whole signs were initially a simple default system used when horoscopic astrology first emerged in the 2-3 centuries BCE, but that there were some problems with whole signs which subsequent house systems authors sought to address. However, they did not do so in an orderly fashion.

Houses were not used in Babylonian astrology, so houses developed some time after the introduction of astrology into Greece from Mesopotamia. Babylonian astrology was based on the moon's transits, not the sun, so the definition of houses as pre-determined in static space by a model of the sun's diurnal transits seems very Egyptian to me.

I've looked at the horoscopes interpreted by Neugebauer and his associates, based on archaeological finds, and the majority do not mention a house cusp system. The demotic horoscopes that do mention houses sometimes use Egyptian symbolism, like calling the 4th house the "Dwat" (Duat), the Egyptian name for the hall of Osiris, a major stage in the soul's passage through their afterlife. Several planets were identified as attributes of Horus. I think the "rudder" or "tiller" associated with the first house in some Hellenistic astrology texts stems from the Egyptian barque of the sun.

We find different explanations amongst the Hellenistic astrologers for the strong and weak houses; and particularly very different thematic meanings ascribed to the houses. (The third is the moon, goddess, and brothers; the latter seemingly derived from Gemini as the third sign, to cite just one example.) Manilius (3: 96ff) describes a house system ("athla") based upon lots. This variety would make sense if astrologers did not start out with one unified house system, but with several different house systems that they subsequently thought to weld together.

I think houses initially had a pretty weak affiliation with the rest of the horoscope. Because the stations of the sun (or pharoah or soul) were religious in origin, they needn't be firmly connected to particular degrees.

(to be continued)

(continued from my previous post)

Let's look at the technology. An early type of horoscope was the "astrologer's board", a fixed zodiac on which gems could be moved around, each symbolizing a different planet. This would suggest a whole-sign system, if houses were used, at all. Apparently the earliest known astrologer's board is from 2100 to 2200 BP, prior to our major textual sources. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/worlds-olde ... discovered. It would be easiest to use such a board, I imagine, either with no houses or whole-sign houses.

We often find the Hellenists using houses sparingly, even though they give one or more thematic schema. Delineations for which we today might use houses, to them were often determined through planetary relationship or "lots" (Arabian parts.) It is almost as though astrologers initially developed some house-free techniques, subsequent to thinking, "OK, now that we've settled on houses, what do we do with them?"

Here I will display my ignorance, in the hope that someone will help me out, but I actually do not find whole signs to be a very realistic way of dividing up a horoscope-- which is fundamentally a stylized representation of the earth in the cosmos.

I have yet to get my head around how the whole signs system fits the problem that different signs take different amounts of time to rise, depending upon latitude and time of year, which the ancients were well aware of. Regardless of whether degrees represent time or distance, rising sign times do not squish neatly into 30-degree segments.

[I am still puzzled by a horoscope divided into two equal hemispheres, upper and lower, because day and night balance each other with 12 precise hours a piece only at the equinoxes; a problem for any house system. If someone can explain how this works with uniform 30-degree signs I would greatly appreciate it.]

I am also puzzled by why the emerging sun is shown under the horizon (significantly so, for a late degree rising) when the ascendant supposedly represents the sun's position at dawn; thus positioning much of the first house into what seemingly ought to be the 12th house. Similarly, I don't get why the MC should wind up far from the 10th house in a high-latitude birth at certain times of year, when supposedly it relates to the 10th house.

(But Larxene, I think this explains how you could get a first house planet either by day or night, depending upon whether it was above or below the ascendant.)

To me, there is a real unhinging of "hinges", "cardines", angles, &c. from houses in both equal houses and whole signs systems, which is why I wonder if several systems were designed separately and then superimposed. I do understand the "logic" of explaining weak and strong houses as far as it goes, but why it should seem logical to anybody escapes me. (However, you can map it very well onto daily weather patterns in the Egyptian summer, if anybody is interested.)

The ancients had several means for estimating the ascendant, which could then be relatively easily mapped onto the rest of the horoscope in an equal house system. I think at one point Valens says, that one can find the ASC, and count 90 degrees from it to get your MC, in addition to more sophisticated methods.

But neither equal house system really gets at the above problems of the impact of time and latitude on the horoscope, which quadrant systems seem designed to solve.

Porphyry houses make sense, because it is simple enough to walk outside (assuming a flat plane,) identify the points of sunrise, sunset, and the MC simply by looking at the sky, dividing the quadrants by 3, and extrapolating into the lower hemisphere.

It does seem as though whole signs were the "default" house system initially, but that with time, more refinement took place. However, this did not happen in any unified step-by step fashion.

History is a lot messier than tidy schemes for systematization, as Ptolemy clearly realized.

@waybread:

Indeed, if we use WSH, it would be possible for the Sun to be in the first house by day and night. However, by Equal House the first house is always under the horizon. Yet, the house system Maternus described was Equal House!

At this point, ways to explain this paradox will be speculative. Perhaps Liber Secundus and Liber Tertius were respectively compiled from two different sources.



Regarding Curtis's observation that Valens seemed to have used WSH for topics/places, I noticed something similar with Maternus's delineation of Albinus's chart. The ascendant and the planets were described as being in signs. Yet there were some instances where he made references to the houses, but it seemed like he had equated the nth House with the nth Sign, or at least, there was no differentiation between them.

To further investigate this, I checked out Albinus's chart in Astrodatabank to no avail, as the planetary positions were slightly but significantly different than what Maternus described.



@james_m

In practice, it makes a big difference. The differences are especially stark when dealing with Ascendants in the late degrees. Planets in the 9th sign may end up being in the 8th house, planets in 10th end up in the 9th, etc. In addition, you need to decide on whether to accept out of sign conjunctions. Aspects may also change if you compare WSH with Equal House.



One interesting thing to note is that Maternus also described the MC as being 90 degrees away from the Ascendant. Intriguingly, he states something that seems similar to Valens as well (see the part in bold):

The Medium Caelum is the tenth house from the ascendant, but sometimes also the MC is found exactly in the eleventh sign from the ascendant. To understand this more clearly, compute, starting from the degree of the ascendant, through the other following signs, 270 degrees, and in whatever sign the 271st degree is found, this is allotted the Medium Caelum, which the Greeks call Mesuranima.

But if we interpreted the bolded part literally, it would be referring to the cases where the Ascendant is in the 30th degree of any sign, e.g. 29 degrees Aries. So it seems that this method of finding the MC is strictly used in conjunction with the Equal House system.

Mark, to my own disadvantage I didn't take note of the link you provided in your second post of this thread. I knew some of these issues had been discussed before, but couldn't find that older thread myself (despite searching) so ended up retyping the quote from Antiochus. As you note, many issues relevant to this thread have been discussed before, and in greater depth, so let me give that link again, as there is no reason why that thread cannot be continued if anyone wants to add general points to it.

http://skyscript.co.uk/forums/viewtopic ... c&start=60

I don't want the discussion in this thread to drift away from its focus, which is specifically about the significance of passages in Valens work, and how they impact upon our understanding of his use of houses, or our understanding of the approach taken by other astrologers of that period. I think it is necessary to draw comparisons with other works to show ideas that were around in his time, that could have been influential on him, or influenced by him. Astrologers of his era would probably have had a better familiarity with his approach than we do.

It is very difficult for me to moderate and contribute, so hopefully everyone will understand my request to keep the discussion on topic.

A problem we have with Valens is that a great deal of his examples are intended to show the meaning of lots, and he didn't leave chart diagrams (or at least we don't have them), and he very rarely makes reference to the placement of planets in their radical houses. Examples where he does are worth looking at it in detail. One of the things I bear in mind is that in regions closer to the equator the houses would have been more proportional generally, and though we expect the astrologers to have been careful to distinguish between the terminology used for signs and houses, I'm not sure that they always were. I've noticed this over and over with traditional works - we expect the use of certain words to be loaded with particular meaning, but the more you investigate the more you discover that the special meaning you expect appears sometimes, and sometimes not.

Larxene - have you checked the Holden translation of those quotes you gave from Firmicus earlier? I noticed yesterday that Bram's translation of the Latin is so abbreviated as to be pretty useless. I was hoping to take a closer look today, but can already see I won't have time for that. If anyone else has the Holden translation it would be useful to compare.

Larxene wrote:Indeed, if we use WSH, it would be possible for the Sun to be in the first house by day and night. However, by Equal House the first house is always under the horizon. Yet, the house system Maternus described was Equal House!

The description of the Sun in the first house by day, or the 7th house by night allows two possibilities: one would be a whole sign approach, the other would be the expectation that within 5? of the asc-desc axis the Sun is counted as on the ascendant or descendant (or within the 1st or 7th house) even though the centre of its body has passed the horizon - the criteria by which, according to Ptolemy's definition, day turns to night and vice versa.

One of my close family members has the Sun just above the ascendant, and I wouldn't hesitate to refer to that as a 1st house Sun in a diurnal chart. We don't know the extent that the 5? allowance was recognized by Firmicus, but because there are various references to it in ancient works, we can't eliminate the possibility that it impacts on his work. A more persuasive example would be one where the Sun is seen to be more than 5? from the angle and defined in such a way that leaves only the possibility of whole-sign consideration.

From the first book of Valens pg 2 Riley translation:

Aries is by nature watery, with thunder and hail. From its first degree to the equinox, it is stormy, full of hail, windy, destructive.

It is important to keep in mind that Valens used a zodiac that set the vernal equinox point at 8 degrees Aries. Schmidt has said that this could be very likely a tropical zodiac with an 8 degree offset. Something to keep in mind when using WSH...

Hello everyone,

Before I give two ways to test whole signs (more correctly called topical places) let me direct your attention to something else.
As someone who has taken Robert Zoller's 2 Courses, I was taught to consider both house systems but in actuality Zoller uses pretty much Alcabitius only. So did I. So did Ben Dykes and Regulus Astrology and I am sure other students as well.
Then the above mentioned two people started using whole signs. (it would be interesting if they read this and decide to share with the forum why they switched, but having purchased the two books of Regulus Astrology and the translations and lectures of Ben Dykes, I know what they would most probably say).
Whole signs looked strange for me and too different, they changed many charts! I kept on using quadrant houses for a few years until I got my hands on Schmidt's translation of Valens. This was THE turning point for me even though I had read Ptolemy and Dorotheus before that.
I suggest that anyone really interested in this should read Valens, but the whole book and go over it at least 2 or 3 times and study it deeply with an open mind and contemplate on it. Giving quotes is not enough in my opinion.
My take, based on the Anthology itself and not on Schmidt or Hand or Brennan or Curtis, is that whole signs is implicit except for the length of life, the tweaking of the profections for the angles in some cases, and derived houses.

Anyway, one can only do so much with theory, it is best to see it in practice for themselves and in an objective way. So, to see that whole signs really are what Valens (and others) meant, here are two suggestions:

1) Take note of the Rulers of the Times in a given chart, especially the Distributor and Partner (easier seen when inferiors due to speed) ingressing into the the profected Asc and also the Lord of the Year ingressing in that zoidion or even the natal Asc or other key places. You will note that the significations start at the beginning of the zoidion and that intermediate house cusps mean nothing in terms of topics.
One can also note the ingresses of Jupiter and Saturn. They don't necessarily have to be Rulers of the Times (they could rule the SR for instance), they can rule an angle or be configured to those Rulers for their significations to be noted immediately having once entered a given zoidion.
Do this for many charts and see for yourselves whether intermediate house cusps have any role at all.


2) Valens introduces the so called Decennials technique which is extremely valuable and very peculiar. The technique, as with others, implies whole signs even though it does seem to mimic the Predomination/Apheta one.
So here is what you can test: take charts in which you have taken some time to study the whole life of the native, which have the Sect Light at least or better both Lights cadent in quadrant houses but actually angular in whole signs. See which version of chart delineation is true: the one with the Light/s angular in whole signs or the one with the first planet after the Ascendant in zodiacal order.
Again, study many charts and see whether the Decennials technique (or Zodiacal Releasing etc etc) really can work with a quadrant house system or not. My answer based on Valens and many charts I have examined is that whole signs is the only system, though as I said Decennials can be tricky (because of the two doctrines of busy places).

It is best and easiest to test this with the best program for Hellenistic and Medieval Astrology, namely Delphic Oracle.
In fact Curtis did a good video (in the News section of the forum) a few days ago on Arnold Schwarzenegger's chart and is so happens that Arnie has a nocturnal chart with the Moon cadent in quadrant but actually in the angular 7th zoidion and the Decennials technique counts it as angular and starts the division from it. Of course, if one wants to test Decennials one can set Delphic Oracle so that the person chooses which planet to start the division with.

Right, Curtis-- supported by Neugebauer and Van Hoesen, Greek Horoscopes (available as a google book.)

Deb wrote:

I don't want the discussion in this thread to drift away from its focus, which is specifically about the significance of passages in Valens work, and how they impact upon our understanding of his use of houses, or our understanding of the approach taken by other astrologers of that period. I think it is necessary to draw comparisons with other works to show ideas that were around in his time, that could have been influential on him, or influenced by him. Astrologers of his era would probably have had a better familiarity with his approach than we do.

I wonder if Neugebauer & Van Hoesen is worth revisiting. They went through each of Valens's nativities and pegged their dates. It should be possible to cast these charts today, therefore, to see how Valens constructed the ones where houses or cusps are relevant. N & VH cast all of Valens's horoscopes, and shed some light on how there might be some slippage in Valens's house system/s.

1. Rising times vary according to latitude (called "clima"), and were calculated in different ways in the ancient world. Valens used both major arithmetic systems, but no trigonomic methods.

2. Valens's computations are all based on the latitudes of either Alexandria or Babylon, regardless of where the native was born. (N & VH, pp. 185-6) Valens doesn't give the birth location of most of his nativities, so this could introduce some error. Although Valens did note clima in 53 nativities ranging into the Levant and Rome, re-calculating the horoscopes shows that he actually used the latitude of Babylon for the most part.

3. Although Valens wrote ca. 150 CE and lived from ca. 120-175 CE, he gives horoscopes as early as 37 CE. (p. 166.) It is likely, though not conclusive, that he got earlier horoscopes from other earlier sources and followed their methods. (He approvingly cites the methods of a lost 1st century CE source, Critodemus (3:8, 5:11-12, 9-8 ) with some early horoscopes from these sections.)

N &VH say that Valens's latest horoscope comes from 188 CE, so there's an authorship discrepancy somewhere. I don't know if Riley or anybody else got into the question how how heavily the Anthology might have been edited subsequent to its first edition.

4. "Also, the accurate determination of the... [MC] is not yet of any importance in the Anthology. Although 'Midheaven' is often mentioned, it is generally simply the third sign from the Horoscopos." (p. 184) In 3 nativities where Valens gave an "accurate MC" he followed different methods. (Ibid.)

5. N & VH (88-9) also state that Valens gives two versions of the same horoscope from 74 AD (and elsewhere.) These might be worth checking for methods discrepancies, vs. simply as illustrations of different points.

There is so much contextual evidence of Valens as a compiler of various methods. If we look at the thematic contents of the houses within and between Hellenistic sources, then the variation becomes even more striking. Hellenistic astrology was clearly in a big state of flux.