Skyscript Astrology Forum

Paul, could you please tell me if you are going to continue this conversation, or should I introduce another facet of the topic with some new charts?

Thanks,
Therese

Therese Hamilton wrote:Paul, could you please tell me if you are going to continue this conversation, or should I introduce another facet of the topic with some new charts?

Thanks,
Therese

Sorry Therese, my time has just become limited again. I try to fit in astrological discussions wherever I can, but have missed some of your last posts and have not had time to read through your articles on your site. I hope to get back to it, but it could be a couple of weeks

Hi Therese,

You must have noticed my presentation of a few key arguments for seeing the "sleeping prophet" as a strongly Piscean character - regardless of the zodiac being used - in my "Cayce interruption" above.

More specifically, I was talking about the prominent role of Venus in Pisces ruling the Midheaven and an important stellium there. In regard of what is known about the man, I would say, a much better match than a rulership by Mars, according to your scheme.

Given that you have been a Cayce follower since the 70ies, and that some of your astrological views are based on his readings, I assume that you could demonstrate to us an at least equally convincing delineation based on Mars as a main contributor to Edgar's chart and life?

Michael

Reply to Michael Sternbach:

First of all, I chose a poor word in ?follower.? I meant to say that I have been a student of the Cayce readings since the 1970s. I went back and changed my wording to ?student.?

Now let?s go back to the beginning, Michael. This topic was started to deal with what you claimed to be my ?twisted pretzels? of inaccurate traits of sidereal signs. Rather than carrying through with your promise of providing more pretzels, you broke into the conversation with the chart of Edgar Cayce. This was bad forum manners. If you want to discuss the chart of Edgar Cayce, your charts and comments on this topic should be deleted, and a new topic started for Cayce?s chart

So if you want to further discuss Cayce?s chart, please copy your commentary and save it, then delete your Cayce charts and commentary from this topic. I will start a new topic and post Cayce?s tropical and sidereal charts from Solar Fire, as those are much easier to read than the charts you posted from Astrodienst. Then if you re-post your comments under the charts, the conversation can continue.

In order to discuss Cayce?s Moon, I need Prash Trivedi?s 27 Celestial Portals, which (to my severe frustration) isn?t in its accustomed place in my office. I will have to find the book since his delineations of the 27 lunar mansions are more extensive than any other author?s. (The Moon belongs to the mansions, and the Sun belongs to the 12 signs.)

Another matter: You apparently have a copy of my birth chart. I asked you to PM your data to me so that we are on a level playing field, so to speak (a sidereal Libra function to be sure: equality). In order to converse further with you, I would like to see that PM.

It is the very worst of forum manners to comment on another member?s birth chart, which you have done. All data submitted to me is kept strictly private, often with bogus names attached. I never mention another member?s chart on a public forum. In my opinion, moderators should immediately delete any such posts.

Therese

Therese wrote:

Now let?s go back to the beginning, Michael. This topic was started to deal with what you claimed to be my ?twisted pretzels? of inaccurate traits of sidereal signs. Rather than carrying through with your promise of providing more pretzels, you broke into the conversation with the chart of Edgar Cayce. This was bad forum manners.

The way I see it, I was providing a practical example for what I mean. So I was somewhat surprised that you considered this an interruption.

The nativities you presented, which I am not familiar with, I didn't feel competent to talk about ? especially since we are dealing with such a fundamental topic here. - Paul commented, instead.

That's why I suggested someone we are both acquainted with.

So if you want to further discuss Cayce?s chart, please copy your commentary and save it, then delete your Cayce charts and commentary from this topic. I will start a new topic and post Cayce?s tropical and sidereal charts from Solar Fire, as those are much easier to read than the charts you posted from Astrodienst. Then if you re-post your comments under the charts, the conversation can continue.

Personally, I find the Astrodienst charts much easier to read than the charts you or other American astrologers typically publish. I guess it's simply what one has grown accustomed to. Plus, I may need my version for further demonstrations on the thread.

So I suggest that you post what you like, the way you like it, first. I would then transfer my whole post regarding Cayce, and delete it here.

Another matter: You apparently have a copy of my birth chart. I asked you to PM your data to me so that we are on a level playing field, so to speak (a sidereal Libra function to be sure: equality). In order to converse further with you, I would like to see that PM.

It is the very worst of forum manners to comment on another member?s birth chart, which you have done. All data submitted to me is kept strictly private, often with bogus names attached. I never mention another member?s chart on a public forum. In my opinion, moderators should immediately delete any such posts.

I think it should be left to the discretion of any astrologer if they wish to share their birth data with anybody but their closest associates. Yours is in the public domain. Thus inviting public discussion of your chart by other astrologers. Even more so when you bring up the topic yourself in the course of a conversation!

In the unlikely case that you don't know what I am talking about, I will PM you the link, so you can potentially erase it.

However, I would certainly welcome an agreement on both sides to clearly stay on topic during any future conversation, and refrain from remarks regarding personal backgrounds altogether.

Michael

I didn't place my data in the public domain. Someone else must have taken that liberty. But I won't carry the discussion further without your PM, Michael. It's up to you. I've been considering withdrawing from Skyscript due to the rudeness and lack of mutual respect among some posters. At least I'm set to take a break for awhile.

As far as I'm concerned, (Michael), you crossed the line with your comments. However, I have his chart....somewhere. Don't know where it is at the moment. Somewhere among several hundred charts of astrologers, probably, which I've never alphabetized.

Therese,

Not to continue this probably fairly unproductive conversation is fine with me, too.

Let me assure you that this is a fairly polite forum in comparison with many others.

Best,
Michael

For clarity, I'll make one comment about the birth chart of Edgar Cayce. The chart belongs to the man, Edgar Cayce, and reflects his life, but does not describe the content of his readings as such.

Later on, after a much needed Skyscript break, I may begin a topic on Cayce's chart.

Paul, I hope you'll eventually find time to continue our conversation here.

Therese

For clarity, I'll make one comment about the birth chart of Edgar Cayce. The chart belongs to the man, Edgar Cayce, but does not reflect the content of his readings. Cayce was entirely unconscious during the readings, and had no memory of what he said in trance.

Likewise for clarity, I need to make one comment in reply.

I would agree that Cayce drew on a superconscious source of information when in trance ? but what he shared was information filtered through his personality structure, nonetheless.

This is a very important consideration with any psychics. It's more obvious than in most other fields of human experience here, that the observer cannot really be seen as separate from the observed.

Looking at the charts of different psychics, you may in fact recognise their specific trance personalities. Invariably, the trans-Saturnian planets play a key role. Possibly, I will present other examples later.

In Edgar's case, the exchange between his conscious and his sub-/superconscious parts of his personality is also exemplified by his devotion to Christianity both when awake and in trance, his constant use of "biblical" language while channelling (Cayce was an enthusiastic student of the King James bible), and by his usage of terms which ? in all likelihood ? he got familiar with by reading Blavatsky.

Also, in this context it should not be forgotten that Cayce demonstrated psychic abilities when in the waking state as well, such as ?reading? a book put under his pillow overnight, seeing auras, and receiving people's thoughts telepathically, and he sometimes spontaneously shared his perceptions and wisdom much like he did when in trance.

Therese Hamilton wrote: I meant the understanding of those terms is modern. I've taken up the terms "active" and "passive" in my article on the triplicities: http://www.snowcrest.net/sunrise/aatriplicities2013.htm

The meanings of "active" and "passive" are reversed in the modern understanding of those terms.

Hi Therese

As per your PM, I've taken a look at this thread again.

I read through your article here which I didn't get time to do back in May.

The point of dissension, as I understand it, relates to what active/passive may mean.

From your article:

Aristotle?s Passive is external to the active, and is related more to the outer world. (Thus, the usual astrological understanding of "active" is what Aristotle might term passive!) Aristotle's passive has been said to relate to matter or the world of forms. The passive intellect would represent computer data files, but not the hard drive itself. This function can be related to the Moon which collects and reflects light from the Sun.

This is an interesting way of looking at it, with regards the locus of intellect being either internal or external. However the entire idea of the passive/active intellect is actually a very complicated, and, if I can add, controversial subject. It's not a clear-cut part of Aristotelian philosophy.

I think it's a little bit more than just internal/external - keeping in mind my caveat that this is a complex subject anyway, and I have not studied philosophy at higher education, or anything like it. I am not sure whether you have?

The way I like to think about the active/passive intellect is that the active intellect is not just some internal locus, rather it is emanating. The passive intellect is therefore receiving from an external locus. I hope this makes sense? It is not just that the active intellect is internal, it is emanating from internal such that it applies itself to the external/passive in order to be perceived.

Consider this quote:
http://bit.ly/1oGQScB

In the whole of nature each kind has something as its matter, which is potentially all the things in the kind, and something else as the cause and producer, which produces them all - for instance, the craft in relation to its matter. One sort of intellect corresponds to matter, by becoming all things. Another sort corresponds to the producer by producing all things in the way that a state, such as light, produces things - for in a way light makes potential colours into actual colours

With this in mind, we may see that light, or the thing which generates and emits light, is the active intellect, and that which perceives or is given form from light is the passive intellect. With this in mind, we may see the active intellect as being that which generates or emanates from, say, within, and the passive intellect is that which is altered or takes on form because of it.

My conclusion then is the active intellect is that which emanates/moves and the passive that which receives/moved.

To back up this statement, let me take a quote.
Notes on Aristotle De Anima 3. 5, by John M. Rist
Classical Philology, Vol. 61

Of all the Aristotelian doctrines perhaps the most difficult is that concerning the Active and Passive Intellects which we find in the short fifth chapter of the third book of De Anima. Interpretations of this chapter have been almost as numerous as interpreters and it would be naive to expect at this stage to be definitive.
...
We may say then that there are within each individual soul an Active and Passive Intellect. The Active Intellect is the moving factor and the Passive the factor that is moved.
...
The effect of the former [Active] is to bring the latter [Passive] up from potency to act.

In other words it is not just that the Active Intellect has an internal locus, but that it acts outwardly to make sense/shape of the potential passive.

Therefore we imply movement, with the active intellect acting outward or moving, and the passive intellect being acted upon, or impressed upon, or formed, or shaped or moved.

Now, when we see it from this point of view, and not just merely as a check box of whether the Intellect can more or less be considered internal or external (keeping in mind the quality of the soul is such that it contains both in Aristotelian philosophy), then we realise that movement or direction is the important part.

With this in mind, this is actually pretty much exactly what modern tropical astrolgoers expect from the words masculine and feminine in so far as they relate to activity and passivity. In this sense they relate the masculine to the active and the feminine to the passive. I think what you believed to be the case is that tropical astrologers take masculine/active and feminine/passive to be "externally located" for masculine and "internally located" for feminine. But actually this is not so.

The passive intellect would represent computer data files, but not the hard drive itself. This function can be related to the Moon which collects and reflects light from the Sun.

I agree with the gist of what you're trying to say in this piece I think - though I believe you miss the implicit idea of motion or application for active intellect, and reception or being moved for the passive. It results that you mix up this analogy here. Instead what you ought to say, I believe, is that the computer files, representing certain data, are Active, whilst the hard drive, the form in which that data is encapsulated, is feminine. So this gets understood backward here in your example. I am not sure if this is a slip of the pen so to speak.

I hope you can see from this that actually the modern tropical understanding, whilst surely confused in many ways from the Aristotelian meaning of Active/Passive in many ways, namely by being a simplified variant of it, the basic crux is actually preserved, in that tropical astrologers believe active/masculine to be in relation to a sense of movement outward (hence its link to that which is dry, consider dry sand dispersing), whilst on the other hand, passive/feminine is that which is applied to, moves or is inward or holding (linking with moist, consider moist sand clumping and holding.


Now, let's go back to why we're even discussing Aristotle here (even if we assume, fairly reasonably, that Ptolemy has Aristotle more or less in mind, or is at least inspired directly or indirectly by Aristotle) when he mentions masculine and feminine signs.

The reason we're mentioning any of this is because you stated:
Thu May 08, 2014 5:00 am

I relate the qualities of stubbornness or persistence to Aries as the more internally focused sign for Mars. (Scorpio is externalized Mars energy.)

Thu May 08, 2014 7:19 pm

But the understanding of ?feminine? and ?masculine? is a modern tropical teaching.

Now as I was trying to show before, feminine and masculine are traditional concepts as per my quote from ptolemy, Ptolemy lists Aries explicitly as a masculine sign. Therefore the notion that this is a modern teaching is surely inaccurate. Now what the conclusions are based on this could be modern, but, hopefully from my post here, you can see now that actually the problem is, as I understand it, not understanding what tropical astrologers mean by active/masculine and passive/feminine in regards the signs, which, as I hope to have shown, is the same as what is meant by the Aristotelian philosophy (or at least as I personally understand it). I think the point that is missed from your summary of the philosophy on your article is the sense of movement of application being completely overlooked in favour of merely attributing a locus for each, but, in fact, Aristotle is saying that both concepts are found internal in the soul, for a start, but actually the key defining criterion is whether one is moved or moves, whether one generates or receives/perceives what is generated. And this is exactly how Tropical astrologers understand the matter.

So now going right back, clearly the idea that Aries is an internally focused sign is clearly not true provided we are generating this information from the fact that Aries is a masculine sign, which, as I've shown, really is a traditional concept after all, and not a modern tropical one.


EDIT

I might add that when I say it is as tropical astrologers understand it, I don't mean to be exclusive with that statement, but rather also inclusive of tropical astrologers. I am of the opinion that both sidereal and tropical astrologers understand this correctly. With Active being outwardly moving, and Passive being moved or inwardly holding/shaping/moving.

Therese, although conceptually related to the last point, I wanted to break up the posts so as not to have one massive post that is difficult or draining to read.

This is an important distinction because it solves the apparent tropical-sidereal contradiction of signs which tend either to extroversion or introversion. For example a sign with a primary inward focus is called Active in Aristotle?s philosophy (the mainframe), but passive (feminine) in the western astrological system.

I think there is actually an underlying assumption/problem implicit or at the foundation of this whole idea, which is mentioned earlier in your article.

Quoting from your article:
http://www.snowcrest.net/sunrise/aatriplicities2013.htm

There also seems to be a general belief among astrologers that whatever traits signs of the zodiac might have are similar in the tropical and sidereal zodiac. Thus, if tropical Aries is forthright, impatient and aggressive, then sidereal Aries must manifest the same traits. I must agree with Mr. Spock in this one: ?Captain, that is not logical.? If this were true, it seems we?d have to shift the physical nature of the sky depending on which astrologer (tropical or sidereal) happened to be reading our astrological chart.

But actually the argument is totally logical, what is not (necessarily) logical is the conclusion you make.

Let's take the argument again, both the sidereal and tropical astrologers say the same things about the same sign, but you believe that this can't be true unless we shift the entire nature of the sky depending on who is observing it. But actually there is a fundamentally easier conclusion - one of them is wrong.

It's entirely logical and possible for two people to make the same claim. We can logically conclude that one of them is wrong. We do not have to logically conclude that both are actually correct in their observation but the problem is that actually they are both measuring the same thing without realising it, or misunderstanding what is being measured, which is ultimately the conclusion that your article draws.

You say that both tropical and sidereal are correct, more or less, and this is because actually tropical astrologers don't understand what masculine/feminine mean in relation to active/passive signs, and, as a result, reverse what each means, which, as it happens, would mean that the tropical understanding of active correlates to the sidereal understanding of passive.

But this is not true, as I hope I demonstrated in the previous post.

Therefore the other really simple logical conclusion is that one of them is simply wrong. We may not like that conclusion but it is a logical conclusion that we could, if we chose, form from the argument.

The other conclusion, notably not even considered here, is that rather than tropical astrologers getting it wrong, it's entirely possible that sidereal astrologers have it mixed up and are altering the sign meanings. I don't happen to believe that but I just put it out there as another logical derivative that could be drawn.

So, back to Captian Spock, he's more likely to say "that is one alternative, the other is that one of the two parties is simply incorrect."

Going back then to the entire argument. I have really never seen any reason to consider that tropical astrologers are casually, and constantly over time, altering the meaning of the signs so as to keep them in line with sidereal placements. If we wish to make this argument by way of examining what each means by masculine and feminine, then I do not think we can do so in terms of the evidence we have available, insofar as modern tropical (and indeed also sidereal) astrologers mean by active/feminine similar things to what we can assume Ptolemy meant by it if we derive it from Aristotelian concepts of Active/Passive Intellect such as you (probably rightly) assume in your article.

We need something else to make a compelling case. So far I have not read one - despite this being an actually quite common assertion made by sidereal astrologers.

Ernst Wilhelm, the greatest 21st Century Astrologer, has already put this argument to bed.

He has done the research, wrote the books, and programmed the best Vedic software in order to back it all up.

I don't see why people are still debating the issue.