Skyscript Astrology Forum

Hello,

I've always wondered (and still wondering) why the ancients didn't stick to the same symmetry for the seven planetary Lots (or Hermetic Lots). What I mean is that to turn the all the planets simultaneously (according to primary motion) until the sun is aligned on the ascendant (diurnal chart) or until moon is aligned to the ascendant (nocturnal chart) and simply say that where turned Venus is, is the Lot of Venus, where turned Saturn is, is the Lot of Saturn, etc. Why the inclusion of the Lots of Spirit and Fortune for the other Hermetic Lots?

Well, as mentioned before presently I only use Lots of Fortune, Spirit and Eros (from among the Hermetic Lots). I am not comfortable using the rest of the Hermetic Lots due to conflicting philosophies as well as very limited practical explications by traditional and modern astrologers. The reason for Eros to be included is simply because I am testing Brennan's method. I will not use any astrological techniques whose philosophies are inconsistent and I will advocate strongly those that are consistent as well as practical. Although Eros is among the Hermetic Lots that falls in the category of the "inconsistence" (which formula, whether to reverse or not, etc.), at least it has been partially shown by Brennan to work in practice - so I am testing it for practical reasons. This is also what I like about Frawley. Although I strongly disagree with some of his philosophical arguments, he does have a number of interesting practical methods that I can immediately test and use e.g. what he calls "mundane conjunction" where the Lots can be used to time events in solar and lunar return charts.

Here is a video that I made a few months ago using Delphic Oracle which shows how the speed of the five planetary Hermetic lots change based on the sect of the chart:

http://www.hellenisticastrology.com/vid ... icLots.mp4

This is how the lots are supposed to move according to the calculations presented by Paul and Olympiodorus - and also partially in Abu Ma'shar and Bonatti as well (they use different calculations for Eros and Necessity).

The 'fluctional' nature of the lots, which you can see in the above video, is a large part of what Schmidt objects to, because it doesn't make 'sense' to him that they should be so erratic. Gabe reiterates this position with his statement that

This creates an extremely erratic motion in the Lot when it is "contrary to sect", which we can see offends the proportion & stability both the Lots of Fortune and Spirit exemplify. It is also, IMO, just plain ugly nonsense.

In my paper on the Hermetic lots I attempted to provide a rationale for why the lots are slow during one part of the day and then fast during the other. The rationale seems to involve the Sun being dominant in the calculation for the slower moving lots and the Moon being dominant in the calculation of the faster moving lots, with the dominant luminary shifting by day and night. Basically the faster moving lots are mimicking the swift movement of the Moon, while the slower lots are mimicking the Sun. The full explanation is in the paper that Mark linked to earlier, so I wont repeat it here: http://www.chrisbrennanastrologer.com/B ... ionale.pdf . Suffice it to say, there is a compelling rationale underlying the differing speeds of the lots, and the reversals make sense within that context.

What Schmidt's 'correction' does is it effectively erases this distinction, and it makes all lots move the same speed by getting rid of the reversed formulas that are outlined by Paul and the rest of the authors. So, instead of reversing the formulas as it says to do in the texts, you only use the diurnal formula for Eros and Victory, and you only use the nocturnal formula for Necessity, Courage and Nemesis.

While I don't dismiss the elegance of Schmidt's calculations and the ratios involved, I don't think that it is right to attempt to rewrite the astrological tradition just because something doesn't make 'sense' to you, or because something looks weird. In my opinion, this is what Schmidt has done in this instance.

I would have been fine if he just said that the calculations presented by Paul, Olympiodorus, Abu Ma'shar and Bonatti didn't make sense to him for X reason and said that X solution works better in practice and makes more sense to him. There is nothing wrong with that. People do it all the time. But instead Schmidt has gone to great lengths in order to try to argue that his correction constituted the original set of calculations, by trying to instill a false sense of uncertainty about what the texts actually say.

In doing so I feel that he has abused his authority as a translator, by telling those who follow his work that there is an ambiguity in the text when there is not. As a result, most people who follow Schmidt's work on the lots are under the mistaken impression that there is some sort of textual issue with Paul's Introduction because it doesn't match Schmidt's formula, and that Olympiodorus is an idiot, because he demonstrates the calculation of Eros in a way that explicitly contradicts Schmidt's argument.

I have great respect for Schmidt and the work that he has done, and I think that he has accomplished some amazing things in the past two decades, and I hope that he continues to do so in the future. I probably have a greater appreciation for the importance of his work than most. But I think that he has gone astray with this argument, and I find the lengths with which he has gone to support it disturbing, because it makes me worry about other areas of his work where similar issues may be at play.

If we are going to recover the tradition then we have to stay true to what the texts say, and we have to understand them on their own grounds before we start imposing our own views onto them. If we deliberately decide to deviate from the tradition once it has been restored then that is fine, because at least the baseline from which we are deviating from will have been established. But if we simply try to rewrite the texts from the start then the entire project to revive the tradition will have been pointless, as we will have simply become innovators rather than restorers, and we will be no closer to the ancient traditions than when we started.

Hello,

To Chris:

Very well said! Vey well indeed!

If we are looking for textual support for Schmidt's interpretation of the Lot of Eros algorithm in Paul, one interesting place is Dorotheus, and his Lot of Marriage, whose formula is the same as the emended Lot of Eros.

From the Pingree translation wrote:Calculate the lot of wedding by day and by night from the Sun to where the Moon is, and add it to the degrees of Venus [by day] or subtract it from where Venus is [by night] thirty at a time; wherever it reaches, there it is.

To put it into an algebraic format:

• diurnal Lot of Wedding=Venus + (Moon - Sun)
  nocturnal Lot of Wedding=Venus - (Moon - Sun)

Now let's look back at how the Lot of Eros algorithm in Paul is reduced to a three-planet lot independent of the Asc both by day and by night according to Schmidt, and simply regroup the terms:

• diurnal Eros=Venus - Sun + Moon = Venus + (Moon - Sun)
  nocturnal Eros=Venus - Moon + Sun = Venus - (Moon - Sun)

This parallels with Dorotheus perfectly, and I think it asks the question "Where could such a Lot come from, if not from the Hermetic Lot of Eros?" And if we are arguing about upholding tradtion, consider that Dorotheus wrote considerably earlier than Paul and was closer to the original sources of the tradition.

Gabe

steven wrote: It is very much human nature that when we don't understand something through our native logic and knowledge, we rewrite it in a such a way so that it makes sense to our own faulty knowledge and logic.

It is also very common to mortal men that they carry their own preconceptions with them, and use them as a glass to peer with and a pen to write.

Hello All,

I just wanted to thank all the contributers to this thread to date. Some really great posts. Thanks! I could you list you all but it would sound like a speech at the Oscars.

Wow! I had no idea this topic would stimulate all this passionate discussion!

I am a total agnostic on the calculation dispute that seems to be opening up here. I am frankly too ignorant to have a firm view on the topic.

I do think its great though that two outstanding astrologers: Steven Birchfield and Dorian Greenbaum will be offering publications on this subject.

I have got a lot out of Steven's posts (no pun!) on this topic already and his radio online interview with David Hernandez last year on the Lot of Fortune and Spirit. Up to then I hadn't really appreciated the Platonic themes that can be brought out not just into the Lots but astrology in general. The posts from Levente and Tom have also followed up the important philosophical dimension of the topic.

I am so glad to hear Dorian Greenbaum will also be sharing her years of painstaking research in a full publication at last. I had the great good fortune to hear Dorian speak at the History of Astrology Conference in London some years back. Her topic was the Daemon and the Fates in Greek astrology and it was a spellbinding talk.

I will leave others to their different interpretations of the arithmetical logic regarding the lots I am going to dig out my copy of The Republic out and read that. I think that might give me more insight at this point than any amount of astrological technique regarding additional lots. Once Steven and Dorian's books appear I will take a fresh look at the additional lots. For now I think the only Hermetic Lots I will be working with are the Lot of Fortune and Spirit. However, the discussion is interesting. Please continue with your thoughts and insights on the Hermetic lots or the lots in general.

Thanks

Mark

GR wrote:If we are looking for textual support for Schmidt's interpretation of the Lot of Eros algorithm in Paul, one interesting place is Dorotheus, and his Lot of Marriage, whose formula is the same as the emended Lot of Eros.

...

This parallels with Dorotheus perfectly, and I think it asks the question "Where could such a Lot come from, if not from the Hermetic Lot of Eros?" And if we are arguing about upholding tradtion, consider that Dorotheus wrote considerably earlier than Paul and was closer to the original sources of the tradition.

Gabe

This isn't textual support for Schmidt's calculation. It is another lot that has a different name and purpose which has a similar calculation as Schmidt's 'corrected' lot of Eros. It is a lot for marriage though, not the Lot of Eros.

There is evidence in an appendix in the critical edition of the Book of Aristotle that Pingree and Burnett published that Dorotheus may have followed the same lot tradition as Valens for the Lot of Eros. This would make sense since the two display a very similar approach to a number of techniques, for example such as the trigon lords of the sect light and the Lot of Fortune. If Dorotheus used the same calculations as Valens for Eros and Necessity then he may not have been familiar with the Hermetic lot tradition preserved by Paul at all, and thus this would not support Schmidt's conjecture about the calculations underlying the set of Hermetic lots in Paul.

In fact, there is no evidence for the calculations of the Hermetic lots outlined by Paul prior to the 4th century, basically prior to Paul's own text. The earlier tradition only seems to have known about the Eros and Necessity lots of Valens that only involve the distances between Spirit and Fortune, and these are the ones that show up in the Greek horoscopes.

We are left, then, in the position of having to rely on Paul and Olympiodorus as the only two Hellenistic representatives of that particular tradition of lots, as well as Abu Ma'shar and Bonatti as representatives of that tradition during the Medieval period.

Spirit lots and questions about what they authors mean by 'the reverse' aside, the question that you have to answer is this: if the texts explicitly say that you should count from the planet to the Lot of Fortune for the Lots of Nemesis and Courage, how can Schmidt possibly claim that the text is supposed to say the opposite? You guys are just going to reject that because it offends your aesthetic sensibilities?

I started out using Schmidt's correction for the Hermetic lots early on in my studies of Hellenistic astrology, as that is the default in Delphic Oracle, and in one of my early lectures on the subject I even advocated the use of Schmidt's correction for Eros. I spent about a year trying to justify the argument at one point, and searching the Hellenistic literature for evidence that would support Schmidt's correction. Eventually I had to concede that I couldn't find any though, as there was no way to justify the argument based on the existing textual tradition, which almost entirely consists of Paul, Olympiodorus, Abu Ma'shar and Bonatti.

The argument is not supportable, and anyone who picks up a translation of any of those four authors and reads the section on how to calculate the Hermetic lots will immediately see why. If you read those translations and you see the author advocating one calculation by day and one calculation by night that involves reversing the points counted from and to, then Schmidt is wrong. However, if you read the translations and you see the author advocating only one calculation that does not change by day or by night, and only involves counting from the Lot to the planet involved, then Schmidt is correct. Anyone can do this. It does not take a seasoned classics scholar. I encourage you all to do it, and to make up your mind about the matter on your own.

It is in Book 4, chapter 25, sentences 13 and 16 in Pingree's edition, in the chapter on the handing over and taking over of the four lots. Pingree has the two sentences bracketed as not belonging there for some reason, although if you look on page 202 of Kroll's edition you'll see that he didn't bracket them. Presumably Pingree had Paul's lot calculations for Eros and Necessity in mind, and that is why he bracketed these calculations as not belonging, although it seems like kind of a strange mistake to make when those particular calculations do show up in the horoscopes, and then later in Abu Ma'shar and Bonatti. Unfortunately he doesn't give any notes on the critical apparatus to help explain why he departed from Kroll there.

Because it was bracketed by Pingree, Schmidt didn't include the two sentences in his original translation of Book 4 of the Anthology in 1996. I wasn't aware of the calculations in Valens until Dorian Greenbaum pointed it out at the last Blast astrology conference in September of 2008. I don't think Schmidt remembered those sentences as being omitted by that point either, because the initial response that I got from the Hindsight people when I asked about it was negative, that Pingree had bracketed it and it didn't belong. By November of that year when Schmidt did the lot workshop he seems to have accepted the calculations as being legitimate though. And for good reason, because that was always one of those really annoying questions when you read the Anthology - why Valens only ever mentions Eros and Necessity of the Hermetic lots, and why he never mentions which calculation to use (i.e. the normal calculation that is in Paul, or Schmidt's correction). It turns out that Valens isn't connected to Paul's lot tradition at all, although he does appear to have been one of the sources of the later Medieval tradition for those two lots. So, that provided a huge missing piece for the later lot tradition that had been unexplained up to that point, at least for those of us who had been relying on the translations.

For those who don't have the Greek text but do have Schmidt's translation, the calculation for Eros is tacked on to the very end of the paragraph on profections from Eros in chapter 25 of book 4:

"Take the Lot of Eros by day from the Lot of Fortune to the Lot of Spirit and the same (distance) from the ascendant, but by night the reverse."

?????????? ?? ? ?????? ??? ?????? ?????? ??? ??? ??? ?????? ??? ????? ??? ??? ??? ???????? ??? ?? ??? ??? ??? ?????????, ?????? ?? ?? ????????. (Valens, Anthology, IV, 25: 13, ed. Pingree.)

The calculation for the Lot of Necessity is similarly given at the very end of the paragraph on profections from that lot in the same chapter:

"Take from Spirit to Fortune, but by night the reverse."

??????? ?? ??? ???????? ??? ?????, ?????? ?? ?? ????????. (Valens, Anthology, IV, 25: 16, ed. Pingree.)

I'm not sure if these translations are entirely grammatically correct because I just did them on the fly, so I wouldn't quote them without checking them with someone first, but that is basically what the sentences say.

There are countless lots that have different names but the same formulae, so what difference does that make? It only says that Dorotheus likely got the same lot from a different source than Paul, and one that knew what reversal meant in that instance. Since it reduces to exactly the same version as in Dorotheus in Schmidt's way, why is this not evidence?

What difference does it make that Dorotheus also knew the other version of the Lot of Eros? The issue is what reversal means in the case of the version of the Lot of Eros found in Paul, and whether the Lot of Marriage in Dorotheus is derived from such a formula.

My initial question was not what "tradition" did it come from, but how could such a lot as that in Dorotheus come about in the first place. Schmidt argues that three planet lots can be understood to derive from a lot taken from a two planet lot and some other planet. This implies that the Lots, at least initially in astrology, are constructed logically, though they are obscured by priestly formalism.

Gabe

I've been sick lately and so I haven't been able to follow up on this discussion yet, although I wanted to point out that I think Gabe's comments were in response to me rather than you Steven. I will try to post something soon.

(I drafted this a few days ago. I guess I'll just post it now.)


Hi Steven,

Thanks for your comments.

steven wrote:In Al Biruni's treatise, "On Transits", he makes an interesting comment that Abu Ma'shar got all his "principles of astrology" from Valens Anthology. Although he refers us to the Persian commentary rather than the actual Anthology. Now whether this was his own conjecture or knowledge, I don't know, but studying very carefully I do note a lot of Valens techniques and subtleties in Abu Ma'shar's works. He even refers the student to Valens lot of Marriage which was with Mars instead of the Sun.

Since it is in Abu Ma'shar that we see the combination of Valens and Paul's lots, perhaps it was Abu Ma'shar's reverence for Valens that led him to use Valens' calculations for Eros and Necessity rather than Paul's?

steven wrote:I am wondering if perhaps these very different parts (than the hermetic one in Paulus) could be a Persian influence since both Dorotheus and Valens works were best known to medieval arabic astrologers in the Persian commentaries that were written rather than the original manuscripts which were also translated into Pahlavi. That's just a thought of mine anyway. It is something both Dorotheus and Valens have in common. Could the copyist of the Valens manuscript we have today, been aware of the Persian commentaries and the formulae that was therein and added them to the text to fill in an obvious blank in the original manuscript?

I find it very difficult to believe that Valens, who quotes from Nechepso and his book , was not connected to the hermetic tradition. Something in all of this does not add up for me. Of all the material we have now, no one used the lots as extensively as Valens did nor had as much to say about them. Valens focus was on practical usage for the astrologer and there is so much in many chapters. So on one hand I do understand Pingree questioning these formula and saying they are out of place. In many ways they are.

I don't think that it is an issue of Valens not being connected with the Hermetic tradition, as there is plenty of evidence that he was, but it is more of an issue of whether we should conceptualize that tradition as something that was singular and unchanging, or if grew and developed.

Current scholarship does not view the philosophical Hermetica and the treatises of the Corpus Hermeticum in particular as all having been written at the same time in the same place by the same person. Instead what we have there is a corpus of texts that were produced by a specific school over the course of a few centuries, united by a similar underlying philosophy. Not every philosophical treatise attributed to Hermes was written by the same man though, and the individual treatises were composed over a period of time between the first and the third centuries.

In the same way, not every astrological doctrine or technique attributed to Hermes was necessarily developed by the same person, or introduced during the same time period. Even if Schmidt's hypothetical founder of Hellenistic astrology who wrote under the name Hermes existed, that doesn't mean that other later astrologers didn't attempt to attribute texts to that author as well.

Paul's Hermetic lots are one of those instances where we have to admit that from our vantage point there is no evidence of their existence prior to his work in the late 4th century. That being the case, we have to admit the possibility that they may have been introduced later on in the Hellenistic tradition, and they may not represent the earliest set of lots. If they did, then we would expect to see them in Valens and Dorotheus and other authors. The fact that we do not should raise some sort of red flag.

One of the reasons why I accept the calculations that Pingree omitted is that there are a few places in the Anthology where Valens seems to treat Necessity in a more positive manner than one would expect based on the delineations given by Paul. So, the realization that he may not have been using the same calculation made sense to me from that perspective, as he may not have conceptualized it as being as negative as Paul seems to have with his version.

GR wrote:There are countless lots that have different names but the same formulae, so what difference does that make? It only says that Dorotheus likely got the same lot from a different source than Paul, and one that knew what reversal meant in that instance. Since it reduces to exactly the same version as in Dorotheus in Schmidt's way, why is this not evidence?

What difference does it make that Dorotheus also knew the other version of the Lot of Eros? The issue is what reversal means in the case of the version of the Lot of Eros found in Paul, and whether the Lot of Marriage in Dorotheus is derived from such a formula.

My initial question was not what "tradition" did it come from, but how could such a lot as that in Dorotheus come about in the first place. Schmidt argues that three planet lots can be understood to derive from a lot taken from a two planet lot and some other planet. This implies that the Lots, at least initially in astrology, are constructed logically, though they are obscured by priestly formalism.

Gabe

Its not evidence in it of itself because there is nothing in Paul's text which indicates that the Lots should be calculated in the way that you describe. Paul and Olympiodorus both clearly thought that the Lots were supposed to be reversed. If you want to argue that the original lost text by Hermes must have calculated the lots differently then that is fine, but the issue then is that the only evidence that you guys have for that is your argument that it doesn't make sense to you that some lots move fast. I mean, that is really the basis of the entire argument.

Now if Dorotheus had given that calculation and said that it was for the Lot of Eros then you would have some tangible evidence that someone may have interpreted the Hermetic lots differently than they are outlined in Paul. There would be some sort of external confirmation or evidence for what is only sort of a weak theoretical speculation on your part about the lots moving too fast in Paul.

But the fact that he uses a different calculation for the Lot of Eros sort of removes Dorotheus from the equation altogether because it seems to indicate that he wasn't dealing with the same Hermetic lots as Paul. That is to say, he wasn't drawing on the same text. If he had gotten that lot from the same text, as you say, then he would have used it for the Lot of Eros. That being the case, then the fact that he uses some weird lot of marriage is irrelevant, because there is no demonstrable connection between that and the set of Hermetic Lots in Paul.

The only thing that Dorotheus' lot of marriage does is it opens up the possibility that three planet lots existed in some form in the Hellenistic tradition. There is still no motivation in Paul's text for saying that those lots should all be calculated that way though. All you have is the notion that it doesn't make sense that some of them move quickly. That isn't evidence of anything though. Its just a sort of questionable aesthetic argument, which can be invalidated if it can be shown that there was some sort of theoretical motivation for the differing speeds of the lots.