Skyscript Astrology Forum

I didn't bother to re-read the thread. When I brought up the symmetry of ascensional times, it was to point out that this only works in a tropical zodiac which suggests that this part of the logic is tropical.

There is another dimension to this that Robert Schmidt mentioned years ago that is largely misunderstood by astrologers today (the popular "as above, so below"). In the platonic sense, one could take below to mean "hule" (or matter), and above to mean "nous" (or form). In this latter case, the "above" doesn't mean the physical stars, but the noetic ones (in other words the essence of "starness"; what is it that makes a star, a star?). The realm of Nous contains the natures of planets, motions, numbers, etc... Whereas the "below" represents the physical earth. The realm of Nous is not visible because its "objects" come closer to the realm of Mind.

The tropical zodiac in the nature of it's measurement participates in the nature of Sameness (rather than Otherness) and most appropriately belongs to the realm of Nous and has limits. Schmidt said that the planets participate in the nature of Otherness in regards to their motion, because their motions are irregular (as stated in the Timaeus) and limitless.

It occurred to me (Schmidt probably thought of this first and didn't tell me) that when dealing with the ideal year of the Egyptians of 360 days, that what we are measuring belongs to the realm of Nous. Several of the Hellenistic time lord techniques use this method of counting years, but some notably don't such as the Lunar Quarters, Lunar Monomoiria, and the 9 years of the Moon methods which use the 365.24259... days/year measurement (the misnamed solar year from a platonic perspective). What do these latter methods have in common? Schmidt says that the Moon is the most "Dyadic" of all the planets and was assigned the leader of the nocturnal sect and participates in the realm of the "Other" which is more closely aligned with Hule (or matter) and the principle of limitlessness.

Matter doesn't like to conform exactly to the Sameness of Nous which is why you need real numbers to represent it. Integers participate in the nature of Sameness and have orderly (limited) operations.

When modern scientists try to get at the "truth" they measure as precisely as possible (unwittingly participating in the Dyad/Otherness). The modern view of "Hule" or matter representing "the truth" mimics Descartes view who said that the only thing that can be measured is extension such as "miles per hour" (what Schmidt calls extensive magnitudes). Other measurements such as the saturation of color, intelligence, brightness of light are intensive magnitudes which participate in the realm of the Other and limitlessness. When Einstein discovered general relativity, speed became an intensive magnitude (usually miles/second) because it became dependent upon the realm of the Other (space in using light-years) and mass. Objects approaching light speed develop intensive magnitude measurement issues and generate a red-shift when moving away from the observer. Astrologers should be careful to pay attention to which realm they're dealing with.

Graham wrote:

I now think I have an answer ? Ptolemy did, but no one else. The link betwen constellation name and rulership is so strong that everyone has ignored Ptolemy's explanation of the internal logic of the rulership scheme (his attempt at explaining why) in favour of his more frequent, well-known and simple statements that Aries is the first sign (whihc I think he chose because it did indeed start at the VP, sidereally). His chapter on The Houses of the Planets, with a logical justification for giving the sign before the summer solstice to Cancer, the one after to Leo etc, is simply considered a mistake, if it's noticed at all (I would suggest it's a , a Freudian slip : a consciously deliberate mistake, what the French call an "acte manqu?", a "failed act", which Lacan and other psychoanalysts see as "inadvertently successful acts").

I note Ptolemy is being quoting exclusively from his comments in the Tetrabiblos. But we should also not ignore his comments from his great astronomical classic The Almagest from which we can glean a mass of relevant information on his thinking. In particular he makes clear that he has no use for a sidereal frame of reference and indeed criticises the logic of such an approach.

The frame of reference for measuring longitudes along the ecliptic is established, in 2.7 from the Almagest , where Ptolemy writes,

We shall employ the names of the zodiacal constellations also for the twelfth-divisions of the inclined circle [i.e. the ecliptic] and on the hypothesis that their starting points are taken from the solstitial and equinoctial points, calling the first twelfth-division starting from the vernal equinox in the direction of the trailing parts in the motion of the totality [i.e. eastwards] ?Aries,? the second one ?Taurus,? and likewise
for the ones that come next, according to the order of the twelve zodiacal constellations that has been handed down to us.

Ptolemy establishes two things here: that that for the purpose of expressing longitudes the ecliptic is considered as divided into twelve equal arcs of 30? named after the zodiacal constellations, with the degrees counted eastwards, and that these arcs (i.e. zodiacal signs, as distinct from constellations) are fixed such that Aries 0? is the vernal equinoctial point. Thus the frame of reference is strictly tropical.

Mark wrote: Do you have a reference for where David Pingree suggests that Margherita?

Mark

I quoted by heart, but I found for you the quote.
David Pingree, From astral omens to astrology from Babylon to Bikaner, ISIAO (Italian Institute for Africa and East, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istituto_ ... _l'Oriente) 1997 - page 26
I believe the book is out of print because the Institute was dismissed. margherita

Margherita wrote:

I quoted by heart, but I found for you the quote.
David Pingree, From astral omens to astrology from Babylon to Bikaner, ISIAO (Italian Institute for Africa and East, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istituto_ ... _l'Oriente) 1997 - page 26

Thanks very much. Both for the exact reference and the scan.

I note this is one of David Pingree's later works i.e 1997. So I wonder if Robert Schmidt just ran with this speculation of David Pingree or developed it independently? I suppose Robert Schmidt could have been speculating like this in his conclaves for years before he put this idea out publicly.

Mark

Mark wrote:I note this is one of David Pingree's later works i.e 1997. So I wonder if Robert Schmidt just ran with this speculation of David Pingree or developed it independently? I suppose Robert Schmidt could have been speculating like this in his conclaves for years before he put this idea out publicly.

Schmidt, before the first conclave in August of 1994 (The Back to the Future Conference by NCGR in Princeton, NJ), gave a talk on the Platonic solids and how they might relate to aspect theory (along with several other Platonic ideas). I don't think Schmidt cared much for the Aristotelian tweaks favored by Ptolemy which digressed from many of the other Hellenistic texts. He had said that he thought that most of the elements of genethlialogical astrology were from the Platonic school. From these early days (The PHASE lectures) which started around 1995/1996, he had been throwing his classical training into understanding these texts. I attended many of these in Cumberland at the time.

Zoidsoft wrote:

Schmidt, before the first conclave in August of 1994 (The Back to the Future Conference by NCGR in Princeton, NJ), gave a talk on the Platonic solids and how they might relate to aspect theory (along with several other Platonic ideas). I don't think Schmidt cared much for the Aristotelian tweaks favored by Ptolemy which digressed from many of the other Hellenistic texts. He had said that he thought that most of the elements of genethlialogical astrology were from the Platonic school. From these early days (The PHASE lectures) which started around 1995/1996, he had been throwing his classical training into understanding these texts. I attended many of these in Cumberland at the time.

Thanks Curtis,

I had been rather hoping you might respond on my question. Its seems plausible from what you are saying that Robert Schmidt formulated his rapid development theory of hellenistic astrological principles before David Pingree's book appeared in 1997.

Mark

Mark wrote:Zoidsoft wrote:

...From these early days (The PHASE lectures) which started around 1995/1996, he had been throwing his classical training into understanding these texts. I attended many of these in Cumberland at the time.

I should correct the bold above to say Berkeley Springs, WV. The Schmidt's weren't in Cumberland until after Ellen's mother died in fall '96 after which time Ellen inherited the mansion. I first visited them in Cumberland in Feb 1997.

Graham F wrote:Waybread

I read Gavin White's book some years ago, I don't have it now. It's very interesting. I remember some of these points about the Leo-Cancer duo, related to a Taurus spring equinox, and the significance of Scorpio (the rising sign at sunset when Sun in Taurus. But these, and the question of Sirius as the start of the year, are sidereal (or "sidero-tropical") considerations, and I'm interested here in the relation of the rulerships to the fully tropical year and its ecliptic, structured around the solstices and equinoxes.

You mention exaltations. The possible association of most of the exaltations with what were originally the solstice and equinox points is very plausible, and I think White mentions that as well - or maybe I read it somewhere else, and found it quite convincing. If it's true, there now in the wrong places in the sidereal zodiac, but nearer their proper places in the current tropical one.

I think the weather associations in Ptolemy and others just show how the zodiac was already at least partly being interpreted tropically. Or was rather a muddle - they're not very convincing, at least on the surface, I haven't investigated them properly.

I think the weather associations in Tetrabiblos are highly plausible. If we take Tetrabiblos as a whole, it has a lot of astro-meteorology in it. Book 2 might be called a treatise on cultural anthropology or regional human geography, which Ptolemy explains through astral and climatic determinism. This book seems terribly racist today, but it leaves no doubt that Ptolemy thought the sun's intensity was a major factor in human physiognomy and temperament. He wrote of the Ethiopians (probably meaning sub-Saharan Africans) that their country's oppressive heat adversely affected their culture, and that "their climate and the animals and plants of their region plainly give evidence of this baking by the sun."

There's so much more in book 2:2. But briefly, eastern cultures are more masculine because "one would reasonably assume that the orient partakes of the nature of the sun." Western peoples are more lunar and feminine (or effeminate.) So Ptolemy's got a lot more ideas going on about the sun and moon than the one out-of-context passage on the antiscia that nevertheless inform it.

Moreover, regarding the Cancer-Leo primacy, we might even take Ptolemy at his word when he talks about the hottest months.

I'm not convinced by the argument about it being hotter in Egypt in late July, August and September than in June. Mainly because I think the tropical year, astrologically, is firstly about light (solstices and equinoxes), and only incidentally about heat. Also because I feel that even if Alexandria was a great place of diffusion of learning, astrology has a deeper and more universal validity than being a set of local correspondences can explain.

Graham, I don't know how much time you have spent in a hot desert climate, but the afternoon summer heat can be seriously life threatening. The hottest time of the year is not at the summer solstice, when the earth's surface is still heating up following the winter cooling, but in the subsequent months. As the climate graph linked in my previous post above shows, the hottest time is not smack dab on the summer solstice, but subsequently, even into September. And it doesn't rain all summer in this climate.

If I posted climate graphs for other parts of the Mediterranean and Near Eastern desert regions, you would see the same climate pattern as I showed for Alexandria. We recall that the cradle of astrology was nowhere near temperate Europe.

Moreover, at the latitudes of Babylon and Egypt, the differential in dark and daylight hours is significantly less than it would be in temperate Europe. Religiously, the solar dying god who was reborn (Tammuz, Dumuzi) was a major celebration, but in summer when the god died, probably a bigger consideration was that during the summer drought season, vegetation and crops died off with him.

For sure, the equinox and solstice points were critical in Babylonian civic and religious calendars. But the ancients dealt with all kinds of other phenomena critical to their survival. I could even argue (as I think Paul did, previously,) that you don't actually need to care about where the solstice and equinox points are located in order to cast a horoscope.

Fagan suggests that the images of the zodiacal constellations which we've inherited come not directly from looking at the sky, but from finding images for what was visible in the sky, when the VP was in early Taurus, by projection of what was going on the earth locally and seasonally (e.g. a plague of insects = Scorpio; flooding= Aquarius; lots of fish to catch= Pisces). I don't know how justified this is hisotrically, but it seems plausible.

Sorry, I've not read Fagan (and should.) But we do not have to speculate a great deal about what the ancients thought about their months, because their textual and archaeological remains often tell us. The constellation of Taurus as the front part of a bull is probably Paleolithic, given an apparent star map on one of the ceilings of the cave at Lascaux. Gavin White has some interesting material on the evolution of star-pictures in Babylonian Star Lore. The newer scholarship would have been unavailable to Fagan (d. 1970.)

And Ptolemy, in his explanation of the rulership scheme, specifically says "Since of the twelve signs the most northern, which are closer than the others to our zenith and therefore most productive of heat and of warmth are Cancer and Leo, they assigned these to the greatest and most powerful heavenly bodies, that is, to the luminaries, as houses.
I know, this is easy to dismiss as a msitake, but still, his reasoning is that the logic of light precedes and determines taht of heat. And like I said, a slip can be an unconsiously deliberate mistake. His logic (commen sense?) got the better of his preconceptions, I'd say.

Graham, I don't think so, for reasons I've tried to explain in more depth here. Rather, I would see Ptolemy's primary project as the systematization, Hellenization, and secularization of a whole heap of disparate astrological information available to him in the 2nd century CE. He probably sorted through and weighed up the lot, then came up with the most plausible system available, based on the disparate knowledge at hand.

As Deb's excerpt from Neugebauer's Greek Horoscope shows, the present system of sign rulerships pre-dated Ptolemy. Valens actually gives two (and maybe more) different systems of sign rulerships in different parts of the Anthologies. Ptolemy was probably familiar with the Greek custom of hinging the agricultural cycle on the Pleiades, and the Egyptian New Year based upon Sirius. He favoured Aristotelian proto-science and Greek mathematics. What to make of all of them?

One thing he wouldn't have included was a big influx from Hindu astrological beliefs, as the transmittal of horoscopic astrology minus the Nakshatras, as the diffusion seems to have gone from West to East.

Just to muddy the waters, sidereally, in Ptolemy's day, the spring equinox had visibly moved to late Pisces. Ptolemy must have known that. Not so neat and tidy, though, is it? 0 degrees Aries has an efficient systematic look to it, and was close enough for his purposes. For another thing, it enabled the Ptolemaic system to fit tidily into pre-existing religious and civic calendar sensitivities of his day.

Mark wrote: I note this is one of David Pingree's later works i.e 1997. So I wonder if Robert Schmidt just ran with this speculation of David Pingree or developed it independently? I suppose Robert Schmidt could have been speculating like this in his conclaves for years before he put this idea out publicly.

Mark

I would say the opposite.
Pingree was a very very famous orientalist and his PHD "Materials for the Study of the Transmission of Greek Astrology to India" was written since 1960.
It is quite possible he wrote something like that previously than 1997.
I tend to think like that, especially because (I forgot this) "from Babylonia to Bikaner" is just a collection of lectures he gave around the world.

margherita

Margherita wrote:

I would say the opposite.
Pingree was a very very famous orientalist and his PHD "Materials for the Study of the Transmission of Greek Astrology to India" was written since 1960.
It is quite possible he wrote something like that previously than 1997.
I tend to think like that, especially because (I forgot this) "from Babylonia to Bikaner" is just a collection of lectures he gave around the world.

margherita

It was only a speculation on my part Margherita. And I fully concede I am not familiar enough with the corpus of David Pingree's academic writings on astrology to comment on whether he discussed this idea before 1997.

Mark

margherita wrote:I would say the opposite.
Pingree was a very very famous orientalist and his PHD "Materials for the Study of the Transmission of Greek Astrology to India" was written since 1960.
It is quite possible he wrote something like that previously than 1997...

margherita

I think we should be more careful here about exactly what Pingree meant vs what Schmidt intended. For instance, the idea of a "cosmic animal" has been around for ages (it's in the Timaeus which Schmidt most likely first encountered at St John's back in the early 70's) and this idea only roughly parallels Pingree's statement about an "aristotelian universe". We're acting like this was some kind of new invention only around the last few decades which it was not. Pingree's statement of "an aristotelian universe from which the earth was the center" is not likely the same as Schmidt's idea of a cosmic courtroom where the cosmic animal was having an internal dialog using the planets witnessing and testifying to clarify. Pingree didn't believe there was anything to astrology which is why he never developed the ideas hidden in the Greek words to the degree that Schmidt did.

Waybread wrote:

Therese, one book you might enjoy reading if you haven't yet done so is Frederick H. Cramer, Astrology in Roman Law and Politics. He doesn't uncover horoscope analysis during your black-out period, but quotes all kinds of Latin authors on astrology in Roman society through those centuries BCE when horoscopic information is sparse. He cites, for example, Roman authors critical of "circus astrologers," astrologers as foreigners, and European astrologers as introducing foreign ideas; suggesting a continuing Babylonian influence.

Thank you, Waybread. I've ordered this book, but another of your recommendations earlier in this thread was too pricey. I'm still trying to complete a post for this thread I began a day or two. It's amazing how days can be filled up during the December holiday season.

I've been mulling over the fact that the tropical zodiac is a zodiac of declination related to the equator, and doesn't really have the same relationship to the ecliptic and stars as such. This is why southern hemisphere seasonal energies at any time are opposite those in the northern hemisphere, of course. I've been gathering some interesting source material that relates to mundane astrology vs. the astrology of the human being which is more cosmic due to the spiritual aspects of soul and free will. (But this may be another thread a little later.)