Therese Hamilton wrote:
Paul, let?s just say that my understanding of concepts has developed over the years, partly due to studying recent translations of ancient texts. We do change over time, you know...
Right, apologies if you felt I meant that change is indicative of contradiction. Instead I was trying to demonstrate not that the articles have changed, but that the logic has, in places, completely reversed, whilst the conclusion remains the same. It is as though the conclusion came first, and the evidence/logic used to support it is of secondary importance.
I'm going to stick to this point first. You take this up in your next post so I'm going to focus on this one first and explain why I'm using the previous article in more detail, and why I think that there is a contradiction inherent in it. It is not, to me at least, that your views have remained the same.
Now keep in mind that you've now updated the article. But what I was focusing on wasn't just one word, static/dynamic, as you claim, but rather on the exact reversal for the short description of, for example, female. Luckily I took a copy of the original article. In the original article this is how you summarise female, which we can take to be passive intellect, in so far as it relates to Aristotelian philosophy:
Dynamic principle (moves outward)
This is the only time movement appears to be mentioned in the article. My point is that actually this is masculine/active intellect - a point I have reinforced by quoting from an external author better familiar with Aristotelian philosophy than we are. You conclude from this:
These signs belong to the feminine polarity, and we see that the typical traits of tropical fire?acting from feelings, being at home with change, very expressive in relationships?all belong to the feminine gender
...
The point is that action from feelings and the concept of change belong to the Moon rather than the Sun. This is a key point of any discussion on gender preferences and behavior.
Hence we see it's not just a poorly worded definition, but actually we form a major conclusion from this idea of action or movement and associating it to the female gender, you describe this as a key point. But what I'm trying to show is that this idea of action from feelings as you put it here is an example of this dynamic outward moving association you have with the feminine back in 2004.
But all this disappears in the later article, yet the conclusions remain the same, namely that it's tropical astrologers who have it the wrong way around, when in fact if we take that 2004 quote and juxtapose it against the quote I provided from the Classics article I think it's more likely that we'd suggest that the 2004 article is incorrect.
So let's now look at the latest article too.
One understanding is that the active intellect relates to a fixed and stable set of concepts
But compare this to my quote from the Classics article and we'll see that for Aristotle links the active intellect not necessarily with things fixed and stable, which implies a lack of dynamism or motion, but instead it is a principle/force which moves outward. In fact if you were to have taken your female description from 2004 of being dynamic and outward moving, and applied it to the masculine then we'd be much closer.
This is really important to understand, because when you say that tropical astrology considers aristotle's active intellect to be feminine. And I do not recognise that one bit. Instead I recognise that your article took the adjectives that we might associate with the active intellect, namely dynamism and moving outwards, and applied it to the feminine, and backed that up with a sense of dynamism and movement with your examples. So if anything, as I concluded above, it is your 2004 article which has gotten it reversed.
We can now look to see what the situation is in your current one and we see that this whole idea is dropped, which is probably a good thing, but the conclusion still remains the same.
This time the idea of the solar/lunar symbolism is more fully brought to bear, which is only teased at or hinted at in the 2004 article. But in focusing on this, we don't have any sense of difference between the sidereal and tropical. In the 2004 article you compared the two. Incidentally as I said before you validate your views before, not based on the sun and moon, but based on the rulership of signs as to whether they were masculine and feminine, but in doing so made some odd logical twists. This is exactly the criticism that Michael made of you twisting logic like a pretzel, and it has to be said insofar as the rulership issue goes, that really is true. Surely you admit this now? I understand you're distancing yourself from this article, and have edited it, but much of it remains the same, and we can't discount it entirely as it's the article Michael cited which lead to this discussion in the first place.
For example let me take this example again, in case I didn't make the point clearly enough before:
Tropical Gemini is often an avid conversationalist, is curious about the world, sociable and friendly. This sign overlays sidereal Taurus, ruled by Venus and also the Moon?s exaltation sign. The Moon and Venus are sociable and friendly. As a sign, Taurus traditionally rules the throat and tongue used in speech.
You associate this area as being indicative of being Sidereal because Taurus, being feminine, is found under the rulership of Venus, a feminine planet.
But this makes two logical errors, as per my previous post, you then ignore tropical venus when it rules the same area of the sky, which would be a sidereally feminine sign, in favour of Mercury, which doesn't appear to be noteworthy for when it ruled tropical Gemini.
Secondly all the arguments you make for the signs rulership can be applied either way anyway. For example I could say that tropical Taurus is spot on because Taurus is a feminine sign and ruled by feminine planets, for example Venus. But insofar as this would precess back to Aries, clearly Mars is an inappropriate ruler for this feminine sign.
Do you understand what I mean?
This is why the logic is highly flawed and is formed from comparing apples to pears and basically making non-sequitor conclusions. And all of this is based on the same logic you employ in the latest article, namely that the only logical conclusion, as per Mr Spock, is that we're using the same 'energy', to use your term, when observing the zodiac - but by doing so you conflate the two zodiacs, and then simply pick and choose examples which support you, using a particular logic, which then systematically fails when you apply that logic across the board.
So it's not JUST about dynamic and static. This is about the idea that the tropical zodiac is secretly using the sidereal zodiac.
You have suggested in part this is due to masculine/feminine being reversed but, as I've demonstrated from my Classics citation, actually it is your 2004 article which is clearly reversed, and the latest article seems to adopt an entirely different approach which focuses more or less on simply stating that it's wrong rather than attempting to demonstrate it.
But let's take that statement and rationale used by it.
One understanding is that the active intellect relates to a fixed and stable set of concepts, a link to a universal mainframe (hard drive), so to speak. A modern commentary states: "The active intellect...is more properly called the Agent Intellect, as it is the force...causing thoughts to pass from the potential to the actual."
Right but even the very citation you use here doesn't seem to be describing anything as fixed and stable. Rather those ideas are not the primary concern. As we can see from your citation, the idea of force which extends out to manifest or change something else (that something else being passive). So it is an outwardly moving/dynamic concept. I believe that concept is lost when we describe something as fixed. What you really mean, I think, is that the active intellect is immutable, whilst, in comparison, the passive is the mutable. But using words like fixed removes the sense of motion involved. And as a result, when you run with it later, you focus more on this fixity quality.
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!)
But it isn't at all. The weird thing is that I agree that active relates to the Sun, and passive to the Moon, but notice that it informs us nothing at all about the zodiacs.
It is not that the passive, being external to the active tells us anything about the astrological understanding. Because, the other way of saying this is that the active is external to the passive and both statements are true.
Instead by wording it like this you miss the sense of application or dynamism that is associated with masculine and the sense of receptivity that is associated with feminine, which, incidentally, seem like better analogies for your sun/moon description of active/passive.
But, as a tropical astrologer, that's exactly how I see the concepts of masculine and feminine anyway. I would be in 100% agreement that we can liken, to a point, the sun with active and the moon with passive. I see the masculine as being outwardly moving, or emanating/projecting/dispersing, and the feminine as being receptive/changing/containing or being inwardly moved. Which is pretty much how the Classics article I cited describes it - moving and moved.
You don't like those, but surely then the problem is in how you view it, and not how tropical astrologers view it!?
I can't speak for other tropical astrologers obviously. All I can go by is how I understand these things as a tropical astrologer. And I suspect that many tropical astrologers think along the same lines as me.
You say
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.
So a large part of understanding the tropical-sidereal issue seems to be based on this if I understand you right, not all of it, but a significant portion.
But the problem is that Aristotle is not, as I understand it, saying that Active has an inward focus at all. That's why I cited the article I did. It has an outward focus, in that it moves outward. That's why I cited the 2004 article too, as we can see the sudden reversal in logic.
You seem to have some misunderstanding with this, and I'm not sure to what level I can explain it better.
Because then later you start saying things like this
In particular the Gemini trigon requires an explanation. Though these signs are grouped with the other three odd numbered signs which are termed masculine, they have a strong feminine component. This was recognized in antiquity where Valens refers to these signs as "feminizing" (Riley translation), "effeminate" (Schmidt translation) or "womanish" (Gehrz translation). So this trigon shares the Active quality (inward focus) with Aries, Leo and Sagittarius, but the nature is toward feminine psychology.
And here you are literally taking something which is described as masculine and deciding that it actually has a feminine psychology. But what we need to do here is remove psychology from the concept of Active/Passive Intellect. Valens describes the signs as masculine. By which we mean the 'positive' pole of the magnet or the active intellect type.
The psychology is a separate thing.
And yet in other instances, despite using this logic here and accepting it, you instead decide to determine whether a planet is masculine/feminine based on the psychology part which you admit here is separate.
Why the special treatment?
Well it's only used when it supports the argument you want to make. When it doesn't it's not used.
You then describe all the elements in a manner which seems to alter how they're described through history.
Namely we have earth signs being with a focus on the mind. This is due to an unclear separation between masculine/feminine and active/passive. Here a trigon can be Active and Feminine, Passive and Masculine, and if you have explained why you've done this, it really isn't clear to me.
I wasn't going to bring this up yet, I was saving this for later until we got active/passive out of the way, but I suspect that won't happen, if even taking a citation from a Classics article to support my view isn't enough.
I will respond to your other comments in my next post. I just wanted to focus on the two articles, explain why I used them and why the focus isn't just on one word.
