This item that I just posted in the News forum may be of interest to people working with ancient/Hellenistic astrology:
http://skyscript.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?p=123322

'Platikos and moirikos: Ancient Horoscopic Practice in the Light of Vettius Valens’ Anthologies' - https://doi.org/10.1163/25899201-12340029

I hope you don't mind if I expand on this existing notice of an academic paper, Martin – and use the reaction to your paper as a way to open up discussion on the standards of scholarship in astrology.

Over the last few days, I have brought attention to your paper on Social Media, and I also posted a video of the lecture given for the AA last year. As you know, our explorations of the issues were independent and coming from different angles, but – for the most part – we seem to be in broad agreement. At least I find nothing in your paper that I substantially disagree with, and I am delighted to see your excellent paper get published, with such a detailed exploration of specific points.

Le's pause for a moment over that fact that yours is a 43 page, fully referenced, peer-reviewed scholarly work, critiqued by experts in the field, presented in an academic journal edited by the emminent Michael Lackner and Charles Burnett, and published by the leading international academic publisher, Brill. I can only imagine how slowly and carefully such papers progress through the barriers to see the light of day.

It is an article that reaches impeccable standards of scholarship. While detailed enough to explore the issue fully, its length is not beyond anyone seriously interested in this issue. All astrologers should be using this article as a reference for what is currently established through careful scholarship about the use of quadrant house division in ancient astrology.

Yet I have observed the reaction of some highly influential astrologers on social media. Labelling themselves ‘historians’ supposedly free of value judgements, to wide applause your article is treated as non-existent, or denounced as “bad scholarship??? when attention is brought to it. One tells us we must wait for the publication of another paper, which will prove that “WSH is the ancestor of all subsequent house systems… It is the only or the default system in all surviving Hellenistic and Byzantine horoscopes ever using houses??? amongst other things. Of course, this suits the popular storyline of the moment, and the power of social media will ensure your article is disregarded as another ‘bye-the-bye’ in the boring, ongoing saga of astrologers needing to feed petty compulsions to fight over house systems.

That false narrative masks the real problem the astrological community faces – the lack of scholarly standards in what is taught by schools and courses about the known history of our art. When we cross-reference this matter with the results of the Social Media survey conducted by Dru, we see how persuasive and effective the power of Social Media marketing can be, and to what extent information is controlled by the influencers and the popularisers, rather than the scholars.

Now, academics might not care about this – you lot tend to just get on with your stuff... and I know that even in your guise of astrologer, you are not invested in what house system some other astrologer chooses to use. Neither am I. Nor am I an academic; but as an astrologer preparing to ‘get off the stage’ and leave this study in the hands of a new generation, I am concerned that scholarly attitudes are maintained in our internal account of historical information. Hence I think the community should be more vocal and more engaged, and approaches that refuse to acknowledge, or go so far as to denounce modern scholarship, should be taken to task.

Recently, the power of internet ‘influence’ has been such, that anyone arguing or demonstrating that quadrant systems were indeed employed in ancient astrology -- free of any need to use signs for houses, or two house systems at once (meaning quadrants are only used to demark planetary strength, whereas meanings coming from the signs) -- have been labelled ‘Hellenistic astrology deniers’, and other disingenuous tactics have been used to ensure that certain views on things are disregarded as extreme, anti-historical, or deranged.

Hence I am starting this thread to highlight the issue that continues to go unaddressed. No astrologer should be talking about this matter now without recourse to your paper, which has established information based on scholarly review. As in all things, you have probably established only a stepping stone in knowledge that will get deeper and evolve, but we have a more reliable foothold now as a result of your work.

And until such time that others publish to the standard that you have set, they should neither disregard your paper nor denounce it in the name of 'history', because it has already been so rigorously and critically assessed – this is now the hallmark of where the information stands.

(And how lucky we are to have free access to the full paper, without the prohibitive access fees that academic papers sometimes attract - thank you!)

As a reminder to all – another thread exists to discuss the details of Martin’s paper here.

This thread concerns the broader discussion of astrologers applying appropriate standards when teaching or populating historical knowledge of astrological technique – and not popularising personally favoured approaches based on unproven speculation, or an appeal to authority that does not exist. Astrology is (largely) an unregulated study, so if we are going to stand against the increasing pressure of social media - that whoever has the most power, wealth, popularity, (influence) gets to control the storyline, the whole community needs to be on guard - with increased expectation that anything declared to be a scientific or historical 'fact' is based on scrutinised evidence that has passed the academic bar.

Thank you for your kind words and encouragement, Deb. Accusations of 'bad scholarship' are something I would take very seriously if they were directed at me by another scholar. But as you indicate, there is a fairly rigorous procedure to go through before your work is published, and although the peer-review system isn't perfect, it's certainly better at filtering out garbage than a free-for-all on social media. (Which is one reason I personally have opted out of all such platforms.)

To be clear, a paper can be published in a scholarly journal and still contain errors or views that are contested by other scholars (who will say so in their own published and rigorously vetted work). That's how knowledge, ideally, progresses, but it doesn't mean that the original scholarship was necessarily bad.

(The IJDP gives reviewers a scheme to fill in where marks ranging from Poor to Excellent are given under five headings: Creativity, Originality, and Academic Value; Literature Used and Bibliography; Structure/Content; Language; Quality of Any Translations from Source Material; Research Methods and Demonstration of Arguments. These are evaluated separately by two anonymous experts in the field concerned. I wouldn't normally mention such things, but as the phrase 'bad scholarship' has come up, let me just say that the paper that has apparently ruffled so many feathers got top marks across the board. So it would seem that we scholars are all as bad as each other, which of course is what some people genuinely think.)

The funny thing is that anyone who has actually read the paper will know that I agree that whole-sign houses were (probably) typically the default approach of most ancient astrologers, along with whole-sign aspects, whole-sign lots, etc. But what I think we need to ask is Why. To quote my own conclusion:

The practical value of such time- and labour-saving procedures to a practising astrologer in this period should not be underestimated. The basic horoscope gave a broad overview of the nativity, to which details pertaining to any particular area under investigation – including the precise longitudes of planets, angles, and intermediate places – could be added as needed.

All I am saying is that (a) it was not a system but a shortcut, and (b) at least some of the people using that shortcut, including Valens, also used the more time-consuming and exact methods when they thought it relevant/necessary. I'd be interested to see how anyone would try to disprove that, as it is stated in so many words in the source texts. But I'll wait for the carefully considered and published scholarly argument.

Nice approach Martin.
In your paper, you have drawn something that resembles the painting technique 'pointillism' created by Georges Seurat.
Painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image. If you look at it from afar, it looks like a painting. When you approach it, you see all the small little dots. Both end of the spectrum describes a reality in astrology.

Best to you,
Ouranos

Hi Martin


I just got this from a guy on facebook.

I destroyed Gansten's paper in Traditional Astrologers, and László's formal response is being prepared. It's full of holes. It omits evidence, and the one that cherry picks is twisted for some nonsensical conclusions. That you think it's correct says a lot about how little you've thought about this



The Skyscript forum thread you just shared has another astrologer debunking Houlding. Embarrassing. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XM42S64PItk

Orisis wrote:László's formal response is being prepared. It's full of holes.

I'm sure it isn't; Levente is a very capable scholar, even if we don't always agree.

There's a reason (actually, lots of reasons) why I'm not on Facebook or other social media.

Yes, we don't have to replicate the very informal (sometimes nasty) and often mob-like posts on Twitter or Facebook here. I am glad Martin's response is so civil.

I also noticed in the thread about my presentation you placed a post that was criticism of Chris Brennan based astrological practice. But that wasn't in any way relevant to the topic point of the thread, so I am going to remove that.

Let's keep this as a place people can be sure we stay focused on the astrological points of the debate, and don't go into personality dynamics any more than absolutely necessary.

Martin Gansten wrote:

Orisis wrote:László's formal response is being prepared. It's full of holes.

I'm sure it isn't; Levente is a very capable scholar, even if we don't always agree.

There's a reason (actually, lots of reasons) why I'm not on Facebook or other social media.

I dont think he meant Levente but your article. Maybe a tipo

Yes, I know. Just trying to introduce a little levity...

Well played levity

Thanks, Deb, for the link to the other thread on Martin’s paper. I’m assuming that’s the better thread for general discussion of it, then. I posted a comment there.

Martin Gansten wrote:Yes, I know. Just trying to introduce a little levity...

hi

Its funny that Brennan talked about the chart of a grammarian in Rhetorius when he discussed house systems.
That chart is more evidence for quadrant houses.
He had Saturn in 4th sign but cadent by quadrant and his 1st 3rd of life was full of hardship.Apparently Brennan didnt notice that.

Hi Martin,

I finally found some time to read your article. And it was time well spent, for the article is brill-iant! Thanks for providing open access to it.

To briefly summarise, based on a careful analysis of Valens' text, you were able to clearly demonstrate that:

- The author knew Porphyry Houses.
- He also knew Equal Houses.

As a proponent of EH, I particularly appreciated the following statement from page 16:

Although we cannot know exactly how this happened, it seems reasonable to assume that the notion of a “sign??? as an arc of 30° – one twelfth of the ecliptic – led first to the system of equal places, which was then modified by the pre-existing tradition that included the culminating point, resulting in quadrant places.

So what you are suggesting here is that EH is actually the oldest complete house system. Did I get that right?

Further, I think it's safe to say that some of the astrologers at Valens' time were using WSH at least occasionally. What we can't know for certain is just if this was considered state-of-the-art practice (by some) or just employed as a rough-and-ready method - although you do provide some evidence that supports the latter view.

I'm not sure if we will actually ever find out more than this, even if we had a time machine! It's quite conceivable that the answer would depend on which ancient astrologer you would ask! Just like today's astrologers are divided over the question of house division, or so I have heard...

At the present stage, I would like to see the debate shift more towards empirical observations by practitioners of these ancient methods, and especially to their respective theoretical rationale.

To me, the ASC-DSC axis coinciding with the horizon and thus dividing the Wheel of Houses into a 'nocturnal' and a 'diurnal' half' (regardless of where the Sun actually would be in a given case) seems like an absolute conceptual necessity. Add to that the Nonagesimal (in lieu of the Meridian, but that's for another debate), and you end up having a neat partitioning of the observer's space. Which is something entirely missing from the WHS approach, so I wonder what its conceptual underpinning could possibly be?