Skyscript Astrology Forum

Hello!

I'm new here (and new to astrology in general), but I found this forum while searching for a copy of the Schmidt translation of Vettius Valens Anthology and came across an old thread comparing the 3 translations of Valens (Schmidt, Riley, and Gehrz).

I'm in a reading group that just started reading the Gehrz translation and in that group we'll compare and contrast the other translations as we discuss. The old thread here was doing exactly that, so I thought folks here might be interested in joining the reading group.

The group meets for 1 hour on Thursdays at 4 PM (America/Los_Angeles), registration is $7 (USD) - you can sign up through Andrea Gehrz website: https://andreagehrz.com/events/tag/valens/month/

Thanks!

Shane

Good to know Shane - and welcome to the forum

If you come across any interesting new points of note feel free toa dd them here too.

This is my first time through Valens, so I'm really not sure what's been compared before or what might be a new point of note, but Andrea made a video discussing some of the differences that we've called out in the group so far: https://youtu.be/nt0yUeFYY5w?si=qXsaNINJPefEv2is

For those who'd rather read, here's a summary of the video:

Gehrz is more wordy - This stems from her background as a sign language interpreter, using expansion and explicitation. So where words have a more abstract concept, translating a single word in ancient greek to a single word in english may not be possible. She does this to help translate the meaning of the passage as opposed to a direct transliteration of 1 word for 1 word. Example from Jupiter: Riley uses "household", Gehrz uses "the governing of family affairs". (Andrea explained some of this in greater depth in that old thread)

Gehrz translation also says that Jupiter rules the teeth, and neither Riley or Schmidt mention teeth. Gehrz says she may have made an error there, or possible that they were working from a different critical edition during the translation.

One difference with perhaps more astrological meaning: on Mercury, Gehrz uses the term "oikodespot" directly with a footnote explaining oikodespot means "master of the house": "If Mercury is the oikodespot the chart could create a sculptor, temple carver, [etc]". Astrologically this could refer to Mercury being the ruler of the chart, or the ruler of the 1st house. Schmidt's translation uses "Properly speaking, it makes temple-builders, brick-makers, sculptors, [etc]" and Riley uses "In its own character, it makes temple builders, modelers, sculptors, [etc.]", which doesn't seem to convey rulership very clearly.

Shane

shaned wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2024 3:52 am One difference with perhaps more astrological meaning: on Mercury, Gehrz uses the term "oikodespot" directly with a footnote explaining oikodespot means "master of the house": "If Mercury is the oikodespot the chart could create a sculptor, temple carver, [etc]". Astrologically this could refer to Mercury being the ruler of the chart, or the ruler of the 1st house. Schmidt's translation uses "Properly speaking, it makes temple-builders, brick-makers, sculptors, [etc]" and Riley uses "In its own character, it makes temple builders, modelers, sculptors, [etc.]", which doesn't seem to convey rulership very clearly.

But the Greek text doesn't have the word oikodespotēs or anything like it: it says kuriōs, which does mean 'properly' etc. It is an adverb formed from kurios, which as an adjective means 'proper, valid, authoritative' and, as a noun, 'lord, master' (that is, someone in authority); but the sense here is that the planet is its own master, not the master of the nativity. If you compare the description with those of the other six planets immediately preceding, there is no mention at all of rulership of the nativity, so it would be odd if Valens suddenly introduced that idea here. But there is a parallel in the description of Venus immediately preceding, which speaks of the planet being 'in its own terms and degrees among the signs' (Riley has 'in the zodiac'). In other words, the sense is 'with its nature unmixed'.

Sorry it took me so long to get back to this - I'm moving and this week has been a flurry of packing and cleaning and preparing. I brought this up to Andrea, and she made a video to respond. Quick summary is that she agrees she shouldn't have used Oikodespot since that isn't in the original and she plans to take it out of the next edition, but she was translating kurios as "ruler" or "rulership".

The 2nd meeting didn't run into too many differences (that haven't already been covered in that previous thread) but she did make a video summarizing the differences. I'm not sure if she plans to do that for every meeting, but she's definitely expressed an interest in making a new edition based on the feedback so far.

Would love to have others join, especially if you can translate the original!

It's a good thing you summarized Andrea's response, as I don't watch videos of people talking if I can help it. Again, if you read the whole of Valens' description of the planets you will see that rulership of the nativity isn't mentioned for any of the other planets, so why would he suddenly bring it up in connection with Mercury?

'Ruler' and 'rulership' are nouns. The text doesn't have kurios (the noun) but kuriōs (the adverb), the meaning of which can be found here. To connect it plausibly with rulership of the nativity, I think one would need at least to show that it is used in that sense elsewhere in Valens.