Skyscript Astrology Forum

i was wondering if someone would make a comment on the antiscia in lakewinds chart between mercury and mars and astrojin didn't disappoint. thanks astrojin as always for your insightful posts. here is the thread i reference. http://skyscript.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6831

i want to talk about this ancient technique which i see as a mirror reflecting the signs on either side of the the solstice line at 0 cancer/capricorn.

i am familiar with midpoint work as i was mentioning before and note the use of the aries point included in the work of alfred witte who is primarily responsible for bringing midpoint theory to a wider audience and i believe the introduction of the idea of the 'aries point'. it is interesting from the point of view that if one does midpoints off the aries point which include hard aspects to this point, one will get these same antiscia connections being made by the trad crowd. the parallel will be obvious to anyone who works with midpoints using the aries point, but perhaps not to those who only work with the antiscia. i wanted to point this out to anyone who hasn't already made this connection and for some new to the idea of the aries point to note the parallels.
http://www.universalastrologer.com/ariespt.html

on another note, i am reading matheseos libri v111 by firmicus maternus and am at the spot in the book where he is using an example to discuss this. to me it is a very poor example but it was interesting to read non the less. see page 58 in jean rhys bram's translation. comments welcome..

Good morning,

A complete, competently footnoted translation of Julius Firmicus Maternus' Mathesis by Mr James H. Holden has been published recently.

Julius Firmicus Maternus emphasised the astrological importance of the antiscia and exempli gratia of the dodecatemoria. Maternus' delineations are based on the mirror-nature of the antiscia.

Herr Alfred Witte did not (re-)discover the half-sums, not even in the modern era (his teacher of astrology Herr Albert Kniepf, who did not support Witte's hypothetical planets, is credited with this), but placed them in the foreground of astrological techniques in his system. Witte included the Vernal Point (main delineation: 'world at large') in his system to complete its symmetries of six individual points, MC - Asc, Moon - North Lunar Node, Sun - Vernal Point.

Witte's basic delineations of astrological symbols often differ much from those of, say, Mediaeval astrology, but also occasionally significantly from those subsequently applied in 'Uranian astrology' west of the Atlantic. Witte transferred some of the attributes from visible planets to hypothetical ones, for example from Saturn to 'Hades' (Greek for Pluto). This is not surprising in view of the limitations of the human mind to accommodate sets of symbols.

Best regards,

lihin

hi lihin,

you have been mentioning Julius Firmicus Maternus' Mathesis by Mr James H. Holden quite a bit on the site lately! i take it you have just read it, or are still very much infatuated with it.. funny, but i have been slowly reading the tail end of the same book, but with the translator rhyes from 1976.. since i don't have both books to compare, i wonder if the differences are anything like the differences between witte verses ebertin in their views on midpoints? could be, but i don't imagine so.

at any rate, i see your comments here are more of a diversion from the main article with a focus on the history on witte.. i think the idea of how much similarity there is between arabic parts and midpoints needs to be understood better, apart for the interpretations being offered. this is what i feel the article helped to do.. it seems to me that many astrologers who are interested in arabic parts could benefit from knowing more about midpoint pictures.. i will leave it to those who are curious and imaginative enough, to consider this.. this is what i believe the article helps demonstrate.

Good evening,

'Infatuated' would be an exaggeration. However, i do find the Mathesis the most comprehensive work of Hellenistic astrology preserved and readily usable in contemporary practice. I have both of the translations into English and one into German. In my humble opinion Mr James H. Holden's English translation is somewhat better due to completeness and to more useful footnotes.

Of course this does not intend to slight Claudius Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos in any way. This work is compared to Maternus' terse in style and nearly void of examples. Mathesis was written about 3 centuries later in Latin, although Maternus was obviously fluent in ancient Greek, often stating the Greek words for astronomic-astrological concepts. It 'summarises' Hellenistic astrology. Alas, they are some lacunae in the text, particularly in the systematic delineations.

Best regards,

lihin

hi lihin,

thanks for articulating all that on the different translations of jfmaternus lihin. i just realized that this thread is not the one i thought you were responding to, so my apologies for thinking i was on the arabic parts thread i had started, when in fact i am on the antisicia -aries point thread.. to my knowledge it was alfred witte who re-ignited interest in this point about 100 years ago, which has carried on with some schools of astrology.. with regard to this point i have heard it described as the earths nodal axis point which is an interesting way of thinking of it, if you are into nodal axi and such..

cheers james