Skyscript Astrology Forum

I recently finished writing up a paper on a discovery about the planetary joys that I made last year with Benjamin Dykes, and I submitted it for publication in the next issue of the ISAR journal. In the paper I demonstrate how the four classical elements came to be assigned to the signs of the zodiac, as well as a few other things. You can read a pre-publication version of the paper through the link below. I'm hoping to submit a shorter version of the paper to Culture and Cosmos soon, so if anyone has any comments or feedback I would love to hear it. Here is the link:

http://www.hellenisticastrology.com/the ... y-joys.pdf

Olivia Barcley loved this stuff and prepared an overview describing the basics of the system. Al H. Morrison published Olivia's form on the front cover on an edition of his CAO Times. I will look more into your article, Chris, when I am not so pressed for time. Thank you!

chris,

thanks! great article and i like how you have brought together the elements with the planetary joys. that is a very good connection..

morning sun will hopefully read page 20 and 21 for further elucidation on the issue of mars and saturn in the nocturnal and diurnal sect. i thought chris covered this very well too!

a few things to comment - why did the chaldean's give saturn to the 1st house as its planetary joy? i don't know the history on this, but it is a question that you might have some insight on..

regarding the "octatopos" page 24 area... i seem to recall reading this was a different house system and that it meant a division of the circle into 8, but that it was abandoned for a 12 house system. in your article you appear to suggest it was about 8 of the 12 houses.. i wonder about this and if you can give a source that rationalized it this way? you did cite a work on this that i haven't read or heard about, but i would be curious if you'd like to discuss this more fully?

all in all it was a great read so thanks!

james_m wrote: a few things to comment - why did the chaldean's give saturn to the 1st house as its planetary joy? i don't know the history on this, but it is a question that you might have some insight on..

regarding the "octatopos" page 24 area... i seem to recall reading this was a different house system and that it meant a division of the circle into 8, but that it was abandoned for a 12 house system. in your article you appear to suggest it was about 8 of the 12 houses.. i wonder about this and if you can give a source that rationalized it this way? you did cite a work on this that i haven't read or heard about, but i would be curious if you'd like to discuss this more fully?

Hi James,

Did you mean to say why did they give Mercury to the 1st house? Or are you talking about something else?

With respect to the Octatopos, there has been a lot of debate and confusion over that in the past century. I think that Bouch?-Leclercq was one of the early people who interpreted it as being a full division of the circle into 8 sectors, and a number of people probably followed his interpretation after that.

On the other hand, other scholars have been saying for a while now that the Octatopos isn't a full division of the circle into 8, but instead it is just a system which gives significations for the first 8 whole sign houses. A large part of the argument here is that usually when the Octatopos is mentioned the astrologers will refer to the signs rather than the houses, which implies that they are still using whole sign houses. So, for example, they will say "the 2nd sign signifies this, and the 3rd sign signifies this", and so on. The argument is that this would only make sense if they were just talking about the first 8 signs.

I found a letter between A. E. Housman and F. E. Robbins where Houseman pointed out to Robbins that the Octatopos is just the first 8 signs, so this alternate view has been in circulation since at least the 1940s. Goold followed Housman's interpretation and mentions it in his translation of Manilius, and then more recently Robert Schmidt has made the same argument.

I'm not sure if there are any proponents of the other view at this point. I think that the Gauquelin's may have flirted with it a bit at one point in the late 80s or early 90s, and then I think it Patrice Guinard wrote a paper about it at one point a while ago as well, although I'm not sure he still advocates this interpretation of the Octatopos.

hi chris,

i am just going on memory with the saturn according to chaldeans had its joy in the 1st, or perhaps in the ascendant.. maybe i have that wrong, but it is something that stuck in my head as i have saturn close to the ascendant.. i will see if i can find a source for it..

the 8 house division is something i recall reading about with a connection to cyril fagan.. here is an article that touches on it, that i haven't read, but which mentions the french fellows name you mention in your last paragraph.

http://cura.free.fr/docum/02fagan.html

Very interesting paper, Chris. Personally, I found your comments on the upper half of the chart as the realm of the Sun and spirit, and the lower half as the realm of the Moon and fortune, particularly illuminating. This may have been obvious to others, but it helped me make sense of the Lot of Fortune being said to belong to the Moon, and the Lot of Spirit to the Sun, despite the fact that both Lots are based on both the luminaries.

Martin Gansten wrote:Very interesting paper, Chris. Personally, I found your comments on the upper half of the chart as the realm of the Sun and spirit, and the lower half as the realm of the Moon and fortune, particularly illuminating. This may have been obvious to others, but it helped me make sense of the Lot of Fortune being said to belong to the Moon, and the Lot of Spirit to the Sun, despite the fact that both Lots are based on both the luminaries.

When you take the lots as cast in a given direction due to the chart sect, from the perspective of the Thema Mundi, fortune then falls in the 2nd house, spirit in the 12th (see my article on the nodes 3 years ago: http://www.astrology-x-files.com/x-file ... astro.html).

Schmidt has said that some house meanings are derived from the Thema Mundi as well as the "angular triads" of Hermes. Chris's article probably solves a long standing problem with the origins of elements assigned to triplicities.

I liked the article a lot. The first part about the compass and elements is especially interesting

margherita

Chris
Thanks very much for a fascinating and illuminating article. The hypothesis for the attribution of the elements to the signs of the zodiac makes me want to use them, as it had always seemed to me be based just on unconvincing seasonal ideas.
The scheme of angular triads and a coherent rationale for the triplicity rulers is also very impressive. The diagrams showing this and the sect-mates brings to mind Taoist symbols, as used in Tai-chi etc, yang fading into yin and vv.
Just one thing about the classical scheme that still bothers me (as it perhaps did others wiser than me like Ptolemy, Lilly and Morin, because they changed it - well, Morin changed the whole system): the water triplicity is not symmetrical with the rest, and awkwardly has Venus as day ruler although it already has that role in the Earth tripliclity, and Moon as cooperating ruler although the Sun was not chosen for the that in the Air triplicity. It would seem logical to use each planet twice in the scheme, and the luminaries once, as in the rulerships. This is highlighted by your commentary on the symmetry of the diagram:

It is notable that in every instance the cooperating triplicity lord happens to be the next closest planet in the diagram among planets of the same sect. For example, the Sun and Jupiter are the main triplicity lords for fire, and Saturn is the cooperating lord because he is the next closest planet to them. Saturn and Mercury are the main triplicity lords for air, and Jupiter is the cooperating lord because he is the next closest planet to them. The Moon and Venus are the primary triplicity lords for earth, and Mars is the cooperating lord because he is the next closest planet to one of them. Finally, Mars and Venus are the main lords for water, and the Moon is the cooperating lord because she is the next closest planet.

From your diagrams and commentary it's clear that the Fire and Air rulers follow an anticlockwise sequence around the angles: cadent (Sun)> succedent> cadent // same cadent (Saturn)> pivot > back to previous succedent.
This starts the same for Water: cadent (Moon)> succedent> cadent,
then starts again in the same cadent as before, but then goes clockwise instead of anticlockwise, and doesn't include the pivot. This leads to Venus being used twice as a day ruler, and Mercury only once, while Moon is used twice though Sun isn't.
You mention how Mercury is assigned to the ascendant pivot because it can be both diurnal and nocturnal, yet in the Sect-Mates diagram it only appears as diurnal, because there's nothing in H7. If we put a nocturnal (occidental) Mercury in H7, the whole system would be completely symmetrical, and the Water triplicity could be Mars (night)> Mercury (day)>Venus (coop) (i.e. cadent>pivot> back to succedent, as for Air)
The diurnal triplicities would begin with a light (as ruler of the primary sect of each), and the nocturnal ones with a malefic; the 5 planets would each be used twice and the lights once, and only in leading roles.
I know one isn't supposed to tamper too readily with what's handed down, but it's your fault for triggering off these ideas! I'm wondering if it could help to sort out which version of the terms is most coherent, as that still seems to be a bit of a mess.
Thanks again for the great article, it really helps to have visual diagrams to understand rather than just tables to learn parrot-fashion.
I've got a few ideas about the Oktotopos (Oktotropos?) which I looked into recently, and will try to put together tomorrow if time.

Graham

Chris

Just thought that the sequence of elements you propose, although coherent (earth at the bottom, air rising towards fire at the top, water falling from fire towards earth) doesn't corrrespond with the arrangement of the elemental signs in the zodiac: fire angle opposite air, earth opposite water, and the sequence fire-earth-air-water (clockwise) (or VV anti-clockwise). Perhaps this doesn't matter, as we're not initially talking about the signs but the houses, but we do link them to triplcity rulers of the signs. But I wonder if it wouldn't be better to think in terms of the North/East/South/West angles (and triplicities) instead, or simply e.g. the Leo/Scorpio/Aquarius/Taurus triplicites, for example.
(Though I should say that I find your proposal of house, or at least angle, assignments for the elements more convincing than the zodiac sign assignments).

On the Oktotopos/Oktotropos, I think there is still a reasonable argument that there was a full 8 sector division of local space, or perhaps an important temporal 8-fold division of the day+night (4 daytime watches, 4 nightime - this is eveident in the New Testament). Fagan deals with this in a chapter of his book Astrological Origins, summarised in the article mentioned by James:
http://cura.free.fr/docum/02fagan.html
There is also an article by Bill Johnston:
http://www.snowcrest.net/sunrise/aoctobj.htm
and two longer articles by Guinard on the same question, which get a bit convoluting, but have some interesting stuff and are well annotated, all references given:
http://cura.free.fr/10domi1e.html#*
http://cura.free.fr/11domi2e.html#Ref18

I wonder if this Oktotopos arrangement could possibly be the forerunner of quadrant house systems? Spatial if thought of in relation to the angles, temporal, like Placidus, if in terms of 8 "watches", four at night and four in the day.

Graham

Varahamihira in Brihatjataka describes the 12signs in two groups.First eight and the second Four.

(let me get the actual sanskrit reference for this..)
Varahamihira had praised Yavanas in his book.

--------------

Sorry, could not find the exact sloka where the first 8 signs are mentioned in one group and the last four in another group.


PD

Hello pankajdubey
I can't find anyting in the BJ, but in Guinard's 2nd article he mentions Varahamihira Brihat-Samhita:

The celebrated Indian astronomer-astrologer Var?ha Mihira (ca. 505-585), the inheritor of Greek astrology and of Babylonian theories as well, preserved in his Brihat-Samhit? the theory of eight zones, linked to the eight directions of space and to the Hindu divinities. The lords of the eight quarters (East, Southeast, South, Southwest, West, Northwest, North and Northeast) are respectively Indra, Agni, Yama, Nirriti, Varuna, Vayu, the Moon and Shiva." (Var?ha Mihira, in Brihat-Samhita, translation by Panditabhushana Subrahmanya Sastri & Vidwan Ramakrishna Bhat, Bangalore, Soobbiah, 1947, 86.75, p. 666). Cf. also op. cit., 54.3, p. 459 and 86.34, p. 656. There is still the question of the eight quarters in the work of one of his disciples (his son?), Prithuyasas. Cf. his Horasara, translation by Panditabhushana Subrahmanya Sastri & Vidwan Ramakrishna Bhat, Bangalore, Soobbiah, 1949.

I think there may also be connections with ashtakavarga for this principal of oktopos (8 places) or oktotropos (as spelled in Valens and Manilius, apparently, and which would mean "8 turning", or something like that). But it would start getting too off topic here.
Graham