Skyscript Astrology Forum

Hi All,

I wanted to let you know about a new Hellenistic work I just released, translated from Greek by Eduardo J. Gramaglia. You can see free PDF excerpts and buy it at: http://www.bendykes.com/hephaistion.php

Below is a description from the web page:

"Hephaistion of Thebes' Apotelesmatics (5th Century AD) is an important record of ancient doctrines on general principles, natal, and electional astrology, largely drawn from the work of Ptolemy and Dorotheus.

"Book III: On Inceptions focuses on inception charts taken broadly: elections, thought-interpretation and analysis, event charts, and even proto-horary questions. In addition to lengthy instructions on crafting strong elections, typical inceptions include forming business deals, getting married, finding lost property, founding cities, farming, asking for favors, travel, surgery and medical treatment, and even the astrological reading of entrails. Event charts include analyzing the truth of rumors, the return of missing spouses, and more. Hephaistion also includes thought-interpretation techniques, using twelfth-parts and other methods.

"Hephaistion of Thebes is also the most important source of authentic Greek verses of Dorotheus, complementing the Arabic translation by 'Umar al-Tabari. This edition includes numerous Dorothean Excerpts and Fragments identified by Pingree and others, which supplement and enhance the material in Hephaistion. Along with Choices & Inceptions: Traditional Electional Astrology (2012), Hephaistion's Book III provides the most complete picture of Hellenistic and medieval inceptional astrology. (206 pages)"

Link doesn't work with the period:

www.bendykes.com/hephaistion.php

Hi Curtis,

Thanks for that--I updated the link in case people were including that last period in the URL.

Ben

Just want to add a note of thanks to Ben for making this text available - it's important and has been long-awaited!

Thank you Ben,

As Deb said this provides a really valuable opportunity to study a translation of Hephaistio's Book III. Project Hindsight only ever translated books I &II.

This will also hopefully help clarify something I discovered a few years ago while reading Greek Horoscopes by Neugebauer and Van Hoesen. In particular they give a translation taken from Hephaistio where he clearly is assigning topical names to Porphyry quadrant houses. No suggestion he was applying quadrant houses for just planetary strength. In fact quite the opposite. He uses traditional names of the houses for what are quadrant sign divisions. This makes me question how reliable Schmidt's assumption is that ancient astrologers were just using quadrant houses to assess planetary strength /length of life calculation. Perhaps Valens was but we have no way of knowing how representative he was. In regards house systems, the idea that Valens represented the astrological mainstream seems no more than than an unsubstantiated assumption. If there ever was such a consensus, on using whole sign houses, it appears to have broken down by the time of Hephaistio and probably some time before him.

I was never clear which book of Hephaistio this came from but I assumed it was book III. Now I can check myself!

Mark

Mark wrote:This will also hopefully help clarify something I discovered a few years ago while reading Greek Horoscopes by Neugebauer and Van Hoesen. In particular they give a translation taken from Hephaistio where he clearly is assigning topical names to Porphyry quadrant houses.

Do you recall where in Greek Horoscopes this was, Mark?

Mark wrote:This makes me question how reliable Schmidt's assumption is that ancient astrologers were just using quadrant houses to assess planetary strength /length of life calculation. Perhaps Valens was but we have no way of knowing how representative he was.

Schmidt was saying that he thought quadrant houses were used for strength within the context of Ptolemy's explanation of the division of the signs (the 5 degrees above the horizon belonging to the 1st house, etc). He also said that when read strictly that such a definition does not necessarily come to 12 divisions in every chart (that is an assumption on our part). As for Valens, no. Schmidt said that Valens example of using the MC in the 9th or 11th houses as giving signs for "praxis" may be where the line between topical and what he calls dynamical divisions started to blur. But Schmidt focused upon the dual meaning of the word "kentron"; one which has a meaning of a center upon which something spins and the other as a point which can be used to goad to action. This dual meaning can easily be an analog of the topical / dynamical house where the first meaning of kentron maps to topical divisions and the second meaning maps to dynamical division.

Hi Mark,

The bit about quadrant houses must be in Books I-II by Schmidt, as there is no use of them in Book III.

Ben