Michael Sternbach wrote:Paul,

Interesting how this topic morphed from aspects to houses before I even got a chance to chime in... Talk about thread drift!

It seems to happen to me all the time! I just hope it's not just me

This ties in with the old idea that the houses were somehow linked to the outermost sphere of the Aristotelian Universe, the one that was attributed to the 'unmoved mover'.

Right, and it's interesting to imagine that the cardinal points are kind of pillars or supports that hold up the universe, which is how Manilius describes them, with that in mind, the supports in place, the houses seem to be like static frameworks or scaffolding.

I believe I have heard all the arguments in opposition to that view by now, and (again much like you) I just don't have the time and energy to enter another extensive and fruitless discussion about the topic. So please be free to use whatever house system you feel comfortable with, fellow astrologers, you do have my blessing!

Same, I think, in practice, people should just use whatever house system they find useful and practical for their purposes.

What I haven't heard so far, however, is a philosophical (or astrosophical) rationale for WSH!

The best I can see is that most WSH advocates have one of a couple of important things in common.

The most common is the belief that astrology emerged from a sudden inventor or school. That is to say that someone came up with things like the aspect doctrine, the houses and so on all at the same time. In that way of thinking, the houses were meant to be signs as they were meant to be used alongside the zodiac and the aspect theory (presuming it's whole sign aspects). I don't think there's a huge amount of evidence for this, and there's plenty of evidence of sudden shifts and developments by not just multiple individuals, but multiple cultures.

However, in a worldview where some genius figure, like the Einstein of his time, came up with the astrological use of the zodiac, the houses and the aspects all at the same time and the unit of measurement or division for them all was the same has some merit to say that actually there's the zodiac and the zodiacal relationships encapsulated in the aspect theory from which, amongst other things emerged the houses.

If you have Chris Brennan's book I think he does a very fair and decent job of trying to balance out both arguments citing authorities in favour of both.

For my money, the inventor hypothesis just doesn't stand up. It calls into question what exactly inventor means. We know the houses likely derived from decan observations as they culminate and pass the horizon and so on, and aspects are apparently mentioned in mesopotamia, the wording of what horoscope means has changed over time etc.

Next up is the pragmatic approach, not really a philosophy of why it works, but why to keep using it. The idea is that whole sign houses can be used anywhere in the globe. If this is meant to contrast with quadrant houses, then this simply is not true. The problems of high latitudes are not necessarily to do with the houses per se but rather with what happens when the zodiac apparently reverses when it rises. I've dealt with this in another thread so wont' go into here.

Now the topic of the ancients' take on aspects is obviously related with this topic of the houses. Even though it has its own intricacies. Who knows, maybe we are yet going to talk about it, after all.

I know enough to know that the likelihood of that is too slim, once the house issue has started, it won't stop til everyone exhausts themselves and eventually get fed up talking about it.

Let me reply to the question and the ad hominem remark.

It's entirely possible you're not reading my posts fully or not understanding them.

I am. I understand that you aren't a Latin scholar, you don't read Latin or German, and you beg for the fool's pardon should any arguments defeat your position, which of course can never happen; your thesis as you present it is irrefutable since every possible objection will be discredited:

The instructive use of words as internal evidence?
Occasional poet's freedom.

Comparative evidence of the same word usage by other authors, including virtually every early author like Nechepso and Petosiris, Imbrasius of Ephesus, Timaeus, Thrasyllus, Balbillus, Dorotheus, and Serapio? Further comparative evidence drawn from actual case horoscopes of the age? Even further comparative evidence of the actual state of developments in astronomy and its documented reception among astrologers?
Comparisons are not relevant; we're talking about Manilius.

The external evidence of up-to-date scholarship?
Bouché-Leclercq and others say the same as me; the rest I don't care.

But, at the same time, you are a moderator of an astrological forum, not just the anonymous of 2019, and your expressed views will undoubtedly influence many of those who don't have the time, humor, or faculty to critically evaluate the evidence presented by you and me. Therefore, you may wish to consider whether you'd happily like to be credited as the ultimate author of a statement that can quickly morph into something like "Manilius used a quadrant house system, most probably Campanus."

You mean when he talks about a point and arcs between one cardinal point and another you think he might really mean signs? [...] in this section you really think by cardinal point he might actually mean sign?

No, the description of the quadrants reads for me as though he's writing about mundane quadrants. Just it seems that he switches back and forth between the two meanings of cardo without signaling what he means, and so does he with other words having two meanings throughout the poem.

After all, I regard Manilius's work as something like contemporary popular nonfiction: little factual information, mostly to exhibit the author's aptitude, embedded in entertaining stories, engaging images and so on, rather to amuse and motivate the reader than to instruct her; you'll never learn to interpret a nativity from Manilius. In any case, if I were about to write a poem on the houses (no matter which house system), I'd also employ the same imagery of rising, setting, culminating and the like, as this is the way how they can be powerfully depicted. If Manilius had really wanted to write a technical manual, his Astronomica would look like Dorotheus's poem. But to me, poetry doesn't mean that words that have only one meaning can be used to convey something totally different because while playing with ambiguity is sort of okay, the other trick is fooling the reader.

Levente Laszlo wrote: I am. I understand that you aren't a Latin scholar, you don't read Latin or German, and you beg for the fool's pardon should any arguments defeat your position, which of course can never happen; your thesis as you present it is irrefutable since every possible objection will be discredited:

Then you haven't understood me, as I suspected. There's no ad hominem here, I just began to suspect that you don't really believe or understand that I'm really not here to argue the point. There are no arguments at all. It is not that no arguments can defeat my position, rather I am not arguing to begin with. I am explaining and answering the question of why I believe Manilius isn't describing whole sign houses. That is all. Now were this a debate, or some argument or some attempt to convince one another or hold up some study for scrutiny it would be different. But that's not where I'm coming from. I have tried to explain this because I know from past experience how difficult it is to simply accept someone as giving their viewpoint without seeing it as a challenge to open a debate or argue over the points. I'm simply trying to explain my position and nothing more. I'm happy to listen to other people's positions if they want to give them.

But, at the same time, you are a moderator of an astrological forum,

The position of which calls for me to be moderate in my posts and ensure moderation in posts by others. Nothing more. I'm first and foremost a poster on a forum who has accepted a request to serve, freely of my time, skyscript to ensure that posts can be moderate.

What I'm not, however, is a professional astrologer, professional scholar, hoping to make waves in the astrological community, trying for speaker positions, writing astrological books etc. I'm a web developer who does astrology as a hobby and semi-professionally on an ad-hoc basis.

Therefore, you may wish to consider whether you'd happily like to be credited as the ultimate author of a statement that can quickly morph into something like "Manilius used a quadrant house system, most probably Campanus."

I don't accept the onus of responsibility for what other people say or do. I am happy to do that only for what I say or do. I've presented why I think Manilius is describing quadrant divisions of some kind, I could go more into why I suspect he either doesn't have any particular division in mind, or perhaps it's Campanus. You have presented your views, I created this thread explicitly because you asked for it and I thought it fair and moderate to explain as best as I can why I came to those views and you have done the same as to why you disagree. If you are the authority here on the houses, then great, you can simply conclude that I'm wrong or haven't studied it enough. Some day I may try for a compelling argument, or write a paper on the issue, but it's not today.

People can make up their own mind, if people want to say Manilius uses Campanus, ok, I've given my reasons, people can find it compelling or not.

After all, I regard Manilius's work as something like contemporary popular nonfiction: little factual information, mostly to exhibit the author's aptitude, embedded in entertaining stories, engaging images and so on, rather to amuse and motivate the reader than to instruct her; you'll never learn to interpret a nativity from Manilius.

Sure, I mean the most obvious gap here is that the planets aren't treated at all. He promises to deal with them and then doesn't. However, a question people have wondered when dealing with Manilius is whether his poem is a didactic poem or not. You clearly come down on the side of it not being a didactic poem or at least not instructional in astrology. I am not so sure. I think Manilius's intent is for it to be instructional but not really just about astrology but also about Stoicism. In that sense I do think Manilius is trying to be instructional and informative - he provides formulae, he criticises other formulae or calculus for achieving some measurement etc. I think he equally means to be instructional when discussing houses - whether he means for us to be able to create a house system ourself at the end of it is much less clear, possibly not. That may be to avoid that there were multiple house systems already in his time or else that the doctrine was still in flux, or it could be that he doesn't have anything specific in mind.

Manilius followed Lilly!

petosiris wrote:Manilius followed Lilly!

Come on, don't be kidding! I know you are very well aware that there never existed a man named Marcus Manilius, and Astronomica was written under the disguise of a Roman by Gerbert of Aurillac.

petosiris wrote:

What I haven't heard so far, however, is a philosophical (or astrosophical) rationale for WSH!

I haven't either, but I put forward one myself on the previous page. It is the only reason I even bothered with a reply. Did you bother to read it?

I have read all previous posts in the thread before I wrote one of my own, of course. The way I got you, a sign is an image, which can only be taken as a whole. To that I would reply that images have also been attributed to the subdivisions of a sign (decans etc.), down to individual degrees (Sabian symbols or, if you like it more traditional, what is shown in the Astrolabium Planum).

So no, this is hardly a tenable explanation to me. Your mileage may differ.

David Cochrane, a modern astrologer, also noted the affinity of the sidereal zodiac with whole sign houses - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgS_iMS7Cr0

He is saying that there are no houses, essentially. Which is an alternative view in its own right, however, one I don't concur on.

An antistellar astrologer would not be able to see the meaning and coherency of the place, represented by the material boundaries of the image.

Even in a sidereal zodiac, the actual boundaries of the visible image (i.e. constellation) have little to do with the sign it is associated with. The constellations deviate considerably in length from the regular 30 degrees extensions of the signs.

Other considerations have been put forward, for example the zodiacal configurations (schema) of each place to place, or the counting of houses from any point.

You mentioned it yourself here - counting the houses from a point, as opposed to from a whole sign! No doubt, the former was the common practice at least with some of the ancients.

But these, appear to me, side factors of the relations of the currently neglected signs. Manilius' work treats of them exclusively, while modern astrologers have went to great length to diminish their usage to ''background''.

The practice of counting houses from the Lots (commonly called Arabic Parts later) has indeed fallen out of fashion just like so many other ancient techniques, though it's quite possible that some traditionally minded astrologers still do this today.

It would be a miracle if someone made a post on that matter.

Feel free to make one yourself!

This fascination with the rising and culminating twelfth-parts might be older than the Greek astrology, if we are to trust the usage of decans by some authors. Note that the decans were originally based on the same principle - stellar clusters occupying specific spaces. Whether the first part of the cluster or the middle or the last portion of the cluster arises, the deduction would be the same. The same would be judged of the degrees and minutes of the Myriogenesis, each portion should be looked at its own fatalistic terms.

Again, this actually supports that the ancients were very much aware of the subdivisions of the sign; even Ptolemy presents various systems of terms (bounds).

Paul wrote:

Michael Sternbach wrote:Paul,

Interesting how this topic morphed from aspects to houses before I even got a chance to chime in... Talk about thread drift!

It seems to happen to me all the time! I just hope it's not just me

Hardly. Some mods are working hard to keep threads really tidy, whereas I too prefer a somewhat more relaxed attitude on the forums I am involved with. A thread is a living discussion to me that should be allowed to move in this and that direction, generally speaking.

This ties in with the old idea that the houses were somehow linked to the outermost sphere of the Aristotelian Universe, the one that was attributed to the 'unmoved mover'.

Right, and it's interesting to imagine that the cardinal points are kind of pillars or supports that hold up the universe, which is how Manilius describes them, with that in mind, the supports in place, the houses seem to be like static frameworks or scaffolding.

An interesting picture, to be sure!

I believe I have heard all the arguments in opposition to that view by now, and (again much like you) I just don't have the time and energy to enter another extensive and fruitless discussion about the topic. So please be free to use whatever house system you feel comfortable with, fellow astrologers, you do have my blessing!

Same, I think, in practice, people should just use whatever house system they find useful and practical for their purposes.

What I haven't heard so far, however, is a philosophical (or astrosophical) rationale for WSH!

The best I can see is that most WSH advocates have one of a couple of important things in common.

The most common is the belief that astrology emerged from a sudden inventor or school. That is to say that someone came up with things like the aspect doctrine, the houses and so on all at the same time. In that way of thinking, the houses were meant to be signs as they were meant to be used alongside the zodiac and the aspect theory (presuming it's whole sign aspects). I don't think there's a huge amount of evidence for this, and there's plenty of evidence of sudden shifts and developments by not just multiple individuals, but multiple cultures.

However, in a worldview where some genius figure, like the Einstein of his time, came up with the astrological use of the zodiac, the houses and the aspects all at the same time and the unit of measurement or division for them all was the same has some merit to say that actually there's the zodiac and the zodiacal relationships encapsulated in the aspect theory from which, amongst other things emerged the houses.

That would make the zodiac the pivot of all of astrology (no pun intended) which is not my perspective, as I think of it and the other main factors (planets, houses, even aspects) as equally valid expressions of certain archetypal 'ideas' common to them all, albeit on various levels.

It is interesting that you bring up Einstein as the reputed singular genius of modern physics, for even he did not create his theories out of the blue. Rather, hs role was to bring together bits and pieces of information and ideas (by Maxwell, Poincaré, Lorentz, Minkowski, Michelson/Morley etc.) that already existed in the literature of his day and combined them into a coherent whole. This in no way diminishes his achievement, it just show how scientific progress happens in general.

Also the elements of contemporary astrology may indeed have been developed by different individuals and in different cultures, yet they have been weaved into a comprehensive system by some ingenious (some might say, divinely inspired) mind(s) in Hellenistic times.

What this boils down to is the question whether you think of astrology as a merely symbolic system in which meanings can be attributed to different factors more or less at random (some kind of cosmic inkblot test, as it were), or if you assume that there is some objective metaphysical reality underlying it. The latter is how the ancients looked at it, in keeping with Hermetic and neo-Platonic natural philosophy, which I believe is still essentially viable despite modern insights into the workings of the Universe.

If you have Chris Brennan's book I think he does a very fair and decent job of trying to balance out both arguments citing authorities in favour of both.

What's the title of the book?

For my money, the inventor hypothesis just doesn't stand up. It calls into question what exactly inventor means. We know the houses likely derived from decan observations as they culminate and pass the horizon and so on,

Do you know any decent link or printed source for that topic?

and aspects are apparently mentioned in mesopotamia, the wording of what horoscope means has changed over time etc.

Next up is the pragmatic approach, not really a philosophy of why it works, but why to keep using it. The idea is that whole sign houses can be used anywhere in the globe. If this is meant to contrast with quadrant houses, then this simply is not true. The problems of high latitudes are not necessarily to do with the houses per se but rather with what happens when the zodiac apparently reverses when it rises. I've dealt with this in another thread so wont' go into here.

Now the topic of the ancients' take on aspects is obviously related with this topic of the houses. Even though it has its own intricacies. Who knows, maybe we are yet going to talk about it, after all.

I know enough to know that the likelihood of that is too slim, once the house issue has started, it won't stop til everyone exhausts themselves and eventually get fed up talking about it.

Which may be a good moment to start talking about the ancient understanding of aspects, opening another can of worms.

Even in a sidereal zodiac, the actual boundaries of the visible image (i.e. constellation) have little to do with the sign it is associated with. The constellations deviate considerably in length from the regular 30 degrees extensions of the signs.

What if I told you that the Greek astrologers did not make a difference? Mindblown, I know. Firmicus and Rhetorius (probably using the same source) distribute the 30 degrees of each constellation throughout the twelve signs. Then every single astrologer without exception treats the forms of the constellations as applying to the ideal 30 degrees twelfth-parts rather than whatever constellations one chooses to see.

For one list of significations of the signs see Ludwich, A. (Ed.). (1877). Maximi et Ammonis carminum De actionum auspiciis reliquiae: accedunt Anecdota astrologica. BG Teubneri.

Examples include watery, terrestrial, amphibian, royal, servile, vocal, mute, fertile, infertile, digging, with many limbs, two-coloured, rising backwards, lying, thievish, missing limbs, fierce, quadrupedal, enigmatic, outrageous, many-coloured, polycentric, running, sitting, double-bodied, incomplete etc. In one place, Valens 2.36 (possibly using Critodemus as a source) seems to treat the whole of Taurus as indicative of blindness because of the Pleiades (another unexpected whole sign consideration).

Dorotheus, Manilius, Ptolemy, Valens, Rhetorius all applied those to the twelfth-parts. In the spirit of the thread, it could be another method of convenience (or necessity, or something for the students as Paul put it), or... they conceptualized and used equal sized constellations. Certainly, Firmicus and Rhetorius intended to, and the rest did not have problem using them in that way.

For a method of distributing and seeing the constellations equally (without idealization), check out this thread - https://www.astrologyweekly.com/forum/s ... p?t=121654

To test out my theory.

Peotsiris and Levente - inventor hypothesis by an individual or school ? or gradual development ?

To test out my theory.

Peotsiris and Levente - inventor hypothesis by an individual or school ? or gradual development ?

What theory? Considering that the vital components of astrology come from Mesopotamia, I consider the inventor hypothesis untenable - things include like the benefic and malefic powers of the wandering stars, and the areas they influence, the twelve-fold circle, the groupings of triplicities and assigning them to planets, the exaltations, the Egyptian terms, the dodekatemoria, heliacal risings and settings etc. Mundane astrology was also adapted without change.

However, many Hellenistic astrologers acknowledge certain Egyptians as the founders of the science. I consider the pseudigrapha, probably compendiums, of these authors to have held great value and enthusiasm, hence the user name. These authors (whether an individual, a school or else) had to come up with the domicile scheme, twelve place system, configurations, the Lot of Fortune, length of life technique, profections, other handy chronocrator systems and other things, in other words they developed technical stuff that helps the craft. It also helped that it was firmly based on Aristotelian cosmology. This is what we call Hellenistic astrology as distinct from the Babylonian.

petosiris wrote:

To test out my theory.

Peotsiris and Levente - inventor hypothesis by an individual or school ? or gradual development ?

What theory? Considering that the vital components of astrology come from Mesopotamia, I consider the inventor hypothesis untenable - things include like the benefic and malefic powers of the wandering stars, and the areas they influence, the twelve-fold circle, the groupings of triplicities and assigning them to planets, the exaltations, the Egyptian terms, the dodekatemoria, heliacal risings and settings etc. Mundane astrology was also adapted without change.

However, many Hellenistic astrologers acknowledge certain Egyptians as the founders of the science. I consider the pseudigrapha, probably compendiums, of these authors to have held great value and enthusiasm, hence the user name. These authors (whether an individual, a school or else) had to come up with the domicile scheme, twelve place system, configurations, the Lot of Fortune, length of life technique, profections, other handy chronocrator systems and other things, in other words they developed technical stuff that helps the craft. It also helped that it was firmly based on Aristotelian cosmology. This is what we call Hellenistic astrology as distinct from the Babylonian.

I couldn't agree more. Maybe the only thing I would add is that I'm also fairly convinced that the works attributed to semi-legendary figures like Nechepso weren't necessarily written by the same author and in the same era.

Well there goes that theory