13 by Eddy zoidsoft wrote:In other words, a planet can be in a center of activity, but not particularly motivated (if 10th house topic for instance, but not that close to the MC); or vice versa a planet can be declining (say 9th house which is not a "center of activity") but be highly motivated (a planet conjunct the MC in the 9th). Perhaps this reflects the development of the MC as a mathematical (and calculable) point on the ecliptic (I believe somewhere in the 2nd century). In those days the MC wasn't part of the houses but a 'sensitive point' according to James Holden's A history of horoscopic astrology http://books.google.nl/books?id=9p1igGF ... gy&f=false p. 19 By the way, when I use equal MC houses I do something similar with the Ascendant. MC houses determining the topics and Asc. as a sensitive point. So just the reversed of the original use. The concept of kentron/pivot is interesting but I think that from this it could follow that the equinoxes and solstices are pivots too. p. 91 of Holden mentions the view of the solstices being in the middle of Capricorn and Cancer. The Babylonians also did something similar in the earliest development of the zodiac (according to B.L. van der Waerden). Deb once wrote something on this and its relation to the antiscia http://www.skyscript.co.uk/antiscia.html . Applying this concept to an ascendant based house system would lead to the Vehlow system, starting with Asc-15? as I. Quote Tue Nov 29, 2011 8:25 pm
14 by zoidsoft Eddy wrote:The concept of kentron/pivot is interesting but I think that from this it could follow that the equinoxes and solstices are pivots too. p. 91 of Holden mentions the view of the solstices being in the middle of Capricorn and Cancer. The Babylonians also did something similar in the earliest development of the zodiac (according to B.L. van der Waerden). Deb once wrote something on this and its relation to the antiscia. Applying this to an ascendant based house system would be the Vehlow system, starting with Asc-15? as I. Yes. One of the things about a "pivot" (kentron) is the ability for there to be a change in direction which creates a "phasis" (an appearance that speaks). The cardinal points indicate a change in direction (or an initiation of something new which essentially is the same thing). Curtis Manwaring Zoidiasoft Technologies, LLC Quote Tue Nov 29, 2011 8:31 pm
15 by Mark Eddy wrote: I've been looking around on the internet and here's something of Chris Brennan: Chris Brennan wrote: However, it appears to me (and probably Schmidt at this point as well) that it is not so much that the Hellenistic astrologers were using whole sign houses in order to assign topics (i.e. health, finances, siblings, parents, etc.) and quadrant houses in order to determine angularity, but rather that in almost every area of chart delineation whole sign houses were used in order to determine both topics and strength (angularity), except in the length of life treatment, which is where the Hellenistic astrologers usually tended to introduce the quadrant systems. This effectively means that unless you are working with the length of life technique, you are using whole sign houses virtually 100% of the time. Unfortunately, this caused quite a bit of confusion in the later Medieval tradition, which is what eventually led to the plethora of different house systems that were introduced. source: http://horoscopicastrologyblog.com/2009 ... h-project/ I find Brennan's view more convincing. The problem with that statement is that it is a serious oversimplication of the available evidence and makes a lot of assumptions. No one is really sure what house system Ptolemy was using. The topic has been discussed ad nauseum here on Skyscript for years and the only rational conclusion is that we dont have enough information in his Tetrabiblos to know quite what system he was using. This article by Deb sets out quite a lot of detail on what we know ( and dont know) about Ptolemy's approach to houses: http://www.skyscript.co.uk/houprob_print.html One of the earliest surviving astrological texts is the Astronomica of Manilius dating from the early 1st century CE. He seems to be using a house system dividing up the celestial sphere. It has been suggested that this may be the Campanus house system. The third century astrologer Porphyry was obviously using the quadrant system named after him. However, the system was first mentioned by the 2nd century astrologer Vettius Valens in his Anthology. While Valens does use the porphyry house system for the length of life calculation it is Robert Schmidt's theory that this was the only way it was utilised. I have quoted a post below by Deb that questions this assumption. Equally, we have no evidence Porphyry was restricting himself to a length of life calculation in his use of quadrant houses. In his text the Mathesis The 4th century Roman astrologer Firmicus Maternus is using a house system that seems to utilise equal house cusps. Robert Hand has suggested Firmicus was actually using a whole sign house system with equal house cusps the points of strength in the houses. I haven't read James Holden's latest translation and would be interested to see his take on this. Then we have the 6th/7th century Byzantine astrologer Rhetorius who seems to be describing a time based quadrant house system that seems to be Alcabitius. I haven't studied other important early sources on this issue such as Paul of Alexandria and Hephaistio of Thebes. However, the above texts give me enough cause to question how universal the exclusive use of whole sign houses really was in hellenistic astrology. I am no authority on statistics but to maintain the position that 100% of hellenistic astrologers were using whole sign houses (excluding length of life calculation) is drawing a conclusion that many of the available sources simply dont support. The whole sign house system is clearly an idealized representation of the signs. However, from the earliest sources such as Dorotheus of Sidon in his Carmen Astrologicum we have references to 'straight' and crooked ' signs which seems a reference to the long and short ascensional rising times of the zodiac signs. Its important to take a look at this article by Robert Schmidt as it has been immensely influential on others in the traditional astrological community. Schmidt's approach on the houses has been effectively adopted by others such as Robert Hand, and Chris Brennan. http://accessnewage.com/articles/astro/houses.htm At this point I want to quote from a recent post Deborah Houlding made to me on another thread that makes a lot of extremely interesting points. I apologise for quoting another post so extensively and for dragging Deb into this discusion but her views are interesting and worth reading. Not least because too many astrologers are simply accepting one interpretation of the texts without critically examining the topic for themselves. Its not a question of who is right here but rather retaining an open mind that continues to ask searching questions. Deb wrote: With regard to the article you referred to, this is the one that Robert Schmidt published in the 1990s to propose the notion that meaning comes from whole sign placement but quadrant divisions were used to evaluate planetary strength. Astrologers have relied upon the authority of this article without appreciating how many of the comments made within it are subject to debate. For example, the suggestion that the whole sign ?method? was the oldest method of all, draws a lot of its weight from this being the apparent method of Valens (whilst admissions are made elsewhere that Valen's approach was often ?crude? in regard to technicalities). So when Robert Schmidt discusses why there is a very clear and explicit passage that describes the process of division adhering to what we call the ?Porphyry method? his suggestion is that we should consider this to be a separate technique, used only to judge planetary strength from position, rather than with respect to house meaning. Putting all other previous conceptions and contextual knowledge of other sources aside, this is not an irrational suggestion because the passage identifies the places as being powerful, average or weak ? what we are all familiar with in the concept of angular houses being strong, cadent houses weak and suceedent houses intermediate. However, because Valens doesn?t appear to reference the meaning of these places, other than strength of position, Robert Schmidt suggests: Deb quoting Robert Schmidt "He in no way indicates that he is establishing a division into topics, or a house-system in the proper sense. In fact he makes it clear that he is not when discussing the second place so constructed, "and to judge another 1/3 part of the degrees as middling neither more good nor more base on account of the post-ascension of the Horoskopos and the Goddess and the diameter of God." Deb wrote: In support of this he makes an illogical point. He continues (I've emboldened some particularly significant comments): From Robert Schmidt's article: ''The post-ascension of the Horoskopos is the second whole-sign, while Goddess is the traditional name for the third whole-sign. In other words, this division has an intermediate activity level because the two second and third traditional whole-signs overlap on it. Notice that he does not reassign the name "post-ascension" to the second interval nor the name "Goddess" to the third interval of his new mundane division. Furthermore, Valens offers this assessment of activity levels as his own correction of a tradition that preceded him, in which the first 1/3 of the mundane quadrant was considered to be powerful, but all the remaining degrees weak. Thus, it may have been Valens first of all who extended the activity assessment to twelve places instead of eight, and such a system could not in that case have preceded him." Deb wrote: What Robert Schmidt is saying is that the way the first part of the explanation is written is confusing and seems to be proposing something less straightforward than a three-fold divsision between the ascendant and IC. However, the next paragraph, which is not quoted by Schmidt, is perfectly clear in its meaning and restores the necessary clarity to know that what we would naturally assume was indeed the case. Quoting from Mark Riley?s text for convenience it reads (III.2): ''It is necessary to calculate likewise from MC, and to consider the first third of the distance between angles as operative, the second third, following MC, as of average influence (thus it was called Good Daimon by the ancients), and the last third, up to the Ascendant, as afflicting and inoperative. The Places in opposition to these will have the same force. Orion expounded all this in his book.'' Deb wrote: The fact that Valens acknowledges this to have been done by the ancients is relevant, and the fact that he defines the places by name is very significant, because these names are not, as Robert Schmidt suggests, the names of whole signs, they are the names of the celestial ?places?, ie ?houses?, as made clear by an abundance of other sources which give their names and expand upon the house meanings which extend from or relate to those names. As for example, in Manilius, where we are told that the first place is called horoscope because it is on the same level as the earth and marks where the stars rise and the time is divided into hours; or for example that the 11th house is called ?good fortune? because it is a place where planets are moving upwards towards the towards the summit of heaven; the third, which rises by diurnal motion form the lowest region, called goddess, etc. Deb wrote: I could spend many hours debating other points in that article if I had the time, but I don?t. This always turns into a very controversial discussion so let me be clear that I?m not denying that a whole sign approach can be effective or denying the use of it in ancient practice. I am pointing out that some arguments are being exaggerated to the point of astrologers assuming the matter is cut and dried when it isn?t. Robert Schmidt concludes his article by saying: ?it is apparent that no astrologer writing in Greek ever used a dynamical division topically.? The fact is that outside of Valens we still have very few examples of the practical application of these principles and very few examples indeed of graphical reproductions of charts that would make the matter clearer. However one of the very rare examples we have access to which offers a diagram to accompany the astrological analysis of the chart - in Greek - demonstrates the use of the Porphyry system of divisionand it clearly shows what Robert Schmidt says was never done. That?s obviously something to be considered. I'll give the link to the chart and my narrative on it below. Although I am aware of arguments that this - like any other - might have been altered by a copyist, I see no reason to dispute the validity of this chart because I have checked all the details carefully. To suggest that the chart itself may have been later reconstructed in a system which was not that of the original astrologer's is not feasible unless we assume that the translator, for reasons of his own, changed the recorded text so that it matched with the chart details exactly, and also recalculated the whole thing, using the necessary tables of construction for the original time and place (which were not his own), down to minute details of agreement, rather than simply copying out what he saw before him (and then doing all this without leaving hint of a promotion of argument nor any reason as to why he would want to do all that complicated research rather than simply preserving and reproducing the original, which was the purpose of his work). Given that the method of Porphry division is so clearly described by a number of classical works, it is not necessary to assume that the system was never applied in practice. I think (well as far as I know) I was the first person to check the graphical chart details thoroughly and notice that this demonstrated Porphyry division. How many other examples may exist which have not yet been checked as this one has? The details of that chart, which are interesting for all sorts of other reasons, are here: http://www.skyscript.co.uk/greek_horoscope.html Last edited by Mark on Sun Dec 18, 2011 12:32 pm, edited 1 time in total. As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly Quote Tue Nov 29, 2011 11:38 pm
16 by waybread I just love this discussion, everyone-- although it will take me a while to fully digest all the posts. On another forum I became so puzzled about the oft-repeated statement that whole signs were the only house system used before the late Hellenistic period, that I challenged some members simply to show me the evidence, chapter and verse. A lot of the "evidence" seems to come from Robert Hand's 2-part article in The Mountain Astrologer, subsequently republished as a small book. I don't have a copy and it seems to be out of print except for a few on-line book-sellers who still carry it. TMA has the article available on CD-- plus a lot of other material on it that I don't necessarily want. Two of the discussants have a copy of Hand's book and I asked if either of them would puh-leeze simply quote the lines from the original sources upon which Hand bases his argument. Still waiting. If anyone here can paraphrase Hand's hard evidence from the original sources, I would love to hear from you! Francesca Rochberg (1998), the authority on Babylonian astrology in cuniform, says that the Babylonians didn't use houses. They did use other divisions like "seasonal hours" or indicating that births occured "late at night" or "before sunset." Does anyone know about the ancient Egyptians? So I wonder where the idea of houses even came from. Ptolemy (Tetrabiblos), who had access to both traditions (2nd century AD) says next to nothing about houses. He names only five of them. Nearly all of his techniques have no reference to houses: he uses planets to address most of the themes that I would allocate to houses. Then there is the peculiar place (III:10) where he says to start counting 5 degrees into a sign. Manilius Astronomica seems to have compiled several different systems, as I think one could make a case for Porphyry or something like it (2:778ff), for a constellational astrology with his ascendants based on a constellational calendar (book 4). Then he's got a kind of turned house system that might be more whole-signs based. I hope someone can enlighten me, whether orthogonally or elegantly! Quote Wed Nov 30, 2011 5:05 am
17 by Eddy Mark wrote: However, the above texts give me enough cause to question how universal the exclusive use of whole sign houses really was in hellenistic astrology. In that case it is not clear and we now will have to make the best of it. I remember that thread you mention Mark. Reading Martin?s comments there and other things, I more and more think that Placidus must has left a big footprint on modern astrology in the English-speaking world with the passing through of Placidus in the 18th century when astrology was much less practiced. waybread wrote:Francesca Rochberg (1998), the authority on Babylonian astrology in cuniform, says that the Babylonians didn't use houses. They did use other divisions like "seasonal hours" or indicating that births occured "late at night" or "before sunset." Perhaps the ?planetary hours? preceded the house systems in being a time sector being followed by a space sector. Babylonian astronomy/astrology was more arithmetic while Greek astronomy/astrology was more geometric. So I wonder where the idea of houses even came from. Not a really elegant answer but perhaps the pressing need for more information stimulated their development. The analogy (in number) with the 12 signs seems obvious. Perhaps Kepler?s view about houses wasn?t so bad and the use of houses should be abandoned. And if houses still are to be used, I suggest we all use equal MC houses from now on . Quote Wed Nov 30, 2011 9:18 am
18 by Martin Gansten Thanks to Mark for his timely quotations. I have been disinclined to get into the discussion on this regularly recurring theme, but there are two brief points which I think ought to be made: 1. The 'topical' house meanings are obviously based on several principles, the two most important being (a) the aspectual relationship of a house to the ascendant, and (b) the place of a house in the diurnal motion. The 9th house is beneficial because it trines the ascendant; the 10th house has to do with fame and visibility in the world because it is culminating. These two principles not seldom conflict with one another, which leads to my second point: 2. Many ancient and medieval authors, whether writing in Greek, Sanskrit, or Arabic, seem to work from an idealist mindset. They may know that the sign culminating is not always the 10th from the one rising, but they still think that it ought to be so -- that this is the ideal or normative situation -- and their formulations with respect to houses reflect this thinking. As a practising astrologer working on a chart, my personal solution is to attempt to unravel the threads that go into the combined significations of any given house, in order to understand which of these may or may not apply to a planet which is, for instance, falling away from the midheaven but in square to or disjunct the ascendant; etc. Quote Wed Nov 30, 2011 10:19 am
19 by Mark Thanks Martin, Can I just ask when do you think Porphyry houses were first being used in Indian astrology? I should state I dont have any personal problem with whole sign houses. I actually utilise them myself. Especially, in natal astrology where I find them very effective. I tend to give more weight to quadrant houses in horary and electional astrology. I rather like the approach of Persian astrologers like Masha'Allah who combined whole sign and quadrant houses in his delineation. My main issue is deciding which time based house system (Alcabitius or Placidus) to use in combination with whole sign houses. Thats a topic I may open for discussion elsewhere. Its seems to me one can approach this subject in various ways. Firstly, historically, based on the development of house systems. Secondly , a logical checklist of pros and cons. Thirdly, practical experience of working with the two approaches. Looking at the advantages of whole sign houses I see the following points: Pro-Whole Sign 1 The Original House system (?) 2 No intercepted houses 3 No problem of Northern latitudes stretching/squeezing house size. Such systems become unusable at very high latitudes. In this respect Placidus is more subject to this than Alcabitius. 4 Ingress to Sign=house less ambiguous than numerous alternative quadrant house cusps 5 Many of the cases of prominent 12th house nativities with quadrant houses are actually 1st house with whole sign! Arguments against 1 MC can fall between 8th-12 houses. Blurs delineation MC or WS 10th house? Same issue for IC vs WS 4th house 2 WS charts are somewhat generic beyond the ascending sign. Quadrant houses such as Placidus or Alcabtius arguably more accurately reflect the astronomical relationship of the zodiac signs and the ecliptic to an exact location on earth. In essence this argument states Whole sign houses are an idealized representation of the signs but not ?natural? as signs in reality take different amounts of times to rise at a specific location. Pro-Placidean houses 1. Angles associated with house cusps. More accurately reflects planets in powerful or weak positions in relation to the angles. 2 House cusps of quadrant houses such as Placidus reflect exact location on earth 3 Different ascensional rising time of signs is better reflected in systems such as Placidus and Alcabitius 4 One Placidean house=Two planetary hours-Coincidence? The arguments for and against whole sign houses tend to overlap. What one person might perceive as a strength another may see as a weakness. For example the stretching/shrinking of Placidus houses (or the ever increasing intercepted signs) could be seen as a practical weakness or a strength reflecting astronomical reality. As I said I dont see any reason why one cannot work with both approaches. They are both quite elegant in different ways. Lets have our cake and eat it I say. Mark Last edited by Mark on Wed Nov 30, 2011 8:05 pm, edited 2 times in total. As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly Quote Wed Nov 30, 2011 7:35 pm
20 by Mark Eddy wrote: In that case it is not clear and we now will have to make the best of it. So true of so many issues in astrology I think. Its reassuring to believe things are cut and dried but the truth is seldom so straightforward. As Jean-Paul Sartre said 'We are condemned to choose'. Eddy wrote: I remember that thread you mention Mark. Reading Martin?s comments there and other things, I more and more think that Placidus must has left a big footprint on modern astrology in the English-speaking world with the passing through of Placidus in the 18th century when astrology was much less practiced. Yes John Partridge the late 17th century astrologer seems to have been a big influence on later English astrology in terms of adopting Placidus houses. He was strongly influenced by Placidus and his Primum Mobile. Somewhat ironic considering his personal anti-Roman Catholic prejudices. However, Martin is the resident expert. He has lectured on this subject and I think(?) written an article on this very topic. Mark As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly Quote Wed Nov 30, 2011 7:56 pm
21 by Eddy Mark wrote:The arguments for and against whole sign houses tend to overlap. What one person might perceive as a strength another may see as a weakness.That's true. Your point 3, no intercepted signs (and houses, I don't know the correct term), is the most attractive one. However non-interception already occurs with any 'equal' (along the ecliptic) method. Chris Brennan wrote:The transit doctrine also becomes more interesting with whole sign houses, because sign ingresses gain increased importance since the ingress of a planet into a new sign is also an ingress into a new house, and the topics associated with that house begin to become more prominent in the native?s life shortly thereafter.This advantage has a disadvantageous side too. While the sign ingress becomes more important, the house ingress becomes less personal. There are many people with the same rising sign. This should be noticed in society as a somewhat collective event for an average of each 1/12th of the population, somewhat akin to sign ingresses used in Sun-sign astrology, but a bit more personal. Because of the different rising times, the Leo and Scorpio rising sign people would be in the majority, and the Pisces and Aries rising sign people would be in the minority. (This applies to the northern hemisphere, in Australia it's vice versa). Would the latter group then be more special, as a rare species? A whole MC sign variant would hardly suffer this problem. The MC moves more regularly through the signs with a slightly longer (ca. +8 min. per sign) than average (2 hrs) stay in the signs on each side of the solstice points, an average stay in the fixed signs, and a slightly shorter stay (ca. -8 min. per sign) than average in the signs on each sign of the equinoxes. Mark wrote:Yes John Partridge the late 17th century astrologer seems to have been a big influence on later English astrology in terms of adopting Placidus houses. He was strongly influenced by Placidus and his Primum Mobile. Somewhat ironic considering his personal anti-Roman Catholic prejudices. I believe that Placidus' works were placed on the Index of forbidden books of the RC Church, so that perhaps explains Partridge's stance. Moreover anti-Roman-Catholicism was strong in 17th century England. Quote Wed Nov 30, 2011 8:23 pm
22 by waybread More cool responses! Martin, thanks for your clarity. Just a question, though: Robert Schmidt (CURA, 1996; TMA, 1999/2000) essentially argues that there were 3 different house systems for different purposes. 1. Topical: This would be themes like reputation, illness, and marriage (depending upon the author and date, as their house contents varied.) Whole signs. 2. Dynamical: assessing the strength of a planet according to its position in its quadrant; i.e., angular, succedant, cadent. Porphyry. 3. Unnamed, but it corresponds to your 1a. Planets are well or poorly placed in a given house because of its aspect to the first house. The bad ones are semi-sextile or quincunx. House system not mentioned. You've explained the houses somewhat differently. Are their flaws in Schmidt's 3 categories from your perspective? Also--anyone--in thinking of how and why someone invented houses back-when: although houses are invisible, they have a logic that is very much tied to the geocentric view of the world; and some awareness of the heavens as a celestial time-piece. AS/DC are the horizons on the ecliptic. The MC is the high point of the sun's journey on the ecliptic. I am struck by how important the angles and quadrants were to the ancients I've read so far. Then with houses, we need some rationale for further division. If I use the sky as a celestial clock, I might offer to meet someone when the morning sun is just half-way between the horizon and the high point. I can even use my hands and arms to point to such a location in the sky. At night we could even say we will meet when such-and-such a heavenly body reaches the middle of the quadrant. This could lead to an 8-house system. If we've had practice with this sort of time-keeping, however, we could divide the quadrant into 3 sectors: closest to the horizon, in the middle, or closest to the natural mid-heaven. The advantage to the latter would be that it: (a) offers finer delineation, and (b) gives us the magic number 12. But if we stick to such a natural, visual system of time and sky division, we would have no necessary link to whole signs except during the 12 moments when the celestial clock points and sign cusps coincided. My sense is that this is what Manilius did, as he seems to rely on a "natural" midheaven and calculates rising sign within a few degrees from rising constellations; vs. somebody like Valens who seems to view the MC and even the AC as calculated, derived, points. Any thoughts on this? Quote Wed Nov 30, 2011 8:44 pm
23 by Mark Hello Waybread, I should let you know that Robert Hand's book on Whole Sign Houses still seems to be readily available. You can order it from Robert Hand's own online bookstore: http://www.arhatmedia.com/newavailpub.htm The Astrology Center of America also stock it: http://www.astroamerica.com/arhat.html#h41 Its a great booklet and helped get me hooked on whole sign houses but the text (excluding index etc) is only 46 pages. Its principally an introductory text and devotes quite a lot of space to practical delineation with chart examples. I suspect many of your more in depth questions will remain unanswered. It really only devotes about 6 pages to a detailed discussion of historical sources. Moreover, that is restricted to Ptolemy, Firmicus Maternus and especially Valens. Like Robert Schmidt, Hand doesn't really regard Manilius as a representative hellenistic text and therefore ignores it in his booklet. I think its fair to say that Deborah Houlding strongly disagrees! Hand also put forward his view that Ptolemy was probably using a variant of whole sign houses too. Hand's basic theory is that most hellenistic astrologers combined equal house 'cusps' with whole sign houses. However, his only source is Firmicus for that and not everyone would accept his interpretation of that source. Keep in mind the etymology of the word 'cusp'. The word "cusp" comes from a Latin word "cuspis" which is the tip of a sword or the point where the energy is concentrated. The cusp is the most sensitive or important point in the house, however it is not necessarily the boundary of the house. You can see this in Indian astrology where I believe the 'cusps' fall in the middle of houses not the beginning. This will come as quite a shock to many modern astrologers! Mind you the book came out way back in 2000. More recently,(2007) Hand has written an article on houses: ''Signs as Houses (Places ) in Ancient Astrology.'' Hand discusses Firmicus Maternus, Ptolemy and Valens again in regards houses (places) and reasserts his view that whole sign houses was the default system in early and intermediate hellenistic astrology. I do detect a more cautious approach to Ptolemy though but that may reflect the more academic nature of this publication. Robert Hand's main argument in his article (2008) is that the lack of a calculated MC in the vast majority of the hundreds of surviving Greek and Demotic (late Egyptian) horoscopes is not necessarily a sign of incompetence or rudimentary astronomical ability but rather evidence that these early astrologers gave primary focus to the tenth place from the ascendant not a calculated MC. Hand's source for this position are Neugebauer and Van Hoesen's Greek Horoscopes ,and Jones Astronomical Papyri from Oxyrhynchus. These collections contain the vast majority of recovered horoscopes from the ancient period. Hand relies on the research of J.D North (author of Horoscopes and History) and sources him with the statistic that out of 168 horoscopes presented in Greek Horoscopes only 27 give both an ascendant and midheaven. Only two charts give house cusps of the intermediate houses according to J.D. North. Hand's article is from a special double issue of Culture and Cosmos published in 2008 devoted to Ancient Astrology. It contains articles from Giuseppe Bezza, Deborah Houlding, Joseph Crane and Dorian Greenbaum amongst others. The articles were presented at a Conference at the Warburg Institute in London in 2007 entitled 'The Winding Courses of the Stars'. I highly recommend the whole issue of Culture and Cosmos to any student of ancient astrology. Here is the link if you wish to purchase a copy: http://www.cultureandcosmos.org/issues/vol11.html Mark As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly Quote Wed Nov 30, 2011 10:18 pm
24 by waybread Mark, thank you so much! Really helpful. Robert Hand's site seemed to direct people to the bookshop at the AFA; but they don't carry his whole signs book(let) any more. I am reluctant to trust my credit card to on-line book-sellers without a demonstrable track-record of credit card security, but I would like to get a copy-- so thanks. Your synopsis actually confirmed my hunch about Hand's "evidence". That there aren't many (any??) explicit references to the whole sign system in the primary sources; but that once one "reads" Hellenistic astrologers as using the whole sign system, the tumblers to the combination lock of house systems in antiquity fall into place and the lock opens. Trouble is, such "aha" moments can actually be mistaken. It is easier and less troublesome to get an "aha" moment than it is to painstakingly slog through the original sources, line by line. I don't know if anyone else is bothered by Hand's or other astrologers' deliberate exclusion of certain Hellenistic authors who don't "fit their pictures." I don't find this practice acceptable; because actually we have so few extant sources from antiquity, that exluding Manilius or Ptolemy as "outliers" reduces us to just a small handful of presumably valid, extant, traditional sources. And then we would have to do a lot more homework to substantiate a conjecture that the "kosher" sources were mainstream or accurate purveyors of older traditions. Astrologers who turf out Manilius, for example, seem to ignore that his book is very mainstream in the context of earlier Greek and Roman works on the heavens. For example, Hesiod, Works and Days, Aratus, Phaenomena; and Ovid, Fasti. Similarly, an arbitrary judgement that Ptolemy knew diddly-squat about "real" astrology ignores some important points. (1) Not all Hellenistic astrology was genethliacal. Some of it legitimately dealt with mundane astrology, astrological meteorology, or cultural geography. These branches do not deal with clients' birth charts. Robert Schmidt termed them "universal astrology." (2) Ptolemy's specific project was to put astrology on a more "scientific" (for the 2nd century AD) footing. As such, he fit very well into the Hellenistic scientific and mathematical cultures of his day. (3) Vettius Valens, Mr. Pt's contemporary, is often held up as "the real astrologer." I'm sorry, but some of his calculations just seem (to me) to be make-believe; for example, how to calculate the ascendant when one has zero clue about the native's actual birth time. Also, many of Mr. V's horoscope synopses clearly could not have come from his own "client files." The inquiry continues! Quote Thu Dec 01, 2011 7:39 am