Francesco wrote:

jventura: what do you mean by Haiz?

Its basically a medieval use of sect which includes compatibility of a planet's placement by hemisphere and sign.

The Skyscript glossary discusses it and many other traditional terms:

http://www.skyscript.co.uk/gl/hayz.html

While some ancient sources such as Valens certainly mention the hemisphere difference in sect the majority of ancient sources just refer to whether its a night or day chart to determine sect.

This gets lost in medieval astrology and the focus shifts exclusively to Haiz/Similitude. The issue of whether its a night or day chart is neglected.

Mars has always been trickier to assess on sect since its a masculine planet but of the night sect. The ancient astrologers tended to think it was more desirable in a feminine sign like Scorpio because of the excesses of a malefic like Mars were thought to be moderated somewhat. So in terms of sect I would say Mars fits by sect in Capricorn as one of the nocturnal sect planets in a nocturnal sign. The Perso-Arabs took a different view and relied on the fact Mars was masculine to indicate it fitted better in a masculine sign. This reflects the fact hellenistic sect theory was losing its importance as Perso-Arabic astrology developed. By the renaissance sect was reduced to a very minor factor in chart delineation.

Mark

What they mean then by Saturn and Moon being contra-Haiz?
Are they contrary of what they should ideally be?

Francesco wrote:

What they mean then by Saturn and Moon being contra-Haiz?
Are they contrary of what they should ideally be?

Saturn =Diurnal Sect. So it should be in the same hemisphere as the Sun at night ie below the earth. Also Saturn is in a feminine /nocturnal sign (Capricorn).

Moon=Leader of Night sect. It should ideally be in the hemisphere above earth at night but here it is below the earth ie ASC-DESC axis. Moon is also in a masculine/diurnal sign (Leo).

Some think sect was a rival early system to essential dignity to assess planets efficaciousness. We certainly see that above where Saturn is well placed in Capricorn by essential dignity. However, it is out of sect by time, hemisphere and sign. The only mitigation is it is oriental of the sun which better fits a masculine planet.

Mark

I was asking me another thing: what precisely classical authors mean when they say <when>, they mean oriental-occidental as we are speaking now?
Or they mean <oriental> and <occidental>?
I most believe that, when they say that Mars or Jupiter oriental are mostly hot, they refer to what we are speaking now, and not oriental-occidental in the sense of quadrants and neither in the sense of conjunction to ascendant-descendant. Is that right?
http://www.skyscript.co.uk/marsatt.html
One example is here: Lilly says that, when oriental, <Mars>

For example in the note
<35>

hi mark,

thanks for the thoughtful and informative reply on the issue of inner planets phases.. i will read mccanns article later.. for me it is a case of what i retain to memory to make some subjective conclusion on it all that changes.. i think about planetary phase with regard to all the planets fairly easily except mercury and venus which is harder for me to understand. what this means a bit is that unless the planet is under the beams, i tend to have a vague idea that it is in a better position then if it isn't! obviously that isn't very nuanced!

bottom line and as joao has demonstrated - solar phase is only one of a number of considerations for assessing planetary strength.. just how much one factors this in is subjective as i see it.. assessing planetary strength is subjective too as i see it.. this is probably why frances thread here is especially interesting as even if one figures out what has the most strength according to the idea of solar phase, one still has to factor other considerations and weight them according to some subjective viewpoint.

solar fire is okay. i think it could be better. i use the animate feature.. i like using it a lot on the biwheel, but one can also animate a single chart and it is helpful to do... i still think it could be better and that it isn't really laying it out with regard to solar phase.. maybe we see that differently..

back to frances's chart.. i still tend to see mercury as strong for a few reasons.. being in the ascendant and the one planet closest to an angle will give it a lot of power for good and bad.. one could argue that being in pisces isn't very helpful and i would agree with that too, but it doesn't change its power to act which overshadows the other planets in this chart as i see it.. that it is conjunct the north node also feeds into it's 'strength'.. i doubt the software will pick up any of that in terms of changing it's strength or weakness..maybe software can do this too.. the exact trine to the pof is interesting..

fortunately none of these planets operate in a vacuum.. this is where the strength of mars can be very helpful to a muddled mercury even if it is strong by being in the ascendant. same deal venus which is favourably placed in taurus and throws some serenity over the chart it might not otherwise have. the dominant square of sun- neptune, in combo with pisces rising and mercury in pisces is an interesting 3 some. the chart might have some potential for acting and drama given the moon in leo but that all seems overwhelmed by too strong a mars which is pushing the chart into action more associated with making money..

it is hard to figure out charts! solar phase is an interesting part of this. what does one do with a conclusion that mars or venus (as suggested by joao's software) is strongest in the chart? one still has to factor in all sorts of other considerations and the software is incapable of reaching any helpful conclusion other then mathematical weighing type conclusions..

I missed the link to the McCann article but if it was the late Maurice McCann I remember him giving a mnemonic (thanks spellchecker) for assessing the strength of the outers as they go around the chart from combust , oriental sextile and so on till occidental.
Now we have some useful diagrams in Ben Dykes work
I concur with James about arithmetic counting of dignity scores. We should be able to spot the most powerful planet without this

it is hard to figure out charts! solar phase is an interesting part of this. what does one do with a conclusion that mars or venus (as suggested by joao's software) is strongest in the chart? one still has to factor in all sorts of other considerations and the software is incapable of reaching any helpful conclusion other then mathematical weighing type conclusions..[/quote]


Well, I believe it is important to trace a general predominant, of course not as an excuse to remain superficial in the context of chart analysis.

James_M

it is hard to figure out charts! solar phase is an interesting part of this. what does one do with a conclusion that mars or venus (as suggested by joao's software) is strongest in the chart? one still has to factor in all sorts of other considerations and the software is incapable of reaching any helpful conclusion other then mathematical weighing type conclusions..

Mjacob wrote:

I concur with James about arithmetic counting of dignity scores. We should be able to spot the most powerful planet without this

I agree with James and Mathew here.

Dignity pointing systems can appear to provide a reassuring clarity by reducing things to a some kind of rational, objective point score. However, all pointing systems are inevitably subjective since they all rely on personal astrological assumptions to create in the first place. We therefore need to unpick and scrutinize the implicit assumptions that underlie any point scoring system.

In the astrological tradition there have been numerous approaches to dignity scoring systems.

For example see this article by Robert hand which summarises systems designed by Ibn Ezra, Montulmo, Schoener, Lilly:

http://arhatmedia.com/alldign.htm

Here is a piece from Skyscript setting out Lilly?s system:

http://www.skyscript.co.uk/dig5.html

All these systems were commonly devised to identify the chart ruler variously known as the Kurios, Chart Victor, Lord of the Geniture etc.

This piece by Regulus Astrology sets out his interim research into the subject:

http://regulus-astrology.com/pdf/Victor ... _Chart.pdf

Naturally, different techniques will alter the scores we obtain. For example in a Hellenistic approach there would be a separate scoring for a night/day chart not just hemisphere /Haiz. This is lacking in all the medieval and renaissance scoring systems. And even if we agree on the point weighting for houses we will reach different scores due to our choice of house system. Even in the renaissance where there was more technical consensus there was common disagreement on how to point parts of the chart. So I think technical differences make any kind of ??objective?? pointing system quite impossible.

But there is a bigger philosophical objection to this systematizing tendency. What do we actually mean by points in the first place? Power, strength? The problem with this is that it assumes all these factors ie essential dignity, sect, solar phase, aspectual connections and house placement are synomymous. I don?t believe they really are. I think we are often comparing apples with pears.

I opened a thread a while back contrasting the issues of qualitative vs quantitative on essential dignity.
http://skyscript.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7264

By qualitative factors I mean chart indicators that alter the expression of a planet and by quantitative I mean chart elements that give a planet more power or opportunity to act. Its clearly not black and white but there do seem some chart factors more heavily at one end of the spectrum than the other. Essential dignity for example is I think primarily a qualitative description of how the planets express themselves and whether their dignity lords support them. At the other extreme seems to be houses. House placement seems to be primarily about power or ability to act. A planet can have all the apparent dignity in a point system but if its not placed in an effective house (Angular or Succeedent) its going to struggle to ever express itself. Although, this can be mitigated by its dignity lords placement , reception or aspectual connections. Of course house rulership or placement can also tell us about how a planet expresses itself too in its role in a house or ruling it. Lord 6 or 12 clearly take on associations of those houses in their expression.

Getting back specifically to solar phase I think Ptolemy provides the clearest, most logical presentation of the subject. For example,:

"The planets, when matutine, and from their first emerging until they arrive at their first station, are chiefly productive of moisture; from their first station until they rise at night, of heat; from their rising at night until their second station, of dryness; and from their second station until their occultation, they produce cold." Claudius Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, I, 8.

The ancients seem to have seen solar phase it as a kind of additional essential dignity. Hence it could alter the expression of a planet. For example, an oriental Venus adds a more assertive , pushing nature to Venus. Mars is more tempered in its oriental phase, and because moisture is a creative quality, all the planets are ?full of the vigour of youth? when they are in this stage, which is why they get the increased dignity score. As Mars moves more towards the opposition of the Sun, the heat becomes emphasised; so it is in this period that it becomes intemperate. But because its extreme quality is dryness, it is most destructive after opposition up to the last phase, because this is when Mars has been thoroughly warmed and the extreme dryness is further exaggerated. Hence, if you were to split this into just two periods, then the oriental phase is definitely preferable to the occidental phase.

Mark

Hello again,

it seems that my answer may have moved this topic to a discussion about the relevance of arithmetic and scores, which was not what I intended. Let me try to clarify my current view with a small section of the results from my previous post:
Comparing Venus and Mars, we already know that both are essentially dignified. But when we try to compare them further, we can see that both have almost the same accidental dignities: both are direct, in their orientalities, fast, increasing light and not under the sun beams.

The software is giving the scores, but we can choose to ignore them. I am ignoring them in the comparison above. But then we have the differences: Mars is in a "better" house than Venus (11th vs 2nd) regarding the "quantity of expression" (is, say, more "visible") and we can even compare if we should give more "importance" to Venus being in her sign of joy vs Mars aspecting a benefic.

Regardless of what planet we consider "better", my goal was just to demonstrate that there are other factors beside sect and orientalities. Personally, I consider both planets strong, not one 75% strong or the other 78.5% strong.

The numbers only measure the importance that I programmed those factors to have (I didn't invented them, of course, I obtained them from the Treatise of Spheres by Lu?s Ribeiro and Helena Avelar). So, when we have a Venus with +26 of score and a Mars with +29 of score, we can grasp the relative strength of those planets (almost the same). But if we compare it with the +0 score of the Moon, we can measure how disproportionate the relative strengths of those planets are. Relativity is the key here..

Going further, with Mercury we can have a similar analysis. Although it is essential debilitated, there are lots of accidental factors which can give it some strength: is in the Asc, in its house of joy, direct, fast, free from the sun and aspecting a benefic. The total score is just a relative number that says that although it is essential debilitated, it is not so bad in terms of expression.

So, more important than the score, the small piece of code shows all the little details that you could have missed on the first analysis of the planets. The importance of those details to the final interpretation still depends on the astrologer himself.


Jo?o Ventura

Jo?o I note you haven't engaged with any of my objections to point scoring schemes in general I raised above.

Anyway, maybe we should keep this on topic and leave out the merits or weaknesses of point scoring schemes.

Mark

The scheme is quite good. The only thing I think is quite exaggerated, is to tell that a peregrine planet should get -5.
Sounds like being peregrine is worst than being in fall or exile.
It is my only doubt.

Mark,

Mark wrote:I note you haven't engaged with any of my objections to point scoring schemesin general which I raised above.

I made a general reply to the thread participants, and I thought I made it clear by now that my opinion is that scores are relative, and that a number can synthesize a lot of information in it (albeit with loss of "precision"). Also, that there are more factors to consider regarding "strength" than sect and orientality alone.

Finally, I presented the script for those who want to be able to reproduce the results, and the results themselves as they come from the program, in order to save myself from the trouble to create a table..


Jo?o Ventura