31
Spock wrote:
Is that still your intention? I'd think that the Philosophy & Science section of this forum would be a more relevant place for it.
I am considering this subject in a number of ways not just in philosophical terms. Firstly, I want to look at the subject historically in terms of the the possible use of the zenith (nonagesimil) in some ancient astrological sources.

I feel the Traditional forum is really much better for that kind of discussion. Quite simply that forum has a higher participation rate and the quota of historically well informed members who check in there is at its highest.

Secondly, I also want to discuss the topic practically, with other astrologers in terms of experience working with with this point. I fully take your point that that can all be brought back to the ASC as simply a square aspect. This isn't inconsistent with what some ancient astrologers wrote. However, I think that kind of discussion belongs better on the General and Nativities forum.

Mark
Last edited by Mark on Fri Jul 05, 2013 5:29 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

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spock wrote: I think there's more to astrology than divination, and that astrologers who equate astrology with divination do so for one (or both) of two reasons. ...


Geoffrey Cornelius in The Moment of Astrology rightly recognizes that astrology in its present form is a kind of divination, but errs in supposing that's all it can be. It doesn't occur to him that astrology needs to change in fundamental ways in order not only to fit more rigorous observations and tests but also to conceptually make sense as the sort of thing that can exist in the world. It doesn't occur to divination-oriented astrologers (or to astrologers in general for that matter) that a post-divinatory, post-magical astrology can even exist. In a way it's a failure of imagination.......
hi dale,

i haven't read your article in full yet, but i will. you raise interesting issues that i believe astrologers tend to generally avoid or ignore.

i don't know that cornelius only wants astrology to be divination, so much as he would like to steer it back to what i think he believes it's roots are. this might be seen as a good way to avoid the scientific emphasis of our worldview since the 1700's( or even all the way back to ptolemy and his tetrabiblios) which has essentially overthrown a particular astrological outlook and approach which instead demands that everything must be scientifically valid in order to be taken seriously..

"signs verses causes" is one of the ways that cornelius encourages one to consider astrology.. do we look at astrology as omen(signs) based, or do with look at it with a scientific outlook where there must be an astrological cause, which will equate with any number of conclusions astrologers regularly make..

i don't think cornelius is trying to close the door on a more scientific approach to astrology, but moving astrology back in a direction that it can have relevance in an immediate manner. he seems to want to embrace the idea of developing a 'sense of the sacred' in life.. these are my words. when everything including astrology becomes a dry calculated exercise it can appear to take away a soulful or spiritual relevance that many people today have a need for.. again - these are my thoughts and words. i will try to get round to reading your full article over the weekend.

cheers james

33
Hello Dale,

Geoffrey Cornelius is not directly involved in the Sophia Centre. Instead he is the chief academic leading the MA in the Cultural Study of Cosmology and Divination at the University of Kent.

Its actually Nicholas Campion who is the driving force behind the The MA in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology (CAA) which is taught distance-learning, on-line through the Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture.The course is now run through The University of Wales, Trinity St David.

http://www.trinitysaintdavid.ac.uk/en/sophia/

However, I dont deny Geoffrey Cornelius has had a substantial impact on the astrological community here in Britain through his book The Moment of Astrology.

If you want to critique the divinatory approach to astrology I personally think it would fit better in a thread specifically devoted to that subject. I do think this is a healthy debate to be having but I fear your comments are rather buried so far into this thread. Still, its your decision if you want to continue commenting here or open a new thread.

Mark
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly

34
Papretis wrote:Hi Mark and James,

In the past few days I?ve gone through the same 174 samples I used in the Octoscope study and looked for samples that have certain planets in the 1st or the 3rd Octoscope house, that is, in the Gauquelin plus zones, in order to find out about the nature of the planets like the Gauquelins did. It has given some results, and though the results are maybe not as clear as in the Octoscope study, they go along similar lines than with Gauquelin.

The Moon would seem to do with writing and also somewhat with care (Kids more than three, nurses, psychiatrists).

As with Gauquelin, the Sun doesn?t show clearly any specific significations, but because of its nature as the center and power supplier of the solar system, its role may be as a more general energy source.

Mercury might have some connection with calculating practicality (economists, private personalities, public officers, producers, outdoor people, thieves - the traditional signification of Mercury!).

Venus is prominent with people dealing with beauty and popularity (the US presidents ? 19 out of 41 having Venus in the 1st or 3rd Octoscope house, sex symbols, architects, social workers, football players, sport coaches / managers, psychologists, fashion designers, song writers, critics, music teachers).

Mars shows up with Gauquelin?s sportsmen (of course), but also with Gauquelin?s scientists and military men, with people served in the army (from AstroDatabank), polices and executed people.

Jupiter is strong in the charts of military men (Gauquelin, along with Mars), actors, politicians (Gauquelin), NASA astronauts, adventurers / explorers, military pilots (Gauquelin), photographers and textbook writers. Classical Jovian expansion themes.

Saturn is a real malefic, showing prominence in the charts of violent criminals, psychotic people, bigoted personalities, nervous breakdown cases, assaulters, people with prison sentences and rapists.

The Nodal Axis would seem to have something to do with having an intelligent and/ or intuitive mind (North Node) versus being a simpleton or having a distorted mind (South Node).

I also went through some asteroids and the outer planets. A bit surprisingly, the most common asteroids (Vesta, Pallas, Juno, Ceres) would seem to give some results along with Uranus, but Neptune and Pluto give nothing very meaningful.

Uranus might signify intelligence and high education (doctors, politicians, public officers, highly educated people, attorneys, teachers, government empolyees, social workers, journalists). I noted a few years ago that the Uranus transits through the signs seem to correlate with trends in popular music, and Uranus is frequently found in the power zones of pop singers and song writers.

But Neptune and Pluto give such variable collection of samples that you cannot pull anything meaningful out of them. It may be because of them moving so slowly that with a certain age cohort they are always more frequently in certain houses (because of the variable rising times of the ascending signs), so the random control data should be composed very carefully matching the birth years of a sample. I actually tried to do that with the Gauquelin data, but it didn?t help.

The other option is that they simply don?t have any astrological significance! In any case I think Neptune and Pluto are given far too much emphasis in chart interpretation.

What about Vesta, Pallas, Juno and Ceres then?
- Vesta: business, especially business having to do with home and cooking (restaurateurs, real estate agents, business owners, rich people).
- Pallas: science (Gauquelin?s scientists, clerics / secretaries, Nobel Prize winners, mathematicians, engineers, military pilots, researchers, eccentrics, private people).
- Juno: metaphysical things (metaphysical writers, people with mystical experiences, people with metaphysical world view, religious / spiritual writers, religious leaders, western ecclesiastics).
- Ceres: music (instrumentalists, jazz musicians, conductors, composers, critics).

James, though I would like to see astrology getting accepted in scientific circles, unfortunately I?m too weak and academically uneducated to make that happen by myself :) . But what really interests me is to find astrological techniques and significations that really work on large amounts of charts and thus for example in blind readings. I love it when I look at the charts of my friends, family members and celebrities and see things that I?ve found in these studied working in single charts.

One example: Roy Orbison (23rd April 1936 at 3.50 PM Vernon, Texas). He had his Asc and MC ruler Mercury in the 3rd Octoscope house along with the Sun, Moon and Mars. First I was baffled: the 3rd house should be about travel, vehicles, machines, technics, etc. ? what did Orbison have to do with those things? Until I read in Wikipedia:
Orbison was fascinated with machines. He was famous for following a car that he liked on sight, and making the driver an offer on the spot. He had a collection worthy of a museum by the late 1960s. He and Claudette shared a love for motorcycles; she had grown up around them, but Orbison claimed Elvis Presley had introduced him to motorcycles. However, tragedy struck on June 6, 1966, when Orbison and Claudette were riding home from Bristol, Tennessee. She was struck by a semi-trailer truck and died instantly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Orbison

This is simply mind-boggling.

Another example (help me, I cannot stop, if I start!): in the statistical study the 7th Octoscope house didn?t show any specific emphasis on the classical 7th house meaning of marriage, but on single charts things change.

Let?s take Cary Grant (18th January 1904 at 1.07 AM, Bristol, England) and Elizabeth Taylor (27th February 1932 at 2 AM, Golders Green, England), both actors and classic heart breakers of the Hollywood golden era. Grand was married five times, Taylor notoriously eight times with seven husbands. Grant had his Asc ruler Venus, MC ruler Sun along with Mercury and the Moon in the 7th Octoscope house. Taylor had her Sun, Mercury, Mars and North Node in the 7th house.

This may be too creative for the tastes of many of you, but if I rectify the whole hour birth time of Taylor 22 minutes backwards to 1.38 AM, then Saturn joins the existing 7th house planets, the 7th house Mercury becomes the MC ruler and the new 7th house ruler Jupiter is found in the 3rd house, the possible significator of fame and career (because of the MC).

In Yoko Ono?s chart (18th February 1933 at 8.30 PM, Tokyo, Japan) the Asc ruler Venus and the 7th house ruler Saturn conjunct together in the 6th house of eccentricity and inventiveness = Yoko and John Lennon met at her experimental art exhibition, and since that they were inseparable until once she initiated a temporal separation (Venus is separating from Saturn). Also the MC ruler Moon is found in the 7th house of marriage = her fame comes from first and foremost from her marriage.
Hi Sari

Can you provide a few charts of evil people with Saturn in 1st or 3rd sector?
I was surprised about that one
thanks

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Dragon Queen wrote:
Hi Sari

Can you provide a few charts of evil people with Saturn in 1st or 3rd sector?
I was surprised about that one
thanks
Why do you think this would prove anything? There must be lots of people -good, bad and indifferent with Saturn in all 4 sectors. Keep in mind Paperetis has been analysing Gauquelin's data containing literally thousands of charts. Its not the kind of research that conveniently lends itself to being reduced to just a few natal examples. You could argue just about anything on such logic but it would have no statistical validity. What research like this is trying to establish is a statistically significant correlation. That is a long way from assuming everyone or even most people will have a planet in a particular sector. We are talking about a relatively subtle correlation here.

Mark
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly

36
Hi all and thanks again for an enjoyable discussion.

Dale, I read your article ?After Symbolism?. Of course you had excellent points there. You also had some really good observations about the transits of Mars and Saturn. I especially liked the way you wrote about how Saturn loosened Freud?s existing conceptual commitments ? loosened, not tightened, as a thoroughly modern astrologer might think; Saturn as the traditional significator of decay and disintegration. I also liked how you criticized our certainty about the interpretation of the outer planets. As you probably know, Sue Ward has written a good paper on this subject http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~sueward/p ... urnepl.htm .

But I?m really getting out of the topic. I would like to make an update and that is that before finishing my paper on the results of the study at hand I decided to settle the zodiac question for myself for good. I wanted to be sure that the tropical zodiac is the one that pays off in further studies. I thought that the tropical zodiac will be the winner, but I just wanted to be sure of it.

So I went through the same 180+ groups (with Jigsaw and Excel it?s not as slow or tedious as it sounds) and looked for the most frequent Ascendant ruler in each group. Because the traditional rulers overlap (people ruled sidereally by Mars are most often ruled tropically by Venus and Jupiter and so on), only one of the zodiacs should give clear and logical, unconfused results.

And to my surprise it was the sidereal zodiac after all. Even the planetary polarities were visible with the sidereal Ascendant rulers. Mars: passion and confrontation <--> Venus: sensibility, intelligence and conciliation; Mercury: physical and mental action, practicality and worldliness <--> Jupiter: quietness, spirituality and otherworldliness (I know that this doesn?t align with modern Jupiter as the planet of excess and extraversion, but I think this modern interpretation stems mainly from tropical Sagittarius = sidereal Scorpio ruled by Mars); the Sun and the Moon: the queen and the king, uniqueness, leadership, centre of attention <--> Saturn: mass mentality, working class, repetition, perseverance.

The most curious and provocative polarity emerged with the Sun and the Moon: the Hellenistic notion of the Sun as Spirit and the Moon as Matter becomes really apprehensible on the sidereal zodiac, but so that the Sun emerges as the fragile, sensitive, feminine Princess and the Moon as the the strong, physical, protective, masculine King. That would change the masculine / feminine polarities of all the signs on the sidereal zodiac.

So I?ll write a paper of this study first. I?ll put the link here on the Skyscript forum for free download as a new topic, when the paper is ready.

I have already looked at the sidereal Ascendant rulers in Octoscope houses, and confusingly now it seems that the faganesque ?Ascendant as the center of the 1st house? type Octoscope works better after all. It needs further studies.

Which 'sidereal' zodiacs?

37
Good morning,

Ms Papretis, which 'sidereal' (presumably equal sign) zodiacs did you test and which criteria did you apply to select them, please?

Best regards,

lihin

PS One might recall that fixed stars analyses and interpretations were an integral, indispensable part of the practice of nearly all astrologers using the tropical zodiac of the northern hemisphere until about the latter 19th century CE.
Non esse nihil non est.

38
Good morning, lihin,
I used Lahiri. I tested several ayanamsas and Lahiri (not Fagan as I had anticipated!) gave in most cases the biggest effect. The test will be included in the upcoming article.

39
Papretis wrote:
I used Lahiri. I tested several ayanamsas and Lahiri (not Fagan as I had anticipated!) gave in most cases the biggest effect. The test will be included in the upcoming article.
I noted you mentioned earlier in the thread you were testing this out with ASC rulers. Since we are discuusing occupation/profession wouldn't the MC (or nonagesimil) ruler be more logical in this instance?

Mark
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly

40
Mark wrote:Papretis wrote:
I used Lahiri. I tested several ayanamsas and Lahiri (not Fagan as I had anticipated!) gave in most cases the biggest effect. The test will be included in the upcoming article.
I noted you mentioned earlier in the thread you were testing this out with ASC rulers. Since we are discuusing occupation/profession wouldn't the MC (or nonagesimil) ruler be more logical in this instance?

Mark
I remember being told by my teacher (Indian-based sidereal) that in matters of career/vocation, the ascendant is more likely to show the "what", the MC (or 10th) the "how".
Graham

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Mark wrote:Papretis wrote:
I used Lahiri. I tested several ayanamsas and Lahiri (not Fagan as I had anticipated!) gave in most cases the biggest effect. The test will be included in the upcoming article.
I noted you mentioned earlier in the thread you were testing this out with ASC rulers. Since we are discuusing occupation/profession wouldn't the MC (or nonagesimil) ruler be more logical in this instance?

Mark
I am just now (very late) looking in on this topic which has many interesting posts and referenced articles. Thanks to everyone! I believe that Papretis has been totaling ascendant signs in her research rather than the position of ascendant rulers. Papretis, please correct me if I'm wrong.

Therese
http://www.snowcrest.net/sunrise/LostZodiac.htm

42
I've been "away" while recovering from shoulder surgery but I'm baaaack.
Papretis wrote:Hi all and thanks again for an enjoyable discussion.

Dale, I read your article ?After Symbolism?. Of course you had excellent points there. You also had some really good observations about the transits of Mars and Saturn. I especially liked the way you wrote about how Saturn loosened Freud?s existing conceptual commitments ? loosened, not tightened, as a thoroughly modern astrologer might think; Saturn as the traditional significator of decay and disintegration. I also liked how you criticized our certainty about the interpretation of the outer planets. As you probably know, Sue Ward has written a good paper on this subject http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~sueward/p ... urnepl.htm .
Glad you enjoyed it. Just to clarify, in studying Freud and others I didn't come to associate Saturn by itself with a loosening of existing conceptual commitments, just the combination of transiting Saturn and natal Mercury. I wouldn't necessarily expect the same effect with Saturn transiting other planets. Nor do I associate Saturn with disintegration and decay, in and of itself or in combination with other factors. In general I try, to the extent that I can, to forget what the received tradition says things mean, and what things have meaning, and instead endeavor to search without preconceptions for "astrological" order in nature via the means outlined in "After Symbolism". Often the biggest block to progress, the thing that has to be broken through for a breakthrough to occur, is what we already "know". That was the specific point I was making in describing my study of the Uranus/Neptune cycle, albeit it's not just the handed down meanings of outer planet transit cycles we should question but all things astrology. At present I associate Saturn per se with that level of the psyche that Freud called the ego, Jung the persona, and Maslow esteem needs. (Just as different wavelengths of light are perceived by us as different colors, so too do different temporal wavelengths, in this instance 7? years, correspond to different levels of the psyche.) Hence during what cognitive developmental psychologist L.S. Vygotsky called "the crisis at age 7", which astrologically coincides with transiting Saturn squaring its natal place, the child's self-directed speech, via which she organizes her activities, goes underground and becomes Silent Speech, or thinking, which is no longer out loud as it has been since the turn to age 3 but in our heads in service to a conscious self-image which we try to live up to. The child at age 7 is for the first time able to do "work", a fact which is reflected in past and present cultural practices around the world.

I'd like to read Sue Ward's article, even though I find the title, "Uranus, Neptune and Pluto: the sources of their symbolism", somewhat off putting. It's not the source of their symbolism we should be looking for, but the source of their effects, although even that is a misnomer. I prefer to say that life over evolutionary time has used the planets as temporal templates around which to organize its constituent processes, with those processes (in humans, anyway) being motivational rhythms. I'd still like to read the article but I'm not working (or drawing paychecks) while my shoulder is healing, so at the moment I'm pinching pennies and can't purchase it.
Article: After Symbolism