Hermetic decans, Egyptian decans and Mesopotamian stars

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I've got a general interest in ancient astrology (but little specialist expertise) and this is my first foray into the forum, so here goes:

Does anyone have information, insights or interests in possible connections between the 36 Overseers/Gods/Bright Lords of Time of the Corpus Hermeticum, the Egyptian decans and the Three Stars Each of the Babylonian 'Astrolabes'?

I'm following up ideas I've read in The Babylonian Astrolabe 2013 by Rumen Kolev (pp96-97), where he links the 36 Hermetic gods/overseers to heliacally rising constellations and suggests they correspond to the 36 Astrolabe divinities.

I've asked Rumen about the correspondences, but he is very busy with other projects at the moment. I'm wondering if any work has been done to establish specific constellation identities for them.

I'd also love to know more about the 36 Hermetic overseers/gods and their daimones. Are there are general guides to the Corpus Hermeticum information on them? Rumen mentions CCAG VIII, part III, pp120-122, which I don't have access to, plus unfortunately I can't read Greek (I can cope with Latin, French, German and - probably not terribly useful here! - Chinese). I don't have Neugebauer & van Hoesen's Greek Horoscopes 1987 either.

If anyone has references, material or thoughts they'd be willing to share, any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Thanks
Gill Zukovskis

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This is a matter of great interest to me as well. Unfortunately, even finding out what the original 36 Decan stars were is a difficult matter. I've done some preliminary research and found a paper (The Egyptian Origins of Planetary Hypsomata) by Joanne Conman that offers a possible table of the decan stars, but I have no idea how accurate it may or may not be. Said paper also suggests that they are related to the planetary exaltations.

I can only add that based on my reading of Firmicus Maternus, the Full and Empty Degrees he lists appear to be related to the decans. Unfortunately, said list and similar lists of bright, empty, smoky and void degrees are a bit of a mess, and it would take somebody with far more astronomical knowledge than I have to even begin to decode the underlying principles.

Conman and Firmicus

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Many thanks for your reply, Eric. It's interesting to know there are others puzzling over similar things.

I've also been perusing Joanne Conman's suggested identifications - like you, I feel very astronomically under-qualified to judge how accurate they might be. Her radically revised analysis of the different 'stages' of the decans does seem very plausible to me, and similarly Rumen Kolev's fascinating work on the Astrolabe stars - as a non-specialist of course.

I've noticed Firmicus in Latin at Bill Thayer's site - I'll have a look at the Skyscript article he recommends as an introduction (haven't read it yet - it may take me a little while). From Thayer's brief contents outline, it looks as if these degrees are in Part IV of the text - do you happen to know which section?

Best regards
Gill Zukovskis

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Greek Horoscopes has a table comparing Hephaistion decans and the Decans from the temple of Edfu which he states is more accurate than Denderah. e.g. 3rd cancer is knmt in Egyptian
Do not know if this helps
Matthew Goulding

Re: Conman and Firmicus

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Gill Zukovskis wrote:Many thanks for your reply, Eric. It's interesting to know there are others puzzling over similar things.

I've also been perusing Joanne Conman's suggested identifications - like you, I feel very astronomically under-qualified to judge how accurate they might be. Her radically revised analysis of the different 'stages' of the decans does seem very plausible to me, and similarly Rumen Kolev's fascinating work on the Astrolabe stars - as a non-specialist of course.

I've noticed Firmicus in Latin at Bill Thayer's site - I'll have a look at the Skyscript article he recommends as an introduction (haven't read it yet - it may take me a little while). From Thayer's brief contents outline, it looks as if these degrees are in Part IV of the text - do you happen to know which section?

Best regards
They're located in chapter XII of book 4 - "Empty and Full Houses". The Bram translation which I have isn't considered a very accurate translation, but I checked it against the Latin edition and the degrees are listed correctly. I can't read Latin, but I can understand the numerals.

Unfortunately, the reliability of the received text is problematic. You will note that the sign of Cancer there are thirty-one degrees listed - there's an error in there somewhere. I'd hope that's the only error in the table, but it's hard to say. The later four-fold degree classification found in Medieval texts and mentioned in Porphyry and Rhetorius appears to be derived from a similar source.

I actually took the time a while back to make a spreadsheet comparing the degrees found in Firmicus Maternus with the listings from al-Qabisi and Abu Ma'shar in Ben Dykes' Introductions to Traditional Astrology. I'm going to link to it in case anybody finds it useful. Unfortunately when I uploaded it to Google Drives it seems to have lost the sign names. The first page is Aries, the second Taurus and so on.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By3ZwZ ... sp=sharing

copy of table in Greek Horoscopes

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Your spreadsheets are much appreciated Eric - thanks for kindly sharing this work you've done.

M Jacob: Thanks. This Table from Greek Horoscopes (Neugebauer & Van Hoesen) sounds very useful. Does anyone have a copy of the relevant page(s) they would be willing to share? Assuming it's OK to do a single copy for personal research purposes ...
Gill Zukovskis