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Checked Koch-Westenholz's book last night (now see it's in the thread) - thanks Wolfgang! To briefly summarise, it confirms the existence of the micro-zodiac technique, and Koch-Westenholz speculates that "Since division by 2?? is cumbersome" (why?) the Babylonians would have devised an easier method, "perhaps the precursor of the method used in Hellenistic astrology". But he admits there is no evidence of this. He then details the other method, which is attested in two magico-astrological texts.
Martin wrote:Actually, Rhetorius does go into the calculation in some detail (pp. 17-18 in Holden's translation), explicitly criticizing Paul. I just checked.
You are right - I hadn't seen that section, only the later one in ch 6. Now I see the footnote you referred to by Holden (p.18 ), where he uses Koch-Westenholz's book pp.168-169 to state that the Babylonians had two calculation methods "These amount to multiplying the degree of the planet by either 12 or 13 ..." But I don't see how he can conclude that from what Koh-Wstenholtz has written here: one method is attested; the other is not (so far).

Going back to Rhetorius, I 'll check those references he gives and post the results here - then if anyone knows of anything else, they can add to it. What is especially interesting in that passage is that Rhetorius says that he found by trial that the results of multiplying by 12 generated the same result a dividing the signs by 2??, so this appears to have been something he (thought he) discovered personally. Whether others realised this or not before him, it couldn't have been explicitly stated in any of the sources he had access to.
Last edited by Deb on Wed Jan 20, 2016 12:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Dorotheus:

Rhetorius says (p.17) "Dorotheus says in the 11th book to multiply the degrees by 12".
Reference to 'the 11th book' introduces a bit of a mystery, since we only have five, though Arabic sources report there were more. All we have from the Pentateuch (that I can find) are:
[I.8] A chapter. Knowledge of the masculine and feminine "hours" of the nativity.
Know the masculine and feminine "hours" as, if the Moon is in a masculine dodecatemorion, he [the native] is masculine. If the Sun and the ascendent and the Moon are in masculine signs, then, even if the "hour" of the nativity is double [i.e., even], males are born in it. If the Sun is in the ascendent in a masculine sign and the "hour" is double, males are born in it. If the ascendent is a two-bodied sign and is masculine and a masculine planet is in it, then, even if the "hour" of the nativity is double, males are born in it. If you find a masculine planet in the ascendent and another masculine [planet] in the seventh sign and the "hour" is double, males are born in it. If the Moon is in a masculine sign and the Sun also is in a masculine sign and the ascendent is what it is and the lord of the ascendent is Jupiter, similarly males are born. Count the dodecatemoria according to this manner: in a masculine sign two and a half "days" [i.e., degrees] masculine and two and a half "days" feminine, and in a feminine sign: two and a half "days" feminine and two and a half "days" masculine.
V 5 The corruption of the Moon.
...
4 If it is an action which its master wishes to keep secret, commence it when the Moon is immersed under the Sun?s rays as there is good for him, and it will be more concealed if he commences it at the with? drawal of the Moon from the Sun and [its] appearance from under the Sun's rays. If the Moon is in the dodecatemoria of Mars or Saturn and if the Moon is in the middle of the equator descending towards the South and if the Moon is in opposition to the Sun, then it is bad and it indicates the accession of quarrels and that the younger of the two will be the winning antagonist.
If we had text telling us to multiply by 12, the matter would be settled, but whilst we have evidence that the Babylonians recognised the micro-zodiac divisions of 2??, yet still multiplied by 13 for other techniques, we can't conclude from this that Dorotheus did any different (though Rhetorius' belief that he did might count for something).

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Ptolemy makes only brief reference to the micro-zodiac of the dodekatemoria, where he discusses these and the monomoria at I.22 "Of Places and Degrees", and then dismisses them for having no natural (astronomical) basis:
Some have made even finer divisions of rulership than these [terms], using the terms "places" and "degrees". Defining "place" as the twelfth part of a sign, or 2??, they assign dominion over them to the signs in order. Others follow other illogical orders, and again they assign each "degree" from the beginning to each of the planets of each sign in accordance with the Chaldean order of the terms. These matters, as they have only plausible and not natural, but rather, unfounded, arguments in their favour, we shall omit.
Rhetorius seems unaware of the work of Firmicus, which (if I have this right) is the only other Greek source we have that specifically mentions the technique of multiplying by 12 as he does, though perhaps it was also mentioned in a now lost work by Dorotheus as Rhetorius reports it was.

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Deb wrote:Checked Koch-Westenholz's book last night (now see it's in the thread) - thanks Wolfgang! To briefly summarise, it confirms the existence of the micro-zodiac technique, and Koch-Westenholz speculates that "Since division by 2?? is cumbersome" (why?) the Babylonians would have devised an easier method, "perhaps the precursor of the method used in Hellenistic astrology". But he admits there is no evidence of this. He then details the other method, which is attested in two magico-astrological texts.
I don't read Ulla Koch-Westenholz (who incidentally is a she ? Ulla is a Scandinavian women?s name ? and apparently now just Koch) the way you do, Deb. She does say that the method of dividing by 2? is attested in Babylonian sources; the only speculation she offers is that this method was probably developed into a method of multiplying by 12 (and then dividing by 30). It doesn't matter much whether it was or not, as both methods would give the same result: as Koch-Westenholz points out, n/2.5 = n?12/30. (I personally agree with her that division by fractions is cumbersome, but I suppose that's subjective.) She also remarks in footnote 4 that Rochberg-Halton (now just Rochberg) 'discusses only the second procedure', that is, the multiplication by 13.
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Deb wrote:Rhetorius seems unaware of the work of Firmicus, which (if I have this right) is the only other Greek source we have that specifically mentions the technique of multiplying by 12 as he does, though perhaps it was also mentioned in a now lost work by Dorotheus as Rhetorius reports it was.
Firmicus wrote in Latin rather than Greek, which probably accounts for Rhetorius not being familiar with his work. But clearly Rhetorius thought (as Holden did, and Koch-Westenholz, and my humble self) that it doesn't matter whether you divide by 2? or multiply by 12, as you get the same result either way -- just like multiplying either by 13 or by 12+1 will give you a Pauline dodecatemorion.
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I will try my philosophical obfuscation skills:


12 and Thirteen

While 12 is the representative of micro cosmos etc, thirteen is the number or regeneration ,change.Thirteen is appropriate as it includes itself- a regeneration of cyclical change that includes endings(12+1)

I see no conflict with basic concept, it is just stating it in another way.

PD
Last edited by pankajdubey on Thu Jan 21, 2016 2:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Martin wrote:But clearly Rhetorius thought (as Holden did, and Koch-Westenholz, and my humble self) that it doesn't matter whether you divide by 2? or multiply by 12, as you get the same result either way
It is natural for anyone to anyone assume that, once they know that is the case. But I didn?t assume or realise that before it was explained to me, and Rhetorius talks about making this discovery for himself as if he?s made a break through.

Let me clarify that I?m not trying to lend favour to one technique or another ? that which allows us to multiply and divide to get the same result is obviously the most appealing, to me as well as anyone else. But if we strip away what Koch-Westenholz speculates, the facts reported in her work are the same as those reported by Rochberg: the Babylonians had two uses of the same term, which identifies two techniques: one generates the micro-zodiac in each sign (to which symbolic attributions are made), the other creates associations between a planet?s position, and where it would be if we multiplied its degree placement by twelve and cast that arc from its current position.

The result of the latter doesn?t correspond with the micro-zodiac, so we are left with two choices: either the Babylonians (and Paulus) expected they would, and were hopeless at maths and never figured out that what they describe gives the wrong result; or, the two techniques were developed separately and possibly used in different ways. If this possibility exists, then it may not be safe to assume that recognition of the technique that divides the signs into twelve 2?? portions (described by Ptolemy to be something similar to the use of terms), meant the astrologer expected to identify the same point by multiplication and use it in the same way.

I have been struggling with this issue a lot lately, in trying to understand a technique Valens refers to, which uses the dodekatemorion of the Sun to identify the rising sign (the association between dodekatemoria and rising signs keeps cropping up all over the place!). I am not sure if we?ll ever figure out the mechanics of this long-abandoned technique, but where Valens uses the term dodekatemorion in reference to this (I.4, Riley, p.8 ), his example leads us to assume he uses the Pauline calculation (dodekatemorion of 22 Aquarius = Scorpio). I came to this conclusion myself, as did the Project Hindsight team, with Robert Hand annotating the point in the Schmidt translation (p.24) with the comment that this "is computed by the 13th harmonic method, rather than the dwadasamsa method ...".

However, as Konrad pointed out earlier, if the Sun were between 22?30' and 23? Aquarius, its dodekatemorion would fall into Scorpio by both methods, so it is not beyond the realm of possibility that Valens used the method that Firmicus described. But this solution is messy ? why would the example he gives to illustrate a principle be complicated and require knowledge of a precise placement in the 23rd degree which he doesn?t report?

Valens uses the term ?dodekatemoria? in an entirely different way (to mean 12? increments of celestial longitude) in his first book, where he gives a handy method for determining new and full moons. The only other place he talks about the dodekatemorion of a planet is in his ninth book, chapter 8: ?Male and Female Nativities; Monstrous or Animal-like Nativities?. Here his technique uses the dodekatemorion of the Moon to establish gender and his example tells us ?? the moon in Pisces 19?. The dodekatemorion is in Libra?. This accords with the use of the micro-zodiac (as generated by the Firmicus method) ? applying the Pauline method takes us far out, landing at 7? Scorpio.

After a lot of thought and head-banging, I eventually came to conclude that, on balance, it?s more likely Valens was using the micro-zodiac/Firmicus method, and his example given in the first book is just an unfortunate one, (or has expectations in it that are not explained/ has been subject to omissions in transmission/or is mistaken). Or for some reason we'll never understand, one of the two parts of his work were effected by a "correction" from a copyist, so the knowledge of how he would have calculated himself will never be known for sure.

I felt relieved to be able to make a mental conclusion on this minor point and move my mind on to other things. But it keeps nagging away at the back of my mind. What if there is another possibility, and the mistake is to assume that the word dodekatemoria, which we know has a very broad application, has to mean the same thing for Valens in both instances? In book 9, he is making a purely symbolic reference to the signs of the micro-zodiac to establish gender in the same way that later astrologers consider the Moon?s placement by term or sign in the actual zodiac. In book one he is doing something very different: trying to establish a relationship with a point that has some kind of astronomical significance in determining the rising sign ? why would the symbolism-rich micro-zodiac be expected to do that? Valens, using Babylonian astronomical principles, knew things about the mathematical basis of this relationship that we don?t understand. The Sun is used as the starting point because (as he tells us in book IX.8 ) ?the sun?s position always indicates the length of day and night, depending on which sign it is in?.

Rochberg also talks about how the dodekatemoria were used to establish the rising signs of the climes by the Babylonians (p.159), and she assumes this to be the use of the 2?? divisions of the ecliptic because the text says ?the first portion of Scorpius, Scorpius of Scorpius?. But this is exactly how the text she has earlier described (which multiplies by 12 and adds to the position of the planet) makes reference, and Rochberg does not seem to realise that there is a difference between this, which shows a ?travelled distance?, and the 2?? divisions of the micro-zodiac she describes on p.157.

So if I seem a little obstinate in not simply settling for assumptions that might reasonably be drawn, it is not because I am trying to reject something that might be very plausible, it is because this issue has a conflict running right down the middle of it, with the older sources not reporting what we expect them to. I think we have to allow the possibility of two separate techniques that appeared to become unified at a certain point through a different calculation for the multiplied position, which is why I'm hesitant to accept references to divisions by 2?? as being necessarily implicit of the method described by Firmicus, though not wanting to deny that (of course) they could be.

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I think you're absolutely right that the word dodekatemoria, which just means 'twelve-parts', was used in several different ways. If memory serves, Ptolemy uses it somewhere to mean 'signs' (that is, twelfths of the zodiac), and apparently Valens uses it to mean 'parts of twelve [degrees]' as you say. Perhaps the real obfuscation was caused by whoever it was that first applied this word to the '13th harmonic' technique.
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