Fagan and sideralism-joseph epping

1
Hi

This article is quite interesting and now understand why planets are exalted in certain degrees. We should maybe be using sideral zodiac.I wasn`t aware of the work by the German Epping

http://www.westernsiderealastrology.com ... art-series

http://www.westernsiderealastrology.com ... art-series

1. Joseph Epping, ?Zur Entzifferung Der Astronomischen Tafeln Der Chald?er,? Stimmen aus Maria Laach (Freiburg im Breisgau), no. 21 (1881): 277-292.




http://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/45f0b2_38 ... affe83.pdf

interview with the author and some predictions below
http://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/45f0b2_19 ... fa1eab.pdf

2
By all means adopt the sidereal zodiac if you find it more convincing. However, your rationale for doing so here seems rather dubious. I dont read German so I had to leave out Epping. Have you actually read this work? What does it say you find persuasive? Without that Jens the only relevant section I can find to elucidate your actual point seems to be this bit of Ken Bowser's piece discussing Cyril Fagan:
In 1948, with the mathematical assistance of fellow Irishman James Hynes, Fagan discovered that the exaltation degrees of Mercury Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are the heliacal phenomena of those bodies for the parallel of Babylon for the lunar year, i.e. the civil year, 786-785 B.C. The positions of the Sun, Moon and Venus are the sidereal positions of those bodies at First Nisan (New Year?s Day in the Babylonian soli-lunar calendar) in 786 B.C. Fagan and Hynes calculated first Nisan as April 3, 786 B.C.

The exaltation solution was presented in Fagan?s first major work in support of the sidereal zodiac with the publication in 1950 of Zodiacs Old and New. Fagan considered the exaltation solution his crowning achievement because the origin of the exaltations was lost by Ptolemy?s time. The exact degrees, which are sidereal in origin, were repeated even in Late Antiquity by Julius Firmicus Maternus (9) in his Mathesis, circa A.D. 334, but in a tropical context.

Fagan published Symbolism of the Constellations in 1962 and the work for which he is best known, Astrological Origins was completed in 1969 (published 1971) as well as a monthly column in American Astrology Magazine from 1953 until his death in 1970.
What Fagan was attempting to do was pioneering and highly ambitious. This kind of retroactive astronomy reminds of the later work of Robert Bauval and Graham Hancock on the Egyptian pyramids. But it was all the more impressive in Fagan's time as it was calculated without the help of computers. However, I didn't think this research was taken that seriously today as an explanation for the origin of the exaltations let alone the their actual degrees?
It seems the exaltations are much older than the 12 sign equal zodiac developed in the 5th century BCE. For example, Francesca Rochberg has pointed out that since the system of exaltations is found in the tradition of Enuma anu enlil, its roots may extend into the second millennium BCE. In which case it seems highly unlikely the origins of exaltations were linked to specific zodiacal degrees as Fagan suggested.

I think Fagan was quite right that Ptolemy was misleading in suggesting the domicile rulers required a seasonal explanation. At least in the context of a northern hemisphere outlook. The notion of planetary spheres linked to planetary speed fanning out from the two luminaries in the so called 'Egyptian order of the planets' seems more powerful. However, it seems harder to avoid a seasonal rationale in ancient Babylonian thinking for some of the exaltations. Later scholarship has tended to support that.

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