Climaterical Years

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In this article Max Engammarre presents an overview of the climaterical years. “Soixante-trois, nombre fossoyeur de Pétrarque à Claude Saumaise. Brève histoire de la grande année climactérique à la Renaissance. In: Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 152e année, N. 1, 2008. pp. 279-303???
Extract from his article are in italic. Google and free translation. Note: preceding my commentaries.
https://www.persee.fr/doc/crai_0065-053 ... 52_1_92133
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General definition

“Every 7th and 9th year in a Nativity, supposedly brought about through the influence of the Moon in its position in the Radix. The Moon squares her own place by transit every 7th day, and by direction every 7th year; and trines it every 9th day and year. Thus the climacterical periods occur at the ages of 7, 9, 14, 18, 21, 27, 28, 35, 36, 42, 45, 49, 54, 56, and 63 years. The most portentous are those of the 49th and 63rd years, which are doubly climacterical, 7x7 and 9x7. When evil directions coincide these are generally deemed to be fatal. The 63rd year is called the Grand Climacteric, and the general presumption is that more persons die in their 63rd year than in any other from 50 to 80.??? Nicholas DeVore
Also meaning “certain Jupiter-Saturn Conjunctions??? Nicholas deVore

Alan Leo's definition: 'Every seventh and ninth year is considered a climaterical period in Astrology, owing to the Moon's position in the radix; every 7th day, or yer, she squares her own place, and every 9th day, or year, forms the trine aspect, and from this the following become the climaterical years.' (Alan Leo's Dictionary of Astrology, p. 17 edited by Vivian E. Robson)

“There existed among the Greeks at least two theories relating to the ages and the duration of human life in relation to planetary cycles: the theory of planetary periods, with its many variants including that attested by Ptolemy, and the theory of years known as climacterical.??? Patrice Guinard (cura.free.fr/24cyclas.html number8)

Note: This represents a certain year/day that imparts a fatal outcome or a change of guard not only for human beings but also for countries/states/governments and so on.

Ancient Sources
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Claude Saumaise (1588-1653) in his 'De climactericis annis', published in 1648 discusses the climacterical year by mentioning that astrology distinguishes between climacterical years and determination of the day of death, not necessarily climacterical.
“The fifth house of the horoscope and what it aspects through a trine to the left defines the sixty-third year. But when the moon is placed in this house, then the sixty third year is not climacteric, but fatal and final.???
The thesis is more subtle than it seems, because the ancient astrologers attributed certain periods to the cycles of the mobile planets (vagantes stellæ) and, from these calculations, defined the climacterical years. Thus ancient astrologers had considered that the ultimate age of life was one hundred and twenty years, which correspond to the period of the Sun, but also to the curse of Genesis 6.3 “My spirit shall not remain forever in man, for man is but flesh, and his days shall be a hundred and twenty years.???

Some, during the Renaissance, believed that man could exceed this limit, including Jérome Cardan relying on Tommaso Rangone, pushing it up to one hundred and fifty years (cf. Nancy G. Siraisi, The Clock and the Mirror Girolamo Cardano and Renaissance Medicine, Princeton, 1997, p.78 and n.37, p.262)

Note: The oldest known person who ever lived is Jeanne Calment (1875–1997) of France, who lived to the age of 122 years and 164 days. This theory of 150 years remains to be seen.
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Petrarch, scholar and poet of early Renaissance Italy and one of the earliest humanists fears enough his 63rd year to say:
"There is a very old opinion, astonishing by the oddity of the thing, but even more astonishing by the reason that is produced to justify it. It is said in fact, something that is based on a long observation, that the sixty-third year of life is fatal for the human race, either by a signal misfortune, or by death, or by a disease of the body or of the mind, all things serious, but the most serious is the last... if that's true??? quoting Book IV of the Mathesis of Julius Firmicus Maternus.


In chapter XLIX of book VII of the Historia naturalis, often titled in old editions De varietate nascendi, Pliny the Elder defines longevity: 112, 116, even 124 years mark the ultimate limit of human life. It evokes the mythical school of Aesculapius:
“The School of Aesculapius affirms that longevities are rare, because at the critical hours of the lunar days, for example at the seventh and fifteenth hours, when night and day are counted as well, a crowd of people who are destined to disappear at progressively staggered periods, which are called climacterical years: in general, such a birth would not make it possible to exceed fifty-four years.???


Note: Interesting to see Pliny the Elder mentioning the 7th and 15th hours ??

Longevity is therefore determined by the time of birth; it is subject to the astrological influence, in particular of the critical hours of the lunar days. The figure that Pliny puts forward is not sixty-three years, but only fifty-four years, nine times six, not yet nine times seven.

It is with Aulu Gelle that the limit increases to sixty-three years. Aulu Gelle devotes a chapter of Book III of the Attic Nights to the number seven, relying on Thabit Ibn Qurra in De imaginibus. From the seven stars of the Big Dipper to the zodiacal constellations, he notes that the seventh hours and the seventh days are full of strength. Then he comes to the years:
"As for the dangerous periods which threaten the life and fate of men, which the astrologers (Chaldæi) call 'climacterical', it is the septenaries which are the most serious." (Aulu Gelle, Attic Nights III, x, 9, volume 1, p. 166.


In the second century of our era, but also throughout the Middle Ages and again in the sixteenth century, sixty was the age of great old age, announcing the end of life.

“Here again the ancient and medieval sources are explicit. For Ptolemy, for example, human life is divided into seven ages, old age beginning at fifty-six, the last age at sixty-eight; for Hippocrates, the seventh and final age begins at fifty-six. For Thabit Ibn Qurra, Isidore of Seville, Avicenna, and most, old age begins at sixty. (Antoine Du Verdier, 1577, first part, ch. XL, “De la distinction de l’age de l’homme, selon la doctrine des astrologues???, p. 167-173.???)

Censorinus in De die natali, p. 22-25, relying on Pythgoras, endeavors to show the influence of the stars on man, the seven mobile (wandering) planets between heaven and earth regulating the generation of mortals.

Finally, the great Plato, initiator of a philosophy worthy of heaven and a very holy man, estimated that the duration of human life ended with a squared number, but the square of nine, that is eighty-one years . Some writers anxious to reconcile have accepted the two numbers of forty-nine and eighty-one, assigning the smaller to night births and the larger to day births. (In fact, this calculation is not found in Plato who, moreover, does not use the words klimakthvr nor klimakthrikov~. The critical editors, however, refer to Plato, The Republic, IX.)


Medical Astrology
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The theory of "critical days" seems to have had a more marked influence in medical astrology where Culpeper identifies the importance of the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th of the lunar cycle.
Nicholas Culpeper, Astrological concept of diseases, London, 1655; Tempe (Arizona), American Federation of Astrologers, n.d. [1959], p.17-18.

From medical observations relating to the critical days in the disease, the seventh and its multiples. It seems that the day rather than the year being the unit but this cycle is mentioned in Censorinus, Maternus, Nostradamus or Auger Ferrier, up to Henrik Rantzau.

In his Aphorisms, Hippocrates evokes the threshold of fourteen days of illness (II, 23-24), on another occasion seven days (IV, 71), it is very little. We find a more important development in Macrobius, in book I, chapter vi, of the Dream of Scipio, with the mention of Hippocrates and the septenary, and even novenary, figures in connection with the conception. then other references to the number seven: milk teeth appear after seven months, and they are replaced after seven years! This whole passage is in honor of the number seven.

Moreover, the writings of physicians and philosophers contain many things on these weeklies from which one can see that, in diseases, the seventh days are to be considered with attention and are called “critical???; in the same way in the course of life, the seventh years are dangerous, also critical in a way, and they are called “climacterical???.

But among these years, astrologers have found some to be more dangerous than others. Some think that special attention should be given to those at the end of each series of three weeklies, namely twenty-one, forty-two, sixty-three and, finally, eighty-four years.
On the other hand, many authors have expressed the opinion that there is one climacterical year more critical than all the others, which results from seven times seven years, the forty-ninth year. This opinion is followed by the largest number, because square numbers are believed to be the most powerful.


Note: I have witnessed in my practice and study that the 49th year is a turning point for many people not always bad but as if our human life is passing through a bottleneck and I pay special attention to Saturn and the Moon at that age.
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Note: Below, Michael Stolberg link it to the 'menopause' but somehow I Iike his definition of climaterical as 'a change of life'

“The concept was well-known and widely debated and commented upon in the 16th and 17th centuries. By the 18th century it had lost much of its scientific credibility but eventually term "climacteric", rather than coming out of use, acquired a new meaning. Decisive for this process was a new understanding of the female menopause. Leading physicians, especially in France, reframed widely held traditional notions of the dangers of a "cessation of the menses". They no longer saw them as initiating a period of increasing decline due to the accumulation of superfluous or impure matter in the bodies of postmenopausal women. Instead they distinguished a specific period of troubles and danger in female life around the time when the periods stopped, which they called "menopause". Once this period of menopause was over a stage of renewed health and vigour was said to follow. Around the same time, English physicians began to describe a "climacteric disease" which commonly occurred roughly between 50 and 75 years of age, primarily though not exclusively in men. They thus still used the term "climacteric" but it no longer referred to individual, particularly dangerous years but, like the new term "menopause" to a more or less extended period in life. The two concepts gradually seem to have merged in the course of the 19th century. In the end, rather than suggesting a cyclical structure of crisis and renewal in human life, the term "climacteric" became a single, more or less extended, frequently quite troublesome but rarely lethal period in the life of women.'
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17153291/


Some link these years to the Profected Years
On his website Zoidsoft says...
“Valens describes what is known as the "Climateric Year" and the procedures for examining the periods of danger. First we profect the ascendant at the rate of one sign per year. If the year leaves off at the sign of the prenatal lunation or the squares or diameters of these, the times are dangerous. To quote Valens, "And especially if, these things being so, Kronos should be found in the 4 declines (cadent houses) of the nativity, and the support concurring, death will follow closely thereupon and bodily weakness and bloodshed and precarious sicknesses or hidden troubles, falls and sudden dangers???
https://www.astrology-x-files.com/x-fil ... light.html

Also mentioned p. 223 of Johannis Partridge 'On an Astrological Vade Mecum'
“efpecially when the Afcendant happens to be giver of life, and in Signs of equal or long Afcenfion... where there happens to be a Conjunction of the Malignant Stars; this is the only true Climacterical year.???

But most authors have made a subtle distinction between these two numbers and assign the square of seven (7X7=49) to what touches the body and the square of nine (9X9=81) to things of the soul. And an intermediate year consisting of the multiplication of the two numbers (7X9=63).
Also the first number has been attributed to the medicine of the body and to Apollo, the second to the Muses, because music is used to soften and cure the diseases of the soul which are called "passions".


Note: Interesting here to compare Saturn (the body) and the Moon (the soul). But generally speaking, the Moon aspecting the other planets indicates that something needs to be addressed not just through modern medicine but on the soul, spiritual, emotional and mental level. For the Moon collects and translates the energies. I remember a client with a Moon/Mars conjunction in Pisces who had a heavy drinking problem. I told him he would benefit by joining a choir (he had a radio voice) which is a way to dissolve your mind in a larger whole and singing is a very physical art.
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Let us mention here that Seneca reports that Plato died on his 81st birthday, the square of nine. The perfect cycle of life, that of Plato's life, ending on his birthday at nine times nine, perfect oborosa, almost divine. As for Luther, he died at the age of 63.
In the First Babylonian Dynasty at the turn of the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE, the forty-ninth day from the first day of the previous month was considered inauspicious (Brach, Symbolic of Numbers p. XVIII)


The one who is undoubtedly at the origin of modern knowledge and the revival of this interest: Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499)

In the last chapter of the second book De triplici vita (1482, 1489): "For this reason in each seventh year of life there is a very great mutation in the body, and yet very dangerous, because Saturn is commonly foreign to us, and that during this the highest of all Planets (Saturn) suddenly returns the government to the lowest of Planets, which is the Moon. The Greek astronomers call these years climacteric, we call them staircases, or by degrees, or decretorias. And by chance that the planets by the days govern of the same order the movement of the humor or the nature of diseases, this is why each seventh day for the same reason is called “critical??? or “judicial???. (M. Ficinio, Three Books of Life, C. V. Kaske and J. R. Clark (eds.), Binghamton (NY), 1989, p. 230-235)

Note: Here Marsilio Ficino suggests that it is as if Saturn operates a change of guard and give back the power to the Moon when transitioning. Or maybe I am overreaching my understanding of this quote.

De triplici vita was a real bedside book for European intellectuals of the Renaissance, Ficino is no stranger, in fact, to the new upsurge in climacterical interest at the end of the 15th century, under the double influence of astrology and medicine.
“If, therefore, you wish to prolong life to old age, which is not interrupted by any of its degrees, however, and as soon as you approach each seventh year, take diligently the advice of a good astrologer. Learn from what part danger threatens you, then go to the doctor, or call for prudence and temperance. For by such remedies Ptolemy himself confesses that one can prevent the threats of the stars. (Quadripartitum or Tetrabiblos) aphorisms 5 and 8.)???


With Ficino, we close the long parenthesis of the silent Middle Ages opened by Julius Firmicus Maternus, the last man of Late Antiquity who had dealt with the climacterical year.


Thank you for reading until the end, you have survived a few climaterical minutes.

Blessings,
Ouranos :D
Blessings!

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Regarding the number 7

In 1905, Théophile Perrier published a thesis "La Médecine Astrologique" presented to the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy of Lyon to obtain the degree of doctor of medicine.
In the engraving below , he presented the human body in its relationship with the signs of the Zodiac and the planets, and indicated, according to the different times of the year, the points where bleeding should be done.
Image
On page 36, he says...
"Applied to human life, the number 7 is capital; its multiples are equally important:
The 7th hour decides the life of the child;
At 7 months, appearance of teeth;
At 21 months, the child begins to walk;
At 7 years old fall the first teeth;
At 14 begins puberty;
At 21, the child is a man or woman;
At 35, the man or woman stops growing;
At 42, the forces cease to increase;
At 49, perfection and fullness of faculties.

Not sure that this is part of doctor's curriculum today!

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http://bibnum.univ-lyon1.fr
Blessings!

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Ouranos wrote:Michael,
Were you or are you involved in health in some way?
Yes. I started out in the early 90's as a certified Bach Flower therapist and soon after co-founded a centre for alternative therapies together with a psychiatrist and other types of practitioner. It existed until about the turn of the century.

I also studied homoeopathy, spagyrics, and spiritual healing methods.
_________________

Visit my blog:
https://michaelsternbach.wordpress.com/

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Very interesting Michael!
I have been surrounded by alternative medicine all my life!
Good friends of mine are into homeopathy mostly from the influence of Rudolf Steiner and the 'subtle energies'.

Today, it is referred as Neptunian energies but what is your view on this?
Neptune did not exist (in the knowledge of astrologers!) during Culpeper's writings after all.
I read that Hippocrates considered "The stars are the sign of the exterior elements of the body (skin, etc.), the moon, of the interior elements (“cavernous???, that is to say the organs), and the sun, of the “intermediate??? elements, which make the link between the two."
Blessings!

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Ouranos wrote:Very interesting Michael!
I have been surrounded by alternative medicine all my life!
Good friends of mine are into homeopathy mostly from the influence of Rudolf Steiner and the 'subtle energies'.

Today, it is referred as Neptunian energies but what is your view on this?
Neptune did not exist (in the knowledge of astrologers!) during Culpeper's writings after all.
If we are talking specifically about homoeopathy here, it's clearly Uranian to me. Why? For a couple of reasons...

It's inherently paradoxical to use substances that are prone to inducing symptoms to treat the same. But of course, they have been "dematerialized" to a level that, with the higher potencies, not a single molecule remains in the ready-made remedy. In fact, the higher the degree of dilution (more precisely: potentization), the more powerful they are!

And on top of that, Samuel Hahnemann started developing this method of healing in the early 1790's, soon after Uranus had been discovered in 1781.
I read that Hippocrates considered "The stars are the sign of the exterior elements of the body (skin, etc.), the moon, of the interior elements (“cavernous???, that is to say the organs), and the sun, of the “intermediate??? elements, which make the link between the two."
I once read that the signs were more indicative of the exterior body parts, while the planets would primarily signify the organs. However, I found the signs highly indicative of the more internal conditions too, in my personal research.

Again, the "melothesic man" can be taken as your guide here. Besides to the zodiac, it is applicable to the Wheel of Houses as well; this was known already in Arabic astrology.

And I especially found the "Part of Sickness" (ASC + Mars - Saturn; reversed for nocturnal charts) to be of great use in astromedical delineation (along with other factors, of course).
_________________

Visit my blog:
https://michaelsternbach.wordpress.com/