I just received an email from a former student of mine a couple of days ago who recorded a video endorsing my introduction to Hellenistic astrology course. Since I am starting a new group of students in the course this week I thought that I would take this opportunity to promote the class a bit for anyone that is interested in signing up. The new group of students is just getting started this week, but since the course is designed so that people can work at their own pace there is still time for new students to sign up for the course this month.

Here is a link to the video endorsement I received from Bill Frazier today: click for video

Hellenistic astrology was the original tradition of ‘horoscopic astrology’ that was developed sometime around the 1st century BCE. In the course I take people on a detailed trip through the history, philosophy and techniques of this ancient tradition of astrology. Unlike modern astrology, most traditional forms of astrology are more explicitly directed towards timing and prediction, rather than say, psychology or character analysis.

I include a number of more obscure and remarkable timing techniques in the course, many of which have only recently been recovered due to various translation efforts. Upon completing the course students acquire a better understanding of the fundamental concepts and theories underlying astrology, and they find themselves in a better position to approach chart synthesis in a much more concrete and systematic manner. This naturally leads to an improved ability to carry out the fundamental purpose of astrology - to make predictions.

I’m taking on new students for private study all the time, so if you are interested in learning more then please send me an email or register for the course here.

I wrote this paper on the use of mythology as a device in astrological delineations a few years ago while I was still attending Kepler College . I think that I initially wrote the paper because I was kind of annoyed by the subject matter and I wanted to focus on more precise techniques, having just had my first introduction to Hellenistic and Indian astrology a few months earlier. At the time I was also rather excited by some of the arguments that Robert Schmidt was making about the conceptual origins of the Hellenistic tradition and the possible the influence of Plato’s Timaeus on the original cosmological model of the astrologers, as you can tell in the paper. The paper is pretty amateurish, and I would probably write it a bit differently now, but I’ll present it in the original form with only a few slight modifications since gist of the argument towards the end is still essentially the same as what I would make at this point in time.

This isn’t a technical paper on how to delineate charts using mythology, but it is actually more of a theoretical argument against using mythology as a core tool in delineations. I should point out that I’m not trying to denigrate anyone who is a proponent of such an approach, and I have a number of good friends who regularly employ mythology in chart delineations, but this article is more of a rationalization of my own reasons for not doing the same as the basis for my own practice.

The Place of Myth in Astrology

Horoscopic astrology appeared in the Mediterranean area sometime around the 1st or 2nd century BCE and it was heavily influenced by the philosophy of the earlier Athenian and Hellenistic philosophical schools, particularly that of Plato (437-347 BCE). Robert Schmidt has recently proposed that the entire apparatus of horoscopic astrology was a theoretical construct devised by one person, or one group of people, over the course of one or two generations based off of the Platonic notion that the cosmos is a living, sentient animal, with a body and a soul.[1] Furthermore, Schmidt argues that this cosmic animal possesses a rational consciousness that is capable of knowing the events that befall individual human beings, and the observable astronomical phenomena that are studied by astrologers are actually believed to be expressions of thoughts that take place in the cosmic consciousness of this animal.

Following this basic premise it is thought that the preexisting astrological traditions derived from the Babylonians and the Egyptians were synthesized and used as the basis of an intricate and precise construct which could be used to read, translate and interpret the thoughts of the cosmic animal as they occur relative to individual human beings or events. The technical language of astrology was based upon the attempt to use the multifaceted nature of the Greek language to convey concepts of a universal character in a very specific way. Schmidt argues that the meaning of the astrological concepts were implicit in the language and grammar used, and much of the significance derived from the system was indeed inseparable from the language itself. It appears that the language used in the surviving texts from the Hellenistic astrological tradition was grounded in a concrete theoretical structure that was multivalent enough so as to not warrant the use of analogy, similes or mythology because the words used were able to convey a very precise message through the complex linguistic wrangling of the ancient Greek language.

While the planets themselves were named after the gods of the Greek pantheon centuries before horoscopic astrology came out of Alexandria, nowhere in any of the Hellenistic astrological texts is there made a direct correlation between the mythology of the gods and the significations of the corresponding planetary bodies that bare their names. The connection between the names of the celestial bodies and their corresponding myths in an interpretive astrological context does not appear to have been made in the western astrological tradition until sometime in the 20^th century, and thus it is a relatively new innovation with respect to the history of horoscopic astrology as a whole. As a relatively recent development in the western tradition, this method of chart delineation should be reexamined within the context of ancient and contemporary astrological system alike in order to determine the applicability of mythology to the astrological construct as a whole, from both a theoretical and a practical standpoint.

Origins of the Use of Mythology in Modern Astrology

According to Demetra George in a lecture given to the Washington State Astrological Association at their meeting in March of 2005, the first modern astrologer in the west who seems to have explicitly used mythology to glean information about the nature of the planets was Liz Greene. In the opening paragraph of her first book, Saturn, a New Look at an Old Devil, Greene states

…the stuff from which myths and fairytale are composed is a symbolic portrayal of the values of the collective unconscious psyche of man. [2]

From this basic premise Greene goes on to make analogies between the various myths and ‘archetypes’ of the Saturn/Kronos character in Greek mythology, with how the planet Saturn can be interpreted by astrologers in a horoscopic chart. She says in her closing remarks that

…a symbol cannot be comprehended by words but must be approached though the intuitive facility…

Thus the use of mythology in modern astrology from its introduction was a tool used to emphasize the intuitive function of the art so that broader concepts could be conveyed, and it was done largely in order to makeup for the limitations of modern language and to convey the full complexity of certain astrological concepts.

In Greene’s book she draws heavily on the work of one of the psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), particular some of the main concepts that he proposed during his lifetime such as the notion of archetypes, the collective unconscious, and the theory synchronicity. In his 1917 work On the Psychology of the Unconscious Jung explains the collective unconscious and archetypes in the following manner:

The unconscious contains, as it were two layers: the personal and the collective. The personal layer ends at the earliest memories of infancy, but the collective layer comprises the pre-infantile period, that is, the residues of ancestrial life. Whereas the memory-images of the personal unconscious are, as it were, filled out because they are images personally experienced by the individual, the archetypes of the collective unconscious are not filled out because they are not forms personally experienced. On the other hand, when psychic energy regresses, going even beyond the period of early infancy, and breaks into the legacy of ancestrial life, then the mythological images are awakened: these are archetypes. [3]

Demetra George elaborates on the matter of the archetypes in her book Asteroid Goddesses

Archetypes are the essential universal thought forms available to human consciousness during all periods of time. [4]

By incorporating these definitions of the collective unconscious and the archetypes with Schmidt’s argument that the Hellenistic astrologers considered the universe to be a living creature whose thoughts could be read through the movements of the celestial bodies, perhaps we could speculate that the collective unconscious that we draw upon is somehow connected to the consciousness of this living cosmos that we reside inside of. Perhaps the archetypes or concepts inside of that consciousness are available for all of humanity to draw upon and they are somehow intertwined with the thoughts of the cosmic mind, as expressed by the movements of the celestial bodies. The archetypes are somewhat general in character though, because they are essentially broad, undirected concepts, of a universal nature and they are not as specifically focused because they occur everywhere in our world and not just through the specific language of astrology. One could argue that astrology itself is a structured, or systematic attempt to translate the multivalent conceptual cognitions of the cosmos into a language in order to reveal precise ‘thoughts’, and thus the use of mythology to further illustrate certain broad archetypes would be something that would be an addition to an already complicated system, since by nature mythology is general in its character and meaning, whereas astrology can be more specific insomuch as it is a language.

Other languages in the ancient world eventually supplanted classical Greek, which was used to develop Hellenistic astrology, and when ancient Greek died as a spoken language it took with it much of the meaning inherent in the original astrological concepts. Astrology was translated into other languages numerous times and was transmitted to several other host cultures, going through transformations each time to the different belief systems, languages and cultural customs of its hosts. In each instance astrology was adapted to its host cultures. Although there were often deliberate attempts to retain the original intent and meaning underlying the technical terminology, in the process of these transformations and adaptations much of the meaning of the technical language was changed or forgotten. By the time astrology was revived in the English speaking world in the 20^th century there was very little of the original theoretical and interpretive edifice left. Western horoscopic astrology was lacking the type of philosophical and technical depth that it once had, not to mention the intimate understanding of the languages were used in the previous traditions in order to come to a deeper understanding of the intimate details of the system. After the development and proliferation of Jung’s psychological concepts it was only natural for them to be adopted and refined by astrologers because they provided a type of consistent theoretical basis that had been lacking. Not surprisingly, much of Jung’s own work was directed towards investigating the concepts of myth and symbolism, as it exists in the psyche.

The Use of Myth Now

One could argue that the use of mythology to describe astrological concepts was developed and utilized by astrologers in the 20th century largely due to the inadequacies of the modern astrological construct and the technical terminology that was available at the time, as well as the need to find a better way to convey the cognitions of the cosmic mind. Mythology isn’t a precise translation of those concepts or cosmic cognitions though, but rather it is more like a rough outline or allegory of the astrological concepts. It lies completely separate from the entire astrological apparatus in it of itself, almost as an overlay to the initial information that can be gleaned from the placements in a horoscopic chart. This is because astrology is not fundamentally mythological, or perhaps even archetypical at its core, but rather it is a very precise language, albeit one that can be translated into many different conceptual paradigms, including the mythological and archetypal realms. However in doing so it looses a certain amount of precision that is inherent in the language of astrology itself, because myth is naturally predisposed to being imprecise, and thus the meaning is generalized and non-specific.

Thus, while mythology should be used to help elucidate and convey certain messages, stories and feelings, it should not be done at the expense of the technical accuracy or integrity of the system. Therefore mythology should be treated more like a type of garnish or as the figurative ‘icing on the cake’ of the astrological apparatus itself, as it does not constitute the core of the system.

Endnotes

1. Robert Schmidt, Kepler College Sourcebook of Hellenistic Material with Commentary, Project Hindsight, Cumberland, MD, 2003, pgs. 4-5.

2. Carl Jung, ‘On the Psychology of the Unconscious’ in Two Essays on Analytic Psychology, Meridian Books, Cleveland, OH, 1965, pg. 87.

3. Liz Greene, Saturn, A New Look at an Old Devil, Samuel Weiser, New York, 1977, pg. 9.

4. Demetra George, Asteroid Goddesses, ACS Publications, San Diego, CA, 1986, pg. 12.

I’ve been of the opinion for a while now that astrology is fundamentally deterministic, and that the majority of astrologers approach the subject with a more or less deterministic mindset, whether they consciously acknowledge it or not. In fact, the vast majority of astrologers seldom even realize just how deterministic their unspoken assumptions about astrology actually are, and these assumptions are in conflict with their consciously stated views about the subject.

A member of the Horoscopic Astrology group on Myspace posed a question along these lines on the forum today:

When we feel and understand the potential of a planetary (whole sign) ingress, maybe its possible to harness the energy to put us in the driving seat. If we don’t harness it, it will harness us. Can awareness make us the master rather than the slave?

I decided to approach my answer to this question from more of an explicitly Stoic perspective. Here is a modified version of my response:

The early founders of Stoicism, Zeno and Chrysippus, used an interesting example to illustrate a point along these lines, according to a later author named Hippolytus:

They too affirmed that everything is fated, with the following model. When a dog is tied to a cart, if it wants to follow it is pulled and follows, making its spontaneous act coincide with necessity, but if it does not want to follow it will be compelled in any case. So it is with men too: even if they do not want to, they will be compelled in any case to follow what is destined. (Long & Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 62 A.)

The important point for here for the Stoics seems to be the degree to which a person can realize and accept their own fate, and how they subsequently choose to work with it. Within this context the Stoics also introduce additional ideas about the notion of co-fated events the doctrine of assent, since the choice to accept and ‘trot alongside the cart’, so to speak, or to not accept and be dragged, is a choice in it of itself. Theoretically, if we understand our fate then the more appealing option is obvious.

Hence he says in book 2 that it is obvious that many things originate from us, but that these too are nonetheless co-fated along with the government of the world. And he uses certain examples, like the following. That the cloak should not perish, he says, was fated not absolutely but together with its being looked after. Someone’s escaping from the enemy was fated together with his running away from the enemy. And having children was fated together with wanting to have intercourse with a woman. For just as, he says, if someone said that Hegesarchus the boxer would come out of the fight without sustaining a single punch, it would be ridiculous to expect Hegesarchus to fight with his hands by his sides on the ground that he was fated to come out without sustaining a punch, since the person making the denial said it because of the man’s superior guard against being punched, so too it is with other matters. For many things cannot come about without our wanting them and applying the most intense determination and efforts over them, since it is together with this, he says, that they are fated to come about. (Long & Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 62 F.)

So, even the most deterministic philosophers of antiquity thought that you still have to make a choice, even if that choice itself is essentially fated in some sense based on your own internal dispositions and such. The Stoics also used this metaphor of a cylinder being pushed off the top of a hill and subsequently rolling down the hill in order to explain their notion of an internal type of fate that works in tandem with an external type of fate, and I always thought that this was a beautiful metaphor for astrology. In the cylinder model the internal fate of the cylinder is the fact that it is cylindrical, and thus it is predisposed towards rolling. This is the internal fate of the object. However, at some point the cylinder receives a push and then it begins rolling down the hill, and this is the external fate of the object. (For more on this see Keith Seddon’s excellent article Stoics on Determinism.)

I think that this cylinder metaphor is applicable to astrology, especially when you view it within the context of a natal chart and the transits to the natal chart. The internal fate of a person would be their natal chart itself with all of the planetary positions therein, which shows all of the native’s predisposition and characteristics, just as the internal fate of the cylinder was simply the fact that it is cylindrical. The external fate, then, would be the transits, which in some sense activate the internal predispositions in the natal chart at various points in the native’s life, in the same way that the cylinder is pushed at some point and given the external impetus to role down the hill.

An important point to make with respect to transits to a person’s natal chart is that they do not only represent internal character traits and psychological states that are being activated or experienced during a given transit, as some modern astrologers argue, but transits also correlate with concrete external events and circumstances that occur in the life of the native at fixed periods. While we may have a certain amount of leverage as to how we react to the internal psychological states that we experience during a given transit, some of the external events that occur in tandem with the transits are frequently out of our control in a concrete sense. With these concrete external events we are still in a position of being able to slightly modify our perception or internal reaction to these events though. However, the argument could be made that even our ability to modify our reaction to external events may be fated or predetermined as well, since that too depends on our own internal dispositions and character traits at a given point in time, and all of this is contained in our natal chart. Of course, our internal reaction to events changes over time as we grow and develop, and this is largely what the study of transits is all about.

So, I don’t think that awareness can make you the master rather than the slave, but I do think that it can give you greater control over your perception of events, and this awareness makes you more of a willing participant or co-creator with you own fate, rather than someone who is simply being dragged along for the ride.

My friend Nick Dagan Best has a new video up on Youtube from his interview in the forthcoming documentary Return of the Magi. It is a rather insightful look into the the views and the practices of a contemporary astrologer.  If you are not very familiar with astrology, or you don’t know much about how astrologers view the subject, then I would highly recommend that you watch this video, as it gives a pretty thorough introduction.

My favorite line from the clip is Nick’s statement in response to a question about skepticism of astrology:

I wake up every morning with the express intent of disproving astrology, and I go to bed every night having failed miserably.

Here is the clip:

More information about the movie that this interview will be incorporated into can be found at returnofthemagi.com. The Association for Young Astrologers is hosting the movie premiere of Return of the Magi on May 18th in Denver, Colorado at the United Astrological Conference. Tickets for the event can be purchased on the AYA website. For more information about Nick Dagan Best and his work see his website ExotericAstrology.com

Lately astrologers have been talking a lot about the lunar eclipse that just occurred tonight in Virgo. Eclipses of any sort of often tend to be rather unpleasant, depending of course on how they are hitting a certain person’s birth chart. Sometimes it is kind of interesting to observe how they effect certain people when they land in pivotal areas of their chart. Even though the eclipse just went exact a couple of hours ago, we already have an example of how this correlated with an event in one prominent individual’s life.

The New York Times Article

So, I was watching CNN just a bit ago and they had a few political commentators on talking about this article that the New York Times just decided to publish tonight at 7:00 PM EST on their website. Apparently the article is about John McCain allegedly having an affair with a female lobbyist during the 2000 campaign. This apparently compromised his political integrity because he also supposedly wrote

…letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s client…”

This is potentially damaging for McCain because, if its true, then it brings his integrity into doubt with regard to doing favors for lobbyist, even though he has been a staunch opponent of politicians doing favors for special interest groups like this for much of his career. Even if the New York Times article isn’t true, it is just bad publicity for McCain.

McCain’s campaign was quick to issue a statement tonight in order to dispute the New York Times article

It is a shame that the New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit and run smear campaign.

What is interesting about this from an astrological perspective is that, according to Dana Bash of CNN, there may have been some arguments within the New York Times over whether or not to run the story in the first place, and according to McCain’s campaign

…The New York Times started working on this story several months ago, back in the fall.

If this is true, that the Times started working on this story sometime back in the fall, then I wonder if the story really first started to be formulated during the last set of eclipses back in August and September. Often eclipses act as these sort of bookends which link together events in a six month period, and it wouldn’t be terribly surprising if this was the case here.

As for the astrological relevance in McCain’s birth chart, if we assume that the purported 9:00 AM birth time is correct, then the issue becomes rather clear.

The Eclipse & the 12th House

McCain is in a 12th house profection year since his last birthday on August 29th, which coincidentally was just a day or two after the last lunar eclipse prior to the one that occurred tonight. This means that for the duration of this year of his life his 12th house is activated, and any transits through his 12th whole sign house are going to be of extreme importance. For McCain this is sort of a mixed bag since he has some important planets in the 12th house in his natal chart, although these placements notwithstanding, the 12th house has traditionally carried some pretty negative connotations.

Modern and traditional astrologers ascribe the 12th house a variety of more problematic significations such as enemies, secrets, ailments, etc. The 2nd century astrologer Vettius Valens outlines some of these more problematic aspects of the 12th house in his work known as the Anthology:

The 12th: place of foreign countries, enmities, slaves, injuries, dangers, courts of judgment, ailments, death, weaknesses. (Vettius Valens, The Anthology, Book 4, trans. Robert Schmidt, Project Hindsight, 1996, pg. 33.)

Charming, I know. Everyone has a 12th house in their natal chart, but for McCain this more problematic area of his chart is activated until his next birthday in August, and certain events of this nature will have more of a chance to manifest in his life when certain key planets transit through that house. Tonight happened to be just one of those pivotal transits in the year.

The lunar eclipse went exact tonight sometime around 10:30 EST at about 1 degree of Virgo in the tropical zodiac, right in McCain’s 12th house. It probably didn’t help any that Saturn is making a retrograde transit over his Sun in Virgo at the same time, and Mercury just stationed direct while square his natal Uranus.

Closing Thoughts

I’m not really trying to say that the report that the New York Times published was accurate or even that it wasn’t accurate, since I don’t know either way and it isn’t really terribly relevant here. What is relevant is just the fact that such allegations were published in the article on the Times‘ website tonight right about the same time that the lunar eclipse was going exact, and this has a direct correlation with McCain’s chart.

If nothing else, the Times‘ article is bad publicity, and what we are seeing with the eclipse landing in his 12th house is a correlating astrological aspect which fits the symbolism of the bad publicity that has occurred tonight.

This is interesting to me because it actually seems to help confirm that the purported birth time that we have for him as a candidate in the presidential election is correct, or at least close enough to provide us with the proper whole sign houses. As I detailed in my previous article on birth data problems in the 2008 presidential election, when we started the race we didn’t have reliable birth data for many of the candidates. Now that the race has been narrowed down to three candidates, it looks like we may have a reasonably reliable birth time for at least one of the contenders. So, one down, two to go.

Kepler College recently started a YouTube account and they posted a few clips from a recent graduation ceremony that took place in October of 2007. I found Rob Hand and Nick Campion’s speeches to be particularly interesting, as usual.

Rob Hand: Kepler College and the Liberal Arts

Click here for part 2.

Nick Campion

I just finished reading an astonishingly misinformed article by Glenn Perry in the latest issue of the NCGR Journal titled From Ancient to Postmodern Astrology, Toward a New Synthesis. Normally I would just let the uninformed ravings of some random astrologer pass by without taking much notice and then continue on about my day, but I was honestly caught off guard by the rather caustic nature of the article, as well as the string of inaccurate and uninformed statements that it was riddled with. So, I thought that I would take the time to address some of the issues with his article here. Such a misinformed and misleading tirade published by anyone deserves to be rebuked and admonished, but especially when it is coming from a guy with a Ph.D who should know better than to publish such a shoddy paper in an international journal.

Diatribe Par Excellence

While the title of the article implies that Perry intends to introduce or propose some sort of synthesis of modern and traditional astrology, the vast majority of the rather lengthy 18 page article actually turns out to be just one long diatribe directed against traditional forms of astrology in general. Actually, the emphasis of the article is directed towards disputing and ridiculing the author’s own rather skewed and minimal understanding of traditional astrology, which is not the same as saying that it is a legitimate critique of traditional astrology per se. I say this because the author is clearly addressing the tradition without much background or knowledge of it, which even Perry himself later admitted.
Perry actually reminds me of many of the modern day ’skeptics’ or ‘debunkers’ of astrology who attack the subject without really knowing much about it, and subsequently tend to make some pretty obvious mistakes in the process. Perry even invokes the Barnum effect at one point on page 31, much like many modern debunkers of astrology such as James Randi and Richard Dawkins are fond of doing. In general Perry also follows the same framework that many modern ‘debunkers’ do, in relying mainly on his rhetorical abilities in order to get his point across, rather than say, something more than a superficial understanding of the subject matter. This is an interesting case though because Perry is actually an astrologer that simply has some sort of axe to grind with the earlier traditions of astrology, for whatever reason. In the process of doing so Perry shows himself to be quite an aspiring rhetorician, but rather incompetent when it comes to actual research and scholarship.

I will focus mainly on some of the more blatant mistakes in the article, many of which showcase Perry’s lack of background or understanding of traditional astrology, as well as the history of astrology in general. (Update: for another perspective see Ben Dykes’ article) The point of this little overview will be to highlight the fact that Perry’s academic shortcomings far exceed his rhetoric, and thus undercut pretty much any point that he was attempting to make.

Firmicus Maternus

On page 27 of the article Perry states that Firmicus Maternus’ Mathesis

…is considered the most detailed work on astrology to survive from the classical period

This is not really an accurate statement. While the Mathesis may be the longest text to have survived into the present day, largely due to Firmicus’ cribbing of delineation material from other authors, it is generally accepted by most people who have studied the tradition that the most detailed treatise on astrology that has survived from the classical period is Vettius Valens’ nine book Anthology. James Holden writes in his book A History of Horoscopic Astrology, which Perry cites at one point, that

…the Anthology affords us our best look at the materials available to and the procedures used by a Greek astrologer of the Classical period.” (pg. 57, 1996)

Robert Schmidt makes the statement in his catalog of Hellenistic astrologers that

More than any other astrologer, Valens may represent the mainstream of the Hellenistic tradition.

Perry appears to know nothing of Valens’ work, outside of a few scattered quotes that he was able to collect from secondary sources, so naturally this point escaped his notice.

Speaking of secondary sources though, if you look through Perry’s footnotes you will notice that citations of primary source texts from traditional astrologers are conspicuously absent. He quotes from Wedel’s The Medieval Attitude Towards Astrology for quotes from Bonatti, McCaffery’s Astrology: Its History and Influence in the Western World for Ptolemy, West’s The Case For Astrology for Kepler, and Barton’s Ancient Astrology for quotes from Firmicus and Valens.

So while Perry did a pretty good job of perusing the secondary literature in order to pick out catchy one liners from various authorities, he never actually took the time to read any of the actual source texts! This completely undercuts any argument that he makes about the techniques of traditional astrology being ‘highly questionable’, not working in his ‘experience’ or being ‘unconvincing’ because when it comes down to it he doesn’t actually know anything about the techniques, having never read any of the traditional manuals or authors. This fact can be clearly demonstrated in the rather sophomoric mistakes that he makes in the rest of the article, as we will see.

Case Studies

In the next paragraph, on page 28, in order to somehow negate delineations provided by traditional astrologers Perry speculates

we must assume that ancient astrologers were seriously compromised by a comparitive lack of reliable charts to study.

This statement is shown to be somewhat faulty and meaningless when one examines the 100+ example charts used in Valens’ Anthology, most of which clearly come from Valens’ own personal case studies, as well as those of his predecessors. Perry would probably respond that he is speaking in relative terms, since he follows up his speculation with the statement that

the modern astrologer can study more reliable charts in a week than a 1st century astrologer could study in a lifetime.

Here Perry equates the number of charts that an astrologer has studied with the depth of his understanding of the subject. This is arguably a rather questionable assumption to make.

Misunderstanding Sect

On page 29, in the context of attempting to discard the notion of ’sect’, Perry tells us that

some planets are allegedly stronger during the day (Sun, Jupiter, Saturn), while others are stronger at night (Moon, Venus, Mars). For example, if a person is born during the day and Mars is above the horizon with the Sun, its functionality is allegedly weakened.

The problem with this statement is that sect isn’t a quantitative measurement, it is a qualitative measurement. The sect status of a planet does not make it ’stronger’ or ‘weaker’, as Perry assumes, but its main function is to augment the benefic or malefic status or functioning of a planet. Perry’s ineptitude with respect to the subject matter as well as his rhetorical ability shine through here because he is vehemently rejecting and even mocking a technical concept that he doesn’t even fully understand. He even goes so far as to say that it is ‘impossible’ to test the validity of the concept of sect, and

If there is no conceivable way to test the merit of a claim, then it is vacuous.

This is the very epitome of a straw man argument, in misrepresenting the nature of an opponent’s argument, in this case a technical concept, and then rejecting it based on nothing more than your own mistaken assumptions as to its purpose. Indeed, how could Perry test the concept if he doesn’t even understand how it is supposed to be applied?

The Terms or Bounds

On the following page, in the context of disputing the ‘terms’ or ‘bounds’, Perry makes the faulty technical statement that

a planet at 27 degrees of any sign would be in Saturn’s bounds…

Although I am not sure which version of the bounds he is referring to here, since there are several different sets, this is a false statement nonetheless since Saturn’s bounds are not always located at the end of the signs, no matter which system of bounds you use. So Perry has made a universal statement here, which happens to be universally wrong. While this may be a simple technical oversight on Perry’s part, it is a rather obvious mistake that he would have avoided if he had anything more than a passing understanding of the techniques underlying traditional astrology.

The Exaltations

On the same page Perry attempts to dispute the exaltations, which are still used by modern astrologers, because

“unlike domiciles” they do “not follow a logical scheme for sign assignment”, and thus they “constitute an arbitrary system…”

Perry, being less than knowledgeable as far as Hellenistic astrology is concerned, doesn’t know that there actually is a logical scheme underlying the exaltations, which even ties in to the domicile assignments. Antiochus and Porphyry point out that all of the diurnal planets have their exaltations in signs which are configured to one of their domiciles by trine, and all of the nocturnal planets to one of their domiciles by sextile. There is even a link to the houses that each of the planets are placed in when viewed in the context of the Thema Mundi, which Schmidt points out in his forthcoming translation of Antiochus, and a pretty straightforward rationale for how the domicile lord of each of the exaltation signs compliments the tendencies of the exalted planet. This theory about the interaction between the domicile lord of a sign and an exalted planet is spelled out by Rhetorius in his commentary on Antiochus’ work:

Why is it that where the Sun is exalted, there Kronos is depressed; and where Kronos is exalted, there the Sun is depressed? We say that it is because the Sun is the storehouse of fire and light, and is the master of the day; while conversely, Kronos, signifying the darkness, is cold. Then, at the place where the light of day is exalted, there the darkness and the night is depressed, and that which is cold is warmed. But at the place where the darkness is exalted, there the light is depressed and the day becomes shorter.

And again, why is it that at the place where Zeus is exalted, there Ares is depressed; and where Ares is exalted, there Zeus is depressed? We say that it is because Zeus is the overseer of the life-breath and abundance, while Ares is the overseer of death. Then, at the place where the life- breath increases, there the bringer of death is depressed; and where death increases, there life is depressed.

And again, why is it that at the place where Aphrodite is exalted, there Hermes is depressed; and where Hermes is exalted, there Aphrodite is depressed? We say that it is because Hermes is the master of arguments, while Aphrodite is the overseer of desire and intercourse. Then, at the place where the intellectual increases, there the desire and the pleasurable in intercourse is depressed. And where the appetitive and pleasurable is, exalted, there the intellectual is depressed. … (From Antiochus of Athens, The Thesaurus, Translated by Robert Schmidt, Project Hindsight, 1993, chapter 7.)

So, in fact the exaltation assignments are far from arbitrary, but they simply have their roots in a tradition and a conceptual structure that Perry is entirely ignorant of. His ignorance of their systematic nature in the astrological construct speaks more to his competence as an astrologer and a researcher than it does to their validity or legitimacy in the system though. Even with their origins being somewhat obscure, it seems strange for Perry to be disputing a concept that even many modern astrologers take for granted and use in their practice.

More on the Exaltations

Perry continues to exhibit his ineptitude with respect to the subject matter further down the page when he makes the totally inaccurate and rather ridiculous statement that

In modern astrology, a dispositor is a planet that rules the sign that another planet is in… However, in traditional astrology, a dispositor is a planet that is the exaltation ruler of a sign; thus, if Venus is in Aries, then the Sun would disposit Venus since the Sun is allegedly exalted in Aries. But if the very concept of exaltations is questionable, then the traditional method of assigning and assessing dispositors is likewise thrown into doubt.

Since he apparently didn’t read any of the source texts related to the subject matter of his article, Perry appears to have gotten the idea that dispositorship only relates to the exaltation ruler of a sign, and that it was only recently in modern astrology that dispositorship came to be associated with the domicile lord of a sign. Such a statement is obviously as absurd as it is inaccurate, as the use of domicile lords as dispositors can be seen in every single text on astrology from the 1st century through the 17th century. Perry of course gives no citation for this bogus notion that he concocted, since none exist. It is interesting though, because it seems to explain part of the reason why he doesn’t understand the function of the exaltations, and thus why he would reject them, since for Perry a lack of understanding or insufficient knowledge of something apparently does not preclude its rejection.

Anachronism

On the same page again Perry makes another obvious mistake when he says

I may observe that someone with Venus in Pisces in the 8th house negotiates financial transactions in a deceptive manner… To say, however, that Venus is exalted in Pisces and is in the house of its detriment are simply vague value judgements.

What he did here was to equate the signs with the houses, which is commonly done in modern astrology, but was not done in traditional astrology, particularly in the Hellenistic and Medieval traditions. The notion that the 8th house = the sign Scorpio, the sign of Venus’ ‘detriment’, is more of a modern notion, which makes this statement totally anachronistic, not to mention misleading since he also implies that a delineation of some sort would not have been made for that placement by a traditional astrologer.

Misunderstanding the Timelords

Later Perry dismisses the Hellenistic ‘time-lord’ systems with the rather abrasive and prejudiced statement that

the technique of time lords in which different planets allegedly rule various periods appears so obviously made up and arbitrary that it is difficult to understand how any person of discernment could believe in it. Each planet is assigned a period of time, which purportedly determines the general tone of the life for that duration, e.g., Saturn rules 11 years, the Sun rules 10 years, Mercury rules 13 years, and so on.

In a footnote right after the first sentence in the above statement he explains that

Time lords are tied to bound or term systems, of which there are several variations - Ptolemaic, Chaldean, Egyptian, and one created by Vettius Valens. Variations of the division of signs into differing periods underscores that the system is made-up and arbitrary.

There are two problems here. The first is that in the footnote Perry refers to one specific time lord system, sometimes called ‘circumambulations’, or ‘circumambulations through the bounds’. The problem is that the actual time periods associated with the planets that he listed (i.e. ‘Saturn rules 11 years, the Sun rules 10 years, Mercury rules 13 years’, etc.) come from a completely different Medieval time lord system known as Fidaria, and the Fidaria system isn’t actually based on the bounds at all, as he claims all time lord systems are his footnote. He is conflating two entirely different systems or techniques.

Second, the circumambulations time lord system is the only time lord system that is based on the bounds; there are several other time lord systems that have nothing to do with the bounds. If not for the random conflation of the Fidaria periods in the same paragraph in which he defines the time lord systems as always being “tied to bound or term systems” in the footnote, then one would be led to assume that Perry is only aware of one of the many time lord systems. Instead he appears to be aware of, but not quite able to accurately define, two time lord systems.

While I guess that knowing about two time lord systems is better than just knowing about one, there are at least 7 major time lord systems in the Hellenistic tradition alone, as well as a host of others in the Medieval and Indian traditions. With Perry’s lack of familiarity with the numerous time lord systems in the different traditions, as well as his inability to even properly define the two systems that he is apparently aware of, what basis does he really have for rejecting them?

More Faulty Statements About the Time Lords

Later in the same paragraph on time lords on page 31 Perry trumpets his minimal attempt at research into the subject matter of his article even further with the statement that the time periods used in the time lord systems

do not correspond to actual planetary motions, i.e., they are not observational statements, but random suppositions.

While Perry may simply be referring to his previous confused statements about the only two systems that he appears to be aware of, this statement can be proven wrong in at least two other time lord systems contained in Valens’ Anthology, which are partially based on the synodic cycles of the visible planets (i.e. the 8 year period of Venus, the 12 year period of Jupiter, etc.), which are ‘actual planetary motions’.

The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy

On page 31 Perry makes what would be a pretty normal historical statement about 30 or 40 years ago, prior to the widespread advent of scholarship on the history of astrology, with the statement that Ptolemy was

the grand master of Hellenistic astrology.

This view was prevalent back when Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos was the only real Hellenistic astrological text available, and astrologers like Perry simply assumed that Ptolemy was the most competent and representative astrologer of the Hellenistic tradition. Since the mid-80’s this common assumption has been rejected though, once more texts from the Hellenistic tradition became available and it was realized that Ptolemy was actually not representative of the mainstream of Hellenistic astrology, but rather he was more of a reformer. Some people such as Holden have questioned whether or not he was even a practicing astrologer:

Ptolemy cites no astrological authorities by name, he gives no example horoscopes, and he certainly was not a practicing astrologer. (Holden, A History of Horoscopic Astrology, 1996, pp. 48-49.)

The Luxury of Ignorance

Towards the end of Perry’s article it culminates with what seems to have been the implied premise of his rather dubious argument all along

Exponents of traditional astrology frequently claim that superior, ancient techniques are now being recovered for future generations. I find this claim, like the techniques themselves, unconvincing. The history of science is one in which ideas that prove to be insufficient, untestable, or invalid are gradually eliminated, like vestigial organs that no longer serve a purpose. It would appear that this is what happened to much of traditional astrology…

Realizing that he is making a totally bogus claim, and likely in an attempt to soften his diatribe, Perry backtracks a bit before he ends the sentence

…although it can be argued that its near demise in the 18th century was more for sociopolitical reasons than scientific.

This last statement appears to have been tacked on in order to lessen the impact of the dubious historical argument that he was trying to put forward with respect to the reason why much of traditional astrology didn’t make it into the 20th century. Here lies, I believe, the crux of Perry’s argument, as well as his prejudices against traditional astrology.

Perry’s writing indicates, and he even admits himself, that he knows very little about the techniques or the concepts underlying traditional astrology, as I have demonstrated, thus his evaluation of the tradition is not based on his actual experience with the techniques, but instead it is almost entirely based on his presuppositions about their nature and providence. Perry appears to be approaching the entire matter under the dubious historical context that the techniques of traditional astrology were consciously discarded because they were found to be of no value. This is a common, albeit mistaken, historical assumption that is made by many modern astrologers, particularly by those who have not investigated the history and transmission of astrology. Perpetuating this myth is quite possibly the biggest mistake that Perry makes in the entire paper.

Modern astrology, as it was practiced in the 20^th century and as it is practiced even today by the majority of western astrologers in the early 21^st century, was not the result of a linear development and refinement of the subject over the centuries which culminated in the form that it is in today. This is one of the great myths surrounding modern astrological practice. Rather, modern western astrology is largely the result of a handful of influential 20th century astrologers who inherited a few fragments of the astrological tradition and then created a new construct around it which was then infused with their own religious, ethical and theoretical speculations. Rob Hand explains this matter in his article Towards a Post-Modern Astrology:

…we have astrology up until about 1700, which had certain consistent patterns, ideas and principles and which had a more or less a continuous tradition from something like – this date is extremely flexible – the fifth century B.C.E. Then, in the 18th century we had a very long break. Conventional historians refer to this as the Enlightenment. I prefer the term “Endarkenment,” based on what happened in astrology – it almost died. And then in the 19th century a revival began, which for most of the 19th century was a revival of a portion of the tradition that had nearly died in 1700.

But then with Alan Leo, and more recently people like Dane Rudhyar, and on another level people like the Hamburg School and Cosmobiology of Ebertin, a rather new kind of astrology began coming into existence, which it might be appropriate simply to call 20th century astrology, but I would like to call modern astrology.

Although recognizable in some of its basic technical principles, Modern astrology is actually quite different than any system of astrology that was practiced in the various ancient traditions of the past, both technically and in its theoretical and philosophical approach. The reason for this disparity between the ancient and modern traditions is largely due to this gap in the astrological tradition between the 17th and 19th centuries when astrology fell into disrepute and the techniques and concepts of the tradition stopped being transmitted. While Perry’s inability to truly comprehend and accurately identify these distinctions between modern and ancient astrology make the majority of his technical and philosophical critiques completely worthless, his argument about the historical evolution of astrology which disregards the fact that there was a break in the transmission is completely unfounded and inexcusable.

Concluding Remarks

Simply put, Perry has no business critiquing, much less rejecting or berating, a form of astrology that he knows so little about.

My critique of his article has mainly been directed towards highlighting his technical mistakes and assumptions, and I have not addressed the faulty philosophical arguments made in the article. A critique of Perry’s philosophical misassumptions would be as long as this article on the technical issues has been, although I am confident that these problems will be addressed by other astrologers in the near future who find his rather shallow philosophical treatment to be as misleading and apprehensive as I did. (Update: see Ben Dyke’s response)

Ultimately Perry’s article is more annoying than anything, because instead of engaging in some sort of productive research or dialog he wastes his time writing frivolous and inaccurate attacks against the work of his colleagues. He of course pays lip service to the main figures who have been leading the movement that he just spent 18 pages attacking when he says towards the end of the article that

Regardless of why traditional astrology fell into disrepute, a huge debt of gratitude is owed to researchers like Robert Schmidt, Robert Zoller, and Robert Hand for restoring our history.

The ironic part about these concluding remarks is that the work of these three scholars has already made a major impact on the astrological community and will probably continue to influence astrologers for generations to come. While their names will go down in the history books as those who made an effort to reconceptualize, improve and reunite the astrological traditions, the names of others who engage in the type shallow scholarship exemplified by the article under consideration will simply be forgotten.

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• Update: For another perspective on this matter see Ben Dykes excellent response to Glenn Perry on his blog, as well as his discussion forum.

As I said in my previous post on Hillary Clinton’s birth chart earlier this year, one of the biggest issues that astrologers are going to run into when trying to make predictions about the upcoming election is that birth data for the majority of the candidates is pretty scarce. Basically, we just don’t have reliable birth times for a number of the candidates, and this information is quite important when casting charts and making predictions using horoscopic astrology.

That was the state of things earlier this year, and I had hoped that matters would have improved since then, but unfortunately the status of the birth data for the majority of the candidates is still a pretty dismal state of affairs. Recent events have led me to be a bit more skeptical about three of the candidates proposed times in particular, so I would like to address that issue briefly here.

Hillary Clinton’s Birth Time

Earlier this year I attended the NCGR astrological conference in Baltimore where I sat in on a lecture about the 2008 election. Naturally during the course of the lecture the point came up that the birth data for many of the candidates is either nonexistent or highly ambiguous. At one point the subject of Hillary Clinton’s natal chart came up, for which there are several different proposed birth times with different sources, and there was a discussion about which chart was the correct one.

Towards the end of the discussion about the different proposed birth times an older woman who was sitting off to the left hand side of the room stood up and stated quite calmly and sort of mysteriously that Hillary was born at 8:02 am, and that the Scorpio rising chart was the correct one. The unusual air of calmness and conviction about the woman kind of struck me as interesting, and I quickly jotted down the time. When I had done some cursory investigations into Hillary’s birth chart the previous fall I had come to the conclusion that the Scorpio rising chart was likely the correct one, although I was still perplexed to hear this woman state a precise time with such assurance, almost as if she had some sort of inside information.

As chance would have it, a couple of days later, after the conference had ended, I was just checking out of my room and walking out to the car with my friends when I happened to run into the woman by the hotel elevator. I was still really curious why she was so confident about Hillary’s birth time, so I asked her about it. Although I can’t remember the precise words she used now, she basically said something to the effect that she did have some sort of inside information and either she or someone she was close to had seen the birth certificate. She told me that someone had once told Hillary something bad about the sign Scorpio, and that was the reason why Hillary didn’t want to confirm the actual birth time, and that is why there are so many different birth times floating around. She seemed quite sincere about it, and I was kind of excited to get this sort of inside information. I thanked the woman for sharing this with me and asked her what her name was. She said that her name was Frances McEvoy.

Obama & Romney’s Birth Time

A month or so ago I received an encouraging email from a reader of my blog who was interested in hearing more about my take on the US election after seeing my successful prediction about the French election earlier this year. I began looking into the US election again to see if any astrologers had been able to get more reliable birth data on some of the candidates. I was looking through AstroDataBank and I noticed that there was solid birth time for Mitt Romney of 9:51 am, although I was slightly surprised to see that it came from the same Frances McEvoy that had given me the birth time for Hillary. According to ADB Frances McEvoy “quotes him”, which presumably means that she met him at a campaign rally at some point in the past year and asked him his birth time directly. While it was great to have a birth time for another one of the leading candidates in the election, for some reason I felt a bit uneasy about the fact that I was now relying on one astrologer for the data on two of the candidates.

Later in the same week I began asking around to see if anyone knew who the source of the 1:06 pm birth time was for Barack Obama. I came to find out that, according to one website, the 1:06 pm time

was relayed by astrologer Frances McEvoy to astrology newsgroups, and supposedly originated from Obama’s own memory when he was asked what time he was born during his New Hampshire visit.

That’s right. The source for our birth data on three of our candidates comes from the same person. Unfortunately, I never got a chance to ask Frances about this because a few days after I realized that she was the source for these three candidates data, she passed away. On December 10th actually.

Now, I’m not trying to say that Ms. McEvoy was putting out faulty data, but only that the circumstances were kind of unusual in that she was the main source for birth data on these three candidates, and there could be some issues involved with that.

According to another astrologer I know named Robert Blashke she was also the original source of the birth time for John Kerry prior to the 2004 election. From what I can tell from the AstroDataBank records, Frances was originally told by Kerry’s mother that he was born sometime around “sunrise”. Having only a general notion that Kerry was born sometime around sunrise she then seems to have played with the time a bit in order to come up with what she felt was a plausible ascendant, and she submitted it to AstroDataBank as an exact time of 7:10 am. Later Blashke actually spoke with Kerry’s sister-in-law by his first marriage, and she gave him an exact birth time of 8:03 am, which was nearly an hour later than McEvoy’s rectified time.

So my point here is that we don’t know at this point, or I don’t know, if the times given to Frances McEvoy for Clinton, Obama and Romney were exact times straight from the birth certificate, or if they were general times like Kerry’s which she then ‘rectified’ or adjusted somehow. When dealing with some of the more precise techniques that I work with, such as the ‘lots’ for example, even the slightest changes in time can really alter the entire character of the birth chart and any predictions that might be based on it. Even in Obama’s case, more precise techniques aside, the Moon is in a completely different sign if he was born just a few minutes before the 1:06 pm birth time.

John Edwards’ Birth Time

Interestingly enough, there are some issues surrounding John Edwards’ birth time that are somewhat related to the previous issues surrounding Kerry’s. The currently accepted time for Edwards is 7:02 AM based on what some anonymous staffer as well as his mother said on different occasions. However, according to the original entry on AstroDataBank

On November 4, 2004, PT talked with Sat Siri Khalsa who says that she attended a political rally in which she was able to slip a note to Elizabeth Edwards asking for the candidates’ birth times. Sat Siri says Elizabeth Edwards smiled, walked over to the candidates and came back with the note on which Mrs. Edwards had written that John Kerry was born between midnight and 1 AM and that John Edwards was born at 7:23 AM.

This source gives us a birth time that is about 21 minutes later for Edwards than the other two sources are. Notice though that this was one of the original sources for Kerry’s birth data, but the time given is totally wrong according to the later established data for Kerry having been born around sunrise, or at 8:03 am to be exact. It would seem logical that this 7:23 birth time should just be discarded as a bogus source due to the previous discrepancy with Kerry’s time, although as it stands now this is still ‘C’ data on AstroDataBank since there are inconsistencies between the sources and the accuracy of the time is still in question.

Birth Times for Giuliani, McCain, Richardson, and Biden

Apparently we are in somewhat decent shape with Rudy Giuliani due to an ‘anonymous’ source that wrote in to AstroDataBank in late 2005 with a 2:30 pm birth time, supposedly from Giuliani’s mother. ADB was apparently confident enough in their source to list this as ‘A’ data, or ‘from memory’, but it still seems kind of sketchy. I guess that it is better than nothing though, and it could be in the ballpark even though it is clearly a rounded time.

Pat Taglilatelo from AstroDataBank says in a recent article in the December/January issue of the Mountain Astrologer that she has a copy of Bill Richardson’s birth certificate ‘in hand’, and his birth time is 11:35 am.

According to the same article, Joseph Biden’s birth time is 8:30 am apparently. This comes from Marion March, who got it from someone else named Celeste Longacre, who says that it came from him in ‘Welcome to Planet Earth’, whatever that is.

John McCain’s birth time is reported to be 9:00 AM according to staffers working for his campaign. The time obviously seems rounded, although we don’t know by how much.

Birth Times for Paul, Huckabee and Thompson (or lack thereof)

In short, for Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee, and Fred Thompson we have got absolutely nothing in the way of verified birth times. Zip. Zilch. Zero.

Conclusions

With all of the confusion still surrounding the birth times of pretty much all of the candidates, it seems like we aren’t in a much better position to make predictions about the final outcome of the upcoming election than we were a year ago. Our only real options are either (A) to get more astrologers trying to contact the candidates and their staff in order to get verified birth times, or (B) to attempt to rectify each of their charts individually. The former option seems like the most reliable thing to do, while the latter seems like the most tedious and unreliable option when what we need are exact birth times, although ultimately if we are still coming up empty handed a few months from now it may be our only choice.

It is not the purpose of this article to give a full review of Roger Beck’s new book on Hellenistic astrology titled A Brief History of Ancient Astrology. The major shortcomings of the book, as well as most of the issues that I have with it, have already been addressed in detail by Deborah Houlding in her review. Other reviews besides Houlding’s from Beck’s colleagues give him a bit more credit than he deserves. The purpose of this article is to point out one of the major flaws in the book that is due to a mixture of lack of knowledge of other scholarship or developments in the field, and lack of real familiarity or depth of understanding with the technical side of the subject matter, which probably stems from the sense of distaste that Beck exhibits for astrology in general throughout the course of his book.

While we might excuse Beck’s historical mistakes due to the fact that some of the recent work in the field that would have helped Beck to avert his errors were made by astrologers - and perhaps there is some justification in this excuse - I think that there is a deeper issue in the approach to scholarship that academics like Beck take that I want to address. First, we have to take a little detour.

House Division

In 1982 the astrologer, linguist and historian of astrology James Holden published a paper in the American Federation of Astrologers Journal of Research titled ‘Ancient House Division’. In this paper Holden, who reads Greek and Latin, pointed out that the original method of house division in the Hellenistic tradition was actually whole sign houses, or the “sign-house” system as he called it. According to Holden:

This was the origin of the houses of the horoscope. They began with the rising sign and were numbered successively in the order of signs. … Starting from the rising sign, the houses were numbered off in succession. … Note that the reckoning was by whole signs. This means that if the first house was Leo, the entire sign of Leo constituted the first house, the entire sign of Virgo the second house, and so on. This is the primitive form of Equal House division. It is found in the papyri (GH, pp. 16-75) from the earliest to the latest, and it is still in widespread use in India. (Holden, 1982)

Holden reiterated the same point in his 1996 book A History of Horoscopic Astrology. In the mid 90’s this argument was further confirmed and developed by Robert Schmidt and Robert Hand of Project Hindsight during the course of their translation project of Hellenistic astrological texts. Hand published a monograph which summarized their findings in 2000 titled Whole Sign Houses: The Oldest House System. Hand pointed out that not only were whole sign houses the original and primary method of house division in the Hellenistic tradition, but that early generations of Arab era astrologers in the 8th and 9th centuries were still using whole sign houses as well. (Hand, pg. 17) In the preface to his translation of book 3 of Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos Schmidt pointed out that there was a distinction in the Hellenistic tradition between whole sign houses which provided significations for certain topics, and the quadrant or ‘dynamic’ divisions which were used to gauge planetary strength. (Ptolemy, pg. viii)

With these developments in mind as a backdrop, we turn to Roger Beck’s treatment of the houses or ‘places’ in the Hellenistic astrological tradition that was published just this year, in 2007.

Hellenistic House Division According to Roger Beck

To put it simply, Roger Beck appears to be pretty much unaware of the existence of whole sign houses in the Hellenistic tradition of astrology. His initial statements in his main chapter about house division, chapter 4, appear to implicate Equal House division more than anything else:

The places are numbered counter-clockwise from the ascendant. In other words, the first place runs from the rising point in the east back below the horizon for 30° (from 9 o’clock back to 8 o’clock as it were). (pg. 42)

In a footnote he mentions the practice of extending the influence of the ascendant 5 to 15 degrees above the actual degree of the ascendant, implicitly with reference to a procedure employed by Ptolemy in order to determine planetary strength. Then in the very next sentence Beck appears to switch gears and he begins talking about quadrant divisions where the arc between the ascendant, astronomical midheaven and other angles are trisected:

Strictly speaking, the lengths of the places vary over the course of the day, expanding and contracting as the midheaven and lower midheaven oscillate to and fro.

“However” he informs us, “in practice the places were usually treated as equal 30° arcs measured back from the ascendant.” (pg. 43) Here, one assumes, he is switching back to equal house division again, although earlier in the book, prior to this rather confused and terse exposition of house division, he spends quite a bit of time discussing quadrant divisions. He makes this clear with the matter-of-fact statement that

…if you were to assume that midheaven can be identified by subtracting 90° from the ascendant and lower midheaven by adding 90°, you would be mistaken. Sometimes the angular distance between the ascendant and midheaven is less than 90° and sometimes it is greater; likewise the distance between the ascendant and lower midheaven. (pg. 28-29)

Beck is of course describing the astronomical midheaven, rather than simply the 10th whole sign house from the ascending sign which is also called the ‘midheaven’ in Hellenistic astrology. In doing so he is obviously correct in stating that the astronomical midheaven is seldom exactly 90° from the ascendant. That is precisely what makes this amusing though, because it perfectly exemplifies the fact that he hasn’t the slightest idea that the classical astrologers were using the signs as houses, otherwise he would have qualified the statement. Even given his later passing reference to equal houses one would have expected some sort of qualification here. Instead he launches into a relatively lengthy discussion on why the astronomical midheaven moves back and fourth relative to the ascendant/descendant axis due to the obliquity of the ecliptic. (pgs. 29-33) This of course means that the “arc of the ecliptic from the ascendant to the midheaven will be longer than the arc from the midheaven to the descendant”, and vice versa. (pg. 29)

With this in mind, Beck then makes what I think is actually the grossest error in the entire book by proceeding to lambaste the Hellenistic astrologers for this astronomical issue with the midheaven, when they didn’t even use the houses in the sense that he thinks that they did for the majority of their history. It is essentially a faulty straw man argument. Well, an anachronistic straw man argument I should say, in the sense that he is actually projecting what is more of a problem with modern astrology into the Hellenistic period. While he says that he is gracious enough to spare us all of the gory details about the midheaven problem, he is more than willing to take what he perceives as an opportunity to take another dig at astrology:

Since this is a brief history of ancient astrology, I do not want to linger over this complication - and be assured, it is the most complicated piece of celestial kinematics I shall inflict on you. Nevertheless, it cannot be ignored. It is an important factor in genethlialogy at any level above the most basic, and in discussing it we can appreciate how Greek astrology was an expression - a regrettable expression, if you will - of the astronomy of its times. Astrology’s error lay more in its false assumptions about celestial cause and terrestrial effect than any failure to comprehend or manipulate the basic positional astronomy required. (pgs. 30-31)

In fact, it is Beck’s own false assumptions and failure to comprehend even the most basic of astrological principles which is at fault here. Had he read any of the authors who he cites in his book a bit more closely, and perhaps with a bit less loathing, then he would have realized that they were primarily using the signs as houses, and that the midheaven issue and the question of the relation between the quadrant house divisions and the topical significations of the ‘places’ did not become an issue until much later. Such details escape Beck in his ‘brief’ treatment of ancient astrology though.

Deeper Issues

So, you may be asking yourself, as I often do in these instances, how could such an accomplished scholar, whose previous work I actually really respect, who has enough knowledge of Greek and Latin to read the texts in their original languages overlook the fact that the Hellenistic authors regularly refer to the houses within the context of the signs? Perhaps to a certain extent we can’t really fault Beck because this specific issue with house division and the existence of whole sign houses doesn’t appear to be widely acknowledged in the academic community at this point, and the mistaken assumptions about Hellenistic house division probably go much further back than Beck’s book.

In Neugebauer and van Hoesen’s classic work Greek Horoscopes, which was published in 1959, the houses are defined as either being of “constant length, [with] 30° each, or obtained by accurate trisection of the arcs between the ‘centers’ or rather points which precede the centers by 5 degrees.” (GH, pgs. 7- The reference here is somewhat murky in that it may implicate either equal house or whole sign house divisions in the first case, and then clearly to normal quadrant style division in the second case, in a way that is identical with Beck’s definitions. On the following page of Greek Horoscopes the ‘midheaven’ is simply defined as the “culminating degree of the ecliptic”, or in other words the ‘astronomical midheaven’, even though the Greek term for midheaven (μεσουρανημα) is just as often applied, if not more often, to the 10th whole sign house from the ascending sign than it is to the actual degree of the astronomical midheaven. Even a cursory glance through works such as Vettius Valens’ Anthology will reveal this. Neugebauer points out as much on page 184 of GH when he says that

…the accurate determination of the culminating point (M) is not yet of any importance in the Anthology. Though “Midheaven” is often mentioned, it is generally simply the third sign from the Horoscopos [i.e the 10th whole sign house].

On the other hand, the preeminent historian of astrology David Pingree appears to have been fully aware of whole sign houses very earlier on in his career, probably partially due to his familiarity with Indian astrology, where that system is still employed as the primarily means of house division to this day. As early as 1969 in his entry on astrology in the Dictionary of the History of Ideas Pingree wrote

As the planets revolve through the zodiac by their various motions, direct and retrograde, the zodiac revolves around the earth. From a particular spot on the earth’s surface this motion appears as a succession of signs rising one after another above the eastern horizon. The sign that at any moment—say, that of an individual’s birth—is just rising, is the horoscope or the first place; this determines the soul of the native for whom a birth-horoscope is cast. The next sign below the horizon, the second place, determines his wealth; the third his brothers; the fourth his home; the fifth his children; and so on through all the aspects of his life. (Pingree, 1969, pg. 120)

This is a far more concise, elegant and accurate account of house division in ancient astrology than Beck was able to manage in his several tortured pages on the subject.

So what gives? It seems to me that the deeper issue here is the question of whether or not a person can set aside their own personal beliefs and prejudices in order to conduct a thorough, perceptive and accurate account of something that they intend to study. Or perhaps it is not an issue of if a person can remain objective when dealing with a subject that they have a certain degree of contempt for, but rather it is an issue of what sort of impact their contempt for the subject actually has on their research and their ability to accurately assess the discipline under question. Perhaps I’m blowing this little major technical oversight of Beck’s out of proportion, or drawing an unwarranted conclusion about his personal beliefs adversely effecting his research, but it is still an interesting question to think about. If Beck had spent less time in his book berating astrology, would he have been forced to pay closer attention to the technical details of the system under question?

For the most part I actually really admire and commend the work that all the scholars in this field have done. The research that scholars such as Pingree, Neugebauer, and even Beck have done on the history of astrology and astronomy should be commended- especially by astrologers. To a certain extent I think that their skepticism or disbelief in astrology has actually strengthened much of their work and many of the conclusions that they have come to in many instances.

However, every once in a while when I see a major mistake like this that is passed off along with copious amounts comments about the failings of astrologers and the flaws of astrology, I can’t help but want to return the favor by pointing out some flaws as well.

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Bibliography

• Roger Beck, A Brief History of Ancient Astrology, Blackwell Publishing, Malden, MA, 2007.
• James Holden, Ancient House Division, The American Federation of Astrologers Journal of Research, Vol. 1, No. 1, Tempe, AZ, August 1982, pp. 19-29.
• James Holden, A History of Horoscopic Astrology, The American Federation of Astrologers, Tempe, AZ, 1996.
• Robert Hand, Whole Sign Houses: The Oldest House System, ARHAT Publications, Reston, VA, 2000.
• Claudius Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, Book 3, trans. Robert Schmidt, Project Hindsight, 1996.
• O. Neugebaur & H. B. van Hoesen, Greek Horoscopes, The American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, PA, 1956.
• David Pingree, Astrology, in the Dictionary of the History of Ideas, 1969 ed.

An astrologer named Kelly Lee Phipps has been filming a documentary over the past year on astrology called The Return of the Magi. It is sort of a What The Bleep Do We Know-esq documentary with a number of interviews from various astrologers in the field, as well as a running storyline with a narrative which incorporates some of the concepts that are mentioned in the interviews. This is a much needed project since, to the best of my knowledge, nothing like this has been done before on the subject of astrology. Certainly nothing with such a broad scope and a decent production budget.

Kelly has been going around to astrological conferences all year and interviewing various astrologers from different walks of life. The NCGR conference in Baltimore in March, the Blast in Sedona in April, NORWAC in May- Kelly made it to just about every major conference this year with his equipment, and it seemed like he did hundreds of interviews. We kept running into each other at conferences and trying to set up a time to do our interview, but we kept missing each other or running out of time before the conference was over. Eventually he caught me in Seattle right before I gave a lecture at NORWAC in May, and we did a quick little 20 minute interview.

I was pleased to hear that Kelly uploaded a bunch of short clips from all of the interviews that he did this year to his YouTube account today, including one that he took from the interview that he did with me:

It is kind of short, and I was feeling a bit nervous and rushed since the interview took place just minutes before I was about to give my lecture at NORWAC, but it gives you some idea of the types of clips that he plans to incorporate into the full movie. There are other segments of interviews that Kelly did on YouTube with other famous astrologers such as Demetra George, Steven Forrest, Rob Hand, Nick Dagan Best, Moses Siregar, Richard Tarnas, Michael Lutin, and many others.

Earlier this summer Kelly asked me if the Association for Young Astrologers, which I am the president of, would be interested in partnering with him to premiere his movie at the United Astrological Conference (UAC) in May of 2008. We agreed, and then spent the summer working out the logistics of premiering the movie at UAC. At this point everything is set, and the premiere will take place on Sunday May 18th, 2008 at 9:00 PM in Denver at the Adams’ Mark Hotel, towards the end of the conference. Tickets for the event are being sold on the AYA website, and pre-orders are appreciated since it will help us to fund the event.

A couple of weeks ago Kelly released the trailer for the movie on YouTube as well. While the soundtrack is kind of weird, frankly, and there are some other critiques that I have as well, I’m pretty sure that the final product will be a hit at UAC, and the film will do a good job of gathering together a number of different views on astrology. So, it should be quite interesting.

So check out the trailer, and if you will be attending UAC then please come join us for the premiere in May.