Welcome & Postion Statement from Moderator

[Robert_Schmidt]

I would like to extend to all a belated welcome to this Hellenistic Astrology forum. Although I am sure that we will end up exploring in detail many technical issues and concepts on this forum, it is my hope that we do not ignore some of the broader implications and themes of Hellenistic Astrology. In that vein, let me start out by making a few comments by way of orienting you to some of the positions I have come to after translating and studying Hellenistic Astrology for the past 18 years.

First, Hellenistic Astrology is the foundation of all later Western Astrology. Although it certainly inherited some concepts from Babylonian and pre-Hellenistic Egyptian astrology, it made them its own in a characteristic manner, and introduced a vast number of other concepts and techniques for which there does not seem to be any historical precedent. Most of the concepts and many of the techniques of modern astrology can be traced back to Hellenistic astrology as their source, although 20th century astrology radically re-conceptualized them. However, only about half of the original technical apparatus of Hellenistic astrology survived transmission to modern times.

Secondly, according to the best documentary evidence, Hellenistic Astrology came on the scene very suddenly sometime in the second or first century B.C.E. and emerged complete in a very short period of time. This suggests that there was a single shaping intelligence behind its origin—that is was the result of one man or a small school of men working together. It could hardly have been the outcome of centuries of empirical study correlating celestial phenomena with human events. Not only that, but many of its concepts could not even in principle have been discovered empirically. (That is not to say that they could not be tested empirically.) Instead, I maintain that Hellenistic Astrology was an inspired rational construct, by which I do not mean that it was simply made up whole cloth.

Thirdly, the original astrology of the Hellenistic period was highly systematic—not so much in the manner of its exposition, but in the interrelationship of its first principles and the organization of its practical concepts and techniques. (It would be hard to account for its demonstrable systematic integrity if Hellenistic Astrology had been an eclectic synthesis of the work of numerous astrologers working independently.) In fact, I maintain that it was more systematic than any astrology before or since. I am not necessarily claiming systematic integrity as a virtue for astrology; I am simply stating the results of my investigations.

Fourthly, there are no surviving treatises addressed to the theoretical precepts that underlie the Hellenistic Astrology of the founding period, nor even any references to them. This leads me to believe that the original foundations must have been fully embedded in its practical system. We cannot presuppose, therefore, that Hellenistic Astrology was based on the teachings of the Stoics, the Middle-Platonists, the Neo-Pythagoreans, or any one of the other Greek schools. The theoretical precepts that guided the founders must be teased out of the practical system itself.

Fifthly, I do not think that Hellenistic Astrology was intended to be a divinatory art by its founders, if by divination we mean a way of understanding the will of the gods (as the Babylonians evidently understood their astrology). One of the reasons I hold this opinion is the lack of anything like horary astrology in our surviving sources, horary being arguably a divinatory application of astrology. I maintain instead that it was developed as a discipline for rendering human life intelligible (and meaningful) in the manner of a Classical Greek epistēmē—that is, a way of coming to knowledge about a given human life as a whole.

I am aware that all of the above contentions have been challenged by one or more students of traditional astrology. Comments, anyone?

[Robert_Blaschke]

... Secondly, according to the best documentary evidence, Hellenistic Astrology came on the scene very suddenly sometime in the second or first century B.C.E. and emerged complete in a very short period of time. This suggests that there was a single shaping intelligence behind its origin—that is was the result of one man or a small school of men working together ...

Dear Robert,

As your work began in 1990 during the Jupiter opposition to a rare Saturn-Uranus-Neptune triple conjunction (which can only form once every 685 years), it seems plausible to hypothesize that the dawn of Hellenistic Astrology took place around June of 0056 B.C. at the Lunar Eclipse when Jupiter previously opposed a rare Saturn-Uranus-Neptune triple conjunction.

Best wishes,

Robert P. Blaschke

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[Doug_Noblehorse]

Fourthly, there are no surviving treatises addressed to the theoretical precepts that underlie the Hellenistic Astrology of the founding period, nor even any references to them. This leads me to believe that the original foundations must have been fully embedded in its practical system. We cannot presuppose, therefore, that Hellenistic Astrology was based on the teachings of the Stoics, the Middle-Platonists, the Neo-Pythagoreans, or any one of the other Greek schools. The theoretical precepts that guided the founders must be teased out of the practical system itself.

[snip]

Comments, anyone?

How much influence from or connection to the teachings of Plato is there in Hellenistic Astrology? And what of the so-called Hermetic philosophy?

noblehorse

[Robert_Schmidt]

I have not yet welcomed you to the Hellenistic forum, Mr. Blaschke, so let me do so now.

Since I do not work that much with the outer planets, I had not noticed the configuration you noted for the beginning of my work, and your identification of the 56 B.C.E. date (with the same configuration) as plausible for the dawn of Hellenistic astrology. I had considered the grand precessional month of 2160 years as a possibility, which would put the date back around 170. I now have some reasons for favoring a date closer to the one you have posited.

By the way, unlike some traditional astrologers, I do not wish to ignore those pesky outers. I am interested in how they might be integrated into the Hellenistic system without destroying its integrity, which means not giving them sign or exaltation rulerships, and other things. I do have some ideas on this subject. Perhaps this issue will arise some time later on the forum. At the moment, we have a lot of basics to attend to first.

[Gabriel_Rosas]

Hello Mr. Schmidt!

Thank you for your kind welcoming. I look forward to your exposition on Hellenistic astrology, especially as I can't say I disagree with you May this find you well.

Gabe Rosas

PS. Will we following the conventions set out in your recent seminars, i.e. the use of formal title and last name, and the use of the Greek terms for planets and other astrologicals?

[David_Stricker]

Thank you for taking the time and effort that it takes to moderate a list and to invite me to it.

As far as comments go, all I can say is that it appears that Kronos has been pumping up Helios again! And from the challenge at the end of the introduction, it is apparent that figure of the two is indeed that of a combative posture? (tetragonally -sp?)

It is not difficult for me to be flexible regarding the changing circumstances over the last 14 years. The comments that you have presented do not surprise me and I am more than willing to go along for the ride. The scenario is always interesting, even if it consists of only "dead words" here

Seriously, I do like the idea of your last comment. After spending several years as a counseling astrologer, I began to see that for me, astrology was first and foremost a tool for trying to understand the mysteries of my own life. Since I have so many planets and lots with their lords in aversion, I have always tended to have terrible "natural" instincts. Astrology has been an aid in trying to navigate the storms and currents of my life.

Enough innuendo for tonight. (I kind of like the roots of that word, ("to nod to") in relation to discussions about the different kinds of seeing that takes place........

[Robert_Schmidt]

A personal welcome to the Hellelnistic forum, Mr. Rosas

I am not enforcing any formal mode of address on this forum, although I intend to follow that custom myself.

As for the technical language, you know how important I think it is to use fully translated English terminology, drawing as far as possible on the same semantic fields. it is only then that Hellelnistic astrology comes fully to life. As a courtesy to those who are new to this study, I will be introducing this terminology slowly, first using what I regard as the correct English translation, followed by the more conventional translation in parentheses and quotation marks. Of course, anyone is free to question my translations of technical terminology, and I will be happy to give my reasons. But since the study of Hellenistic astrology is so new, I believe it is essential that we have an accurate and serviceable common language for discussing it.

I look forward to your contributions.

[Robert_Schmidt]

Thank you so much for joining us on this forum, Mr. Stricker.

I appreciate your innuendo. I know at least some of the Hellenistic issues that have obsessed you ever since the beginning of Project Hindsight, and I assure you that we will address them in due time. My views about Hellenistic astrology have in fact changed quite a lot (in general and in particular) since we last had the pleasure of your company at the PHASE lectures.

I especiallly like your singling out from my position statement the remark that the study of Hellenistic astrology can help render our lives intelligible (and meaningul). I believe that its capacity for doing so is primarily linked to its use of universal techniques, which make statements about the life as a whole. (I am starting a new topic to discuss two such techniques, the domicile master and the lord of the nativity.) It is also based on the use of time-lord procedures, which do not look at events as momentary occurrences in isolation from one another, but begin by examining spans of time that can be further subdivided, like a biography that has major sections, chapters, episodes, and incidents. I am certain you understand what I mean by this.

At any rate, I very much look forward to your contributions.

[Robert_Schmidt]

I am just now getting to your question, Mr. Noblehorse, about any connection between Hellenistic astrology and teachings of Plato, as well as any with Hermetic philosophy.

Well, let me first say that I believe you pressed the right button. One of the hallmarks of Platonic metaphysics is the distinction between image and original: shadows and reflections as images of visible things, these very visible things as images of entities accessible only to the discursive intellect (such as the mathematicals). Take the Hellenistic concept of an anticion. The Greek word means "a shadow cast the opposite direction." Ask youself why such a term would have been chosen to describe this astrological concept. Another suggestive instance is the curious way that Hellenistic astrologers (at least when they are being careful), refer to a visible planet as "the star of Kronos". Is the planet being regarded as a visible manifestation or image of deity? Where might its original be found in a natal chart? And of course there is the Greek word zoidion, which itself means a "representation". With such examples in mind, you might ask yourself (putting yourself in the postion of a Platonist) how a planet transiting a natal planet (which is no longer where it originally was) is able to relate to that natal planet in any way at all.

I have hopes that these issues can be addressed partly on this forum and partly on the Philosophical Astrology forum. I am sure that the moderator Mr. Timothy Smith will have much to say on this subject.

As for the so-called Corpus Hermeticum, which itself betrays significant Platonic influence, many have claimed that it is therein that the theoretical precepts underlying the "technical Hermetica" (such as astrology) may be found. I think that there is some truth to this, but I have to first of all add a caveat. Much of the astrology discussed in those dialogues seems to stem from pre-Hellenistic Egyptian sources; the evidence for this is the emphasis on the decanates. I also have to make a distinction. The Hermetic dialogues have strong ethical content, which may have been regarded as important training for a would-be astrologer, inasmuch as they address the purpose of human life. They also explore the Hellenistic fate concept with great subtlety. I believe that for the Hellenistic astrologers it is these fate concepts that show the meaning of human life. However, I have not found in those dialogues anything from which one could derive the technical apparatus of Hellenistic astroloogy that has as its goal rendering human life intelligible as a form of knowledge.

[Robert_Schmidt]

Mr. Kolev has drawn attention to an article by Simo Parpola (under the Miscellaneous Questions topic) that seeks to counteract the what has long been a prevailing view that Greek and Hellenistic culture were definitive in shaping and forming our Western world. Mr. Kolev’s post was in the context of a dialogue we have been having about the primacy of Babylonian astrology. Since this issue is connected with my position statement at the beginning of this topic, I would like to take the occasion to make a response here and clarify my own position a bit.

I confess to feeling no shame at being a bit of a Hellenophile, but that is really neither here nor there. What interests me most about the astrological tradition is not so much who first appropriated some celestial phenomenon for astrological purposes, but how such a phenomenon was conceptualized in an astrological context and given meaning. And in this matter I see far less continuity in the tradition than Mr. Kolev.

Let me use an example from the history of mathematics. As far as documentary evidence is concerned, it was Greek mathematicians who first studied the conic sections and discovered their defining properties. For them, conic sections were mathematical entities to be studied in their own right. Many centuries later, along comes Descartes, who is more interested in a universal mathematical method that he finds in algebra. He makes use of the defining properties of conic sections to provide geometrical images for the general relationships among magnitudes. In other words, in Cartesian geometry, the conic sections are no longer primary objects of mathematical inquiry, but rather a serviceable means for grasping the general algebraic relationships amongst magnitudes. This constitutes a conceptual transformation in mathematics, in the way in which geometrical entities are understood.

Returning to astrology, Dane Rudhyar inherited what little remained of the Western astrological tradition. He did not attempt to understand how this astrological apparatus was originally conceptualized; instead, he totally reconceptualized it to serve a completely new purpose, so much so that modern astrology bears little resemblance to the earlier tradition.

Mr. Kolev regards the astrological tradition as a story of continual decline and degradation since its origins in Babylonia. I maintain that the Hellenistic astrologers conceptualized the Babylonian legacy in an entirely new way. This could in one sense be understood as a rupture in the tradition. As historians of astrology, we are in no position to evaluate these transformations until we have understood the resulting astrologies on their own terms and from their own presuppositions.

I do not happen to like the direction in which Dane Rudhyar took modern astrology, but I respect him for a thoughtful man who attempted to think through astrology in a fundamental way. Such thinking only happens rarely in any tradition. Fortunately, he has left his presuppositions clear for us to examine in his writings. Unfortunately, in the area of Hellenistic astrology we have to ferret these presuppositions out of the surviving technical manuals, but I believe their presuppositions can be recovered. I am not sure if enough survives of the Babylonian astrological record to really understand their astrological presuppositions: for example, what exactly a heliacal appearance meant to them, or a prenatal syzygy, or their “micro-zodiac”. But I would be more than happy to listen to any accounts or speculations about these matters.