 |
|
Introduction
This book began as a series of articles published by The Mountain Astrologer in 1995 and 1996. In this book, I explain to the modern astrologer some of the best ideas and techniques from the natal astrology of the past. You can apply this information to your natal chart and the charts of others to gain new insights and methods. I also hope that you will use it to learn more about the origin of astrology, its history and potential.
This booklet is truly a community effort. The staff of The Mountain Astrologer provided the initial context. The translations and commentaries of Robert Hand, Robert Schmidt and Robert Zoller provided its foundations. Geraldine Hanlon lent editorial assistance, particularly on the first and last chapters. My wife, Jill-laurie Crane, had the initial idea for the project and patiently endured its process. Editorial help was provided by Bonnie Brugger as well as my astrological best friends, Marcia Butchart, Dorian Greenbaum, and Priscilla Harlan.
As a modern astrologer, I conduct a private practice using modern astrology; I also teach modern astrology to beginning students up to budding professionals. Over the past five years, however, traditional ideas and techniques have influenced my natal work. My purpose is not to replace one style of astrology with another but to reclaim and promote the richness of traditional and modern astrology together.
"Traditional astrology" is not one school or set of ideas but constitutes fifteen hundred years of changing assumptions and cultural contexts. In this book, we'll focus on ideas from the late Hellenistic period and the style of astrology that flourished in Europe from the 1100's to about 1700.
In Chapter I we'll see how astrologers from ancient and medieval times used signs to depict the essential dignity or debility of a planet. In Chapter 2 on houses, you will read that in Hellenistic astrology the signs from the Ascendant sign, or from the sign of the Sun, or the Lot of Fortune (also known as the Part of Fortune), constituted the houses. In Chapter 3 on aspects you'll read that aspects were originally features of relationships between signs. Here you will learn how the zodiac was used as the basic reference for the condition and relationships of other chart factors. Then in Chapter 4 on significators, you will read about planets and learn about putting together dignities, houses, and aspects to give information about a planet in a chart. In Chapter 5, on planetary sect, we'll explore the differences between daytime and nighttime charts. In Chapter 6, the final chapter, we'll examine the planetary phenomena of heliacal rising and setting, oriental and occidental positions, and re-examine the phases of the Moon.
What Astrology Gains by Exploring its Traditions
By the early 1900's mainstream astrology had taken much of its present form. Astrology had become simpler and more available to the general public but at the high price of losing much of the richness from the past. During this century astrologers responded to astrology's simplification in two important ways.
We expanded our technical scope, adding for example, symmetries (midpoints and planetary pictures), and harmonies. This work enabled astrology to use a more complex geometry. Alternatively, many of us went deeper into the mainstream astrology that remained, and its planets and elements and signs became psychological functions and collective archetypes. This allowed us to be more psychological and transpersonal in our astrological interpretations.
As we contact the astrology of the past, we also understand that traditional astrology too has always had its cultural assumptions and background. When we work with traditional astrology, we also work with many ideas at the root of Western culture, and we discover how similar and how different we are from our past.
One outcome from our study of traditional astrology is that we better understand astrology on its own terms. Instead of becoming more scientific, psychological, or spiritual, we allow astrology to be itself. To our modern mind astrology is one way we can contact the world's magic. As we understand our traditions better, we may find its roots in what we call "divination". Also, as we better understand how we use the visible sky for purposes of divination, the more we may find that this is not only the root of our profession, but also the trunk, branches, and leaves of astrology's historic tree.
The other outcome from our study is that we find a blend of traditional and modern astrological viewpoints and techniques that stay true to astrology's traditions, meet modern needs, and are internally consistent. This seems like a search for the Holy Grail and will probably take at least a generation to accomplish. Within that context our work in the late 1990's must be considered preliminary and probably quite naive. But also within that context is the excitement of exploring new horizons.
Differences Between Modern and Traditional Astrology
Unfortunately, astrologers frequently teach and write about astrology as if its current practices have always been part of its heritage. There are some surprising ways in which modern astrology differs from its past. I am not asking you to drop modern practices, but to consider them as recent developments and to approach them accordingly, i.e., with curiosity and discernment. I am also suggesting that you try to adopt traditional practices naively. We need to fully understand these practices exactly as they were applied, learn to apply them correctly ourselves, and then to rigorously test them for consistency.
o Traditional natal delineation focused on discrete areas of life. Modern natal delineation often attempts to look at the chart as a whole and read it to get a glimpse into a person's essential being. Instead, traditional natal astrology works a birth chart one topic at a time. Often beginning with indications of vitality, length of life, and character, the astrologer gathers information about fame and fortune, relationships and marriage, friends and family. In horary astrology one will use only those indicators that are relevant to the issue at hand; traditional natal astrology works the same way.
In traditional astrology we do not see chart patterns as the bucket or the bowl, or aspect configurations like T-Squares, Grand Crosses, and Grand Trines. Nor did one total how many planets there were in fire or mutable signs, nor count voids in various categories.
o Traditional natal astrology was much more concerned with the world in which one lived and concrete situations within that world. I'd like to illustrate this through the astrological houses, Commonly modern astrologers use houses to describe psychological tendencies toward the world, and many also liken houses to respective signs of the zodiac: houses themselves manifest certain kinds of energy. This is not the traditional use of astrological houses. Instead, the house of the father (the 4th House, by the way), was concretely about your father, not your father-projection, and the 2nd House was about your money, not your values. One may argue that this is a rather superficial way to go about doing astrology in our sophisticated times; I counter that this is where astrology can restore some of the world's magic.
o Until this past century astrologers did not use zodiacal signs as intrinsic qualities or as personality types. When we, as modern astrologers, look at a natal chart for the first time, It's instinctual for us to look at the rough distribution of planets in various signs and especially the sign placements of the Sun, Moon, and Ascendant. When you read about traditional natal delineation, you'll find almost nothing about the zodiacal signs themselves.
From ancient times until fairly recently astrologers did not depict signs in a unified way but simply listed their qualities: Aries is tropical, cardinal, fire, bestial, of short ascension, ruling certain colors and items, and signifying certain features of weather and parts of the body.
How did astrologers consider an Aries Ascendant? The astrologer would notice that Aries is not a "human" but a "bestial" sign, and that as a cardinal sign there might be a more public display of oneself; more often, however, one would look directly for Mars, the domicile lord of Aries, as a significant planet for various issues in a person's life.
When, you may ask, did astrologers begin to use the elements of the signs for personality delineation or to depict one's "energy"? Except for using the sign of the Ascendant as one factor among others, it was not until the middle of the 20th Century that astrologers used elements in a psychological way.
o Traditional astrology aligned itself more strongly with the changing appearances of the surrounding sky. Because mainstream modern astrology is based on zodiacal signs and planetary aspects, and because we do not make clear distinctions between planets that are visible and planets that are not visible, our experience of the astrological sky has become more purely mental. (Astrology's computer age has of course exacerbated this.) As one works with the astrology of our ancestors, however, one finds a new appreciation for the visible movements of the planets and the entire sky itself.
The Background of Traditional Astrology
It is most convenient to divide traditional astrology's literature into two major eras: the Hellenistic Greek era, and the Medieval era.
The extant literature of Hellenistic Greek astrology was contemporary with the Roman Empire but lasted until about 900. Its origins, however, were a few hundred years earlier, from the world of Alexander the Great. This astrology had its roots in Babylon but was strongly influenced late by Egyptian culture and by Greek philosophy. Its home remained throughout the Roman Empire, as long as there was a Roman Empire, and was most fertile in Egypt and the Middle East. Its language was primarily Greek as that was the language of culture and literacy at the time. Hellenistic Greek astrology resembles Jyotish, or Vedic astrology, although there are also significant differences.
Hellenistic Greek astrology arose later and separately from the Olympian religion of the Greeks, and flourished at a time when the Greek Olympian religion, with its Roman counterpart, had become mostly a ceremonial and political religion. Because our planets have the names of Roman Gods, and because Greek astrological writers call Jupiter "the star of Zeus" and so forth, it is natural for us to imagine that the Greek and Roman gods were prominent in ancient astrological understanding. This would be a great mistake; in its extant literature ancient astrology never tried to understand itself better through examining the Olympian religion. Instead, Hellenistic Greek astrology coexisted with many philosophical and religious systems from the Near East, out of which emerged the Christian religion. After the Roman Empire fell, Hellenistic Greek astrology survived in the Eastern world, especially within the Byzantine Empire.
After the rise of Islam and appearing about 900 C.E. perhaps from Persia, there appeared an astrology more like our own. The astrology emerging from the Arab world differed significantly from the Greek tradition, especially in its use of orbs for aspects and, more gradually, of quadrant house systems. This type of astrology came to Europe around the time of the Crusades, and was systematized in the work of Ibn Ezra (12th Century), Guido Bonatti (13th Century) and others. Over the centuries there were some developments, but in large part this tradition continued steadily through the Renaissance to the beginnings of the modem era. This tradition of astrology prevailed throughout Europe and its written language was primarily Medieval Latin. Although there were would-be reformers of astrology before William Lilly, notably Morinus and Johannes Kepler (all 17th Century), it wasn't until around 1700 that this long astrological tradition was seriously disrupted.
Now, without any further delay, we move to the astrology that we have inherited from the past. We'll look at zodiacal placement with disposition and essential dignities, perhaps bring some new uncertainty about houses and aspects, combine all these into some interpretative work on planets as significators. Then we summarize two methodologies unused by most modern astrologers until recent times: planetary sect and phases of the planets with the Sun. May you have a good journey!
| |
|