Is Uranus an Astrological Planet?

waybread

Well-known member
Petosiris, to be perfectly clear, I didn't say that anyone should regard Uranus as a fixed star if that doesn't work for them.

Obviously Uranus is an actual planet to modern astrologers. There's no way around that.

But a possibility for trads:

There is some scholarship on the strong circumstantial evidence in the Almagest that Ptolemy and probably Hipparchus (whose data Ptolemy used) did observe Uranus, but thought it was a fixed star in the constellation Virgo. See my posts at Skyscript via Petosiris's link.

In 1690 Flamsteed observed Uranus in the constellation Taurus but thought it was a fixed star. Same with the French astronomer Le Monnier in the 18th century. William Herschel in 1781 was not the first to see Uranus, but the first to correctly identify it as a planet.

The magnitude of Uranus is right around the limit of naked-eye visibility. If you Google around, you can find instructions for "backyard" amateur astrologers to see Uranus without a telescope.

Uranus orbits the sun only every 84 years, so it's not surprising that earlier astronomers did not detect its motion.

If you read Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos section on fixed stars, you will see that he (a) identifies 6 of them by name; (b) some according to an unmistakable position, like the points on the horns of the consellation Taurus; (c) and some as "bright stars" in a portion of a constellation. But (d) Ptolemy often simply grouped bright and dim stars together according to a given region of a zodiac constellation. Uranus would have fallen into this latter category.

For the region in Virgo where Uranus seems to have been recorded in the Almagest, Ptolemy in Tetrabiblos said that the stars have the nature of Mercury and Mars. Which some trads might feel are reasonable substitutes for the action of Uranus in a modern horoscope.
 

JUPITERASC

Well-known member
There's controversey re: Ptolemys use of predecessors data :smile:



Petosiris, to be perfectly clear, I didn't say that anyone should regard Uranus as a fixed star if that doesn't work for them.

Obviously Uranus is an actual planet to modern astrologers. There's no way around that.

But a possibility for trads:

There is some scholarship on the strong circumstantial evidence in the Almagest that Ptolemy and probably Hipparchus (whose data Ptolemy used) did observe Uranus, but thought it was a fixed star in the constellation Virgo. See my posts at Skyscript via Petosiris's link.

In 1690 Flamsteed observed Uranus in the constellation Taurus but thought it was a fixed star. Same with the French astronomer Le Monnier in the 18th century. William Herschel in 1781 was not the first to see Uranus, but the first to correctly identify it as a planet.

The magnitude of Uranus is right around the limit of naked-eye visibility. If you Google around, you can find instructions for "backyard" amateur astrologers to see Uranus without a telescope.

Uranus orbits the sun only every 84 years, so it's not surprising that earlier astronomers did not detect its motion.

If you read Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos section on fixed stars, you will see that he (a) identifies 6 of them by name; (b) some according to an unmistakable position, like the points on the horns of the consellation Taurus; (c) and some as "bright stars" in a portion of a constellation. But (d) Ptolemy often simply grouped bright and dim stars together according to a given region of a zodiac constellation. Uranus would have fallen into this latter category.

For the region in Virgo where Uranus seems to have been recorded in the Almagest, Ptolemy in Tetrabiblos said that the stars have the nature of Mercury and Mars. Which some trads might feel are reasonable substitutes for the action of Uranus in a modern horoscope.
 

petosiris

Banned
Petosiris, to be perfectly clear, I didn't say that anyone should regard Uranus as a fixed star if that doesn't work for them.

Obviously Uranus is an actual planet to modern astrologers. There's no way around that.

But a possibility for trads:

There is some scholarship on the strong circumstantial evidence in the Almagest that Ptolemy and probably Hipparchus (whose data Ptolemy used) did observe Uranus, but thought it was a fixed star in the constellation Virgo. See my posts at Skyscript via Petosiris's link.

In 1690 Flamsteed observed Uranus in the constellation Taurus but thought it was a fixed star. Same with the French astronomer Le Monnier in the 18th century. William Herschel in 1781 was not the first to see Uranus, but the first to correctly identify it as a planet.

The magnitude of Uranus is right around the limit of naked-eye visibility. If you Google around, you can find instructions for "backyard" amateur astrologers to see Uranus without a telescope.

Uranus orbits the sun only every 84 years, so it's not surprising that earlier astronomers did not detect its motion.

If you read Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos section on fixed stars, you will see that he (a) identifies 6 of them by name; (b) some according to an unmistakable position, like the points on the horns of the consellation Taurus; (c) and some as "bright stars" in a portion of a constellation. But (d) Ptolemy often simply grouped bright and dim stars together according to a given region of a zodiac constellation. Uranus would have fallen into this latter category.

For the region in Virgo where Uranus seems to have been recorded in the Almagest, Ptolemy in Tetrabiblos said that the stars have the nature of Mercury and Mars. Which some trads might feel are reasonable substitutes for the action of Uranus in a modern horoscope.

I am not particularly interested in any fixed star except for say the 50 or so brighter ones, and even then, not that much. There are a just a few hundred fixed stars that are constantly brighter than Uranus at its brightest. But I am sincerely interested in how one can synthesize the outer planets in traditional astrology along with the seven without changing the whole edifice. Bringing the magnitude of Uranus is not going to change minds. You might as well be clamoring that it is a planet and that planets are more important than fixed stars because they are moving, and cosmic motion transmits change in ancient physics. I bet you are going to have more success in conversion. That is a joke, I know you are not doing that. :smile:
 
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