Apotelesmatica
1. Introduction
Among external accidentals, first comes the inquiry of material fortune, and then the inquiry of the fortune of dignity, for the first is associated with the properties of the body and the latter with the properties of the mind.
2. Material Fortune
We must consider the predominators over the Lot of Fortune and the planets in aspect with them, whether they are overcome by beneficent or maleficent planets. And when the planets which rule the Lot of Fortune are favourably placed, they make the subjects rich, especially when they have the proper testimony of the luminaries, Phainon brings riches with building, agriculture, shipping ventures, Phaethon with fiduciary relationships, guardianships, priesthoods, Pyroeis with military operations and command, Phosphoros with gifts from friendship or women, and Stilbon through eloquence and trade. And in a special way, Phainon associated with material fortune, with aspect from Phaethon, becomes the cause of inheritance, particularly when this comes about upon the upper angles and Phaethon is in a dual place or is applying to the Moon, for in that case they are adopted and inherit the possessions of others. If planets of the same sect as dominant planets are configured with the governorship, they retain their possessions without loss, but if planets of the opposite sect overcome the governing planets or post-ascend them, they bring about the loss of possessions and the general time is discovered by means of the approach of the causative planets to the angles and the post-ascending places.
3. Fortune of Dignity
We must determine the inquiries of dignity and happiness from the position of the luminaries and the familiarity of their attendant planets, for when both are masculine, and either both of them, or even one of the two, angular, and particularly when the luminary with the sect is attended by the five planets, morning with the Sun, evening with the Moon, the children will be kings. Attending planets angular or with aspect to the superior angles indicate that the children born will continue to be great, powerful, and world-rulers, and they will be even more fortunate if the attendants are in dexter aspect to the superior angles. But in this situation, if the Sun alone is masculine, and the Moon is in feminine places, while one of the luminaries is angular, they will be merely generals with power over life and death. If, however, besides this the attendants are neither ascending nor witnessing to the superior angles, they will be merely great and will enjoy partial dignities, those which involve high priesthood, superintendence or military command, and not those of first rank. But when the luminaries are not ascending, and most of the attendants are either ascending or in aspect with angles, they will not attain the more conspicuous honours, but rather civil leadership and moderate advancement in their careers. If, however, the attendant planets are not associated with the angles, they are rendered obscure in their actions and without preferment, and they are entirely humble and miserale in their fortunes when neither of the luminaries is angular, or in a masculine place, or attended by beneficent planets. The attendants of planets of the same sect, or of the beneficent planets indicate greater independence and security with the dignities, while the opposite sect and maleficent planets indicate dependency and less security. Phainon brings about power based on wealth and amassing of riches, Phaethon and Phosphoros that which rests upon favours, gifts, honours and magnanimity, Pyroeis through generalships, victories and the fears of subordinates, Stiblon with intelligence, education, and the care and management of affairs.
4. Quality of Action
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The method of the philosopher is reasonable in this regard, for Pyroeis, Phosphoros and Stilbon are the lords of strength, grace and intellect, and as they are constituted, such will be the quality.
Likewise the specific natures of the places with which are the lords of the action contribute to the variety of the action, solstitial and equinoctial with interpretation, barter, measuring, agriculture, and religion, solid with buildings and foundations, dual with grace and the like, likewise the airy, fiery, earthy, and watery places contribute to actions within their specific domains.
In a special way, when the Moon holds the place of action and is moving away from conjunction, together with Stilbon, produce diviners, necromancers, those who can arouse daemons, prophets, magicians, astrologers, those who have the second sight, interpreters of dreams, and the like.
The predominators rising or angular make independent actions, setting or declining, subordinate, when beneficent planets overcome them, they make them great, glorious, profitable, unerring and gracious, if the maleficent overcome, they produce them mean, inglorious, profitless and fallible. With Phainon in diameter brings cold and the mixture of colours, Pyroeis, temerity and notoriety, both together, utter ruin of action. The period of increase or decrease, again is calculated through the approach of the planets responsible for the effect relative to the method of temporal intervals.
5. Marriage
Likewise the matter of marriage is to be investigated from the Moon in the nativities of men, and from the Sun in the nativities of women, with their quadrant position and from their applications.
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6. Children
The Midheaven, by virtue of its greatest heating power, predominates the begetting of children. Moon, Phaethon and Phosphoros upon the Midheaven or its post-ascension, or the diametrically opposite places, or sometimes when they are in aspect with them, portend the giving of children, while Sun, Phainon and Pyroeis indicate few or no children. Stilbon must be taken as common, with whichever group it chances to be in aspect, and to give children as morning planet, and to take them away as evening planet.
Donative planets by themselves give single offspring, with dual and feminine places, two or even more. Masculine planets make male children, feminine planets make female children. Maleficent planets overcoming them give children, but for no good nor for any length of time. Whenever the Sun and the maleficent planets govern the aforesaid regions, if they are in masculine places, and if they are not overcome by the beneficent planets, they signify complete childlessness, but when they are in feminine places or have the testimony of beneficent planets, they give offspring, but it will suffer injury and be short-lived. If both sects, beneficent and maleficent, bear some relation to the places which indicate the begetting of children, there will be losses amongst the children, either of all of them or of a few, depending on the superiority of the planets, either by number, or by being greater in power by being eastern and closer to the angles, or because they are superior, or because they are post-ascending, while the others are with aspect. Favourably placed donative planets make famous and illustrious children, but if they are unfavourably placed, they will give humble and obscure children. If they are found in harmony with the Hour-Marker and the Lot of Fortune, the children will be dear to their parents and attractive, but if they are disjunct or with diameter, they will be quarrelsome, trouble-makers, and injurious. Likewise, if the planets which give children are in harmonious aspect one to another, the children will have brotherly affection and mutual respect, but if they are disjunct or in diameter, their disposition will be quarrelsome and scheming. Particular details, again, one could conjecture by using in each case the planet that gives children as an Hour-Marker, and making investigation of the configuration, as in a nativity.
7. Friends and Enemies
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Likewise these matters are to be investigated in this way, only that the hour-marking regions are most sympathetic within 15° of the same place of the ecliptic, and that the topic of servants is to be investigated from the Lot of Fortune, for it indicates matters of property, while places do not.
8. Foreign Travel
The topic of foreign travel receives treatment by observing the position of the luminaries to the angles, both of them, but especially the Moon. The Moon settting or declining portends journeys abroad or changes of place. Pyroeis too sometimes has similar force, when setting or declining, while in tetragon or diameter to the luminaries. If the Lot of Fortune also falls among the places that cause travel, the subjects spend their whole lives abroad and will also have all their personal relations and business there. Beneficent planets regarding or post-ascending make their activities abroad honourable and profitable and the return quick and unimpeded, if maleficent planets, their journeys will be laborious, injurious and dangerous, and the return is difficult, although in every case the mixture of influences is taken into consideration as determined by the predominators.
Sun and Moon declining in eastern quadrants make travel to the eastern and southern parts of the world, if in the western quadrants or the Setting itself, to the north and the west, and if the places which cause travel are single, or if predominated by planets in single places, the journeys will be made at long intervals and upon occasion, but if they are dual, they will travel continuously and for very long time. Phaethon and Phosphoros predominating the places which govern travel and, and of the luminaries, they make the journeys not only safe but also pleasant for the subjects will be sent on their way either by the chief men of the country or by the resources of their friends and favourable conditions of weather and abundance of supplies will also aid them. Often, too, if Stilbon is added to these, profit, gain, gifts, and honour result from this good fortune of which we have spoken. If Phainon and Pyroeis control the luminaries, however, and particularly if they are in opposition to each other, they will make the results useless and will involve the subjects in great dangers, through lack of provisions and unhealthy conditions with solstitial and equinoctial places, through falling from heights and assaults of winds with solid places, through piracy, plots and robberies with dual places, through hard going with airy places, through desert places with fiery places, through attacks of beasts and earthquakes with earthy places, through unfortunate voyages and shipwreck with watery places, and when Stilbon is present at the same time, through the weather, dangerous accusations, and, furthermore, through the bites of reptiles and other poisonous creatures. The peculiar quality of the event is to be determined from the original disposition at the nativity, and the occasions which will to the greatest degree bring about these portended events are judged from the time of the ingresses of the five planets.
9. Quality of Death
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Likewise these matters are to be investigated in this way, except that with regard to the forms we shall reject them, for they are merely fictions, while the following natures emanate from the real places of the ecliptic, and the powers within them.
Phainon in tetragon to the Sun from a place of the opposite sect or in diameter, in solid places, it causes death by trampling in a mob, or by the noose or by indurations, likewise when it is setting and the Moon is approaching it. With the Hour-Marker, in diameter to either of the luminaries, it brings death in prison. In earthy places, it causes death by wild beasts, and when Phaethon, itself afflicted, bears witness to it, death in public places, or on days of celebration, in fighting with the beasts, if it is in aspect with Stilbon, through bites of poisonous creatures, and if Phosphoros is in aspect with them, by poisoning and feminine plots. In watery places when the Moon is in aspect, by drowning and suffocation in water, or as victims of shipwreck. In the equinoctial and solstitial places, when Phainon is with the Sun or in diameter, or with Pyroeis instead of the Sun, by being caught in the collapse of a house, and if they are with the Midheaven or the Anti-Midheaven, by a fall from a height.
If Pyroeis is in tetragon or in diameter to the Sun or the Moon, from a place of the other sect, in dual places, it causes the subjects to be slaughtered in civil factions or by the enemy, or commit suicide, and to die because of women or as murderers of women, whenever Phosphoros testifies to them, and if Stilbon also is in aspect to these, it causes death at the hands of pirates, robbers or criminals, and death by decapitation or mutilation when overcome by Pyroeis itself. If Pyroeis is in fiery places, death by burning, cutting, or amputation by physicians, or death in convulsions, if with the Midheaven or the Anti-Midheaven by being set up on stakes, if with the Hour-Marker or Setting, by being burned alive. With earthy places, death by the collapse of houses, by breaking, or by crushing. When Phaethon itself afflicted, bears witness to Pyroeis, again the subjects perish conspicuously by condemnation and through the anger of generals or kings.
If the maleficent planets are together and with this state are with diameters with some one of the aforesaid significant positions, they work together all the more for the affliction of the death, and in this case the signification of the quality of the death lies with the one that chances to occupy the destructive place, or else the fatal occurrences are multiplied, or doubled, either in quality or in quantity, whenever both have some relation to destructive places. Persons with such nativities are even left without burial, and are consumed by wilds beasts or birds, whenever the maleficent planets predominate the Anti-Midheaven with the beneficent planets turned away from the angle. Deaths occur in foreign lands if the planets that occupy the destructive places are declining, and particularly when the Moon is present, or in tetragon, or in diameter, to these destructive places.
10. Division of Times
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Likewise these matters are so, only that we observe the annual and monthly chronocrators from the predominators of each prorogatory place with the solar and lunar revolutions respectively, by using the nature and power of the planets at that time and in that place, because we must consider the quality, magnitude and time in the ways which we have already set forth.
Sources
Robbins, F. E. (1940). Ptolemy: Tetrabiblos. William Heinmann, London. Retrieved from http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Ptolemy/Tetrabiblos/home.html
Schmidt, R. Hephaistio of Thebes Apotelesmatics Book II. Project Hindsight.
Such then, are the theoretical modifications I propose to this compendium.
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