Why does Mars Joy in H6?

petosiris

Banned
Why? I mean seriously, why? Haven't YOU ever been curious? We have this body of astrology handed to us, that includes rulerships, joys, and exaltations. Why WOULDN'T you want to see them on a wheel? Beyond that, how about a quote from Valens? Book II.."The VI Place, the house of Mars?"

Does he ever mention Sagittarius in that passage?

What is the difference between this and the Aries = 1st = Mars system, I wonder. Who is supposed to draw the arbitrary boundaries when we use such associations?

How is this translated into practice either?
 
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tsmall

Premium Member
Does he ever mention Sagittarius in that passage?

What is the difference between this and the Aries = 1st = Mars system, I wonder. Who is supposed to draw the arbitrary lines between when we use such associations?

Does it matter? The question is, "why does Mars Joy in the 6th?" The ancients weren't about answering why. They wanted people to figure it out. My friend, I think you are reading to much into the concept of the signs representing the joys. But the joys are based on the places, not the signs. Think topics only. The 6th is things that harm the body. It is a lunar house, so that makes sense. Lunar are things that happen to us, Solar things that happen because of us. It makes total sense that the lesser malefic would rejoice in the house that represents harm to the body.
 

tsmall

Premium Member
I don't get why my post was deleted, IV is the house of Saturn, X of Venus, according to Manilius, I hoped waybread saw it since she may have missed critical information.

She saw it. And I did not delete your entire post, just the part where you disparaged waybread. Pray do not do so further.
 

petosiris

Banned
Does it matter? The question is, "why does Mars Joy in the 6th?" The ancients weren't about answering why. They wanted people to figure it out. My friend, I think you are reading to much into the concept of the signs representing the joys. But the joys are based on the places, not the signs. Think topics only. The 6th is things that harm the body. It is a lunar house, so that makes sense. Lunar are things that happen to us, Solar things that happen because of us. It makes total sense that the lesser malefic would rejoice in the house that represents harm to the body.

Yes, and Chris Brennan shows how Mars' placement in the joys is tied to it being nocturnal ruler of water, and cooperating ruler of earth - https://www.hellenisticastrology.com/the-planetary-joys.pdf.
 

JUPITERASC

Well-known member
She saw it.
And I did not delete your entire post, just the part
where you disparaged waybread.
Pray do not do so further.
I scrolled back to check and notice now that
a post I read earlier that was posted by petosiris
is definitely no longer visible
the entire post has indeed been deleted

the gist of the post was on topic for the thread
because petosiris highlighted
WB quoting Manilius on 12th house
but
then WB continues with the joy of Saturn relative to house XII
and joy of Venus relative to house V

however
petorisir highlighted
that does not equate
with Manilius placing the joy of Venus in 10th house
and joy of Saturn in the 4th
Manilius, Astronomica, ed. and trans. G. P. Goold, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1977

beginners reading this thread

therefore may become confused vis a vis the joys

so just to clarify Manilius stance on the joys
is on topic for this thread
which concerns Mars joy in sixth
 

waybread

Well-known member
Well, now I'm confused.

As I mentioned earlier-- or should have-- there are different theories about the joys.

Off and on (and probably more off than on) I began to consider that the joys reflected ancient Egyptian mythology about the sun god's passage through the circuit of day and night. (This isn't wild speculation, Petosiris, but I don't have the time to go into all of it here. If you can just follow along, that's all I ask. I get that you will disagree with it.)

As a starting point, the origin of houses in Hellenistic astrology appears to be Egyptian., based on their mythology of the sun god and individual soul passing through different stations during the 24-hour day. The Egyptians invented the ascendant, and made meticulous observations of the sky as their clock and calendar for religious purposes-- going back several thousand years. You are probably familiar with their system of decans stars-- insofar as it is understood today. Rightly or wrongly, the Hellenistic astrologers gave a lot of credit to their Egyptian predecessors Nechepso, Petosiris, Ascelpius (Imhotep) and others.

A little study of Egyptian mythology would be helpful. The one thing to note is that Egypt was a very old and diverse country. Consequently its deities and myths do not fall into tidy discrete packages. They blur around the edges. Upper and Lower Egypt were not unified during much of that history, so some of their myths developed independently. So we can find one god with multiple functions, as well as different gods with the same functions and myths.

The Greeks and Romans liked to identify foreign gods as the counterparts of their own gods with whom they were familiar. In this way you can get something like Venus/Aphrodite being equated to Hathor.

Going back to Manilius, where he gave the 12th house to Typhon as a kind of tutelary spirit, Typhon (from whom our word typhoon is named) was a disruptive evil god of destructive wind storms. His Egyptian counterpart was Seth (Set,) who not only ruled sand storms, but was the primary force of obscurity and disorder, who sought to destroy the basic order on which civilization depended.

Interestingly, Ptolemy didn't like to talk about houses at all, but he mentioned that the 12th was seen as evil because stars close to the horizon didn't appear in their true colors. Sunrise on the Nile actually is often quite obscure due to heavy humidity and ambient dust in the air.

In Egyptian myth, as soon as the sun god (Ra) defeated his enemies of darkness and emerged into the dawn (ascendant,) Seth was again ready to do perpetual battle.

The closest planetary Roman counterpart to Seth was Saturn, the great malefic.

Then if we look at the opposite house to the 12th, the 6th, the lesser malefic Mars joys in this house. The 6th house-- located in the west after sunset symbolizes twilight and also a time when the planets would be obscured with the afterglow from the sun.

A number of Egyptian gods bore the name "Horus" (Heru, Har) as different names for the stages of the sun in its daily circuit. Heru-ur, or Horus the Elder was described as in a perpetual battle with Seth, prior to the unification of the Upper and Lower Kingdoms. In effect, he became a kind of younger or lesser Seth.

This material by no means proves, but it does suggest that the battle between the greater malefic god Seth and his younger counterpart would be translated as Saturn vs. Mars. The house of the evil spirit opposing the house of ill fortune.

This is just the briefest and crudest of outlines, but I've pretty well worked out all of the joys according to Egyptian mythology, with the exception of the moon in the 3rd, who needs more study.

To stand the question on its head, given all the credit that Hellenistic astrologers paid to Egyptians, it would be really curious if nothing from Egyptian lore made it into Hellenistic horoscope interpretation.
 
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petosiris

Banned
Too many assumptions I am afraid. There is no reason to think that ''Nechepso and Petosiris'' espoused anything but an Aristotelean model of the universe (see From astral omens to astrology by David Pingree - https://archive.org/details/FromAstralOmensToAstrologyFromBabylonToBikanerDavidPingree/page/n19).

However, sometime in the late 2nd or early 1st century' B.C. someone,
perhaps in Egypt, invented genethlialogical astrology, which assumes an
Aristotelian universe in which the earth at the center, consisting of the four
sublunar elements, is surrounded by the eternally circling spheres of the
seven planets in the so-called Hellenistic order (Moon, Mercury, Venus,
Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn). This author also assumed the ability to compute
the longitudes of the planets and the rising-point of the ecliptic for any given time, and to divide the ecliptic into the twelve astrological places. - Pingree, D. E. (1997). From astral omens to astrology: from Babylon to Bīkāner. - https://archive.org/details/FromAstralOmensToAstrologyFromBabylonToBikanerDavidPingree

Pingree quotes Hephaistio to support his assertion. I would also add that the summary of Thrasyllus says he treated of the heptazone system ''in accordance with Nechepso and Petosiris'', but the greatest evidence is that every author from Manilius to Ptolemy would mention some naturalistic principle, even if some mention religious deities (aside from the planets) from time to time. This is the beginning of astrology, as distinct from divination, and I would argue there is a lot to support Pingree's hypothesis.

To stand the question on its head, given all the credit that Hellenistic astrologers paid to Egyptians, it would be really curious if nothing from Egyptian lore made it into Hellenistic horoscope interpretation.

There is, it is called decans. However, I doubt that the Hellenistic syncretism always represents direct ''Egyptian'' influence, in any case, it is more Greek than it is Egyptian.
 
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waybread

Well-known member
Petosiris, I noted above that I didn't expect you to agree with what I wrote. I just hoped you would follow it.

I don't mean this in any attacking way, but just as an everyday common-sense observation: that people are unlikely to find evidence in an area where they are not looking, let alone in an area where they truly do not want to look.

You are familiar with this article by Greenbaum and Ross: The Role of Egypt in the Development of the Horoscope."

https://www.academia.edu/7370462/The_Role_of_Egypt_in_the_Development_of_the_Horoscope

[I see that Micah Ross has two new articles out: I'll see if I can find them:
Demotic Horoscopes
Ancient Astronomy in Its Mediterranean Context (300 BC–AD 300): A Brill Companion, Brill (2018), 427-443.

Egyptian Planetary Theory
Ancient Astronomy in Its Mediterranean Context (300 BC–AD 300): A Brill Companion, Brill (2018), 136-141.]

I've also not purchased this article: perhaps you have.
Dorian Greenbaum: "What is a Daimon, and What Does it Have to Do with Astrology?"
https://www.uacastrology.com/record...-Does-it-Have-to-Do-with-Astrology-p108202724

Also this article by Stefan Heilen:

https://www.academia.edu/7781974/Some_metrical_fragments_from_Nechepsos_and_Petosiris

In a Skyscript interview, Dorian Greenbaum made a comment that I indicated previously about Saturn: http://www.astro.com/

"Q: 'You referred the other day to Saturn in the 12th house being 'in its joy'. Does that work, in your experience? Are you glad that your Saturn is in the 12th?'

"A. 'Well, according to the tradition of course, you want the malefics in cadent houses. You want Saturn in its joy in the 12th, and Mars in its joy in the 6th. You want them cadent so that they can't do a lot of damage.'"

So it may be as simple as that.

You are probably also familiar with her book, The Daimon in Hellenistic Astrology: Origins and Influence, based on her doctoral dissertation.

This is one expensive book, but the introduction is available at: https://books.google.ca/books?id=Bn...ce=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Greenbaum draws on a wide variety of ancient cultures, including Egyptian, and clarifies that there is no single tradition for the daemon (good and evil spirit of the 11th and 12th houses.) I happen to be interested in the Egyptian thread.

Heilen notes that the attribution of astrology's foundations to Egyptian sages was probably based on pseudonyms from the Hermetic tradition that flourished in Hellenized Egypt. But this tradition didn't come out of nowhere, and has a number of references to Egyptian gods.

When archaeological finds of some horoscopes from Hellenized Egypt refer to the 4th house as the "duat" ("dwat,") the Egyptian name for the judgement hall of Osiris, and late ancient astrologers switch from a sidereal to tropical system, we find enough tidbits of evidence to think that an Egyptian origin for houses and their thematic interpretations is worthwhile exploring.
 

waybread

Well-known member
Thanks for linking that monograph by David Pingree. I don't see where he looked closely at ancient Egypt.

Maybe one point that should be clarified is that by the time horoscopic astrology emerges, Egypt had been under Greek rule for some time, so I'm not talking about some sort of impossibly pure Egyptian tradition. Early horoscopic astrology was a synthesis of different contributions.

An Egyptian tradition, however late-breaking, however, is not in question. The decans stars became the 3-part division of the sign. Ptolemy discussed both Babylonian and Egyptian terms. Your namesake was an Egyptian scribe-- or a later author who adopted his name as a pseudonym. Despite the clear evidence of the transmission of astrology from Babylon to Greece, several Hellenistic authors traced their discipline's roots to ancient Egypt.

So inquiring further into possible Egyptian origins of planetary joys seems worthwhile.
 

david starling

Well-known member
Just to add, Horus was a "solar god", but not a personification of the Sun itself--that was Ra. The Greeks derived their god of solar light, Apollo, from Horus. The word "Horoscope" is from "Horus the Watcher" and related to the word "horizon", and the word for an "hour" of time.
 
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waybread

Well-known member
Yes, there wasn't just one Horus. One classification of the Horus deities was whether they presided over sunrise, the sun at the highest point at midday, sunset, and so on.

Just to recap. In my experience a lot of the aficionados of ancient astrology are looking for logical, rational explanations. I wonder if they feel uncomfortable about the very mention of mythology and religion, let alone magic.

However, ancient astrology was steeped in myth and religion, and there's no way around this. Why else have planetary gods, or credit Hermes/Mercury as the founder of astrology? Why else believe in fate-- not just via Stoicism-- but through a path that goes back to the more ancient 3 Fates? (Or in Egypt, the 7 Hathors.)

A lot of Egyptian religion was not divulged to the public, kept in the hands of initiated priests. This makes it difficult to prove much today. Especially in my case, since I'm not a professional Egyptologist.

But surely we can look at this material objectively.

Accordingly, Venus joys in the 5th house of pleasure and childbirth. Her Egyptian counterpart was Hathor, who presided over pleasure and childbirth. Her name in Egyptian basically meant the mother or "house" of Horus. Horus was one edition of the sun god. Mercury joys in the first house. The first house was sometimes called the "helm" or "rudder" in Antiquity. The Ibis-headed or Ibis god Thoth, a former moon god, became assimilated to Hermes/Mercury because their scribe and funerary traditions were similar. Thoth was often depicted as standing on the prow of the boat that carried the sun god through the after-world. Egyptian boats were sometimes steered from the front, and sometimes towed in the direction opposite the current (south.)

Thoth was probably the "Tat" inquiring of his father about the mysteries of Hermeticism, which was one of the roots of ancient astrology.

This is just a small sample of evidence about the religious origins of the joys that I think are out there.
 
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petosiris

Banned
If the joys are dependent on twelve sign zodiac, how can they be Egyptian? Agathodaimon is a Greek deity, same with Tyche.

The word "Horoscope" is from "Horus the Watcher" and related to the word "horizon", and the word for an "hour" of time.

Write a paper on your discovery. :w00t:
 

waybread

Well-known member
If the joys are dependent on twelve sign zodiac, how can they be Egyptian? Agathodaimon is a Greek deity, same with Tyche.



Write a paper on your discovery. :w00t:

Petosirus, the houses are based upon the dirunal movement of the sun, whereas the signs (and constellations for which they were named) seem to have a more seasonal/annual meaning.

You are better informed on this point than I am, but some of the early authors talked about angularity as the most important principle in a planet's location in the horoscope, which is also not so sign-based. I think it took a while for the 12-signs, 12-houses horoscope to be codified; during which time there were competing techniques.

The Hellenists naturally put their own names onto the deities of other cultures, or said things like, "The Egyptians' god A is basically like our god B." So having a Greek name on a house does not signify that its tutelary spirit was originally Greek.

I wish I could do the research necessary to publish a paper. I live in a pretty remote rural area and I can find only so many things on-line; even with access to on-line materials at a university library. I do use Inter-library loan occasionally; but really this kind of research needs an Egyptologist.
 

JUPITERASC

Well-known member
Petosirus, the houses are based upon the dirunal movement of the sun, whereas the signs (and constellations for which they were named) seem to have a more seasonal/annual meaning.

You are better informed on this point than I am, but some of the early authors talked about angularity as the most important principle in a planet's location in the horoscope, which is also not so sign-based. I think it took a while for the 12-signs, 12-houses horoscope to be codified; during which time there were competing techniques.

The Hellenists naturally put their own names onto the deities of other cultures, or said things like, "The Egyptians' god A is basically like our god B." So having a Greek name on a house does not signify that its tutelary spirit was originally Greek.

I wish I could do the research necessary to publish a paper.

I live in a pretty remote rural area and I can find only so many things on-line; even with access to on-line materials at a university library. I do use Inter-library loan occasionally; but really this kind of research needs an Egyptologist.
it is clear by simply reading over this thread :smile:
that petosiris was responding not to you - but to another poster - when he said:
Write a paper on your discovery.
you appear to have overlooked
that BEFORE making the comment regarding writing a paper
petosiris had quoted the following remark
i.e.
Quote:
The word "Horoscope" is from "Horus the Watcher"
and related to the word "horizon", and the word for an "hour" of time.
and then advised the poster to:
Write a paper on your discovery.
 
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