Cadent houses being weak vs planetary joys

HoldOrFold

Well-known member
The Moon joys in the 3rd
Mars joys in the 6th
The Sun joys in the 9th
Saturn joys in the 12th

These are all cadent houses, infact they are all of the cadent houses. Cadent houses are the only house quadruplicity to have a planet in it's joy in every house.

Yet cadent houses are considered weak, why would these be the best places for these planets to be? e.g. is the Sun strengthened by being in the house of it's joy or weakened by being in a cadent house, how does one reconcile the two concepts?
 

petosiris

Banned
The Moon joys in the 3rd
Mars joys in the 6th
The Sun joys in the 9th
Saturn joys in the 12th

These are all cadent houses, infact they are all of the cadent houses. Cadent houses are the only house quadruplicity to have a planet in it's joy in every house.

Yet cadent houses are considered weak, why would these be the best places for these planets to be? e.g. is the Sun strengthened by being in the house of it's joy or weakened by being in a cadent house, how does one reconcile the two concepts?

Maybe it is a contradiction. Ptolemy does not ever mention the joys. You can hardly give a rational explanation for most house significations, let alone the joys.

Most, however, thought of the 9th as stronger than the 8th, because it is in trine to the Ascendant. So you can reconcile the two concepts like some Hellenistic authors did in their ranking - 1>10>11>5>7>4>9>2>3>8>6>12 which combines angularity and aspect. To answer your question, most traditional interpretations of the houses are also based on aspects to the Ascendant, not just angularity. The malefics are placed in the most unfortunate for a reason, though some astrologers disagreed whether they would give more positive or more negative things in their joys.

Ptolemy seems to contradict himself in Tetrabiblos 3.4 by saying that 10>11>1>2>7>8>4>5>declines while mentioning aspect as important in 1.24. It is a mess. I prefer the following ranking in power by angularity and angle to reason - 10>1>11>2>7>4>8>5>9>12>6>3. I use Placidus, while if I thought aspects to the Ascendant matter so much, I would use either equal, Vehlow or whole sign. I have found the use of aspects to the Ascendant to be useful for some things (negative when they are not in aspect), but not for power or construction of a house system.
 
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JUPITERASC

Well-known member
Maybe it is a contradiction. Ptolemy does not ever mention the joys. You can hardly give a rational explanation.

Most, however, thought of the 9th as stronger than the 8th, because it is in trine to the Ascendant. So you can reconcile the two concepts like some Hellenistic authors did in their ranking - 1>10>11>5>7>4>9>2>3>8>6>12 which combines angularity and aspect. To answer your question, most traditional interpretations of the houses are also based on aspects to the Ascendant, not just angularity.

Ptolemy seems to contradict himself in Tetrabiblos 3.4

by saying that 10>11>1>2>7>8>4>5>declines
while mentioning aspect as important in 1.24.

It is a mess.

.
That's unsurprising

Ptedious Ptolemy was not a practising astrologer :smile:
instead Ptolemy was a mathematician and astronomer
with access to the writings of great library of Alexandria
and he chronicled, cherry picking, the works of earlier astrologers
Ptedious Ptolemy discarded and reworked much ancient material
if he felt so inclined

Nevertheless
obviously worth reading
I prefer the following ranking in power by angularity and angle - 10>1>11>2>7>4>8>5>9>12>6>3. I use Placidus, while if I thought aspects to the Ascendant matter so much, I would use either equal, Vehlow or whole sign. I have found the use of aspects to the Ascendant to be useful for some things (negative when they are not in aspect), but not for power or construction of a house system.
I use Alcabitius
 

JUPITERASC

Well-known member
Ptolemy was not a practicing astrologer?
Are we talking about the most indubitably influential astrologer that has ever lived? :smile:
Ptedious Ptolemy mentions NO NATAL CHARTS OF CLIENTS :smile:

unlike genuinely working and pracitsing astrologer Vettius Valens
Vettius Valens left over one hundred natal charts from a personal client database
 

petosiris

Banned
Ptedious Ptolemy mentions NO NATAL CHARTS OF CLIENTS :smile:

unlike genuinely working and pracitsing astrologer Vettius Valens
Vettius Valens left over one hundred natal charts from a personal client database

It is redundant to leave natal chart examples in an astrology handbook that overviews everything an astrologer at the time needed. Just because you give examples, doesn't mean they are practical. :smile:
 

JUPITERASC

Well-known member
It is redundant to leave natal chart examples in an astrology handbook
that overviews everything an astrologer at the time needed.
Just because you give examples, doesn't mean they are practical. :smile:
Do you have something personal against the guy? :unsure:
Robert Newton argues
in his book THE CRIME OF CLAUDIUS PTOLEMY
currently available on amazon
that despite his skill as an astronomer
Ptolemy was simply an astronomical fraud
i.e.
Newton aruges that Ptolemy’s 13 volume work The Syntaxis

aka The Almagest
contains observations about the planets that are surprising.
Compared with modern astronomical tables
some are so accurate that
he simply couldn’t have made them with the instruments he describes.
Others are extraordinarily error prone:
Newton provides as an example Ptolemy’s sighting of
the autumn equinox at 2PM on 25 September AD132
a measurement that he said he made “with greatest care”
was wrong by more than a day.
Newton says Ptolemy simply fitted his measurements to his theories
rather than vice versa
often adapting observations made centuries before his time.


“....We can say that all of Ptolemy’s observations
that can be tested
are fabricated
Further, we can say that
all of his theories depend heavily on fabricated data
and some of them seem to depend completely upon such data.
Overall, The Syntaxis has done more damage to astronomy
than any other work ever written
and astronomy would be better off if it had never existed
Ptolemy is not the greatest astronomer of history
but he is something still more unusual:
he is the most successful fraud in the history of science....” Robert Newton

That assessment did not endear Newton to other historians of ancient science :smile:

One refutal by Owen Gingrich ruefully admits
that The Syntaxis contains some fishy data :smile:
but he suggest that Ptolemy merely followed the practice of his time
by selecting only those observations that supported his theory.
“Certainly,” Gingerich says, “Ptolemy did not commit fraud.
And his great contribution of the geocentric theory,
was the true testament to Ptolemy’s greatness as an astronomer.”

More recent studies of Ptedious Ptolemys work suggest that a
“......combination of

observational, calculation and rounding errors
plagiarism of existing data
and selection of the best examples
could account for the appearance of fraud.
But, in the absence of categorical evidence
the verdict must remain ‘not proven.'” :smile:
 

petosiris

Banned
Claudius Ptolemy was the most influential astrologer, astronomer and geographer from Antiquity until the mid-Renaissance, even if he were to falsify 50% of his observations. Plagiarism did not exist as a concept until the modern era. :smile:
 

JUPITERASC

Well-known member
Claudius Ptolemy was the most influential astrologer, astronomer
and geographer from Antiquity until the mid-Renaissance,

even if he were to falsify 50% of his observations.

Plagiarism did not exist as a concept until the modern era. :smile:

Ptolemy and Ancient Astronomy



Melvyn Bragg and guests

discuss the ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician Ptolemy

and consider how and why

his geocentric theory of the universe held sway for so many centuries.

In Almagest, written in the 2nd century AD
Ptolemy proposed that the Earth was at the centre of the universe
Ptolemy's model of the universe remained dominant
for over a thousand years.

It was not until 1543, and Copernicus's heliocentric theory of the world
that the Ptolemaic model was finally challenged
and not until 1609 that
Johannes Kepler's New Astronomy put an end to his ideas for good.
But how and why did Ptolemy's system survive for so long?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017528d :smile:
 

petosiris

Banned
I don’t find this concept of strong or weak houses coherent or reflective of the different interests, tasks, or characteristics of either the planets or the way they would operate together in a horoscope. Planets are in community with each other, not all trying to act “strong.”

Dignity is a very useful concept in traditional astrology, you know the astrology that has to do with prediction, and not with modern drivel.
 

petosiris

Banned
We are in traditional astrology board so you are free to call anything modern “drivel,” but are you suggesting that joy is a modern concept?

Indeed, we are on the traditional astrology board, where we discuss dignity, which the seven planetary joys are certainly part of. People have to choose their methods for estimating dignity, and you can't use them all, as the ancients invented innumerable systems. Personally I don't use the planetary joys, just like Ptolemy didn't. What I am certain, however, is that you have to use some methods to be capable of astrological prediction, as all traditions including the Indians to this day have used the concept to make particular predictions.
 
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HoldOrFold

Well-known member
You can hardly give a rational explanation for most house significations

Patrick Watson has a couple of good articles about this:

- https://patrickwatsonastrology.com/why-aries-≠-the-1st-house/

- https://patrickwatsonastrology.com/...la-petite-mort-and-sex-as-an-8th-house-topic/

tldr, when you combine dinural and zodiacal motion, the joys and the aspects and positions of the thelma mundi you get a pretty good foundation for the meanings of the houses.

, let alone the joys.

And Chris Brennan wrote an interesting paper about the joys:

- https://www.hellenisticastrology.com/the-planetary-joys.pdf

However none of tho above resources answer the dichotomy of most of the joys falling in cadent houses.


Most, however, thought of the 9th as stronger than the 8th, because it is in trine to the Ascendant. So you can reconcile the two concepts like some Hellenistic authors did in their ranking - 1>10>11>5>7>4>9>2>3>8>6>12 which combines angularity and aspect.

I suppose the crux of the question comes down to if a planet in it's joy kind of "overrides" the weakness of being cadent. Or another angle on the question would be if the Sun prefers the 9th to the 7th for instance, or does the Moon function better in the 3rd more so than the 5th, despite those houses being 'weaker' or of lower ranking in the above system. And if so, does that imply it overrides the weakness of those houses in some way.
 

petosiris

Banned
I suppose the crux of the question comes down to if a planet in it's joy kind of "overrides" the weakness of being cadent. Or another angle on the question would be if the Sun prefers the 9th to the 7th for instance, or does the Moon function better in the 3rd more so than the 5th, despite those houses being 'weaker' or of lower ranking in the above system.

This is why I personally reject the system. All planets rejoice in the 10th. The end.
 

petosiris

Banned
I suppose the crux of the question comes down to if a planet in it's joy kind of "overrides" the weakness of being cadent. Or another angle on the question would be if the Sun prefers the 9th to the 7th for instance, or does the Moon function better in the 3rd more so than the 5th, despite those houses being 'weaker' or of lower ranking in the above system. And if so, does that imply it overrides the weakness of those houses in some way.

Valens rejects the Sun as hyleg in the 9th in 3.1 of the Anthology - https://www.csus.edu/indiv/r/rileymt/Vettius Valens entire.pdf

Other astrologers (Antiochus and Porphyry for example) also rejected the luminaries as hylegs in the declines, without specifying an exception for the joys too. Valens gives some explicit examples in the chapter. This is strange, since most of the time they consider the 9th house to be an operative one, as does Ptolemy incidentally in his chapter on the length of life. Some astrologers say that Hermes thought the 2nd, 3rd, 6th, 8th and 12th to be inoperative houses, while Nechepso thought the cadent houses were the inoperative ones. The latter is usually associated with Petosiris who expounded upon the Hellenistic methods for the length of life, so the astrologers might have followed him on this technique, but the other astrologers (such as Hermes) on the delineation of houses. We don't know as their writings do not survive.
 
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petosiris

Banned
Patrick Watson has a couple of good articles about this:

- https://patrickwatsonastrology.com/why-aries-≠-the-1st-house/

- https://patrickwatsonastrology.com/...la-petite-mort-and-sex-as-an-8th-house-topic/

tldr, when you combine dinural and zodiacal motion, the joys and the aspects and positions of the thelma mundi you get a pretty good foundation for the meanings of the houses..

https://patrickwatsonastrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/ariesalphabet.png

Interesting picture. It reminds me of Kepler calling houses oriental sorcery and that contemporary of Morin who made fun of Firmicus' chapter of the houses - ''he would be ridiculous who might think that these ridiculous reasons require our refutation'' (Holden translation, Book 17). Different things make different sense to different people at different times and different places.

But everyone is certainly entitled to their own opinion. :smile:
 
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