waybread
Well-known member
Re: Hellenistic deliniations
I might just mention a few gleanings.
1. The sun isn't so important in Hellenistic astrology. The really important "me" point" is the degree of the ascendant. Several of the authors cited above used it to calculate all kinds of "lots" (which came to be known as Arabic parts.) I would suggest that these sometimes seem more important than houses in determining areas of life.
2. Angularity gives a planet a huge amount of strength, notably if it's in the first or 10th house. The 9th, 5th, and 11th houses were also good news. The 7th and 4th houses are next in order of favourability. If you've got planets in the sixth, 12th, or 8th house, normally they're toast. And you might even be a wretched person.
3. Lords are really important to some of the authors, and they are calculated in several ways. One way that we use in modern astrology is identifying the so-called accidental house-cusp ruler: the planet that rules the sign on the cusp of the house in question. Its location says a lot about how the house in question functions. But they also looked at the lords of triplicities, which varied depending upon whether you had a day or night birth.
4. Because precise planetary positions were sometimes hard to calculate, the ancient astrologers tended to consider tenanted signs in aspect, not planets based upon degrees and orbs.
5. Neo-Hellenistic astrology gave whole sign houses a lot of cachet. But Porphyry, who developed a simple quadrant house system, was also a Hellenistic astrologer. Because a lot of the methods don't refer to houses, you can use either whole signs or Porphyry with a lot of them.
I might just mention a few gleanings.
1. The sun isn't so important in Hellenistic astrology. The really important "me" point" is the degree of the ascendant. Several of the authors cited above used it to calculate all kinds of "lots" (which came to be known as Arabic parts.) I would suggest that these sometimes seem more important than houses in determining areas of life.
2. Angularity gives a planet a huge amount of strength, notably if it's in the first or 10th house. The 9th, 5th, and 11th houses were also good news. The 7th and 4th houses are next in order of favourability. If you've got planets in the sixth, 12th, or 8th house, normally they're toast. And you might even be a wretched person.
3. Lords are really important to some of the authors, and they are calculated in several ways. One way that we use in modern astrology is identifying the so-called accidental house-cusp ruler: the planet that rules the sign on the cusp of the house in question. Its location says a lot about how the house in question functions. But they also looked at the lords of triplicities, which varied depending upon whether you had a day or night birth.
4. Because precise planetary positions were sometimes hard to calculate, the ancient astrologers tended to consider tenanted signs in aspect, not planets based upon degrees and orbs.
5. Neo-Hellenistic astrology gave whole sign houses a lot of cachet. But Porphyry, who developed a simple quadrant house system, was also a Hellenistic astrologer. Because a lot of the methods don't refer to houses, you can use either whole signs or Porphyry with a lot of them.
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