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One of my favorite
pastimes on the Upper West Side of New York is checking out the sidewalk
used-book vendors; these characters (straight out of Dickens-scared-by-Stephen-King,
with just a touch of Klingon grace and refinement) offer tables (or milk
cartons, or blankets) covered with very used, seriously grimy, utterly
irresistible old books. Spotting me for a sucker, they murmur insidiously
tempting come-ons --"Paperbacks only one dollar! This pile 3 for 2 dollars!
That's out of print! You'll never find it in a store!!"
Last fall my eye
fell upon a battered orphan entitled simply "Archaeology" with the imprimatur
of New York University's Library of Science, containing a series of chapters,
each by a different NYU scholar. Flipping through the pages, I spotted
the word "Stars," and immediately dropped the groceries and got serious.
This turned out to be a chapter by one Jotham Johnson who was, in 1963,
(the date of the book's publication), head of the Department of Classics,
New York University; Chairman of the Department of Classics, Washington
Square College, and President of the Archaeological Institute of America.
The chapter (originally published in the Summer 1951 issue of Archaeology)
was titled "Tell Time by the Stars", and included a drawing of a crude,
partially obliterated 2nd century CE horoscope. I wheedled the
price down a bit and scurried home with my prize. Needing a justification
for the expenditure, I told myself "it'll make a neat little article!"
Jotham Johnson ("JJ")
was a 23-year-old student when he joined a research team fielded in Winter
1928/9 by Yale University to excavate the ancient Mesopotamian (later Greco-Arab-Roman)
city of Dura on the Euphrates, in present-day Syria. Scholars had considered
Dura an unimportant backwater town until the accidental 1921 discovery
of wall paintings; then excavators hurried to the site and discovered rich,
remarkably preserved Pompeii-like remains of what had been an amazing fusion
of Greek, Semitic and (later) Roman culture, including temples of Zeus
Theos, Zooroaster, Adonis and Atargatis, along with a Synagogue, and even
a Christian church! The wall paintings in the last two buildings "contain
extensive wall paintings...of the highest importance for the study of Jewish
and early Christian art and architecture."
One day, on a stroll
through an area that had been cleared but not yet officially recorded,
Johnson's eye was caught by a figure on a courtyard wall of a small house
near the center of the city - a crude circle he thought looked like a clock
face divided into quarters, with 12 sets of Greek letters around the outside.
He could read the letters, but they seemed to make no sense. Intrigued,
he copied the figure and made a private project out of deciphering the
drawing. His first clue was the number 12: he thought of the 12 labors
of Hercules, the 12 gods of the Olympic pantheon, the 12 signs of the Zodiac
- aha! But what were the Greek names of the signs? He tried to remember
their English names, and suddenly knew he was on track, for he realized
that the lambda-epsilon-omega-nu at
4 o'clock spelled Leon, for Leo the Lion! Pi-alpha-rho-theta
at 3 o'clock were the first 4 letters of Parthenos, "Virgin." At
7 o'clock were tau-alpha-upsilon: Taurus! With his Greek
dictionary in hand he figured that iota-chi-theta
at 9 o'clock stood for Ichth-ies, Fishes. Tau-omicron-xi
at the top was tox-otes, the Archer, 2 o'clock's zyg turned
out to be zygos ("yoke"), i.e. Libra. Kark at 5 o'clock stood
for kark-inos, Cancer, and did at 6 meant did-ymoi,
twins, or Gemini. The 8 o'clock position was kri: kri-os, the Ram,
at 11 was aig, obviously aig-okeros, Capricornus. Two positions
were obliterated - 1 o'clock must have been Scorpius, and 10 o'clock
would have been Hydrochous - "Water-pourer" - the tail of its "rho"
was still visible!
Now JJ was well and
truly hooked. Realizing that the remaining words must be planets, he tried
to get the words to conform to Hermes, Aphrodite, Ares, Zeus, and Kronos,
but had no luck at all, so he took the phi, alpha, iota, nu
at the bottom and ran his finger down the phain- words in a Greek
dictionary, where he found Phain-on, Shiner, the early literary
word for Saturn! At 5 o'clock, next to the kark- of karkinos,
were phi, alpha, and part of either epsilon
or omicron; the dictionary supplied Phaeton, Radiant
One - Jupiter! At 4 o'clock, with Leon, were 3 planets: phosph-
for Phosphoros, Light-Bringer: Venus. Stil- was Stilbon,
the Gleamer: Mercury; and over the initial phi of phosph-
were the letters py- for Pyroeis, Fiery One - Mars! But that
was all; the Sun & Moon were missing. After learning that Sun had to
be within one sign of Mercury, and seeing that it was not in Leo or Virgo,
he knew it had to be in Cancer, under the gouged-out segment on the lower
right. The missing Moon would have had to be under one of the 3 gouges,
in Aquarius, Scorpio, or Cancer. Realizing he could go no further without
reference books, he packed his notes to await his return home.
Back in New Haven,
young JJ screwed up his courage and asked the eminent Prof Ernest W Brown
of Yale's Dept of Astronomy to help discover the date of the figure, giving
him the time parameters of the occupation of the city, that is, from 300
BCE to 275 CE. Brown handed the task over to Dirk Brouwer, a research assistant
(Brouwer later became Prof of Astronomy, Chairman of the Dept of Astronomy,
and Director of Yale's Observatory). Brouwer concluded that the date of
the horoscope was July, 176 AD, and given the possibilities of the missing
Moon, it had to be either July 3-5 (if in Scorpio), or July 10-12 if in
Aquarius (the other positions would not work with the Moon in Cancer).
Johnson was delighted, not only to have a date within a 10-day span, but
to have an archaeological fix on a date for the house it was found in!
At this point Johnson
took a close look at a photograph he had taken of the wall, which showed
faint letters above and to the left of the diagram; with great difficulty
and a magnifying glass he made out what seemed to be Zeta Pi Upsilon
Pi Alpha Nu Theta: ZPYPANTH? - certainly not a word, even to a Greek,
and definitely a puzzlement. After a long period of mystification, it occurred
to the decipherers (by this time the others were hooked too!) that it might
be a date - the Greeks had used letters for numerals! The first three might
be the year, the second three the month name (abbreviated), and the last
the numeral for the day. Using the Greek letter-for-number system, it became
zeta: 7, pi: 80, upsilon: 400, adding up to 487, that
is, the 487th year (of whichever one of the calendrical eras
of the many despots of western Asia had been employed). They knew that
before the Romans had annexed Seleucid/Parthian Dura, the calendar in use
had been the old Babylonian Seleucid Era, whose Year One ran from September,
312 to September, 311, BCE. If it was the Seleucid Calendar, the year 487
would have run from September 175 to September 176, CE! They were getting
very warm.
Still to be deciphered
were Pi-Alpha-Nu: "Pan". They hunted up other texts found
at Dura (nearly all the documents found at Dura were in Greek, which surprised
scholars, for they had thought it an "obscure eddy in the mainstream of
Hellenism") and discovered that the Macedonian months had been in
use; of these, only one began with Pan-; this was Panemos,
July! This was a wonderful confirmation of Brouwer's work, but there was
still a problem. The day did not fit. Theta stood for 9,
and Panemos 9 would not fit either alternative for the Moon, July 3-5 or
July 10-12. They presumed that even in the Seleucid Era, the Julian (solar)
Calendar would have controlled the months, and they were stumped and discouraged.
Then it occurred to them that one possibility remained - perhaps the Romans
had not, at least not at Dura, yet outlawed the former Macedonian lunar
calendar. In a lunar calendar, each month begins with the new moon; Panemos
9 would have been the 9th day from the first appearance of the
lunar crescent.
As Johnson tells
it, he was literally shaking with excitement when he consulted Ginzel's
Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie, a 3-volume
reference that contained dates of new moons, as seen from Babylon. The
previous new moon had been June 24, at 9:56 AM, but this didn't work -
if June 24th was Panemos 1, then Panemos 9 would be July 2,
a day too early. But Ginzel's tables gave the astronomical new moon,
and JJ realized that a human observer would not have been able to see the
extremely thin new crescent on the evening of June 24; Panemos, therefore,
would not have started until the evening of the 25th, and Panemos
1 would have run from sunset June 25 to sunset June 26, and eight days
later Panemos 9 would have run from sunset July 3 to sunset July 4. Bingo!
Later, they realized they could fix the time a little more closely still:
they had learned that the horoskopos, i.e. ascendant, indicates
the eastern horizon, and the Sun, in Cancer, was well below the western
horizon, between sunset and midnight; therefore they decided that the baby
was born about 10 PM, July 3, 176 CE, OS. As an unexpected bonus, the scholars
were able to use this single example to show the exact correspondence between
the Seleucid & Julian calendars (Panemos 9, 487 S.E. = July 3, 176
CE), and to demonstrate that one of the Hellenistic lunar calendars, the
famous Babylonian cycle, had still, surprisingly, been in belated operation
as late as 176 CE!
But what about the
horoscope itself? Who was this babe? Was it a boy or a girl? Destined for
an ordinary existence, or prominence? Which of the wild medley of competing
religions (note the square of Apollon & Poseidon) did the family follow?
Dura (Doura-Europos on some maps) was a Babylonian-Seleucid Greek-Parthian
caravan city on the trade route from the Persian Gulf through Palmyra to
the Mediterranean, taken over in 165 CE (11 years before the horoscope
was drawn) by the Romans and turned into a frontier fortress. This Greco-Arab
society of Hellenistic/Roman Mesopotamia was a seething stew of co-existing-while-competing
races, nationalities and philosophies, including such oriental religions
as Persian Mithraism, Parthian Zoroastrianism, the cult of Adonis/Atargatis,
the Egyptian worship of Isis, as well as Orphism, Platonism, Stoicism,
Sabianism, Judaism, and even early Christianity (still considered merely
a minor sect of Judaism, and often harshly surpressed by the Romans).
Curious to see what
I could glean from the chart, I fed the data into CCRS, using 10 PM LAT
(Local Apparent Time), and deriving the latitude & longitude from an
historical atlas. On studying the chart in depth, I was forced to think
about the possibility that the child was stillborn, or died right after
birth, for Aries/Sun=Admetos is the formula for "corpse," and Uranus+Poseidon-Saturn,
another death formula, came out at 20Aries53, square chart-ruler Jupiter,
and the Asc is square Saturn. Yet I suspect, if there is a death here,
it may have been the mother. The Moon, ruler of the 5th, the
8th-of-death of the 10th-of-the-mother, is in Scorpio
in the 8th opposed by Uranus and Hades. Other indications of
the possible subsequent loss of the mother: Moon/Admetos=MC, and both Mars/Saturn
and Moon+Mars-Aries=Venus, which is entering 0 of the fixed signs, sometimes
called the "Death Axis." If we take the MC as the place of the mother,
the close conjuction of Neptune, combined with an nth-degree Venus, tends
to confirm her loss, if not at the birth, shortly thereafter, though there
are many other possibilities for these pictures. It did not seem likely
to me that a family would deeply and permanently carve a figure on a wall
commemorating a stillbirth, or a birth that resulted in the death of the
mother, esp since the picture for family celebration, Aries/Asc-Cupido,
equalled the Meridian! I decided to proceed as if this was a live birth,
and analyze it from that point of view.
The newborn's Sun
is also on the axis of Aries/Jupiter (ruler of the primary angles), as
well as Aries/Saturn, Mercury/Neptune, Moon/Venus, Venus/Uranus, and Mars/NNode.
To strengthen the babe we have Sun/Jupiter=Asc, a hopeful picture. Was
it born to the one of the Roman garrison families occupying the outpost,
or to Greek or Rabbinical scholars perhaps? Arab tradesmen? Parthian militia?
Actors? Artists? Soothsayers?
Since we know almost
nothing about the circumstances here, I started with the one incontrovertable
fact: a courtyard wall near the center of an ancient city was wet-plastered
so that a horoscope could be cut into it, and it was left there, and not
plastered over, for the duration of that family's occupation of the dwelling.
From this we can conclude that astrology was important to them, possibly
even an integral part of their philosophy and way of life.
There are several
planetary pictures for astrology, but since Neptune culminates, the formula
Nep+Kronos-Admetos was the one I started with (this formula also can mean
"heavenly bodies" and so can refer to astronomy, as well). It came out
on the MC! Aries+Uranus-Apollon hit MC, Neptune, and the Apollon-Poseidon
cnj as well; Jupiter/Apollon-Uranus (success in astrology) came out on
Mercury, and Uranus/Apollon-Vulcanus equalled Jupiter & Zeus. No doubt
about it. But was the child to become a professional astrologer? First
we have to seek out more information.
Since Mars/Zeus=Sun,
Zeus/Vertex=MC, and Zeus was exactly on the Aries axis, this meant that
every midpoint and planetary picture that hit Aries, (including MC/Asc,
MC/Vulcanus, Node/Zeus, Node/Admetus, Moon/Cupido, Asc/Venus, Venus/Pluto,
Neptune/Pluto & Jupiter/Equatorial Asc) also hit Zeus! According to
the Encyclopedia Britannica, after surviving through Babylonian, then Seleucid,
then Parthian rule, the trade caravan city of Dura was annexed to the Roman
Empire in 165 CE (just 11 years before this horoscope was drawn) and used
by them for nearly a century as a cantonment and frontier fortress. With
all that Mars and Zeus, this may very well have been the horoscope of a
Roman army brat! But how to check the Roman connection further?
Were they strangers
in a strange land? The formulas for aliens are based on Saturn/Hades combinations,
and here Saturn/Hades=MC, and Saturn + Hades - Moon = Mars. Saturn + Hades
- Kronos, "occupying power", equalled the dynamic (and violent) Uranus-Hades-Moon
combo, as well as Cupido and Aries/Zeus. "Special assignments in a war"
- Kronos + Admetos - Zeus, equalled Mars, Vulcanus, and Pluto. The military
patterns I tried all came up strong: Cupido/Zeus (military organization)
= Asc, Pluto, MC, & Neptune (Cupido + Zeus - Neptune: "parts of army
forced into inactivities"). Military camps are Aries + Asc - Zeus; here
it = Asc, Sun/Jupiter, Sun/Admetos, Sun/Saturn, Sun/Kronos, and Mercury,
ruler of the 4th. Saturn/Vulcanus: "vigilance, to be on guard", = Mars.
(This last picture occurred at the 1982 Libra Equinox, when US troops policed
Beirut). Kronos/ + Admetos - Saturn is "to be in a difficult position because
of separation or seclusion"; it equals Jupiter, ruler of Asc & MC -
certainly suitable if this is a military family sent to protect an outlying
fortress at the edge of the endangered empire! These all could well represent
the newborn's connection with the Roman occupation.
Marcus Aurelius ruled
Rome in 176 CE, and the chart's Zeus was on his natal Uranus, which is
interesting because we know that the Emperor was, at the time, constantly
occupied with rebellions and "brush wars," trying desperately to hold the
Empire together (Uranus/Zeus = "sudden outbreak of war" and "the will").
Perhaps significant is that the babe's NNode was the Emperor's Zeus, and
his Sun was the degree of the Emperor's NNode! This not only connects the
little one's horoscope with Rome, but implies that there may be a military
role for him (by now I have assumed it is a him) in the military
affairs of the Empire; besides, the formula for soldier, Aries + Moon -
Mars, = his Sun/Zeus & Asc! Later I checked the Rome Foundation chart
of 753 BCE, and found that Junior's Kronos was Rome's Admetos, his Admetos
Rome's NNode, his Jupiter is trine Rome's Mars, and his Mars is Rome's
Zeus! Not only an army brat, but possibly a potentially important one -
also suggested by Cupido + Vulcanus - Kronos = Sun: "privileged social
standing."
What did he look
like? (Jupiter, his ruler, exalted, on Vulcanus axis - probably large,
and strong); Neptune, his other ruler, is in Jupiter's sign. Big fella,
probably tending to overweight. Born on the Day of Mars, Hour of the Sun,
what would this little Roman grow up to be? Military prominence is certainly
a possibility, especially since Sun/Zeus ("born leader") = Asc, and Sun
+ Zeus - Aries ("military persons of rank," "belonging to the general staff")
= Sun!
Yet there are other
possibilities - the Sun in the 5th house suggests a pleasure-and-fun loving
nature, possibly drawn to performing, being the center of attention. The
MC-Neptune combination led me to try pictures for acting and music: Venus/Apollon,
a midpoint for music, art, friendship and peace = Mars, and the Meridian
(with Neptune) is on the Aries/Cupido axis, an artistic influence. A formula
for actor-- MC + Neptune - Sun, =Aries, tNode, Zeus, & Moon/Cupido.
For successful actor, Sun + Apollon - Venus, should = Mars; here it does
not, but does = Ma/Ze, and Jupiter + Apollon - Vulcanus! Yet Saturn &
Pluto are conjunct on the chart, and Saturn/Pluto = Mars & Vulcanus,
indicating that the child was probably trained into strong discipline,
endurance and survival; if he was to be an artist, actor, or musician,
that sort of upbringing would seem a little less likely. So we are back
to the military probability, with the arts a possible side interest. But
there's a problem: Sun/Neptune equals both Mars: "weak, sensitive, weak
muscles" (FDR, crippled by adult-onset polio, had this) and Saturn: "inhibitions
through illness or physical disability, emotional of mental illness, emotional
affliction." Yet another possibility presents itself here: Ebertin mentions
that mediums have this planetary picture, and under Sun-Neptune lists "Abundant
experience in the spiritual and psychic realms or spheres, mystical experiences...sympathetic
understanding of other people." These are not a patterns you would
expect to find on the chart of one who was simply a professional soldier.
Yet at the same time, we have Saturn/Pluto = Mars: brutality, violence,
necessity to fight for existence; maltreatment &/or strict discipline;
magicians, adepts (italics mine).
Trying out the spiritual,
mystical hints, I wondered what religion might be followed by this fellow.
A bit of research came up with the fact that Mithraism, a major mystery
religion of the era, was popular with many Roman soldiers, bureaucrats
and merchants, and though only a little is known about Mithraic doctrines
(adherents were sworn to secrecy), it was definitely a religion based on
the sky! Every known Mithraic monument - from England, through Europe and
into the Middle East, features constellation figures and zodiacal signs
surrounding the central feature: the "tauroctony" - Mithra in the act of
slaughtering a sacrificial bull. The Roman legions carried this (males-only)
religion into every area they occupied, setting up elaborately carved altars,
usually undergound, in grottoes or caves. This would fit both the Roman
military theme, and the fact of the casting of the horoscope itself!
Traditionally, caves
& caverns are ruled by Saturn: here the 12th (as 4th from 9th, i.e.
place where religion is practiced) is ruled by Saturn, in the house &
sign of neighborhood; its conjunction with Pluto stresses the underground
nature of the site, and Admetos indicates it is enclosed. HadesUranus is
in the 2nd, which is the 6th house of ritual from the 9th of religion;
Mars, ruler 2, is in the 6th of ritual, trine the MC. Scorpio on the 9th
cusp affirms a secretive religion and suggests that the rites could include
death. Pisces, the sign of sacrifice, rises, and Neptune, planet of sacrifice,
culminates. This child's Venus/Poseidon (faith, religion) = Mars (religious
activities, religious zeal) & also = Vulcanus: power, might, force
of a religion. MC + Venus - Poseidon is the formula for strong religious
conviction: here MC/Venus equals Poseidon. (The only other
way to read this is that the babe itself was sacrificed, and I definitely
don't want to get into that!!)
Now the chart began
to come into focus: with his need to be the center of attention, his military
Roman upbringing, and his mystical inclinations, might not this child be
destined to become a priest of Mithra? I tried to think of other patterns
I could try to test this out, but for some inexplicable reason, there are
no planetary pictures listed for the sacrifice of a bull (darn!); so I
tried the tame "to take part in a funeral service" -- Asc + Mars - Saturn:
it came out at 7 Tau 33, sq Merc, on the Mars/Hades axis, at the mouth
of the Celestial Bull! (The precession correction, from July 176 to
January 1996 (1819.5 years) is 25°23'; this brings it (A+Ma-Sa) to
2 Gem 56 -- 495 Tauri, a double star at the Bull's mouth). The relief sculptures
of the tauroctony showed Mithra gripping the bull by the mouth and
pulling his head back. But to slaughter a bull is a bloody, drastic business
- what could I use to check this? Taking the UranusHades (sudden mean acts,
murder) conjunction as a focus, I subtracted Mars (sudden damage or death
by weapons): it came out exactly = MC! This could relate directly to the
horrors of battle, of course, but when I added the precession correction
to the UranusHades, I discovered that the conjunction came to 29 Taurus
- the Pleiades cluster of stars in the shoulder of the Bull. This
is the place the Mithraic bull was stabbed, to bring forth its life-sustaining
blood! (In India this cluster marked the 1st Nakshatra Krittika,
The Cutter(s), representing the nurses of the infant God
of War).There's a potential for plenty of violence here: Mars + Hades -
Vulcanus, murderous deeds = the debilitated Moon (at fanatic, destructive,
and sacrificial Alpha Centauri). Moreover, the Moon was at the stars of
the Scorpion's head which, in the Hindu lunar mansions, formed Anuradha,
the only Nakshatra whose Regent is Mitra!
A man born
under) Mitra's mansion [Anuradha], he will be wise and a wanderer, have
steadfast friends, will live in foreign countries, be unhappy through hunger,
enjoy all kinds of jewels, pleasures and riches, be preeminent by birth,
fame and energy, have both dharma and worldly gain, and be one who makes
enemies into friends.
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- Lunar
Mansions in the Charts of Men, Vrddhayavanajataka
of Minaraja, ca
4th century CE: Sanskrit, trans Valerie J Roebuck
(oldest extant account
of the significance of the Vedic lunar mansions in natal astrology) |
There don't seem to
be any worshippers of Mithra around any more to check out, but Franz Cumont,
a famous scholar of Mithraism, had Uranus in the degree of babe's Sun,
(Mithra was Sol Invictus, identified with Helios, the Sun God: recall
that this baby was born in the Hour of the Sun), and David Ulansey, author
of The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries, has his natal Uranus less
than 2 earlier (interesting that Ulansey, who has challenged Cumont's hypothesis
that Orion represented Mithra and is championing Perseus in his place,
was born on Cumont's Uranus return!)
FIXED
STARS:
"I am a star
which goes with thee and shines out of the depths"
-
I had decided not
to check each placement of the chart against my own Fixed Star Encyclopedia
until I had done most of the traditional & Uranian interpretations,
because I wanted to see if I could read the chart without it, and then
see if the conclusions I had come to were sustained by the stars. Besides
the bull's mouth and the Pleiades, there were 2 surprises: first, stars
associated with astrology & astronomy came up more strongly than I
had anticipated - he (I still think it's a he) may have indeed practiced
astrology, whether as a priest of Mithra or not. (After all, he may have
grown up seeing his own horoscope on the wall, year after year). Second,
there were many fixed star placements associated with injuries; this led
me to believe he may have started as a soldier (possibly an officer), and
after injuries kept him out of battle he may have turned to the study of
the sky. This could explain the "weak muscles" & "physical disabilities"
patterns, as well as the many death and funeral pictures prominent, indicating
either the loss of many comrades, and/or himself, as a priest, presiding
over such rites). His progressed Sun would have come to natal Mars when
he was about 32, when Saturn, by double arc, came to his Part of Fortune,
and UranusHades to his Saturn, and by double arc, to his Pluto. Mercury,
by half-arc, came to his Mars/Saturn, and by double arc, to Admetos, while
Mars + Saturn - MC double-arced to his Asc. In this year (208 CE) he may
have nearly died, or, at the very least, thoughts of death preoccupied
him, perhaps turning him to a religious path. 208 CE was the year Emperor
Septimus Severus triumphed over Parthian invaders in Mesopotamia (was Junior
with him?) and returned in triumph to Rome.
If he lived long
enough, i.e. to 42, a fairly advanced age at that time, he would have seen
the Halley's Comet apparition of 217-218, which was quite bright, reaching
0 Magnitude in the spring of 218 (Dion Cassius called it "a very fearful
star"). Comets are important year-indicators: at his Solar Return it would
have been 27Leo35, in the 4th house of the return, cnj the return's chart-ruler
Venus, and the late 6th of his natal chart; solar return Mars squared his
natal Asc, with Saturn/Uranus bracketing his Moon, opposite natal Uranus/Hades.
At its perihelion Halley's was 22Aries57, square his natal nodes. The comet
was generally perceived to have been the agent of death for Emperor Macrinus
in that year; it may have done for our friend as well.
The precession correction
for the difference in the fixed star placements between 176 CE and 1996
(1,820 years) is 25 23' which is added to each position in the horoscope,
to match it with current star positions. Besides the UranusHades at the
Pleiades, already noted, his natal Pluto was at Omicron Aurigae & 132
Tauri (now 27-28 Gemini). Our figure of Auriga, the Charioteer, was in
ancient China "The Five Chariots" - a military encampment! The Greeks held
that the charioteer was Erichthonius, adopted son of Athena, who invented
the chariot because he could not walk. Three years ago I tried putting
these two themes together (military and disabled) with the idea that crippling
& war disabilities might turn up at Auriga's stars, and so it proved.
(War vet Ron Kovic, for instance, of "Born on the 4th of July", has Sun,
Uranus, & the NNode aligned with stars of Auriga!). Saturn was at the
star 60 Orionis (now 29 Gemini), below the upraised right arm of the huge
hunter/warrior figure the Chinese called "The Supreme Commander" with,
in the same degree, Menkalinan, Beta Aurigae (also in the Chinese military
garrison), and 36 Aurigae, which the Chinese called "The Headquarters Standard,"
ruling class distinctions, rank, and the proper observation of rites. Admetos
was at star 1 Geminorum (now at 0 Cancer) in Castor's left foot (the Gemini
twins were military heroes), with 30 & 40 Aurigae (also in The HQ Standard,
concerned w/rank, etc), and Chi2 Orionis at the tip of the Orion's
sword, an asterism which the Chinese called "The Officer in Charge of Omens!"
Complementing this is Cupido at Kashud, Theta Ophiuchi, called "The Magician"
in the most ancient cuneiform texts. An entire (possible) story has emerged.
Military service, disability, and a new (or continuing) profession as a
priest/occultist/astrologer/seer.
Note: After all this
work, I told Gary Christen about the horoscope, and he shot me down! According
to Gary, the British Museum has many of these horoscopes, all electionals
for Roman Army operations! I was truly crushed until I studied the figure
from that point of view. If this was an elected time for any military campaign,
troop movement or re-supply, the astrologer was a candidate for a malpractice
suit! Would you choose to start out with the Moon, mistress of the flow
of events, in detriment in the sign of death, in the 8th house of death,
applying to a square of Mercury and Mars? The Asc is about to square Saturn
in the 3rd of travel, and the chart is for 10PM, not a usual time for army
movements, unless there was an emergency. The following sunrise would have
been much better, when the Moon would be at 8 Scorpio, and having escaped
the deadly squares, would be flowing instead towards trines to Sun, Jupiter
and NNode. Gary, I rest my case. ((Another possibility has just occurred
to me: could this an electional chart for a Mithraic ritual bull sacrifice?))
After I had completed
this article, I searched through books on ancient civilizations hoping
to discover one or two possible illustrations for it. I hoped simply to
find pictures of the general area - my digression into Mithraic possibilities
had started as a shot in the dark. No map of the known Mithraic sites had
shown any worship that far east, but to my astonishment, a picture of
a Mithraeum discovered at Dura turned up! Of course, this proves nothing,
but I was excited nonetheless!
This article is certainly
an exercise in Aries hubris! To attempt an interpretion of a horoscope
with almost no knowledge of its background or purpose is presumptuous,
to say the least. As for the use of multi-national sources, I have found
that the sky is a cross- and inter- cultural space. Western constellations
& their mythic associations work everywhere in the world, as do the
Chinese, Hindu, Arabian and Mayan/Aztec; apparently, the message is the
message is the message, find it where you will! But really, to me, the
ability we now have to interpret a chart with almost no initial information
demonstrates the amazing power and potential for analysis offered by the
Uranian System, butressed and affirmed by the Fixed Stars.
Oh, by the way. the
chart's Saturn/Admetos: "of long duration," equals both chart-ruler Jupiter
and Uranus/Apollon, the combination for astrology: a perfect expression
of the resilience and endurance of our discipline, and of the horoscope
itself, discovered after a "duration" of more than 1,800 years!
Bibliography:
Booher, Wayne. I
am indebted to Wayne for his ideas on planetary pictures for sacrifice,
caves, grottoes, etc, and for David Ulansey's article in Scientific
American.
Campion, Nicholas.
The Book of World Horoscopes: Wellingborough: The Aquarian Press,
1988.
Christen, Gary. personal
conversation, June, 1996.
Cirlot, J. E. A
Dictionary of Symbols. New York: Philosophical Library, Inc, 1962.
Cumont, Franz. The
Mysteries of Mithra: New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1956.
Cumont, Franz. Astrology
& Religion among the Greeks and Romans: New York, Dover Publications,
Inc, 1960.
Ebertin, Reinhold.
The Combination of Stellar Influences. Wurttemberg 1972: Ebertin-Verlag.
Encyclopaedia
Britannica, Vol 7, p 612, & Vol 15, p 604. Chicago, London, etc:
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc, 1965.
Goodenough, Erwin
R. Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period. Princeton: Bollingen
Series, Princeton University Press, 1988 (illustration of Dura Mithraeum).
Houck, Richard. Mr
Houck was kind enough to send me Valerie Roebuck's translation of the Vrddhayavanajataka
of Minaraja.
Johnson, Jotham.
"Tell Time by the Stars," Archaeology, New York: New York University
Press, 1963.
Lehman, J. Lee. The
Book of Rulerships. West Chester: Whitford Press, 1992.
Niggemann, Hans.
The Key to Uranian Astrology: New York: Hans Niggemann, 1977.
Roebuck, Valerie
J. The Circle of Stars, An Introduction to Indian Astrology. Rockport:
Element Inc, 1992
Roebuck, Valerie
J., letter to Richard Houck dated July 21, 1995, with translation of the
Vrddhayavanajataka of Minaraja, Lunar Mansions in Natal Astrology,
books 60 & 63.
Rosenberg, Diana
K. Encyclopaedia//Correspondence Course of Fixed Stars & Constellations.
New York, 1996.
Staal, Julius D.
W. Stars of Jade. Decatur, GA: Writ Press, 1984.
Ulansey, David. The
Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries: Oxford University Press, NY, 1989.
Ulansey, David. "The
Mithraic Mysteries," Scientific American, December, 1989, pp. 130-135.
Walters, Derek. Chinese
Astrology. Wellingborough, England: The Aquarian Press, 1987.
Witte-Lefeldt, Rules
for Planetary Pictures, Hamburg, 1977: Ludwig Rudolph (Witte-Verlag).
For Urania started
Feb 27, 1996
finished July 11,
1996 |
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