Astrological Origins Part 3B
Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2018 1:36 am
[ORIGIN3a] and [ORIGIN3b]: Astrological Origins Part III: Abridged
excerpts from Rupert Gleadow's THE ORIGIN OF THE ZODIAC, 1968,
specifically with reference to the origin of DECANS-which-were-PENTADS,
and EXALTATIONS [see file HELIACAL], both Fagan's discoveries, and the
naming of the constellations. Whereas Fagan concentrates on what he
saw as the prototypical seeds of the original zodiac in Egypt,
Gleadow's approach is to survey the historical diffusion, interaction,
and evolution of astrological concepts in ancient cultures. Although
he differs with Fagan in his approach and in the interpretation of some
of Fagan's findings, Gleadow credits Fagan in a chapter on the
rediscovery of the ancient zodiac: "This is, however is a relatively
recent discovery, and the credit for it belongs to an Irishman named
Cyril Fagan, who first published his findings in 1947. His reasoning
collided head-on with the habits and beliefs of astrologers, who for
some fifteen hundred years had been quite happily using a zodiac
measured from the equinox."
File [ORIGIN3a]: In Chapter 12, The Horoscope of Eternity, Gleadow
gives a fascinating overview of the Egyptian Calendar, and then covers
Fagan's discovery of the DECANS, which were PENTADS or 5 degree
divisions, more extensively than did Fagan in his ZODIACS OLD AND NEW.
Gleadow also recognizes the the Egyptian "straight line from Arcturus
to SPICA as the original measuring point of the zodiac." He disagrees
with the Egyptian zodiac as an anciently established concept, but
acknowledges the origin of the DECANS/PENTADS as Egyptian, which he
says such were not divisions of the zodiac, but were measuring points
similar to lunar asterisms as markers of the moon's path. This is may
be a scholarly moot point since many scholars generally agree that moon
watching must have been the first germ of any astronomical observation
anywhere. Gleadow makes many important points, one of them--the
celestial equator's inconstancy causes changes of the DECAN/PENTADS
rising over centuries (and which inconsistency is also is a factor in
precession). This is the reason Fagan abandoned the Pentads as
indicating the essential meaning of the constellations although Fagan
sites the Pentads in Astrological Origins in his chapter on "Naming the
Constellations." On other points of interpretation (such as the lesser
one of identification of the Meta-decans), Gleadow disagrees with
Fagan, and presents his own views.
Further, regarding the DECAN/PENTADS, Gleadow discusses the Egyptian
worldview as it applied to their astrology. For example, the Egyptians
were not oriented to divination; their view was to the absolute
immanence of the ideal eternal in the temporal. "The magical influence
of the hour...would not lie on one horizon to the exclusion of the
other, but would be characteristic of that moment, at which when a
certain star rises, another certain star necessarily sets. From the
magical point of view, therefore, the hour...[of whatever asterism
named] could well control both horizons at once." Gleadow uses a most
wonderful phrase to refer to this: "The Moment of the Horizon!" In the
Egyptian concept of the magical influence of the hour, (i.e., what
celestial influence was on the Horizon as indicated by both the
Ascendant position and its corresponding opposite Descendant position),
Gleadow says the Egyptians were the source of Plato's doctrine that
'each sign had its ruling god and the later astrological doctrine that
each sign had its ruling planet.' Gleadow sees the Egyptian worldview
as more akin to what might be suggested in Jung's Synchronicity, rather
than to Babylonian divination.
Chapter 12, The Horoscope of Eternity, also cites the importance of
the Heliacal Rising of Sirius in the Egyptian Calendar as their
'eternity connection.' "Since the rising of Sothis seems to have been
to the Egyptians the only important astronomical moment, this will
doubtless have been the origin of the astrological notion that certain
celestial moments are more important than others, and also that the
decan/pentads represent the condition of the sky at the particular
moment of the 'horoscope of eternity,' that is to say, of taking up
residence in eternity." One of Gleadow's final comments is that "all
Egyptian horoscope-charts are diagrams of the heliacal rising of
Sirius..." and that "Nothing was predicted from them either in this
world or the next, but each one was the moment of a Sacred Marriage of
Isis and Osiris; and this, in the simultaneous rising every eight years
of Sirius and Venus, was the moment when the ideal touched the real."
Again, the Moment of the Horizon!
File [ORIGIN3b] PART III: In Chapter 13, The Naming of the
Constellations, Gleadow begins with the philosophic and Jungian concept
of Synchronicity. In a charming story of a possible conversation
between an Egyptian priest and an Assyrian priest, he points out that,
unlike the Babylonians, the Egyptians had a philosophic lack of
orientation to divination. To a certain extent, Gleadow associates the
divinatory usage of the zodiac as part of the zodiac as we know it,
which is a main point in his notation of a later rather than earlier
origin. Gleadow says, "This suggests that the first notion of
astrology as we know it was begotten on Babylon by Egypt between the
seventh and fifth centuries, and the zodiac itself, as a calendrical
device, was of similar origin but may be a little older."
Most importantly, he discusses Fagan's discovery of the EXALTATIONS
and as well adds points of his own. The Exaltations are the heliacal
appearances and disappearances of the planets in the year 786 B.C.,
which commemorate extraordinary and unique astronomical phenonmena.
The EXALTATION'S (Hypsomata's) historical significance and implications
for astrology is set forth below by Fagan (5/1956 "Solunars").
Although the major conclusions and focus of Gleadow's history are
significantly dependent on Fagan's discoveries as to the origins,
Gleadow is an outstanding historical scholar in his own right.
Examination and debate can bring about clarification. Among Gleadow's
concluding comments, "This first zodiac, of course, cannot have been
tropical. It was not supposed to be either tropical or sidereal, but
was simply assumed to be both at once....That the first zodiac can only
have been measured from the stars was not only inevitable but also a
fact--although, of course, it was no sooner invented than it was
thought to be tropical and used as such."
* * *
*
*
*
*
MAY 1956 AMERICAN ASTROLOGY
Cyril Fagan's "Solunars"
[Exaltations - Hypsomata]
...It is, of course, common knowledge that the Chaldeans--an
ancient Semetic tribe, which originally inhabited the lands about the
estuaries of the Tigris and Euphrates--gradually became the dominant
people in Babylonia winning renown in the old world for their mastery
of Babylonain astrology, so much so that Chaldean became a synonym for
an astrologer.
The astrology of Ptolemy's TETRABIBLOS, Manetho's APOTELESMATICA,
Manilius' ASTRONOMICON and Firmicus' MATHESEOS, with its copious
aphorisms as to dignities, exaltations, rulerships, signatures,
influences and rules, which form the bedrock of medieval and modern
testbooks, was almost wholly derived from Babylonian and Egyptian
sources. If these aphorisms are to have any validity, they must
obviously be related to the zodiac wherein they were originally framed.
Hence it is of prime importance to ascertain what, in fact, was the
zodiac of the ancient astrologers of Babylon and Uruk. Hitherto it has
been taken for granted that the Babylonian zodiac was identical with
that in common use today, namely the tropical or moving zodiac, which
takes its beginning from the vernal equinoctial point (V.P.) designated
Areis 0 degrees....
The discovery of the date and origin of the exaltation degrees of
the planets, known to the Greeks as the Hypsomata, decisively
establishes that the Babylonian zodiac was sidereal as the following
remarkable tabulation confirms:
Event: Installation of Nabu, the great Babylonian god of astrology
in his new temple at Neneveh, during the reign of Adad-Nirari III (809-
782 B.C.) in the Babylonian year commencing 1st Nisan at sunset, April
3, 786 B.C. (Julian). 1st Nisan was the Babylonian New Year's Day.
It will be noticed that in the sidereal zodiac all the planets are
in their exact exaltation degrees, the Moon alone showing the small
deviation of -3.3 degrees. The tabulation establishes the following
fundamental facts:
(a) The 12 zodiacal constellations were known in the 8th century B.C.
(b) The Babylonians used a sidereal zodiac.
(c) Longitudes were measured from the Pleiades in Taurus 5 degrees,
Aldebaran in Taurus 15 degrees, Regulus in Leo 5 degrees, Spica in
Virgo 29 degrees, or Antares in Scorpio 15 degrees, but not from
the vernal equinoctial point.
(d) The zodiacal constellations were of strictly equal lengths, there
being 30 degrees to each constellation. The Babylonian
constellations thus differed from the Graeco-Roman constellations
of the late period, which were all of unequal length. It is the
Graeco-Roman zodiacal constellations that illustrate our modern
"Star Atlases," and which have created so much confusion.
(e) The exaltation degrees relate to the sidereal and not to
the tropical zodiac.
(f) In A.D. 213 the sidereal longitude of the vernal-point
(V.P) was zero, when both the sidereal and tropical zodiacs
coincided. The Almagest and Tetrabiblos were written less than 100
years before this date, hence to all intents and purposes Claudius
Ptolemy's zodiac was sidereal, at the time these works were
written.
(g) On January l, 1954, the sidereal longitude of the vernal
point had retrograded to Pisces 5 degrees 48 minutes (335 degrees
48'), hence the true "ayanamsha" (i.e. 360 degrees - 335 degrees
48') is now 24 degrees 12', which must be deducted from all
tropical longitudes to reduce them to their sidereal equivalents.
(h) Because the planetary exaltation degrees (Hypsomata) are integral
to the Babylonian zodiac, the latter has been designated the
Hypsomatic zodiac.
The sidereal longitude of the vernal point, Aries 13.80 degrees for
the year 786 B.C. was obtained by deducting the tropical longitudes
from the traditional exaltation degrees and adjusting the mean value
with that obtained from the position of the vernal point in the luni-
solar tablets of Naburiannu and Kidinnu and the Babylonian almanacs of
the Seleucid period (312-64 B.C.). Calculation discloses that the
autumnal point, Libra 13.80 degrees, was 14.80 degrees to the eat of
Spica, hence Spica's sidereal longitude was Virgo 29.00 degrees.
[NOTE: this was written before Garth Allen's SVP correction to Virgo.]
this fact enabled me to compute the following sidereal longitudes of
the vernal point for the years stated:
Vernal Point
B.C. 1001 Aries 16.76 degrees
" 901 " 15.38
" 801 " 14.01
" 701 " 12.63
" 601 " 11.24
" 501 " 9.86
" 401 " 8.48
" 301 " 7.09
" 201 " 5.71
" 101 " 4.33
" 1 " 2.95
A.D. 100 " 1.57
" 200 " 0.19
" 300 Pisces 28.80
The V.P. for any intervening year between the above century
longitudes can be obtained by simple interpolation. Multiplying the
decimal of a degree by 60 reduces it to minutes of arc: thus 0.80
degrees x 60 = 0d48'. A tropical longitude can be converted into is
sidereal equivalent by merely adding the V.P. for the year.
* * * * *
[ORIGIN3b] Rupert Gleadow's THE ORIGIN OF THE ZODIAC
Chapter 13: The Naming of the Constellations
The origin of an idea is naturally hard to trace; it appears to
spring full-grown like Athena from the head of Zeus. But when Athena
was called on to create she produced an olive-tree out of the earth;
and the study of human intuition shows that there is normally some soil
in which the idea has grown. Its genesis, like that of anything else,
is by conflation: the meeting and mating of two old and known ideas
produces one which is new.
The zodiac grew up, and must have grown up, as a device for
measuring time. Only later did it come to be used for divination, and
later still for the analysis of character. But divination is not and
never has been based on cause and effect. The principle, which has
been best explained by Jung and Pauli,1 is synchronicity, or the
interpretation of signs occurring simultaneously. Divination is a
matter of signs, not causes, and the ancients did not supposed there to
be any mysterious causative influence of the stars. It is therefore a
waste of time for either astrologers or their enemies to try to
establish or disprove the existence of such an influence.
The Babylonians were deeply addicted to taking omens, and in
particular to observing them in the sky. This is one half of
astrological practice. But their method was basically empirical; they
expected a similar sign in heaven to be followed by a similar event on
earth in virtue of correspondence between heaven and earth, not in
consequence of any cause. And, most important, they did not time their
omens very closely. The occurrence of a halo round the moon and
enclosing Venus would have two different significations according as it
appeared in the west or east, and possibly according to the width of
the conjunction; but it was only expected to foretell one event in the
near but not precise future, and it was not taken as a significant
moment from which the future should be counted. This, which is the
other half of astrological practice, was unknown to the Babylonians in
the second millennium.
The Egyptians, on the other hand, were not given to celestial
divination. Next to telling the time at night and the seasons of the
year, their chief interest in the stars was in learning how the soul
could ascend to heaven and join the Sun in His boat. They did,
however, believe in lucky and unlucky days, and each hour of the day or
night had its tutelary spirit, whose name was known. It was inevitable
some hours, and later some ruling spirits or some groups of stars,
should be regarded as more favorable than others. The same idea could
have arisen equally well in Babylon.
In addition, the Egyptians possessed two calendars which were far
superior to anything known to the Babylonians; and because one of them
rotated through the seasons there there occurred once in fifteen
centuries an epochal beginning-point when the first day of the
Wandering Calendar returned to its ideal position in the Sothic
Calendar. Thus the recurrence of epochal dates was part of Egyptian
culture in a way that it could not be in Babylon. Furthermore, the
Egyptians had a traditional celestial diagram which they copied from
century to century, and although it was more traditional than
contemporary it did represent a particular moment from which time was
counted. Thus it is not unfair to say that the first horoscope ever
drawn was, so far as we know, that of the Phoenix Era of 2767 B.C.
The Egyptians will not have made any predictions from this
horoscope, nor was it drawn in terms of the zodiac; but when the
Assyrians conquered Egypt in 671 B.C., or even through cultural contact
in the previous century, there was likely to occur a conflation of
influences from which both the zodiac and the notion of astrological
prediction could arise. The evidence for this is in the timing.
... After all, when Babylonian priests were brought to Egypt in the
train of Esarhaddon, and after some years discovered the unchanging
Sothic calendar had the Horoscope of Eternity, their first question
might naturally have been: 'And what did you predict from that
celestial event?' The Egyptian priest would have blinked before
answering: 'We did not predict anything.' At which the Assyrian
priest's jaw would have dropped. Fancy missing such a wonderful
opportunity! I do not suggest that this little romance at Heliopolis
actually occurred; but it could have done: place, time and climate of
thought converged.
That was in the seventh century B.C. No direct evidence has
survived for the use of the zodiac in predication before the fifth
century, and in Egypt before the third.4 But Proclus, writing of the
philosopher Theophrastus, Aristotle's immediate successor who died
about 288 B.C., says that 'the most extraordinary thing of his age was
the lore of the Chaldeans, who foretold not only events of public
interest but even the lives and deaths of individuals.5' So astrology
as an effective technique invaded Greece in the latter half of the
fourth century. To have reached such a stage of development there must
already have been behind it a hundred years of practice. This suggests
that the first notion of astrology as we know it was begotten on
Babylon by Egypt between the seventh and fifth centuries...
Thus the zodiac certainly existed before 500 B.C. But the
conflation of Egyptian and Babylonian astronomy need not have waited
until the Persian occupation of Egypt, which lasted from 525, under
Cambyses, to 405. Nor is it likely to be the result of the brief
occupation by Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon in 567. The Assyrian
conquest and occupation lasted from 671 till 610, and the astronomical
library of Nabu was transferred from Calah to Nineveh by Asshurbanipal,
who reigned from 668 to 626. Astronomy was a great interest at the
Assyrian court, and at the same time the fashion ran strongly towards
Egyptian art, which was imitated and sold in great quantity to the
Assyrians by Phoenician artists.10
This takes us back as far as the seventh century B.C. To carry the
argument further we shall have to look to the exaltations of the
planets. Traditionally each planet is 'exalted' in a certain degree of
the zodiac, and has its fall in the opposite degree. Astrologers have
naturally assumed that each was especially strong or weak in those
degrees or signs containing them. Their origin, however, remained a
mystery, since they cannot be explained by juggling with the planets'
nodes, aphelions, or epicycles, or their proximity to the zenith.
The word translated 'exaltations' means in fact 'hiding-places', and
the hiding-places of a planet are obviously those parts of the zodiac
in which it is invisible, and especially the degree in which it
disappears from view into the sun's rays at heliacal setting and the
degree of its reappearance at heliacal rising. The same is true of the
moon, and is proved by the distance of the moon's 'hiding-place' from
the sun's, 14 degrees, which is a typical elongation for a new
crescent. Since these phenomena change their positions every time they
occur, we are evidently faced by an historical date, and there can be
no doubt whatever that this date is 786-785 B.C. As for the sun having
a hiding-place, it emerges from darkness at dawn on New Year's Day.
Until the zodiac drew attention to the position of planets in
constellations, the chief focus of interest in them was their heliacal
disappearance and reappearances, and in 786 all the planets had
heliacal phenomena in or very near the degrees of their exaltations--an
event so improbable that it cannot plausibly be ascribed to chance.
TABLE 23 - EXALTATIONS OF THE PLANETS
Exaltation I
Nisan = April 4th, 786 = New Year's Day
May 10th Venus heliacally set east in 9 CAN
Jun 22nd Jupiter " set 15 CAN 15 CAN
Jul 24th Venus " rose west in 18 VIR
Jul 30th Jupiter " rose west 21 CAN Aug 25th Mars
" set in 11 PIS Sep 14th Mercury " set east in
16 VIR 15 VIR
Sep 23rd Saturn " set west in 21 LIB 19 LIB
Oct 27th Saturn " rose east in 26 LIB
Feb 4th 785, Mars " rose east in 1 AQU 27 CAP
The positions of Sun, Moon, and Venus are for New Year's day:
Sun 19 ARI 19 ARI
Moon 29 ARI 3 TAU
Venus 26 PIS 27 PIS
(Mercury's 13 other phenomena omitted)
The year 786 B.C. saw the opening in Calah of the new temple of Nabu
(Nebo), the god of writing associated with the planet Mercury. This is
the origin of Mercury's connection with writing, wisdom, commerce, and
all similar subjects. The Egyptian god of writing and wisdom, Thoth-
Tahuti or Hermes Trismegistos, was not associated with the planet
Mercury until astrology was in full sail across the Hellenistic world;
for Thoth as god of time-measurement was a moon-god. He readily became
director-general of celestial happenings, as he was of the weighing of
the soul before Osiris, but there was no Egyptian reason to associate
him with Mercury.
There are two slight weaknesses in this argument. The heliacal
risings and settings are not as close together as they might have been;
and also some are risings and others settings. This apparently
haphazard selection may leave us unconvinced that the coincidence is
not an accident.
But the exaltations are not and cannot be the horoscope for the
foundation or opening of the temple of Nabu, for Mercury cannot be in
Virgo while the Sun is in Aries. They are simply heliacal phenomena
recorded in that year; and since they are not those closest to a given
date, and since they include an arbitrary mixture of settings and
risings, it becomes probably that they were not observed and catalogued
at the time, but were looked up in the temple records when the priest-
hood conceived the notion that they might be especially important. But
what could have given them that idea?
It is a curious thing about Egyptian astronomy that we often find
the year treated as of 360 days, the 5 epagomenae being ignored. If we
could believe that by 'days' the Egyptians meant 'degrees' they would
be using our system. And there is an extant text which says: 'A temple
day is 1/360 of a temple year.11 This is not an astronomical text at
all; on the contrary, by 'a day' it means a day's rations. But it
exemplifies once more the Egyptian habit of dividing the circle of the
year into 360 parts.
When Assyrian priests came to Egypt and compared notes with their
Egyptian colleagues, as they would naturally do, not begin monotheists,
they might easily think, if the esoteric lore were not full explained
to them, that the Egyptians divided the circle into 360 equal parts.
Thus the ideal circle of days invented by the Egyptians for use in the
afterlife would have become a real circle of new and convenient
degrees. This is possible even if a year of 360 days was used in the
mulAPIN tablets.
And similarly when the Assyrians met the Horoscope of Eternity and
realized that it was drawn for the beginning of an era, they would be
likely to return home and look up the records to see what they could do
in the same line. They could not choose a more significant epoch than
the foundation of the temple of their own god of astronomy. And
because the Egyptians mentioned planets in the west and south as well
as the east, they would think it natural to make a mixture of heliacal
settings and risings. If this hypothesis be correct, then the
exaltations were an Assyrian imitation of the Horoscope of Eternity,
not observed at the time but looked up in the records, and thus perhaps
a century or more later than 786 B.C. For almost a century scholars
have said that the zodiac was of Babylonian origin and left it at that;
it now seems more probable that it was the product of interaction
between Babylon, Egypt, and Assyria...
* * * * * * *
excerpts from Rupert Gleadow's THE ORIGIN OF THE ZODIAC, 1968,
specifically with reference to the origin of DECANS-which-were-PENTADS,
and EXALTATIONS [see file HELIACAL], both Fagan's discoveries, and the
naming of the constellations. Whereas Fagan concentrates on what he
saw as the prototypical seeds of the original zodiac in Egypt,
Gleadow's approach is to survey the historical diffusion, interaction,
and evolution of astrological concepts in ancient cultures. Although
he differs with Fagan in his approach and in the interpretation of some
of Fagan's findings, Gleadow credits Fagan in a chapter on the
rediscovery of the ancient zodiac: "This is, however is a relatively
recent discovery, and the credit for it belongs to an Irishman named
Cyril Fagan, who first published his findings in 1947. His reasoning
collided head-on with the habits and beliefs of astrologers, who for
some fifteen hundred years had been quite happily using a zodiac
measured from the equinox."
File [ORIGIN3a]: In Chapter 12, The Horoscope of Eternity, Gleadow
gives a fascinating overview of the Egyptian Calendar, and then covers
Fagan's discovery of the DECANS, which were PENTADS or 5 degree
divisions, more extensively than did Fagan in his ZODIACS OLD AND NEW.
Gleadow also recognizes the the Egyptian "straight line from Arcturus
to SPICA as the original measuring point of the zodiac." He disagrees
with the Egyptian zodiac as an anciently established concept, but
acknowledges the origin of the DECANS/PENTADS as Egyptian, which he
says such were not divisions of the zodiac, but were measuring points
similar to lunar asterisms as markers of the moon's path. This is may
be a scholarly moot point since many scholars generally agree that moon
watching must have been the first germ of any astronomical observation
anywhere. Gleadow makes many important points, one of them--the
celestial equator's inconstancy causes changes of the DECAN/PENTADS
rising over centuries (and which inconsistency is also is a factor in
precession). This is the reason Fagan abandoned the Pentads as
indicating the essential meaning of the constellations although Fagan
sites the Pentads in Astrological Origins in his chapter on "Naming the
Constellations." On other points of interpretation (such as the lesser
one of identification of the Meta-decans), Gleadow disagrees with
Fagan, and presents his own views.
Further, regarding the DECAN/PENTADS, Gleadow discusses the Egyptian
worldview as it applied to their astrology. For example, the Egyptians
were not oriented to divination; their view was to the absolute
immanence of the ideal eternal in the temporal. "The magical influence
of the hour...would not lie on one horizon to the exclusion of the
other, but would be characteristic of that moment, at which when a
certain star rises, another certain star necessarily sets. From the
magical point of view, therefore, the hour...[of whatever asterism
named] could well control both horizons at once." Gleadow uses a most
wonderful phrase to refer to this: "The Moment of the Horizon!" In the
Egyptian concept of the magical influence of the hour, (i.e., what
celestial influence was on the Horizon as indicated by both the
Ascendant position and its corresponding opposite Descendant position),
Gleadow says the Egyptians were the source of Plato's doctrine that
'each sign had its ruling god and the later astrological doctrine that
each sign had its ruling planet.' Gleadow sees the Egyptian worldview
as more akin to what might be suggested in Jung's Synchronicity, rather
than to Babylonian divination.
Chapter 12, The Horoscope of Eternity, also cites the importance of
the Heliacal Rising of Sirius in the Egyptian Calendar as their
'eternity connection.' "Since the rising of Sothis seems to have been
to the Egyptians the only important astronomical moment, this will
doubtless have been the origin of the astrological notion that certain
celestial moments are more important than others, and also that the
decan/pentads represent the condition of the sky at the particular
moment of the 'horoscope of eternity,' that is to say, of taking up
residence in eternity." One of Gleadow's final comments is that "all
Egyptian horoscope-charts are diagrams of the heliacal rising of
Sirius..." and that "Nothing was predicted from them either in this
world or the next, but each one was the moment of a Sacred Marriage of
Isis and Osiris; and this, in the simultaneous rising every eight years
of Sirius and Venus, was the moment when the ideal touched the real."
Again, the Moment of the Horizon!
File [ORIGIN3b] PART III: In Chapter 13, The Naming of the
Constellations, Gleadow begins with the philosophic and Jungian concept
of Synchronicity. In a charming story of a possible conversation
between an Egyptian priest and an Assyrian priest, he points out that,
unlike the Babylonians, the Egyptians had a philosophic lack of
orientation to divination. To a certain extent, Gleadow associates the
divinatory usage of the zodiac as part of the zodiac as we know it,
which is a main point in his notation of a later rather than earlier
origin. Gleadow says, "This suggests that the first notion of
astrology as we know it was begotten on Babylon by Egypt between the
seventh and fifth centuries, and the zodiac itself, as a calendrical
device, was of similar origin but may be a little older."
Most importantly, he discusses Fagan's discovery of the EXALTATIONS
and as well adds points of his own. The Exaltations are the heliacal
appearances and disappearances of the planets in the year 786 B.C.,
which commemorate extraordinary and unique astronomical phenonmena.
The EXALTATION'S (Hypsomata's) historical significance and implications
for astrology is set forth below by Fagan (5/1956 "Solunars").
Although the major conclusions and focus of Gleadow's history are
significantly dependent on Fagan's discoveries as to the origins,
Gleadow is an outstanding historical scholar in his own right.
Examination and debate can bring about clarification. Among Gleadow's
concluding comments, "This first zodiac, of course, cannot have been
tropical. It was not supposed to be either tropical or sidereal, but
was simply assumed to be both at once....That the first zodiac can only
have been measured from the stars was not only inevitable but also a
fact--although, of course, it was no sooner invented than it was
thought to be tropical and used as such."
* * *
*
*
*
*
MAY 1956 AMERICAN ASTROLOGY
Cyril Fagan's "Solunars"
[Exaltations - Hypsomata]
...It is, of course, common knowledge that the Chaldeans--an
ancient Semetic tribe, which originally inhabited the lands about the
estuaries of the Tigris and Euphrates--gradually became the dominant
people in Babylonia winning renown in the old world for their mastery
of Babylonain astrology, so much so that Chaldean became a synonym for
an astrologer.
The astrology of Ptolemy's TETRABIBLOS, Manetho's APOTELESMATICA,
Manilius' ASTRONOMICON and Firmicus' MATHESEOS, with its copious
aphorisms as to dignities, exaltations, rulerships, signatures,
influences and rules, which form the bedrock of medieval and modern
testbooks, was almost wholly derived from Babylonian and Egyptian
sources. If these aphorisms are to have any validity, they must
obviously be related to the zodiac wherein they were originally framed.
Hence it is of prime importance to ascertain what, in fact, was the
zodiac of the ancient astrologers of Babylon and Uruk. Hitherto it has
been taken for granted that the Babylonian zodiac was identical with
that in common use today, namely the tropical or moving zodiac, which
takes its beginning from the vernal equinoctial point (V.P.) designated
Areis 0 degrees....
The discovery of the date and origin of the exaltation degrees of
the planets, known to the Greeks as the Hypsomata, decisively
establishes that the Babylonian zodiac was sidereal as the following
remarkable tabulation confirms:
Event: Installation of Nabu, the great Babylonian god of astrology
in his new temple at Neneveh, during the reign of Adad-Nirari III (809-
782 B.C.) in the Babylonian year commencing 1st Nisan at sunset, April
3, 786 B.C. (Julian). 1st Nisan was the Babylonian New Year's Day.
It will be noticed that in the sidereal zodiac all the planets are
in their exact exaltation degrees, the Moon alone showing the small
deviation of -3.3 degrees. The tabulation establishes the following
fundamental facts:
(a) The 12 zodiacal constellations were known in the 8th century B.C.
(b) The Babylonians used a sidereal zodiac.
(c) Longitudes were measured from the Pleiades in Taurus 5 degrees,
Aldebaran in Taurus 15 degrees, Regulus in Leo 5 degrees, Spica in
Virgo 29 degrees, or Antares in Scorpio 15 degrees, but not from
the vernal equinoctial point.
(d) The zodiacal constellations were of strictly equal lengths, there
being 30 degrees to each constellation. The Babylonian
constellations thus differed from the Graeco-Roman constellations
of the late period, which were all of unequal length. It is the
Graeco-Roman zodiacal constellations that illustrate our modern
"Star Atlases," and which have created so much confusion.
(e) The exaltation degrees relate to the sidereal and not to
the tropical zodiac.
(f) In A.D. 213 the sidereal longitude of the vernal-point
(V.P) was zero, when both the sidereal and tropical zodiacs
coincided. The Almagest and Tetrabiblos were written less than 100
years before this date, hence to all intents and purposes Claudius
Ptolemy's zodiac was sidereal, at the time these works were
written.
(g) On January l, 1954, the sidereal longitude of the vernal
point had retrograded to Pisces 5 degrees 48 minutes (335 degrees
48'), hence the true "ayanamsha" (i.e. 360 degrees - 335 degrees
48') is now 24 degrees 12', which must be deducted from all
tropical longitudes to reduce them to their sidereal equivalents.
(h) Because the planetary exaltation degrees (Hypsomata) are integral
to the Babylonian zodiac, the latter has been designated the
Hypsomatic zodiac.
The sidereal longitude of the vernal point, Aries 13.80 degrees for
the year 786 B.C. was obtained by deducting the tropical longitudes
from the traditional exaltation degrees and adjusting the mean value
with that obtained from the position of the vernal point in the luni-
solar tablets of Naburiannu and Kidinnu and the Babylonian almanacs of
the Seleucid period (312-64 B.C.). Calculation discloses that the
autumnal point, Libra 13.80 degrees, was 14.80 degrees to the eat of
Spica, hence Spica's sidereal longitude was Virgo 29.00 degrees.
[NOTE: this was written before Garth Allen's SVP correction to Virgo.]
this fact enabled me to compute the following sidereal longitudes of
the vernal point for the years stated:
Vernal Point
B.C. 1001 Aries 16.76 degrees
" 901 " 15.38
" 801 " 14.01
" 701 " 12.63
" 601 " 11.24
" 501 " 9.86
" 401 " 8.48
" 301 " 7.09
" 201 " 5.71
" 101 " 4.33
" 1 " 2.95
A.D. 100 " 1.57
" 200 " 0.19
" 300 Pisces 28.80
The V.P. for any intervening year between the above century
longitudes can be obtained by simple interpolation. Multiplying the
decimal of a degree by 60 reduces it to minutes of arc: thus 0.80
degrees x 60 = 0d48'. A tropical longitude can be converted into is
sidereal equivalent by merely adding the V.P. for the year.
* * * * *
[ORIGIN3b] Rupert Gleadow's THE ORIGIN OF THE ZODIAC
Chapter 13: The Naming of the Constellations
The origin of an idea is naturally hard to trace; it appears to
spring full-grown like Athena from the head of Zeus. But when Athena
was called on to create she produced an olive-tree out of the earth;
and the study of human intuition shows that there is normally some soil
in which the idea has grown. Its genesis, like that of anything else,
is by conflation: the meeting and mating of two old and known ideas
produces one which is new.
The zodiac grew up, and must have grown up, as a device for
measuring time. Only later did it come to be used for divination, and
later still for the analysis of character. But divination is not and
never has been based on cause and effect. The principle, which has
been best explained by Jung and Pauli,1 is synchronicity, or the
interpretation of signs occurring simultaneously. Divination is a
matter of signs, not causes, and the ancients did not supposed there to
be any mysterious causative influence of the stars. It is therefore a
waste of time for either astrologers or their enemies to try to
establish or disprove the existence of such an influence.
The Babylonians were deeply addicted to taking omens, and in
particular to observing them in the sky. This is one half of
astrological practice. But their method was basically empirical; they
expected a similar sign in heaven to be followed by a similar event on
earth in virtue of correspondence between heaven and earth, not in
consequence of any cause. And, most important, they did not time their
omens very closely. The occurrence of a halo round the moon and
enclosing Venus would have two different significations according as it
appeared in the west or east, and possibly according to the width of
the conjunction; but it was only expected to foretell one event in the
near but not precise future, and it was not taken as a significant
moment from which the future should be counted. This, which is the
other half of astrological practice, was unknown to the Babylonians in
the second millennium.
The Egyptians, on the other hand, were not given to celestial
divination. Next to telling the time at night and the seasons of the
year, their chief interest in the stars was in learning how the soul
could ascend to heaven and join the Sun in His boat. They did,
however, believe in lucky and unlucky days, and each hour of the day or
night had its tutelary spirit, whose name was known. It was inevitable
some hours, and later some ruling spirits or some groups of stars,
should be regarded as more favorable than others. The same idea could
have arisen equally well in Babylon.
In addition, the Egyptians possessed two calendars which were far
superior to anything known to the Babylonians; and because one of them
rotated through the seasons there there occurred once in fifteen
centuries an epochal beginning-point when the first day of the
Wandering Calendar returned to its ideal position in the Sothic
Calendar. Thus the recurrence of epochal dates was part of Egyptian
culture in a way that it could not be in Babylon. Furthermore, the
Egyptians had a traditional celestial diagram which they copied from
century to century, and although it was more traditional than
contemporary it did represent a particular moment from which time was
counted. Thus it is not unfair to say that the first horoscope ever
drawn was, so far as we know, that of the Phoenix Era of 2767 B.C.
The Egyptians will not have made any predictions from this
horoscope, nor was it drawn in terms of the zodiac; but when the
Assyrians conquered Egypt in 671 B.C., or even through cultural contact
in the previous century, there was likely to occur a conflation of
influences from which both the zodiac and the notion of astrological
prediction could arise. The evidence for this is in the timing.
... After all, when Babylonian priests were brought to Egypt in the
train of Esarhaddon, and after some years discovered the unchanging
Sothic calendar had the Horoscope of Eternity, their first question
might naturally have been: 'And what did you predict from that
celestial event?' The Egyptian priest would have blinked before
answering: 'We did not predict anything.' At which the Assyrian
priest's jaw would have dropped. Fancy missing such a wonderful
opportunity! I do not suggest that this little romance at Heliopolis
actually occurred; but it could have done: place, time and climate of
thought converged.
That was in the seventh century B.C. No direct evidence has
survived for the use of the zodiac in predication before the fifth
century, and in Egypt before the third.4 But Proclus, writing of the
philosopher Theophrastus, Aristotle's immediate successor who died
about 288 B.C., says that 'the most extraordinary thing of his age was
the lore of the Chaldeans, who foretold not only events of public
interest but even the lives and deaths of individuals.5' So astrology
as an effective technique invaded Greece in the latter half of the
fourth century. To have reached such a stage of development there must
already have been behind it a hundred years of practice. This suggests
that the first notion of astrology as we know it was begotten on
Babylon by Egypt between the seventh and fifth centuries...
Thus the zodiac certainly existed before 500 B.C. But the
conflation of Egyptian and Babylonian astronomy need not have waited
until the Persian occupation of Egypt, which lasted from 525, under
Cambyses, to 405. Nor is it likely to be the result of the brief
occupation by Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon in 567. The Assyrian
conquest and occupation lasted from 671 till 610, and the astronomical
library of Nabu was transferred from Calah to Nineveh by Asshurbanipal,
who reigned from 668 to 626. Astronomy was a great interest at the
Assyrian court, and at the same time the fashion ran strongly towards
Egyptian art, which was imitated and sold in great quantity to the
Assyrians by Phoenician artists.10
This takes us back as far as the seventh century B.C. To carry the
argument further we shall have to look to the exaltations of the
planets. Traditionally each planet is 'exalted' in a certain degree of
the zodiac, and has its fall in the opposite degree. Astrologers have
naturally assumed that each was especially strong or weak in those
degrees or signs containing them. Their origin, however, remained a
mystery, since they cannot be explained by juggling with the planets'
nodes, aphelions, or epicycles, or their proximity to the zenith.
The word translated 'exaltations' means in fact 'hiding-places', and
the hiding-places of a planet are obviously those parts of the zodiac
in which it is invisible, and especially the degree in which it
disappears from view into the sun's rays at heliacal setting and the
degree of its reappearance at heliacal rising. The same is true of the
moon, and is proved by the distance of the moon's 'hiding-place' from
the sun's, 14 degrees, which is a typical elongation for a new
crescent. Since these phenomena change their positions every time they
occur, we are evidently faced by an historical date, and there can be
no doubt whatever that this date is 786-785 B.C. As for the sun having
a hiding-place, it emerges from darkness at dawn on New Year's Day.
Until the zodiac drew attention to the position of planets in
constellations, the chief focus of interest in them was their heliacal
disappearance and reappearances, and in 786 all the planets had
heliacal phenomena in or very near the degrees of their exaltations--an
event so improbable that it cannot plausibly be ascribed to chance.
TABLE 23 - EXALTATIONS OF THE PLANETS
Exaltation I
Nisan = April 4th, 786 = New Year's Day
May 10th Venus heliacally set east in 9 CAN
Jun 22nd Jupiter " set 15 CAN 15 CAN
Jul 24th Venus " rose west in 18 VIR
Jul 30th Jupiter " rose west 21 CAN Aug 25th Mars
" set in 11 PIS Sep 14th Mercury " set east in
16 VIR 15 VIR
Sep 23rd Saturn " set west in 21 LIB 19 LIB
Oct 27th Saturn " rose east in 26 LIB
Feb 4th 785, Mars " rose east in 1 AQU 27 CAP
The positions of Sun, Moon, and Venus are for New Year's day:
Sun 19 ARI 19 ARI
Moon 29 ARI 3 TAU
Venus 26 PIS 27 PIS
(Mercury's 13 other phenomena omitted)
The year 786 B.C. saw the opening in Calah of the new temple of Nabu
(Nebo), the god of writing associated with the planet Mercury. This is
the origin of Mercury's connection with writing, wisdom, commerce, and
all similar subjects. The Egyptian god of writing and wisdom, Thoth-
Tahuti or Hermes Trismegistos, was not associated with the planet
Mercury until astrology was in full sail across the Hellenistic world;
for Thoth as god of time-measurement was a moon-god. He readily became
director-general of celestial happenings, as he was of the weighing of
the soul before Osiris, but there was no Egyptian reason to associate
him with Mercury.
There are two slight weaknesses in this argument. The heliacal
risings and settings are not as close together as they might have been;
and also some are risings and others settings. This apparently
haphazard selection may leave us unconvinced that the coincidence is
not an accident.
But the exaltations are not and cannot be the horoscope for the
foundation or opening of the temple of Nabu, for Mercury cannot be in
Virgo while the Sun is in Aries. They are simply heliacal phenomena
recorded in that year; and since they are not those closest to a given
date, and since they include an arbitrary mixture of settings and
risings, it becomes probably that they were not observed and catalogued
at the time, but were looked up in the temple records when the priest-
hood conceived the notion that they might be especially important. But
what could have given them that idea?
It is a curious thing about Egyptian astronomy that we often find
the year treated as of 360 days, the 5 epagomenae being ignored. If we
could believe that by 'days' the Egyptians meant 'degrees' they would
be using our system. And there is an extant text which says: 'A temple
day is 1/360 of a temple year.11 This is not an astronomical text at
all; on the contrary, by 'a day' it means a day's rations. But it
exemplifies once more the Egyptian habit of dividing the circle of the
year into 360 parts.
When Assyrian priests came to Egypt and compared notes with their
Egyptian colleagues, as they would naturally do, not begin monotheists,
they might easily think, if the esoteric lore were not full explained
to them, that the Egyptians divided the circle into 360 equal parts.
Thus the ideal circle of days invented by the Egyptians for use in the
afterlife would have become a real circle of new and convenient
degrees. This is possible even if a year of 360 days was used in the
mulAPIN tablets.
And similarly when the Assyrians met the Horoscope of Eternity and
realized that it was drawn for the beginning of an era, they would be
likely to return home and look up the records to see what they could do
in the same line. They could not choose a more significant epoch than
the foundation of the temple of their own god of astronomy. And
because the Egyptians mentioned planets in the west and south as well
as the east, they would think it natural to make a mixture of heliacal
settings and risings. If this hypothesis be correct, then the
exaltations were an Assyrian imitation of the Horoscope of Eternity,
not observed at the time but looked up in the records, and thus perhaps
a century or more later than 786 B.C. For almost a century scholars
have said that the zodiac was of Babylonian origin and left it at that;
it now seems more probable that it was the product of interaction
between Babylon, Egypt, and Assyria...
* * * * * * *