Hellenistic Birth chart Question

CosmicBeing

I have an odd question...well possibly odd.

Hellenistic birth chart vs a birth chart you may get on astrodienst.


When I put my birth information in a program for Hellenistic style astrology vs when I put it in astrodienst... notice a very slight difference in my house.

I notice my houses would maybe shift over by 2 or 3 degrees...this may cause one planet to move from one house to the other.

So my question is....does the houses shift slightly in a hellenistic style chart?

I hope I phrased that to a point of understanding.

**This is with the house being in placidius even though I think Hellenistic style is usually whole house right? Anyway this might be an ignorant question, but a question I have.**
 

Minderwiz

Whole Sign Houses

Hellenistic Astrologers used two types of house system. Whole Sign Houses for topical issues, such as simply reading a natal chart, and a quadrant house system (Porphry or Alcabitius) for forecasting - mainly the length of life calculation.

For the former system, The whole of the rising sign becomes your first house. The whole of the following sign becomes your second house and so on, ending with the whole of the sign that has just finished rising being your twelfth house.

In my case my Ascendant is in Leo, so that makes the whole of Leo my first house and Virgo my second, Libra my third and so on till we reach Cancer, as my twelfth. This can and does mean that planets will change houses compared to say Placidus or Regiomontanus. In my case, Mars, Saturn and Pluto (if I used it) change from my twelfth house into my first. The amount of movement depends on where your Ascendant lies. It it's early in the sign and you don't have many placements in the end of a sign, you my find little change in placements.

For the length of life calculation (and there are almost as many variants as there are Astrologers) you have a system that uses the Ascendant as the cusp of the first house and the MC as cusp of the tenth. You are still likely to get some movement in placements because Porphyry trisects the space between Ascendant and MC and between Ascendant and IC to get the intermediate cusps. Alcabitius works on rising times and trisects the time taken for a degree to move from Ascendant to MC. Placidus in also time based, it differs from Alcabitius in how the degrees of the angles is projected onto the ecliptic.

So using Alcabitius against Placidus should produce less house shifting. Indeed if I use Porphry or Alcabitius I get virtually no movement in placements, though the exact degrees of the intermediate cusps do vary slightly.

Towards the end of the Hellenistic period the Astronomic MC was used in topical analysis as well as the Tenth Whole Sign House (which they also called either the MC or the Place of Action).

You could well find your placements to be in the same houses if you had cast a Vedic Chart, though you might well find that the planets have changed signs. Basically, expect any planet that is in about 24 degrees or more of a sign to remain in that sign, though now at an earlier degree. The other planets, in less than 24 degrees will have shifted backwards into the previous sign - basically because Vedic Astrologers adopted the Hellenistic approach to drawing chart, but kept to the sidereal zodiac rather than switch to the Tropical Zodiac.
 

CosmicBeing

tropical vs sidereal for hellenistic vs vedic.

Vedic has lunar houses which are tied to fixed stars if I understood my books correctly.

Does Hellenistic astrology have something similar? So vedic looks into what lunar house the planet sits in to hep describe it's characteristic in the person's life more. So there are 12 houses... each house is broken into lunar sections (nakshatra) and then each section is broken into 4 sections as well called pada.


Then also Vedic has planets that rule a certain time period which s called Mahadasha and that can go into more specific times through mini planetary time periods. I read one article on Hellenistic astrology and they seem to also have something similar. Is that true as well?

Thank you for sharing the information you have.
 

RohanMenon

I am still learning Hellenistinc astrology

by studying Valens with generous clarifications from Minderwiz, which you can see on my "Study Notes" thread. So I am no expert, and will confine my answer to the one part where I have some experience - tropical vs sidereal.

I use a sidereal zodiac, with an ayanamsha with 1 degree of difference with the Lahiri ayanamsha, which is the most common ayanamsha used for Vedic astrology today. I get good results with these.

On the other hand Minderwiz uses the Tropical Zodiac and gets excellent results therefrom.

So in the end, I suspect sidereal vs tropical is not a very important consideration *in practice* though there is a lot of theoretical hairsplitting which can be indulged in about this topic.

I think it might be best to select a zodiac that resonates with you and works well for you, and focus more on acquiring technique and experience. But I'm no expert and this is just my opinion.

the equivalent to the dasha system of Vedic astrology would be the various time lord systems of Hellenistic astrology, the most comprehensive of which would seem to be Zodiacal Releasing. I have only theoretical knowledge of this, and haven't yet put it into practise.

As far as I know Hellenistic astrology does not use Lunar Mansions. Arabic astrology, which is a later development, does.
 

Minderwiz

tropical vs sidereal for hellenistic vs vedic.

Vedic has lunar houses which are tied to fixed stars if I understood my books correctly.

Does Hellenistic astrology have something similar? So vedic looks into what lunar house the planet sits in to hep describe it's characteristic in the person's life more. So there are 12 houses... each house is broken into lunar sections (nakshatra) and then each section is broken into 4 sections as well called pada.

No Hellenisitic Astrology doesn't use something similar to nakshatras, those are the original Vedic element. But the Vedic use of a 12 sign zodiac and places numbering from the Ascending sign, is Hellenistic in origin. So is the use of four angles, and the system of aspects. David Pingree's translation of The Yavanajataka of Sphujidhvaja. a key Jyotish text, shows that much of it is Hellenistic in origin. Jyotish still uses the whole sign house system of Hellenistic Astrology and many of the Astrological terms used, have no meaning outside of Astrology. They are clearly based on the Greek terms, which indeed did have a meaning outside Astrology and tend to signify that common terms were adapted for astrological analysis. The terms and methods were lifted wholesale into Indian Astrology and added to what already existed. Jyotish also uses the same sign rulers as Hellenistic Astrology' has the same Exaltations as Hellenistic Astrology and the same benefics and malefics as Hellenistic Astrology.

CosmicBeing said:
tropical vs sidereal for hellenistic vs vedic.


RohanMenon said:
I use a sidereal zodiac, with an ayanamsha with 1 degree of difference with the Lahiri ayanamsha, which is the most common ayanamsha used for Vedic astrology today. I get good results with these.

On the other hand Minderwiz uses the Tropical Zodiac and gets excellent results therefrom.

So in the end, I suspect sidereal vs tropical is not a very important consideration *in practice* though there is a lot of theoretical hairsplitting which can be indulged in about this topic.

Hellenistic Astrologers did not use the Tropical Zodiac, they would not have understood the term. When they wrote, The Equiinoxes lay in Aries and Libra and the Solstices in Cancer and Capricorn, and the constellations lay in the Signs which took their names. Most of the charts cast were basically sidereal, though they lined up quite well with the Tropics. They were aware of precession, and Ptolemy did suggest fixing the Aries point to the March Equinox but those casting charts continued to use the unified zoidac of the time. It was only towards the end of the Hellenistic period that that the Tropical Zodiac began to replace the sidereal one.

CosmicBeing said:
Then also Vedic has planets that rule a certain time period which s called Mahadasha and that can go into more specific times through mini planetary time periods. I read one article on Hellenistic astrology and they seem to also have something similar. Is that true as well?

Thank you for sharing the information you have.

As RohanMenon points out Hellenistic Astrology has a number of Time Lord Systems both for particular years, such as Profections of for longer periods, such as Zodiacal Releasing. Whilst the specific systems died out with Hellenistic Astrology, the concept continued into the Arabic period with the use of Fidaria. By the Seventeenth Century all that remained were Annual Profections, plus a development of the Hellenistic system of Circumambulations - called Priimary Directions(and still practiced today)

The use of sub periods for ZR and Fidaria was common, so there copuld be more than one Time Lord in operation at any one time, even under the same system. ZR can break down form lenghty periods, such as those ruled by Saturn (Average 29 years) to peroids as short as an hour, though commonly the shortest period used was a few days
 

CosmicBeing

by studying Valens with generous clarifications from Minderwiz, which you can see on my "Study Notes" thread. So I am no expert, and will confine my answer to the one part where I have some experience - tropical vs sidereal.

I use a sidereal zodiac, with an ayanamsha with 1 degree of difference with the Lahiri ayanamsha, which is the most common ayanamsha used for Vedic astrology today. I get good results with these.

On the other hand Minderwiz uses the Tropical Zodiac and gets excellent results therefrom.

So in the end, I suspect sidereal vs tropical is not a very important consideration *in practice* though there is a lot of theoretical hairsplitting which can be indulged in about this topic.

I think it might be best to select a zodiac that resonates with you and works well for you, and focus more on acquiring technique and experience. But I'm no expert and this is just my opinion.

the equivalent to the dasha system of Vedic astrology would be the various time lord systems of Hellenistic astrology, the most comprehensive of which would seem to be Zodiacal Releasing. I have only theoretical knowledge of this, and haven't yet put it into practise.

As far as I know Hellenistic astrology does not use Lunar Mansions. Arabic astrology, which is a later development, does.

Thank you for sharing and answering some of my questions.

I will have to check out that thread.

I figure it wouldn't make too much difference between sidereal and tropical...

It's hard choosing a system....I like vedic, but not fully and then I like western but not fully. But, I am not that knowledgeable on western really to decide which one be the best. It seems like Hellenistic astrology might be a good meeting ground for me. But, I will see... have to read more a Hellenistic astrology.
 

Minderwiz

It's hard choosing a system....I like vedic, but not fully and then I like western but not fully. But, I am not that knowledgeable on western really to decide which one be the best. It seems like Hellenistic astrology might be a good meeting ground for me. But, I will see... have to read more a Hellenistic astrology.

If you are familiar with Vedic then you will find the mindset of Hellenistic is similar, though it isn't as hard and fast in some of it's applications - I think that's because rigidity crept into Vedinc over the period of 1,800 years, since it imported a lot of Hellenistic concepts. In the west, that rigidity was broken, both by the collapse of the Roman Empire, and the influence of Arab, Persian and Jewish Astrologers, that in term was modified when it was reintroduced into Europe (especially through its links to medicine) and the influence of Astrologers from Bonatti, through to Lilly and Morin. It then died again , only to be resusictated by Alan Leo and the Theosophists. Since then it's had several incarnations.

That makes Western more vibrant but also often more eccentric.
 

CosmicBeing

If you are familiar with Vedic then you will find the mindset of Hellenistic is similar, though it isn't as hard and fast in some of it's applications - I think that's because rigidity crept into Vedinc over the period of 1,800 years, since it imported a lot of Hellenistic concepts. In the west, that rigidity was broken, both by the collapse of the Roman Empire, and the influence of Arab, Persian and Jewish Astrologers, that in term was modified when it was reintroduced into Europe (especially through its links to medicine) and the influence of Astrologers from Bonatti, through to Lilly and Morin. It then died again , only to be resusictated by Alan Leo and the Theosophists. Since then it's had several incarnations.

That makes Western more vibrant but also often more eccentric.

Yea, I feel all over the place with Western astrology. I definitely can tell the "eccentricity" is there.

I saw a book on hellenistic astrology I was thinking of buying. I have to save up my money because I don't predict myself being able to buy it until mid march because of other financial responsibilities

I am not sure if I should get a book on the history of hellenistic astrology because if I understand the history a bit... I feel I would understand why certain methods are used.


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Well thank you for your responses. I am heading out right now...so my response right now is small.
 

RohanMenon

fwiw I don't think Vedic is rigid at all

at least in practise.

There are so many schools (Jaimini, Parashara, etc not to speak of traditions confined to certain states - eg Kerala has a very unique tradition - and families (of astrologers, where knowledge is handed down from father to son), that for any given configuraton there are many many ways of calculating and interpreting, that a degree of flexibility is a pre requisite to making things work

It is only the books that have been translated to English and targeting Western readers that show hints of rigidity. I think Vedic works as well as (or as badly as!) any other school of astrology, and I have personally witnessed some utterly mindboggling predictions from practitioners of the School.

Fwiw, I have a long term goal of studying Vedic astrology, but first I'll have to brush up my Sanskrit to read the core books in the original - the translations are terrible- and also dig into the underlying philosophy (Sankhya mostly) to provide a good foundation.

Meanwhile Hellenistic astrology is a good stepping stone and very interesting in its own right. And since I use a Sidereal zodiac, there isn't that much of a transition between Hellenistic and Vedic techniques. E.g the dasha system is just another 'time lord' system.

Also, having an access to an expert is key to understanding *any* (classical) school of astrology, as can be seen by my interactions with Minderwiz here with respect to Hellenistinc and Lilly's astrology. If this is lacking, the time to master any technique is multiplied exponentially.

My 2 cents.