Mandmaud, thanks so much for hijacking my thread.
This is very interesting.
Minderwiz, you mean, the "Traditional Astrology for Today" is based on medieval astrology?
I have read the thread and the interview with interest, but not completely because I am at work, so I will re-read all this night, but I found extremly interesting what you said about medieval and modern astrology.
I'm fed up with the psychological mood that actually is given to tarot and astrology, and after reading that I may get a book about medieval astrology.
Thanks!!
Traditional Astrology For Today is written for people interested in the difference between the Traditional Approach and the Modern Approach - so you will find a much expanded treatment of some of the ideas he covers in the interview. Whilst it's not specifically confined to showing a Medieval approach that is his area of expertise and it is largely based on that. it's a very good start to the approach because it sets out some of the key ideas and methods, though as a short book it is, as its subtitle says, '
An Introduction'
I would seriously suggest it as a starting point before proceeding much further
Before continuing with my work...
If I understood well, the medieval astrology is predictive, rather than the modern, which is more "psychological", isn't it?
In that case, could you recommend a book to learn the medieval techniques to do predictions?
I'm involved in some magical studies, and I'm more interested on the predictive side of the astrology.
Thanks!
All Astrology before the twentieth century was event oriented. It's function was to predict. That is not to say that there's a complete absence of character assessment or 'psychology' but it's shorter and a prelude to prediction.
Much of the groundwork was done at the outset of Horoscopic Astrology by the Hellenistic Astrologers, largely based in Alexandria, around 100 BC to 200 AD. They, in effect, invented Astrology (or specifically the use of charts based on the Ascendant or Horoskopus) and the interpretation of charts.
Much of today's Astrology is derived from them and from the developments introduced by Medieval (particularly Arabic or Persian) Astrologers.
I found Medieval Astrology difficult to get into. I came to it via Lilly and the Seventeenth Century version but whilst I could find translations, there wasn't much in the way of a general textbook. In particular, I couldn't really understand where some of the concepts came from. That's why I started to study Hellenistic Astrology as its the foundation of all later Astrology. There are differences between the Medieval approach and the Hellenistic one, as you would expect over a period of 1,000 to 1,500 years. but nothing like the difference between Lilly or even early nineteenth century Astrologers and what happened in the twentieth century.
As for Books:
I said above, go for Dykes Traditional Astrology For Today.
For a more detailed coverage that doesn't involve reading translations, go for
'On the Heavenly Spheres' by Helena Avelar and Luis Ribiero. It's Medieval to Sixteenth Century based and it tries to explain some of the techniques and methods used. However it's rather light on predictions (I believe they intend to issue a follow up that will cover that.)
Joseph Crane's book
Astrological Roots; The Hellenistic Legacy looks at some predictive techniques that made their way into Medieval Astrology, such as Profections and ones that didn't such as Zodiacal Releasing. It also has a good section on Lots, which were developed with something of a vengeance by Medieval Arab Astrologers (and became know as Arabic Parts)
If you want to venture into some translations,
Ben Dykes has published 'Introductions to Traditional Astrology: Abu Ma'shar and al-Qabisi
This uses Introductory texts from both writers (al-Qabisi gave his name to the Alcabitus system of quadrant houses, though the system was in use in Hellenistic times). It's a thick volume and not cheap, which is why I didn't mention it earlier. Reading even translations can be demanding because many of the authors were writing for their students and therefore didn't include everything they taught, the remainder would be handed down orally.
Dykes has a plethora of books in which he translates texts. I don't find his style easy, but technically he's probably the most accurate. For me James Holden's translations are more readable, even if they miss some of the nuances picked up by Dykes.
Dykes has also edited
Astrological Prediction: A Handbook of Techniques written by Turkish author Oner Doser - this might be the book you are looking for. It's recently published (Jan 2015) and I have it on order, though it's going to be a week to ten days before it arrives, so I can't tell you a lot about it at the moment. It is available on Amazon (at least in the UK) and there's a Look Inside so you can at least get an overview.
Lastly Dykes has written
Astrological Magic: Basic Rituals & Meditations along with Jayne Gibson. Again it's expensive, as are all Dykes works with the exception of
Traditional Astrology For Today It's not a work on prediction but it might be relevant to your magical studies. Another expensive tome so look before you buy. It's on Amazon. If you have Kindle Unlimited, you can download and read this book for free. The Kindle versions of Dykes books are fairly rudimentary in terms of the usual Kindle features and some of the charts don't work (though I haven't looked at this one) However as a virtual freebie, it's not something I bother about LOL.
OK There's more than one book there. Sorry, but I don't know of an obvious single volume.
Buy Dykes' TDFT and then either his
Introductions or Avelar and Ribiero. The book on predictive techniques might be the third one. I'll let you know when I get it.
