Diploma Course in Medieval Astrology Orientation Diploma Course in Medieval Astrology Robert Zoller A New Library Publication 1st Edition 2002 New Library Limited 27 Old Gloucester Street London WC1N 3XX England http://www.new-library.com [email protected] All Rights Reserved. IMPORTANT NOTICE TO PURCHASER AND USER. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, the purchaser agrees to use this publication only for his or her exclusive non-commercial personal and private use and it is a condition of sale that the purchaser will keep only one copy on hard-disc and one copy on a back-up disc and will make only one printed copy of this publication for the purchaser’s exclusive and private use. 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And that the purchaser accepts the above conditions without reservation as an express part of the contract of sale and acknowledges that any breach will render the purchaser liable to the payment of liquidated damages to New Library Limited or its successor(s) for breach of contract to the full value of ten thousand times the purchase price as on the date that the purchaser bought the publication from New Library Limited its Agent or Representative notwithstanding additional damages for infringement of copyright either of content or format. The purchaser and any subsequent user is hereby notified that this publication is encoded and electronically marked so as to allow its identification as originating as the property of New Library Limited, London. Diploma Course in Medieval Astrology ORIENTATION Introduction In 1993, I first released the course entitled Robert Zoller’s Medieval Astrology Correspondence Course. In the intervening years, I have continued translation of Latin texts and research into Medieval astrology. This has resulted in the revision of many of my earlier works and to the replacement of the original course with two others. Firstly, a Foundation Course which leads to the Certification in Medieval Astrology (CMA) and secondly, this more advanced course which leads to the award of the Diploma in Medieval Astrology (DMA). This new DMA course not only generally revises the old correspondence course but also introduces completely new areas of learning. These include chart calculation for natal charts and returns (“revolutions”), and a brief discussion of the use of Primary Directions in longevity delineation and prediction. In addition, from time to time, Academy Papers will be made available on my website (www.robertzoller.com). Some of these will address mathematical subjects related to astrology such as cartography, trigonometry, calendrics, and the use of the astrolabe. Others will relate to astrological subjects proper such as Mundane astrology, Reception, the Fixed Stars, and the North & South Nodes of the Moon. It is important that the student grasp these subjects for while reliance can be made on computer programmes which are competent aids in chart erection, they are no substitute for the understanding of the mathematics that underpin astrology. In addition, lessons on delineating and predicting marriage and children have been included. These are based on the methods of Guido Bonatti’s Liber astronomiae (thirteenth century), which I have worked with for some years now. While it is correct that no technique in astrology is always 100% reliable, you should find these methods to be consistently accurate at least 80% of the time. Advantage is also being taken of the major new influence that the Internet has had on teaching astrology. All of my revised works are available at www.robertzoller.com and these should be consulted where the student wishes to expand his or her knowledge. The serious student should not confine him or herself to the course materials alone but make good use of the other materials, articles and eBooks found at on the above Website. Research and learning in this field is ever constant and we have not yet reached a plateau but I and the staff at the Academy of Predictive Astrology (based at the New Library in London) will endeavour to ensure that you are kept up to date. 4 While you are doing this course, you are a member of the Academy and should you experience any difficulties you should address them to the Registrar at [email protected] Acknowledgments I am extremely fortunate to have the assistance of a number of friends and colleagues and the support of the very competent staff at the New Library under the excellent direction of Luke Andrews the Registrar of the Academy of Predictive Astrology. I would also like to extend my particular thanks to Daniel Salt for his skill and assistance in the creation of the audio lectures and to James Chapman and the production team at Lovely Partners London for their high standards and expertise. Thanks also go to Mark Gemmill who has produced the diagrams, charts, and tables included in this course. Mark’s attention to detail and artistic abilities are greatly appreciated. I should like to thank Mark Griffin for his double-checking of my calculations and to Astrology House for permission to use the Janus fonts. Also I would like to express my thanks to Hamish Saunders and Angela Thomas also of Astrology House Auckland for their kind assistance and much appreciated help over the years. Lastly, but not least it is with ever increasing gratitude that I thank my wife Diana and Torin who have been unstinting in their love and support making this whole task the more easy and infinitely more fruitful. 5 Medieval Astrology and its Historical Development You are about to embark on a course in Medieval astrology and so let us begin with the question What is Medieval Astrology? Medieval astrology is the astrology practiced from roughly 750 AD to the Renaissance, circa 1500 AD, firstly by Arab and Persian astrologers; then later (post 1100) by astrologers of Western Europe and astrologers of the Byzantine Empire (in the East). The astrology, which had been practiced in the Roman Empire, was the creation of Greek speaking philosophers of the first to sixth centuries AD. These “Greeks” based their creation upon astral omen lore reaching back into the centuries before Christ and passed down to them from Egyptian, Babylonian, and Persian sources. By the fourth century AD, astrology was recognized as a science and influenced most religions in the Roman Empire. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire circa 500 AD and the rise of barbarian kingdoms of Western Europe (i.e. Italy, the Iberian Peninsula regions of modern day Spain and Portugal, Gaul/France, Germany, the low land countries of modern day Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg, and the British Isles) the astrological tradition was interrupted in Western and Central Europe. Meanwhile, in the Eastern Roman Empire (called the Byzantine), which survived the Western Empire, astrology did not fare much better. There, for the next two centuries the religious and political climate almost completely suppressed the practice of astrology. Latin remained the language spoken in the West but Greek was the language of the East in the Byzantine Empire. In the seventh century, the Moslem Arabs conquered the Middle East and by 711 AD, they had extended their empire from the Iberian Peninsula in the West to India in the East. Arabic was the language spoken in this new regime. However, in the eighth century the Arabic rulers of the Moslem world encouraged their intelligentsia to learn Greek and to absorb the scientific lore of the Greeks, Persians, and Indians. In this way, Greek astrology, along with other Greek sciences, came to be a feature of Arabic Islamic science. Special Note: when discussing Arabic or Greek or Latin astrology we must be clear about what we mean. These terms Arabic, Greek, and Latin do not refer to the ethnicity or religion of the authors of astrological texts but exclusively to the language, they used. In Moslem regions, the dominant language was Arabic and so we speak of Arabic astrology. In the Greek speaking regions of the Byzantine Empire, we have Greek astrology and Latin astrology from the West. In this course, we will focus on techniques drawn from the Latin texts. Some of these are Latin translations of Arabic works dating back to the eighth century, these I and some other scholars have then translated into English. Others are Middle English works while still other works we will draw upon are English translations of Greek texts dating from the 6 earliest centuries of the Christian era. Some of these works, particularly those of Firmicus Maternus1 and the Liber hermetis2 contain material possibly dating from as early as 200 BC. All of these works taken together give us the comprehensive insight that we need to synthesise and fully understand Predictive astrology. Together, the material presented in this course represents the astrological tradition from about 200 BC to 1700 AD. We distinguish them by the language they have been communicated to us in but in doing so we must understand that the sources upon which they draw are often inter-linked. For about six hundred years (500 - 1100 AD) the practise of astrology was severely restricted in the Latin West. There are several reasons for this but one of the most important is that, following the decline of the Western Roman imperium c.500, there was a lack of mathematical education in these Western Christian lands. Then around 1100 the West was awakened to the need for science just as the Moslems had been in the eighth century. Scholars in the West found that the Moslem East had cultivated astrology and related sciences during those centuries when the West had lost its science and so they began to translate Arabic scientific texts into Latin. The Byzantines also revived their interest in astrology at this time. The result was a rebirth of interest in astrology in the Latin West. This interest remained strong for the next three centuries until the Renaissance (15th – 16th centuries) when resurgence in Greek language studies led to a reassessment of Greek astrological texts and techniques. In the Renaissance, this increased attention devoted to the study of the Greek astrological texts of Ptolemy and others coincided with a serious political and military threat from Moslem Turkish expansionism and contributed to a repudiation of all things “oriental,” that is, Arabic, Turkish or Moslem. The Turkish expansionism threatened the very existence of Western Christian Civilization. By 1500, the Turks were in Central Europe and controlled the Balkans, Transylvania, Hungary, Wallachia, Moldavia, and Bulgaria, and what are modern Macedonia, Romanian, and Bessarabia. They ruled virtually everywhere from the upper east coast of the Adriatic (except that narrow strip of coast which Venice had retained), as well as Syria, Iraq, Egypt and North Africa as far west as Algeria and parts of Russia. Western Europe was effectively isolated both culturally and economically, from the Orient. The pro-Greek/anti-oriental tenor of the times led the Western astrologers to look to Ptolemy and Greek astrological sources for assistance in purging the Arabic accretions from what they believed was a superior pristine Greek astrology. 1 Mathesis in eight books. Firmicus while writing in African Latin was Sicilian (probably from Syracuse) and was fluent in Greek. But as pointed out it is primarily called a Latin work because it is written in Latin, not because of the ethnicity of the author nor the sources (Greek) that he is largely drawing upon. 2 Liber hermetis trismegisti in Abhandlungen der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Neue Folge) 12, 1936.”Neue astrologisches texte des Hermes Trismegistos” von Wilhelm Gundel. 7 This attempt to reform astrology by returning to its Greek origins began in the fifteenth century with criticisms of contemporary astrological theory and practice (e.g. Pico della Mirandola’s Disputatio contra astrologiam divinatricem3). It led, in the latter part of the fifteen century and in the sixteenth century, to translations from the original Greek into Latin of Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos (e.g. Quadripartium iudiciorum opus Claudii Ptolemei Pheludiensis ab Joane Sieurro…Paris 1519 and Philip Melancthon’s 1553 edition4 of this work, also bearing the Latin title, Quadripartium. Before the fifteenth century, Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos was known only in Latin translations of Arabic translations of the original Greek.5 The Arabic translations were viewed as corrupted by the interpolation of material not found in the original Greek Ptolemy. Bit by bit, those practices of Medieval astrology not traceable to Greek antecedents came to be regarded with suspicion or were just abandoned as Arabic distortions of the allegedly purer and somehow better Greek astrology. The seventeenth century saw the Scientific Revolution in Western Europe, during which advances in mathematical physics and modern chemistry led to the perception among many Western Intellectuals that in the not-too- distant future all the mysteries of Nature would be solved through reason and experimental science. In the field of astronomy, the Heliocentric Theory of Copernicus (1473-1543), first been published in 1543 (De revolutionibus orbium coelestium) gained widespread acceptance and with it the Medieval Geocentric Cosmology based upon Ptolemy was viewed by many as exploded. This lead to major doubts about Judicial astrology (the casting of horoscopes of individuals and nations for the purpose of predicting their fates), which had traditionally rested upon Ptolemaic geocentric astronomy. It now appeared that its astronomical basis had been pulled out from under it. In continental Western Europe, Judicial astrology was on the wane and all but died out between 1650 and 1700. In England it continued but in a simplified form. The reason for this survival in England is not entirely certain, but what is clear is that during the eighteenth century Enlightenment, when the European and English philosophers declared the advent of the Age of Reason, astrologers were required by these new rationalists to express the principles of their Art in scientific terms. This was a line followed by later generations of astrologers right up to our own day 6. 3 Pico della Mirandola, Opera, Basel 1572. 4 For more on Melancthon’s astrological interests, see Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science, Columbia U. Press, NY, 1941, vol. V. pp. 378-405. 5 The first Latin translation of Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos or Quadripartitum seems to have been made by Plato of Trivoli circa 1138 with further translation of the commentary of Haly a century later. 6 See Zoller The Occult Sciences at http://new-library.com/zoller/features/rz- article-occult.shtml 8 This imposition was impossible for the religionists. Christianity rests upon the expression of belief and faith, rather than reason. The religionists (especially the Protestants) endeavoured to render their faith as rational as possible. They did this by accepting the natural laws discovered by the scientists as part of God’s Law and by articulation of philosophical/ theological constructs such as “Natural Religion” and Idealist Philosophy. Under the same pressure from this rising belief in reason and science, the astrologers for the most part divided into two camps: the Scientific and the Hermetic. The former stripped astrology of as many as possible of the non-astronomical features (e.g. Arabic parts and signs); and distinguished Natural astrology (the prediction of weather, earthquakes, epidemics, volcanic eruptions, etc) from Judicial astrology (which they dismissed as little more than “fortune telling”) 7. However, no matter how severe their reconstruction in pursuit of making astrology scientific, they still failed to achieve their objective of having mainstream scientists accepting astrology as scientific. Meanwhile the Hermetic astrologers attempted to continue the practice of astrological talismans, prediction, spiritism, magic, and alchemy. This Hermetic astrology later fed into the Occult Revival of the mid to late nineteenth century and largely contributed to astrology being banished to “superstition”. Unfortunately for the Hermetic astrologers, the world was fast changing. The eighteenth century saw both the French Revolution and Industrial Revolution with their aftermaths that so altered European society. As a direct result so to was the astrologer’s role in society changed. In the preceding centuries, many astrologers were physicians, linguists, and mathematicians. They were highly educated 8 and learned in theology, philosophy, and observational astronomy. They worked for both the church and the aristocracy, which were the governing classes of those times. Guido Bonatti, whose work forms the core of this course, was himself a noble and predicted for priests as to whether they would become bishops, cardinals or even Pope. He also advised kings and members of the aristocracy, on military, economic, and political affairs. In the Middles Ages, society was based on an agrarian and mercantile economy. This meant that most people were employed on the land and lived in the countryside. Bonatti refers to them as rustici, populares, vulgus9. 7 Natural astrology continued to flourish into the first third of the nineteenth century in New England 8 In the Middle Ages, the astrologer was usually a cleric or at least church educated. This was because there were few opportunities for education out side the Church. Without education, one could not be an astrologer (this is still true today). At first education was primarily reading and writing with rudimentary mathematics. In the twelfth century, mathematical education had increased and in the following century, we find the astrologer and Franciscan monk, Roger Bacon, exhorting the Pope to emphasize mathematics as part of Christian education. We may also bring to mind John Dee’s advocating that a similar program of mathematics be taught in England circa 1600. 9 Guidonis Bonatti Liber Astronomiae Basel 1550, passim but especially in Pars IIII columns 491-625 9 There was also a growing middle class emerging at this time, especially in the cities, which would come to dominate their hinterlands and emerge as centres of major affluence. Members of this middle class became quite wealthy and powerful (Bonatti refers to them as magnates, i.e. great men) and they too called upon the services of astrologers. The Protestant Reformation (sixteenth century) broke the power of the Roman Catholic Church in Northern Europe and England. This created a political climate in Protestant areas favourable to the pursuit of secular science. The later French Revolution (1789-1804) and the Napoleonic era which followed it, continued this severe reduction in the power of the Papacy in the Catholic countries, as it stripped the churches of assets, severely reduced the priestly Estate and all but eradicated the nobility. The astrologer’s traditional clientele, the aristocracy and the Church hierarchy was destabilised and thus the role and influence of the astrologer was altered. Those that continued to practise had to adapt to the changing times driven by the growth of the modern Industrial State. From 1804, the shift of power moved more in favour of the moneyed bourgeoisie, as they became the focus of a new economy and of a new politics. At the same time, increased literacy among the increasingly urban- based workers, led to the rise of a pop-astrology, which reflected the interests of a new social structure. Gone was the Medieval astrologer as military adviser, theologian, philosopher, and scientist. Increasingly astrologers were called upon to address middle class and working class interests. Education in these new times was humanistic, rationalistic, and dominated by the need for engineers, workers, tradesmen, labourers, managers, and bankers. Classical studies (including the study of Latin, Greek, Hebrew and the Antiquities) and the Liberal Arts were reduced to the rich man’s interest. A degree in philosophy was not an avenue to wealth in this new society. All one could hope to do was teach philosophy, go into theology and preach or possibly enter publishing. The emphasis was on industry and the money economy. The thrust of nineteenth century education further advanced what had already begun generations before. There was a continual moving away from the kinds of studies that would have facilitated access to the primary texts of both Greek astrology and of Arabo-Latin Medieval astrology. A direct result of this was that when there was a revival in astrology in the mid to late nineteenth century, there were few astrologers with the linguistic and mathematical skills necessary to read the important texts. Around 1825 a revival of interest in astrology and other occult arts began to flourish in France and Germany spurred on by growing doubts about “reason’s ability” to solve all of man’s problems and every mystery of nature. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781) questioned whether reason by itself could apprehend the Absolute (the Idealist code-word for God). The European Intelligentsia split into two camps following the publication of this idea. We can call these two camps the Rational Materialists and the Transcendentalists (not to be confused with the American Spiritual movement of the same name). The latter is exemplified by the Swabian Poets of Germany (especially Uhland, Richter and Kerner). Engels and Marx typify the former along with some capitalist apologists. 10