Skyscript Newsletter 2, by Deb Houlding

Newsletter

The Sun is in Virgo www.skyscript.co.uk/virgo.html

#2: Virgo Ingress 2022 – CONTENTS – • Skyscript updates, news and announcements • A bit about John of Seville • Al-Qabisi’s ‘Nature of Mercury’ & translation notes • The 11-day Mystery of Agatha Christie • A Slip up with the falls?

• Aspectarian for September • In-Depth Speed-Interview with Astrologer Lee Lehman

by Deb Houlding

2 WELCOME TO ISSUE 2

Welcome and thank you to everyone who has recently subscribed to this newsletter through Patreaon. The past month has whizzed by – is there anyone who has not felt an overload of things to do these last few weeks? Almost every email I have received lately has started, as mine have, with apologies for delays, and explanations of ploughing through much hard work and many distractions. I expect this is part of the general astrological outlook and don’t foresee an ease up for anyone until Saturn has turned direct and moved right away from the square of my Sun. After that, we can all relax again.

This introductory part of the newsletter is going to be short in this issue – there is some great content herein and I don’t want to stop you getting straight to it. But first, just a little update on Skyscript news and events.

SKYSCRIPT UPDATES

Fixes You will not see a lot of new content on Skyscript this month – most of the development work has concerned repairing content in preparation for its improvement. It is amazing for me to note how rapidly web content becomes redundant or outdated. I realise that the reinvestment in Skyscript has come not a moment too soon. This is not just affecting Skyscript but many valuable websites that have been vital for student astrologers over the past few decades.

As an example, I recently started working through the list of links to historical astrology texts available online (good progress is being made, but it is not finished yet). This turned into a game of ‘spot the working link’ among a long list of resources no longer available. Sadly, the astrologiamedieval.com site constructed by Paulo Alexandre Silva seems to have gone the way of many, the domain having being taken over by a commercial astrologer with no apparent interest in medieval astrology.

Paulo’s site was important because it hosted a wealth of PDF facsimiles of traditional astrology texts – from my attempts to locate these elsewhere I realise how many broken links now exist all over the web from sites who had linked to his content. Luckily, I managed to find alternatives for many and had my own copies of others that I uploaded to Skyscript to make them accessible again. I am also working on a design that will centralise the site access to important links, so changes can be made more efficiently in future.

Firmicus Good news and bad news about the ongoing Firmicus project. I had expected to proudly announce the revamped Firmicus biography page in this newsletter issue, which will be accompanied by a free download of book II of his Mathesis (unlike the content of Book I, which has little practical application, Book II gets meaty straightaway and covers important points on astrological technique).

As previously mentioned, I am working through the translation of Jean Rhys Bram to make it more reliable and more readable, including diagrams and checking the translation against various editions of the Latin text. The good news/bad news is that during this process I came across a number of passages in Latin works, including the sections on the planetary natures, that were not translated by Bram because there are absent from the Teubner edition of the Latin text.

James Holden did not include them in his English translation either, stating that these missing passages are lost. But they do exist in the Latin manuscripts I have been referring to, and seem to be authentic since Firmicus makes addresses to his patron within them. Hence, we can rule out the prospect of these being padded in from similar works to fill up the blanks.

The bad news was when I realised I was going to need more time to complete Book II and would miss my self-imposed deadline of having it finished by the end of this month. When I stopped reacting from my own small-minded viewpoint, I realised that this is actually good news. And then the exclamation mark dropped on my head – of course it is!

Since I am a slow writer of my own thoughts in English and a painfully slow translator of Latin, I am commissioning help with these sections. Hopefully they will be ready next month – but I must stop thinking like that – they are in production and will appear shortly, when the time is right.

Another interesting detail that emerged from checking the content of the Latin manuscripts has been included as an article at the end of this newsletter: ‘A slip up with the falls?’. I am very pleased to be able to give newsletter subscribers early access to that info.

Virgo One page that has been give the full makeover is: Sign symbolism: Virgo the Maiden https://www.skyscript.co.uk/virgo.html

As the only female in the 12 zodiac motifs, I was keen to highlight purity and grace in the presentation of this content. I was particularly delighted that the artist S. C. Verseille allowed me to use her painting Seraphim II: High Vigil as a representation of the sign in the set of arched logos I am creating for the series (see next page). I love the stunning serenity and elusive quality of her image – and how great to have a representation of Virgo that recognises diversity in such an exquisite, powerful and beautiful way.

As I worked over the content again, I remembered how this sign had been the last one I produced. It was the most challenging to write, eventually materialising a long time after the others, with a great sense of relief. I had been beset by the writer’s block you inevitably get when there is something you must write, but your thoughts have moved on to something else. Several times I started and struggled with it, but my heart wasn’t in it, so I didn’t get anywhere productive. I would sit wasting my time, feeling bad as I would go through cycles of typing words, then deleting words, then staring blankly, forcing myself to try to attend to this, just so I could be free of the need to do it. Looking back, it is obvious now why the narrative did not flow as it should in all those attempts to force it! Ultimately, I gave up on it for quite a long time, went off and indulged myself in something else, but kept the niggling sense of annoyance at the back of my mind for having left a project 11/12ths complete.

When I eventually regained my interest and focus, I knew it would be one of my favourites. My motivation was recalling how disappointed I had felt as a student astrologer when I discovered I had a Virgo Moon. From all the reports I had read, nothing was enticing about Virgo – you would think it was ‘Virgo the hypercritical crone-like old spinster’ rather than ‘Virgo the Maiden’, powerful in her own right, not needing to be the consort of some other God. I shared my dissatisfaction with having a Virgo Moon instead of a more exciting and dramatic Leo with another astrologer at the first astrology conference I attended. But she had a Leo Moon and said how envious she was of my Virgo Moon because she saw it quite differently. “Look at the way you always

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put just the right colours together, there is something really artistic and graceful in the little details that makes me so envious of the discretion and perfect sense of taste …” and she continued for quite a while, maximising (exaggerating) every good trait I had and showing me how each detail was an expression of this wonderful Virgo energy. That really turned my thinking around. No, no, Virgo is not a complaining, critical old hag – she is a youthful, discrete, elegant, incredibly practical and creative earth-goddess angel with wings!! Wow. A big thanks to triple Virgo Lee Lehman for volunteering to be the voice of that article, which is available as a downloadable PDF file as well as an audio file.

PATRON NEWS It was really great to join up for our recent discussion on fate and freewill. Thanks to everyone who shared thoughts in the meeting, and to those who followed up with interesting comments and links afterwards. Between us, I think we can safely say that we can put that thorny issue to bed. The answer is: probably beyond our mental capacity to discern.

I am looking forward to our next meet up – details below:

SKYSCRIPTER HOOK-UP DISCUSSION

Zoom Meeting: Birth Chart Data & Rectification FOR BODY & SOUL MEMBERS

How to do it, and is it really worth the effort?

One reason I prefer to work with horary is so I don’t have to worry about rectification. According to traditional sources all nativities should be rectified, which sounds like a lot of work to me. And yet … how many times have I itched to tweak that Rodden rated ‘A’ time just a little bit (because I know that would make so much more sense)? Is that what rectification is about, or is there more to it than that?

We will be joined by Martin Gansten, who practices rectification regularly as part of his astrological practice, and Lee Lehman, who rectified her own chart to within a fraction of a degree (triple Virgo according to her own rectification of her chart – but not according to the unrectified A rated chart they have for Lee on AstroDataBank). How reliable is recorded birth data anyway?

The zoom link will be placed on patreon.com and circulated to patrons a few days before the meeting.

Time and date: 5 pm UTC start – Thursday, 8th September 2022 You can check the specific time for your locality by clicking on this link The meeting is expected to last about 75 mins.

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INSIDE THIS ISSUE This is our Virgo issue so that sign, and its ruler Mercury are taking centre stage. Let’s hear it for Virgo-Mercurial types: astrologers, writers, scribes and translators! Let’s here it for Nabu, Babylonian god of astrology and scribes (oh Lord, we have given you acknowledgment in the article about the exaltations).

Let’s hear it for Wade Caves, for putting together some information about Avendehut, Johannes (David) Toletanus, Johan Hispano, Hispalensis – that 12th century Jewish bloke, called either John or David, from either Seville or Toledo, who did so many important Latin translations. Where would many of my astrological arguments be without him?

Let’s hear it for Morgan Le Gall. Firstly, because I love the sound of his name. But also because he contributed his linguistic skills in the Latin translation of Al Qabisi’s ‘Nature of Mercury’ and he leant his design skills to various diagrams scattered through this issue.

And let’s hear it for Virgo lady Agatha Christie. Who better to act as an emblem for scribes than the best selling novelist of all time? Dame Agatha Christie, mistress of tweed twin sets and pearls: not a whiff of scandal attached to that name, right?

I feel a little guilty for giving so much attention to Agatha. The whole thing was supposed to be only a couple of pages, but setting out the backdrop turned into the longest lead-in to a chart analysis I have ever penned!

The problem is, the Agatha mystery really has it all: spurned wife, shadowy mistress, haunted mansion, bottle of poison, unsolved disappearance. Greedy Agatha took up more time and space than I had planned, and my husband has taken to calling me ‘Aggie’ this month, saying he understands why her husband wanted a divorce.

It is true that I have been quoting her a lot – “Never do anything yourself that others can do for you” (why I’ve been leaving all my things lying around: Labours of Hercules); “Never tell all you know – not even to the person you know best” (why I’ve been leaving all my things lying around: The Secret Adversary). I can see why I got on his nerves.

Since this is a newsletter, not a book, I didn’t have space to go into some issues as much as I wanted – so I came up with the plan of leaving some work for you readers to finish. You take a look at what you think of the charts – then vote for your favourite theory and share your own views.

And finally, let’s hear it for Lee Lehman for being the most Virgoish-Virgo I ever did meet.

And her secret heart-throb, the Virgo Al Biruni.

I hope you enjoy the content – have a great Virgo month!

Deb More Virgos:

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JOHN OF SEVILLE

a.k.a.

JOHANNES HISPALENSIS

by Wade Caves The following translation of Al-Qabisi is based on the Latin text of ‘John of Seville’. We have no images of John, but if you have any degree of familiarity with traditional astrology, then you should realise you are the recipient of the knowledge transmitted by this important 12th-century translator, whose other epithets include Johann or Johannes Hispalensis, Hispaniensis, Hispanus or Hispano. All of these variations translate into English as ‘John of Spain’. As a native of Toledo, he was also sometimes known as ‘Johannes Toletanus’ (see panel left).

á Entry in The Jewish Encyclopedia, J. Jacobs (1906) â Title page and extract from John of Seville’s 12th century treatise Isagoge in Astrologiam

Latin text available at www.skyscript.co.uk/seville.html

Few translations of scientific treatises were made from Greek to Latin after the decline of the Roman Empire, until the Muslim invasion of Spain opened the door for an exchange of intellectual and philosophical ideas. This concurred with the emergence of the Islamic Golden Age, which extended from the 8th to 13th centuries.

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After Toledo was captured in 1085, it became the cultural and intellectual centre of Christian Spain. The translation movement that occurred there in the 12th and 13th centuries parallels that of Baghdad in the 9th and 10th centuries.

It was only near the end of this period that the great works of Arabian science were made available to Latin and Spanish-speaking peoples. Many philosophical and religious works were translated out of Greek and Arabic into Latin under the influence of Archbishop Raymond of Toledo in the 12th century.

Johannes Hispalensis was a central figure in what would be called the Toledo School of Translators, alongside other notable scholars such as Dominicus Gundlissalinus, the first appointed head of the school who relied on John for help with Arabic texts, and Gerard of Cremona, who translated Ptolemy’s Almagest, Al-Kindi’s On optics, and a number of Aristotle’s works in the 12th century.

A prolific pen, Hispalensis translated an extensive assortment of astrological texts including works by Abu Ma’shar, al-Fargani, al-Kindi, al-Battani, ibn Yusuf, ibn Sina (Avicenna) and al-Qabisi. He also published the Secretum Secretorum, his Latin translation of a 10th-century Arabic masterpiece which covered an array of subjects from medicine to statecraft in encyclopedic format.

Baptized a Jew, the Spanish scholar was more than just a translator. He was an adept compilersynthesiser, who produced his own astrological manual under the title Isagoge in astrologiam (‘Introduction to astrology’). A testament to his theoretical knowledge, Albertus Magnus identifies Johannes Hispalensis’ work as worthy of protection in his Speculum Astronomiae.

Thorndike notes that in his Isagoge John broadly aligns with the perspectives and techniques presented by the historical greats, particularly where he finds most ancient authors in agreement. He particularly cites Ptolemy, Dorotheus, and the “more recent masters” of the astrology practiced in India, namely Masha’allah (8th-9th century) and al-Kindi (9th century).

But John does not shy from presenting his own perspectives and opinions – in his work, he highlights where there are conflicts between historical systems, and it was not uncommon for him to suggest that his predecessors might have held too tightly to convention and not to the benefit of experiment.

This is the hallmark of a passionate astrologer, showing John to have been committed to his subject philosophically, theoretically and in practice, and not someone who simply translated the words.

“We see that John was not merely a translator or writer on astrology but an expert practitioner of the art. He supplements the divergent views of past authorities, or qualifies their consensus of opinion, by his own apparently rich experience as a practicing or experimental astrologer. Indeed, for him the theory and practice of the art, the paths of reason and experience, are so united that he not merely speaks of ‘this reasoning’ or view as being ‘tested by experience,’ but seems to employ the words ratio and experimentum somewhat indiscriminately for astrological tenet or technique.”

Lynn Thorndike (left), A History of Magic and Experimental Science, vol II

THE NATURE OF MERCURY Al-Qabisi Translated from Latin by Morgan Le Gall & Deb Houlding

Statue of Mercury outside San Bartelome church, Murcia Spain, photographed by Mireille Crossley

Full Latin text available online at www.loc.gov/item/2021666822/

MERCURY: mixed, masculine, diurnal; its own nature inclines towards whatever planets and signs it is with. It is the significator of younger brothers and it signifies servants1 and the love of concubines.

It also signifies divinity, oracular prophecies, belief, books, and homage or prayers.

When acting according to its own nature, and no planet joins with it, it signifies all crops and earthly things that are increasing in growth. And of the ages, youth and adolescence.2 And of occupations, works which involve predictive knowledge, rhetoric, negotiations, calculation, geometry, regulating things, philosophy, prophecy, speaking, writing, poetry, science and great arithmetical works.

1 Mercury has long-standing association with servants or slaves, the low-end of the underlying theme of stewardship

by which it signifies all manner of assistants, administrators, clerks and accountants (for Al Qabisi it signifies “servants”, for Albumasar, “service”, Ibn-Ezra, “ministers”). The love of concubines might show someone who uses or makes employment of that role – Al Biruni, who sees Mercury as the significator of “Merchants, bankers, councillors, taxcollectors, slaves and wrestlers” also says it shows someone “eager to buy slaves and girls” (Ramsay-Wright, p.251-252).

2 Iuventutem et profectum in ea – literally: ‘youth and advancing (growing up) in it’.

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0 8 7 3 6 4

If connected with Saturn, it signifies the work of measurement in surveying lands and estates and estimations for buildings and walls [architectural design].3 If Jupiter, it signifies the numeration of chants and the archiving of religious books.4 If Mars, it signifies the calculation of bonus made to soldiers and fighters, and the calculation of blows of whips and bludgeons.

If the Sun, it signifies the chief accountant of the king and the administrator of the treasury [or official tax-office].5 If Venus, it signifies the computation of the strings of wooden instruments or the lute, and the composition of sounds and pipes.

If the Moon, it signifies the calculation of dishes that will serve for meals taken while traveling outside the house.

Of ailments, it signifies spiritual infirmities of the soul, horrible thoughts, restlessness of the mind, doubts and such. It also signifies the quality of the mind in accordance to its complexion and combination. When it is made fortunate, there will be good things according to the kind of benefic that fortifies it and according to the place in which Mercury is fortified. And when it is harmed, there will be iniquities according to the one that renders the affliction and the place in which it became harmed.

Of philosophical sects, it signifies the veneration of unity [monotheism] and the like, and this secretly, with hypocrisy and pretense.6 And some have said that it signifies the thighs, the navel, the pubic bone [pelvis] and the legs, the nerves and the veins. And of colours, it has every colour mixed and varied, and the sky blue colour of the flower of the wild lily.7 Of savours, it is sour.

The size of its orb is 7 degrees. And of the days, it has Wednesday and of the nights, Sunday night. The years of its firdaria are 13, and its greater years are 76, the greatest 460,8 the mean 48, and the least years 20. Its rulership of the regions of the zodiac circle is in the north.

3 The word translated as ‘walls’, telarum usually means something woven, presumably referring to the ‘wattle and

daub’ method of creating walls from woven branches plastered with wet soil, clay, dung and straw.

4 The Latin numerum psallendi concerns the number of times one has to chant or recite a psalm or mantra; numerum

librorum divinorum suggests someone who acts as a librarian or keeper of sacred texts.

5 More literally significat preesse numero regum et substantiae domorum reads “it signifies presiding over the computation of the kingdom and the substance of the houses”.

6 The phrase & hoc secreto cum hypocrisia & simulatione appears in the Latin editions only, possibly referencing the Mercurial leaning towards occult knowledge that needed to be kept secret in some societies. Lilly tells us that Mercury signifies “a man of a subtle and political brain … a searcher into all kinds of mysteries … curious in the search of any occult knowledge … given to divination and the more secret knowledge”, but when afflicted “given to wicked arts, necromancy, and such like ungodly knowledges; easy of belief … if he prove a Divine, then a mere verbal fellow, frothy, of no judgement, easily perverted, constant in nothing but idle words and bragging” (CA, p.77-78).

7 The Latin word alezmeniuni, has no recognised meaning in Latin, but seems to be transliterating the Arabic āsmānǧūnī, ‘sky blue’. The wild lily mentioned in the descriptive reference is identified by annotations in some manuscripts as acetosum or campestris, which is wild geranium, a.k.a. meadow cranesbill. William Lilly says of colours associated with Mercury: “Mixed and new colours, the grey mixed with sky-colour, such as is on the neck of the stockdove” (p.79). Al Biruni says “sky-blue mixed with a darker colour” (p.240).

8 Some versions of the manuscript give 480 for the greatest year, others say 460, which is incorrect (as is Lilly’s figure of 450 though this may have been intended as a very rough approximate only). For the inferior planets, the greatest year indicates the passage of time until their synodic phases repeat from the same place of the zodiac at the same time of year – it is found by multiplying the number of days in the planet’s synodic period with the period of sidereal rotation, then dividing the result by 365.25 to turn the days into years. So for Mercury, the calculation is as follows: Synodic period: 115.88 days Sidereal rotation: 1513 days

115.88 x 1513 = 175326.44 days /365.25 = 480.02 years The table of relevant information is shown below; for more details, see footnote 147 of An Annotated Lilly part III by Deborah Houlding; online at www.skyscript.co.uk/pdf/CA_pages_57_68.pdf.

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Colours of _: mixed and mottled colours, sky blue, sometimes described as a grey-blue (Lilly says like the neck of a pigeon).

Some9 have said that from the middle of its retrogradation to its second station Mercury signifies childhood, and from the second station until the conjunction with the sun, youth. From the conjunction of the sun to the first station, middle age, and from its first station to the middle of retrogradation, and opposition [with the Sun’s superior conjunction], it signifies old age.

And from its conjunction up to the first station it signifies love, friendship and the expression of love; and from its second station to the conjunction it signifies the quest for love and harmony. From its first station, going retrograde, it signifies the quest for opposition and separation, slowness, having little shame, unrest and stupefaction in things. And in the midst of retrogradation it signifies moderate speed and weakness of the mind. At the second station it signifies confusion and intellectual unrest,

Pl.

i= h= c= M= `= _= R=

Sidereal Period 29.46 years 10759 days 11.86 years 4332 days 686.980 days 365.25 days 224.7 days 87.969 days 27.32 days

Synodic period 378.1 days 398.9 days 779.9 days n/a 583.9 days 115.88 days 29.53 days

Sidereal rotations 9 36 151 1 720 1513 309

Greatest year 265 427 284 1461 1151 480 25

Greater year 57 79 66 120 82 76 108

Mean year 43½ 45½ 40½ 69½ 45 48 66½

Least year 30 12 15 19 8 20 25

9 See the diagram overleaf. Bonatti’s reproduction (Liber Astronomiae, III) attributes this report of Mercury’s phases to

an astronomer named ‘Jafar’, almost certainly Abu Jafar Muhammad ibn Husayn Khazin from Khorasan (a.k.a. AlKhazin, 900–971), who is known for measurement of the obliquity of the ecliptic and for writing a commentary of Ptolemy’s Almagest which proposed a different cosmic model to Ptolemy. Though his commentary was criticised by Al Biruni, he was highly influential in the fifty years before Al-Qabisi wrote his text (for more details see the Mac Tutor biography at: https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Al-Khazin/).

As an innovator, Jafar may have been the first to propose that Mercury signifies youth at its inferior conjunction, which would require this point to act as the starting point for the full, two-fold cycle of synodic interaction with the Sun. This knits into the view expressed in this text – though not found in more ancient texts – that Mercury is essentially masculine, even if it’s nature is considered convertible. All of the masculine planets (Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) are associated with youth as they wax in their synodic cycles as oriental planets, and are then associated with old age and the decline of strength as they wane in their synodic cycles as occidental planets; hence, we can understand why some astrologers would want Mercury to fit the template of the other masculine planets, to be associated with youth when oriental in phase, and old age when occidental.

However, as an inferior planet, Mercury’s synodic cycle is very different to that of the superior planets, and this approach to aging its symbolism conflicts with other important astronomical and philosophical principles that are embedded in that cycle too. Therefore other authors, including Lilly, use the superior conjunction of Mercury as the starting point for a full cycle of increase and decrease, which is the time when Mercury’s motion is swift and direct, and its light is weakest. The fact that the description of the cycle here names only the superior conjunction as “the conjunction of the Sun”, and refers to the stations as the first and second that come after this, and the inferior conjunction as an opposing point, shows that this symbolic outlook is founded on a perspective that uses the superior conjunction as the starting point and not the mid-point. This text has naturally led to a point of conflict in the tradition over whether the inferior or superior conjunction of Mercury acts as the fundamental starting point for its cycle of age.

slowness, but [after this] the gaining of speed and increase of intelligence. By its conjunction with the sun, being direct, it signifies swiftness, inspiration and the spread and increase of ingenuity. The same things happen to Venus and the superior planets in these places.10

And Masha’allah said that in human appearance Mercury signifies a skin color that is not too pale or dark, a high and long forehead, a long face, a long nose, sparse beard on cheeks and jaw, beautiful eyes [that are] not entirely black, and long fingers.

10 The basic template of the scheme is that the superior conjunction is the period of swift and direct motion where

Mercurial processes gain speed. At this point, Mercury is at its apogee (furthest – or ‘highest’ – distance from Earth), so its light is faint, associated with subtlety, refinement and higher-mindedness. Having rejoined the Sun (cosmic distributor of light and life), Mercury is embowed with the more divine qualities of spirit, mind and soul, experiencing a state of love and harmony which it extends in its influence as it emerges from superior conjunction (the expression of love). As Mercury moves towards perigee at the inferior conjunction, its light is stronger but its motion is retrograde, associated with corruption, slowness, dullness and the materialistic concerns of mundane matters. After regaining direct motion following the second station, Mercury regains speed but loses brilliance as it returns to the superior conjunction and rejoins the Sun in its ‘higher heaven’. Hence, this final phase of the cycle is associated with the seeking or quest to regain the love and harmony it experiences at its apogee.

This template applies to every planet because of the symbolic differentiation in traditional astrology between planets in apogee and perigee, which reflects a sense of ‘elevation above’ or ‘debasement’. When a planet descends towards perigee its influence is said to be felt more heavily at a mundane level. In contrast, planets ascending to apogee are moving towards a ‘high point’ of heaven, which is associated with higher mind, inspiration and predominance of the soul.

An example of how this determined the nature of the mind, body and soul is seen in Ibn Ezra’s Book of Reasons: 10 When a planet is in its high position it is close to the zodiac wheel, and is like a soul, and when it is in its low position it is closer to the Earth, which is like a body that is the vessel for the soul … Hindu astrologers say that when a planet is in the high position, it is like a man riding on his horse, whereas in the low position it is like the slave walking on the road. Ptolemy says that when a planet is closer to the Earth, it is much stronger, and the opposite when it is further away. In my opinion, both are correct, because when a planet is far from the Earth, it receives much strength from the superior ones, and if it rules the affairs of the soul, which is superior, then the native will have exceptional wisdom in all matters, and if it rules bodily affairs, he will be short and skinny and will not have sufficient strength. If the planet is in its low position and rules the soul it indicates that the native will be foolish and ignorant, and if it rules the body it indicates a big and strong body.

The quoted text is in Meira Epstein’s translation of Ezra, Book of Reasons, pp.18-19. For a fuller discussion, see her article ‘The Astrology of Avraham Ibn Ezra’ on the Cura website at http://cura.free.fr/cura2/901meira.html.

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Of the Parts, it has the Part of Commerce11 and it signifies fear, persecution, war, enmity, seductions and vexations. It also signifies perfect mastery and precision in work and research, and in everything connected to men through transactions and contentions.

_ Al-Qabisi: characteristics of MERCURY

Of regions it has Daylam and Makran (Iran), most of the south, and the Indian regions.

Definitions: Principles: Qualities: Traits: Appearance: People/professions:

With Saturn: Jupiter: Mars: Sun: Venus: Moon: Age: Activities: Minerals/resources:

Illnesses: Anatomy: Colours: Savour: Orb: Days: Years: Associated Part Territories

Masculine | diurnal | mixed| benefic & malefic (by aspect or conjunction respectively, and by sign).

Youth, divinity, predictive knowledge, mathematics, commerce, science, writings, accountancy and design.

Variable, according to phase and connections with other planets: with good planets, it is benefic, with malefic planets, it becomes malefic.

Talent for speaking, calculating or negotiating, with literary interests and proclivities towards philosophy, poetry and the occult.

A high forehead, long face, long nose, sparse beard on cheeks and jaw, beautiful dark eyes, and long fingers.

Younger people/adolescents. Professions concerned with numbers, calculations, book-keeping, words and the synthetization, interpretation and transmission of facts or symbols.

Measuring, accounting, surveying lands and architectural design.

Works involving calculations and archiving spiritual or religious texts.

Accountancy or engineering designs for military projects.

High-level accountancy or auditing for national budgets.

Musical compositions or designs of a more artistic nature.

Calculations connected to catering.

Youth/adolescence.

Research, talent for precision work and commerce.

Not mentioned (Al Biruni associates with amber, all yellow and green stones, all minted coins, quicksilver, turquoise and coral; Lilly adds Achates, topaz and all stones of diverse colours).

Spiritual disturbance, anxieties, restlessness of the mind, doubts, and any other kind of mental strain, breakdown or affliction.

The thighs, navel, legs, nerves and veins.

Mixed colours; sky-blue.

Sour.

7°.

Wednesday / Sunday night.

Firdaria: 13 |lesser years 20 | mean years 48 | greater years 76 | greatest years 480.

Part of commerce.

Daylam and Makran in Iran, India and southern regions.

11 Pars Negotiationis: the formula for the calculation is given in the fifth part of the text, where it is referred to as the

Part of Debt and Lack of Ingenuity: by day, Asc + (Part of Fortune – Part of Spirit); by night, Asc + (Part of Fortune – Part of Spirit).

The Latin text reads: Pars paupertatis et parvitatis ingenii idest pars mercurii accipitur in die a parte futurorum in partem fortune, & in nocte econverso et proicitur ab ascendente – “The Part of Debt and Lack of Ingenuity, viz, the Part of Mercury, is taken by day from the Part of Spirit to the Part of Fortune, reversed by night, and projected from the ascendant”.

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THE 11-DAY MYSTERY OF AGATHA CHRISTIE OPENING SCENE: THE LADY VANISHES It is a dark winter’s night: 3rd December 1926. A 36-year-old woman has returned to her imposing English country home after visiting her mother-in-law. Still mourning the death of her own beloved mother, she had argued fiercely with her husband that morning after he murmured about divorce and announced his intention to spend the weekend with his mistress, rebuffing her plans for them to visit a Yorkshire hotel.

As the evening hours tick by, she stares through the window, forlornly hoping he will return. Desperation mounts in her rising realisation that he will not.

With her seven-year-old daughter in bed and the servants retired, she feels utterly alone. Melancholic despondency and pent-up fury envelop her from the shadowy walls of the brooding house she knew to be maligned by “unlucky spirits” when she bought it less than a year ago. Awed by its beautiful garden and architecture, she had initially viewed its ominous reputation as a blessing, since it forced the discounted price that reduced its cost to within reach. She was aware that three previous owners had all left abruptly after suffering broken hearts or broken spirits, and that the land had been the site of a brutal murder, and a suicide; but she had hoped her happy marriage and self-content would break the curse of the house.

Now she realises the house is breaking her – her husband has spent most of the year away from her, unable to tolerate the combination of her grief and the house’s disturbing night effects and heavy, oppressive air.

As dejection fills her mind with suicidal thoughts, an irrepressible urge takes over. She can bear it no longer; she must get away. She scribbles three hasty notes: one to her husband, the contents of which he will never reveal; one to her brother-in-law, always her friend; and one to her secretary, outlining the affairs to be dealt with in the morning. Worried servants hear her drive off in her Morris Cowley motor car around 9:45 pm, leaving the garage doors wide open. They have no idea where she is heading.

“If I do not leave Sunningdale soon, Sunningdale will be the end of me” “I must get away. I cannot stay here in Sunningdale much longer” – comments reported by friends

The car was found crashed and abandoned the next morning, 15 miles away, in the direction of Guildford, where her husband spent the night. It was precariously close to the edge of a quarry, having collided with a bush that broke its path towards the edge. The broken headlights had been left on, but it seemed to investigators that the car was not driven at the time of the accident – it was pushed down the hill with its engine running. Close to the car, a bottle was found, labelled “poisoned lead and opium”. Inside the car: a fur coat, a bag of clothing, and a driving license revealing the identity of the lady and her home address in Sunningdale, Berkshire.

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Thus began the most extensive, highly-publicised manhunt in British history. More than 1,000 police officers, a host of hounds, and 15,000 members of the public joined the search for the missing lady, dredging rivers and combing surrounding areas. Newspapers in Britain and America headlined the case on their front pages – had she committed suicide? Was she disoriented after the crash, now lost and injured, or dead? Had some other sinister business prompted her sudden flight? Had she been murdered? Some papers published mock-ups of what the lady would look like in disguise and offered lucrative rewards for news of her whereabouts. The British Home Secretary applied political pressure on the police to solve the case as it whipped the nation into a frenzy. For the first time, planes were used to make arial searches for a missing civilian. Many high-profile psychics joined the furore with speculations and predictions, as did many famous crime writers and mystery novelists of the day.

These included King Kong author Edgar Wallace (she had planned it all carefully to draw attention to herself), and Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who procured one of the lady’s gloves for world-famous spiritualist, Horace Leaf. Leaf sensationally went against the prevailing opinion that the lady was dead, proclaiming her to be troubled but alive, and set to resurface by 15th December.

Only one famous crime writer was notably silent: Agatha Christie. The set up to the disappearance was all so perfectly in line with one of her mysteries we might imagine her authoring the whole thing.

And in fact, she did, as the ill-starred lady of concern. So another tantalising scenario was added to press speculation: was Mrs Christie even missing at all, or was the nation being fooled by an ingenious, selfish publicity stunt, designed to raise her profile and increase sales of her books? Or, perhaps, to deliberately make her husband worry, or suffer the pressure of being questioned as a suspect …

The impression of Horace Leaf (after receiving the glove): “There is trouble connected with this article. The person who owns it is half-dazed and half-purposeful. She is not as dead as many think. She is alive. You will hear of her, I think, next Wednesday.”

Above: local rivers being dredged in the search.

Left: photos of Agatha, the ‘Queen of Crime’ Below: recent photo of Agatha’s “unlucky” house at Sunningdale, Berkshire. She named it ‘Styles’ after the title of her first novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

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The woman who went on to become the best-selling novelist of all time had not been murdered and did not die for another 50 years (12 Jan 1976, at the ripe old age of 85).

Agatha’s whereabouts were finally exposed eleven days after her disappearance. Leaf’s prediction that she would emerge “by the following Wednesday” was correct: her identity was confirmed shortly after 7:30 pm on Tuesday 14th December; the news hit the headlines on Wednesday. She was enjoying a luxurious stay at the Hydropathic Spa Hotel, in Harrogate, Yorkshire. That she decided to go ahead with her own visit to Yorkshire had been reported to her brother-in-law by letter, but although he shared this information with the police, their inability to find her, his inability to find her letter, the abandoned car and their suspicion of her husband made them view his report with mistrust.

The real mystery is this: what was going on in Agatha’s mind as she seemingly staged a car crash, then travelled 250 miles by train to check into a hotel under the assumed name of Mrs Teresa Neele? The choice of name was definitely loaded: Neele was the surname of her husband’s mistress – was Teresa an anagram of ‘teaser’? What was she thinking as she read newspaper reports and discussed the case with other guests who remarked on her resemblance; as she allowed so much time, money and effort to be spent out of concern for her well-being while she passed her days indulging in shopping trips and massages, and her evenings dancing the Charleston to the tune of ‘Yes, we have no bananas’?

After hotel staff reported their suspicions to the police, her husband, Archie, was required to travel to the hotel to confirm the identification before the police could confront ‘Mrs Neele’. Upon the meeting, she stared at her husband coldly. Neither embraced the other. They were allowed some time together, after which Archie gave a statement: “There is no question about the identity. It is my wife. She has suffered from the most complete loss of memory and I do not think she knows who she is. She does not know me and she does not know where she is. I am hoping that rest and quiet will restore her”.

The next day the Christies were mobbed as they made the humiliating train journey to Abney Hall, the home of Agatha’s sister, where she remained (press reported) “in guarded hall, gates locked, telephone cut off, and callers turned away”. Husband and wife barely spoke in the journey. Agatha did her best to look subdued, but the press concluded she seemed perfectly normal and noted the times she shared jokes with her female companion. Within 24 hours two eminent doctors signed off a press release read out by her husband: “After careful examination of Mrs Agatha Christie this afternoon, we have formed the opinion that she is suffering from an unquestionably genuine loss of memory”. Some ventured she would not forget to pay those doctors for their services.

And then? (Long story cut short:) Agatha sailed to the Canary Islands for some months to “convalesce”.

After the fuss died down, she divorced Archie in 1928 on the grounds of his adultery; he married Nancy Neele one week later. Agatha never returned to the house at Sunningdale which was sold in 1928. She spent the period travelling to exotic locations, where she picked up ideas for her novels and met the archaeologist Max Mallowan. He became her husband and life-long companion in 1930. Her fame as a writer continued to grow. In 1971, she was made a Dame (of the British Empire) for her contributions to literature. She left instructions for her autobiography to be published only after her death, but within that she sought to keep the whole ‘disappearance’ episode buried, allowing only a brief reference to that unhappy period of the illness, sorrow, despair and heartbreak, before clamping down with the comment “There is no need to dwell on it”.

POIROT: 3 types of disappearance: “First, and most common, the voluntary disappearance. Second, the much abused ‘loss of memory’ case – rare, but occasionally genuine. Third, murder, and a more or less successful disposal of the body” The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim Agatha Christie, 1923

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THE THEORIES Nonetheless, my dear Agatha, dwell on it we shall.

Many have accused you of being the original ‘Gone Girl’ – the vengeful wife who faked her disappearance to make her husband suffer intrusion as the suspect of murder. In your absence, Archie complained, “I have been badgered and pestered like a criminal; all I want is to be left alone!”. Compelled to issue press statements declaring his innocence, he turned the tables to reveal how you had boasted that you could stage a disappearance better than anyone.

The world would know what a liar he was in his categorical assertions of your happy, trouble-free marriage – he was unaware then of how you had embedded the name of his mistress into the saga, so she could never escape the scrutiny either (well played!).

What about the theory that you staged the whole fiasco as a publicity stunt? According to your secretary, you were “much too quite a lady for that”, but it didn’t go unnoticed that publishers and theatres ran ads for your works alongside reports of your disappearance. If the end goal is fame, no publicity is bad, and your book sales did rocket following the fuss over your disappearance.

The only time you spoke about the episode (interview, below), you claimed a combination of memory loss and secondary personality disorder, two conditions that medical experts rarely put together.

Amnesia can be triggered by stress: the term ‘dissociative fugue’ is used today for the temporary loss of memory and identity by which a person ends up in an unexpected place (the Latin word fugue meaning ‘fleeing’ or ‘running away’). But according to Professor of Neuropsychiatry Michael Kopelman, total amnesia is almost unknown in someone who otherwise functions well. However amnesia is caused, the idea that someone would not know who or where they are, or recognise their spouse, is so exaggerated and clichéd in its fictionalised depictions in books and movies that modern experts easily recognise these accounts as ‘simulated (pretended) amnesia’.

“This disappearance seems to be a typical case of mental retaliation against someone who’s harmed her. To put it bluntly, her primary intention seems to have been to hurt someone who would be affected by her disappearance… It is impossible to lose your memory and find your way to a determined destination.”

Edgar Wallace, to the Daily Mail

Possibly, your account was exaggerated, but not devoid of fact? Or were you really so calculating as to plan it all, as many believe?

There’s only one way to find out … let’s pull up the charts!

Interview with Daily Mail, 15 Feb 1928 “… people thought I had gone away to seek publicity, to carry out a stupid hoax, or to have a subtle revenge on somebody. What actually happened was this. I left home that night in a state of high nervous strain with the intention of doing something desperate. I drove my car over the crest of the Downs in the direction of a quarry. The car struck something, and I was flung against the steering wheel and injured my chest and my head. I was dazed by the blow and lost my memory. For 24 hours I wandered in a dream and then found myself at Harrogate a well-contented and perfectly happy woman who believed she had just come from South Africa. The trouble really began with the death of my mother in the spring of 1926. That affected me very deeply, and on top of this shock there came a number of private troubles, into which I would rather not enter. I began to suffer from insomnia, and slept on average only two hours a night…

ARCHIE & AGATHA Wedding day: 24 Dec 1914

Up to this moment I was Mrs Christie. I was in an abnormal state of mind, and scarcely knew what I was doing; all the same I Knew I was Mrs Christie. After the accident in the car, however, I lost my memory… As Mrs Neele I was very happy and contented. I had become a new woman, and all the worries and anxieties of Mrs Christie had left me… At Harrogate I read every day about Mrs Christie's disappearance and came to the conclusion that she was dead. I regarded her as having acted stupidly.

I was greatly struck by my resemblance to her and pointed it out to other people in the hotel. It never occurred to me that I might be her, as I was quite satisfied in my mind as to who I was.”

CAST OF CHARACTERS

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READER POLL: What was the cause or motivation of Agatha’s disappearance and prolonged absence?

Generally, only 3 scenarios are considered: loss of memory, hoax, or revenge. I am adding a 4th option and detailing my case for that below. Agree or disagree? Mark the theory that best suits your judgement and feel free to make your own argument on the Patreon site: www.patreon.com/skyscript/posts 1) Ambition (publicity stunt, designed to raise her profile as a mystery writer) 2) Subtle vengeance (to punish/expose the cruelty of her husband and his mistress) 3) Genuine loss of memory (dissociate fugue after knocking her head in the accident) 4) Emotional breakdown followed by inability to deal with a situation that got out of hand

Natal themes The closest aspect in Agatha’s nativity is the sextile between Mars and Uranus, which dominates the angles. Whilst this lively pairing proposes great energy, initiative, originality and the kind of explosiveness that allows brilliance or disaster in career matters, its volatile blend depicts someone who is highly strung, impulsive, unsettled or subject to stress.

Mars in Sagittarius is fiery and spontaneous; against this, the mutable quality of the square from the Virgo Sun seems exaggerated by the Sun’s placement on the 9th cusp. The 9th signifies books and publishing, but it is also relevant that Agatha’s parents were wealthy and she was very well travelled, even as a child. The family moved around a lot, spending long periods with relatives or visiting Europe or America, sometimes spending months in exotic locations like Egypt, where the cost of living was cheap for those with the time and means to make the journey.

Mars rules the I.C., so there seems to be excitability in her roots, possibly explained by all that change and stimulation in her childhood, which gave her a life theme of feeling ‘at home’ when travelling and being ‘on the move’. She reported a happy relationship with her parents but said that her father’s death when she was 11 brought her childhood to an abrupt, unnatural end.

Young Agatha

A few moments with her natal chart forces us to look past the popular image, as portrayed in the AstroDatabank biography which describes Christie as “a plain and matronly Englishwoman with hair forever locked in a marcelled wave, wearing dowdy housedresses; a deeply religious teetotaller who loved to putter in her garden”. This seems to depict her character, Miss Marple, not young Agatha, who was fashionable and well dressed, in many ways a setter of the trends of her era. As that Libran Moon trine Neptune shows, she was sociable, charming, artistic, musical and highly creative. She played the piano and enjoyed singing, dancing and all forms of performance. Underneath her sharp, agile mind, she was fascinated by dreams, spiritualism, and the psychology of human behaviour.

But, as per that Mars, she was also adventurous, ambitious and aspiring. If someone told me hers was the horoscope of a shrewd and cunning pirate, I could believe that. She loved challenges – she wrote her first novel in response to her sister’s challenge: “I bet you can’t write a good detective story” – she relished sports such as horse riding, hunting, and roller-skating. She also worked hard as a young woman serving as a volunteer nurse in the Red Cross during World War I. As a result, she reported knowing all about pain and misery, and the look and smell of death. During this period, she became fascinated (as many Virgos do) with learning the effects of herbs, poisons and natural remedies, studying throughout, and qualifying as an Apothecary’s Assistant in 1917.

Re our storyline: double-bodied Gemini on the 7th suggests two marriages – more pertinent to a painful divorce is the opposition of Mars and the aspect from Uranus to the 7th cusp and its ruler. A 1920s divorce was always life-changing and conflict-ridden. At a time when people were expected to stay together for

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the sake of the children, it could only proceed through allocating guilt and blame to one party, imparting a sense of shame in both. Keep your eye on Agatha’s Venus, debilitated at 8° Ü, sextile Saturn at 9° Ñ (the sign of fall for Venus): this is the signature of someone who suffers dejection and disappointment in romantic love, but who can find happiness in later life under more realistic, mature expectations. Venus also disposes Agatha’s Moon, which rises on the ascendant of her solar return for 1926, the year when she would lose her mother and her emotions, marriage, reputation and home life were all set to fall apart.

1926 When the degree of a personal planet falls on the SR ascendant, we expect the themes of that planet to highlight the experiences that year. The cadent Moon, at 6° Ö, is in a partile trine to Neptune on the 6th cusp in Agatha’s nativity, and in the SR it joins the cusp of the dark, 4th house, associated with death, loss, and retreat.

In the solar return, the Moon rules the 10th house (mother/career) and is separating from the trine of its dispositor, 8th-ruler Venus, testifying to the grief Agatha was working through – the death of her mother in April had left her bereft of creativity and suffering writer’s block. Ancient sources warn of a sense of deprivation when a planet separates from its dispositor, and the damage even trines bring when the planets are essentially afflicted: here, the Moon is in detriment; Venus in fall. The afflicted state of the two feminine planets denotes loneliness, isolation, sorrow and – with the Moon in Capricorn – coldness. The signature strikes a chord in how Agatha registered her mother’s death “It was going up in the train to Manchester that I knew, quite suddenly, that my mother was dead. I felt a coldness, as though I was invaded all over, from head to feet, with some deadly chill and I thought: Mother is dead”.

Mercury is the only planet strong by essential dignity, but its role as 12th-ruler makes its signification sorrowful. The Sun, the primary significator of the creative spirit, is placed in the 12th house, associated with clandestine secrets, being undermined, and “tribulation, all manner of affliction, self-undoing, &c”, according to Lilly. The Sun receives the retrograde opposition of disruptive Uranus. As with Mars, the prominence of Uranus in the natal chart means its effects in progressions are important to note.

Mars now acts as the 7th ruler, representing Archie and the state of Agatha’s marriage. Debilitated in its sign of detriment in the 8th house, Mars moves in close to the opposition of Saturn. Agatha fought to save her marriage, but there is no question that it is ending. The upcoming lunar eclipse of December 1926 (the month of the disappearance) falls at 26°36 Å, on Agatha’s natal descendant, where it opposes her natal Mars and is squared by transiting Uranus. These patterns suggest such intense levels of stress, emotional heartbreak and mental agitation that separation and disassociation can be expected to result.

Ruling out the disappearance being a publicity stunt: 1926 was a year of loss and bereavement, where indicators of career are low and subdued, showing all Agatha wants to do at this time is lie low, be free of work commitments, and bury herself away.

Event chart: disappearance If Agatha’s disappearance was being reported today, astrologers would hunt for clues in the event chart for the time that she left her home and the mystery began.

A debilitated, retrograde Mars dominates the chart from its elevated position on the M.C., colouring everything with an air of catastrophe, and suggesting the accident was the manifestation of badly managed (or unexpressed) anger and fury. Proposals of divorce had recently resurfaced and the period leading up to this event could have been predicted as one of extreme emotional distress by noting radical

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themes, such as transiting Mars’ opposition to Agatha’s natal Venus and its completion of a grand trine in the solar return between the Moon (6°à) and Venus (5°Ñ).

Agatha is signified by the 1st house, with Leo rising and the Sun in fiery Sagittarius – she is not working to a plan but reacting to impulse, albeit with issues of pride at stake. Even though she is reported to have been a teetotaller, Neptune rising and the afflicted state of the Moon and Mercury show that normal patterns of behaviour are disturbed, and her mind is definitely clouded, subject to fantasies or irrational delusions.

“I’ve never been an advocate of teetotalism. A Agatha might have taken opium or some other form of little strong drink is always advisable on the narcotic (of which she was very well informed and supplied). premises in case there is a shock or an accident.

The Moon and retrograde Mercury (natural significators of Invaluable at such times.” the mind) are united in Scorpio, disposed by the retrograde – Miss Marple: The Mirror Cracked Mars and in a partile trine to retrograde Uranus in the 8th house. (Her thoughts are dark and brooding, full of resentment, paranoia, and possibly revenge, and she is ready to snap). The Moon immediately translates the light of this destructive configuration to the rising retrograde Neptune by square. Although the amnesia theory does not convince me, if I were looking for a planetary signature of an accident leading to memory loss (technically known as retrograde amnesia), this would be it.

The Moon’s square to 8th-ruler Jupiter supports Agatha’s account that she felt suicidally depressed when she set off in the car. Since the aspect is separating, the inclination is waning, but it is still effective in what happens next. In her biography, Agatha talks about how much the car meant to her: “I, Agatha, could have a car, a car of my own. I will confess here and now that of the two things that have excited me most in life the first was my car, my bottlenosed Morris Cowley. The second was dining with the Queen at Buckingham Palace about forty years later”.

Regardless of whether she drove the car or let it roll towards the quarry, this detail is very telling, suggesting that she engaged in an act of utter despair by the wilful destruction of the one thing that epitomised her personal happiness (if that was gone, why should the car not go too?).

I doubt Agatha contrived any plan beyond that but simply reacted at that point to a survival instinct which compelled her to find somewhere comfortable, far away from everything on her upset mind.

The Moon’s close conjunction with Mercury is fascinating in light of Agatha’s account of suddenly transforming from Mrs Christie to Mrs Neele after the crash. With Archie signified

by Saturn as the 7th-ruler (its new sign ingress the previous day showing he had committed to change), the mistress, Nancy Neele, is signified by Mercury as the ruler of the derived 5th house from the 7th: the husband’s lover.

Mercury makes an apt significator for Neele; she was ten years younger than Agatha, with a strong emphasis on Mercury and Gemini natally, and had worked for Agatha as a secretarial clerk in the period the affair with Archie developed. Based on the Moon-Mercury conjunction I would judge that Agatha set off in the car to confront Miss Neele. We will never know whether she was on the way to or from such a meeting when the crash happened and she abandoned her car, but we can see how disturbed her mind was, and how intimately Nancy Neele played upon it.

The most recent contact for the Sun, Agatha’s main significator, was the recent conjunction with Venus.

As the ruler of the 10th and 3rd, the combustion of Venus shows Agatha’s inability to write at this time was underlined by the fear of losing everything. She was undergoing a reset professionally as well as personally – when she did get back to writing, she emerged with a new, female character: Miss Marple.

Nothing happens with the Sun until it perfects a sextile with angular Jupiter on the descendant in just over 10°. At this stage an informed astrologer would check the ephemeris for 10 or 11 days after the

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event, to look for a transit confirmation of something relevant happening at that time. They would see that on Wednesday 15th December the Sun (signifying Agatha) would come to 23°á, the degree of her natal ascendant, and expect her whereabouts would be fully exposed and brought to light around that time. (As the Sun hits her ascendant, it also joins her natal Mars-Uranus configuration, so this is not the end of the problem for Agatha, merely the beginning of her recognition of what the problems really are).

We can rule out the disappearance being planned to malign the husband: though she felt an overwhelming combination of need, desperation, anger and hate, her mind was genuinely distressed and disturbed, incapable of functionally sharply and cleverly at this time.

“Dogs are wise. They crawl away into a quiet corner and lick their wounds and do not rejoin the world until they are whole once more.”

– Miss Marple: The Moving Finger

Did she really lose her memory?

Surely everyone realises that was just the most convenient explanation for a woman who lacked a satisfactory explanation?

She no doubt compartmentalised her mind as a coping strategy, and temporarily chose to abandon troubled thoughts about her real life rather than deal with them while she felt so broken.

Something in her psychology drove her to a more relaxing, carefree environment, far away from the dark, morbid house and the family woes it represented. I am sure the doctors realised this too but recognised that her frailty and vulnerability were real. Rest and removal from pressure were essential to the recovery of a woman who was at her wits end and malfunctioning emotionally.

Agatha was still in hiding when she was exposed, still masking her own reality, but she was ill, weak and depressed in a genuinely low and trauma-filled period of her life.

“The simplest explanation is always the most likely.”

– Poirot: The Mysterious Affair at Styles

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A SLIP-UP WITH THE FALLS? Not for lack of theory or proposed conceptual designs, the origin of the exaltation degrees remains as mysterious as Agatha Christie’s disappearance.

The 3rd-century Syrian astrologer, Porphyry, was impressed by the pattern by which the diurnal planets (M, h, i) yield trines between their signs of rulership and exaltation, while the nocturnal planets (c, `, R) yield sextiles. But Porphyry gives no reason for the varying degrees he lists for each planet – why, Porphyry, is the Sun exalted in the 19th degree, the Moon the 3rd, Venus the 27th, &c?

Also, I don’t buy Porphyry’s explanation that Mercury has the same sign for its rulership and exaltation because “its ray is dimmer”.1 He is basically saying that diurnal planets get trines, nocturnal planets get sextiles, and Mercury gets a conjunction. It’s a neat pattern to observe but not a satisfactory explanation.

Planetary exaltations M ~ 19th degree R Ä 3rd degree i Ö 20th degree h Ç 15th degree c à 28th degree ` ä 27th degree _ Ñ 15th degree ¡ Signs of exaltation for diurnal planets trine a sign of rulership Signs of exaltation for nocturnal planets sextile a sign of rulership ¢

In terms of explanation, we have two models to follow. One views the degrees as recorded positions in a year of special astronomical significance (note: the degrees are describing distinct planetary phenomena within that year, not depicting planetary positions for one moment of time – we can rule that out since Mercury cannot be in Virgo when the Sun is in Aries). The other diverts attention away from the specific degrees, as Porphyry does, and builds a theory that the relationships of the signs reflect some kind of interplay between the planets. Although both models come from different perspectives, they unite in one persuasive detail.

CYRIL FAGAN in 1969

Let’s consider first the proposal of Cyril Fagan, as the leading example of the “recorded positions” theory. In his 1950s book, Zodiacs Old and New, Fagan explained his fascination with a cuneiform tablet from the era of Nebuchadnezzar (604-561 BC), which lists the Moon’s exaltation in the Pleiades. He noted how its position aligned with Moon’s historically reported exaltation in the 3rd degree of tropical Taurus, proving that planetary exaltations were established before the widespread adoption of the tropical zodiac, hence, ruling out any theories that their rationale is based on the relationship of the 12 equal zodiacal signs. The same tablet also records the Sun’s exaltation in the Hireling, the Babylonian constellation later known as Aries.

1 Porphyry’s Introduction to the Tetrabiblos, translated by James Holden, (AFA, 2009), p.10.

Fagan realised that the Pleiades was central to the New Year festival in ancient Mesopotamia. Their year began with the first heliacal rising of the Moon after the Sun had returned to the Vernal Equinox,2 and the arc of separation between the Sun and Moon’s exaltation equates to that of the Pleiades from the Sun on the first day of the Babylonian New Year (when the new crescent actually becomes visible).

Fagan’s work argues that all of the planetary exaltations line up with important heliacal phenomena from the year 786 BC, which was of commemorative interest to astrology because it saw the official opening in Calah3 of the temple of knowledge dedicated to Nabu. Nabu (or Nebo) was represented by the planet Mercury and the Babylonian god of astrology, writing, and wisdom. It is true that the opening of this temple was a huge foundational event in the history of that ancient Babylonian city.

By the time of the ancient Greeks those exaltation were being recorded by some (not all) sources, but without explanation of why the specific degrees matter. If Fagan’s theory, or something like it was correct, this might have been because astrologers of a later era and a different geographic region saw no value in commemorating an event that had no relevance to their own culture.

Now let’s consider the reasoning of the sign arrangement as it was understood by Ptolemy.

Ptolemy does not mention or acknowledge the exaltation degrees. However, he does state that the reason the Sun is exalted in Aries is because this is the sign where the Sun crosses the Vernal Equinox to bring the return of spring to the northern hemisphere. So the Sun is exalted in Aries and depressed in its opposite sign, Libra.

He adds that the reason the Moon is exalted in Taurus is because this is the sign where it shows its first phase (reappears) after its union with the Sun in Aries. So the logic proposed by Fagan is the same as that recorded by Ptolemy, who adds that the opposite sign, Scorpio, is where the Moon experiences its fall.

From this point on, the explanation moves to a new set of logic that is not embedded in Fagan’s theory – it is based on aligning planets with directions and cardinal signs and contrasting their qualities with each other.

The opposing planetary pairs and qualities are as follows:

heating

M=

opposes

i

cooling

fertile / northern

h

opposes

c

fiery/ southern

moist/ spring

`

opposes

_

dry/ autumn

So Saturn, being the opposing quality to the Sun, is exalted in Libra and suffers its fall in Aries – because where the Sun is strong, Saturn is weak, and vice versa.

Next we consider that Jupiter is associated with the fecund north wind and Mars with the destructive south wind (remember, this philosophy originated in regions that were hot and arid, where cooling 2 Much like the modern formula for calculating the date of Easter today, which relies on similar reasoning but uses the

Full Moon rather than the New Moon. So Easter Sunday is celebrated on the first Sunday following the first Full Moon following the Sun’s return to the Vernal Equinox (now fixed at 0° Aries in the tropical zodiac).

3 Also spelled Kalhu or Kalakh, modern Nimrūd, ancient Assyrian city situated south of Mosul in northern Iraq.

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winds and rainfall were considered a blessing).

This association of Jupiter with the north wind and Mars with the south wind is extremely ancient and derives from Babylonian astrology.4 So, with the first two cardinal signs, Aries and Libra, allocated to the Sun and Saturn, the remaining two cardinal signs are allocated to Jupiter and Mars, in line with the directional associations (Cancer, the northern sign, is given to Jupiter; Capricorn, the southern sign, is given to Mars). Note how these two planets are treated as opposites – so where Jupiter is exalted, Mars is depressed, and vice versa.

Only Venus and Mercury remain.

These are also treated as opposites. Venus is “moist by nature” and associated with spring, so exercises her power more fully in moist Pisces, a sign of spring. Mercury “is drier” and associated with the autumnal qualities of Virgo. Where Venus is exalted Mercury is depressed, and vice versa.

This may seem like an unnecessary detour into an ancient explanation of seven exaltation signs that you can simply remember, but the points expressed in Ptolemy’s passage are pertinent to understanding the Babylonian concepts that underlie the original exaltation arrangement. These details tie into associated philosophies and allow us to build connections with other elements of ancient astrology. I would like to develop this and look at other elements of relevance in a future issue; for now, the emphasis on the contrasting planetary pairs is what I ask you to keep in mind as we consider the design of the planetary falls.

What Ptolemy reports is also expressed in a slightly altered form in the 2nd-century Greek text of Antiochus (Thesaurus I.7). This agrees that the Sun (heat and light), is exalted where Saturn (cold and dark) is depressed, and vice versa. Jupiter (life and abundance) is raised where Mars (overseer of death and) is depressed.

For Mercury and Venus, Antiochus tells us that Venus is exalted in the place that Mercury experiences fall, and vice versa, because Mercury “is the master of dispute” while Venus “is the overseer of desire and intercourse”. So “where the intellectual increases, there the desire and pleasure in intercourse is depressed. And where desire and pleasure are exalted, there the intellect is depressed”.

“Venus is opposite to Mercury. He comprehends languages The Moon is now the odd one out, as Mercury was and discipline; she delights and pleasures, Jupiter the like for Porphyry, so Antiochus ends with a less than to Mars; this coveteth mercy and justice; that, impiety and satisfactory but rather poetic explanation that the cruelty” Moon is “the fortune of all” and so “whom fortunes – Aphorism 3: Hermes Centiloquium exalts, no one may depress; while he whom fortune www.skyscript.co.uk/centiloquium2.html depresses, no one is able to exalt”.

Exaltation and fall degrees So now let’s consider the concept of the falls. Like everyone else, I acquired the understanding that in whatever degree a planet is exalted, the opposite degree is where it experiences its fall. For example, the exaltation of Jupiter is 15° Ç, therefore its fall must be 15° à; the exaltation of Mars is 28° à, therefore its fall must be 28° Ç.

4

We see evidence of the north wind being associated with certain months of the year, and certain signs of the zodiac and the region of Akkad (under the influence of Jupiter), and the south wind likewise being associated with signs and months and the region of Elam (under the influence of Mars) from at least the 7th century BC.

24

25

But think again about what we have been told: the place where Jupiter is exalted is the place where Mars experiences its fall.

So, if we are considering the specific degrees, and Jupiter is exalted at 15° Ç, then shouldn’t this degree – 15° Ç – be the one where Mars experiences its fall? If Mars is exalted at 28° à, then shouldn’t this same degree be where Jupiter experiences its fall?

This had not occurred to me until I recently worked through a Latin manuscript of Firmicus, which explains and tabulates the degrees of exaltation and fall in this way. This is not how the text reads in the English translations of Jean Rhys Bram or James Holden. Holden recorded his suspicion of corruption in the transmission, so he ‘corrected’ the text to agree with Dorotheus. But in this Latin edition, the tabulated information carefully agrees with what is stated in the text – so cannot be dismissed as a careless error.

Here is how the passage reads (Mathesis, II.3). This definitely gives new food for thought about the issue, although more research is needed before any firm conclusions are drawn.

EXALTATIONS AND FALLS OF THE PLANETS

We must know about exaltation and debasement – that is, what is the exaltation of each individual planet, in which it is raised up to a maximum of its own natural force, and what is its fall, when it suffers loss of that force.

When planets are in their own exaltations we say that they rejoice. When in a chart the majority of the planets are in the exact degree of their exaltation, they indicate the greatest prosperity.

On the other hand, men are overwhelmed by catastrophe when the majority of the planets are located in the exact degree of those signs in which they lose their power by debasement or fall.

The former are called exaltations, or favourable places in the chart, because they make those who are born with this configuration fortunate and successful. When they are in their debility or fall, that is, in unfavourable places, they make men wretched, poor, of low birth, and constantly plagued by bad luck.

The Babylonians called the signs in which the planets are exalted their ‘houses’. But in the doctrine we use, we maintain that all the planets are more favourable in their exaltations than in their own signs.

The M is exalted in the 19th degree of ~ but is in its fall in the 20th degree of Ö. The R is exalted in the 3rd degree of Ä, in its fall in the 3rd degree of Ü. i is exalted in the 20th degree of Ö, while it is in its fall in the 19th degree of ~. h is exalted in the 15th degree of Ç, but its fall is in the 28th degree of à. c is exalted in the 28th degree of à, but is in its fall in the 28th degree of Ç. ` is exalted in the 27th degree of ä, in its fall in the 15th degree of Ñ. _ is exalted in the 15th degree of Ñ and is in its fall in the 27th degree of ä.

Sign

Exalt

Degree

Fall

~= Ä= Å= Ç= É= Ñ= Ö= Ü= á= à= â= ä=

M= R= = h= = _= i= = = c= = `=

19 3

i=

15

c=

15 20 3

` M R

28

h

27

_

26

HIGHLIGHTS

OUTLOOK:

Changeable, chaotic, literary (but full of dispute and confusion), easing and relaxing at the end of the month; much change in theme on the day of the equinox.

SEPTEMBER 2022 Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

“We are born at a given moment, in a given place and, like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and of the season of which we are born. Astrology does not lay claim to anything more” – Carl Jung

1

Thursday

Friday

3J4 7J8

2 4a-

3

5a8 4L8 4J5 4a7 3K4

4 4J0

4K0 4L= 4J; 4K6 4 "M

Saturday

Sunday 4K=

5 4L6

6

3L4 4L4J= 4F;

7 4"Q

8 4K-

9 4"W

10 5 St. Ret.

11 4 J ;

12 4 J 7

13 4 K ;

14 4 L 6

15 4 K 0

16 4 J 8

17 4 F 7

18 4 " Y

19 3 L ;

20 6 L -

21 4 J 5

22 4 J 7

23 3 4 O

24 6 a =

25 4 a =, F 6

26 6 L ;

27 4 L 7

28 7 L 0

29 6 " O

30 4 " M

4"} 6"I 4K8 4K5

4J0

4J6 4J-

5F6 3a8

4"R

4L= 4a; 3J4 4"U

4L0 5L; 4K; 4"P

4J8 4L5 4L7

4F-

4L8

4F0

3L4 4J= 4L; 4"T

4K4a0

4a4K0 4L= 4J5 4J;

4a6 4K7

4L5 6K7 3a=

Equinox 3F5 4"I 5"I

4J6 4L8 3J4

3a4 4J4F=

4K6 4L0 4K= 3K4

4K7 4L-

4"E 3L4F8 4a5

4K8 4K5 5a8

4L; 4F5 4"O 3F4 4a8

27 COMING UP

EPHEMERIS

SEPTEMBER 2022

28

DEB’S IN-DEPTH SPEED INTERVIEW with the Astrologer: LEE LEHMAN For those unfamiliar with my in-depth interview technique, I suggest you catch up with previous examples here: An Interview with Some American Astrologers www.skyscript.co.uk/US_interviews.html

Lee Who??

Full time astrologer, botany expert, cat lover, and all round egg-head, Dr. Lee has been writing, teaching, consulting, cataloguing astrological rulerships and authoring astrology books for over 40 years. Recipient of the 1995 Marc Edmund Jones Award, and the 2008 Regulus Award for Education, Lee also has a black belt in Tae Kwon Do (like Karate, with a Korean accent). I proposed we conduct our interview by Zoom, where I would be safely out of reach.

Q1: Since you are a double Virgo and your chart has been published by AstroDataBank, can I include it …

Q3: Lee, not including the one what I wrote, what would you say is the best astrology book of all time?

Well you can, but the one on AstroDataBank is wrong.

No it’s not. It has a Rodden rating A. Well they used birth certificate data. I have rectified it since. My Ascendant is Virgo, not Leo. But your version doesn’t have a Rodden rating A. It is up to you, but my ascendant is actually Zero Virgo.

What???? I’m not including that. We could argue forever whether zero Virgo is actually the 30th degree of Leo. Could you be a bit less awkward?

It’s 0°05 Virgo.

Ah… OK [Geez, Virgos] … did you need to be so precise?

[At this point Lee decided to educate me on her rectification technique, not realising that my allocated time for conducting this interview had already passed] Thanks Lee. I’ll have to look up the meaning of ‘diurnals’ sometime. In the meantime, I never got to complete my first question because you interrupted me… … and if so: how do you keep your balance with a chart as imbalanced and lob-sided as that?

[Lee’s answer didn’t translate well. And there were further references to “diurnals” … whatever those are. I thought she might be talking about sect, so I just failed her on this question and moved on to the next]

[Damn Zoom connection was so bad. I couldn’t make out whether she said Astrology of Sustainability by Lee Lehman, or The Houses: Temples of the Sky by Deborah Houlding – even though I asked her not to make this all about me. I could only give her half a point for this.]

Q2: I’m looking at your chart with its Virgo ascendant and dying to ask a more probing question: How do you feel about sect Lee – and how important is it to you?

[I swear, I was not prepared for the answer I got from this socalled triple Virgo. I said “sect”, she heard “S … E… X” even though the sound of those words is miles apart! Suffice to say the matter seemed to be one of some importance. Lee pointed out that she was one of the first astrologers ever to be an homosexual, and so she has some letters after her name for that, which is quite amazing, isn’t it? (This was back in the old days when it wasn’t compulsory to be homosexual to be an astrologer). Fascinating stuff, but Lee didn’t answer the question asked, so this was another fail.]

Q4: William Lilly tells us that, for places, Virgo rules “a study where books are, a closet, a dairy-house, corn fields, malt-house, hay-ricks, or a place where cheese and butter is preserved and stored up”. Which of these do you prefer to work in, and why?

Well … there was a long time in my life when I had to work in a closet, so to speak, so I think it’s easy for me to choose a study where books are.

[I am soooo simple minded. It’s only now, as I type this up, that I realise her reference to being “in a closet” (which struck me as strange) might have had ‘layers’ to it. Still not sure what she really meant, but I’ll give her the point.]

Q5: What is ‘dustoria’ – and do you have any planets in that state?

Dustoria is one of those wonderful astrology terms defined in the Skyscript Glossary of terms, and probably not.

Correct! It’s something to do with hayz. Nerdy types can check at www.skyscript.co.uk/gl/dustoria.html

Psychological assessment of answers: 2½/ 5 Lee’s prowess at rectification failed to impress me. If I had rectified that chart I would have splattered the planets round the wheel a bit more. This revealed to me a rather disturbing and dark unconscious mind in an astrologer who secretly yearns to be the reincarnation of Al Biruni. Don’t believe me? Take a look at her chart, then look at Al’s chart on p.5; see what I mean? As for all that precise minute on the ascendant stuff, I take back everything nice I said about Virgos on page 3. Whether 29° Leo or 0° Virgo is on the ascendant, it’s all the same – Regulus rises (she’s a show off).