phore Posted May 21, 2013 I recently came across this guys book www.jadelunaastrology.com He says that he studied with Brahmin priests in India. He claims that he has translated their jyotish astrology system into an Latin form. He apparently set up the correspondences to the western astrological signs and added three subhouses to each sign. The time of the year for each house is different. For instance a Capricorn might actually be a Sagittarius in this system. He claims that western astrology is astronomically incorrect due to the procession of the equinoxes. He claims that the chart is off by as much as 23degrees. Â What do you all think of this? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Zhongyongdaoist Posted May 21, 2013 I recently came across this guys book www.jadelunaastrology.com He says that he studied with Brahmin priests in India. He claims that he has translated their jyotish astrology system into an Latin form. He apparently set up the correspondences to the western astrological signs and added three subhouses to each sign. The time of the year for each house is different. For instance a Capricorn might actually be a Sagittarius in this system. He claims that western astrology is astronomically incorrect due to the procession of the equinoxes. He claims that the chart is off by as much as 23degrees. Â What do you all think of this? Â Well, since you asked, to a person like myself with decades of study and experience with astrology "East and West", unless your have unwittingly misrepresented him, he sounds ignorant and pretentious. Â Ignorant because he didn't know that Western astrology has had subdivisions of the signs since the Hellenistic period and all he did was "reinvent the wheel". Call then decans, decanates, faces or whatever, such a ten degree subdivision of each sign has been in use for a long time in the West. It is usually thought to be an adaptation of the Egyptian calendar system. Â As for Western signs being off by 23 degrees, this is a difference that arises between what is usually called the Tropical and the Sidereal Zodiacs. Western Astrology is based on the Tropical Zodiac which is defined by the relation between the Earth's equator and the ecliptic. The ecliptic is defined by the tilt of the Earth's axis and is what determines the season. The ecliptic is the Sun's apparent path during the year. Spring begins in the Northern Hemisphere when the sun passes over the Earth's equator going from the Southern Hemisphere to the Northern one. This exact day is called the Vernal Equinox because the day and night are of equal duration, and is the beginning of the sign of Aries in the Western or Tropical Zodiac. Thus the Western Zodiac is based on fundamental relations of space and time which determine the seasons and also the cycle of eclipses, which, by the way, is why the ecliptic is called the ecliptic. Whenever the sun and moon are both "on the ecliptic", new or full moons are eclipses. Â Seems like a long time ago someone noticed that the bright star Spica was setting at sunrise around the Vernal Equinox. So the setting of the Spica became a marker of the beginning of Spring. That pesky precession of the Equinoxes changed all that though and now the setting of Spica no longer corresponds to the Vernal Equinox. Oh well, things change I guess. However, the opposite point to Spica is the beginning of the ancient Indian Mansion's of the Moon and thus the Indian Sidereal Zodiac. So the question is, what is more important, that Spica happened to be setting on the Vernal Equinox for a couple of Centuries two thousand or so years ago or a basic pattern derived from the relation between the Sun and the Earth that determines the seasons? Â As a curious aside, I will note that Spica is important to the Chinese Lunar Mansions also, but it seems to be quit independent of Indian usages. Â By the way there is a common misconception that Western Astrologers were ignorant of the precession of the Equinoxes and the Sidereal Zodiac. Far from it, both were known from Hellenistic times. The precession of the Equinoxes was termed the motion of the eighth Sphere and is mentioned in the Middle Ages in Sacrobosco's De Sphaera, the standard astronomical text from the Thirteenth to the Seventeenth Centuries. Agrippa mentions the motion of the Eighth Sphere in both his Vanity of Arts and Sciences and in his Occult Philosophy, where he mentions the difference between the two Zodiacs and says that for purposes of working with the Arabic Lunar Mansions in magic it is preferable to use the Sidereal Zodiac. Somewhere between the Seventeenth and Nineteenth Centuries, the Precession and the Sidereal Zodiac where lost to Western astrologers, but in terms of astrological practice it wasn't much of a loss. The Sidereal Zodiac was reintroduced to Western Astrology by Cyril Fagan in the mid Twentieth Century and has enjoyed a certain vogue among people who think it is more "scientific", of course a modern astronomer is going to consider either zodiac laughable and the notion that any astrology could be "scientific", ridiculous. Â As a final note, I will mention that the oldest surviving work in Sanskrit dealing with astrology is called the Yavanajataka and is an account of Western Hellenistic Astrology, yavana being Sanskrit for the Greeks, and is the practical basis for all subsequent Indian astrology. The only native aspect that survives is the Nakshatra's or Mansions of the Moon. which probably explains why the Indians astrologers continued to uses the Sidereal Zodiac long after astronomy had left them behind. Â I have tried to condense the above as much as possible, there is much more that could be said, but I don't have time now to enter into any extended discussion of these matters. I hope that you and others find the above interesting and useful. 5 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
wayki Posted May 21, 2013 this has been known for a while......but the archetypal energy blocks are so deep in the collective consciousness - western astrology still works.......e.g the 12 signs are in the sky not 30 degrees apart but in the astral they are......its kinda like this. Â scepticism of an ancient babylonian system that goes back to 4000bc using logic will leave you with a locked door. Â seek the mystery, not the logical reasons why not. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
