Skyscript Astrology Forum

Therese Hamilton wrote:Petosirsis, did you take the time to read the article on the link I posted?

And to stay on topic we're trying to discover the origin date of the assignment of the modern fire, earth, air and water to signs in the tropical zodiac. But if you're specializing primarily in Hellenistic astrology, then you wouldn't have that information.

Your OP contains the following information:

Even Kenneth Bowser in his Introduction of Western Sidereal Astrology (American Federation of Astrologers, 2012) mentions the elements in relation to zodiac signs. (Some Fagan school sidereal astrologers reject the association of elements with signs.) As I’ve written elsewhere, we get a more accurate picture of the sidereal zodiac if we forsake that are called tropical elemental properties and instead assign Aristotle’s four qualities (hot, cold wet and dry) as well as Hellenistic triplicity lords to signs of the zodiac.
http://users.snowcrest.net/sunrise/aatr ... es2013.htm

I was discussing that part. I am confused whether you are trying to trace the inclusion of the qualities in 20th century Indian astrology or medieval western astrology. I was offering my opinion on these qualities that differ from your opinion that they are working with the sidereal zodiac.

The inclusion of the element properties depends on the elements, just changing their names means you are still led by elemental logic. But you are of the opinion that the tropical zodiac has empirical validity and the sidereal zodiac changes with it, but not many would agree with that statement. The two might be related.

Scorpio is not a wet sign. Moisture is indicative of the element water. Scorpio is a terrestrial creature as Aries and ruled by burning and drying Mars. Scorpions can't swim and in the environment the ancient astrologers were living, they are mostly encountered in extreme dry desert conditions.

Therese, ask Ben Dykes, he may have that information. This presumably comes after Ptolemy, who doesnt use the 4 elements in his sign classification, to the best of my knowledge.
I lost my Hephaistio so I cant look there. Petosiris might know if he used the 4 elements, he was from about 380 AD.

[quote="And to stay on topic we're trying to discover the origin date of the assignment of the modern fire, earth, air and water to signs in the tropical zodiac. [/quote]

Pier wrote:Therese, ask Ben Dykes, he may have that information. This presumably comes after Ptolemy, who doesnt use the 4 elements in his sign classification, to the best of my knowledge.
I lost my Hephaistio so I cant look there. Petosiris might know if he used the 4 elements, he was from about 380 AD.

Yes, Hephaistio is one of the few Hellenistic authors who does ascribe the four elements to the signs. He in fact uses them very literally, he says that if you make a foundation of a city near an eclipse in the trigon of Cancer (watery), the city will be harmed by water, in fiery, from fire.

Valens, Hephaistio, Firmicus Maternus and Rhetorius are the ones I know who attribute the elements to the signs. Authors who mention triplicities, but do not assign the four classical elements or their properties to them include the summary of Thrasyllus, Manilius, Dorotheus, Manetho, Ptolemy, Paulus, Porphyry and Olympiodorus. They usually assign winds and directions to them instead. The practice of grouping three signs into winds and specific cardinal direction is from the Babylonians.

Great input Petosiris,

So Valens seems to be the earliest astrologer using these allocations of 4 elements to the signs. He writes of them as Fiery, watery, earthy and so forth as a matter of course, almost as if it was well known, though.
These elements are also used in Horary so the proof of the pudding is in the eating actually.

petosiris wrote: Yes, Hephaistio is one of the few Hellenistic authors who does ascribe the four elements to the signs. He in fact uses them very literally, he says that if you make a foundation of a city near an eclipse in the trigon of Cancer (watery), the city will be harmed by water, in fiery, from fire.

Valens, Hephaistio, Firmicus Maternus and Rhetorius are the ones I know who attribute the elements to the signs. Authors who mention triplicities, but do not assign the four classical elements or their properties to them include the summary of Thrasyllus, Manilius, Dorotheus, Manetho, Ptolemy, Paulus, Porphyry and Olympiodorus. They usually assign winds and directions to them instead. The practice of grouping three signs into winds and specific cardinal direction is from the Babylonians.

Petosiris wrote:

Yes, Hephaistio is one of the few Hellenistic authors who does ascribe the four elements to the signs. He in fact uses them very literally, he says that if you make a foundation of a city near an eclipse in the trigon of Cancer (watery), the city will be harmed by water, in fiery, from fire.

Unless I'm missing something, this passage (Book III, page 65) seems to be a single isolated reference to the sign-element association in the Hephaistion texts. I went through all three books this evening and couldn't find another mention of sign elements. There is some mention of "watery" signs, but in conjunction with such sign types as amphibious or those related to dry land (p. 40).

Petosiris wrote:

Valens, Hephaistio, Firmicus Maternus and Rhetorius are the ones I know who attribute the elements to the signs. Authors who mention triplicities, but do not assign the four classical elements or their properties to them include the summary of Thrasyllus, Manilius, Dorotheus, Manetho, Ptolemy, Paulus, Porphyry and Olympiodorus.

It's helpful to have this list, but I'm not seeing the elements in Hephaistio (Apotelesmatics, Book 1, Golden Hind Press, 1994). At least the elements aren't in 1. Concerning the name and the Power of the Twelfth Parts (pp. 3-25)
Aries is:
...the head of the cosmos, house of Ares, exaltation of the Sun about the 19th degree, equipartite, spring, tropical, kingly, commanding, vocal, terrestrial, nocturnal.

....in general it is full of thunder and hail...preceding parts are barren and full of thunderstorms and wind...middle parts are temperate and fruitful... (and so on, same pattern with the other signs)

Rhetorius (early 7th century) is the latest on the list, so perhaps he is the key to the later pattern of elements related to triplicities.

I became somewhat bleary eyed scanning three books in a short time in one evening, so perhaps I've missed additional mention of sign elements?

Another example: sun, Venus in Capricorn, moon in Cancer, Saturn, Mercury in Sagittarius, Jupiter in Taurus, Mars in Leo, Ascendant in Aquarius, the Lot of Fortune in Leo. Mars was in Leo, a fiery and solar sign, in opposition to the Ascendant. Saturn and Mercury were in superior aspect to the <8th> Place
of Death <Pisces>. The native was burned alive.

http://www.csus.edu/indiv/r/rileymt/vet ... entire.pdf - Riley translation. Valens constantly uses the elements throughout his work.

Unless I'm missing something, this passage (Book III, page 65) seems to be a single isolated reference to the sign-element association in the Hephaistion texts. I went through all three books this evening and couldn't find another mention of sign elements. There is some mention of "watery" signs, but in conjunction with such sign types as amphibious or those related to dry land (p. 40).

Hephaistio and Valens continued to use the old assignments of Capricorn and Aquarius as being moist in addition to the elemental scheme with Scorpio. That is the reason.

I do not know what you are trying to prove here.

Of course Valens uses the elements. I was referring to the hard copy Hephaistio texts, and noted that elements weren't included in the sign (image) descriptions in Book 1. So I'm questioning whether Hephaistio made much use of the elements as such compared to other sign characteristics listed throughout Book 3. (Hephaistion of Thebes, Apotelesmatics, Book III: on Inceptions, The Cazimi Press, 2013.) Trans. by Eduardo J. Gramaglia, Edited and Intro. Benjamin N. Dykes

Examples of sign characteristics (Italics are mine):

From page 52:

37. To go hunting [after wild beasts] with the help of dogs [the Moon should be] in the bestial signs; after birds, in the winged signs; to go fishing in the wet signs.

41. Emigrating and changing from one place to another in signs of human shape, and even better in Cancer (on account of it being her house). 42. Making associations with friends in signs of human shape.

From page 40:

10. The watery signs mean watery places, the activities through or in water, the amphibious ones combine what is of earth with what is of water, those of dry land [signify] plains and mountains; the fertile and prolific ones crowds and people; the barren ones, deserts and inaction.

(Potosisris, many forum members don't have these books. That is why I'm giving examples so they know what we're talking about, and why I noted the publishing information for the books. I was wondering if there was any specific mention of fire, earth, air and water associated with triplicities aside from that one reference on page 65 in Book 3.)

Petosiris wrote on May 19:

I am confused whether you are trying to trace the inclusion of the qualities in 20th century Indian astrology or medieval western astrology.

I had a reply written to answer this question, but then the conversation went in a different direction.

Actually it’s a dual question. It’s established that:

(1) India’s classical texts didn’t assign the so-called “elements,??? fire, earth, air and water to sign triplicities.

(2) Modern astrologers who practice what is now called Jyotish have assigned these elements to sign triplicities, thus adding traits to signs that resemble tropical interpretations and were not part of India’s classical precepts. This tropical interpretation is being carried across the board to other sidereal systems now being practiced by astrologers.

(3) The modern BPHS (Parasara), first translated into English by R. Santhanam in 1984 does contain the four triplicity “elements??? in the description of zodiac signs.

The date and history of the modern BPHS is unknown, open to conjecture. If we want to know when these triplicity assignment MIGHT have been added to the text or even when the modern version of the text first came together from diverse sources, it would be helpful to trace when these triplicity element-sign relationships first routinely appeared in western texts. That is why I quoted Valerie Roebuck, but stated that I thought the date might have been earlier than Medieval or Renaissance times as she suggested.