Hellenistic
- Where
- the Greek-speaking eastern Mediterranean
- When
- roughly 150 BCE to 600 CE
- What survives
- Technical Greek treatises, some surviving whole, many known only through later quotation and excerpt.
46 entries
- "Vedic Astrology": the Term
A modern label for the Indian astrological tradition, and what the textual record does and does not support about the antiquity it claims.
- Aquarius
Aquarius's Babylonian name is a status title, not a description of pouring water; the water comes from the god's picture, not from the name itself.
- Aries
Aries opens the tropical zodiac at the March equinox itself; its Babylonian figure was a hired farmhand, not a ram.
- Aspects
The angular figures a chart draws between bodies, the reason the tradition allows exactly these, and why the orbs around them are convention.
- Cancer
The narrowest of the twelve like-named constellations, and the one whose divine counterpart may have been an empty shrine rather than an animal.
- Capricorn
A goat with a fish's tail is not a natural animal, and it is the one zodiacal hybrid that survived Babylon to the present essentially unchanged.
- Claudius Ptolemy
The name attached to more of this site's material than any other, and the man underneath it, who names six of the twelve places and is silent about the rest.
- Dorotheus of Sidon
The most-cited author on this site, whose Greek is lost, and whose ranking of the twelve places is assembled here from the entries that each hold one line.
- Ea
The Mesopotamian god of the abyssal waters, and the single figure standing behind three of the twelve zodiac constellations rather than one.
- Eastward Transmission of Hellenistic Astral Material
Alexandrian astral material reached Tang China through Indian and Iranian intermediaries, by the same routes and the same translations that carried it west.
- Eighth House
Named Beginning of Death in Hellenistic Greek and the sign of death by Dorotheus, an exact agreement across two independent lines of transmission.
- Eleventh House
The House of the Good Daemon in Ptolemy's own words, ranked third-best by Dorotheus, and Jupiter's joy since Firmicus and still in Lilly.
- Essential Dignity
Domicile, exaltation, triplicity, bound and face: the fivefold scheme, its sources, and the three places where the surviving texts do not agree.
- Fifth House
Called Good Fortune in Hellenistic Greek and the house of the child by Dorotheus, who ranked it fourth of the twelve places by strength.
- First House
The place of the Ascendant itself, the Horoskopos that gave the word horoscope its name, and the one house nearly every named source ranks first.
- Fourth House
The lower midheaven and cardine of the earth, ranked sixth-best by Dorotheus, though Ptolemy's own method for parents never names it.
- Gemini
The Ptolemaic bounds of Gemini split the transmission: Lilly's row, which most software ships as Ptolemaic, disagrees with every Greek edition.
- Greek Loanwords in Sanskrit Astrology
Sanskrit horoscopic vocabulary carries Greek technical terms, and what that does and does not establish about how the two traditions met.
- House Division
Seven house systems divide seven different objects into twelve, which is why a chart tool that offers all seven never agrees with itself.
- Jupiter
The brightest true planet after Venus, completing the ecliptic in under twelve years, roughly a sign a year, the arithmetic behind its period-marking use.
- Leo
The Sun's sole domicile, and home to Regulus, one of the four bright stars near the ecliptic.
- Libra
The only sign figured as an object: a Babylonian balance, a Greek claw, and a Roman restoration credited to Julius Caesar.
- Mars
The reddest of the five true planets, with the widest brightness swing and the largest retrograde loop of the seven, both from its varying distance.
- Mercury
Mercury never strays far from the Sun and is visible only near dawn or dusk; it is also the one planet exalted in the sign it already rules.
- Moon
The fastest of the seven, covering about 13 degrees a day, which makes it the body most sensitive to an error in birth date or time zone.
- Ninth House
Named God for the Sun in Hellenistic Greek, and the Sun's own joy from Firmicus through Lilly, thirteen centuries and one language apart.
- Pisces
Zero degrees of tropical Aries currently falls inside the constellation Pisces: the concrete case behind the whole tropical-versus-sidereal question.
- Precession of the Equinoxes
The slow westward slide of the equinox against the stars: the rate, who first measured it, and why it separates the seasonal frame from the stellar one.
- Sagittarius
The composite Mesopotamian god Pabilsag was carried into Greek astrology as a plain archer: the clearest case of simplification among the twelve signs.
- Saturn
The outermost classical planet: its Greek and Babylonian names, its dignities, the sect rule that governs it, and where the modern Saturn return came from.
- Scorpio
Of the thirteen constellations the ecliptic crosses, Scorpius is the narrowest by far, and its missing claws are doing duty as Libra's scales.
- Second House
The house of livelihood and movable goods, named the Gate of Hades in Hellenistic Greek, a name Ptolemy records but does not himself use.
- Sect
The division of a chart by whether the Sun stood above or below the horizon at birth, and the largest doctrinal gap in twentieth-century astrology.
- Seventh House
The Occident, built on the Descendant, called the sign of marriage by Dorotheus and one of the few places Ptolemy's own prose names directly.
- Sixth House
Called Bad Fortune in Hellenistic Greek, ranked among the two weakest of the twelve places by Dorotheus, and given as Mars's joy since Firmicus.
- Sun
The Sun rules one sign, holds no bounds, and is the only body whose sign depends on date alone, which is why a newspaper column could use it.
- Taurus
Taurus is a straight translation of the Babylonian Bull of Heaven, but its real distinction is the Pleiades and Hyades within it.
- Tenth House
The Midheaven itself, ranked second-best of the twelve places by Dorotheus and, for Ptolemy, one of his few directly named technical terms.
- The angles
The four points where the ecliptic crosses the horizon and the meridian, how fast they move, and the latitudes at which they stop existing.
- The Tetrabiblos
Ptolemy's four books on astrology: what the work is for, how it reached the present through three languages, and why its chapter numbers must be named.
- The Yavanajātaka and its Dating
A Sanskrit astrological text long dated to the second and third centuries CE on readings its manuscripts do not contain, and the correction that followed.
- Third House
Named Goddess for the Moon in Hellenistic Greek and called her joy by Dorotheus, though Ptolemy's own method for siblings never mentions it.
- Three Reference Frames
The tropical zodiac, the sidereal zodiac and the IAU constellation boundaries divide the sky for three different purposes, and answer three questions.
- Twelfth House
The House of the Bad Daemon, a place Ptolemy names only to say it should be disregarded, ranked worst of the twelve by Dorotheus and Saturn's own joy.
- Venus
Venus was two names, a morning star and an evening star, before the recognition that they were one body collapsed the naming into one.
- Virgo
The sixth sign was a furrow before it was a virgin, and the name of its brightest star still carries the ear of grain the Babylonian figure held.