Lilly's primary directions to fixed stars

1
I have been reading William Lilly's chapters on the directions of various significators to fixed stars (in CA III) and find them a little puzzling. There is no obvious method either in his selection of stars or in the order in which he lists them. Some stars recur in the different chapters (on the directions of the ascendant, midheaven, Sun, Mon and Part of Fortune), whereas others do not. Can anyone shed any light on this?
https://astrology.martingansten.com/

2
Consider also the nature of those fixed starres, whether they are of the same condition with the Planet they are neer unto, yea or no; for if of the same condition or influence, they add vigour to the Significator, or point of heaven where they are so posited.
Once he has decided about the magnitude and latitude,
Lilly seems to be more interested in matching for the same condition or influence and tallying the house or planet to the fixed star in choosing them.

4
I will try.

Lilly discusses 3 stars for conjunction with M.C
To the Lyons heart, in 24. Leo; greater Dog-star in 8.53. Cancer; Arcturus in 18. Libra.
mentions all kinds of qualities but not death of father/Parents.
This he specially chooses for Sun conjunct To the Lyons heart, in 24. Leo;
and he says
yet not without a sharp Disease, both afflicting the Native and his Father, but it will not be mortall.
For moon he skips the Lion's heart but goes for 22 degree Leo-
To the bright Starre of Hydra, in 22. Leo.
I think he is just picking out appropriate planets for appropriate stars and not all planets /angles directed to all stars of Magnitude 1 or 2.

It is a judicious selection to highlight a tendency to make it more apparent and easily foreseeable or predictable(improve its predictive value, so to speak).

He must have been a clever man.

5
pankajdubey wrote:I think he is just picking out appropriate planets for appropriate stars and not all planets /angles directed to all stars of Magnitude 1 or 2.
If I understand you correctly, you mean that Lilly would have regarded some stars as more effective promissors than others for a given significator. That sounds like an important (and entirely novel) principle that would have merited at least a sentence or two of introduction, yet there is none. In other words, I'm quite sceptical about this. Also, it doesn't explain why the stars are listed in what seems to be a fairly random order. I don't doubt that Lilly was clever, but to me it just looks as if he wrote down whatever fixed stars he happened to think of, in the order in which they came to mind...
https://astrology.martingansten.com/

6
In Chapter CII, he does mention his mix and match principle of influences .
Consider also the nature of those fixed starres, whether they are of the same condition with the Planet they are neer unto, yea or no; for if of the same condition or influence, they add vigour to the Significator, or point of heaven where they are so posited.
Lilly probably had more faith in "same ....influence" and that this added "vigour' to the signifactor and hence their effect became more prominent, a bit like accidental dignity.
In other words, if you consider the position of a like minded/like natured star to be a position of dignity, then ,the signifactor getting there or being there gets invigorated.

This is what I understand that sentence to mean.

PD

7
That sentence (which does not occur in the context of directions) means that if, say, Mars is near a star of Martian nature (such as Aldebaran), then its natural influence is strengthened. Clear enough, as far as it goes, but since no stars are described as being 'of the nature of the ascendant' or 'of the midheaven', it couldn't be the reason behind Lilly's selection of fixed star promissors for the angles. (It doesn't actually work with his selections for the other significators either.)
https://astrology.martingansten.com/

8
Like Martin, I have often been frustrated with some of the traditional writings re: the fixed stars. I am such a an avid skywatcher and backyard astronomer that I have actually crawled into the Great Kiva of Chaco Canyon before dawn on the summer solstice to witness the alignments in action.

Guido Bonatti's catalogue of the fixed stars doesn't make a great deal of sense and often seems to me to be a hopeless mishmash; and while I have the deepest possible respect for those of you who have tried to chart a course through Lilly's writings on the fixed stars, I have to agree with Martin that "it doesn't quite work for me."

Though both writers insist that one should never neglect the fixed stars, they only rarely refer to them in the chart examples that they delineate, and then only to the real super-stars (excuse pun) like Spica and Regulus.

This is in sharp contrast to Anonymous of 379 AD, who writes of his topic with deep confidence and clarity, as if he knows his subject extremely well.

I cannot help but wonder if Bonatti and Lilly are both preserving older traditions which they felt were necessary in order to write a "complete" introduction to astrology, but which they themselves no longer fully understood.