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For clarity, I'll make one comment about the birth chart of Edgar Cayce. The chart belongs to the man, Edgar Cayce, and reflects his life, but does not describe the content of his readings as such.

Later on, after a much needed Skyscript break, I may begin a topic on Cayce's chart.

Paul, I hope you'll eventually find time to continue our conversation here.

Therese
Last edited by Therese Hamilton on Sat May 24, 2014 9:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
http://www.snowcrest.net/sunrise/LostZodiac.htm

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For clarity, I'll make one comment about the birth chart of Edgar Cayce. The chart belongs to the man, Edgar Cayce, but does not reflect the content of his readings. Cayce was entirely unconscious during the readings, and had no memory of what he said in trance.
Likewise for clarity, I need to make one comment in reply.

I would agree that Cayce drew on a superconscious source of information when in trance ? but what he shared was information filtered through his personality structure, nonetheless.

This is a very important consideration with any psychics. It's more obvious than in most other fields of human experience here, that the observer cannot really be seen as separate from the observed.

Looking at the charts of different psychics, you may in fact recognise their specific trance personalities. Invariably, the trans-Saturnian planets play a key role. Possibly, I will present other examples later.

In Edgar's case, the exchange between his conscious and his sub-/superconscious parts of his personality is also exemplified by his devotion to Christianity both when awake and in trance, his constant use of "biblical" language while channelling (Cayce was an enthusiastic student of the King James bible), and by his usage of terms which ? in all likelihood ? he got familiar with by reading Blavatsky.

Also, in this context it should not be forgotten that Cayce demonstrated psychic abilities when in the waking state as well, such as ?reading? a book put under his pillow overnight, seeing auras, and receiving people's thoughts telepathically, and he sometimes spontaneously shared his perceptions and wisdom much like he did when in trance.

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Therese Hamilton wrote: I meant the understanding of those terms is modern. I've taken up the terms "active" and "passive" in my article on the triplicities: http://www.snowcrest.net/sunrise/aatriplicities2013.htm

The meanings of "active" and "passive" are reversed in the modern understanding of those terms.
Hi Therese

As per your PM, I've taken a look at this thread again.

I read through your article here which I didn't get time to do back in May.

The point of dissension, as I understand it, relates to what active/passive may mean.

From your article:
Aristotle?s Passive is external to the active, and is related more to the outer world. (Thus, the usual astrological understanding of "active" is what Aristotle might term passive!) Aristotle's passive has been said to relate to matter or the world of forms. The passive intellect would represent computer data files, but not the hard drive itself. This function can be related to the Moon which collects and reflects light from the Sun.
This is an interesting way of looking at it, with regards the locus of intellect being either internal or external. However the entire idea of the passive/active intellect is actually a very complicated, and, if I can add, controversial subject. It's not a clear-cut part of Aristotelian philosophy.

I think it's a little bit more than just internal/external - keeping in mind my caveat that this is a complex subject anyway, and I have not studied philosophy at higher education, or anything like it. I am not sure whether you have?

The way I like to think about the active/passive intellect is that the active intellect is not just some internal locus, rather it is emanating. The passive intellect is therefore receiving from an external locus. I hope this makes sense? It is not just that the active intellect is internal, it is emanating from internal such that it applies itself to the external/passive in order to be perceived.

Consider this quote:
http://bit.ly/1oGQScB
In the whole of nature each kind has something as its matter, which is potentially all the things in the kind, and something else as the cause and producer, which produces them all - for instance, the craft in relation to its matter. One sort of intellect corresponds to matter, by becoming all things. Another sort corresponds to the producer by producing all things in the way that a state, such as light, produces things - for in a way light makes potential colours into actual colours
With this in mind, we may see that light, or the thing which generates and emits light, is the active intellect, and that which perceives or is given form from light is the passive intellect. With this in mind, we may see the active intellect as being that which generates or emanates from, say, within, and the passive intellect is that which is altered or takes on form because of it.

My conclusion then is the active intellect is that which emanates/moves and the passive that which receives/moved.

To back up this statement, let me take a quote.
Notes on Aristotle De Anima 3. 5, by John M. Rist
Classical Philology, Vol. 61
Of all the Aristotelian doctrines perhaps the most difficult is that concerning the Active and Passive Intellects which we find in the short fifth chapter of the third book of De Anima. Interpretations of this chapter have been almost as numerous as interpreters and it would be naive to expect at this stage to be definitive.
...
We may say then that there are within each individual soul an Active and Passive Intellect. The Active Intellect is the moving factor and the Passive the factor that is moved.
...
The effect of the former [Active] is to bring the latter [Passive] up from potency to act.
In other words it is not just that the Active Intellect has an internal locus, but that it acts outwardly to make sense/shape of the potential passive.

Therefore we imply movement, with the active intellect acting outward or moving, and the passive intellect being acted upon, or impressed upon, or formed, or shaped or moved.

Now, when we see it from this point of view, and not just merely as a check box of whether the Intellect can more or less be considered internal or external (keeping in mind the quality of the soul is such that it contains both in Aristotelian philosophy), then we realise that movement or direction is the important part.

With this in mind, this is actually pretty much exactly what modern tropical astrolgoers expect from the words masculine and feminine in so far as they relate to activity and passivity. In this sense they relate the masculine to the active and the feminine to the passive. I think what you believed to be the case is that tropical astrologers take masculine/active and feminine/passive to be "externally located" for masculine and "internally located" for feminine. But actually this is not so.
The passive intellect would represent computer data files, but not the hard drive itself. This function can be related to the Moon which collects and reflects light from the Sun.
I agree with the gist of what you're trying to say in this piece I think - though I believe you miss the implicit idea of motion or application for active intellect, and reception or being moved for the passive. It results that you mix up this analogy here. Instead what you ought to say, I believe, is that the computer files, representing certain data, are Active, whilst the hard drive, the form in which that data is encapsulated, is feminine. So this gets understood backward here in your example. I am not sure if this is a slip of the pen so to speak.

I hope you can see from this that actually the modern tropical understanding, whilst surely confused in many ways from the Aristotelian meaning of Active/Passive in many ways, namely by being a simplified variant of it, the basic crux is actually preserved, in that tropical astrologers believe active/masculine to be in relation to a sense of movement outward (hence its link to that which is dry, consider dry sand dispersing), whilst on the other hand, passive/feminine is that which is applied to, moves or is inward or holding (linking with moist, consider moist sand clumping and holding.


Now, let's go back to why we're even discussing Aristotle here (even if we assume, fairly reasonably, that Ptolemy has Aristotle more or less in mind, or is at least inspired directly or indirectly by Aristotle) when he mentions masculine and feminine signs.

The reason we're mentioning any of this is because you stated:
Thu May 08, 2014 5:00 am
I relate the qualities of stubbornness or persistence to Aries as the more internally focused sign for Mars. (Scorpio is externalized Mars energy.)
Thu May 08, 2014 7:19 pm
But the understanding of ?feminine? and ?masculine? is a modern tropical teaching.
Now as I was trying to show before, feminine and masculine are traditional concepts as per my quote from ptolemy, Ptolemy lists Aries explicitly as a masculine sign. Therefore the notion that this is a modern teaching is surely inaccurate. Now what the conclusions are based on this could be modern, but, hopefully from my post here, you can see now that actually the problem is, as I understand it, not understanding what tropical astrologers mean by active/masculine and passive/feminine in regards the signs, which, as I hope to have shown, is the same as what is meant by the Aristotelian philosophy (or at least as I personally understand it). I think the point that is missed from your summary of the philosophy on your article is the sense of movement of application being completely overlooked in favour of merely attributing a locus for each, but, in fact, Aristotle is saying that both concepts are found internal in the soul, for a start, but actually the key defining criterion is whether one is moved or moves, whether one generates or receives/perceives what is generated. And this is exactly how Tropical astrologers understand the matter.

So now going right back, clearly the idea that Aries is an internally focused sign is clearly not true provided we are generating this information from the fact that Aries is a masculine sign, which, as I've shown, really is a traditional concept after all, and not a modern tropical one.


EDIT

I might add that when I say it is as tropical astrologers understand it, I don't mean to be exclusive with that statement, but rather also inclusive of tropical astrologers. I am of the opinion that both sidereal and tropical astrologers understand this correctly. With Active being outwardly moving, and Passive being moved or inwardly holding/shaping/moving.
"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing" - Socrates

https://heavenlysphere.com/

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Therese, although conceptually related to the last point, I wanted to break up the posts so as not to have one massive post that is difficult or draining to read.
This is an important distinction because it solves the apparent tropical-sidereal contradiction of signs which tend either to extroversion or introversion. For example a sign with a primary inward focus is called Active in Aristotle?s philosophy (the mainframe), but passive (feminine) in the western astrological system.
I think there is actually an underlying assumption/problem implicit or at the foundation of this whole idea, which is mentioned earlier in your article.

Quoting from your article:
http://www.snowcrest.net/sunrise/aatriplicities2013.htm
There also seems to be a general belief among astrologers that whatever traits signs of the zodiac might have are similar in the tropical and sidereal zodiac. Thus, if tropical Aries is forthright, impatient and aggressive, then sidereal Aries must manifest the same traits. I must agree with Mr. Spock in this one: ?Captain, that is not logical.? If this were true, it seems we?d have to shift the physical nature of the sky depending on which astrologer (tropical or sidereal) happened to be reading our astrological chart.
But actually the argument is totally logical, what is not (necessarily) logical is the conclusion you make.

Let's take the argument again, both the sidereal and tropical astrologers say the same things about the same sign, but you believe that this can't be true unless we shift the entire nature of the sky depending on who is observing it. But actually there is a fundamentally easier conclusion - one of them is wrong.

It's entirely logical and possible for two people to make the same claim. We can logically conclude that one of them is wrong. We do not have to logically conclude that both are actually correct in their observation but the problem is that actually they are both measuring the same thing without realising it, or misunderstanding what is being measured, which is ultimately the conclusion that your article draws.

You say that both tropical and sidereal are correct, more or less, and this is because actually tropical astrologers don't understand what masculine/feminine mean in relation to active/passive signs, and, as a result, reverse what each means, which, as it happens, would mean that the tropical understanding of active correlates to the sidereal understanding of passive.

But this is not true, as I hope I demonstrated in the previous post.

Therefore the other really simple logical conclusion is that one of them is simply wrong. We may not like that conclusion but it is a logical conclusion that we could, if we chose, form from the argument.

The other conclusion, notably not even considered here, is that rather than tropical astrologers getting it wrong, it's entirely possible that sidereal astrologers have it mixed up and are altering the sign meanings. I don't happen to believe that but I just put it out there as another logical derivative that could be drawn.

So, back to Captian Spock, he's more likely to say "that is one alternative, the other is that one of the two parties is simply incorrect."

Going back then to the entire argument. I have really never seen any reason to consider that tropical astrologers are casually, and constantly over time, altering the meaning of the signs so as to keep them in line with sidereal placements. If we wish to make this argument by way of examining what each means by masculine and feminine, then I do not think we can do so in terms of the evidence we have available, insofar as modern tropical (and indeed also sidereal) astrologers mean by active/feminine similar things to what we can assume Ptolemy meant by it if we derive it from Aristotelian concepts of Active/Passive Intellect such as you (probably rightly) assume in your article.

We need something else to make a compelling case. So far I have not read one - despite this being an actually quite common assertion made by sidereal astrologers.
"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing" - Socrates

https://heavenlysphere.com/

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Ernst Wilhelm, the greatest 21st Century Astrologer, has already put this argument to bed.

He has done the research, wrote the books, and programmed the best Vedic software in order to back it all up.

I don't see why people are still debating the issue.

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Neptunehead wrote:Ernst Wilhelm, the greatest 21st Century Astrologer, has already put this argument to bed.

He has done the research, wrote the books, and programmed the best Vedic software in order to back it all up.

I don't see why people are still debating the issue.
Presumably because other people have their own views besides Ernst Wilhelm.

Also, because, presumably, not everyone has read Ernst Wilhelm's views. I know I haven't.

Could you perhaps clarify the points he makes and the research he's done and the conclusions he makes and even better point us to the information so that we can find it?

I tried searching his name on amazon but nothing astrological popped out.
"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing" - Socrates

https://heavenlysphere.com/

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Paul wrote:
Neptunehead wrote:Ernst Wilhelm, the greatest 21st Century Astrologer, has already put this argument to bed.

He has done the research, wrote the books, and programmed the best Vedic software in order to back it all up.

I don't see why people are still debating the issue.
Presumably because other people have their own views besides Ernst Wilhelm.

Also, because, presumably, not everyone has read Ernst Wilhelm's views. I know I haven't.

Could you perhaps clarify the points he makes and the research he's done and the conclusions he makes and even better point us to the information so that we can find it?

I tried searching his name on amazon but nothing astrological popped out.
The mp3 link below sums up Ayanamsa and Vedic Astrological Calculations.

http://www.vedic-astrology.net/FreeClas ... -Rasis.mp3

The link below sums up everything else.

http://www.vedic-astrology.net/index.asp

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Neptunehead wrote:Ernst Wilhelm, the greatest 21st Century Astrologer, has already put this argument to bed.

He has done the research, wrote the books, and programmed the best Vedic software in order to back it all up.

I don't see why people are still debating the issue.
First of all, many would debate that Ernst Wilhelm is "the greatest 21st Century Astrologer," so that is a separate discussion point.

As for Ernst's research, nowhere has he published details of these studies. I do have Ernst's earlier books, which are quite good. But since the time those books were published (when Ernst was a Jyotish astrologer), there are only videos of his work. Research can't be properly presented in videos, so up until now Ernst's research is only within his own mind with a few limited remarks in videos.

Any discussion of Ernst Wilhelm and his work is a separate topic, so Neptunehead, if you want to pursue this topic, please start a new thread.

Paul, it will take some time and effort to reply to your posts. Many thanks for our thoughtful remarks.

Therese
http://www.snowcrest.net/sunrise/LostZodiac.htm

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Neptunehead wrote: The mp3 link below sums up Ayanamsa and Vedic Astrological Calculations.
To be clear we're not trying to figure out how to calculate ayanamsas.
You say he puts the argument to bed - without being specific, I presume you mean the argument that tropical signs now reflect the sidereal signs. That this argument is put to bed one way or another.

If you can provide a link and reference that actually demonstrates the argument I would be willing to read through it, but unfortunately it's beyond my ability to search through his entire website looking for what you may be referring to. I would have thought, if anywhere, his article on the zodiac would do it:
http://www.vedic-astrology.net/Articles ... Zodiac.pdf

But it doesn't.

I have no idea if Ernst Wilhelm's ideas have changed or there is some other body of work totally separate which contradicts his views in that article, or if you're confusing him for another author.

In fact, quite the opposite is the conclusion that the author gives, ultimately admitting
Thus the student of astrology should be aware of the corundum that astrology is today
...
The ancient texts can only be relied upon to encourage us to test the Zodiacs ourselves and make up our own minds.
Clearly the matter has not been put to bed.
"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing" - Socrates

https://heavenlysphere.com/

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Therese Hamilton wrote:
As for Ernst's research, nowhere has he published details of these studies. I do have Ernst's earlier books, which are quite good. But since the time those books were published (when Ernst was a Jyotish astrologer), there are only videos of his work.
Thanks for replying, Therese & Paul.

Ernst is a Jyotish astrologer but proves that the ancient Vedic techniques work best when keeping Rasis Tropical, but Nakshatras fixed to the Galactic centre . Listen to the MP3 link; it's all there.

Judging by the time stamp of both your reply's, neither bothered listening to the MP3 link beforehand.

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I would ask Martin (moderator) to intervene if there are any more posts here on the topic of Ernst Wilhelm and his work and opinions. As I said, that topic needs a separate thread. Neptunehead, you are welcome to copy your posts to a new thread if you want to discuss Ernst's work and videos.

I agree with Paul's final conclusion, but this thread isn't the place to further discuss Ernst Wilhelm. I would personally like to see all posts on this subject moved to their own thread.
http://www.snowcrest.net/sunrise/LostZodiac.htm