VS: Wet/Dry (long post)

[Guest guest]

Therese wrote:

 

In the two examples I gave Mercury was in so-called 'mute' signs. This

classification isn't used much anymore, and I don't know if it works.

(The fact that we don't know for sure what astrological factors make a

talker or a quiet person shows how little we know about astrology.)

 

Sari:

 

:oD That's true.

 

Therese wrote:

 

I've never really looked into the wet/dry concept. Do you think they

might apply to the planets even more than to zodiac signs? In Jyotish,

Venus is water, Mars is fire, Saturn is air and Mercury is earth. The

only way Mercury-earth makes sense is that there's a correlation there

with the lowest chakra in the spine. I don't know why Mercury is given

to the lowest center. (Have to look up my referrences here.)

 

Sari:

 

I don't know. In traditional western astrology Saturns is said to be

cold and dry = earth and Mercury is mixed, depending I think on if it

rises before or after the Sun. The funny thing is that Saturn is

nevertheless the day ruler of air and as a ruler it has nothing to do

with earth, so Jyotish has clearly a point here.

 

Therese wrote:

 

Do you know if Rob Hand's article in on the internet?

 

Sari:

 

I looked for it, but all I found was an interview from 1997. It's not

the same. I can borrow the magazine again and scan and send the

interview to you privately if you like, but that may take a few weeks.

 

Therese wrote:

 

>...Let's think about air and earth for example. The traditional

definition

>of air is wet, increasingly hot. " Wet " means " looking for similarities,

connecting things " .

 

Is this from Rob Hand and/or Ptolemy? (I have Schmidt's Ptolemy

translation, but you would know off the top of your head.)

 

Sari:

 

I think it's from Rob Hand. The truth is that I don't know classical

astrology very deeply, only general lines. I've got now Schmidt's

Ptolemy translation with me too, but I've just started to read it,

almost all my knowledge so far is what I've learnt from several articles

and internet.

 

Now, when I take a look at Ptolemy (Tetrabiblos, book I chapter 6.,

Project Hindsight edition), it's interesting that Ptolemy equates wet

with feminine and dry with masculine and this refers exclusively to the

planets, so when you said earlier that this wet/dry concepts might apply

to the planets more than to the zodiac signs, you in fact hit to the

point. Ptolemy says that the Moon and Venus (= " the star of Aphrodite " )

are feminine because of having their excess in the wet; and the Sun

Saturn, Jupiter and Mars are traditionally (says Ptolemy) masculine.

Putting Jupiter here sounds a bit illogical, because Jupiter is

traditionally considered wet by nature.

 

Then there's a note by Schmidt saying that Ptolemy never refers to

elements of fire, earth, water and air when he talks about qualities of

hot, cold, dry, wet - connecting qualitities to the astrological

elements is a later invention. Schmidt writes: " Unfortunatly, later

astrologers consistently converted Ptolemy's 'wet' to 'water', 'cold' to

'earth', 'hot' to 'fire' and 'dry' to 'air'. The problem is that

according to Aristotelian philosophy Water = Cold and Wet, Earth = Cold

and Dry, Fire = Hot and Dry and Air = Hot and Wet. Or if one uses the

Stoic system of elements, one gets Water = Wet, Earth = Dry, Fire = Hot

and Air = Cold. What astrologers did was correct according to neither

system of elements. "

 

In another note Rob Hand writes: " The text does appear to be saying that

Hot = Masculine, Wet = Feminine, Dry = Masculine and Cold = Feminine. If

Ptolemy is completey in accord with standard Aristotelianism in which

Hot and Cold arer both active whereas Wet and Dry are both passive, then

Ptolemy here classifies Hot = Active & Masculine, Cold = Active &

Feminine, Wet = Passive & Feminine and Dry = Passive and Masculine. If

this analysis is correct it has all manner of interesting symbolic

consequences for astrology. "

 

If we take the Stoic system of elements to which Schmidt referred

earlier, we get: Wet = Passive & Feminine = Water; Dry = Passive and

Masculine = Earth; Hot = Active & Masculine = Fire and Cold = Active and

Feminine = Air. But later Ptolemy classifies signs to masculine and

diurnal and feminine and nocturnal in the same way than we do now, that

is fire and air signs are masculine and water and earth signs are

feminine. So if we go on with this logic, it gets quite contradicting!

Huh.

 

Of course, when we talk about Ptolemy we cannot ignore the fact that he

connects signs with seasons and therefore uses clearly tropical zodiac.

But generally, what Ptolemy is doing in his treatise is simply that he's

applying Aristotelian natural philosophy to astrology (and with

considerable success). So, because Aristoteles believed that everything

is this world is mixtures of these two pairs of opposites: wet/dry and

hot/cold, so if Aristoteles is right, I think those qualities should

apply to the sidereal zodiac as well (and if we think that the sidereal

zodiac is the " real zodiac " , those qualities should apply to it better

than to the tropical zodiac). Ptolemy and his contemporaries couldn't

make the difference by empirical observation because these two kinds of

zodiacs were almost the same then.

 

But what this Aristotelian system really is about is cycles. Cold is the

starting point, then it becomes increasingly wet until the first quarter

point is wet. Then it becomes increasingly hot until the culmination

point opposing the starting point is hot. And then it becomes

increasingly dry, and then increasingly cold. So the nature of these

four quarters is combination of two qualities, as follows:

I quarter: cold, increasingly wet

II quarter: wet, increasingly hot

III quarter: hot, increasingly dry

IV quarter: dry, increasingly cold

 

We can equate this cycle symbolically to the diurnal movement of the

Sun:

I quarter - The Sun's movement from midnight to sunrise - cold+wet =

night

II quarter - the Sun's movement from sunrise to midday - wet+hot =

morning

III quarter - the Sun's movement from midday to sunset - hot+dry = day

IV quarter - the Sun's movement from sunset to midnight - dry+cold =

evening

 

We can equate it to the human life:

I quarter - childhood, the child is symbolically under the horizon and

has not yet begun his/her " public life " , but is growing and increasing

his/her knowledge and abilities. Cold+wet = the element of water (care,

security, emotions)

II quarter - youth, man has risen over the horizon and has left home.

Growth, optimism, excitement, sexuality. This is the most fertile phase

in the human life. Wet+hot = the element of air (curiosity, ideas,

connections)

III quarter - adulthood, the life has culminated. Action, ambition,

goal-orientedness. The best time to give birth to children is over

(especially for women). Hot+dry = element of fire.

IV quarter - old age, the life is deceasing and sets under the horizon.

Dry + Cold = element of earth (tiredness, wisdom, contemplation,

slowness). From dust to dust etc.

 

We can even equate it to the female menstruation cycle:

I quarter - the first week, menstruation. Cold+Wet

II quarter - the second week, time between the end of menstruation and

ovulation. The most fertile phase in the month. Wet+hot.

III quarter - the third week, time after ovulation. The fertile phase is

over. Hot+dry.

IV quarter - the fourth week, time before menstruation. PMS symptons.

Dry+cold.

 

The interesting thing here is that in every cycle the first half is wet

and the second half is dry and as we remember, Ptolemy connected wet

with feminine and dry with masculine. So the basic pulse is not

active/passive or diurnal/nocturnal, but it's increasing/decreasing,

breathing in/breathing out, taking in/giving out,

experiencing/analysing. If we think about the travel of the Moon set

against the Lunar Nodes, Rahu and Ketu, their symbolism fits here

perfectly - we take the point where the latitude of the Moon is at it's

lowest (where it squares Rahu and Ketu) as the starting point, so from

there on the Moon starts to apply Rahu and this increasing/wet half of

the cycle culminates on Rahu. If I've understood correctly, Rahu is the

one that takes in and wants to immerse in the worldy experiences and

here the Moon ascends to the plus side of it's latitudal cycle. Ketu is

the culmination of the second, decreasing/dry half and it takes away

those worldy attachments away - here the Moon descends back on the minus

side of it's latitudal cycle.

 

Rudhyar wrote about involution/evolution in his " Astrological Aspects " ,

where involution (the first half of a cycle) means " growth through

spontaneous activity " and evolution (the latter half of a cycle) " growth

through meaning and conscious process " . On the first half we gather

experiences - on the second half we digest them. Rudhyar seems to be a

bit partial here favoring the " evolved " latter half of the cycle, but

generally the ancients saw naturally the growth of the increasing wet

half better than decay of the decreasing dry half. Of course both are

essential.

 

I haven't mention the obvious connection of cycles to the seasons. Some

western tropical traditional astrologers have pointed out that while

Rudhyar & co. have developed a theory about cycles and put 0 Aries as

the starting point, that's erroneous, because in the Aristotelian system

the starting point should be the darkest time of the year, the winter

solstice, not the spring equinox. Also Rob Hand writes about this in

Tetrabiblos in one of the footnotes (p. 19). Hand even says that this

misunderstanding has had tragic consequences of weather forecasting and

mundane astrology. Well, if we listen to Cyril Fagan and Donald Bradley,

the reasons for these tragic consequences are entirely somewhere else

;o), but in the sidereal world we don't have to keep holding on the

connection between signs and seasons. So we can perfectly well have our

starting point in 0 Aries and say that:

I quarter of the zodiac (Aries, Taurus, Gemini) is cold, increasingly

wet and symbolically " winter-like " by nature

II quarter of the zodiac (Cancer, Leo, Virgo) is wet, increasingly hot

and symbolically " spring-like " by nature

III quarter of the zodiac (Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius) is hot,

increasingly dry and symbolically " summer-like " by nature

IV quarter of the zodiac (Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces) is dry,

increasingly cold and symbolically " autumn-like " by nature.

 

And this cycle applies to the southern hemisphere as well, because the

signs themselves are not tied to seasons! With this logic we need not to

drown into the kind of mess that Ian Thurnwald had to deal with in his

article about elements and qualities ). Yes, it is about the same

thing, but as you can see, the Australian and other southern hemisphere

astrologers are in serious trouble with the seasonally coloured sign

descriptions. I've heard that Rupert Gleadow considered the tropical

zodiac almost as an insult to the southern hemisphere astrologers :oD.

 

So, here it is. All we have to do now is to find out if these ideas work

with the sidereal zodiac. I looked with AstroDatabank for persons with

exeptionally much or little planets in sidereal wet/dry signs and this

is what I found:

All of the traditional, personal planets in sidereal fire or earth:

Linda Lovelace, American porn star. Later Lovelace lectured widely

against sex business.

Ivan the Terrible, Russian Czar, who ruled with a heavy hand.

Muhammad Ali, boxer

Angela Davis, American radical activist and philosophy professor

Corazon Aquino, woman president of Philippinos

Jorg Heider, Austrian extreme right politician

Louis Pasteur, French scientist (funny, he doesn't have a Virgo

preponderance, but many planets in sidereal Sagittarius. What does this

tell about Sagittarius?)

 

All of the personal planets in sidereal water or air:

Gianni Versace, Italian fashion designer

Charles Baudelaire, he's got this Piscean cluster in the VIII whole sign

house

Kurt Cobain, deceased rock singer

Abraham Lincoln, asc, the Sun, Mercury and Pluto in Aquarius

Martin Luther, lots of planets in Libra and Scorpio

Jeff Green, American astrologer specialized on Pluto

Jimmy Swaggart, American TV evangelist

Liza Minelli, lots of Gemini

Jose Carreras, Spanish operatic tenor

 

A note about Jeff Green: his career bases on the fact that he has a

tropical Scorpio ascendant and so according to his system, Pluto is the

ruler of his chart. Sidereally he has Libra rising - as you can see from

the gentle looking picture on the back cover of " Pluto - the

Evolutionary Journey of he Soul " - conjunct Jupiter, Venus and Mercury,

Venus is strong in it's own sign, though retrogading. But his Sun and

Mars are in Scorpio with Ketu and the Sun (ego, if you will) is

conjuncting Antares, the heart of the Scorpion.

 

Best, Sari