In episode 436, astrologer Demetra George joins me to discuss the origins of planetary myths in astrology and how the Greek gods were assigned to the planets by the philosopher Plato and his students in the 4th century BC.
At the beginning of the Greek tradition, the planets had no names or were given descriptive names corresponding to their appearance, and later they were given the names of gods.
By the time of the 4th century BCE philosopher Plato and his students, we see Greek writers begin giving specific names to the planets based on the gods of Greek religion and mythology (ie Hermes/Mercury, Aphrodite/Venus, Ares/Mars, Zeus/Jupiter, Kronos/Saturn).
The names first appear in the writings of the philosophers who surrounded Plato’s Academy in Athens: Plato, Philip Opus, Eudoxus Cnidus, and Aristotle.
The full set of names appears to appear for the first time in a philosophical text Epinymsit is believed to have been written by Plato’s student Philip Opus.
The names appear to have been deliberately chosen in part based on their correspondence to older names given by Mesopotamian astrologers to the planets in their pantheon (for example, the god Hermes was assigned to the planet Mercury, since Hermes was the Greek god of writing, and this corresponds to the Mesopotamian god of writing, who was also named Mercury).
The purpose of this episode was to talk about the process of naming the planets after the gods, compare the Mesopotamian and Greek myths about the planets, and discuss the implications of this for astrology.
We’ll spend the first 52 minutes setting up the problem and talking about historical context and related issues, then for the next hour and a half we’ll compare the Mesopotamian and Greek myths for each of the planets and see if they match or don’t. Finally, we have a 30-minute segment where we draw some conclusions and wrap things up.
In a way, this episode serves as the third in a trilogy of episodes I’ve been doing over the past month exploring the influence of Platonism on astrology, the Lot episode being the first and the Proclus episode being the second, in which we take things a little deeper by going directly to Plato and his disciples in the 4th century BC.
This episode is important because it addresses some important questions about what the planets mean in astrology and how those meanings developed, and it takes us back to the roots of western astrology and helps bring us one step closer to understanding where this system came from and how it first came together.
This episode is available in audio and video versions below.
Demeter’s Workshop of Time-Lords
Demetra is holding an intensive training in Hellenistic Time Ruler techniques in June and you can find more information about it here:
https://www.astrologyuniversity.com/shop/in-person/hellenistic-time-lords-retreat
Resources
Time signs
- 00:00:00 Login
- 00:02:46 The basis of the discussion
- 00:05:05 Mesopotamian tradition
- 00:19:30 Greek involvement in astrology
- 00:26:43 Plato and the Academy
- 00:42:20 Philip and Epinomis in Opus
- 00:52:09 A comparison of the legends of the planets begins
- 00:53:50 Sun
- 01:05:23 Moon
- 01:22:20 Mercury
- 01:45:10 Venus
- 02:00:20 Mars
- 02:10:20 Jupiter
- 02:22:20 Saturn
- 02:33:13 Ouranos, Kronos, Zeus
- 02:35:28 Final words
- 03:00:40 Demeter’s Time-Lord Retreat
- 03:03:37 Credits
Watch the video version of this episode
Watch a video version of this episode on Proclus and Astrology on YouTube:
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Transcription
Here is the full transcript of this episode: Episode 436 Transcript
Listen to the audio version of this episode
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