In podcast episode 255, astrologers Chris Brennan and Benjamin Dykes reveal a new discovery about the origin of Ascensions from a lost hermetic text preserved by Abu Ma’shar.
Last summer, Keiji Yamamoto and Charles Burnett published their long-awaited translation A great introduction to astrology By the 9th century astrologer Abu Ma’shar. This is the first time that this text has been fully translated into English.
I received my copy on July 30, 2019, and the most interesting part is that Abu Ma’shar frequently quotes from a lost Greek text attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. It seems to be called the same text Panaretos The 4th century astrologer Paulus Alexandrinus used seven planetary lots in his treatment, but Abu Mashar shares the text much more than Paulus.
The most interesting parts of the Hermès material preserved by Abu Ma’shar are that it contains a set of bases for the accommodation and ascension schemes that are unique to it, and that the original conceptual foundations for both schemes seem to have been preserved.
The Ascendant chapter in particular gives the most detailed explanation of any Ascendant I’ve ever seen and is unique in that it not only provides the Ascendant and Descendant signs, but an astronomical basis for Ascendant degrees.
This is the first time I have spoken about this discovery Episode 26 of the Random Astrology Podcastit was released on September 18, 2019. I encouraged Ben to study it to help confirm the discovery, and over the past few months he has been working on a translation of Abu Ma’shar’s Arabic, which he completed on May 8, 2020, and shared with me.
Ben was able to confirm that most of the math for Ascension Levels works, and so we decided to record this episode to present this discovery and talk about it on May 13th, 2020 around 5:15 PM.
We begin the episode by providing some background information on the text, and then move on to a summary of the arguments presented by the text about planetary exaltations and how to obtain their degrees.
Interestingly, the accommodation and ascension arguments presented in this text are firmly rooted in the tropical zodiac and raise some important questions about previous assumptions that these ascensions derive from the sidereal zodiac and earlier Mesopotamian traditions.
This discovery also raises questions about the extent to which Hellenistic astrology, and Western astrology in general, represents a sudden invention or technical construct that was partially integrated in the 1st century BC.
This is a visually intensive episode, and our friend Paula Belluomi has created a series of diagrams to help illustrate the concepts, so I recommend watching the video version of the episode if you can.
Ben plans to publish his translation Great introduction by Abu Ma’shar in the next few months and you can sign up for his email list on his website and get notified when it’s released:
This episode is available in audio and video versions below.
Time signs
Here are some timestamps for the topics covered at various points in the episode:
00:00:00 Login
00:01:50 New Abu Mashar translation
00:07:23 Hermes
00:12:16 Ptolemy
00:15:24 Mathematics of residence and ascendancy
00:17:50 Planetary joys, themes
00:21:05 Climbing areas
00:24:45 Ascension levels
00:28:00 Origin of Ascension
00:29:54 Glory, sect and aspects
00:33:00 Hermetica mandela
00:39:26 Dendera Zodiac and Ascendant
00:42:50 Tropical base
00:48:00 V.Chapter 7: The Cause of Ascension
00:52:00 Increase/decrease light paradigm
00:54:03 Sunrise in Aries
00:55:14 Moon in Taurus rising
00:57:37 Saturn rising in Libra
00:59:50 Mars in Capricorn Ascendant
01:00:20 Jupiter in Cancer
01:01:35 Corner houses in Tema Mundi
01:03:00 Amazing places
01:03:51 Death in 7th house
01:06:34 Venus Rising in Pisces
01:10:45 Qualities of signs and planets
01:13:34 Mercury in Virgo Ascendant
01:21:05 Planetary brightness chart
01:23:27 Basis for promotion levels
01:55:45 Rising knots
02:02:27 Additional rise comment
02:19:20 Are there any logical conclusions?
02:26:09 Final words
02:28:57 Benjamin’s course
Watch the Video Version of this Episode about the Heights
You can watch a video version of this episode about the ascension here:
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Transcription
Here is the full transcript of this episode: Episode 255 Transcript
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