Sun Signs and Planets in the Zodiac
The ancient literature is very sparce as far as the effects of the 12 zodiac signs upon human affairs in comparison to modern psychological astrology. It is an interesting fact that Hellenistic astrologers did not delineate the planets in the signs. Robert Schmidt says that the reason for this is because the signs affect all of the planets in the same manner. In other words, fixed signs prolong an issue, mutable signs break an issue off after a time, etc. Therefore it is not very useful to delineate planets strictly by their sign placement. What Hellenistic astrologers did instead is interpret the planets according to the rulership of a given sign by a planet which was called the "oikodektor". The planets were said to have familiarized themselves with the signs, in the creation, in a process called "oikeosis". The oikodektor was then made the house steward because that planet was most familiar with how that zoidion should be run.
Despite the apparent contradiction, I will keep in place the "planet in sign" structure for the sake of beginners who wish to look up their birth chart positions more easily. These descriptions will reflect a type of thinking that could be described as a modern form of Lullism (named for the famed early medieval astrologer, Raymond Lull, who was among the first to try to weigh the strength of planetary elemental combinations according to Aristotlean principles). The descriptions of the signs themselves will focus on the more theoretical, while the planets description within a sign will be aimed at beginners, giving the reasons for their behavioral correlations where feasable. The main innovation I will add here is to try to distinguish the effects based upon the sect of the chart.
It should be noted that as the delineations of the planets move from the inner planets to the outer, that the meanings shift from the individual to the generational. Because of this, the issue of sect is probably not important with the three outer planets since an entire generation will statistically have an equal representation of both. Sect may however be important from the individuals perspective if one has a close aspect or conjunction to one of the outer planets. Sometimes such individuals (according to Noel Tyl) become examples to a generation and therefore famous. Sect may then show the individuals bias on how they have affected history. My conjectures about the sect nature of the outer planets are just that and are only my best guesses working from a theoretical framework, since the Hellenistic astrologers were unfamiliar with the existence of the three outer planets.
If you don't know what a word means, look it up in the astrological glossary. If you don't know what a planetary glyph symbol stands for, you can view the legend to understand the symbols of a birth chart.
© 2000 Curtis Manwaring
