Considerations

Adjacent to the last chapter [10], the astronomer continues the topic of the 4 seasons but adding the Zodiac signs in sequence.

It is important to remember the reader that Ptolemy and the ancients used to call the 1st house (the cusp of it) as the Horoscope; the scope of time translated through symbols by those who fathom the universal watch. The word Horoscope nowadays seems to be taken for granted, modernly understood as something you will only read on gossip magazines or the town’s news paper.

Of Solstitial, Equinoctial, Solid, and Bicorporeal Signs

This is the chapter where Ptolemy discuss the rationality behind the modalities, or, triplicities of the Zodiac: Cardinal, Fixed and Mutable. Known to our ancestors by others name which you will read ahead. 

Be sure that when he talks and distinguishes Solstitial (Tropical) signs from Equinoctial ones, he is talking about cardinal mode anyhow. He felt obvious to point that those signs need to be distingueshed somehow because from these specific degrees in the Zodiac a new season is upon humanity. The cycle repeats in a solar year of about 365 days, making an obvious remarkable pattern (& statement) hard not to miss.

“After the explanation of these matters [Of the Effect of the Seasons and of the Four Angles] the next subject to be added would be the natural characters of the zodiacal signs themselves, as they have been handed down by tradition. For although their more general temperaments are each analogous to the seasons that take place in them, certain peculiar qualities of theirs arise from their kinship to the Sun, Moon, and planets, as we shall relate in what follows [the Zodiac wheel], putting first the unmingled powers of the signs themselves alone, regarded both absolutely [single] and relatively to one another [triplicities, or, modalities of the Zodiac Signs].”

“The first distinctions, then, are of the so-called solstitial [cardinal], equinoctial [cardinal], solid [fixed], and bicorporeal [mutable] signs. 

Cardinal Signs (Solstitial/Tropical): For there are two solstitial signs, the first interval of 30° from the summer solstice, the sign of Cancer, and the first from the winter solstice, Capricorn; and they have received their name from what takes place in them. For the Sun turns when he is at the beginning of these signs and reverses his latitudinal progress, causing summer in Cancer and winter in Capricorn. 

When the Sun “turns” and begin to diminish in declination right after its maximum amount, the Earth makes sure you are at Tropical Seasons, or, Solstitial seasons are upon; this is when the Sun changes course and thus reverse latitude. These evident marks are the start of the constitution of Summer-Winter, where they are reversed depending on which of the two Earth’s hemesphiere a person is located at. 

Cardinal Signs (Equinoctial/Vernal): Two signs are called equinoctial, the One which is first from the spring equinox, Aries, and the One which begins with the autumnal equinox, Libra; and they too again are named from what happens there, because when the Sun is at the beginning of these signs he makes the nights exactly equal to the days.”

The author says the fact the Sun transits in the equinoctial signs of Aries-Libra, it shall provide the day and night “equal” in hours, and as I understand, such explanation could be the astrological modulation in which both corruption of nature and equilibrium provenances, once the Earth rotates tilted and not upright.

After he finishes the first 30° degrees of the Tropical and Equinoctial Zodiac signs, he continues on with the rest of the Zodiac Signs discerning them from Fixed to the Mutable Signs and why they are called by that:

“Of the remaining eight signs four are called solid and four bi-corporeal. 

Fixed: The solid signs, Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius, are those which follow the solstitial [tropical] and equinoctial signs; and they are so called because when the Sun is in them the moisture, heat, dryness, and cold of the seasons that begin in the preceding signs touch us more firmly, not that the weather is naturally any more intemperate at that time, but that we are by then inured to them and for that reason are more sensible of their power. 

When he says that the remaining Fixed Signs (Solid) are called like such, because it is the middle of the season and it is when the season “kicks in”, the extremes of the seasons, they keep up and intensify what was already set in motion by the cardinal, or, the equinoctial and solstices signs. For example when the Sun is in domicile Leo [15 degrees], it is said to be at its hottest and driest position, affecting our planet with the warmest heat from such star which comprises 99.8% of the solar system’s mass.

Mutable: The bi-corporeal signs, Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, and Pisces, are those which follow the solid signs, and are so called because they are between the solid and the solstitial and equinoctial signs and share, as it were, at end and beginning, the natural properties of the two states of weather.”

Then, the signs of double features: the twins [Gemini], the hybrid archer which is half-human/half-animal [Sagittarius], and the winged Virgo [half-human/half-angelic] the maiden where its constellation is the 2nd largest in the skies, and the two Pisces swimming in opposite directions – they all suggest the multiplication of things/events and people, these are the signs that serve as intersecting points, they neither are or aren’t, they just simple “go with what it is” at the moment that be, changed by each elemental mode [fire, earth, air and water]. As Ptolemy pointed out, they (bi-corporeal) are where the end and beginning of seasons meet, as if they have no definitive path but multiple choices compared the other Zodiac signs. Mutable [bi-corporeal] focused nativities are indeed seen quite adaptable, distracted and flexible all at the same time if you may.

Conclusion

Ptolemy just counted the Signs of the Zodiac for us, while giving astronomical reasons for such modalities or, triplicities – for example, Aries-Libra & Cancer-Capricorn are action oriented because they are the signs that when the Sun transits them in the tropical Zodiac, not only may affect the temperature to extreme levels, but the genesis of a new season [producing a “new” distinct temperature] is upon us and so forth with the rest of the signs as they follow the what the cardinal ones started. 

In a flash of light, the Egyptian just synthesized the Zodiac wheel, not saying what system and why one and not the other.

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References

Go back to Ptolemy’s Way and read the references