Reading a birth chart: a geniture according traditional astrology

The following text was written in the last summer and concludes the yearly meetings between Giancarlo Ufficiale, a founding member of Cieloeterra, who coordinated the group, Paola Fornai, a CIDA certified member, and the gentle author of this blog. The method is the one taught in Almugea School, inspired to the methods of traditional astrology, as made known by CieloeTerra, the Italian Association for Traditional Astrology. ((General references can be found in the websites of Almugea,  of Apotelesma,  and  obviously CieloeTerra .))
The article has been firstly published in Linguaggio Astrale no. 187, Autumn 2010, under the original name of GINO STRADA, PEACE AND LOVE: una genitura secondo l’astrologia classica (by  Giancarlo Ufficiale, Paola Fornai, Margherita Fiorello)

Andrea Argoli:On the good and bad health according the solar Return of the year

Andrea Argoli, born in Tagliacozzo in 1570 is very famous for his book about primary directions, the Tables of the primum mobile,  (from which I took the picture )  (( Tabulae primi mobilis. Patavii, typis P. Frambotti, 1644) )).

The following is my translation from Latin from another of Argoli’s main works, Two books about critical days and  decumbiture of  diseases (( De diebus criticis et aegrorum decubitu libri duo: ab auctore denuo recogniti ac altera parte auctiores paeneq[ue] noui.  Patauii : apud Paulum Frambottum , 1651-1652. ))   revised and revisited by Lucia Bellizia of Apotelesma– traditional astrologer and University degree in  Classical languages and Literature (on the contrary the gentle author of this blog seems very allergic to Latin, she should study more, the lazy girl !!)

Argoli, the fox and the internet

Traditional astro-lists in the net are a precious source of  knowledge (and friendship), and I’d like to mention two different threads worthy to inquire about and mix a little how I like to do very often.

The first one appeared in The Real Astrology and it was about an Italian translation of two important works of Andrea Argoli, a well known mathematician, astronomer and astrologer- one about primary directions and the other about decumbiture and critical days.

Cardano on Solar Returns

Girolamo Cardano, doctor, mathematician, philosopher, scientist,  is surely one of the most famous Italian astrologers.

He is well known in the traditional astrology world especially for Lilly’s translation  of chosen Aphorisms selected from Aphorismorum Astronomicorum segmenta septem but surely the greatest contribution Cardano gave to astrology was his Comment to  Tetrabiblos, written after 1552  when he  had the opportunity to read,  while was travelling to Scotland  – as St. Paul on the road to Damascus – the new version of Ptolemy’s book directly translated from Greek by Camerarius.

This work was the apex of the process of the return to Ptolemy’s astrology started  100 years before with  Pontano’s new translation of Centiloquium.

The return to Ptolemy was a return to genethliac astrology and the infinity of possibilities and results a birth chart can show, but it implied a deliverance from all the “Arab fantasies” like “facies, novenaries, dodecatemorias, horas planetarias “  as Cardano himself wrote in his Comment. In a word, Cardano was not just freeing texts from mistakes of  Arab translations,  but from hermetism, magic and divination. [1]

De Iudiciis Geniturarum was published  in 1547 together with Aphorismorum Astronomicorum segmenta septem, but more than the latter  anticipates the themes we will find in Cardano’s works after his conversion.

The following pages are about solar returns.  Cardano is not very easy to follow, but in these pages there are some main points about importance of Nodes or the meaning of retrogradation and combustion I found very useful and explicative, so I hope the text would be of some use.

PDF version

Margherita Fiorello

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[1] The translator absolutely disagrees with Cardano.