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  • Marilynn Lawrence
    Oct 7, 2013
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      "Declination" is a good idea, but the latitude with respect to the equator wasn't really a device considered/interpreted in older astrology (it is used in contemporary astrology). There is a concept of declining with respect to the kentra, apoklima, but paraklisis wouldn't likely be a synomym for it (Porphyry would have know apoklima, particularly if he did in fact 'curate' the Introduction to the Tetrabiblos). 


      Your speculation that the point could be the nodes of the Moon is intriguing and worth investigating. There is very little information about the nodes and how they might have been used in the Hellenistic astrology texts, but were/are robustly used in India and were imported into astrology later (such that through the Persians, the nodes make their way into the Dorotheus text as an add on). They revolve backwards through the zodiac, which may account interpretatively for the reversal or return of disease in the Orphic fragment.  


      I also thought it might be something like the paranatellonta or dodekaoros. I think he refers to the latter in passing in the letter to Anebo (don't recall). However, the twelve-hour co-risers are all animals except for a boat, so that's not much good in determining whether a soul gets to be animal or human. But some of the parantellonta are human or gods, so that might balance out the range of choices. This whole thing of determining animal or human birth falls outside of 'normal' technical astrology which had humans at the center of its concern. Paraklisis is used as a technical term in the Orphic fragment, but that doesn't mean Porphyry was using it in the same way or according to any particular astrological rule. For instance, if it is a word for the Moon's nodes, he could be using it as the gateways of souls as they pass through then plop onto earth through the eastern horizon.  

      On Sat, Oct 5, 2013 at 5:30 PM, Goya <goya@...> wrote:

      Thanks for this.

      The passage you reproduce is basically right, I think, but Werner Deuse,
      in his Untersuchngen zum mittelplatonischen und neuplatonischen
      Sellenlehre, Wiesbaden 1983, is critical of Bouché-Leclercq's
      interpretation of Porph's passage, I think rightly. He points out (p.
      153-54) that according to Bouché-Leclercq, the soul enters into the embryo
      before birth, but this is not Porphyry's view, as shown by the Ad Gaurum.

      Thanks, Mike

      > Hi Mike,
      > I'm not a specialist but here's how Bouché-Leclercq's (*L'astrologie
      > grecque

      > *, p.601-602) paraphrases your passage and the following lines of the
      > fragment:
      > "Qu'on imagine a l'Orient, a I'«Horoscope», un troupeau d'âme en appétit
      > d'incarnation devant un etroit passage allernativement ouvert et fermé par
      > le mouvement de Ia grande roue zodiacale, celle-ci percée d'autant de
      > trous
      > qu'elle compte de degres. Au moment voulu, poussee par Ia Justice, qu'on
      > appelle aussi Ia Fortune, telle âme, I'âme d'un chien, par exemple, passe
      > par Ie trou horoscopique, et, l'instant d'apres, une arne humaine par un
      > autre trou."
      > He also notes: "La même theorie est exposee par Proclus (in Anal. sacr.,
      > V,
      > 2, pp. 97 sqq., 137, 173 Pitra), qui voudrait voir les chefs d'Etat
      > attentifs au moment de Ia *spora*, pour capter les âmes de bon aloi. Cf.

      > ci-dessus, pp. 22, 2 et 508.
      > Hope this is of any help and good luck! I am interested in knowing what
      > you
      > make of this.
      > Olivier Dufault

      Michael Chase
      CNRS UPR 76

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