For The Sidereal Zodiac - Kenneth Dowser

The tendency of many western astrologers to make assumptions about the past born of
contemporary usage, indeed to insist upon them, has confounded the tropical-sidereal
argument for the past 50 years. Endless would-be refutations, polemics, even an appendix
riddled with gross errors, have sought to contravene the life work of the most learned men
and women in Assyriology and Near Eastern Studies to impose the tropical zodiac on the
Babylonians and their neighbours. In order to do that one must turn a blind eye to the
material, plus adopt implausible explanations to account for how the patently obvious, to all
but tropical astrologers, is something else.

The material at the root of the problem has been available for many decades, beginning with
the seminal work of J. Epping who in 1881, with help from J. Strassmaier, published a
modest article,On Deciphering the Chaldean Astronomical Table, which solved the problem of
dating the Seleucid and Parthian eras. A larger study followed in 1889 with Father Epping's
book Astronomy out of Babylon. Epping died in 1894 but the work was continued by his
younger colleague, F.X. Kugler, who published Babylonian Lunar Reckoning in 1900 and the
monumental Starlore and Starwork in Babel [Babylon] in 2 volumes and 3 supplements from
1907-1935, the last of which was completed by J. Schaumberger.

The floodgate of information opened primarily by Epping, Strassmaier and Kugler has been
substantially augmented by 20th century scholars on both sides of the Atlantic, such that the
question is no longer if the ancients used a sidereal zodiac, but rather if the Hellenistic
Greeks used a tropical one before Hipparchus or very much afterward in view of the absence
of extant tropical horoscopes before the Roman Imperial period. Moreover the Babylonian
norm of System B (vernal point = 8° Aries) persisted contemporaneously with Ptolemy and
so long after him, that its use gives rise to questions about the currency of the tropical
zodiac, and at the very least constitutes proof of the pervasiveness of Babylonian influence in
the Roman world. It is a moot point whether the tropical zodiac would ever have persisted if
the west had not become an intellectual backwater after Roman power was broken in the 5th
century AD, coincident with both the rise of Christianity which discouraged inquiry, and the
near confluence of tropical and sidereal reckoning in the 3rd century AD.

Significantly, the Almagest was not translated into Latin until the late 12th century AD.
Since, as the editors of Martianus Capellasuggest, there was not a man alive in the west who
could compute a geometric proof when the best qualities of the Classical world fell into
desuetude, it us no surprise that nobody questioned why the cardinal points should not be
reckoned as the beginning of things when one could look up into the sky and see that it was
so, even if only for a few lifetimes, but by then it was too late. The inertia of tradition
coupled to the remarkable achievement of the Almagesthad founded the tropical zodiac:
most people then displayed the right trait characteristics because the sidereal signs were not
far out of alignment with their bogus tropical namesakes.

Hipparchus, the discoverer of precession, apparently did reckon longitudes from the vernal
point, although it looks like he didn't have much company; yet his wholesale adoption of the
Babylonian lunar and planetary theories speaks volumes about the accuracy of Babylonian
mathematical models, and ostensibly his regard for them. Much has been made about
whether the Babylonians were aware of precession or not; Kugler was confident that they
were not except 'perhaps' (his word) very late in their history. Neither the vaunted
Neugebauer nor anybody I have ever read, whose views are corroborated by evidence, and
who has examined the material first hand, claims the Babylonians used the cardinal points
except as a means to intercalate their lunar calendar and as a schematic argument to
determine the length of daylight. The argument then, that the Babylonians didn't know the
difference between the tropical and sidereal appears wanting. What tropical? What
difference? For the Babylonians there was only one zodiac.

Neugebauer stated that in his experience the norm:

0° Aries = vernal point

exists nowhere in the Babylonian astronomical/astrological material. Examining the same for
themselves, van der Waerden concurs, Huber concurs, Aaboe concurs, etc. Neugebauer is
still more explicit in his History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy(p.594) about the
Babylonians:

"Longitudes were not counted from the vernal point but from the sidereally fixed end points of the
zodiacal signs"

Cyril Fagan came to the same conclusion 30 years before Neugebauer published his magnum
opus. They had corresponded during the 1940s but on other subjects as far as I know.

While there is abundant evidence that the Babylonians were assiduous observers and
chroniclers of celestial events from early in the 2nd millennium BC, detractors contend that
what they were doing was not 'real' astrology, as though a model T Ford was something
other than a 'real' car. The nay-sayers contend further that Babylonian data were not
sufficiently accurate to be astronomically or astrologically useful, but the eclipse data were
good enough for Ptolemy who mentioned these in the Almagest(III) as the oldest data
available to him. They are from the first regnal year of the Babylonian king Nabonassar (747
BC). Fagan's greatest achievement, the solution of the exaltation degrees, is even older (786
BC). The Babylonians wrote about the intrinsic natures of the planets and the sidereal signs
centuries before the Greeks: the Babylonians developed the doctrine of the four triplicities,
(and the trine aspect taken over by the Greeks), in addition to furnishing the entire zodiac
eventually adopted by the Greeks. What is this if not divination by the sky? Could an
astrologer do otherwise, even if he styles himself 'counsellor', 'therapist' or psychologist'?

One particularly fine American astrologer contends that the earliest horoscope extant, dated
to 410 BC, could be tropical because it has no degrees (although other Babylonian
horoscopes have them with sidereal degrees), and that there is no proof that the
Babylonians used twelve equal length sidereal signs that early; but since the Greeks had not
even adopted the Babylonian sexagesimal degree notation as early as 410 BC, the degree
objection seems to be without merit. In addition, somehow it has been overlooked that the
oldest text with twelve equal length sidereal signs dates from 475 BC. This also mentions the
31 Babylonian 'normal stars' but does not deal with the cardinal points or a tropical zodiac.

It has been claimed that there are too few sidereal horoscopes from which to draw
reasonable conclusions, because Fagan, using Sachs' work from 1952 described only six, but
24 more have been recovered since then. Early Greek and Roman horoscopes and
inscriptions, (the coronation of Antiochus I of Cammagene at Nemrud Dagi in 62 BC for
example), are commonly reckoned from fiducials other than 0° Aries= vernal point,
(including all of the horoscopes attributed to Vettius Valens), with decreasing values versus
time which Neugebauer and van Hoesen show correspond roughly with precession. Many of
them are close sidereal fits.

A Greek lunar ephemeris (Papyrus Rylands no. 27) from 250 AD, which was recovered only
slightly damaged and later translated by Neugebauer in 1949, proved to be entirely sidereal.
Why then is there the incessant claim that the sidereal zodiac is a fiction? The only way out
for the tropical apologists is to claim that the demonstrably incorrect notion of the
'trepidation' of the zodiac was widespread in the ancient world. It is noteworthy then that
Neugebauer said explicitly that the evidence points to Hipparchus (whose last known date for
works is 127 BC) as the inventor of trepidation. Ptolemy (whose last observation was
recorded in 141 AD) disregarded it, perhaps because their values for precession were
significantly different. Grasshoff points out that this discrepancy suggests that the matter
was not seriously entertained during the interval between their lifespans, when the difference
between sidereal and tropical reckoning decreased from 5° to 1°.

The real question is if the tropical zodiac is invested with meaning. Obviously I think not.
McCann asks for us to look at our ascendants and other positions when addressing such
questions. I wholeheartedly concur. Beside the tradition invoked by Hipparchus and Ptolemy
that longitudes be reckoned from the vernal point, the bleed-over from sidereal sign to
tropical sign is what has caused the problem. A good example is Scorpio, the sign that gets
the most attention because it is considered the most sexual. From the standpoint of a
siderealist, Scorpio is not a love-maker, sweet, alluring, the complex, tortured artist or
inclined to press for a resolution of a problem; rather, Scorpio imposes solutions and brooks
no resistance. It doesn't bargain; it is aggressive, insistent, penetrating and intense, likes to
fight and is often loud, coarse, vulgar and utterly graceless, other things not considered.
Scorpio isn't like Libra, yet 5 out of 6 tropical Scorpios are sidereal Librans during the current
era.

Since the Librans are genuinely agreeable and attractive people, other things not considered,
astute tropicalists who notice what the trait characteristics of the people in their experience
really are, which deviates from the old lore, trot out profound esoteric explanations about
how the deeper occult significance of Scorpio (choose one) is actually in accord with their
contemporary observations. That is how tropical Virgo becomes strong and overbearing,
Aries gentle and sensitive or Capricorn formal and ambitious, etc. They are Leo, Pisces and
Sagittary misnamed, which corruption eventually produces a meaningless hodgepodge to the
great detriment of Art.