Astrological Signatures for Psychic Ability

Barleywine

One of the books that was bestowed on me by my astrologer friend who can no longer read was Joan McEvers' 1980 "12 Times 12: 144 Sun/Ascendant Combinations." Although I tend to be hugely skeptical of anything that surfaced during the advent of the "Piscean Pipe-dream" (aka "New Age"), something she said about the Scorpio Ascendant/8th House Cancer Sun combination made perfect sense when considered in the light of my long-standing practice of divination - primarily tarot, but also geomancy and predictive astrology.

"If either the Ascendant or the Sun is in the Cancer decanate, you can be extremely intuitive and perceptive even bordering on the psychic." Both of these are in the Cancer decanate in my chart.

Further, "With the Sun in either the 8th or 9th House, you have a powerful mystic streak and a definite interest in mental and spiritual matters . . ."

I can certainly see how this fits like a glove. (Even the "false note" in this rosy picture added by my Capricorn Moon makes me demand at least subjectively convincing evidence but doesn't dull the ardor.) I've been urged by a number of people to go "professional," and if I could get over my aversion to "internet" reading I might do that. The Lenormand system - which seems less implicitly moored to the physical presence of a querent - may just take me there.

I do note that McEvers doesn't say anything about the Pisces decanate, which might be seen as an obvious connection for spiritual and psychic proclivites.

(One caveat: I have always used the Placidus houses for natal work, and this looks like something of a validation to me.)
 

Minderwiz

Some observations

One of the books that was bestowed on me by my astrologer friend who can no longer read was Joan McEvers' 1980 "12 Times 12: 144 Sun/Ascendant Combinations." Although I tend to be hugely skeptical of anything that surfaced during the advent of the "Piscean Pipe-dream" (aka "New Age")......

And rightly so :)

Like you I am very sceptical of 'New Age'. However, that is because much of it is based on an import of Eastern mysticism, which is rarely understood by those importing it and ends up used out of context or indeed even misused. That of course, does not mean that in the original context and use it is a 'pipe dream'. The issue here is really going to boil down to whether it has validity in terms of the system into which it is imported - Western Astrology.

Barleywine said:
something she said about the Scorpio Ascendant/8th House Cancer Sun combination made perfect sense when considered in the light of my long-standing practice of divination - primarily tarot, but also geomancy and predictive astrology.

"If either the Ascendant or the Sun is in the Cancer decanate, you can be extremely intuitive and perceptive even bordering on the psychic." Both of these are in the Cancer decanate in my chart.

Further, "With the Sun in either the 8th or 9th House, you have a powerful mystic streak and a definite interest in mental and spiritual matters . . ."

The first issue here is the main one - 'the Cancer decante'. The decans (decantes) are probably of Egyptian origin and Hellenistic codification. There is no such thing as a 'Cancer decan', in this system but there is a decan ruled by the Moon and it happens to run from the 21st degree up to 0 Leo. The system starts with Mars ruling the first decan of Aries and then proceeds in unbroken Chaldean order through the Zodiac. That means that it is unlikely the ruling planet of a sign has a decan within that sign - only Aries, Cancer, Virgo and Scorpio are 'lucky'

Now the decans along with whole sign houses, aspects, etc were imported into Jyotish somewhere around the second or third centuries AD. The Hindu Astrologers ended up with four methods of calculation for decans. One of these was used by New Age influenced Astrologers in the West. That is the trinal or element based system. For Cancer that would have Cancer ruling the first decan, Scorpio the second and Pisces the third. Each sign has itself ruling the first decan and the other two signs in the same triplicity follow in zodiacal order.

This system is not something that was invented by the New Age crew, it existed long before them and is a valid and integral part of Jyotish. I'll mention one use of it in a moment but first I want to look briefly at the second issue.

You mention Scorpio Ascendant Cancer Sun in the 8th and then later Scorpio Ascendant Cancer Sun in the 8th or 9th. I've not read McEvers book that you referred to so I'm not sure whether the distinction here is yours or hers. I'm guessing that she only refers to the latter - that is Scorpio Ascendant, Sun in Cancer in the 8th or 9th but I hope you will correct me if that guess is wrong.

The reason for my guess is that a 12 x 12 system only works if you use whole sign houses or play down the house position in a quadrant system. A Scorpio Ascendant produces a Taurus Descendant. In whole signs that would put Cancer in the ninth (which has a connection with Astrology and Divination). However in a quadrant system, it would be quite possible for Cancer to fall into the eight house, at least in part (ninth house cusp in Cancer). What is more, the further North or South you go and depending on the time of day and year, you might well find that even that observation breaks down.

Barleywine said:
I can certainly see how this fits like a glove. (Even the "false note" in this rosy picture added by my Capricorn Moon makes me demand at least subjectively convincing evidence but doesn't dull the ardor.) I......
I do note that McEvers doesn't say anything about the Pisces decanate, which might be seen as an obvious connection for spiritual and psychic proclivites.

You are always wise to require 'convincing evidence'

One of the uses that Jyotish makes of the decans (drekkana - a transliteration into Sanskrit) is in Varga charts (which are based on various subdivisions of a Sign). Komilla Sutton, uses only the trinal decans in her Essentials of vedic Astrology but she says that the resulting Varga Chart is of significance for Third House matters. She uses the 'usual' interpretation of the third, for Siblings, which she correctly points out are not a trivial issue in India. She includes friends and alliances in the third plus courage ability and motivation. The Varga chart allows you to 'fine tune' the issues relating to these found in the third house of the Rasi or Radix Chart.

Now these areas have nothing to do with the psychic or divinatory abilities and that would seem to invalidate the connection with the decans. But if we go back to Hellenistic Astrology, from which the decans were imported. The original meanings of the third house were not quite the same.

Yes, it included Siblings, friends and relatives (the latter two having fallen out of use), Yes it included travel, foreign things and places and living abroad. But it also included Dreams and Divination. It is, after all, the House of the Goddess and the Joy of the Moon. There are other things as well but the important thing in this context is that the Jyotish reference to third house issues has at least some connection with Divination in a Western Tradition context.

Now that doesn't prove the issue. The trinal decans are not Western and I don't know if, historically, Jyotish ever connected the third house to Dreams and Divination. That might be something worth investigating.

My point here really is that the connection just can't be dismissed out of hand as the delusions of the New Age. There may be grains of truth here.

Barleywine said:
(One caveat: I have always used the Placidus houses for natal work, and this looks like something of a validation to me.)

I'm sorry, it isn't :(

If I'm right about McEvers, she does not distinguish between the eighth or the ninth house placement, with different interpretations. She Takes Scorpio Ascendant and Cancer Sun (whether it falls in the eighth or ninth house). Indeed Jyotish uses the Whole Sign House system and always has for natal work.

What's more, McEvers' interpretation really only makes sense within a ninth House context as this is the house that Western Astrology asssociates with Divination.

PS her non-use of the Pisces decante, inclines me to believe that her source material was not necessarily from a New Age fanatic and that adds perhaps some circumstantial evidence for those 'grains of truth'.
 

Barleywine

Thanks for the analysis and the history lesson. Everything you see in quotes in my post was a direct statement from the book, not my interpretation. You're right, she used the Hindu decans/decanates, not the Western ones used by the GD, Aleister Crowley, etc. I played around with other quadrant systems, but the only house system that put the Sun in the 9th House is the Whole Sign House system, so I think you're onto something there. Also, that moves the Capricorn Moon into the 3rd House and takes it out of interception, which also seems to make more sense in this context. The decan associations remain the same. Perhaps, then, there is a validation of your perspective on this here, since the abilities McEvers posits for the Ascendant/Sun/Decan combinations are unquestionably present, as shown to a greater or lesser degree by any number of past divinations over four decades.
 

Larxene

Minderwiz, if you read the Mathesis [Bram translation], you will find a diagram with signs as decanates. It seems like Maternus mentioned two decanate systems, one with signs, the other one with planets. The system is one where the first decan in Aries is Aries, and the rest of the decans follow the zodiacal order. What do you think of this?



Indeed, the 9th and 3rd houses do relate to prophecy, divination and dreams, according to Maternus at least.

The Ascendant is chosen here seemingly because it represents the native himself, while the Sun, for some modern astrological techniques, is also used to represent the self [hence, solar houses and what not].

The decanate of the Moon is chosen perhaps because the Moon symbolises intuition in modern astrology, and intuition is thought to be one of the main ways in which divination/psychic powers operate. This is not strictly modern, as one can derive intuition if one uses the Schmidtian keyword for the Moon, that is, to gather and include. The Moon accepts everything. It collects the light of all the planets. Thus, a person who operates like the Moon is sensitive and receptive to all information, making him intuitive and perceptive.

I do not understand why decanates are used. From a Hellenistic perspective, I would use the terms/bounds, but the luminaries do not have bounds. So I suppose that is why...still, I do not think that decans function the same way as bounds. Not much is known about its uses, though a source I recall uses it as a factor for the appearance of the native, and Maternus claims it can be used to forecast diseases, though he never showed how. Its use in the Liber Hermetis is cryptic.
 

Minderwiz

There's a third system of decans, which is found in Manilius' Astronomica - the earliest extant text we have on Horoscopic Astrology. This assigns the decans in sign order, starting with Aries for the first decan of Aries and continues through to Pisces ruling the last decan of Cancer. It then restarts with Aries ruling the first decan of Libra and ends with Pisces ruling the last decan of Pisces. This system also appears in Jyotish as the parivritti drekkana.

The interesting thing about this is that Capricorn rules the first decan of Cancer and you have Moon in Capricorn in the third. So it's possible that your Moon actually adds rather than subtracts LOL

The warning is, as always, that mixing and matching can be a dangerous thing as it leads to choosing the method that 'works' in a particular case, rather than being systematically consistent. From a Western perspective, the most consistently applied system is the one of Chaldean rulerships, even Ptolemy didn't play with that.
 

Barleywine

There's a third system of decans, which is found in Manilius' Astronomica - the earliest extant text we have on Horoscopic Astrology. This assigns the decans in sign order, starting with Aries for the first decan of Aries and continues through to Pisces ruling the last decan of Cancer. It then restarts with Aries ruling the first decan of Libra and ends with Pisces ruling the last decan of Pisces. This system also appears in Jyotish as the parivritti drekkana.

The interesting thing about this is that Capricorn rules the first decan of Cancer and you have Moon in Capricorn in the third. So it's possible that your Moon actually adds rather than subtracts LOL

The warning is, as always, that mixing and matching can be a dangerous thing as it leads to choosing the method that 'works' in a particular case, rather than being systematically consistent. From a Western perspective, the most consistently applied system is the one of Chaldean rulerships, even Ptolemy didn't play with that.

In another thread, some time ago, we were discussing decans and my brief search found an article (http://www.bendykes.com/articles/decans.php#footnote22) that said the decans of Hindu astrology (the "triplicity system") are a more recent addendum to Western astrology, and that the Chaldean decans have been the dominant system for many centuries. To the limited extent that I used them before discovering the resurgence of traditional astrology, I used the Chaldean decans. It appears that Joan McEvers caught the Hindu incursion on the upswing as it came into more widespread usage in the late 20th century. She appears to have focused on the "decanal" (Ben Dykes' word, not mine) signs and their modern psychological correspondences rather than the ruling planets of those signs.

The larger issue is whether there even are astrological signatures for psychic ability, other than the house emphasis mentioned earlier. (Which is the discussion I had hoped to stimulate, not the lecture I got.) I've never been comfortable with Neptune in that role, nor with Pisces when Neptune is taken as the ruler. It doesn't seem that the possibility would have crossed the mind of a traditional astrologer, which is why it seemed decidedly "New Age-y" to me, or at least a late 19h century Theosophical augmentation.
 

Minderwiz

The larger issue is whether there even are astrological signatures for psychic ability, other than the house emphasis mentioned earlier. (Which is the discussion I had hoped to stimulate, not the lecture I got.) I've never been comfortable with Neptune in that role, nor with Pisces when Neptune is taken as the ruler. It doesn't seem that the possibility would have crossed the mind of a traditional astrologer, which is why it seemed decidedly "New Age-y" to me, or at least a late 19h century Theosophical augmentation.


Well we did have a recent thread:

http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=213786

On 'uncanny intuition' which begs an even larger question - what do you mean by 'psychic ability'? (and indeed is it the same thing as 'uncanny intuition')

It's difficult to track down a signature (always assuming one exists) for something we are not all agreed on.

Re-reading your original post I must admit I was distracted from your thread title by the concentration on McEvers and her application to your own chart. My feeling on that is that there are grains of truth in what she says, though she might not have arrived at it in the 'right way' (though one can argue it doesn't really matter how she got there if she was 'right').

On your wider question. My feeling would be that if such a signature exist, then it will be related to Moon and or third house positions. Neptune is of a lower Astrological order by several magnitudes than the Moon.

A well known medium of my acquaintance argues that 'psychic ability' is innate - we all have it to a degree. What matters is the extent to which we develop it (a ninth house function) and some but not all can move into mediumship. Now he didn't go into the exact nature of what 'psychic ability' was but for the moment I'll just use that old phrase -'sixth sense' - the ability to 'divine' something accurately with only partial or even no evidence from the other five senses. It's something to do with the non-rational or intuitive mind (back to the Moon)

So following a definition of psychic ability for the purposes of this question, the next thing would be to ask if there's a signature that might tell us something about the ability to develop and refine it up to a level where we can make use of it for divinatory purposes both for ourselves and others.

That's not easy by any means and indeed if there are a combination of signatures that lead to that, then it might be beyond us.

PS, sorry about the lecture - well actually I'm not. We need to have a clear and systematic astrological basis if we're going to get anywhere. Using a mish mash of Western and Jyotish techniques plus New Age add on's is a recipe for confusion and indeed cherry picking the answer. So if decans are important to this (and I'm not sure that they are) then we should be using a systematic approach to them based on Western Astrology (or follow a Jyotish approach) rather than trying to cobble the two together, as McEvers does.