Astrology Encyclopedia

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Cabala, Cabalism: also Kabalism, kabalistic. (1) The Cabalists assume that every word of the inspired writings embodies a secret meaning, the key to which only they possess; (2) a summation of the ancient lore accredited to the ancient rabbis of Israel.

 

Cacodemon: An evil spirit; the elemental. A term once employed in connection with the twelfth house, but no longer in use.

 

Cadent: Those houses which fall away from the angles; the 3rd, 6th, 9th and 12th houses. Cadent Planets are those which occupy Cadent Houses, and whose influence is thereby weakened. v. Houses.

 

Caduceus:  n. The wand of Hermes, or Mercury, the messenger of the gods. A cosmic, sidereal, or astronomical symbol; its significance changing with its application. Originally a triple-headed serpent, it is now a rod with two serpents twined around it, and two wings at the top. As a medical insignia it may appear as a rod surmounted by a ball, representing the Solar orb, and a pine cone, representing the pineal gland. The entwined white and black serpents represent the struggle between good and evil - disease and cure. Another form is the Thyrus, often pictured in the hands of Bacchus. Astronomically, the head and tail represent the Nodes - the points on the ecliptic where Sun and Moon meet in an eclipse. v. Aaron's Rod.

 

Calendar: A system of reckoning and recording the time when events occur; the coordination of the days, weeks, and months of the year with the cycles upon which they are based. Read the Full Article

 

Cancer: The fourth sign of the zodiac. v. Signs.

 

Cappella: A yellow star, in 20° Gemini, the spectrum of which more nearly than that of any other bright Northern star, resembles the spectrum of our Sun.

 

Capricorn: The tenth sign of the zodiac. v. Signs.

 

Caput Draconis: The Dragon's Head. v. Moon's Node.

 

Cardinal Signs: Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn -- whose cusps coincide with the cardinal points of the compass: Aries, East; Cancer, North; Libra, West; and Capricorn, South. v. Signs.

 

Casting the Horoscope: The term used by astrologers to imply the calculations necessary to be made, prior to the delineation of the nativity. v. Figure.

 

Cataclysmic Planet: Uranus, which combines both teh magnetic and the electric elements, producing sudden effects.

 

Catahibazon: An Arabic term for Cauda Draconis. v. Moon's Node.

 

Cauda Draconis: The Dragon's Tail. v. Moon's Node.

 

Cazimi: An Arabian astronomical term applied to the center of the Solar disc. It is employed to describe a planet located within an arc of seventeen minutes (17') of the Sun's longitude: or by some authorities within half a degree of the Sun's center. It is then said to be "in the heart of the Sun." Older authorities considered that this position fortified the planet as much as combustion debilitates it. In his dictionary, James Wilson scoffed at this "silly distinction," saying that a planet so placed "is undoubtedly in the worst state of combustion." Most modern authorities are inclined to agree with him, although the favorable and unfavorable qualities it imparts vary according to the planet involved. v. Combust.

Celestial Sphere: If one pictures the sphere we call the Earth, enlarged to embrace the visible heavens, the resulting concept can be called the celestial sphere. If it is a true sphere, any circle drawn around it can be termed a circumference. To locate any particular circle as a circumference, implies the selection of some point of reference.  READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Ceres: (1) Daughter of Ops and Saturn; a Roman goddess of growing vegetation, particularly corn. Her day of celebration occurred on April 19th. (2) The first of the Asteroids (q.v.) to be discovered.

 

Chaldaeans: First a Semitic tribe, but later the magi of Babylonia, astrologers and diviners. From among them came "the wise men from the East." We know little of Chaldaean astrology, but some idea of their teachings are to be gleaned from the Chaldaean Oracles. With them Astrology was a religion, but of a far different type from any which has survived to modern times. The Chaldaean priests were famous Astrologers. They held that the world is eternal, without beginning or end; that all things are ordered by Divine providence; and that the Sun, Mars, Venus, Mercury and Jupiter are "interpreters," concerned with making known to man the will of God. From the regularity of motions in the heavenly bodies, they inferred that they were either intelligent beings, or were under some presiding intelligence. From this arose Sabianism, the worship of the host of heaven: Sun, Moon and Stars. It originated with the Arabian kingdom of Saba (Sheba), whence came the Queen of Sheba. The chief object of their worship was the Sun, Belus. To him was erected the tower of Belus, and the image of Belus. They did not worship the stars as God, who they thought of as too great to be concerned with mundane affairs; but they worshipped those whom they believed He had appointed as mediators between God and man. Their religion was based upon a belief in one impersonal, universal Principle, but to which they gave no name. To their lesser gods they erected huge temples, of a peculiar construction, specially adapted for star worship. Here they healed the sick, and performed certain magical ceremonies. An inscription on the pedestal of a statue erected to Nebo, reads: "To the god Nebo, guardian of the mysteries, director of the stars: he who presides at the rising and setting of the sun; whose power is immutable, and for whom the heaven was created." In the time of Alexander the Great, 356 B.C., the Chaldaeans alleged that their Astrology had existed 473,000 years.

 

Chaldaean Oracle: An Oracle venerated as highly by the Chaldaeans as was the one at Delphi, by the Greeks. It taught that "Though Destiny may be written in the stars, it is the mission of the divine soul to raise the human soul above the circle of necessity." The Oracle promised victory to any one who developed that masterly will. The Chaldaean teachings with regard to karma and reincarnation, are today found in Theosophy.

 

Changeable Signs: v. Signs.

 

Character: The sublime strength of Astrology is in its delineation of character. As destiny is subservient to character, no prediction should be ventured until the patterns of emotional stimulation and environment are understood. Character is the cumulative result of the aggregate of experience. Daily cosmic stimulation through birth receptivities constitutes a portion of the aggregate of experience. But cosmic stimulation is a conditioning process that determines only the nature of one's reactions, while the reaction takes place only when called into play by some accidental encounter within an environment. Thus environment plus reaction produces an event, and the sum total of events becomes the aggregate of experience - out of which one learns or fails to learn to control reaction, and thereby character evolves.

 

Character of Planets: v. Planets.

 

Characteristics of the Signs:  v. Signs.

 

Chart:  v. Figure.

Chronocrators: Markers of Time. (1) To the ancients the longest orbits within the solar system were those of Jupiter, 12 years, and Saturn, 30 years. Thus the points at which Jupiter caught up with and passed Saturn marked the greatest super-cycle with which they were able to deal. This phenomenon occurred every 20 years at an advance of about 243°.  READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Chronos: (1) The original supreme deity, superseded by Zeus. (2) In ancient texts, the planet Saturn (q.v.).

 

Circle: The complete circle of the zodiac, or 360 degrees of 60 minutes each.

 

Circles of Position: Circles intersecting the horizon and meridian, and passing through a star: in terms of which to express the position of the star. Their use is not obsolete. However, Circles of Position were not so used by Ptolemy or Placidus, who measured the distance of every star by its semi-arc.

 

Cities, Sign Rulership:  v. Signs.

 

Clairaudience: In occult terminology, the psychic ability to hear sounds or voices regardless of distance. The hearing sense is deemed to be ruled by Saturn; the psychic sense, by Neptune.

 

Clairsentience: An occult term indicating psychic sensitivity; a "hunch" or "that peculiar feeling that something is going to happen." Almost everyone possesses instinctive and intuitive clairsentience to some degree, largely dependent upon the nature of the configurations in which Neptune is involved.

 

Climacterical Conjunction: Said of certain Jupiter-Saturn Conjunctions. v. Chronocrators.

 

Climacterical Periods: Every 7th and 9th year in a Nativity, supposedly brought about through the influence of the Moon in its position in the Radix. The Moon squares her own place by transit every 7th day, and by direction every 7th year; and trines it every 9th day and year. Thus the climacterical periods occur at the ages of 7, 9, 14, 18, 21, 27, 28, 35, 36, 42, 45, 49, 54, 56, and 63 years. The most portentous are those of the 49th and 63rd years, which are doubly climacterical, 7x7 and 9x7. When evil directions coincide these are generally deemed to be fatal. The 63rd year is called the Grand Climacteric, and the general presumption is that more persons die in their 63rd year than in any other from 50 to 80.

 

Climate: The precursors of the modern Tables of Houses. They were calculated for every 30' shortening of the diurnal and nocturnal semi-arc as one proceeds north or south from the Equator.

 

Cold planets: Moon, Saturn. v. Planets, Hot, Slow.

 

Collection of light: When a planet is in aspect to two other bodies which are not within orbs of each other, a collection of light results through the action of the intermediary planet. It denotes that the affairs represented by the two bodies whose light has been thus collected, will be forwarded by a third person, described by the intermediary planet, providing both bodies receive the intermediary in one of their dignities. Used in Horary Astrology. Other authors confine it to a larger planet aspected by two smaller, with the interpretation that if the smaller do not receive the larger in one of their dignities, the intermediary will feel no interest in the affair, nor will it prosper.

 

Colors: In the age when an astrologer presumed to find in a chart the answer to every manner of question that could be propounded he frequently undertook to tell, for example, which cock would win in a cockfight merely by indicating the color associated with the strongest planet in an Horary Figure. It also was considered an index to the coloring of an individual's eyes, hair, and complexion, as well as the clothes he should wear. Thus the following color chart adduced from Wilson, who professed not to take it too seriously:
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Combust: Said of a planet when in extreme closeness to the Sun, the limits variously placed at from 3° to 8°30'. The characteristic effect to which the term applies is probably confined within an arc of 3° and is more pronounced when the planet rises after the Sun. Older authorities, including Milton, have described it as weakening, except in the case of Mars which was said to be intensified.
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Comets: Erratic members of the Solar system, usually of small mass. Luminous bodies, wandering through space, or circulating around the Sun, and visible only when they approach the Sun. They usually consist of three elements: nucleus, envelope, and tail. The superstitious once considered them to be evil omens. Those pursuing an elongated orbit are periodic and return at fixed intervals. Those with a parabolic or hyperbolic orbit are expected never to return.
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Commanding Signs: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, and Virgo, because they were deemed more powerful by virtue of their nearness to the zenith. The assumption that these command while the other six obey is hardly warranted, even for this reason - since the Earth is actually at the opposite end of each polarity. Actually they might with more reason be termed the "demanding" signs, with Libra to Pisces termed "commanding" signs, with much the same meaning as that contained in the aphorism that "One does not demand respect: he commands it." v. Northern Signs.

Common Signs: Those of the Mutable Quadruplicity: Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces; said to be flexible but vacillating.

 

Conception: According to Ptolemy the sex as well as the incidents relating to a child, prior to its birth, may be deduced from the positions of the planets at the time of conception. The entire subject of prenatal cosmic stimulation is a welter of confused theorizing, which as yet lacks confirmation in practice sufficient to bring about any unanimity of opinion.

 

Conceptive Signs:  v. Signs.

 

Configuration: (a) Three or more planets in a birth map, that are joined together by aspects, whereby. any stimulation will result in the combined action of all the planets which enter into the configuration. (b) A similar combination of mutual aspects between transitory planets.

 

Conjunction: Conjoined to: Phraseology to indicate the mutual relation of two planets occupying longitudinal positions separated by less than 7°. The exact limits, and the relative strength at different degrees of separation, constitutes a controversial point. Strictly speaking, the conjunction takes place when both occupy exactly the same degree position; although it begins to be operative when they arrive within orbs. v. Aspect.

 

Conjunction, Superior and Inferior: The conjunction of an inferior planet, Mercury or Venus, with the Sun is an inferior conjunction when the planet is between the Earth and the Sun; a Superior Conjunction, when the Sun is between the Earth and the planet.

 

Constellations: Some 90 subdivisions of the heavens, mostly named according to some outline traced among the principal stars within the area. There is no sharp line of demarcation between the various contiguous constellations. Twelve of these groups lie along the ecliptic, and are thus known as the Zodiac of Constellations. At about the commencement of the Christian era, these constellations coincided with the divisions of the ecliptic based on the point of the Vernal Equinox, where the ecliptic intersects the celestial equator. Since at no time did astrologers attribute the influences which repose in the twelve 30-degree arcs of the Earth's annual revolution around the Sun, to the background of stars against which celestial positions are measured, the name of the constellations were appropriated and attached to the zodiac of signs based upon the points of the Equinoxes and the Solstices.  READ THE FULL ARTICLE

 

Contact: (a) Usually applied to an aspect from a transiting or directed planet to a sensitive degree created by a planet at birth. (b) In a general sense it infers the energy discharge which takes place when an aspect becomes operative.

 

Contra antiscions: Apolo-Edited Definition (Devore's having been inadequately clear in this case): These are the same degees of declination held by stars and planets tenanting Signs on opposite sides of the Aries 0º - Libra 0º axis. They are exactly opposite the antiscion points. For example, the antiscion of 5º Aries is at 25º Virgo, while the contra-antiscion of 5º Aries is at 25º Pisces. To find them recourse may be had to Tables of Declination. v. Parallels.

 

Converse Directions: Those computed opposite to the order of the Signs. Some authorities appear to question the validity of Converse Directions. It is true that in a birth Figure aspects are deemed to be formed only by a faster moving planet to a slower moving; but this does not apply to Directions in which the directed planet aspects all natal planets. If there is any validity in either Directions or Progressions the probability is that they are based upon a moving Ascendant which carries with it the entire Figure. In that event it would make no difference which one of two planets is directed to the other; for whether the one moves forward or the other moves backward, a contact between these two planets will result in either case, and which one is deemed to be the birth planet and which the directed planet is of relatively minor consequence. Since transits are the actual rather than theoretical or symbolic motions of the body of the planets in the order of the Signs, forming aspects to the birth places of planets - their own as well as those of other planets - there can be no such thing as Converse Transits.

 

Coordinate: n. Any of two or more magnitudes that determine position. Latitude and Longitude are coordinates of a point on the Earth's surface. v. Celestial Sphere.

 

Copernican System: From Copernicus, an astronomer of Prussian birth (1493-1543), who was the first to show that all the observed motions of the planets could be explained by a diurnal rotation of the Earth on its axis, and a concept of the Sun as the centre around which the Earth and the other planets revolve. He was partially anticipated by Pythagoras, who taught a heliocentric system of astronomy.

 

Corona: A fringe of light, or halo, surrounding the Sun; visible only during a total Eclipse.

 

Correction: The adjustment of mean to sidereal time, whereby to ascertain the correct right ascension of the midheaven. v. Time.

Co-signficator: These are planets and Signs having a kind of rotary signification: thus Aries is a co-significator of all Ascendants, because though it is not the Sign ascending it is the first Sign of the Zodiac, as the Ascendant is the First House in the world.

 

Cosmecology: the ecology of the cosmic. This title was suggested by Harlan T. Stetson, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for a synthesis of the contemporary sciences of astronomy, electro-physics, geology and biology. In his book "Earth, Radio and the Stars" he ventures the remark that some curse apparently inures in the word "astro-" that keeps "astrology, mother of all these sciences, in the scientific dog-house," even though it may be the "lost key." He cautiously suggests that we trace the correlation between changes of a cosmic origin that affect our terrestrial environment, and periods of optimism and depression in the psychology of the human race; also that the ductless glands, controlling our moods and temperaments, respond to penetrating radiations which sooner or later must be discovered.

 

Cosmic: Something vast and systematic, imbued with a sense of magnitude and order. Webster defines cosmical physics as astrophysics.

Cosmic Conditioning: Ancient man was convinced that his destiny upon earth was ruled by the divine power that placed the stars in the heavens; that every created thing was a result of this influence; and that the Sun was the active principle of good, and the darkness of evil.
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Cosmic Cross: Two planets in opposition, each squared by a third planet, resulting in what is termed a T-square or T-cross. A fourth planet, opposing the third and squaring the first two, forms a Grand Cross. The T-square is a dynamic influence; the Grand Cross tends to diffusion.

 

Cosmic Philosophy, or Cosmism: A theory of cosmic evolution originated by John Fiske and advanced by him as an interpretation of Spenser.

Cosmic Psychology: The science of diagnosis whereby the maladjustment of the individual to life can be treated by correctional thinking. It does not concern itself with prediction, fortune-telling, life readings, or any other form of appeal to curiosity, mystery or superstition. It deals with reactions developed in the individual by virtue of growth and development during his first day of life, through the law of adaptability to cosmic ray frequencies then present in the Earth's magnetic field; and with experiences resulting from environmental stimulation of a preconditioned pattern of emotional reactions.  Read the Full Article

Cosmical: Said of the rising or setting of a planet (or a star) when it is near the Sun - hence rises and sets along with it. The opposite of acronycal (qv.).

 

Councillor Gods: A term applied, by the Chaldeans, to the three bright stars in a constellation, which served to mark the position of the ruling planet of that sign, when in the sign. Doubtless employed in an age in which there were no telescopes, to enable the observer to locate the planet when it occupied its own sign, whereby to establish the fact of its current added strength by virtue of attaining to its essential dignity (q.v.). Now ineffective, because of the Precession (qv.), and the availability of the modern Ephemerides.

 

Countries: sign rulerships of. v. Signs.

 

Crepuscule: Twilight. Used in Primary Directions.

 

Crescent: Said of the inferior planets as well as of the Moon, when less than half of the disc is illuminated by the Sun.

 

Critical Days: Those which coincide with the formation, by the Moon, directional or transitory, of each successive semi-square or 45° aspect, to its position at birth; or at the commencement of any illness, operation, or event under Horary consideration. By noting the positions of the Moon at successive crises, aspects thereto will indicate the prognosis. Favorable crises occur at the sextiles of the Moon to its radical place; but the ephemeral aspects it forms while in these positions determine the manner in which the crises will pass, and the eventual outcome.

 

Critical Degrees: v. Moon, Mansions of.

 

Crooked Signs: Taurus, Capricorn and Pisces; and should the Ascendant or Moon be in one of these, and afflicted by the malefics, the native, it is said, will be crooked and imperfect.

 

Crucial Degrees: v. Moon, Mansions of.

 

Culminating: v. Ascendant.

 

Culmination:  n. to culminate. v. (a) The arrival of a planet at the Midheaven (M.C.) or the cusp of the Tenth house, by progression, direction, or transit. (b) Sometimes used to indicate the completion of an aspect - the arrival of a planet at the exact degree where a partile aspect becomes platic.

 

Culminator: A swift-moving planet which in transit reaches a critical position, by conjunction or aspect, and thereby precipitates the externalization of a simultaneous state of displaced equilibrium caused by a lingering aspect from a slow-moving planet.

 

Cusp: (a) The imaginary line which separates a Sign from adjoining Signs, a House from its adjoining Houses; (b) an indeterminate but small arc contiguous to the boundary-line between adjacent Signs and Houses, wherein there is uncertainty as to the planet's location at a particular moment, and ambiguity as to the planet's influence in a borderline relationship. A birth planet is stronger when it is on the cusp than when it is in the last degrees of a House. The angular cusps are doubtless the sharpest.

 

Cycle: Of the Sun, 28 years; of the Moon, 19 years. An imaginary orb, or circle, in the heaven; marks the return of the planets to their own places; each of the planets having a cycle, or revolution, of its own.

Cycles: When a faster moving planet overtakes and passes a slower moving planet, it forms a conjunction. When this recurs a second time between the same two planets there is evident a first step in a cyclic effect, wherein the second conjunction has occurred after a certain interval of time and space: recurrence cycles of position and relation.  Read the Full Article