Gender

Gender

The issue of gender is heavily corrupted by misunderstanding. For many Greeks there were no masculine or feminine stars.

Modern astrologers make the false and baseless claim that the stars are identical to the Greco-Roman gods of the same name. That claim is without merit. There is no textual authority to support their lunacy. Sometimes it helps to understand why things are the way they are. The early Modern astrologers like Alan Leo and the special snowflake Sepharial and the other special snowflake Charubel did not have access to the Greek texts we had. Even worse, the only Greek text they had was from Ptotle the non-astrologer. Ptotle never cast a chart even once in his entire life because he was too busy fabricating data and committing fraud to be bothered with something so trivial.

The stars have no gender. The Greeks used the pronoun “it” instead of “he” or “she” when referring to the stars. The signs are grouped into masculine and feminine. We expressed our dissatisfaction with that because it doesn’t help you correctly interpret the chart. Better is active (instead of masculine) and passive (instead of feminine). The four quadrants are also divided into masculine and feminine quadrants. The odd numbered quadrants (10th, 11th and 12th Houses and 4th, 5th and 6th Houses) were said to be masculine while the even numbered quadrants (1st, 2nd and 3rd Houses and 7th, 8th and 9th Houses) are feminine.

One of the Greeks presented this gender scheme for the stars:

• Masculine: Sun, Jupiter and Saturn
• Feminine: Moon, Venus and Mars
• Common: Mercury

We’re dismissive of that since it is clearly based on sect. Someone was obviously confused and equated the diurnal signs — the masculine signs — with the diurnal stars and erroneously concluded they were masculine. Lather, Rinse, Repeat for the feminine stars and Mercury has no gender. Again, that is clearly someone’s misunderstanding of planetary sect.

This scheme was attributed to Dorotheus:

• Masculine. Sun, Mars and Jupiter
• Feminine: Moon, Venus and Saturn
• Common: Mercury

That’s an interesting scheme and makes more sense to us that the other gender scheme. The scheme most are familiar with comes from the non-astrologer Ptotle:

• Masculine: Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn
• Feminine: Moon and Venus
• Common Mercury

Since that scheme comes from Ptotle, we know it’s wrong and as a point of fact it is wrong, so we’ll never use it. Still, the question before us is how does the gender help us with the interpretation of a natal chart or in predictive work with the interpretation of the actors in an event (if the event indicates people are involved and not things)?

To support our claim that the entire concept is corrupted let’s see what Rhetorius says on the subject:

“The stars which become masculine in the masculine images or the masculine quadrants contribute to the nativities of males. For they make those who have the masculine nature in themselves willful and daring. But they make women undignified, shameless, daring, insubordinate, masculine in relation to intercourse, or masturbators. The stars that are feminine by their phases, images, and quadrants, make men soft, fainthearted, cowardly, fearful of everybody, effeminate and entirely castrated, or those who do the work of women. But it makes women with downcast eyes, those who are modest, considerate, dignified, obedient to men, and those who perfectly lean the customs of women.”

The claim by Rhetorius is easily refuted with the chart of John Glenn (and millions of other charts).

 

We have 5 out of 7 stars – Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun and Mars– in feminine quadrants and 6 out of 7 stars – Moon, Mercury, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn – in feminine signs and then 2 out of 7 stars are feminine by their phases, namely Jupiter and Saturn.

John Glenn:

• began flying planes at age 12
• obtained his private pilot’s license at age 16
• quite college and volunteered for military flight training at the onset of WW II
• volunteered to fly combat missions, flying 57 missions for which he received two Distinguished Flying Crosses and ten Air Medals
• volunteered to fly missions in China (based out of Peking) from late 1946 to early 1947
• volunteered and flew 63 combat missions in Korea earning the nickname “Magnet Ass” because his plane always returned heavily damaged and twice his aircraft had more than 250 bullet and anti-aircraft holes in his plane
• volunteered to go back to Korea and flew 27 more combat missions shooting down 3 enemy aircraft
• volunteered to be a test-pilot flying experimental aircraft that people weren’t even sure could actually fly
• volunteered to be an astronaut and was the 3rd person in space and the 1st American to orbit Earth
• was elected four times as a U.S. Senator
• was the only astronaut from the Mercury or Apollo space programs to fly on the Space Shuttle and was age 77 when he did that.

“…[S]oft, fainthearted, cowardly, fearful of everybody, effeminate and entirely castrated, or did the work of women.”

So… John Glenn was a girly man? Really? Um, no. Rhetorius needs to stop smoking opium.

Let’s sort this mess out and stick to what we do know that works.

First, let’s clear up a misconception. There is no relationship between the stars and the Greek or Roman gods of the same name. That the stars are somehow related to those gods is Modern astrology tripe and Modern astrologers abuse and pervert Greek mythology so badly that Plato, Socrates, Protogoras and Aristotle are spinning in their graves fast enough to generate enough electricity to power Earth for eternity.

The Greek texts clearly refer to Venus as “it” not “she.” Mars is an “it” not a “he”. Mercury is an “it”. Moon is an “it”. That should be obvious since the texts also say the stars are made masculine or feminine based on the signs they’re in.

You can forget about masculine and feminine degrees since the basis for that is magic. Or magik. Or for the special snow-flakes, magick. Magic, like crystals, aliens (the extraterrestrial type), guardian angels, tarot cards etc have no place in astrology. If you wish to know the gender of a fetus, go ahead guess. That’ll save you a lot of time and effort and you’ll have a better average of correct guesses than if you would when using astrology.

We previously mentioned that masculine and feminine are not useful terms. We prefer active or passive signs rather than masculine and feminine signs. The topics signified by stars in active signs tend to initiate faster and terminate sooner. The passive signs indicate topics that unfold slowly and take longer to complete.

When you learn Phase Cycles you’ll be able to combine that with the rising and setting phases of the stars since rising stars indicate things that go forth quickly while setting stars tell us thing occur later in life.

In the chart of John Glenn the 10th House is Virgo, a passive sign and Jupiter and Saturn are setting (Jupiter rules the Sagittarius 1st House). We would expect his greatest accomplishments to occur later in life, and they did. He became a U.S. Senator in the 1970’s when he was in his 50’s and was 77 when he flew on a Space Shuttle mission.

Mercury and Mars are both in their rising phases in the Cancer 8th House which makes them “active”, not “masculine.” He started flying at age 12, got his private pilot’s license at age 16 and quit college to volunteer to fly aircraft in WW II. He became an astronaut at age 39 and was 41 years old when orbiting Earth in the Mercury 7 space capsule.

Obviously, Rhetorius didn’t quite understand the concepts but we aren’t really sure Rhetorius was a bona fide astrologer. He certainly compiled much information from many different astrological manuscripts and unlike Ptotle the Plagiarizer, Rhetorius cites his sources. We’re not suggesting that Rhetorius corrupted the concepts (he certainly messed up a few of them) only that they were already confused and Rhetorius worsened the confusion.

So with respect to gender we’ll only focus on the images and whether a star is rising or setting to get an idea of when things will happen in people’s lives.