SAVol7Dec09WesternCo.. - Saptarishis Astrology

ecause the mathematicians (5) of the Roman empire never forgot that they were thesuccessors of the ancient Caldean priests.The prestige conferred on astrology by its constant relationship with the godly stars issplendidly described in the words of Arellius Fuscus, a rhetorician of the time of Augustus:“He, to whom the gods themselves reveal the future, who also imposes the gods’ will uponkings and their people, cannot be formed within the same womb that has borne us, ignorantmen. He belongs to a superhuman kind. The confidant of the gods, he himself is divine. Ifthe affirmations of astrology are true, why is it that men of all times do not devotethemselves to their study? Why is it that from our childhood we do not fix our eyes uponnature and upon the gods, when we see that the stars unveil themselves for us, and that wecould live amongst the gods?”In Hadrian’s time an imperial horoscope was not only that of a man’s nature and of a man’sdestiny: it could even signal or create a king: Suetonius, who was an official at Hadrian’scourt wrote that a certain Vettius Pompusianus was sentenced to death by Domitian becausehe let people know that he had a horoscope which revealed an emperor. With the danger ofthese mathematicians of Greek culture who found within the make up of Caesar’s empire away to impose men of their own choice, Hadrian was not the sort of man to leave to othersthe use of such a powerful instrument of power: the latest research indicates that he used thesecrets of the geniture oroscopica precisely to back up his government decisions: amongstothers, to choose, very advisedly, his adoptive sons and heirs to the empire: the future LuciusVerus and a young boy with a pensive and sincere look, Annius Verus, the future MarcusAurelius. It appears that Hadrian used the prestige astrology gave to justify a previouschoice, which had at the time appeared bizarre and unjustified, that of the youth CeionusCommodus, called Aelius Verus, clearly unsuitable to be a ruler and who died young;perhaps he was Hadrian’s secret son.Naturally the astrology of the time took great interest in Hadrian’s horoscope: here is itsdescription, by an admiring Antigonus of Nicea, a scholar of the 2 nd century who must havebeen writing soon after the death of the great man:” There was a man born when the sunwas at the 8 degree of the Aquarius, the Moon, Jupiter and the Point of the Horoscope, thethree all together in the first degree of the same sign of Aquarius, Saturn in the 16 degree ofCapricorn, Mercury in the same sign, at the 12 degree, Venus in Pisces at 23 degrees, whilstMars was in the 22 degrees … The moon was in conjunction with a bright fixed star …. Thefact that he was honoured and received the proskynesis (6) from all men alike is becauseJupiter was in epicentric vigilance (?) on the Sun and on the Moon … And he receivedbeneficial qualities from Jupiter’s position. That he was the benefactor of many … comesfrom the fact that the epicentric Sun and the Moon were equally served by five otherplanets. Above all if the Sun and the Moon are found in the active points (or cardinal ones?)that is in the Horoscopic Point or in the Mesouranema, and they are thus served by all the188