History of the Lunar Mansions

[Guest guest]

A VERY BRIEF HISTORY OF THE LUNAR MANSIONS

 

As far as we know, all the ancient cultures had some sort of system of

lunar mansions, the stars or asterism through which the Moon passed on its

nightly journey across the sky. These weren't equal divisions of the

zodiac. Many of the mansions weren't very close to the ecliptic, and they

were very unequally spaced from each other. Even when AlBiruni wrote his

large treatise on astrology in 1029 CE [The Book of Instruction in the

Elements of the Art of Astrology], which contained all the astrological

knowledge of the ancients he could get his hands on, the mansions didn't

have specific boundaries. Here are two examples:

 

1. Al-sheratain (two signals), the first mansion is marked by two bright

stars on the horns of Aries; they are disposed in a north and south

line...(etc.)

 

4. Al-debaran is a large shining red star in the easterly eye of Taurus.

The head of Taurus is shaped like a bowl with its mouth to the

north....(etc.) (Page 81-82)

 

What happened next in the history of the mansions? Well....they were

adopted into the Tropical zodiac, and that's when they were made into the

*equal* 28 divisions of the ecliptic. This is recorded in Cornelius

Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Book 2, Chapter 33. Agrippa

lived between 1486-1535. The mansions were listed like this:

 

1. Alnath, 0 Aries to 12 Aries 51

2. Allothaim or Albochan 12 Aries 51 to 25 Aries 42

3. ....25 Aries 42 to 8 Taurus 34.

And so on.....

 

These equal mansions were adopted into the Picatrix, a

philosophical/magical Medieval text. These mansions were strictly Tropical.

After awhile the popularity of the Picatrix died out along with the use of

the lunar mansions themselves until....

 

Voila!! Cyril Fagan ‘discovers' the sidereal zodiac and decides to

resurrect the 28 equal mansions with markers at 15 Aldebaran/Antares. The

only problem with this lunar zodiac is that it never existed in ancient

cultures. The 28 equal mansions were invented by Tropical astrologers after

the sidereal zodiac had died out in the west.

 

Probably sometime around 300 CE astrologers or astronomers in India decided

to convert the 28 mansions of the Moon into 27 equal divisions of the

ecliptic. Although most of the original lunar mansion stars fall in the

appropriate Indian mansion, these were not the mansions of antiquity

anymore than the 28 equal mansions were. So we now have:

 

1. A list of the 28 mansions of antiquity--no boundaries, only single stars

or asterisms.

2. 27 equal lunar mansions invented in India

3. 28 equal Tropical mansions invented sometime after AlBiruni's time(after

1029 CE)

4. 28 equal sidereal mansions invented by Cyril Fagan in the 20th century

 

We can take our pick as to which system of mansions we want to use. But we

can't claim that there were 28 equally sized lunar houses from 4000 years ago.

 

There are some very good articles on the lunar mansions on the internet:

http://www.renaissanceastrology.com/picatrix.html There's a link to an

article on the lunar mansions on this site.

 

Then the Astrological Journal of Great Britain has a very good article in

the Jan/Feb 1996 journal. Vol 38, No 1. I don't have the URL, but if you go

to the Astrological Journal website, you'll be able to find this article by

Ian Freer: " The Picatrix: Lunar Mansions in Western Astrology.

 

We have a whole lot more to go on now than Fagan did in his time. Lots of

new translations.

 

Sincerely,

Therese