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The first day of the year

January 1, 2009

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The legend says that  Numa Pompilius, the successor of Romulus,  in his reform of the Calendar added two months to the  Roman calendar, and fixed the beginning of the year at the first day of the month dedicated to Janus, the God of the doors – janua in Latin, from yana (road) in Sanskrit. [...]

The attack to Gaza

December 30, 2008

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- Israeli warplanes pounded the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Saturday, killing at least 229 people in one of the bloodiest days for the Palestinians in 60 years of conflict with the Jewish state. Hamas vowed revenge including suicide bomb attacks in the “cafes and streets” of Israel, as Israeli air strikes continued late into the night. [...]

MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE MUSIC

December 28, 2008

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Music in the Middle Ages and Renaissance is music for life, the sound of work, war, happiness, sadness,  love, prayer. The Litaniae Sanctorum are one of the oldest prayers of the Church. They were established by Gregorius the Great in 590 AD to stop the plague. A medieval legend says that during these prayers Pope Gregorius [...]

About translations, translators and the spirit of Christmas

December 27, 2008

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Yesterday in  a forum I stumbled upon a thread about the quality of astrological translations. I will not quote neither the forum nor the translator they were talking about because  he is known in the astrological world - this is the Christmas spirit - especially because he always writes about philological exactitude. This is a point [...]

Gaurico on sinastry

December 25, 2008

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Luca Gaurico and Girolamo Cardano are two of the most important Italian astrologers, still they were always rivals and enemies. Gaurico lived in Rome at the court of Paul III, as Pope’s astrologer and courtier, because he was able to foresee for Alessandro Farnese the election as  Pope, when the noble was not hoping for it [...]

Girolamo Cardano writes about Jesus’ horoscope

December 22, 2008

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In his effort to forget Arab magic and astrology and collections of aphorisms and in order to give more evidence to genethliac astrology, Cardano puts his reading of Jesus birthchart in his Comment to Tetrabiblos. These pages are a turning point after Albumasar’s pages about the Great Conjunction and the Pulchra Virgo. In these lines  written [...]

Syzygy preceding the Winter Ingress

December 16, 2008

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Ptolemy writes “it yet seems to be more consonant to nature, and more consistent with the facts, that the combined positions of the Sun, and the new, or full, Moon, which happen when the Sun is nearest to the points above-mentioned, should mark the four beginnings; and more especially if such combined positions should produce [...]

Love in Renaissance Rome

December 8, 2008

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This morning, as every year, I visited the traditional  Christmas books’ exhibition and I had the opportunity to attend a lecture about the star crossed love between Raffaello Sanzio, the famous painter and the beautiful Fornarina, made immortal by one of his paintings. Who was that woman is not clear but many say she was Agostino [...]

Signs of Earthquakes in astrological manuscripts

December 4, 2008

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Angelicus 29 We can foresee these events in advance from the following signs: when in a sign we find the conjunction of three or four planets, like Saturn, Jupiter and Mars or Mars and Venus and Saturn and even Mercury and when they are in their own places or triplicities or exaltations and one of two of [...]

….and Henry II

November 28, 2008

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About Caterina de Medici’s husband, it is well know the prognostication Luca Gaurico made for him. Percopo, Gaurico’s biographer mentions it: “Itinera tamen aquea videntur infausta et ab equis nonnihil impedimenti et lachrimulis ex oculo sinistro fluentibus“ “Travels by water are inaspicious and accidents with horses and tears from the left eye.” While in his Tractatus, Gaurico mentions [...]