Some considerations about hyleg and alcochoden.

Animus est quo sapimus, anima qua vivimus,

Nonio, De compendiosa doctrina, ed. W.M. Linsay Leipzig 1903 426,27

The first consideration in the doctrine of nativities is that of determining the length of life. This judgement, as Ptolemy says, "takes the leading place among inquiries about events following birth, for, as the ancient says, it is ridiculous to attach particular predictions to one who, by the constitution of the years of his life, will never attain at all to the time of the predicted events"[1].

The 'ancient', the anonymous author cited by Ptolemy,  is thought by some to be the Egyptian Petosiris. In any case, we can presume that the time in which this ancient lived was about five centuries before Ptolemy. It is the time in which Apostelesmatics constituted a technique, in a scientific context, and was expected to foresee everything that happened within a tangible earthly reality from tangible celestial phenomena.

We will now concisely elucidate the foundations on which the astrological theory regarding the length of life is based and, given the large number of variants, limit ourselves to commenting on the most common and essential traits. Only the Sun and the Moon, the clarissima mundi lumina of Virgil, seem to contain within themselves their own life signifying qualities. This premise, which constitutes the fundamental theorem, has nonetheless several corollaries. We will see that there are other things which share the same qualities as the luminaries: New or Full Moon syzygies before birth, the rising degree in the East or the Horoscope, and the lunar horoscope, or lot of the fortune. There are therefore five factors which signify life, a point on which all experts in the art of Apostelesmatics agree.

We must keep in mind that the predominance of the luminaries depends, on the one hand, on their light, which is white and made up of all the colours of the iris and, on the other hand, that their motion produces measurable cyclical periods, the natural periods of time known as the year, month and day, which are the measures used to calculate the life of all beings in this world[2]. One should therefore conclude that as the planets do not fulfil these two aforesaid conditions, they cannot signify life. But this is not so. Astronomers consider periods for each planet which are combinations of the sum of their sidereal and synodical revolutions, with the aim of establishing the smallest whole number of years before the planet and the Sun return to the same position. These periods, which Ptolemy refers to in the first chapter of the ninth book of the Almagest, probably arose in Babylonian astronomy during the time of Achemenides (i. e. c. 5th-4th century B. C.), but we have evidence of them only after the conquest of Alexander the Great. The planetary periods of these five wandering stars are not the same as those found in astrological texts. They were adapted to agree with the number of degrees that each planet ruled by term (horia), in both the Egyptian system and the ancient manuscript of Ptolemy. The astrologers called these periods the "complete years" of the stars and then devised minor years, resulting from a whole number of synodical revolutions. Following this, the average years were derived from the arithmetic mean of these extremes.

There is no trace of planetary periods in the Ptolemaic doctrine on the length of life and, nevertheless, even in Ptolemy one of the five wandering stars can on occasions signify life. We can therefore try to offer a conclusion which, in its essentially theoretical aspects, is common to all astrological thought. Given that the meaning of the planets is particular and that of the luminaries is universal, the planets therefore signify form and things in particular. So if they signify life, they signify it as substance and accident. They therefore indicate not only a particular duration, but also a particular kind of life. On this point a divergence between Ptolemy and the remaining Greek speaking astrologers can be seen. After having contemplated the possibility that one of five planets could signify life, Ptolemy does not distinguish it, for this essential factor, from the other significators, which are all called aphetai, emissores. The term comes from aphiêmi, emittere, "to send forth", "cause to issue out". Therefore, the significator, whichever  one it may be, is that which initiates or sends forth a life-giving movement from where it is. The distance measured by the significator is the measure of life itself. Life terminates when a planet with a corrupting nature goes against it, either bodily or figuratively, or when the diurnal motion pulls it into the invisible hemisphere. Not all encounters are lethal, only those where the corrupting nature prevails over the healing vertue by number or strength.

This Ptolemaic doctrine which, taken separately out of a much wider context, is commonly accepted among the axioms of ancient astrology, describes possible events and appears to be purely a theory of the accident. However, the doctrine regarding the length of life was articulated differently in the Greek language texts and contemplated, alongside the contingent theory of the apheta's course, a theory of essence. A significative passage is to found in the Compendium of the Astrologumena by Antiochus of Athens[3], taken up again in the Introduction to Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos, falsely attributed to Porphyry[4]. Here, either the Sun or Moon, or the Ascendant are called predominators (epikratêtores) because they predominate in signifying life, while the planet that has rights to their position is called oikodespotês. It seems obvious from the context that this term cannot be rendered by the usual "lord of the house or domicile". In fact, oikodespotês is, both here and elsewhere, the planet that has certain rights (logoi) or familiarity (oikeiôsis) in these places in the nativity. It should therefore translate as dominus, lord, and oikodespoteia, dominatus, as lordship. This function could have perhaps been designated by the term despotês, that in Greek originally stood for the master of the house, the head of the family, but later on this lost its original sense and in the Greek version of the New Testament the word oikodespotês was used, which seems to have the same meaning as "lord" and "master", now and then referring to such demonic powers as Beelzebul, or to Christ or God Himself[5]. The grammarian Pollux in the second century B. C. noted that this word was of recent invention and came to assume a technical meaning in the astrological lexicon. It is the expression of rulership exercised in a naturally defined territory[6], a specific entity. It therefore does not depend on oikos in the sense of planetary domicile or "house" as defined by its walls, but as "the hearth", the home, the family as defined by blood ties.

The pseudo-Porphyry states that each of these two planets has its own quality: in the case of epikratêtôr it has the quality of helmsman, while oikodespotês has that of master[7]. Therefore, if the master were rich and had a solid and well defended ship to cross the seas, it would be the job of the helmsman to guide it safely to port. This is the relationship between the predominant planet and its dominus. The first is the alpheta, the indicator of life, while the latter is that planet which, having rights and familiarity (logoi, oikeiôseis) with regards to the first, determines its quality and declares the strength of life. This strength is specified by the specific nature of the dominus: Saturn cannot indicate more years than Jupiter, Jupiter not than Venus, and so on. This also depends on the condition of the dominus on the whole - on the part of the sky, its motion, brightness and the aspects it receives from the other planets - at the time of birth. This is the function of the shipowner. That of the helmsman is to pass through fair weather and foul, which the shipowner can only foresee in theory and fear, if he is aware of the weakness of his ship or, on the contrary, trusts to its soundness. Nonetheless, it can happen that the years signified by the dominus are not reached by the apheta and that a violent storm sinks the ship early. The contrary, however, is not to be taken for granted, as the dominus signifies the strength of life that can unfold in the process.

The figure of the dominus completes a substantial part of the theory that the doctrine of Ptolemy seems to lack. The dominus and apheta are present in the majority of works by Greek authors of the Hellenistic and late period, among them Balbillus, Dorotheus, Paulus of Alexandria, Hephaestio, Rhetorius. The same technical terms appears in Vettius Valens as in Antiochus and the pseudo-Porphyry: ejpikrathvtwr and oikodespotês. In Arabic astrology these words become haylâj and kadhkhudâh, which were later transcribed by western mediaeval astrologers as hyleg and alcochoden, or as other corrupted forms of the original words. These terms reached the Arabs through translations into pahlavi of Dorotheus of Sidon, which the first Sassanid kings (Ardashîr I and Shâpûr I, 224-272 AD) encouraged, together with other Greek and Indian astronomical and astrological works. It is commonly held that these terms are the translation of the Greek aphetês and oikodespotês[8]. Contrary to this we have all the Arab and Persian astrological texts that give an explanation of these terms. In his Keys of Knowledge, al-Khwârizmî observes that "in Persian haylâj means the man's woman and kadhkhudâh her spouse"[9]. This identification is based on haylâj as a synonym of kadbânû, the lady of the house, the mater familias and has lead to the metaphoric representation of a human couple. The metaphor was taken over by mediaeval translators from Arabic: «The masters of astrology, wrote John of Seville, called the rulers of life Hyleg and Alcochoden, which can be rendered as wife and husband»[10], while for Ibn Ezra they are the mother and father[11]. We would like to quote here a passage from a translation by John of Seville of De nativitatibus by ‘Umar ibn al-Farrukhân al-Tabarî, who at the end of the 8th century translated Dorotheus from pahlavi into Arabic:

«It should be known that the meaning of hylech can be rendered in Latin by 'wife', and alcochoden by 'husband'. Just as a wife without the aid of a husband cannot run her house well, nor remain with child, in the same way the hylech without the authority of the alcochoden is not enough to indicate the number of years of life, despite the astronomers who only use the hylech without considering the alcochoden. The hylech is said to be the place of life, because from it the state of life can be found, while the alcochoden is the giver or signifier of the years»[12].

Guido Bonatti states that the hyleg contains the imprint of life, the alcochoden contains the basis[13]. This couple resembled a human one, presented as celestial forefathers, is also understood as a pair of opposites. In the commentary on the nativity of Iskandar al-Sultân, the governor of Fars from 1409 to 1414, al-Kashî states that al-hilâj corresponds to the body and al-kadhkhudâh to the soul[14]. That which corresponds to the body is the source of life, and so hila\j was translated in this way in the Persian Dictionary Burhân-i-Qâti‘ by M. Kh. ibn Khalaf al-Tabrizî in the middle of the 17th century[15].

In place of the metaphor of the helmsman and the shipowner of the pseudo-Porphyry, we have here a direct reference to a medical theory that was widely developed during the Middle Age. Pietro d'Albano, taking up the hyleg/alcochoden = wife/husband, mother/father couple again declared that the first term is analogous to matter and the latter, to form[16].

Nizâmî considers the mother/father relation in these Aristotelian terms of form and matter: the seven spheres of the wandering stars are fathers, the four elements of the sub-lunar world are mothers, and when the influence of the fathers interact with that of the mothers, and all the space between air and fire is full of it, the generation and manifestation of the animal world takes place[17]. Aristotle, at the beginning of Meteorologica, expresses this same concept in what we could define as physical terms: «This, our earthly world, is in some way necessarily in continuity with superior translations, so that all its nature is governed by them. The principle of movement for all beings starts from them, which must be considered as the prime cause»[18]. This passage is often cited from late antiquity till the Renaissance and beyond, as an authoritative argument that justifies the reality of the influence of the heavens. When Aristotle says that there has to be a relation between our earthly world and the celestial spheres, the commentators state that contact is possible because there is no void[19]. This is, however, a negating reply and is insufficient. What does continuity between the beginning and the extremes presented in the form of a causal influence achieve? For Ptolemy it is a certain attribute propagated by ethereal and everlasting nature[20], for Galen, it is the intelligence of the Sun, Moon and stars[21], for the pseudo-Iamblichus, it is light[22]. What for pseudo-Iamblichus is light, for Alexander of Aphrodisia is «the nature (physis) of the ethereal and divine body that moves in circular motion and embraces the whole of material existence, passive and unalterable in contiguous and uninterrupted motion»[23]. Alexander describes these things in his criticism on the Stoic doctrine of pneuma. He clearly states that the influence of the planets is a power (dynamis) and that this power is either causal or not at all, and if it is causal, matter takes form and figure due to the stars. Even the human soul, in its three components (rational, vital and natural), is born out of a matter that takes its form from the power of the revolutions of the stars. Alexander therefore states that "the power of the stars is the cause of the differences between souls"[24].

In the light of the above, we can understand the allegory of Nizâmî regarding the union of the celestial and terrestrial fathers and mothers, or the many metaphors of the Brothers of Purity, for example, the body as a well-furnished house in which the soul carries out its role of master of the house[25]. The conclusion of Alexander, according to which the soul, as form, is the power born from the mixture of the four primary elements (hot, humid, cold, dry), is taken up by Galen in his treatise The faculties of the soul follow the temperament of the body. This mixture requires a ratio between the combined elements, of which physicians are aware: Pietro d'Abano, without going into the Platonic-Aristotelian argument of whether the soul is a harmony or simply presupposes it, recalls that Pythagoras called the harmonic conjunction of the soul with the body “human musc“[26]. Pietro d'Abano tries to explain what this harmonic ratio consists of and begins by stating that the universal causes of life are the motion and light of the heavens, while the mean causes are represented by the hyleg and the alcochoden. The mean causes are then followed by the particular ones, which are the prime qualities and their ratios. Life is favoured by both an abundance of heat and humidity and the supremacy of the active qualities over the passive (heat over humid, cold over dry). The first condition describes the material cause, the second, the formal. Pietro d'Abano does not specify if the first cause points to the hyleg and the second to the alcochoden, but only says that the predisposition for a long or short life depends on the various relationships between these indicators and the prime qualities[27]. From this a theory of harmonic ratios, that from at least the time of Hippocrates has pervaded, sometimes obsessively, all ancient and mediaeval medicine, can be understood.

In this medical theory we can recognise the traces of an originating animism: organic bodies are brought alive by a soul, a breath of life that binds vegetative and sensory life in connective whole. It is an idea that has a cosmic dimension and establishes a parallel between the world and man, in that the life-giving spirit moves the humours in bodies like the cyclical motion of the wind, seasons and planets. Man's internal and external senses derive from this life-giving spirit which pervades the body and governs its physiological functions. Its source is the heart, but when it acts in the brain it is called the rational spirit, in the liver, the natural spirit and in the heart, the vital spirit. This is the three-fold division of the faculties of the soul universally accepted by physicians from the time of Galen onwards. The function of the rational soul is thinking and discerning; of the vital soul, sensation and movement; and of the natural or vegetative one, feeding and growth. Each of these souls has its path along which its own properties move in the body, starting from a seat of optimum temperament: the rational circulates in the nerves starting from the brain, whose best temperament is dry; the vital circulates in the arteries moving out from the heart, where it is hot; the natural moves in the veins, originating from the liver, where the optimal temperament is marked by a humidity in proportion to a moderate heat. To each of these souls, and on the basis of their faculties, astrologers have assigned particular significators: the Sun and Mercury to the rational, the Moon to the irrational or sensitive that moves from the heart; the rising degree and again the Moon to the constitution of the humours that moves at the same time from the heart and the liver. But the relation of these significators to the faculties of the soul bears no relationship to the hyleg and the alcochoden. These, in fact, express life in action and strength, originating directly from the blood that runs in the arteries. Therefore a blood soul is needed.

Of the three souls of this medical-philosophical theory the one that gives life has, in the cultural tradition of peoples from Semitic areas, its analogy in the vital principle that lodges in the heart. The identity of this power in various Semitic cultures can be found in their common root: napishtu in Accadian, nephesh in Hebrew, and nafs in Arabic. Among the various meanings of nephesh and nafs can be found "soul", "breath, life-giving spirit", "essence", "blood" and "sperm". The prohibitions regarding the eating of blood can be explained by the fact that blood is a soul, nephesh[28]. Al-Shahrastanî, in his description of the beliefs regarding life and death of the pre-Islamic Arabs, speaks of a blood-soul, dam, that every hundred years visits the tomb of the defunct in the form of a bird-ghost[29]. Blood is soul in the sense that there is a soul in blood that is considered to be the cause of its vitality. In this soul we can see the greek thymos, whose main meaning is life-giving strength, breath. This word, which comes from thymian - to dissolve into smoke - contains the idea of vapours that rise from freshly spilt blood. In fact the thymos leaves the body when the blood ceases to flow out, waves that some have interpreted as blood-soul[30]. Pietro d'Abano says that the spirit, which feeds on heat and humidity, is vapour tempered by blood[31] or a soft substance made up of vapours of the humours and it begins in the heart[32]. Or, not wanting to get too far away from the original idea of the spirit-breath, its beginning is in the cardiac-pulmonary centre. Nizâmî  describes it thus: "It is the fine vapour that rises from the blood, it spreads to the furthest arteries and is similar the luminosity of the sun"[33]. Although immaterial, this vital soul needs a substratum, which Avicenna defines in two extreme ways: a watery vapour, when the humours, the substance of the soul, are healthy, and a sooty vapour, like the humidity that rises in the morning from the valleys, when there is an excess in the humours or when the body is sick[34].

There is an objective identity between this so-defined soul and the alcochoden: every living species, every human temperament, every human race has the nephesh or blood-soul that suits it. It is the same for the alcochoden: Indians live longer due to the natural support of Saturn than the Tyrrhenians. When Pietro d'Albano put forward the conditions of longevity, after having declared two ratios (hot and humid with respect to cold and dry, the active qualities with respect to the passive), he set out a third word, the heart, to which the aforesaid qualities must be proportioned[35]. As well as this, the blood-soul of the melancholic is not that of the sanguine, and among melancholics there are various temperaments which cannot correspond to one and the same blood-soul. But if the relationship between the elements that make up the temperament of the living thing change, the blood-soul will change too. Physicians recognise this change from the heartbeat and pulse, from the alteration of the incarnate, from the temperature of the skin and its alteration in dryness and moistness. These signs are considered external manifestations of corresponding alterations of the vapour that rises from the movement of the blood. The blood-soul is described by Abu Bakr al-Hasan ibn al-Khasib al-Karashî in the ninth chapter of his Liber genethliacus: it is the wind that the planet Jupiter brings in the second month of the gestation of the embryo and that resides in the heart and governs natural heat, and that after death will leave the body when the heart decays[36].

The life-giving spirit is one, simple and indivisible, its function in the body undifferentiated, which we can compare to that of oxygen. Nonetheless, if we say that each body has its blood-soul, we mean that its cycle, be it seasonal, monthly, weekly, daily or hourly, is different in each body. The time which the four natural elements that make up organic bodies cover is different, the proportions of the elementary qualities are different, and the relationship of these to the cardiac-pulmonary centre is different. All these differences considered, the specificity of the vital spirit results as the dynamis, the vital strength of the single individual. In this respect it is analogous to the alcochoden.

It is also possible to compare the relationship between the functioning body and its power or vital spirit to the relationship that exists between mother and father, hyleg and alcochoden. Jalâl ad-Din ar-Rûmî writes: when the night falls and the stars light up in the sky, these are all our desires dominated by haylâj and kadhkhudâh[37]. In other words, all our desires, that are greed and sighs, designs and appetites, and that are moved by both reflections and instinct, carried and directed by a celestial pair. One can therefore presume that it carries out a guardian function in relation to man, and that the hyleg/alcochoden couple seems limited to physiological functions. Returning then to the chapter of the pseudo-Porphyry that introduced our reflections on this couple, our author writes:

«one needs to define and make distinctions between the hyleg (epikratêtôr), the alcochoden (oikodespotês) and the lord of the nativity (kyrios tês geneseôs). The ancients, in fact, have tied these words together and have not made real distinctions between them»[38].

Here we have the definition of an original triad, of which the third member in Arabic astrology sounds like al-mubtazz, the almuten of western mediaeval astrologers. The almuten is that which conquers a dominion, taking it from the others by force[39]. Consequently, in the arabic word there is a meaning that is not present in the greek one. For the Arabs it is a master that has taken possession, for the Greeks it is a lord exercising his power. The text of the pseudo-Porphyry ends with the following observation: «When the lord is the same planet that rules the apheta, then it will govern great events»[40]. This is the astrological foundation of the conception of the guardian angel, whose strength is inversely proportional to the laws of human democracy. When master and lord are identified with each other in earthly affairs they change the conditions of man, who is subject to them, and his free will is weakened.