Combining Two Styles of Chart Delineation:
Dante Alighieri Using Modern and Ancient Techniques
          By Joseph Crane  © 2001 - All Rights Reserved

Why an Ancient Technique?

        I came onto this topic quite by accident. While preparing a talk for the October 2000 ISAR conference, I was looking through my files for example charts to illustrate Hellenistic and Medieval styles of natal delineation. I had wanted to use a Medieval person for a Medieval delineation, and begun to work with the chart of the best-known poet of the European middle ages, Dante Alighieri. What I found was that his birthchart, as is given, using Hellenistic methods, convincingly depicts a person of notable life, prominent difficulties, and lasting fame and greatness.
        As this article goes to press, a valuable source for material on Hellenistic delineation should be now available. Dorian Greenbaum, of our local chapter, has translated the work of the late Hellenistic astrologer Paulus Alexandrinus and a commentary from a later astrologer, Olympiadorous. Published by Rob Hand's ARHAT press, it is a convenient and thorough introduction to the astrology as it was practiced just before the end of the Roman era.
        It is easy for us modern astrologers to become dogmatic, even rigid, about the techniques we use for natal delineation. We say that they work just fine, thank you. One's choice of astrological technique is often the result of who one's first teacher was or what first astrological inspiration was, and we often carry around much unexamined assumptions. It is sometimes a very good idea to use different astrological techniques to work with a chart -- this can help us see things in a fresh way. We can also appreciate that we use as much art as science. As different styles of music or art may appeal to different people, different astrological styles may speak more strongly to some astrologers than to others. 

Dante and his Birthchart – Modern

        Except for a compulsory reading of The Inferno in standard Humanities college courses, many people these days don't know much about Dante. He lived in, and was very much part of, the transition from the Middle Ages to the Italian Renaissance. He was born in 1265, was a well-regarded poet and intellectual and was also active in politics during a very turbulent era of Florentine history. Partly due to the intervention of a politically ambitious Pope, his party became the party out of power, and, during a mission to Rome in 1302, he was exiled and sentenced to death in absentia. He never returned to Florence during the rest of his lifetime. Dante died in 1321. 

        During these long years of exile, through his faith he began to come to terms with the calamity that had befallen him. His spiritual conversion was not world-denying but world-including, and its literary product was what we call The Divine Comedy, which depicts a fictional pilgrimage through hell, purgatory, and heaven that would occur immediately before his political reversals.

        What makes The Divine Comedy unique? Although we know little of Dante's life and temperament from recorded sources, his work is strongly autobiographical. One can safely say that the depiction of Dante the pilgrim is the fullest characterization in literature up to that time since Homer's Odysseus. Second, The Divine Comedy is the mostly delicately and intrinsically organized work in all of literature. It has occupied an army of scholars from the 1300's through the present, and each generation has found his work compelling and inspiring.  (Astrologers tend to look upon Dante with ill-favor as he placed Guido Bonatti, a contemporary of his and the pre-eminent astrologer of his time, in one of the lower circles of hell. I'll just chalk that one up to Dante's politics. There's plenty of astrological metaphor in The Divine Comedy.)

        Now let's look at Dante's birthchart from a modern point of view, including outer planets, direct midpoints, and Placidus house cusps. [His data, provided by the Timecycles database, is June 6 1265, 4:33 am, in Florence Italy. With an early date and time as is provided, one must regard this data as hypothetical. The reader will find this chart for Dante has great explanatory power.] 

       One immediately notes that Sun and Ascendant are in Gemini and Moon at the Midheaven in Aquarius. This speaks nicely of his intellectual versatility, his ease with all kinds of styles of language, and his organizing ability. The Moon is in Aquarius at the Midheaven, denoting his interest in public life and a way of seeing the broader implications of issues that most of us would consider personal and maybe not important. The Moon is in trine to both Sun and Ascendant, which shows that emotion and intellect tend to be in harmony, mediated by his airy intellectually detached disposition.

       Working with Dante's Sun, he's not your everyday Gemini! The Sun conjunct the Ascendant does allow him to be more engaging; the Sun's close opposition from Pluto demonstrates a difficulty in power relationships. With the Sun also at the midpoint of Uranus and Neptune, Dante demonstrates in interest in ultimate issues of concern (Neptune) and their revolutionary implications on the ways of the world (Uranus). (The outer planets Pluto and Uranus are also in midpoint to his Midheaven, which not only accounts for the complete disruption of his livelihood but its transformation to a message close to that of the Biblical Prophets.)

       Another interesting feature of Dante and his work is that he comes out of the romantic troubadour tradition. In this final work, Dante transforms the idealized object of his affections, Beatrice, into a personal guide to God. At first Dante's Venus in Cancer conjunct the South Node doesn't seem very helpful, until one notices that Venus and Jupiter in Taurus are not only in sextile ("partile," of the same degree), but in mutual reception. Dante's Jupiter in the twelfth house might be strange for someone with strengths in religion and philosophy. The Hellenistic material will help clear this up.

       As an eminent literary figure in world history, Dante's Mercury should be interesting! It's in its own sign, which is also the sign of the Sun and Ascendant -- that's fine. It's conjunct Saturn in Gemini, and moving toward a conjunction to Saturn, and that does account for the strong organization of his literary work. Saturn, however, is an inhibiting force, yet there's no quality of inhibition in his work; his poetry, for all its complexity, seems to have flowed as effortlessly from him as music flowed from Mozart. Neither Mercury nor Saturn seem to be very happy in the twelfth house; if one wishes to talk of the twelfth house as Pisces's house (something I never do).  There may be a case made for his stunning articulation of the vision of God that closes The Divine Comedy.

       One might also note that Dante's Jupiter, Mercury, and Saturn are in strong Gauquelin zones. Of these three planets Saturn is the most prominent in the Gauquelin studies, being correlated with scientists. Interestingly, one of the strengths of Dante's poetry is its groundedness in visual metaphor from a strongly acute eye for visual detail.

       Mars in his chart is in warrior-like Leo with a conjunction to Neptune and a strong sextile to the Mercury-Saturn combination mentioned above: the polemical content of Dante's work, rendered poetically, is unsurpassed in literature.

       In sum, Dante is a person whose work did everything brilliantly, from the mystical to the adversarial to a vivid depiction of the pit of human suffering and evil, and the modern astrology we all use does help us understand some of it. We get a sense, although not a strong one, of his unusual abilities. Importantly, we cannot find in his chart a depiction of the tragic circumstances of his exile, circumstances that resulted in the inspiration that gave us The Divine Comedy.

Dante’s Birthchart - Hellenistic

        Now I'd like to take the reader to a different chart and a different set of rules. You will notice in a Hellenistic-style chart that the houses are whole sign houses, so that the sign of the Ascendant is the entire first houses, and so on. There are no aspect lines between planets. There are no outer planets, but instead I've placed positions of different Lots (popularly known as "Arabic Parts"). I also have included fixed stars that were angular with planets on the day Dante was born.

       I shall begin with the Mercury-Saturn conjunction in Dante's chart, for Hellenistic methods add much to the benefic nature of this combination. Adding Jupiter to the mix, we come up with more information. I'll specifically look at the features of house placement, planetary sect, and configuration with the Sun. 1

        The use of whole sign houses in the accompanying chart may strike the modern astrologer as strange and possibly an example of oversimplification from a less scientific rigorous time. Let me insure the reader that this is not so! You will find that using whole sign houses is useful for delineating houses, allows aspects between planets to make more sense, and releases the chart from unnecessary complications like interceptions, two or three house rulers for a house, and so on.

       Mercury and Saturn now are in the first house, as Gemini is the sign rising in Dante's birthchart. We are no longer having to wonder how it is that his Mercury and Saturn are so prominent, symbolically, in Dante's life. This is revealed by his birthchart.

       Mercury is in its sign ruler, Gemini, but that's not all. Until modern times astrologers interpreted a planet's essential dignity using not only with rulership (or domicile) and exaltation but also triplicity, term or bound, and, with some exceptions, face. Dante's Mercury gathers more strength by being in its terms; his Saturn is in its triplicity. (On a Medieval note, a dignified Mercury is also pushing its dignity onto Saturn through its application to that planet.)

       Mercury and Saturn, as well as Jupiter, are in planetary sect. Since Dante was born in the daytime, with Sun above the horizon, and since Jupiter and Saturn are inherently diurnal planets, they are both favored in his chart. Mercury is also diurnal in this chart, as it rises ahead of the Sun. All three planets have the added "rejoicing" condition of being on the same side of the horizon as the Sun for diurnal planets, and Saturn and Mercury also "rejoice" because they are in masculine, i.e. diurnal, signs. Before interpreting all this, however, let me add in some more information.

        Mercury, Jupiter, and Saturn are all oriental planets, rising ahead of the Sun. Saturn is 18° ahead of the Sun, Mercury 19°, Jupiter 24°. Just before Dante was born, all could be visible on the horizon. These planets would be as prominent in a person's chart as if they were in the first house (which two out of three already are). Additionally, these three planets rising ahead of the Sun are the Sun's "spearbearers." Mercury and Saturn as spearbearers are even more favored by also being in the all-important first house. (This well compensates for Mercury being slow of motion, having recently been at its direct station.)

       From a Hellenistic point of view, the placements of Mercury and Saturn are extremely auspicious. Although Jupiter's fortune is vitiated by its being in the twelfth house, it gains in strength and functionality as one looks at it more closely.

       What does all this mean? Let's look at Mercury, Saturn, and Jupiter individually.

        Mercury, then as now, is a planet of communication and writing. Before Uranus was given over to astrology, Mercury was astrology's ruler. Mercury is the planet of divination, which, in astrology's case, is the translating of an abstract language of the cosmos to a personal interpretation. Mercury, then as now, is the planet of details of life, of the marketplace, of observing and witnessing the diversity of experience and of human character. Mercury is also about irony and paradox, in his role as the trickster. In The Divine Comedy, Dante gives us an opposite of divination: he translates the events of his current world onto a fictional afterlife, onto the realm of the entire structure of the cosmos. Mercury also gives testimony to his unsurpassed mental and expressive versatility.

       Dante's strongly dignified Saturn has two features relevant to his life. One, mentioned above, is the strongly structured quality to his creative work. The architecture of The Divine Comedy cannot be separated from the poetry itself and has its own level of meaning and beauty. I can only recommend that the reader investigate this for himself or herself. Second, Saturn is not only about the indifference of the world to us but how we adjust to that. The calamities in Dante's life made revelation possible to him; they trained him to see clearly the limitations of his own time and his character.

       Jupiter has a more complex character in Dante's chart and in his life. During his years in Florence he was well-read in all the philosophers and had his own contribution to make. He promoted the life of philosophical discourse and logical reasoning, but later discovered that they led him astray. He discovered that he had become proud and arrogant and had his priorities backwards. The truths of religion, he later felt, superseded all truths his unaided intellect could reveal to him.

       In The Divine Comedy, the Latin poet Virgil becomes his Jupiter, being his guide and mentor. As the two move up Purgatory to Heaven, however, Virgil becomes less and less useful until, at the moment of spiritual revelation, he disappears entirely. This ambivalence toward Jupiter is reflected in the strengths and weaknesses of Jupiter in his birthchart.

Dante’s Lots

        I'd like to briefly consider the factors of Lots (or Parts) fixed stars, and touch upon planets' placement a thirteenth harmonic known as the dodekatamoria. As the reader well knows by now, astrology has not diminished in sophistication or in interpretative capacity over the centuries.

       Lots, or klaroi in Greek, are the positions determined by taking the arc from one planet to another and adding that arc to a third point, usually the Ascendant. The good news for Dante is that because of the placements of Sun, Moon, and Ascendant, the Lot of Fortune (representing the influence of sheer luck) and the Lot of Spirit (representing our application of conscious will) are in close trine to each other, the Sun, Moon, and Midheaven itself. This argues for a harmony between the slings and arrows of fortune and his ability to be decisive with those fluctuating experiences. Also, the Lot of Exaltation (using the arc from Dante's Sun to its degree of exaltation at 19° Aries, cast from the Ascendant) is 21° Aries, forming sextiles to all but the Part of Spirit, to which it forms an opposition. This argues for reputation and fame, but possibly at the price of his freedom.

       The bad news in Dante's Lots concerns the "Lot of Accusation," which is also used to depict illness and other bad things that happen to us. This Lot, not surprisingly, is taken from the so-called malefics Mars and Saturn. It's placed at 26° Leo, opposite his Moon, Midheaven, and Lot of Fortune. Vettius Valens, a major figure in Hellenistic astrology, discusses this Lot and these oppositions in terms of "being away from home" - not vacation but exile.

Fixed Stars

        I'd like to touch upon some of the fixed stars prominent in Dante's birth chart. 2  Historically prominent fixed stars are correlated with fame in life and beyond death, and Dante's chart doesn't disappoint. When configured with the angles of a chart or with planets, stars rising or culminating can be prominent early and during the course of a person's life: Rukbat, the brightest star in Sagittarius and on the foot of the archer, rose with the Moon, and Alcyone culminated when the Moon was at the IC; Procyon, the lesser dog star, rose when Venus rose; Denebola, a star at the tail of Leo, culminated when Jupiter set; Saturn rose when Antares set. What does all this mean? According to Bernadette Brady's reinterpretation of the ancient fixed stars (1998), Rukbat is a steadying influence, Alcyone visionary but often wrong, Procyon having a narrow but closing possibility of fame, Denebola being at odds with one's world, and Antares a warrior-like but a bit headstrong.

        What does all this add up to? It helps describe Dante's life in Florence before his exile and a sense of a person with moderate success and a very determined and possibly self-righteous style. It describes an accomplished poet and thinker who may not produce to the level of his potential. This was Dante's situation before his exile.

        Fixed stars setting are often about your life in another place, away from one's original home; anti-culminating fixed stars can tell us the conditions of a person's death and its aftermath. Both factors are particularly interesting when working with the astrology of Dante. Co-setting with the Sun is Alhena, one of the stars in the feet of Gemini, which, according to Brady, can be consumed with cause and purpose. What is more important is that Sirius co-set with Jupiter. This star, the brightest in the sky during most of the year, has been an important star from many cultures, especially the ancient Egyptian. Sirius is about power and importance and the boundary between the cosmic and the ordinary. Dante's exile and subsequent work wonderfully attest to these attributes. Prominent anti-culminating stars are Alphecca, signifying artistic ability and what Brady calls "fruitfulness," and Alpheratz, associated with beauty and independence.

Dante and H13

        I will close on an interesting feature of Hellenistic, the thirteenth harmonic or dodekatemorion. Here we compute another zodiacal position for each planet. The early and late degrees of a planet's sign placement fall within the same sign as the planet, and other planets progress through the zodiacal signs based on the lower or higher degree in their respective signs. Because Jupiter, for example, is in last degree of Aquarius, Jupiter's dodekataorian is itself. What strikes me is this: the dodekatamoria of Mercury, Saturn, Venus, and the Lot of Spirit all fall in Cancer, the sign of Dante's natal Venus!

       This dodekatemorion relationships gives us a major amplification of Venus themes. Although inspired by an unattainable woman who died at an early age, Dante went onto what was probably an unhappy marriage -- his wife didn't join him in exile, which was the last twenty years of Dante's life. However, he did translate his sense of human and divine beauty into original and powerful literary production. Dodekatamoria, not the most famous feature of Hellenistic astrology, is nonetheless significant in pointing the astrologer to a previously neglected feature of Dante's chart.

       I go through this elaborate delineation of Dante's chart for two purposes: (1) as an invitation to the reader to investigate areas of astrology and astrological styles that may interest you; and (2) to show you that there are older branches of astrology, particularly Hellenistic astrology, that have much to offer modern astrological technique. Happy adventures!

1 For a more elaborate rendering of these factors see my book "A Practical Guide to Traditional Astrology", available from ARHAT.

2 For information on fixed star co-risings and co-culminatings and in paranatella with planets in a  birthchart, calculations are provided in the Solar Fire program and in (1998) Brady's Book of Fixed Stars by Bernadette Brady. Published by York Beach Me.: Samuel Weiser. Her work is inspired, in part, by a book by Anonymous of 379, available from Cumberland, MD.: Golden Hind Press.

 Chart Data

Click below for viewing or printing accompanying charts

Chart #1 - Modern Natal

Chart #2 - Hellenistic Natal (NOTE: the printed chart is clearer than the on-line view of it)

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