Ep. 9 Transcript - The Relationship Between Hellenistic & Indian Astrology - The Astrology Podcast

2021.05.6. Ep.
9 Transcript: The Relationship Between Hellenistic & Indian Astrology - The Astrology Podcast
Ep. 9 Transcript: The

Relationship Between Hellenistic
& Indian Astrology
The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 9, titled:
https://theastrologypodcast.com/transcripts/ep-9-the-relationship-between-hellenistic-and-indian-astrology/ 1/59
2021.05.6. Ep. 9 Transcript: The Relationship Between Hellenistic & Indian Astrology - The Astrology Podcast
The Relationship Between

Hellenistic and Indian Astrology
With Chris Brennan and Kenneth Johnson
Episode originally released on July 26th,

2013
—
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Transcribed by Gülşen Altay
Transcription released November 8th, 2018
Copyright © 2016 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
CHRIS BRENNAN: Hi, I am Chris Brennan,

and this is the astrology podcast. Today is
Sunday, July 21, 2013.
And my guess today is author Kenneth

Johnson who has written several books. One
of which is my favorite book on the
Nakshatras which is titled Mansions of the
Moon: The Lost Zodiac of the Goddess.
Kenneth’s website is jaguarwisdom.org.
And this is his rst time on the show.
Kenneth, thanks for coming on.
KENNETH JOHNSON: It is good to be here

with you tonight, Chris.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Great. Well, I am excited

to have this discussion. I have been meeting
to have you for a while to discuss one of my
favorite historical topics which is the
interaction between Hellenistic and Indian
astrology or in other words the relationship
between the oldest, or one of the oldest
traditions of western astrology, and one of
the oldest traditions of I guess you could say
eastern astrology.
First before we get into why don’t you

explain a little bit about your background in
terms of astrology, and in terms of Indian
astrology in particular.
KENNETH JOHNSON: I began with astrology

when I was 21 years old, back in 1973. So
obviously this was quite a long time ago. I
remained with western astrology for quite a
few years, obtained B.A. in Comparative
Religions. And afterwards I discovered

Jyotish or Indian astrology very early on in
the late 1980s when I was rst becoming
popular here in this country. I took to it
immediately, and I have been in it ever
since. I still practice both disciplines. Most
recently I returned to school, and got an
M.A. in Eastern Studies at St. John’s College.
Primarily what the goal of learning Sanskrit
so that I could have a deeper knowledge of
the Indian astrology texts in the original
language.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Right. I remember you

gave a fantastic lecture at Kepler College,
back somewhere around I wanna say 2005,
2006 where you really urged people to learn
some of these ancient languages such as
Sanskrit. Because there are so many
manuscripts lying in libraries literally just
rotting away in various places. Right?
KENNETH JOHNSON: Yeah. That is still very

much true. A man whom we will soon be
discussing Dr. David Pingree once remarked
that there are probably millions of unknown
manuscripts in India, and that many of them
are at risk in a monsoon climate where the
tropical ooding, wild ebbs etc. Many of
these manuscripts do not as well preserved
as they ought to be. They are not in
libraries. They are not often treated with the
same kind of reverence that we often give in
our own country, I should say in our own
western civilization. They don’t receive the
same kind of treatment as many of our

manuscripts do, and many people have
thought that he may have been
exaggerating when he said literally millions.
Most scholars from India have told me that
this may not be an exaggeration.
CHRIS BRENNAN: And these are actual

practical manuscripts on astrology that are
not widely in circulation, and in many cases.
Correct?
KENNETH JOHNSON: That are completely

unknown, and in fact though we have seen
a remarkable absearch in translation of
traditional western astrological texts during
the past 15 years or so, the same cannot be
said for the Sanskrit material. Some of the
most important works of all still remain
untranslated.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Right.
KENNETH JOHNSON: And we may be

touching upon one of them later in this
discussion.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure. And that reminds

me, so you brought up the recent revival of
traditional astrology in the west. And it is
interesting because you mentioned that you
got into Indian astrology towards the late
‘80s which is when there was kind of an
absearch of interest in that suddenly in the
west, and around the same time that was
the beginning of the so called traditional

revival of some western astrologers going
back, and nding texts like William Lilly, or
Bonatti, or eventually when Project
Hindsight started nding authors like Vettius
Valens, and sort of trying to restore the
astrological tradition in that sense, it is
interesting around the same time that you
see similar currents occurring with some
people going back, and focusing on Indian
astrology, and you are one of those people.
KENNETH JOHNSON: Yes. And like many

other students of the history of astrology
when the rst Project Hindsight publications
began to emerge, I was one of those who
was just blown away by the similarities with
Indian astrology. Obviously here was a
tradition which I don’t know if I would go so
far is to call it a single branch, or a single
tradition, but almost as if we were in the
presence of two branches of a single
tradition, you know and of course this is
pretty well-known now.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure. Yeah. And I am sure

that would have been surprising when
Project Hindsight started around 1992,
1993. Because when you look at Indian
astrology from the perspective of modern
western psychological astrology that was
developed in like the late 20th century, it
looks very foreign, or Indian astrology looks
very foreign in its practice, and in its
technical apparatus, and conceptually in just
about in every way from that it looked like

two completely di erent traditions, and yet
when you start studying, when you go as far
back as you can in the western tradition as
you can go about two thousand years, and
you compare Hellenistic astrology, the
original tradition of western astrology to
Indian astrology, they actually have a lot of
similarities and Hellenistic and Indian
astrology in many ways look more alike to
each other than Hellenistic astrology does
to modern astrology in some ways, or
modern western astrology in some ways.
KENNETH JOHNSON: I would say, I would go

so far is to say that these similarities
between Indian astrology and Hellenistic
astrology are much much greater than the
similarities with either of those two
di erences or either of those two disciplines
and western psychological astrology. You
could virtually hand a Hellenistic chart to a
Hindu astrologer, and tropical zodiac maybe
you could ask him to read it, and he would
just start reading in virtually the same way
that he was thought by his grandfather to
read, and it would be perfectly
understandable as a reading to Vettius
Valens, or Hephaistio.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure. Western astrologers

some 2000 years ago.
KENNETH JOHNSON: Yes. Western

astrologers some 2000 years ago. Yeah.
CHRIS BRENNAN: And that is because of the

greater sense of continuity that Indian
astrology has had over the past 2000 years
than there is experienced in the west where
there has been many starts and stops.
KENNETH JOHNSON: You know it is, of

course, a tremendously conservative
culture, and civilization so much so that
actually Greek terms, actual Greek words
that were uncommon to all western
astrologers before the Project Hindsight
translations can be found quite literally in
Indian astrology still being used today
unchanged from the original Greek, things
like apoklima, and epanaphora, and
sunaphe, these are just Greek words pure
and simple. So yes, India has been that
remarkably conservative, and in that
respect it is a kind of very colorful tapestry,
or a hybrid in the sense that it preserves
Hellenistic doctrines lost everywhere else,
and yet it also includes a very colorful
mixture of indigenous material from India
itself.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure.
KENNETH JOHNSON: And just one little

more comment.
KENNETH JOHNSON: Since Indian astrology

is often perceived as an unchanging mono-
leaf, and I may have just given that

impression but this is not true either. The
real situation is much more complex. You
can see tremendous changes after the
Islamic invasions and so on and so forth. So
even though it is highly conservative and
retain so many ancient features that we are
also common in western astrology, it
changes just like everything else. Perhaps
not as radically as astrology but it does
change.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure. So that gives us a

good sort of transition then into our main
topic which is the interaction between
Hellenistic astrology and Indian astrology,
and we might start by I guess de ning some
of our terms, and de ning the traditions in
particular.
So Hellenistic astrology I usually de ne as a

tradition of astrology that developed in the
Mediterranean around the second or
perhaps rst century BC, and then was
practiced in something close to its original,
or similar form until about the sixth or
seventh century AD or CE. So that is
essentially the birth of around the rst or
second century BCE, the type of astrology
that most western astrologers are familiar
with that has the fourfold system of planets,
signs, houses and aspects as well as many
other concepts that people associate like
most of the qualities of the signs of the
zodiac, most of the signi cations associated
with the houses, most timing techniques like

transits and other concepts such as
synastry, all sort of originating at least as far
as we can tell somewhere around the rst
century at least that is the point at which we
have texts that survive that clearly show that
those that system existed so that is
Hellenistic astrology and that is developing
largely over in Egypt, and being practiced
essentially in what is essentially the Roman
Empire.
But then we have Indian astrology and

there is almost two di erent areas of Indian
astrology that you might de ne or in terms
of the practice of astrology in India there is
one that is focused on what I think some
people might call the indigenous astrology
of India that is based on the Nakshatras.
And then there is this other tradition that
occurs later which is when the tradition of
the Nakshatras was merged with this other
system, and you have the full blown practice
of essentially horoscopic astrology in India,
or the type of astrology that focus on
casting birth charts, and other types of
charts from that perspective. How do you
de ne Indian astrology, or what do you call
it, and how do you de ne it?
KENNETH JOHNSON: I like to call it Jyotish

which is its actual Sanskrit name.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Okay.
KENNETH JOHNSON: What would means the

‘science of light’, and there are indeed early
texts most of which remain untranslated. I
have done a few chapters from one of them
which show us what the astrology of India
was like at a very early stage of the game
before what I like to call the Hellenistic
infusion.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Hmm.
KENNETH JOHNSON: And what we see here

is an astrology which is primarily electional.
KENNETH JOHNSON: It is primarily

concerned with nding the right time to
perform a speci c ritual, or begin a speci c
type of spiritual practice. And, of course,
there are some more mundane concerns,
but the earliest texts really show us that you
just mentioned them the Nakshatras, the 27
mansions of the Moon seem to go back to a
very ancient ritualistic context. In fact the
earliest mention we have of all the
Nakshatras under their present names is in
one of the four vedas, the Atharvaveda Book
19: Hymn-7 which can not really be much
later than 700-800 BC.
So this has been around for a long time, and

when I rst began translating a Nakshatra
text that Dr. Pingree dated to around the
beginning of the Christian era. I was amazed
to see that they actually did have already a

rudimentary form of natal astrology based
on the Nakshatras but really the crux of the
matter is once again the Hellenistic
infusion. After a certain point in time we
nd that horoscopic astrology pretty much
as you de ned it 12 houses, planets as
rulers of signs, you know located in various
houses to represent the various
departments of life, and everything we
regard as horoscopic astrology appears in
India. It appears quite suddenly, and while
what we might describe as a Jyotish
fundamentalists with light to a place this
way way back thousands of years ago that
there is really no evidence for that. And
when Hellenistic advocates simply write of
the Indian system as a mirror addendum to
Hellenistic astrology, I think what they miss
is the tremendous amount of indigenous
material which has been, and still is
preserved, for example, if you do electional
astrology in India today. The zodiac is
secondary, and you don’t really need it, even
to this very day electional astrology is still
based around the Nakshatras. So what we
have here is a richly woven tapestry of
in uences. Of which the indigenous, and the
Hellenistic are the two primary, and I think
de ning in uences for Jyotish.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure. And that raises a

question I had which is I know I think it has
been, I have been told that it is more of a
recent thing, or recent thing that is become

popular in the past 20, or 25 years to call
Indian astrology to call Jyotish, Vedic
astrology based on this. I think it is largely
based although perhaps there is another
way to defend that designation but from
usually how it is explained as it is based on
the assumption that Indian astrology that is
practiced today dates back to the Vedas and
back to Vedic times which is 2000 or 3000
years ago. Is that correct?
KENNETH JOHNSON: 3000 years ago at

least. I was just looking at some new articles
in the Indology journal today where there
seems to be a consensus that the nal
recension of the Rigveda, the most
important of the four Vedas, is 1000 BC.
KENNETH JOHNSON: However it must be

said that the doctrine that horoscopic
astrology can be traced back to this period
of time is essentially a matter, I would go so
far is to call of the matter of religious fate,
there is not a single shred of historical
evidence for it. Certainly the text that I
worked with which Pingree dated to the
beginning of the Christian era may no
mention of the zodiac whatsoever, and was
entirely Nakshatra based.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure. So we have this

collection of religious texts called the Vedas
that date back, it is a collection of di erent

texts are written at di erent times that date
back at least to 1000 BC. And well, there are
in some of the later versions of those texts I
think you mentioned earlier from about 800
or 700 BC that mention the Nakshatras,
there is no mention of other concepts such
as natal astrology, or aspects, or
progressions, or what have you. The things
that I guess we should de ne horoscopic
astrology, usually when I see horoscopic
astrology I mean any form of astrology that
utilizes the Ascendant, and the things that
can be derived from the Ascendant such as
the houses, Lots or Arabic parts, and some
other facets of western astrology, or not
western astrology but of the type of
astrology that utilizes charts that involve the
Ascendant, and related things.
KENNETH JOHNSON: And while those who

have a strong cultural feeling for the
primacy of India will insist that there must
be some ancient Vedic original for the texts
that we have now. The simple fact remains
that there is not a single text containing all
the elements that you have just saw very
well describe as horoscopic astrology, there
is not a single text that is actually written in
the Vedic form of the Sanskrit language.
Neither can one simply translate easily from
the Vedic form into classical Sanskrit
without serious changes. I won’t go into all
the Sanskrit linguistics about it. But it really

just is virtually impossible…
KENNETH JOHNSON: …that there were ever

any original versions of these texts in the
Vedic form of Sanskrit.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure. So we do have

though is we have this lunar zodiac that was
I guess at one point 28 but then standardize
eventually to 27 signs, essentially like a
lunar zodiac that consists of 27 signs at
least by 700 or 800 BC, and that was
primarily applied to electional astrology, and
timing auspicious moments to have
ceremonies, or began new ventures.
KENNETH JOHNSON: That…
CHRIS BRENNAN: Go ahead.
KENNETH JOHNSON: Yeah. The Nakshatras,

their origin remains something of a mystery,
the Finnish Sanskrit scholar Asko Parpola,
and several other scholars have argued that
the Nakshatras show such signs of antiquity
that they may actually have been the
original calendar in this Valley civilization.
For example two of the most important
Nakshatras are Rohini and Jyeshta two red
stars, Aldebaran and Antares precisely
opposite each other. One is the king, the
other is the crown.
Now we can nd buildings as early as 3200

BC that are oriented to the rising and setting
of these two stars. And in those days those
two stars would have marked the
equinoxes. So there is a possibility that the
Nakshatras are really very old, although we
can not say with certainty that they are
older than 700-800 BC. Because that is the
earliest written text that we have.
And the earliest example of natal astrology

that I have seen …… Nakshatras, and I would
have to call it a very very rudimentary form
of natal astrology that comes to about the
Christian era, at the beginning of the
Christian era at that time there were still 28
Nakshatras, and in fact it seems to have
shifted from 28 to 27 round about the same
time, that is the Hellenistic in uence
appearing during the rst few centuries of
the Christian era it has been speculated
since the Nakshatra that was dropped out of
the list was called Abhijit, and it is dated the
bright star of Vega. Now of course Vega is a
long ways from the ecliptic that has been
speculated that the Hellenistic infusion
placed more emphasis on the ecliptic.
KENNETH JOHNSON: And so they dropped

Vega because it was just too far, you know
…… into the new system. It was just too far
away from the ecliptic.
KENNETH JOHNSON: And when you are

using the Moon which is one of the largest
bodies in the sky, and which has you know
the farthest declination of the ecliptic. Well,
maybe you could do a rule of the using Vega
but after the introduction of the Hellenistic
zodiac with its emphasis on planets moving
through the ecliptic that there seems to
have been no place for that 28 mansion.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Okay. Interesting. So and

that is another thing I guess that we didn’t
mention that is worth mentioning is that the
Nakshatras are oriented around their 27 or
28 signs but there is each associated with
one speci c xed star. So it is really more of
a sidereal, it is rooted in more of a sidereal
reference system.
KENNETH JOHNSON: Well. Yeah, and not to

go o on a tangent here on some of the
facebook pages such as professional
astrologers and so on, there has been a lot
of discussion is to whether, for example, the
Persian Arabic version of the mansions of
the Moon ‘Can we tropicalize this?’…
CHRIS BRENNAN: All right.
KENNETH JOHNSON: … or ‘Are the meanings

the myths everything surrounding the
mansions of the Moon, are these in fact
based on the visual appearance of the stars,
and therefore you know more or less…….

the sidereal?’ I think this is gonna be a topic
of lively debate among astrologers for a
long time.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure. And I assume your

opinion is that it is because of the close
connection with the xed stars that it would
be best to keep it sidereal rather than
attempting to import it into the tropical
zodiac. Correct?
KENNETH JOHNSON: Well, even though I

love to work with traditional western
astrology, I can not quite bring myself to
work with the western version of the lunar
mansions. Because in as much as I focused
on mythology during my bachelor’s degree
in Comparative Religions I nd it very
di cult to separate the Nakshatras, and the
myths that go with them, and these myths
are visual in the sky, we can see them.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Right. Yeah, in your book…
KENNETH JOHNSON: They tell stories in the

sky. Yeah.
CHRIS BRENNAN: And I just want to plug

your book really quick. Because your book
really does the best job. It is titled Mansions
of the Moon. This is the best job of
explaining some of the myths associated
with each of the lunar mansions, and the
xed stars associated with them in any book

that I have found.
KENNETH JOHNSON: Thank you.
CHRIS BRENNAN: So de nitely if people

want to learn more about that, this subject
they should de nitely check out that book.
So we have this indigenous this is the…,
Nakshatras are really the indigenous
astrology of India.
And then sometime around we think, and

this is the original, now, we should probably
transition into talking about Pingree and
Pingree’s argument. I don’t think it was
originally just Pingree’s argument. Because I
have looked back, and I have found some
old like academic papers from a century or
two where somebody was making the
observation that there were a bunch of
Greek technical terms, and astronomical
and astrological terms that we are
embedded in Indian astrological texts. And
they didn’t know why but they suspected
that it meant that they were Greek texts
from the late Hellenistic, or early Roman
period that were transmitted to India, and
then translated into Sanskrit. And in the
1960s I guess Pingree who was this young
up and coming, I guess you could call him
a…, what is the word for somebody that is
just that knows, because he knew like ten
di erent languages.
KENNETH JOHNSON: Polymath.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Polymath. Yeah.
KENNETH JOHNSON: Polyglot.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Yeah. Polyglot. Somebody

who speaks many di erent languages. So
this is a guy who taught himself Sanskrit in
high school, or learned Sanskrit in high
school, and learned Greek and Latin and
Arabic and Middle Persian or Medieval
Persian, and a bunch of others, just about
every modern European language, and he
was an academic. But he dedicated himself
to studying the history and transmission of
astrology, and astronomy especially in the
ancient world. And for his PhD dissertation
he actually collected together some of the
existing manuscripts of what he thought
was the oldest text on horoscopic astrology
in India that he could nd, and he put
together what is called the critical edition of
that text. So you compare all the existing
manuscripts, and you are trying recreate
what you think the original text was in
Sanskrit, and then he did a translation of it,
and published it somewhere in, I think the
1960s or what your was…, was like ‘69 or
’68?
KENNETH JOHNSON: Somewhere around

there. Yeah. I don’t have it in front of me.

KENNETH JOHNSON: But somewhere

around there. Yeah.
CHRIS BRENNAN: So he published this text,

and then he published this extensive
commentary that takes up a book in and of
itself, or he compares each line of this text
that he dated to about the second century,
or sorry third century where he compared
every single line in it to equivalent doctrines
of the Hellenistic astrologers where he tried
to compare, and show that there was many
areas of carry over, that there are many
instances in which there were similarities
between the Hellenistic and Indian tradition.
And he tried to argue that this text known as
the Yavanajakata was originally a Greek text
on Hellenistic astrology, it was written in
Greek probably in Alexandria around the
late rst, or early second century CE, and
then it went over on a trading ship to the
western coast of India where it was
translated at some point into Sanskrit. And
then this was merged with the indigenous
astrology who have India based on the
Nakshatras, and that this somehow birth,
the long tradition of astrology of horoscopic
astrology in India but that this was really the
starting point , and that prior to that point
he argued that type of astrology didn’t exist
but instead it was mainly focused on the
Nakshatras. Would you say that that is
relatively decent over you what Pingree’s
kind of argument was?
KENNETH JOHNSON: That is a very concise

statement of his argument. He was a very
remarkable man. His actual position was
Professor of the History of Mathematics at
Brown University. But he was the sort of
person where, for example, if you should
happen to nd some badly damaged text
along the silk road, and you are not sure
whether it is written in Tocharian or
Sogdian he was the sort of person that you
would call…
KENNETH JOHNSON: … to make that

identi cation, you know so truly a
remarkable person. And, yeah, that sums up
his thesis very nicely.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure. And I mean what

was…
KENNETH JOHNSON: He did real… Go

ahead.
CHRIS BRENNAN: What was funny is that

that was just the starting point for Pingree
like this critical edition of this 2000 year old
Sanskrit text was just to start for him. But he
went on to have a long career of creating
critical editions of many other texts in
Greek, and Latin, and Arabic, and Persian,
and Sanskrit. And I think you could arguably
say he did more than anyone I can think of
to reconstruct the history of astrology. I
can’t think of anybody else who sort of

comparable to him in terms of what he did
in terms of the study of the history of
astrology.
KENNETH JOHNSON: I certainly can’t think of

anybody else who comes even remarkably
close to his achievement. If it had been
neglected, of course, terribly in an era when
only hard practical science as de ned by the
establishment, you know what was
considered acceptable study at least he
brought it back to us. If not you know in
terms of being astrologer himself, or he
never really stating that he was a believer.
But at least he restored it as part of
humanities intellectual history, and thereby
made a respectful eld of study again which
it had not been for many years.
And I have a quite a few of his texts, his

achievements in Sanskrit were truly
remarkable. There is another text and he
called the…, you just mentioned
Yavanajataka, yavana means Greek and
jataka means birth astrology or quite
literally birth story. So ‘Greek Natal
Astrology’ I think would be a fair translation.
There is another text written by ascertain
Minaraja which is called
Vrddhayavanajataka, and the word is very
di cult word to translate. My friend and
colleague Ronnie Dreyer who just got her
MA in Eastern Studies in Columbia prefers
‘Ancient Greek Astrology’, and I will concord
with her on that. But this text is so

enormous. If you are familiar with Guido
Bonatti from the Middle Ages…
CHRIS BRENNAN: Hmm.
KENNETH JOHNSON: … whose text runs to

something like 1200 pages or thereabouts,
the Minaraja text is equally long, and
Pingree actually succeeded in creating a
critical edition of it. That is a lot of work.
CHRIS BRENNAN: But no translation.
KENNETH JOHNSON: No translation

unfortunately. And now that certain
questions have been raised about his dating
of the Yavanajataka, this makes the
Minaraja text all the more important. It
could be equally old, or perhaps even
slightly older than the Yavanajataka. At this
point so many questions have been raised
that we don’t know for sure. Just recently an
article in an Asian scienti c journal has
asserted that Pingree got the dates wrong
that it isn’t really 269 AD or CE, and the
original which he cites the Greek original
isn’t really a 150 CE, because Mr. Mak the
more recent scholar believes that the
Pingree got the dates wrong.
KENNETH JOHNSON: So now the whole

question of the origins of horoscopic
astrology in India has become a very

debatable topic.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure. So we still have…, so

we have this issue, I guess, actually the
strongest point of Pingree’s argument was
the linguistic evidence where he pointed out
that there are a number of Greek technical
terms for di erent things that meant have
some semantic meaning in Greek like the
term kentron that has a meaning of either a
sharp spike that you use to poke something,
and goad it into action, or it has the
secondary meaning of a central point that,
or a center around which something else
revolves like a pivot. So you have that term
in Greek which was used to refer to the four
angles, or the four angular houses, and that
Greek term was kentron and then you have
the same term showing up in Sanskrit but in
transliterated form. I forget what was the
name, is kendra…, is the term?
KENNETH JOHNSON: kendra.
KENNETH JOHNSON: It is kendra, and there

are others. In fact I can take it a bit far than
that .
KENNETH JOHNSON: There are a certain

number of terms which are purely
indigenous. For example although Pingree

cites early astronomical texts which have
hybrid Greek Sanskrit names for the planets
which were probably common, and what we
would have called Indo-Greek population,
the descendants of Alexander the Great’s
army, even though we have hybrid Greek
Sanskrit names for the planets, the ancient
Sanskrit names for the planets quickly
reassert themselves.
KENNETH JOHNSON: And then we have

terms that appear to be purely and simply a
direct translation of a Greek word. The best
one that I can think of is, for example,
houses 6, 8 and 12. I will call dustanas.
KENNETH JOHNSON: Dus meaning bad, and

tana meaning place, and then the 10th
house is called Karmastana which means
the place of work. Now tana would appear
to be direct translation into Sanskrit of the
Greek word topos in my own opinion.
KENNETH JOHNSON: Linguistically.
CHRIS BRENNAN: And topos was the original

word for a house.
KENNETH JOHNSON: ……. and topos was the

original Greek word for a house, and that is
related to our word topic. Hence the whole
debate, you know what whole sign houses is
to whether you know quadrant houses
should be used in one sense or for topics,
you know it is descendant from the same
word. But what we do ne which is purely
and simply in Greek, and this just you know
to get back to your original point is more or
less the crux of Pingree’s argument there
are certain technical matters in Greek
horoscopic astrology such as, you know
de ning of what we would call it cadent
house as an apoklima after the climax, and
the same word is used in India, they didn’t
change it.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Right. It is just called an

apoklima in Sanskrit.
KENNETH JOHNSON: Yeah, and panaphara

which is… What is the correct Greek?
CHRIS BRENNAN: In Greek it is epanaphora.
KENNETH JOHNSON: Yeah. Okay. Here just

to slight change in intonation. Now, at least
in my own investigation these terms that are
very speci c to the technicalities of
Hellenistic astrology unlike the names of the
planets, unlike very simple terms such as
place, they had no precedent whatsoever in
the Sanskrit language, and the ones that
have no precedent because they are
technical Hellenistic terms are precisely the

words that have remained in Greek under
this very day.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure. So that the crux of

Pingree’s argument is basically that you
have got a bunch of Greek technical terms
where they have taken things in the
language that means something already like
apoklima which means to fall away, or after
the climax, or to decline away from
something, and they are using that as a
technical term to refer to, for example,
cadent houses. And then this gets
transmitted the Sanskrit, and instead of
picking, instead of translating the term in
some instances they would just transliterate
it.
So they would use the Greek word to refer

to it, so they, just like Greek astrologers
were referred the cadent houses as
apoklimas, Sanskrit astrologers Indian
astrologers also referred to cadent houses
as apoklimas. But the fact that in Sanskrit
the word apoklima doesn’t mean anything
outside of its astrological usage is the
strongest piece, or the strongest case you
could make that the in uence, at least in
those instances was going one way that was
going from Greek into Sanskrit rather than
from Sanskrit into Greek.
KENNETH JOHNSON: Right. Exactly.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Okay. Yeah, that is a really

important point. So recently some of
Pingree’s dating has been challenged
because at the very end of Yavanajataka the
author of it basically says that, or at least
according to Pingree’s translation that the
original text was composed somewhere
around the year 1-50 CE. And then the
version that we had is a versi cation of the
text where it was taken, and turned into a
poem essentially somewhere around the
year 269 or 270.
And this recent article that came out just in

the past few months is now challenging
Pingree’s dating, and translation of that last
paragraph where the author of this text
gives the dating, however he doesn’t seem
to be challenging the basic premise of the
general argument which is that there were
some in uence of Hellenistic astrology on
Indian astrology that is demonstrated by
these technical terms, he has transliterated
technical terms that are embedded in Indian
astrology. I think is that your impression as
well.
KENNETH JOHNSON: He is de nitely not

questioning the premise that the essentials
of horoscopic astrology in India were
originally from the Greek.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Hmm.
KENNETH JOHNSON: He is simply

questioning whether or not the
Yavanajataka is the pristine original source
that Pingree believed it to be, and he is
questioning whether the version which is
come down to us was perhaps recorded
two or three centuries later than Pingree
originally believed. This of course does not
mean that that was no Greek original for
this text. It simply means that the Greek
original was much far there back in the past.
KENNETH JOHNSON: And he cites a number

of cultural factors as well, you know
including some linguistics. There is some
terminology mostly relating to Tantra which
appears in the Yavanajataka which would
have been purely and simply impossible in
269 CE because where we don’t nd these
Tantric terms until 500 CE, or later.
KENNETH JOHNSON: And so you know then

the question could be raised is to whether
Pingree was as familiar with all aspects of
Hindu civilization as he was with the
sciences. But in any case it is not necessarily
invalidate the idea that the Yavanajataka is
based on a Greek original rather Mr. Mak’s
argument is simply that the text as we have
it is much later than was originally believed
because Pingree got its dates wrong. And he
also points out that this is by no means a

pure or pristine Greek document it has been
over several centuries deeply in uenced by
Hindu culture to the point where it is a kind
of hybrid.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure. Let’s actually talk

about some of those areas of similarity in
the Yavanajataka, and in Indian astrology in
general where it has overlaps and
similarities with Hellenistic astrology in
some of those areas that are di erent,
although I guess before you move on from
that I just wanna mention the name of the
article we are talking about it is by Bill M.
Mak, last name Mak, and the title of the
article that is challenging Pingree’s dating of
the Yavanajataka is The Transmission of
Greek Astral Science into India
Reconsidered, and if you do a Google search
of that it will come up pretty close the top.
So if you wanna look for that you can.
So back to our topic which is what are…, I

guess when you read through the
Yavanajataka, is many people haven’t it
necessarily, I wanna say many western
astrologers haven’t, and what are some of
the areas of convergence between, let’s say,
Hellenistic astrology and Indian astrology
that make them look very similar or where
they are doing the same thing? Like I am
trying to think of for example domicile
rulership, so they have the same system of
sign rulerships for the planets, that is the
traditional rulership scheme where it is

divided among the seven planets, fending
out from the Sun and Moon which are
assigned to Leo and Cancer and then
Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.
KENNETH JOHNSON: They have all the

essentials of Hellenistic astrology embodied
within the Yavanajakata, and most of these
essentials remain embodied in Sanskrit
astrology to this very day.
KENNETH JOHNSON: They have all those

terms that you have mentioned, and if we
were not talking about Greek horoscopic
astrology, we would not need to use such
terms as apoklima or epanaphora since
those are very technical, and very speci c.
So in fact the entire …… of Hellenistic
astrology is there with a few minor
exceptions, for example the Lots, the
Hellenistic Lots, the Lot of Fortune, the Lot
of Spirit…
CHRIS BRENNAN: The Arabic parts

otherwise known.
KENNETH JOHNSON: Pardon.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Otherwise known as the

Arabic parts to some people.
KENNETH JOHNSON: Yeah. To some people.

These never appear in the Yavanajataka,
and in fact they don’t appear in India until
the Islamic invasions, brought with them,
their own court astrologers who practiced
Medieval Persian Arabic astrology, there is
no knowledge of the Lots, or the Parts in
Sanskrit. And this is a bit of a mystery
because as you have pointed out the Lots
are typically considered to be part of the
original system of Hermes, and they ought
to have been there in any standard texts
since the very beginning. So it is quite a
mystery is to why we don’t have those other
……. …
CHRIS BRENNAN: Yeah. Really quickly, the

lots are really important, and it is surprising
that they don’t show up in Indian astrology.
Although one way that I think is really
interesting in which there is almost an
alternative that you do see is that the Lot of
Fortune is the only Lot that was often used
for a set of derivative houses where you
would nd the Lot of Fortune, and then you
turn the charts that that becomes the rst
house, and then you count the houses from
the Lot of Fortune, or the sign of the Lot of
Fortune. And one way that is kind of
interesting that in India that this kind of
happens is with the focus on the Moon, and
doing derivative houses from the sign of the
Moon, and the importance attributed to
that. And I almost wondered in some
instances if that didn’t take the place of, I

don’t know, the necessity of needing to do
derivative houses from Fortune in some way
but that is just a speculation.
KENNETH JOHNSON: Yeah. It is all

speculative on my part as well. The original
system of astrology in India that was based
on the Nakshatras is, of course, lunar based.
So if they were going to use something else
as an alternative Ascendant, the Moon
makes a lot of sense here.
KENNETH JOHNSON: On the other hand we

do nd, you know the Lot of Fortune is a
mathematically derived point that we uses
an alternative Ascendant. And even though
Sanskrit astrologers did not use the Lots,
they were extremely fond of mathematically
deriving any number of alternative
Ascendants. So this sounds like their
thinking in the same mode as the type of
thinking which produce the Lots but they
are not using the Lots. So this remains a
mystery.
Other things in the Yavanajataka that have

de nitely changed is we nd no evidence for
Greek medical theory…
CHRIS BRENNAN: Hmm.
KENNETH JOHNSON: … whether it might be

Pingree’s original estimate of a hundred
years between the Greek text, and the
versi ed Yavanajataka that we have now, or
whether Mak is right in his several hundred
years but any rate, you know over the
course of time all Greek medicine has been
replaced with ayurveda.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Right. In which they have a

di erent temperament system that is what
three temperaments instead of four.
KENNETH JOHNSON: Three temperaments

instead of four. We also nd that when they
talk about kings going to war, really popular
sort of topic if you read the authors like
Bonatti for example, when they talk about it
in the Yavanajataka, they are using
Nakshatras, and clearly copying part of the
old electional astrology tradition of India
that was based on the Nakshatras, and then
the other great mysteries thing is that
Pingree asserted that the earliest examples
of horary astrology are in the Yavanajataka.
And I am gonna leave you to make the
argument rather than try to summarize it.
You have asserted this is actually something
quite di erent which you have called
consultational astrology, and therefore one
has to question what is the origin of
consultation astrology, does it have a Greek
background, or is this star magic from India?
But I am gonna leave commentary on that
to you because you have studied the
concept of the consultation chart more

deeply.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Yeah. I mean Pingree was

originally, I think in the 1960s and ‘70s of the
opinion although until the late ‘80s, he was
of the opinion that horary astrology was
rst introduced in the Yavanajataka in this
series of chapters that seems to be about
horary but he later changed his…, although
he didn’t actually all the way until.., he
thought horary existed in the Hellenistic
tradition, and that was in Dorotheus from
the 1960s until the early ‘90s and all of the
sudden like 1992-93 he changed his mind
and he began saying for the next 10 or 15
years that horary astrology was invented in
India, and it rst shows up in the
Yavanajataka.
But the problem when I research this

because I really wanted to nd out what the
origins of horary were, were that if you read
the Yavanajataka, the majority of the
chapters in the horary section, there is like
20 chapters or something it is quite
extensive, most of it just deals with
determining what a person is thinking
about, what a client is thinking about when
they approach you for a consultation. And
that is actually there is an analogue to that
in Hellenistic astrology where they had a
system for pretty much doing the same
thing for casting a chart the moment of
consultation began just simply in order to

determine what the client is thinking about.
And but Pingree was saying that that is not

horary, so this creates a bit of an issue
because then how do you de ne horary
astrology, and is that the same as what they
are doing, and I argued that it is not, and
instead I argued that, and I think we treated
a little bit di erently even the modern times
where we have this thing called the
consultation chart which is a chart cast for
the moment that a consultation begins, and
it is supposed to tell the astrologer what the
client is thinking about, and perhaps how
the consultation might go, and that seems
to be what is in the Yavanajataka, and what
is in the early Hellenistic tradition, is this
consultation chart framework where you
just cast a chart to gure out what a person
is thinking about but it does not tell you
what the outcome of their thoughts would
be.
And it is not really clear that that develop

like we don’t have the rst full blown horary
texts in the same way that we think about
horary until several centuries later like the
rst full texts aren’t until the early medieval
tradition with Masha’allah’s book On
Reception, and Sahl Ibn Bishr’s book On
Questions, although there is some evidence
that horary was developing in pretty much
all three traditions the Hellenistic, Persian
and Indian traditions probably a little bit
earlier around like the fth or sixth

centuries.
KENNETH JOHNSON: There are two texts

from India which Pingree dated to 600 CE
more or less which are clearly horary as we
know it today.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Right. And that is by who

again.
KENNETH JOHNSON: Okay. The rst one is

called Shatpanchasika and that is by
Prithuyasas who was the son of the
legendary Varāhamihra, and the other one
which were names untranslated, although I
am actually starting to work on this one. It
dates to around the same era possibly a
little bit earlier because the author ……
seems to be mentioned by Varāhamihra
who was the father of Prithuyasas. So we
might wanna place this back to 550 CE, and
it is simply called the Prashna ….….. which
means knowledge about asking questions.
KENNETH JOHNSON: And but like I said it

remains untranslated. It is really clear that
both Prithuyasas and ……. were attempting
to write something which would be the
de ning text, you can always tell in Sanskrit,
technically we call it a foundation text. And it
looks di erent, it is ranged di erently, the
language is di erent from other kinds of
texts, these are clearly written as foundation

texts. So I could attest to what we would call
horary, asking a question, and then
studying the chart to get the answers in
precisely the same way that we do with
horary now at least as early as 600 CE in
India. This, of course, you know it doesn’t
bare that much resemblance Sahl and
Masha’allah.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Hmm.
KENNETH JOHNSON: So the question

remains open was there a contemporary, or
even earlier Persian tradition, now lost to us
from which Sahl and Masha’allah would
borrow it in the sense that they would both
ethnic Persians.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure. And right around

that same time Pingree claims that he has
seen examples of horary astrology in Persia,
although it is almost simultaneous with the
Indian text that you are mentioning, and
then also simultaneous to that in the Greek
tradition we have some example charts of
horary, at least one or two de nitely seem
to be about horary in the Palchus texts
which…,
KENNETH JOHNSON: Hmm.
CHRIS BRENNAN: … unfortunately Palchus is

kind of not a great source because Palchus
was evidently according to Pingree the
handle or the pseudonym of a 14th century

astrologer who is collecting together a
bunch of earlier Greek texts. But he did
collect together a series of 5 or 6 example
charts from about the fth or sixth century
that were written in Greek, and at least one
or two of them de nitely the other three or
four probably electional charts but at least
two of them are probably a sort of
prototype of horary chart, and this is all
happening about the same time.
So somewhere around the fth or sixth

century we probably have development of
horary, and we have no idea where it came
from. It could have started in India. It could
have started in Persia. It could have started
in Greece. We don’t know.
KENNETH JOHNSON: And this is, of course,

what makes it even more complex is this is
also the precise era when we have the
legendary Academy of Gundeshapur in
Persia, run by Persians but with a major
contribution from historian Greeks, and
often hosting Indian students, and
Prithuyasas himself was a precisely the
right age to have been there. So what we
have here is a potential cross-cultural mix
which because of the loss of virtually all the
Zoroastrian material we may never know
the answer.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure. And one thing I

mean to mention is that towards the end of
his life around I think 2004-2005 Pingree

attended a conference in Amsterdam, or he
gave a talk, and James Holden actually
related to me a few years ago that he…,
Holden ……… historian James Holden and
gave a talk on the history of astrology, and
Pingree came up to him afterwards, and
made a comment, and said, because Holden
said that horary was invented, you know in
the Hellenistic tradition by Dorotheus which
is a very common opinion until 10 or 20
years ago, and Pingree came up incorrected
him afterwards. And he said in fact that he
thought that horary was invented in India in
the 5th or 6th century. But Holden I think
couldn’t remember who he was referenced,
and I will bet you Pingree was thinking of
the texts by Prithuyasas, or the other author
that you mentioned.
KENNETH JOHNSON: …………..
CHRIS BRENNAN: Yeah. I will bet you that is

what he had in mind towards end of his life.
KENNETH JOHNSON: If that was the date

that he gave there actually are no other
horary texts from India that he dated to
circa 550 between 550 and 600. So it almost
has to be the case. This is what he was
referencing. So clearly he began to feel that
the alleged horary chapters in Dorotheus
were later interpolation.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Right. In Dorotheus, and

even potentially in the Yavanajataka…
KENNETH JOHNSON: Potentially, yes.
CHRIS BRENNAN: …that whatever he

thought was horary earlier he may have
revised his opinion yet again later. So
anyways but let’s see back to.
So there is a lot of commonalities between

Hellenistic, and Indian astrology. One of the
other thing is that I thing is a di erence that
always stood out to me is the aspect
doctrine, and that is one of those areas
where there is a major di erence, and it
was never clear to me why, like what
happened with that because the Indians
already in the Yavanajataka have the special
aspects of each of the planets. I think that is
the name. Correct?, or what are they
referred to?
KENNETH JOHNSON: What you call them

special aspects basically, that is along with
the absence of the lots, this is another one
of the unanswerable questions, why and
under what circumstances did aspect
doctrine in India begin to diverge from
Hellenistic doctrine regarding the aspects to
the ……. even as early as the Yavanajataka, it
is quite di erent.
KENNETH JOHNSON: We don’t know. We

honestly don’t know.
CHRIS BRENNAN: And one of the things that

is weird is that in the Yavanajataka at least
according to Pingree’s translation they are
calling the aspects the same thing.
KENNETH JOHNSON: Yes.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Like they are calling them

squares, and trines, and sextiles. But they
are going to di erent signs than the
Hellenistic, their Hellenistic counterparts in
terms of square is going to the fourth sign,
or trine is going to the fth, or sextile is to
the third, or what have you.
KENNETH JOHNSON: Well, and yet they

make use of such terminology. For example
only Jupiter aspects by trine in the Vedic
tradition.
KENNETH JOHNSON: And yet they will say

‘Oh! But Mercury is tru Kona to Mars.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Hmm.
KENNETH JOHNSON: And even though that

is not an aspect they are speaking as if it
were.
KENNETH JOHNSON: So this becomes

terribly unclear, really confusing in terms of
language, and especially so since we do
know that not only did they recognize the
same planetary relationships but ……….
some of them, true aspects, and they even
have the same word for aspect, you know
for example…
CHRIS BRENNAN: Drishti
KENNETH JOHNSON: Yeah. For those who

don’t know aspect means to look, and like
in Shakespeare ……….… when …. says he had
a melancholy aspect about him. It means he
has a melancholy gaze in his eyes, you know
he is looking at the world from a
melancholic point of view. And in yoga if
they want you to, you know lift your head,
and point your eyes to the ceiling, they say
‘Put your drishti to the ceiling’, you see it is
the same word.
KENNETH JOHNSON: So it is one of those

words that I mentioned which is I think a
direct translation from Greek into Sanskrit.
So we don’t know why they changed the
doctrine around the what circumstances.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Okay. And one of them,

and this is always humorous to me one of
them that state the same that did not
change is the use of whole sign houses
which is really funny to me because in the

west we have essentially they forgot about
whole sign houses for about a thousand
years now. And then just recently in the
early ‘80s with the publication of Holden’s
paper in AFA Journal on the whole sign
houses where he announced or he sort of
demonstrated that whole sign houses was
the original house system in the west in
Hellenistic astrology and then that was later
con rmed by Hand and Schmidt during the
course of Project Hindsight in the mid ‘90s.
But in India they have been using whole sign
houses all along for about 2000 years now is
the primary form of house division. Right?
KENNETH JOHNSON: Right. And people

would talk about a quadrant system which
is called the Sripati system.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Hmm.
KENNETH JOHNSON: And cite this as

evidence that India had quadrant systems,
however here is the really interesting thing
about it. If you actually read what Sripati
wrote he is not judging topics by his
quadrant houses…
CHRIS BRENNAN: Hmm.
KENNETH JOHNSON: …he is using it to

access the proximity or distance of certain
planets from the four angles which is
precisely the way that Valens describes the
so called Porprhry system, and the Sripati

system is just a variation on Porprhry. So
here again we nd that, you know just as in
the Hellenistic topics are only considered by
way of whole sign houses, and quadrant
houses are only used for measuring, you
know relationship to the four angles.
CHRIS BRENNAN: That is hilarious! Because

just in my last episode I talked with Kelly
Surtees, and we are discussing this about
the origins of quadrant houses being used
in that way that whole sign houses were
used for topics but quadrant houses were
originally introduced within the context of
the length of life treatment in order to
determine planetary activity, and but only
within the context of that technique, and
then eventually quadrant houses sort of
made their way outside of that into broader
usage.
KENNETH JOHNSON: Hmm.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Yeah, so that is a huge

similarity.
KENNETH JOHNSON: That is another thing

that India preserves. And you could almost
think that you were reading Vettius Valens.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Yeah. And in that way I

think and this is really one of the
importance sort of take home lessons for
me is that western astrologers, now, there is
this movement to recover ancient astrology,

or recover traditional forms of astrology,
and in some instances we have you know
these translations of text, we are trying to
piece together the doctrine of how
Hellenistic astrology was practiced. But in
many instances, you still have this living
tradition of ancient astrology still being
practiced in India amongst Indian
astrologers, and I think that there is many
things that western astrologers who are
interested in traditional astrology have to
learn from, and stand a gain from the study
of Indian astrology.
KENNETH JOHNSON: I have often regretted

the facts that there is not more interchange,
and particularly in India, though this is also
true of western deities, there is what I
describe ……. religious belief system that
India comes from rst in all things.
KENNETH JOHNSON: And therefore, you

know it is not worth discussing, and this is a
shame. Because I believe that if Indian
astrologers would have studied Hellenistic
astrology, they would reach a deeper and
more profound understanding of the
doctrines which underlie their work, and if
Hellenistic astrology fans who studied the
doctrines but wonder how it was practiced
ahead more opportunity to dialogue with
Indian astrologers, we could show you how
to read the stu , you know because we still

read that way.
KENNETH JOHNSON: So it has been my

great regret, and one of the reasons that I
enjoy doing interviews like this so much is
because it helps to build a bridge between
the two. I think it is de nitely time for a
much more dialogue because a close
collaboration between those with the
Hellenistic, and those with a Sanskrit
orientation could really do a lot towards
restoring the essential core, or primal
original teachings that underlyie both
systems.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Yeah, I de nitely agree

and I am de nitely big proponent of that,
and I think nowhere else is that
demonstrated more starkly than in the use
in the application of the time lord systems,
and the Dasha systems where you have, you
know this set of advanced timing
techniques that is now being recovered
from the early western systems, and called
time lord techniques, and we are learning
how to use them, and we are learning how
powerful, and how just striking they can be
in just modern practice. But we were still
trying to piece together how they can
actually be applied to their fullest extent
having only bits and pieces of some ancient
texts in order to guide as the way. But
Indian astrologers have been using time

lord systems for 2000 years now. Because
they have had the dasha systems, and they
never lost them in the same way that we
lost the time lord systems.
KENNETH JOHNSON: In fact here again

another fascinating parallel between the
Hellenistic tradition and India even to this
contemporary period, the time lord system
is the primary predictive tool, transits are
secondary.
KENNETH JOHNSON: And for the most part

when we look at transits from a Hindu, or
Sanskrit point of view we are paying more
attention to the transits of the planets which
are currently serving as the time lords, this
is Hellenistic.
KENNETH JOHNSON: Is it not?
CHRIS BRENNAN: Yeah. I mean that is

exactly the original transit doctrine in
Hellenistic astrology is that you can’t
determine if a transit will coincide with an
event or a hit, unless it is activated as a time
lord.
KENNETH JOHNSON: Right. And if we are in,

for example, a Moon Mercury period, then
even though these are planets that move so

swiftly as to be commonly disregarded by
contemporary astrologers, any transit to
these planets, or from these planets even,
we would give them great importance if
they would have time lords.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Right. Yeah, and I know

just in learning and trying to gure out how
to use some of these time lords systems
that I have learned a lot just by observing
the way that Indian astrologers applied the
dasha systems in practice, and there is a lot
there that is been applicable to using
techniques like zodiacal releasing for
example.
KENNETH JOHNSON: Yeah.
CHRIS BRENNAN: So, yeah, I think that is

probably the strongest argument I think I
could make for the necessity of these
di erent traditions coming together, and
learning something where Indian
astrologers as you said could probably learn
more about sort of the roots of some of the
techniques that they use, and Hellenistic
astrologers, or western astrologers could
learn more about applying this ancient
system of astrology in practice, and some
things that you know perhaps have been
carried on, and preserved in that living
tradition that perhaps we don’t have in the
handful of texts that survived and were
translated from the western tradition into

today.
KENNETH JOHNSON: Yeah. I remember

during the 2006 Project Hindsight conclave
someone handed me a chart than upon
Hellenistic style, and said you know ‘Without
using a lot of Sanskrit, how would you read
this?’
KENNETH JOHNSON: Of course, you know

just forget about the tropical, the sidereal
‘Okay. It is in tropical.’ But how would you
read it ?, and so you start out you know
‘Well, the lord of the fth was in the rst,
and you now it is aspected by the lord of the
ninth’, and blau blau and so on and so forth,
and this planet is, you know encompassed
both sides by male cs, you know we read
pretty much, I am not saying that we read
precisely as Hellenistic astrologers would
have done.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Hmm.
KENNETH JOHNSON: I don’t think so. But we

may be the closest relatives…
KENNETH JOHNSON: …to how they might

have read a chart.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Yeah, de nitely. And yeah,

like I said I think we have a lot to learn from
that western astrologers do. So I hope that
some of this discussion has been
interesting, and sort of opens people’s eyes
to the history but also the necessity I think
of studying some of these di erent
traditions of astrology that you might not
initially, I mean it is kind of interesting that
sometimes when Indian astrology is
mentioned that there is apprehension, or
that there is you know a lack of interest, or
whatever it is. I am not sure that I can
always put my nger on what it is. But
people have a hard time because they
assume that it is so alien, or so foreign to
the type of astrology that they do, or that we
practice in the west. But the truth is actually
a little bit much more complicated, and it is
actually much closer of a relative, or of a
cousin to western astrology than one would
assume if you didn’t know anything about it.
KENNETH JOHNSON: If you take out the

Sanskrit. Yeah, it is…, and try to just use
English terms for everything then yeah, the
similarities with the west original astrology
from Greco-Egyptian times, from the
Hellenistic era there are stunning
similarities.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure. Well, then I think

that unless there is anything else we haven’t
uncovered, I can think of if there are any
topics I mean to cover. Can you think of
anything that comes to mind that would be

good to mention in terms of this general
topic that we haven’t touched upon?
KENNETH JOHNSON: Well…
CHRIS BRENNAN: I mean…
KENNETH JOHNSON: Just taking a look, you

know at…
CHRIS BRENNAN: I mean the only other

thing I can say is that I think I am particularly
interested in, Hellenistic astrology is much
more concrete, and much more predictive
than modern psychological astrology which
tends to be more oriented towards
character analysis, and psychological
analysis. And one of the things that comes
up for me is there is a lot of conceptual, and
ethical, and other considerations that
suddenly come to the forefront when you
start practicing that type of astrology, you
start practicing Hellenistic astrology, and I
think I am very much interested in
dialoguing with Indian astrologers when it
comes to some of those issues, when it
comes to conceptual issues about how you
treat certain things, and ethical issues about
how you treat certain things when it comes
to prediction.
KENNETH JOHNSON: We had, you know a

real time with that during the early days of
the American Council of Vedic Astrology. I
was on the Executive Board back then, and

we were starting to bring astrologers from
India.
KENNETH JOHNSON: And we found that

they think absolutely nothing of mentioning
diseases in death, you know…
KENNETH JOHNSON: They will look at

somebody ‘Oh! you know you are having
Saturn crossing your Moon. Are your
parents still alive? Well, then they will
probably die.’
KENNETH JOHNSON: You know, and of

course this would be considered radically
unethical…
KENNETH JOHNSON: … in western terms.

And then the older astrologers from India
would not discuss relationships.
KENNETH JOHNSON: In fact if an American

woman were to began to say ‘Well, you
know my rst two boy friends after my
divorce…’, that you know the Indian

astrologer would just stand up, and walk
away from her.
CHRIS BRENNAN: No.
KENNETH JOHNSON: So we had all kinds of

cultural damage control, and there are
gonna be issues as we continue to explore
the Hellenistic tradition where so much
emphasis is placed on, you know length of
life, and where there is certainly not afraid
to make negative judgements. We are
gonna have a lot of issues coming up about,
you know how much we should say, and
how we should say it.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Yeah.
KENNETH JOHNSON: And we would be

going through this in India. I wish I could say
that they conveyed their information in the
way which would be acceptable to
contemporary western psychological
astrologers. But no, not really. It can be a
real slap in the face for somebody who has
not use to it.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure. And I am interested

in, you know because you are obviously
there is two sides to that coin, and on the
one hand making the argument for that
type of predictive astrology, and making the
defending as to certain extent being
valuable like being able to make concrete
statements about a person’s life that is

sometimes are not attering, or sometimes
that acknowledge the darker sides of it, or
acknowledge areas of loss, or of pain, or of
su ering, and being able to see that not shy
away from it. But then at the same time the
opposite and which is, you know what is not
appropriate within context of a consultation,
or a modern consulting setting, or what
have you.
KENNETH JOHNSON: Yeah.
CHRIS BRENNAN: There is just obviously

there is two sides to that. And it will be
interesting to explore some of that since
you guys with the modern western vedic
movement have already laid the
groundwork for most of that I am sure.
KENNETH JOHNSON: We have done our

best. That is gonna rough and rocky road at
many stages of the game. That is for sure.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Okay. Well, on that note

than I think we can go ahead, and wrapped
this up. I think it has been a great
discussion. I think people de nitely enjoy it.
And where can…, what do you working on
right now?, or what… ? I think you recently
redesigned your website. Right?
KENNETH JOHNSON: Well, I actually have

two websites.
KENNETH JOHNSON: One is

kennethjohnsonastrology.com…
KENNETH JOHNSON: … in which I work with

both western and vedic astrology. And I also
had the other one that you mentioned
jaguarwisdom.org, and that relates more to
central America because I typically spend
three, or four months out of the each year
living that in a remote my own village where
they still live by the ancient calendar, now
there is a whole system of electional
astrology ….., but in any event, most of my
articles, and so on regarding both western
and vedic astrology can be found at
kennethjohnsonastrology.com.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Okay. Excellent. So people

should check out your website, and then we
will have to have you on again some other
time to talk about Mayan astrology, and
explain that system to us.
KENNETH JOHNSON: Okay.
CHRIS BRENNAN: Well. Thanks for coming

on the show.
KENNETH JOHNSON: Okay. Good night,

Chris.
CHRIS BRENNAN: I guess that is it for this

episode. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed
the show, then please give it a good rating
on iTunes.
And we will see you next time.
   
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Ep. 9 Transcript - The Relationship Between Hellenistic & Indian Astrology - The Astrology Podcast

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2021.05.6. Ep.

Ep. 9 Transcript: The

The Astrology Podcast

Transcript of Episode 9, titled:

The Relationship Between

Episode originally released on July 26th,

Note: This is a transcript of an audio

Transcribed by Gülşen Altay

Transcription released November 8th, 2018

Copyright © 2016 TheAstrologyPodcast.com

CHRIS BRENNAN: Hi, I am Chris Brennan,

And my guess today is author Kenneth

And this is his rst time on the show.

Kenneth, thanks for coming on.

KENNETH JOHNSON: It is good to be here

CHRIS BRENNAN: Great. Well, I am excited

First before we get into why don’t you

KENNETH JOHNSON: I began with astrology

Religions. And afterwards I discovered

CHRIS BRENNAN: Right. I remember you

KENNETH JOHNSON: Yeah. That is still very

same kind of treatment as many of our

CHRIS BRENNAN: And these are actual

KENNETH JOHNSON: That are completely

CHRIS BRENNAN: Right.

KENNETH JOHNSON: And we may be

CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure. And that reminds

the beginning of the so called traditional

KENNETH JOHNSON: Yes. And like many

CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure. Yeah. And I am sure

about in every way from that it looked like

KENNETH JOHNSON: I would say, I would go

CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure. Western astrologers

KENNETH JOHNSON: Yes. Western

CHRIS BRENNAN: And that is because of the

KENNETH JOHNSON: You know it is, of

CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure.

KENNETH JOHNSON: And just one little

CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure.

KENNETH JOHNSON: Since Indian astrology

leaf, and I may have just given that

CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure. So that gives us a

So Hellenistic astrology I usually de ne as a

with the houses, most timing techniques like

But then we have Indian astrology and

KENNETH JOHNSON: I like to call it Jyotish

CHRIS BRENNAN: Okay.

KENNETH JOHNSON: What would means the

CHRIS BRENNAN: Hmm.

KENNETH JOHNSON: And what we see here

CHRIS BRENNAN: Okay.

KENNETH JOHNSON: It is primarily

So this has been around for a long time, and

to see that they actually did have already a

CHRIS BRENNAN: Sure. And that raises a

recent thing, or recent thing that is become

KENNETH JOHNSON: 3000 years ago at

CHRIS BRENNAN: Okay.