Within Orb Episode 5 with Camm Cassidy

Astrologer Camm Cassidy of Omegastrology gets Within Orb to share his love of celestial mathematics and groovy traditional methods with host Jenn Zahrt! Camm and Jenn discuss everything from A to Z (and a half!) – from reading the dictionary for fun (we’re looking at you, Saturn!), to a mini lesson on the twelfth parts, to the origin of the Placidus house system, to how to calculate planetary hours! Head spinning? That’s not all! We’ve also got: bibliographies as a curriculum, the excavation of human character, and… can “the Lord of the Orb” be our job title?

 

 

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Song “Wake Up” used with permission by The E-Block Band.

 

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Episode timestamps (conversation recorded April 2023):

01:02 – Camm’s first astro book as a small person was the quasi-astrological A Little Book of Coincidence by John Martineau. Also, a nod goes to Star Power: A Simple Guide to Astrology for the Modern Mystic by Vanessa Montgomery. (Note: Some books mentioned are available on our bookshop.org page, so do check it out! By purchasing books through this site, you help support CAELi… and that’s a win-win, doncha know!) 

04:49 – Let’s be astrology book nerds with our friend Camm! What 3 astrology books would he take to the Altai Mountains in Mongolia? Once a magnifying glass is included, Camm’s number one pick is The Arcana Dictionary of Astrology by Fred Gettings.

08:18 – Camm’s second pick: The Astrology of Sahl b. Bishr: Volume I: Principles, Elections, Questions, Nativities by Sahl Ibn Bishr and translated by Benjamin Dykes 

12:02 – Visit our sponsor, Rod Suskin School of Astrology!

17:13 – Tune in to hear Camm’s elegant description of the twelfth parts!

20:33 – Camm’s third selection for his mountain pilgrimage is The Primum Mobile by Placidus de Titus, translated by John Cooper. Lots to learn about timing techniques and using different time scales to represent the evolution of our lives!

27:03 – What astrology books for beginners would Camm recommend? The Corpus Hermeticum, which covers astrology, alchemy, and magic. Also, a great primer is Demetra George’s Astrology and the Authentic Self. And finally, the unique Rhetorius the Egyptian translated by James Holden – which covers chart synthesis and how to combine lots of different astro pieces (e.g., the Parts and prenatal points).

32:04 – You can find Camm on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter using the handle @omegastrology. (And do we love that Camm gave CAELi a little shout-out at the end? You betcha we do! Thanks, Camm!)

33:50 – Thanks for listening to Within Orb! If you love the show, please help support it at no cost to you: Follow or subscribe wherever you listen, rate it five stars, or write a happy review! And if you’d like to become a CAELi member or support our work with a contribution of any amount, we’d be delighted! Thanks!

 

Show notes by Jen Braun, JJ Boots Productions LLC.

Transcript, Episode 5: Within Orb

 

Jenn Zahrt  00:01

Hello!

 

Camm Cassidy  00:02

Hello!

 

Jenn Zahrt  00:03

Welcome to Within Orb.

 

Camm Cassidy  00:05

Yes, thank you so much for having me here, Jenn. I’m so excited to have this awesome conversation with you about books. So, thank you for having me on.

 

Jenn Zahrt  00:14

Thank you. Thank you for taking time to be here today. And this is Camm Cassidy, someone who actually came by CAELi – the Celestial Arts Education Library – earlier this past winter to come check out the books. And, so, we began our conversation, and now I would love to learn where you got started with your journey in astrology books. What was your first astrology book?

 

Camm Cassidy  00:37

Yeah, so looking back, when you emailed me with these questions that were kind of like two that first came to me. One was sort of like, definitely sticks out in my mind as the first book that led me into all of this, but it’s sort of quasi-astrological. It’s called The Little Book of Coincidence by John Martineau. And I don’t have the dust cover for it anymore. But it’s basically in the series of really small books that have like these bite sized introductions to different things in like sacred geometry. And like this page right here, this is the pentagram of Venus. This book basically is just all about these different geometrical principles and planetary cycles. And I remember having this maybe when I was like 10, or 11 or so and just initially brought my mind to be really curious about what was with all this, like seemingly programmed things in the sky. Because I was already really interested in math and things like the Fibonacci sequence, which intrigued me, and this book shows how that shows up in our solar system in a bunch of different ways. And so right around the same time, my elder sister who’s eight years older than me, was also getting interested in astrology. And so she had this book Star Power by Vanessa Montgomery, which is, you know, it’s a small short, you know, it’s what you need to just pop right into reading charts. It gives you all the basics, and this was I remember the first book I really read that yeah, got me interested in like, wow, Saturn, you know, Aquarius, just like actually putting pieces together.

 

Jenn Zahrt  02:02

You got interested first in Saturn? Well, I think it’s funny that you bring in Saturn of like, yeah, Saturn, like, Wait a minute. I don’t normally get excited about Saturn from jump street.

 

Camm Cassidy  02:12

Yeah, that’s fair. Yeah, I mean, I can’t say I remember exactly if there was a planet, although I will say, when I was even younger, like age eight, nine, going through my nodal reversal. Interesting enough, I was really interested in the eclipses and Eclipse cycles. And I remember being on like, these old nasa.gov websites, like printing off tables of eclipses. And like I had asked my parents for years, like I really wanted to go see an eclipse. And so yeah, I was sort of just naturally drawn to a lot of these things from a younger age.

 

Jenn Zahrt  02:42

That’s awesome. Yeah, I love the Wooden Books Series that has that Little Book of Coincidences, the picture you just showed of the page of the Venus star pattern. The producers of that series, turned it into a poster that hangs in here in the building.

 

Camm Cassidy 

Oh, no way.

 

Jenn Zahrt 

Yeah, it’s really cool. And they bring up the Fibonacci sequence. So can you say more about that? Like, when you were seeing The Little Book of Coincidences? Did you start to see that everywhere? I mean, how was that for you as a small person?

 

Camm Cassidy  03:09

I remember, It was in third grade. Actually, we all like everyone in my class did like a little independent presentation. And I chose to do mine on the Fibonacci sequence. So I was doing like putting this little poster board together with pictures of like, hurricane spirals and the Milky Way galaxy and, you know, pine cones and sunflowers and how it shows up everywhere. And so I was already looking into that. And then yeah, I mean, this book here just talks about how that same ratio, that seems to be programming our reality, in the sense of how mathematical beauty is really proportioned out in that way. And it’s just so perfect that the sun and Venus cycle from our perspective, share that same ratio, that just kind of programs everything that has to do with beauty and organizational harmony. And yeah, it was just like, wow, that’s, that’s something there.

 

Jenn Zahrt  04:06

what an awesome foundation to start with. Okay, so here’s the big question. If you were stranded, maybe on a desert island, maybe in an airport? No. If you were, well, oh, you know, we could put you on a mountain! if you were stranded on a mountain in the middle of Mongolia, in the Altai Mountains. What three astrological books would you have by your side?

 

Camm Cassidy  04:28

Yeah, I know this is this is like the dreaded question to book nerds, astrology nerds.

 

So the first book that I am deciding to bring with me here is going to be The Arcana Dictionary of Astrology by Fred Gettings. And I picked this book because it’s actually really thick for being like small like the pages are really thin. It’s almost 600 pages. And every time I open this book up, I read about something I’ve literally never heard about. This man put together such a comprehensive text. There’s everything in here from fixed stars to lunar mansions to, you know, medical astrology to Cosmobiology and everything in between. It just covers everything. And like even for posterity, like I don’t know if I’m like, supposed to be the last person on Earth, but like, this is like our modern, like definitions and foundations of like, you know, these ancient Hellenistic authors, right, where we have like kind of just this bulleted, enumerated list of things. I feel like this is like what we might want to have behind. And besides, I mean, you could just spend hours like chasing back and forth, you read one definition, and it brings you to the end of the book to find another and it’s like, you can go crazy. I feel like just reading there’s so much in there. So probably that would be my first.

 

Jenn Zahrt  05:41

So you’d literally read the dictionary?

 

Camm Cassidy  05:44

Yeah, I guess when you put it like that? Yeah, I guess so. But I mean, I do really feel like there’s a lot of information here too on like astronomical principles, there’s enough that you could be casting a chart, and there’s everything in here.

 

Jenn Zahrt  05:55

Yeah. And even what I always love to look at – because my last name starts with a Z – is the very last word of the dictionary. And in this one, you have something I don’t think is pointed out in many of them: Zugos… “is one of the Greek names for the sign and constellation Libra used by Ptolemy.” huh. Yeah, that’s cool. And I also noticed when I was looking through this, the bibliography itself is an entire curriculum.

 

Camm Cassidy  06:21

It is yeah, this bibliography is extremely again, comprehensive. But also, there are gems in here that you just don’t hear about that have also led me down some interesting rabbit holes. Because yeah, I mean, this guy just had such a wealth of knowledge. And this book is like vital. I’d say to anyone who has the bug for learning about astrology, this book will keep your mind going for a long time.

 

Jenn Zahrt  06:44

Yeah, I mean, because it’s a dictionary, it really does have to show you the lay of the land in so many ways. But I also love the way that star lore and humanities are brought together with the more scientific ways.

 

Camm Cassidy  06:56

yeah, I mean, there’s many different mythologies and cultural representations of astronomy and different mythologies that are all included in here. And yeah, I mean, there’s even like magical sigils names of angels. Like it goes from literally A to Z and a half.

 

Jenn Zahrt  07:14

yeah. That’s awesome. Okay, cool. And the other thing, too, is the font size here is minuscule. I mean, you could spend forever reading this.

 

Camm Cassidy  07:27

It is pretty small. You know, can I bring a magnifying glass? I can have an item like if I need to?

 

Jenn Zahrt 

yeah, you’ll probably need one to light fires.

 

Camm Cassidy 

Okay, well, I won’t set this one on fire… [laughs]

 

Jenn Zahrt  07:39

No, to keep yourself warm in the middle of the mountains. [laughs]

 

Okay, so that’s book number one, the Arcana dictionary of astrology by Fred Gettings. what would your second pick be?

 

Camm Cassidy  07:49

My second pick, I wanted to have like a really comprehensive text on astrological foundations practice. And, you know, just in the tradition, personally, I am going to give this to the astrology of Sahl Ibn Bishr, who was essentially an early piece of the medieval Islamic tradition of astrology and did an amazing job synthesizing a lot of work from the kind of link that transferred Hellenistic authors to the medieval and Persian world from on Doza-gar and Masha Allah and just sort of got all of these amazing branches into, you know, one really big tome, which, you know, Ben Dykes sort of edited and put together here. So there’s sort of different segments of this text, you know, he’s got all of the introductory foundations, he’s got the 50 aphorisms, which are like 50 things that every student should just learn upfront things about, like the effects and things like that. And then, you know, he just goes into nativities extensively here. So how you actually throw these things into the pot and see what happens when they’re stirred around. And also there’s a really cool book on timing, where he’s explaining different aphorisms about, you know, this thing makes things become longer in life, or this thing will make this thing happen quickly at first and then slow down. You know, there’s like all those different really nuances with timing that there’s a really cool book for that in here as well. So but yeah, this is really one of the most comprehensive authors we have from the tradition who I’d love to bring with me.

 

Jenn Zahrt  09:17

Yeah. And also bring to awareness. I myself have not dug as deeply into Sahl as you have. So my next question would be in this, I would say it’s actually kind of fictional because any diagnosis of a nativity is also already prediction. But when we’re talking about perhaps like character versus forecasting events, how would you rate the mix in Sahl between the diagnosis of character as we know it in modern astrology versus the Timelord systems that we get from more traditional approaches?

 

Camm Cassidy  09:48

Yeah, well, I guess I would definitely say that there’s a strong emphasis, you know, I’d say there always has been on the excavation of human character from the chart and And Sahl definitely has a lot there in terms of like nowadays we, at least in this more modern perspective, we can simplify the psyche into these seven different or 10, maybe planetary archetypes. But really all those same things are sitting already in the chart through, you know, the ascendant different divisions of the ascendant. So things like the bound of the ascending bound, even, you know, they’d had an emphasized amount of delineation on like the moon and mercury as important significant matters for human behavior, which Sahl talks about. And, yeah, I guess there was also just an understanding that, like, the actions that one is drawn towards, has to say something about who you are and what you do. So obviously, if someone has well dignified planets in their second house, you know, they’re going to be successful at making an income and gaining assets in their life, probably. But that’s also going to, you know, say something about what kind of person they are, that they’re driven towards, you know, maybe they have luck with it, right? That’s maybe a part of it. And that’s why it can be complex. But there’s definitely lines that can connect, that I think, are thrown into a lot of those aphorisms about like, well, he does this. So you can be like this, you know, like, they’re sort of interrelated. And I think that was how they saw it back then it wasn’t like, there’s no character because there’s no description of Mars being like your strength and power. It’s just that it was almost like the lines were just less blurred between who we are and what we do, I guess, if that makes sense.

 

Jenn Zahrt  11:27

Yeah, to show and not tell, for example. The other thing that’s neat about this book that I learned, after you brought it to my attention was some of the special vocabulary. Can you speak to some of the terms that really get you excited that Sahl uses that aren’t used by others in the same way?

 

Camm Cassidy  11:43

I can’t say I’m an expert on the Arabic. So there are some, like, I guess, you know, there’s an amount of leeway that’s taken with, you know, what Ben does in terms of occasional times that the English might be rendered, either distinctly from similar words in Arabic or from different Arabic words that are rendered similarly to the English, there’s, you know, I’d say it’s probably 95%, you know, pretty similar to how Abu Bashar talks or to how Al KindI talks, it sounds like it’s very, in that era of astrological practice, you know, something that I was thinking about, where there’s sort of an emphasis on with planetary rulership when it comes to talking about planets having a certain, you know, ownership of a certain area in the in the sky. And often this word is translated in a lot of these texts as a claim, like a claim of ownership. And I think it’s an interesting distinction, because it’s sort of saying that, whether we’re talking about the claim over a whole sign, you know, or 30 degrees of the sky, or even a claim, you know, of a bound, which in some areas is smallest two degrees, that it’s rightly so that that planet has a claim to that region, and it’s responsible for managing it, which means that that, you know, that bound of Saturn at the end of Pisces, it’s like two degrees, it’s still his claim. And he’s responsible for being there and assisting anything that’s sitting there as much as he has for the 60 degrees between Capricorn and aquarius. And I think that that kind of terminology is nice in dissolving the boundary and kind of hierarchical way we can assess dignity in some cases where, you know, in the medieval tradition to it, it was tabulated. They calculated almutants and gave certain rankings for things. But I personally believe that yeah, that claim of two degrees is just as powerful to evoke astrological symbolism in the right context, and is as necessary to us, as you know, is talking about a whole sign. You know, it’s like those smaller subdivisions are so powerful, and they’re so rich. And I think that we should have a more equated vision of how their symbolism can come to life in any given moment in the right context that they’re not lesser really.

 

Jenn Zahrt  13:46

Right. Right. And also, there seems to be when you say, claim, or when Sahl mentions claim, or a share. It’s like this concept of power distribution that isn’t… that’s got an agency to it, because Saturn’s claiming those two degrees, it’s not like, you have that, and then you’re not claiming it. I mean, maybe he can’t claim it if he’s in Aries, or you know, Leo, but this idea that there is something to be staked, like, I have something to say here. I’m on this committee. I’m in this little fiefdom, you know, inside of this nation state of 60 degrees, for example, right?

 

Camm Cassidy  14:20

Yeah, no, it’s a great point. Because I think as the use of more of the essential dignities is coming back into modern practice. There’s so many ways that all of those, you know, decans and bounds and triplicities I think we’re just going to continue to discover so many ways that their applications are coming alive when we look at them and pay attention to them and open them up to that realm of astrological interpretation. So yeah, I think it’s really beautiful to think about how, you know, even things smaller than bounds right, like the ninth parts or the 12th parts, which are these other even smaller kind of fractalized divisions of each sign as we start to Use these more and revive them more, we’ll see that like, it doesn’t matter. Like we shouldn’t like compare an essential dignity. It’s like each dignity system is its own whole perfect thing, because it’s a way to cut up the whole sky and organize information into one system by looking at it one way and yeah, like we can kind of aggregate those essential dignities and get a feel for a larger scale picture of what are the energies kind of getting thrown around in the chart. But like, when you just peek into the 12 parts, you know, it’s like that is so unequivocably powerful, it’s like they can reveal so much information about what’s sitting in a chart. And same thing with you know, whatever else you want to look at. It’s like you just hone in on the one thing, you’re going to find a rich with information. So I think it’s just great.

 

Jenn Zahrt  15:41

can we rewind just a second and describe what the 12 parts are for people who may not know? only because I feel like they’re becoming popular now. And you might be actually one of the vectors for that with the poster that you created. But can you just go back into some nuts and bolts about what 12 parts are?

 

Camm Cassidy  15:56

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So the 12 part as it sounds, is essentially taking a smacroscopic view into each sign as if each side were its own. So the landscape within just 30 degrees. So we’re slicing up each sign into 12 portions or 12 parts. And we’re going to enumerate them beginning from the sign you’re counting in. So for instance, like that, first sliver of Capricorn will be ruled by Capricorn, and then it will go to Aquarius, and then it will wrap all the way around so that the last few degrees of Capricorn is ruled by Sagittarius, and then it will jump into the next sign. So it’s really like the one of the most elegant harmonics to observe because it’s really like the next logical step, like we divide the sky into 12. Well, we take each of those slivers and put it into 12. Again, and I kind of talk about it like it’s an astral projection of a planet, like it’s sort of when you kind of zoom in and microscope, you know, view on this planet, like, it has this kind of secret place where it’s also putting its influence and putting his virtue and participating in that area of the chart. So Saturn and Mars are their 12 parts are going to fall into other places or other houses in the chart. And especially if they fall into a close aspect by degree with another planets like it opens up a whole other chart that’s sitting inside of that natal harmonic, the first harmonic.

 

Jenn Zahrt  17:15

I also wonder what would you say to someone in two cases: The case one would be a planet like Saturn in cancer being in the part of Capricorn? Right? So just it goes from being in debility to being in rulership or vice versa, right, when we’re Saturn’s in Capricorn, but it’s in the 12th part of cancer, how would you speak to that person, or those two people?

 

Camm Cassidy  17:36

That’s an amazing point, because dignity is a whole other facet of how we can observe that change in the planets, you know, again, that individual journey, planets that are in the natal chart, fallen or debilitated or an exile, when they move into a sign where they have a claim, you know, where they have another domicile or an exultation, you know, that’s actually going to boost the strength of that planet a lot. And it’s going to deposit that strength into the house where that sign is sitting. So say, for instance, you have Saturn in cancer, you know, in the fourth house, then that’s maybe going to open up a conversation with someone about the problematic or challenging experiences they had in their home life with their family, or maybe with a powerful, dominant male figure in their life. But should that Saturn be at 15 degrees of cancer, where he moves halfway around the wheel moves into the 10th house in his own sign, you know, then there’s this whole opportunity for how you know maybe that motivation of whatever their childhood experiences were motivated them to become really successful in their professional career. And so those changes in dignities show a change in the timeline of how that manifests from the natal to the later position as it moves over time.

 

Jenn Zahrt 

Got it. So it can be used in forecasting, in your experience.

 

Camm Cassidy 

Yes, absolutely. Forecasting it can show like transitions again, from those if it starts in an exalted position and moves into a debility. Yeah, it can show how things can evolve into, again, a lesser influence in the context of words sitting.

 

Jenn Zahrt  19:01

Well, that’s an awesome second text to bring with you to the Altai Mountains. So we have the astrology of Sahl translated by Ben Dykes and an Arcana dictionary of astrology by Fred Gettings.

 

What would your third book be?

 

Camm Cassidy  19:15

So my third book is going to be The Primum Mobile by Placidus de Titus. And yeah, I just I printed out a copy because I got my hands on real nice edition yet but I see you have a very nice print edition there.

 

Jenn Zahrt  19:32

We have this black book translated by John Cooper with an introduction by the famed mundane astrologer Michael Baigent.

 

Camm Cassidy  19:39

Wow, very nice. Yeah, I have the Cooper translation too. But anyway, yeah, I I’m really fascinated with placidus. His work in this text really here is all about timing techniques, and using and synthesizing different kinds of astrological timescales, you know, to represent the evolution of our lives. And so He’s pretty remarkably putting together, at least in this text and exposition of how well first of all, just the power of primary directions, he goes extensively and really reframing and reworking the techniques and the technology of primary directions up to his point in history, he made some interesting innovations, made a new house system for them to work together, although that’s also kind of like a misnomer, really, that you need the house system to equate with a system of directions. But he did kind of reframe both. But then yeah, he’s layering them with secondary. And it’s a form of, I guess, a tertiary progression, I think you can call it I think there’s like tertiary one and two, but I think they’re also called minor progressions. So it’s not a true tertiary, like, day for a month, but it’s like the minor progression month for a year that he’s kind of layering in as a third element to how the things are spinning together, which is really cool.

 

Jenn Zahrt  20:54

I love that. And so this is the famed origin of the placidus house system That’s inimical to most astrological software as of now. And I have a feeling there’ll be other house systems at the basis of other software as we move forward.

 

Camm Cassidy  21:09

Yeah. I mean, if any system were to popularize itself into like, a modern mainstream practice, like placidus houses are really sleek, you know, they’re really… it’s a time based system. So it’s incorporating a lot of dynamic movement in the celestial sphere. That’s really complicated mathematically. So there’s a precision to it That’s really elegant. I don’t use placidus houses, but I still think they work. So yeah, but that’s a whole conversation.

 

Jenn Zahrt  21:36

I believe it was Wade Caves at the STA Horary class, who brought it to my attention that placidus. And you can tell me if this is true, because I haven’t worked into the origins of his house system in that much detail. But that the House cusps can tell you what planetary hour it is.

 

Camm Cassidy  21:54

yeah, they can. If you look at where the sun is sitting, and what house it is, in a placidus House division. The idea is that you can break you know, we have 12 houses, you break them all into two, we have 24 segments, and you can actually roughly count, you know how far it’s moved from the ascendant, which would have been the new day when the new planetary hour sequence starts. And you can estimate the planetary hour based off where the sun is in the placidus houses. So yeah, it’s a really cool little way that he’s using that time based system to show divisions of the day, it’s physical system.

 

Jenn Zahrt  22:29

Well, it seems to be important also for Horary to assess the radicality of the question, but it’s, it’s neat that he can create a system that by sight, you can figure that out without having to go to some kind of table or like, you know, count on your fingers or anything like that, you know, and then the other thing that is awesome about that is that planetary hours originated in Egypt, so that we have this lineage of super ancient astrology that survived through Hellenistic Greece landing into that middle ages, you know, are actually at this point, wouldn’t you say? placidus was more like Renaissance? Early Modern?

 

Camm Cassidy  23:02

Yeah, he’s like, 1500s, I think early 1600s. So it’s definitely getting into, like, middle 1000s. Renaissance, early Renaissance. But yeah, I mean, the planetary hours are really cool. I think that’s a great point that it is bringing back a route of the tradition, especially because the Egyptians tracked so much the division of the sky and the hours throughout the day. So it’s really cool that it retains that and especially because the planetary hours are sort of like, the sort of intangible, you know, it’s like we always can calculate the ascendant, we can look at it, but the hours run sort of like this metadata in our computing system, it’s like they’re there. And they work and like, I have my time, no matter where it’s giving me an alert every hour, and like, Mars hours starts, and I see a woman starting to scream in front of me at the checkout line. It’s like, it’s real. But it’s like, you know, we have these apps to show it now. And it feels so physical, because they’re easy to calculate now, but they’re actually very ephemeral. It’s like, they’re just fascinated me.

 

Jenn Zahrt  23:56

Yeah. And also the way that they sort of like throughout the year, they kind of have this butterfly effect, actually, the day will be short, and then long, short. And so there’s like a breath work there. And this like, you know, if you think about the numbers, I would say, this is probably true for living in the north of North America. But the 45 minute hour versus the 75 Minute, by day or night, as you get closer to the solstice point.

 

Camm Cassidy  24:20

Yeah, it warps our perception of time like an accordion. It’s fascinating how that planetary hour shift changes over the course of the year. And that’s also what’s so cool about the equinox, because it’s like everyone’s getting twenty-four 60-minute hours every day and just really cool. And I think also like the work of Dr. Ali Olomi. He’s been pushing out some really cool translations on his Patreon, translating works from different medieval astrologers and the technique of The Lord of the orb, which essentially is like most people now maybe are familiar with the idea of perfecting the ascendant as like a Timelord technique, but you can also do that from like the natal planetary hour. And they sort of have this concurrent, you look at the Perfected sign, and then the Perfected hour, and they really work well, in tandem together. So I think that’s cool for the placidus house system too. It’s like got the ascendant got the hour, and then you can kind of build out all the, it’s it makes sense, though, right? It’s like we have assigned based planetary sequence and a planet based one. And I think they’re really cool.

 

Jenn Zahrt  25:20

Wow, Lord of the orb… I think I need to change my job title!

 

Camm Cassidy  25:26

Or the turn, he’s kind of popularizing that terminology. Yeah, he doesn’t like the orb so much, but I’ve always called it The Lord of the… Anyway…

 

Jenn Zahrt  25:33

yeah know, I love how the terminology will shift and morph as we work through all of these things, especially as the various translation projects proceed over time. Cool.

 

So if you were going to suggest some books for beginners, because I feel like the books that you’ve chosen to take with you, besides maybe the dictionary are pretty high level, foundational, But also not necessarily where you’d want to begin learning about astrology. So if you were going to be professor of astrology and give someone some assignments, where would you start them?

 

Camm Cassidy  26:03

Well, the first one, if I can, like sneak it in, it’s really, again, it’s foundational. And I think everyone should read it. It’s The Corpus Hermeticum. You know, this is the foundation for the theological, philosophical, metaphysical underpinnings of the entire western Hermetic tradition, which includes astrology, and alchemy, and magic, and all of these concurrent sciences that were gelling together in the zeitgeist of the ancient world. And I think having a really deep knowledge of, again, not just like, what the metaphysical perspective was, behind what this astrology was, and why it works, and what we’re doing when we’re casting charts. But really, I think it also serves to remind people that, you know, it’s like we can be so I don’t know, maybe I’m projecting but like, I think studying astrology really takes us up, you know, from the earth. And I think the Corpus Hermeticum is so important, because it reminds us why we’re down here to bring that Heaven down to earth. And so I think it’s just beautiful for, you know, everyone to maybe just peek into what Hermes has to inspire all the students of the hermetic lineage with those ideas about transcendence of, of our reality.

 

But I would universally recommend Astrology and the Authentic Self by Demetra, George to anyone who’s looking to get started with astrology, because this is a really wonderful primer on again, like, it’s that piece of, okay, you have to kind of get all the base ideas and the symbols, but she really takes the reader step by step in weaving them into making meaning in a chart. And I think it’s a great gateway for people who maybe have some familiarity with modern astrology, it’s great because it’s going to reinforce all those things, but also offer gateways into the traditional perspective. But it’s still a universal place, anyone I think can enter with this text.

 

And then should anyone want to go further, and offer what I really do think is pretty exceptional and unique, would be Rhetorius the Egyptian, you know, sort of mysterious figure, we have this Compendium that was translated by James Holden. And it’s pretty unique in the sense that he actually includes a lot of really powerful chapters on Chart synthesis. And what it means to you know, he describes all these things, the Part of Fortune and the part of spirit, the prenatal, whatever. But he actually tells you, unlike most authors in the tradition, what it means to look at all those things in an order, and pick apart what they mean and how they work together. And that’s really valuable for anyone who’s already learning traditional astrology, to read why you have all these little pieces and what they mean when they work together. And I’d say that’s why he is invaluable to students who want to really put together their knowledge of traditional ancient methods of astrology.

 

Jenn Zahrt  28:42

Very cool. So if you were to cut your teeth on Rhetorius, and then make your way to Sahl, what would that shift feel like in terms of expanding the horizon of astrology? Like, what was that like for you?

 

Camm Cassidy  28:55

Well, with Rhetorius, again, it’s like, this is just sort of, you know, the manuscripts and papers that have kind of been shuffled and compiled and brought together to give us like this book here that we have from the AFA, like, Thank you, but we don’t really know exactly what that original manuscript entailed. So there are still some missing links, which solve, you know, if someone were to go from one to the other, will blow out of the water with such complex detail that is just so organized for a student to understand and read an order. And see, it’s like, why we look at like, what is sitting in a house? Where’s the ruler of the house? Is there a lot, you know, or a special point that we can look at to find more information about a specific topic, Sahl just does everything in a really neat way, which became sort of standard around that time in the medieval period, to really talk about house by house. How do you tell someone about everything going on in their life, so it’ll blow that out of the water. All the roots are here. And as we said earlier, this guy was the link that brought that transmission of the Hellenistic corpus of texts into the medieval period. So this is crucial for that reason as well. There’s sort of like a kind of symbiotic linkage that I felt like moving through that, because there are elements of notorious that are definitely more distinctly medieval that don’t feel like violence when you’re reading violence. And like talking about like Mercury and Venus and Mars as like significant matters of someone’s life work. And like what you’re doing out in the world, you know, we have that inventory. It’s like, there’s lots of those evolutions that we see where he kind of bridges that gap. And so I feel like victorious is a really powerful figure because he’s kind of straddling both of those traditions and really gearing his information towards synthesis for students to grasp and put it all together.

 

Jenn Zahrt  30:39

yeah, awesome. Yeah. Start at the root and branch out from there. Very cool. So if you wanted to have people find you, what are you working on right now? And where can people find out more about your work in astrology?

 

Camm Cassidy  30:51

Yeah, so my handle website, everything. You can find me on Instagram and Twitter @omegastrology or Omegastrology.com. And yeah, right now I’m working on a presentation I’m going to be doing in Salem, Massachusetts, next week is Saturday, May 6 (2023), on using triplicity in astrology. And yeah, I have to say that it was brought first to my attention from your work on triplicity. And like we were talking about those kind of early methods of using it for amazing nuance and talking about different house topics. Yeah, we’ll be looking at Dorotheus’s approach to using triplicity and understanding periods of eminence and power in people’s life, but also just like, you know, looking at Venus, it’s like, how does love kind of begin and culminate and change for people? So, yeah, we’ll look at a variety of different methods to really get more nuanced with the use of triplicity. If people are curious to learn more about that they can go on my website and register for that.

 

Jenn Zahrt  31:46

Very cool. Well, thank you for taking time to tell me about your favorite astrology books, and I hope to have you back.

 

Camm Cassidy  31:53

Awesome. Thank you so much for having me, Jenn. And thank you to everyone else who’s listening and please support CAELi. CAELi is absolutely going to just be taking off in the next few years. I’m so excited to be able to be on the channel here and be on the podcast and help support it. So if people are curious, go become a member at CAELi I can’t support enough all the awesome things that are happening there. So I just wanted to shout that out too.

 

Jenn Zahrt  32:15

Thank you so much Camm. That’s awesome. Thank you. And yes, everybody come over and visit and let’s keep talking about these books and learn from them and get super excited. So awesome. Have a great day, everybody.

 

Camm Cassidy  32:27

Thanks, everyone. Bye bye.