The Astrology Book

Hot: sanguine-choleric
Cold: melancholic-phlegmatic
Wet: sanguine-phlegmatic
Dry: choleric-melancholic
All: balanced
What may appear to be the simpler states, the single-quality ones, are actually
more complex. The reason is that the single-quality types are in fact mixtures, because
qualities do not cancel out. Having close to an even ratio of hot and cold or wet and
dry means that it is easy to become out of balance: stress, the change in season, or
even too much to drink.

—J. Lee Lehman, Ph.D.

Sources:
Gadbury, John. Genethlialogia, or The Doctrine of Nativities Together with the Doctrine of Horarie
Questions.London: J. Cottrel, 1658.
Lehman, J. Lee. Classical Astrology for Modern Living.West Chester, PA: Whitford Press, 1996.
Lilly, William. Christian Astrology Modestly Treated of in Three Books.London: T. Brudenell,
1647.

TEMPERAMENTS INJUNGIANPSYCHOLOGY

The assessment of an individual’s underlying type—his or her “complexion or tem-
perament,” as noted in William Lilly’s Christian Astrology Modestly Treated of in Three
Books—according to a fourfold division, has long been an important feature of astro-
logical work.

This system of analysis has its roots in the four elements—fire, earth, air, and
water—introduced to philosophy by Empedocles in the fifth century B.C.E. and
applied to the human organism as an analytical and explanatory tool in the form of
the four humors—choleric, melancholic, sanguine, and phlegmatic—by Hippocrates,
also in the fifth century B.C.E. Hippocrates’s use of the four humors focused on their
use for medical diagnosis. Claudius Galen, in the second century B.C.E., developed and
preserved Hippocrates’s work, and over the centuries a knowledge of the four humors
came to be the accepted frame of reference in the West for understanding a human
being. This understanding was not only for use in making a medical diagnosis, but also
for the description of character in everyday parlance. For example, such writers as
Chaucer and Shakespeare used references to the humors as a convenient shorthand
for conveying an individual’s character or mood.

The relationship between the four elements and the four humors is shown in
this table:

Element Quality Humor

Fiery Triplicity Hot and dry Choleric

Earthy Triplicity Cold and dry Melancholic

Airy Triplicity Hot and moist Sanguine

Watery Triplicity Cold and moist Phlegmatic

THEASTROLOGYBOOK [651]

Temperaments in Jungian Psychology