of the territory they transit - but Ptolemy knew naught about Transits.
Since the Sun and Moon rose to the greatest third-dimensional elevation in North declination
in Cancer and Leo, he assigned to them the Sun and Moon as Rulers. The Moon, because she
was moist, was a female, so he gave her the feminine even-numbered Sign; and since the Sun
was dry, hence masculine, he got the odd-numbered masculine Sign. The planets then had to
have two Houses each, so they could configurate with both Sun and Moon; hence Mercury,
which never gets farther away from the Sun than one Sign, he allocated to Gemini and Virgo,
a feminine one for his night house, since the moist night must of course be feminine, and a
dry masculine one for his day House. Venus, which never gets farther away from the Sun
than two Signs, necessarily came next; followed by Mars and then Jupiter - all on the same
theory. To Saturn, which was far away and hence out in the cold, was assigned the remaining
two Signs - but again a moist female one for his night home and a dry masculine one for his
day throne. From this arrangement came the Solar semicircle, and the Lunar - planets in
Aquarius to Cancer "mounting" to the Moon in the order of the Signs, and those in Capricorn
clockwise to Leo, mounting to the Sun against the order of the Signs.
After that came masculine and feminine quadrants, Signs and Houses, and masculine and
feminine planets, whereby any House, whether or not tenanted, could be delineated by joining
them up in sundry ways through this consideration of sex.
The idea that a female is moist is repugnant, and has nothing to do with planets moving in
cycles. He started by classifying adjacent Signs into pairs according to sex "as the male is
coupled with the female" - yet throughout his entire application of the sex principle he
reversed his logic to emphasize the unfavorable influence to which a male planet is subjected
when tenanting a female area - and the reverse.
It is small wonder that Wilson, a man of strong opinions but penetrating vision, said of the
Ptolemy classification of planets as masculine and feminine that "it is an idle distinction, and
no more founded on reason than his essential dignities." Pointing out that Placidus also
differed with Ptolemy in the matter, he remarks that "this is not to be wondered at, when he
differed so much in opinion with himself." Then he adds, as a sage piece of advice: "I would
advise the student to give himself no trouble about the sex of the planets, but to study their
influence."
Ptolemy's emphasis on heat and cold, moisture and dryness, may be valid, but can only be
accepted when verified by scientific demonstration. Arrived at by a loose symbolic analogy
tied in with sex, they are unworthy of perpetuation in our modern terminology. Actually they
mean nothing to today's astrology, for through the accumulated testimony of research,