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"Tetrabiblos" by Ptolemy

book review by Riley Burnham 12/22/2023

wow(!!) something ~very~ different -- a turn-of-AD classic regarding, essentially, astrology

Ptolemy here [possibly a legendary figure, or pseudonym -- who knows] gives us the interrelationships between celestial objects above & how they affect us

i was glad to read that the 'horoscopes' as we know them are derived from at least something... here we see it's relative warmness/coldness & wet/dry, for instance, like the sun being hot & dry & the moon being cold & moist

w/ those parameters, it seems that a LOT is derived/fleshed out, including ulcers, monstrous children, long life, rheumatism...

i had to take a few grains of salt w/ this stuff -- on the one hand, i'm most excited for his other major work, "Almagest," which is the brunt of Astronomy knowledge from the ancients... a compendium

in Tetrabiblos we get some of that as well as interesting terms [like horoscope, occident, orient...] which are used somewhat differently than colloquially

​​​​​​​anywho, i'm glad i read it