Daimoniodeis

Definition

Daimoniodeis (Greek δαιμονιώδεις, "daimonic") are one of the two kinds of degree the Michigan Papyrus inv. 1, 149 sorts every sign into, the counterpart to the strong degrees, the krataiai. Each quarter of the zodiac holds 42 daimonic degrees against 48 strong ones. The daimonic degrees always occupy the left side of a quadrant and fall at its end in zodiacal order. The four tropical-and-equinoctial signs — Cancer, Libra, Capricorn, Aries — are made up entirely of daimonic degrees.

In Tradition

Greenbaum, reading the papyrus, finds the daimonic side carries a faint edge of danger. Set against degrees called "strong," a word that implies authority, the daimonic ones read as anti-authoritarian, even out of control. She links them, cautiously, to two things the tradition already treated as perilous. One is the last degrees of signs, where the bounds fall to Mars or Saturn; the other is the place of the Bad Daimon, the twelfth. The clues are oblique — weak against strong, left against right, last against first — and she offers the reading as inference, not a stated doctrine of the papyrus.

In Practice

Think of this as a sub-sign layer of meaning that sits underneath the more familiar bounds and faces. A planet in a daimonic degree falls on the part of the sign the papyrus marks as the less governable side, especially toward the end of a quadrant where the harder bounds cluster. Reading a placement in one of the four wholly-daimonic signs — Cancer, Libra, Capricorn, Aries — every degree carries that cast. Hold the link to the twelfth place and the late, malefic-ruled degrees lightly, as Greenbaum does: a quiet warning to weigh, not a verdict to pronounce.

Historical Origin

The scheme survives in the Michigan Papyrus inv. 1, 149, a melothesia-plus-terms system Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum analyses in The Daimon in Hellenistic Astrology (2016), pp. 180-182, where she sets the 42 daimonic degrees against the 48 strong degrees per quadrant and gives the left/right and tropical-sign rules.

Etymology

Origin: Greek. Meaning: daimonic; of the nature of a daimon.

Further Reading

• Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum, The Daimon in Hellenistic Astrology
• Chris Brennan, Hellenistic Astrology