Harpocratiaci

Definition

Harpocratiaci is the term Ashmand uses for one class within Ptolemy's ancient doctrine of defective births in Tetrabiblos III.9. The class is defined by a particular configuration: the luminaries cadent, the malefics in the angles, no support from Jupiter or Venus, with Mercury supporting. Such a birth, in Ptolemy's account, keeps human form but is marked by a defect of speech. The name is drawn from Harpocrates, the god of silence in the Greco-Egyptian pantheon.

In Tradition

Ptolemy classifies the configuration historically, within his scheme of births; the term is best read as a piece of second-century doctrine rather than a description of people. Ashmand supplies the etymology in a footnote: a Latin translation gives the word as "stammerers," and Ashmand takes the epithet — drawn from a god of silence — as Ptolemy's shorthand for impaired speech. The class belongs alongside Ptolemy's other categories of birth — configurations he reads from the chart, set out in the manner of his time, and presented here as historical doctrine and nothing more.

In Practice

Approach this as a historian of the tradition, not as a forecaster. The value of the entry is in seeing how Ptolemy organized his doctrine of births. Two things are worth noting: the configuration he attached to this class — luminaries cadent, malefics angular, the benefics absent, Mercury supporting — and how he named it. The name comes from Harpocrates, the silent god, with the Latin tradition rendering it "stammerers". Read it for what it shows of ancient interpretive method and its assumptions, the way you would read his other birth-categories. Do not turn an antique classification into a judgment about any living person or about people with speech differences.

Historical Origin

The class is named in Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos III.9, in J. M. Ashmand's 1822 translation (p. 136), within the doctrine of defective births. Ashmand's footnote records that one Latin translation renders the word "stammerers" and traces the name to Harpocrates, the god of silence, taking it to signify a defect of speech.

Etymology

Origin: Greek. Meaning: of Harpocrates, the god of silence.

Further Reading

• Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos
• James Herschel Holden, A History of Horoscopic Astrology