Heptazonos

hep-TA-zo-nos

greek: ἑπτάζωνος (Heptazōnos)

Definition

Heptazonos (Greek heptázōnos, 'seven-zoned') is the Hellenistic name for the layered-spheres picture of the cosmos, in which the seven traditional planets sit in nested shells around the Earth. The same word also names the standard order of the seven planets by their assumed distance from Earth — Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon — which Hellenistic astrologers used to organize their catalogues.

In Tradition

In Hellenistic cosmology and the astrology built on it, the heptazonos sets both the shape of the cosmos — seven nested planetary spheres — and the standard order in which the planets are read. It underpins the idea of the soul descending through the spheres, the way technical works arrange their planetary catalogues, and the seven-day week and Chaldean-order schemes, which all depend on that planet sequence.

In Practice

Astrologers and Hermetic writers used the heptazonos in three connected ways. As a picture of the cosmos, the seven-zone model frames the soul's descent through the planetary spheres — each sphere lending a quality picked up on the way down and shed on the way back up — a teaching developed in the Hermetica (Poimandres) and in Macrobius's Commentary on the Dream of Scipio. As a working order, technical treatises lay out their catalogues by the heptazonos: planets are introduced and combined Saturn-first, downward, rather than alphabetically. Lightfoot notes that the Pseudo-Manethonian poet bends the heptazonos by moving the Sun and Moon to the end of the sequence — a reminder that the heptazonos is the default order an author can choose to depart from. The same sequence underlies Chaldean order, the planetary day-rulers, and the Hellenistic seven-house joys scheme.

Historical Origin

The heptazonos appears in the Hellenistic Hermetica, in Pseudo-Manetho (Lightfoot 2020), and across the Greek astrological corpus. The seven-sphere cosmos is attested in Plato's Timaeus, in Ptolemy's Almagest, and in the Hermetic Corpus (1st-3rd c. CE). Macrobius, in the 5th century CE, carries the soul-descent reading into the Latin transmission.

Etymology

Origin: Greek. Meaning: Seven-zoned (seven layered shells).

Further Reading

  • J. L. Lightfoot, The Apotelesmatika of Manetho
  • Brian Copenhaver, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius
  • Claudius Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos