Graeme Tobyn - Culpepers Medicine

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Geoffrey Cornelius, Patrick Curry, Michael Mclntyre and Vernon Wells for kindly looking over the text and offering criticism and advice. I am indebted to Maggie Hyde for introducing me to Culpepers astrology all those years ago, and to Chris Hedley and Elisabeth Brooke for their tuition, support and inspiration in herbal medicine. Finally I owe much gratitude to my wife and children for tolerating me while I struggled to put together Culpepers Medicine .

This book is dedicated to my parents, Bill and Margaret.

Appendices

APPENDIX 1

The Natal Horoscope of Nicholas Culpeper

Culpepers School of Physick , published in 1659, contained a 13-page calculation and judgement on Nicholas Culpepers natal horoscope by the astrologer John Gadbury. I will use this to show the calculation of the temperament from a natal horoscope, to augment what is known of Culpepers use of the symbolism of his nativity and to examine and improve upon Gadburys own rectification of Culpepers horoscope.

Gadburys reading of Culpepers temperament from his natal horoscope was as follows:

His temperature, according to astrologers, should be melancholy-choleric, as is plain by an earthy sign ascending and Saturns position in an earthy sign also. And the Moon being among Martial fixed stars, and stars of the same nature in the ascendant are very strong testimonies of choler prevailing over this native. But the greatest argument of choler predominating I take to be the Suns reception with Mars from violent signs, which seems to signify that choler should overpower the humour of melancholy, notwithstanding an earthy sign ascending &c.

He was indeed of such a temperature. I remembered to have heard him confess that melancholy was an extraordinary enemy unto him, so great at some times that, wanting company, he would seem like a dead man. And at other times would his choler macerate him very strangely, yea, more often than the distemper of melancholy.

Culpeper offered the opinion that complexion, or temperature of body is better judged by an argument a priore than by an argument a posteriore , from the nativity than from the effects of it, for foreign climates and sickness alter the colour. The qualities of the following factors must be noted.

The sign ascending. Example: if Gemini, a hot and moist sign, ascends, it is marked hot and moist in the calculations.

The planet ruling the ascendant. Example: if Mercury is the Ascendant ruler, he is cold and dry.

The sign positions of planets in aspect to the ascendant degree. Example: if Mars in Pisces is square to the Ascendant, this is from a cold and moist sign.

The sign position of the Moon. Example: Moon in Taurus is in a cold and dry sign. If the Moon is also in the Ascendant, these qualities are doubled, eg cold 2 and dry 2 when rising in Taurus.

The sign positions of planets in aspect to the Moon.

The sign position of the dispositor of the Moon. Example: Moon in Taurus is in a sign ruled by Venus. She is thus the Moons dispositor. If she is in Aries, she is in a hot and dry sign.

The season of the year. Example: when the Sun is between the Spring equinox and the Summer solstice, in other words falling in either Aries, Taurus or Gemini, he is given the qualities of that season, namely hot and moist. When between the Summer solstice and the Autumn equinox, he is hot and dry, etc.

The sign position of the planet in the horoscope which, according to its placing, is strongest in essential and accidental fortitudes. See Lillys tables. If this planet is also the Ascendant ruler, the qualities are tripled.

To the total for each of the qualities from these factors are added the qualities of the planets according to their relationship with the Sun, as follows:

T ABLE OF QUALITIES

Clearly there is much complexity in the determination of the temperament from the natal horoscope, and in the final analysis it depends on sound astrological judgement. For if either Saturn or Mars, the intemperate malefics, aspect by conjunction, square or opposition the Moon or Ascendant (and I would include the Sun as well), they strongly tip the temperament towards melancholy or choler respectively.

T AB LE OF CALCULATION

The cold and dry qualities of melancholy stand out here. Culpeper wrote in 1650:

I am exceedingly melancholy of complexion, subject to consumptions and chilliness of my vital spirits, a slavish and sickly life being allotted to me in this city. I had the Sun opposite to Saturn in my nativity, which probably may be the natural cause of it.

Saturn as Ascendant ruler befits a scholar and Puritan such as Culpeper but he was not dour or mean-spirited because of it. Saturns conjunction with Pluto may undermine the tendency to strict orthodoxy and self-discipline, while Mars in square to and in mutual reception with the Sun provides the spark of choler, as Gadbury attests, which frequently inflamed Culpepers tinder-dry melancholic temperament.

From another point of view, the mutual reception of Mars, ruler of his house of achievement and honour, with the Sun in Scorpio culminating there, is a powerful testimony to his fame and reputation lasting way beyond his own death and even into the present day, as if the potency of his lifes work is continually renewed. Moreover, Culpeper was a revolutionary and innovator, which the trine of this Sun in Scorpio to Uranus aptly symbolizes, whose infamy among the politicians and doctors was far outweighed by his popularity among the population at large (Uranus in the 7th). Through it all, his compassion for and struggle in support of the common man and woman shine through, as perhaps the close, challenging square from Neptune in Libra to the rectified Ascendant, and his own melancholic temperament, denote.