HISTORY
It’s safe to say the Wheel of Pythagoras is hundreds of years old. According to Jim Baker in The Cunning Man’s Handbook, Book of Fate-style divination tools, derived from Arabic sources, first started showing up in Europe in the Middle Ages. I speculate it may have been one of those cross-pollination-of-cultures phenomena which accompanied the Crusades. I first came across the Wheel of Pythagoras in Grand Orient’s Manual of Cartomancy, but the earliest published version of this divination tool appeared in Samuel Strangehope’s Book of Knowledge, published in London in 1663, according to Baker.
Given the astrological referents of so many of the answers, it seems likely an astrologer created the Wheel of Pythagoras. Subsequent editions of the wheel also appeared in the chapbook, the Original Book of Knowledge, published in 1725, and Raphael’s The Familiar Astrologer, published in 1828.
One marked feature of these three different editions of the Wheel of Pythagoras is the quartering of the inner part of the circle into Long-Term and Short-Term answers, and Fortunate(lucky) and Evil(unlucky) answers. Though there is some overlap in the distribution of the short-term/long-term and lucky/unlucky, there is a bit of variance between Strangehope’s book, the Book of Knowledge and the Familiar Astrologer, as to which number goes in what quarter. I surmise this quartering may have been featured in the Wheel of Pythagoras in order to serve as a visual clue to the consultant or their client as to the fundamentally positive or negative nature of the potential answers. In other words, the consultant could’ve used the wheel to give the inquirer an immediate, off-the-cuff judgement like ‘bad news, and it’s going to last a long time’ or ‘good news, but only in the short-term.’
I think it’s up to the inquirer to decide if the answer they receive is a good or bad one. Sometimes, a so-called ‘bad’ answer is actually what an inquirer is looking for! Then again, I haven’t sat down to figure out why each author arranged the quartering the way they did. Below is a PDF of the chart above, showing the division of the questions, for those who wish to study the matter in more depth.
Reblogged this on Evolution Vault50.
I was confused with ‘the day of the month you were born’ part until I realized you meant the date. Put it simply:
The DAY I was born on was Monday. The Date was the 15th.
In the book you mention it says ‘add to this the date of the day of the month on which you were born’ and the example in the book the date is used.
Sorry for the confusion. I may have to re-write that part one of these days.
Are you still active around this site?
Hi are you still around?
Yes, I’m still active. When there is a large gap in my posts, it’s because I’m working on another divination lesson post. If I ever decide to go inactive and end the site, I’ll certainly let everyone know.