Robert Schmidt’s project (short version)
I would like to say a word or two about Robert Schmidt’s project; about what he was trying to do. In terms of translation, Robert took his role as translator very seriously. More, it seems to me, than most. His goal was to recreate in common English an experience similar to what an ancient Greek would have experienced reading the original texts. He didn’t want simply to transliterate technical terms like horoscopos and zoidion, or gloss them by using familiar equivalents like ascendant and sign. He didn’t want to do this because the words used by the ancient Greek authors were meaningfully evocative in ways that our modern equivalents are not, and he wanted us to experience the implications of the words chosen by the founders of Hellenistic astrology—which he considered to have been chosen very carefully. But there is a world of difference between modern English and ancient Greek. The languages do not simply line up in rows of words neatly equivalent to one another. This is why Robert talked a lot about trying to match up the semantic fields of words. It took him time and a lot of study—not only of the language, but of the Hellenistic astrological system—to come up with suitable English words that not only by themselves but together could represent the vision of astrology he was discovering in the ancient texts.
This really makes up what was the core of his endeavour. He wasn’t trying to establish himself in a professorial role as the academic-like explainer of ancient Hellenistic astrology—a role many of his detractors have fairly fallen over themselves to fill. He understood a measure of that would be unavoidable, for people would need help to understand. But that wasn’t his primary goal. His project was to leave us with fresh access to ancient knowledge. He was trying to give the original system of Hellenistic horoscopic astrology a new birth. That is why when he would sign the inside cover of Definitions and Foundations he would write, “Toward the restoration of the astrological tradition.” And that is why he and his partner, Ellen Black, chose the image of a mummy being watered by a servant, with wheat sprouting from the casket for the bottom of the title page. That was his goal; to rebirth this ancient astrology and give it new life.
If he had been able to complete his intended project, we would have all of the ancient Greek astrological texts available to us in carefully chosen English translation—not technical transliteration—complete with accompanying notes and explanations, in what he envisioned to be a thirty volume set. Can you imagine? The first volume was intended to be a companion volume, full of technical information like tables and diagrams and a glossary of terms that would be handy for reference alongside while reading the other volumes. The last volume was to be a kind of summary of the collection, meant to clarify the shape and form of the original astrological system underlying the collection of ancient texts. In between there were to be twenty-eight volumes of translation, beginning with the all-important Definitions and Foundations, which would provide the key to understanding the rest. Twenty-eight volumes to match the twenty-eight shafts of “mummy wheat” growing from the watered casket. And when you subtract Definitions and Foundations—which arguably stands apart on its own compared to the ancient texts—twenty-seven volumes would remain, matching the twenty-seven days of the moon’s sidereal cycle. Altogether, thirty volumes; translated ancient texts, twenty-seven. Thirty and twenty-seven: the two minor periods of Saturn, and the idealised periods of the lunar month as measured by synodic and sidereal cycles respectively. It would have been glorious. It pains my heart every time I see the numeral “2” marked on the solitary spine of Definitions and Foundations. But I’m grateful to have at least that.