Predictive Methods

franniee

The date for the surgery was a Thursday in November a week or 10 days before the major plane crash in the rockaways. My first appt after I got out of the hospital was the morning the plane crashed and the city went into lock own and we couldn't leave. Let me se if I can figure the date out
 

franniee

Ok the date for the surgery was nov 1 2001. I got out of the hospital that Sunday which would have been the 4th. the plane crash was the 12 a Monday when I had my follow up with the surgeon. I got out of the hospital a few days early because I protested. Not a hospital gal. :D

Yes I had a fusion of my lower spine. L4-s1.
 

Barleywine

Third, relative to Tropical Solar Returns, there are several broad approaches that have been developed and practiced over the centuries. The Siderealists take a very different approach than what the Tropicalists take --- they focus on angles and a number of secondary and supportive charting techniques. My approach uses p.c. Solar Returns and a very different related set of daily charts.

This seems like a good place to pose this question since I've become interested in solar returns in general and precession-corrected returns in particular as I continue to work on rectifying my father's natal chart. I've been using solar returns for years but never in a very systematic way, preferring secondary progressions, solar-arc directions and transits. But I'm now getting around to reading a couple of books I've had for a long time but never spent any time with.

I just finished Ray Merriman's "The Solar Return Book of Prediction." It has a very clearly-written basic explanation of how to interpret the SR chart in relation to the natal planets and angles. The only new thing in it for me is that I've always related the SR planets and angles to the natal chart structure rather than the other way around. But his explanation of the SR chart as providing a "structure of experience" for the coming year, into which the natal planets and angles are placed, seems sensible. Oh, and he does have an explanation of the "antiscion" (it basically looks like a "parallel" to me) that agrees with what I learned here.

Jim Eshelman's "Interpreting Solar Returns" is up next, and it seems much more dense. I already see that he has an Appendix entry describing how to correct for precession in a SR chart. Although his SVP table only goes up to 1995, I found that the American Ephemeris has an SVP entry for each month. If it's really that simple, I just need to add 1 degree 13 minutes and 20 seconds of arc to my Dad's natal Sun to bring it up to the corrected value for his 87th year. My question is: Is Eshelman's book a good source, or is there a better one I should get my hands on?

I will be getting Fagan and Firebrace's sidereal "Primer" (which is still available at a reasonable price) but want the best specific reference on Solar Returns available (I also have Bernadette Brady's "The Eagle and the Lark" and Mary Shea's "Planets in Solar Returns" but the former has a much broader scope and the latter seems more like a reference book rather than one to read for comprehension of the subject).
 

Barleywine

Software for Primary Directions

Is anyone using Ed Falis's freeware Astroframes to calculate primary directions? According to his website, it calculates classical Ptolemaic directions and classical Placidean mundo directions, with other methods coming later. It uses the Swiss Ephemeris. I downloaded it and will give it a try.
 

Minderwiz

Is anyone using Ed Falis's freeware Astroframes to calculate primary directions? According to his website, it calculates classical Ptolemaic directions and classical Placidean mundo directions, with other methods coming later. It uses the Swiss Ephemeris. I downloaded it and will give it a try.

In terms of your reading list, you might well add Primary Directions, by Martin Gansten, which was recently published by Wessex Astrologer. It looks at both the mechanics and theories of Primary Directions both ancient and modern.

Gansten also rates various software that attempts to calculate Primaries. He actually mentions Astrframes and says that it calculates correctly. Apparently though it only calculates converse directions in the modern sense, not the classical sense, so it would not do for me, as I need the classical version.

Gansten's choice is Morinus (only the 'modern' was available at the time of writing but the traditional is simply a sub-set of it). Gansten says that it by far surpasses most commercial software (for Primaries) and says he warmly recommends it to students of Primaries.

If you decide to buy his book (and I highly recommend it) be aware that he uses the sidereal zodiac for his natal charts (using the Krishnamurti ayanamsa) - which is only mentioned in the preface. As he shifts between tropical and sidereal zodiacs on occasion but without explicitly saying so, it can be a bit confusing if you've not read the preface LOL

Nevertheless this book is highly recommended.
 

Barleywine

In terms of your reading list, you might well add Primary Directions, by Martin Gansten, which was recently published by Wessex Astrologer. It looks at both the mechanics and theories of Primary Directions both ancient and modern.

Gansten also rates various software that attempts to calculate Primaries. He actually mentions Astrframes and says that it calculates correctly. Apparently though it only calculates converse directions in the modern sense, not the classical sense, so it would not do for me, as I need the classical version.

Gansten's choice is Morinus (only the 'modern' was available at the time of writing but the traditional is simply a sub-set of it). Gansten says that it by far surpasses most commercial software (for Primaries) and says he warmly recommends it to students of Primaries.

If you decide to buy his book (and I highly recommend it) be aware that he uses the sidereal zodiac for his natal charts (using the Krishnamurti ayanamsa) - which is only mentioned in the preface. As he shifts between tropical and sidereal zodiacs on occasion but without explicitly saying so, it can be a bit confusing if you've not read the preface LOL

Nevertheless this book is highly recommended.

That one is on my list. I'm currently reading Charles Jayne's "Progressions and Directions" published in rather "home-made" fashion by his Astrological Bureau back in the '70s. Since I have Riyal set up for sidereal, I can very easily produce sidereal natal charts to use with Gansten's method. I really need to read Fagan and Firebrace's "Primer of Sidereal Astrology" before I venture into that territory, though.
 

Minderwiz

That one is on my list. I'm currently reading Charles Jayne's "Progressions and Directions" published in rather "home-made" fashion by his Astrological Bureau back in the '70s. Since I have Riyal set up for sidereal, I can very easily produce sidereal natal charts to use with Gansten's method. I really need to read Fagan and Firebrace's "Primer of Sidereal Astrology" before I venture into that territory, though.

There's no need to mug up on sidereal approaches for Gansten's book. It only becomes an issue if you try to follow his worked example (using a calculator or a spreadsheet). This is not necessary for understanding the principles, as he confines the calculation to an appendix. However being something of a masochist, I decided to try and work through the calculations to test my understanding.

The problem comes when he uses an example from earlier in the book. In the example Mercury is quoted at 15, 17 Cancer but in the example of the detailed calculation Mercury's longitude is quoted as 128 degrees 25 minutes. Now 15, 17 Cancer translates into a longitude of 105 degrees 17 minutes and I found it virtually impossible to understand why he claimed that longitude until I noticed he said tropical longitude. I had the faint recollection of him mentioning his use of the sidereal zodiac in the preface, (at the other end of the book and read several days prior). So I checked the difference between the Krishnamurti sidereal Vernnal equinox and the tropical vernal equinox and found that the difference was 23 degrees 56 minutes, whereas in the calculation the difference is 23 degrees 8 minutes - so the next issue was to explain the discrepencey between the two 'differences'. The answer is that the person was born about 57.6 years ago. Remember that precesion is a continuing phenomenon. And this precession over someone's life has the same impact on PDs as it does for Solar Returns

It became clear that in order to do the calculation it's necessary to convert sidereal longitude into tropical longitude, because of the nature of the spherical geometry involved.

Now if I'd not waded into the calculation line by line, I'd not have become confused and tracked it down to Gansten's use of sidereal charts and the need to convert to tropical in order to do the maths. But as you're mathematically inclined (like me) you may well come across the same headache LOL.
 

Barleywine

It became clear that in order to do the calculation it's necessary to convert sidereal longitude into tropical longitude, because of the nature of the spherical geometry involved.

Now if I'd not waded into the calculation line by line, I'd not have become confused and tracked it down to Gansten's use of sidereal charts and the need to convert to tropical in order to do the maths. But as you're mathematically inclined (like me) you may well come across the same headache LOL.

The spherical geometry involved confused me to no end when I first started out. I finally had to draw my own 3D model just to figure out what was going on in three-dimensional space with all these planes and angles.

On this very (or at least related) topic, this evening I unearthed a 1976 Journal of Geocosmic Research in which Rob Hand explained why it's more accurate to use geographic/astronomical latitude in chart calculation rather than geocentric latitude. It has to do with the Earth being an oblate sphere, flattened a bit on the top and bottom. For years I always made the 11' subtraction from the atlas values to make this correction. I didn't notice the option being offered in the computer programs I use now. Wonder which one they use.
 

Minderwiz

The spherical geometry involved confused me to no end when I first started out. I finally had to draw my own 3D model just to figure out what was going on in three-dimensional space with all these planes and angles.

On this very (or at least related) topic, this evening I unearthed a 1976 Journal of Geocosmic Research in which Rob Hand explained why it's more accurate to use geographic/astronomical latitude in chart calculation rather than geocentric latitude. It has to do with the Earth being an oblate sphere, flattened a bit on the top and bottom. For years I always made the 11' subtraction from the atlas values to make this correction. I didn't notice the option being offered in the computer programs I use now. Wonder which one they use.

Yes I must admit that I had to puzzle a bit over the spherical geometry (SG) in Gansten, as my maths is statistics based not geometrical LOL.

Whilst some knowledge of SG is necessary I have a philosophical problem with it. That is, to what extent, if any, does a given increase in our SG accuracy lead to a measurable increase in the accuracy of our Astrology. I think we need to here distinguish between Natal delineation and prediction. I don't think any increase in SG accuracy has a discernable impact on natal delineation. Indeed I see no a priori reason why a reading from a Whole Signs chart should not be as useful as reading from a quadrant systems based chart - notice I use the word useful rather than accurate here. The emphasis of the reading might be different but it may still produce at least as useful insights into the native's character. The same holds true for different quadrant systems being used or indeed using the sidereal rather than tropical zodiac.

When it comes to prediction, the situation may be different. Quadrant systems were introduced to support the predictive technique of Primary Directions, which does depend on measuring (by space or time) the progres of a degree of the zodiac between two point in the sky - for example the position of a planet at birth and the point of the Ascendant. That clearly does require some use of SG. This problem is compounded if we wish to measure the progress of a planet to the degree of a natal house cusp, because it appears to require us to come up with an accurate system of identifying the intermediate house cusps - the angles themselves are more easily identified.

In principle this appears to suggest that if we can improve our SG we will automatically improve our predictions. However to what extent is this possible - can we achieve 100% accuracy or is there a point at which further increases in the accuracy of SG have no discernable effect - possibly because of random error in human behaviour - we are not entirely automatons, or alternatively because if we can't come up with a definitive house system, does an improvement elsewhere in our SG, get lost in the grey area or where house cusps lie.

Astrology is primarily divination - an attempt to read the mind of God. It might make more use of mathematics than most other types of divination but is the mind of God, amenable to total description by mathematics and is the Astrologer the passive applicant of mathematical rules that yield the required knowledge or does he or she have an interaction with the mind of God that is difficult (or impossible?) to express in a mathematical way.

We are after all studying Astrology - the word or message of the stars, not Astrophysics - the physical properties and dynamic processes of celestial objects. The latter might well be very helpful in establishing the context of the message but the message is more than the properties and processes.
 

dadsnook2000

Some comments

This subject of spherical geometry and its impact on charts is a very large subject. I will attempt to reduce it to its bare minimum, always a dubious course of action.

NATAL charts are really models that include some"actuality" in the sky patterns and much that cannot be seen such as sign boundaries, houses, etc. If the model works, it works.

Once we "MOVE" or "ANIMATE" the chart in some way we start to encounter issues related to spherical geometry. We all know this. Because of the inclination of the equator to the ecliptic, there are places and times when one's positional calculations (by hand or computer) yield distortions of one kind or another. An example is that one sees the Moon at the Descendant angle in a chart, yet due to its its orbital position relative to the nodal axis it is really out of sight below the horizon at the chart's calculated time --- it's actual position being "projected" upward by the calculation to the ecliptic where we measure our longitudinal position (zodiac), different from the equator where we measure our locational position.

This is one reason why many astrological programs offer a speculum table --- it calls our attention to these spherical geometry issues. OUR EARLY STUDIES LIST MEMBERS should look at these rising-setting-culminating tables to find instances for themselves. Latitude matters --- the questions are A) by how much, and B) should you care? Dave