Postby Jim Eshelman on Thu Nov 26, 2015 7:36 pm
Arena wrote:
I just bumped into this pdf book online.
One GREAT thing about this book is that it has excellent diagrams of how great circles behave on the celestial sphere. These are hard to come by. I've long had this information integrated into my cells from work with a celestial globe, visualizations outside, etc. so that I think three-dimensionally (actually, four-dimensionally, since it's set in motion through time) about a horoscope, and this makes moving through multiple frames of reference easy most of the time. This is a big hurdle we have to overcome in teaching astrology, because the usual flat chart has people thinking in a single framework and 2-D. I did a small bit toward pushing this multi-framework thinking in SMA, but I don't do pictures - I do words - and someone needs to create an interactive multi-framework great circle rotation software (preferably as a web site) to get this readily available.
Meanwhile, the best thing we can do is a book like this one that DOES do illustrations and is not shy about doing them abundantly. Patiently, even tediously going through every illustration in the book until you understand it on paper AND understand what it looks like when you stare at the sky, will provide you big, important gains.
BTW, my concept for the software / web site for this: For any given moment in time and location in space, generate a SIMPLE sphere (2-D circle) like the ones in this book where (with check-boxes of something similar) you can turn on all the major great circles (equator, ecliptic, horizon, meridian, prime vertical) and their poles, and optionally turn on (as simple points/spots with glyphs) the planets, and then drag the diagram to spin it, change its orientation, etc., and slowly let it animate through time (at a pace of about 1 minute per second) to watch the changes. Anybody who has the skills should go for it!
Now, back to the book.
I was primary directions in high school with trig tables, and I can recommend nothing better if your goal is to be completely socially alienated for days and weeks at a time while using and rechecking eight-digit decimals and going through vast amounts of ink and paper
Solar Fire calculates these for you, but I've never checked to confirm how they are doing it. I wanted to learn this because all the classic texts all said that Primary Directions are as important as Secondary Directions and they seemed some Holy Grail to pursue. I ended up concluding that there isn't anything to planet-to-planet primaries (and angle-to-planet primaries are already built into what we do anyway under other names).
I still think this is likely the case.
SORTING THROUGH IT
Let's start with the name: "Primary" direction means that it is based on the primary motion of the heavens, i.e., the rotation of the primum mobile. In short, this means nothing more than the rotation of the sky due to the turning of the earth. Primary directions ask the question, "What aspects are formed in a mundane/non-zodiacal framework when you don't change the planet positions at all, but only rotate the sky?"
Cutting through it: What Tropicalists usually call "The Progressed Horoscope" is a mixture of Primary Directions and Secondary Progressions because it is Secondaries with the angles being calculated as if they were Primaries. It requires that these two frameworks (Primaries and Secondaries) interact validly with each other, and there is widespread agreement that they do. (Agreement doesn't mean it's true, of course
But I do think this one is true.)
Major problem to be overcome: Determining the right rate or rotation. Historically the main debate has been between 1° vs. Naibod. For a long time I took Naibod in RA as the best method of rotation. I now think this is untrue, and the right rate is identical with Solar Arcs.
Primaries involving angles: This is the easy part, and the book covers it first. Good! We find these by picking our progressed Midheaven rate in Solar Fire and calculating them like secondaries EXCEPT that only gives ecliptical aspects. Pure Primary Direction doctrine requires that these angular contacts be calculated mundanely, the book shows one way, SF does it by trial and error or a little manual calculation.
Primaries involving planet-to-planet: Here is where I think the classic system described in the book is useless.
WHY ARE PLANET-TO-PLANET USELESS?
They're all based on semi9-arcs! This is the foundation of the whole system. It is also the foundation of the Placidus house system. But let's be clear: I don't dismiss semi-arcs because they're the basis of Placidus; rather, I dismiss Placidus because it's based on semi-arcs.
The semi-arc of a planet is the time it takes to move from IC to Ascendant (if below the horizon) or Ascendant to MC (if above the horizon). (It's a semi-arc, or half-arc, because the arcs on either side of the meridian are equal. Ascendant-to-MC is exactly the same as MC-to-Descendant for a fixed point.)
Using semi-arcs requires that a planet actually rises or sets at the specified location. If the geographic location is too close to the poles, the planet will never rise or set, and therefore the planet CEASES TO EXIST in a semi-arc based horoscope.
Not only could I not find sufficient working cases on Primaries (which is a real let-down after months of tedious manual calculation), but understanding what I just wrote blows the whole thing out of the water: A system theoretically fails if it drops planets out of the chart altogether as one moves farther from the equator, and completely excludes ALL planets from a horoscope for one-fourth of the earth. It is no argument to me that almost nobody lives in that one-fourth of the earth; that's a happy accident independent of astrology.
BUT, ARE PRIMARIES POSSIBLE?
Still, the nagging idea kept hanging in there... maybe we just don't know the math right. Maybe the basic concept is right, but the semi-arc delivery method is the flaw.
In theory, the basic theory is compelling: Just rotate the celestial sphere (at a rate to be determined empirically, which is somewhere near 1°/year) and see what new aspects are formed by the new mundane positions of the planets to (1) the birth mundane positions and (2) each other. If (big if at this point) the theory is sound, then we just have to find the right mundane framework.
Based on other work, in every other area of astrology I've explored, it seems most likely this would be Prime Vertical longitude. PV longitude exists for all points on the globe exact exactly at the poles (and that's just because you can't determine the meridian circle). Even one millimeter away from the poles, it works!
Cool! Let's do it, right? Well, even with good computer resources, I've never been motivated enough to do all the work necessary to substantiate this. Here's how you could test it in Solar Fire if you want.
FIRST: Calculate the natal chart and its mundoscope.
SECOND: Decide what annual rate you are going to test and set the Angle Progressions to this, e.g., I'll test Solar Arc in Longitude since that now seems to me the best primary rate (since it's what seems to work most exactly for "The Progressed Horoscope," so-called.)
THIRD: Pick an event, and calculate Secondary Progressions. Steps 2 & 3 will also cause the angles to rotate at the presumed Primary rate ("presumed" meaning, the rate we are testing).
Now, the challenge is not to move the planets, but just the sphere, and to make sure we recalculate the mundoscope for the natal chart, at the same latitude, but with a different RAMC. This produces the same effect as rotating the natal by the specified amount. So...
FOURTH: From the Reports page, subtract the RAMC of the natal chart from the RAMC of the progressed chart. For example, my natal chart has RAMC 85°31' (the same as LST 5:42:03). For June 5, 1975, my progressed chart (using SA Long rate) has RAMC 107°48'. Subtracting gives the amount of rotation of the celestial sphere, 22°17'.
FIFTH: We need to trick Solar Fire into rotating the sphere. Think this through: We want to increase the RAMC of the natal chart by this amount without changing anything else. The way to do this is to change the geographic longitude, i.e., relocate the birth chart eastward an equivalent amount of geographic longitude without altering the geographic latitude. I was born at 86°13' West, so subtracting 22°17; from this gives a fake birth longitude of 63W56. So I relocate my birth chart to 63W56, but keeping my birth date and time, birth time zone, and birth latitude 41N04 intact.
SIXTH: A test that you did it right: The resulting chart should have exactly the same Asc and MC as the Progressed Chart you calculated earlier.
SEVENTH: Calculate the mundoscope of this chart. This is your PV-longitude based Primary Directed natal chart for that date.
EIGHT: Look for partile aspects between the mundoscope of the primary chart and the mundoscope of the natal chart, and new partile aspects in the Primary chart.
RESULTS IN THE SAMPLE
For this date - a date that completely changed my life forever, altering everything about where I was an where I was going - the above gives the following partile aspects. (Use my chart as a practice chart and see if you get the same results.) NOTE on applying/separating: Remember that Primary directed planets are moving counter-clockwise, i.e., in what normally looks like retrograde motion.
d. Sun -60- r. Uranus 0°09' sep.
d. Sun -60- r. Jupiter 0°30' sep.
d. Mercury -60- r. Neptune 0°35' sep.
d. Venus -0- r. Saturn 0°28' ap.
d. Pluto -90- r. Saturn 0°09' sep.
d. Uranus -120- r. Saturn 0°38' ap.
d. Jupiter -120- r. Saturn 0°55' ap.
d. Jupiter-Uranus conj. 0°13' [aspect exists in natal]
d. Venus-Jupiter trine 0°10' [aspect exists in natal]
d. Venus-Jupiter trine 0°27' [aspect exists in natal]
d. Venus-Pluto sq. 0°37' [aspect exists in natal]
d. Neptune-Pluto sex. 0°37' [aspect exists in natal]
Overall, this is a pretty good description of the event! It is the evening my wife and I separated, I boarded an airplane for the first time in my life, and flew to California where my real destiny (and the whole of my adult life) awaited me. Two strong indications didn't need any of this, because they were available from the first progressed chart calculation, p. MC sq. r. Sun 0°10', and progressed Moon entering Sagittarius that day. But the rest - centered on the Venus-Pluto direction to natal Saturn, and the other support aspects - is quite descriptive. Not bad for one example pulled out of the air that I've never checked before!
Jim Eshelman
I knew this: After leisurely reading Tropical astrology books for 12 years I was sorely disappointed with the results but it at least built certain foundations where I could compare Tropical & Sidereal astrology. When I read Jim’s book I said to myself: Maybe this is what I have been searching for--offering more/better astro truths pertaining to the history of astrology. Then I got my first computer and my first astro program NOVA and started calculating dozens/hundreds of Sidereal Astrology charts, and it did not take me long to realize much astrological truths with the entire field of Sidereal Astrology. I was hooked, and pursued Sidereal Astrology with a passion, and here I am united with Jim’s Forum. You never know where one’s destiny will take you, but I sure am glad Jim’s destiny took him to California uniting him with the Sidereal Astrology movement.