Solunars by Aldebaran Sidereal Academy

This is really cool! It could be cooler... but it is nearly a perfect version of something I've wanted for, oh, like, forever. It uses a tool almost nobody knows exists in Solar Fire called Multiwheel Superimposition. When I learned about it, I couldn't think of any reason I'd ever want to use it, but thought I should keep it in the back of my head. Today, I realized jhow it might be useful.

Look at the very weird-looking wheel below. At a glance, it looks like all the planet pairs are in the same place. On closer look, the Saturn on Ascendant in the inside ring is at 2°27' Scorpio and, right next to it, is Saturn on the outside ring at 0°55' "Aries." Huh? How did I get the "Aries" position to come out next to the Scorpio position? (And all the rest?) Ah, that's the interesting trick.

The inside ring is the actual chart. In this case (not that it matters), it's the Arisolar before the Hotel New World in Singapore in 1986. The outside is its mundoscope! (Except, the mundoscope is drawn as a Z-Analogue (zodiacal analogue) of the Prime Vertical. 0°55' Aries means 0°55' in the 1st house, or 0°55' below Ascendant. 1°34' Cancer means 1°34' in the 4th house (1°34' west of IC). Ideally, I'd redisplay this mundoscope without signs, since the signs aren't real - they're just a display trick. But for the current purposes, we don't have that option.

Quite often I want to display a chart and show - at a single glance - both the zodiacal positions and the mundane positions. I didn't think that was possible; but here it is. In looking at this ingress, for example (just start with the inside ring, ignore the outside) you see that for this destructive, deadly event we have Saturn rising and Mars setting. The outside ring tells us that Saturn, indeed, is less than a degree from Asc but Mars is more than 5° below Descendant. Moon and Jupiter are also foreground, and we can see the mundane square between Moon and Saturn - 1°34' "Cancer" squares 0°55' "Aries" within 0°39'. But we simultaneously can see the exact Moon-Mars eclptical square with Moon 27°38' Capricorn square Mars 27°11' Aries (and Moon at the degree of Mars' exaltation), information that would have been lost if I'd just shown the mundoscope.

If you've been using Solar Fire to examine ingresses and solunar returns for a while, take a close look at this: It's a convenience outside the dreams (or existing only in the dreams!) of our predecessors. We've been able to do this for a while but I didn't know it.

So... how does one do this? First, calculate both the base chart and its mundoscope. Then, open them in a two-wheel. Next, right-click anywhere on the blank white background of the chart and pick Multiwheel Superimposition. This has many options, and you will see, by default, it is set to "Zodiacal (Normal)," meaning that when one wheel is superimposed around the outside of the other, they are both lined up with the zodiac. (That's the norm.)

Now, instead, select "By Exact Position of Selected Points" and in the two blanks beneath select Ascendant both both. This means that a second chart put around the outside will no longer follow the zodiac but, instead, will align its Ascendant with the inside ring's Ascendant. (You could do all sorts of weird things. For example, if you wanted to see both your natal houses and your "solar houses," you could use two copies of your chart and align Ascendant of the inside wheel with Sun of the outside wheel. There are hundreds of other options I'd never think to do and you can experiment.)

For now, I align Ascendant with Ascendant, put the mundoscope (Z-Analogue PV) around the outside, and pick a point set that hides the Ascendant, Midheaven, and Eastpoint to make the wheel cleaner. Voila - a new, useful tool.

(When you're done, go back and change the Superimposition Type back to Normal; or just close and reopen Solar Fire to go back to your usual default.)

Here's another example - a friend of ours from this site, born in Iceland barely beneath the Arctic Circle. Again, the ecliptical nativity is on the inside ring and the mundoscope around the outside (as a zodiacal analog: ignore the signs in the outer ring).

At this extreme latitude, it's hard to read exactly how things line up. Even this special tool doesn't make it as smooth as we'd like (there are visual distortions): Notice that Venus, which looks like it is 7° above Ascendant by longitude, is 10° below Ascendant - shown as 10°22' Aries in the outer ring - but a programming bug puts that down into the 2nd house, too far. Nonetheless, it is way better. You can see in the west just how close Jupiter and Neptune are to Descendant, that Pluto (which is nearly square Ascendant ecliptically) is really 8°39' above Descendant.

This way, you actually get to see that very close Venus-Pluto mundane opposition, or the partile Mars-Uranus conjunction in mundo when the two planets are nearly two signs apart in the zodiac.

I've lived inside these alternate reference circles for a long time, but it seems perhaps this way of displaying things might make it easier for others to learn.

--thanks Jim--very useful visual tool.

Actually super nifty whish we could add a third outter ring eventually (or a way to also show parans provided they are useful).