Solunars by Aldebaran Sidereal Academy

Hi Jim, in another thread, you posted these thoughts on your scoring method:

I have a spreadsheet with formulae I've evolved over time. I tried using the angularity strength of every planet and discovered that it was a mistake to give any planet that wasn't at least distantly foreground. I've moved to a point system: Every planet (natal and transiting) gets points on the following scale for its angularity:

Class 3 - 1 pt (7°-10° from a major angle, 2-3° from a minor angle)
Class 2 - 3 pt (3°-7° from a major angle, 1-2° from a minor angle)
Class 1 - 5 pt (1°-3° from a major angle, 0°30'-1° from a minor angle)
Partile - 6 pt (0°11'-1°00' from a major angle, 0°05'-0°30' from a minor angle)
Super-partile - 7 pt (0°-0°10' from a major angle, 0°-0°05' from a minor angle)


Benefic: Both Venuses and Jupiters + half of both Uranuses
Malefic: Both Marses and Saturns + half of both Neptunes
Change: Both Uranuses and both Plutos
Spotlight: Both Suns and both Moons
Dignity: Both Suns and both Jupiters
Indignity: Both Saturns and both Neptunes

I've been experimenting with a few more that haven't quite worked out satisfyingly - either the formula are invalid or need serious work. To let you know what I've been playing with:

Vulnerability-Sensitivity: Moons & Neptunes
Shifting Conditions (in contrast to Change): Moons and Uranuses
Sex: 2/3 of Moons, Venuses, & Marses
Security Needs: 2/3 of Moons, Saturns, & Neptunes
Commerce: 2/3 of Mercuries, Jupiters, & Saturns
Personal Loss: 2/3 of Venuses, Saturns, & Plutos

I know that more recently you have been layering in the SSR scores - is that to all fields, or just benefic/malefic?

Are there any other newer developments that I missed? I recently went through and scored all of my lunar returns for the year so this is fresh on my mind.

Side note... What do you think of scoring via Time Matters strength percentages? It doesn't line up exactly with your original system (since there's no way to distinguish between 6 and 7), but it feels like there must be a way to make that work...
I threw this together as a quick and dirty conversion system:

100% = 7 (probably overweights most of the time)
99% = 6
98% = 5
90%+ = 3
90%- = 1

Ember Nyx wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 11:15 am I know that more recently you have been layering in the SSR scores - is that to all fields, or just benefic/malefic?

I've been doing a full workup for the SSR and adding them. I'm not sure they literally add, but that's one (perhaps crude) way to place the lunar within the context of the year-chart.

Last year, when I was concentrating on "does the demi-lunar operate fully in the context of the SLR?" I did the same nesting/combining the SLR and DSLR scores. That wasn't fruitful. It's clear that the SLR and DSLR operate independently, even if life circumstances sometimes blur them. (They each have an independent voice.)

But add current SLR or DSLR to SSR scores seems at least approximately right for reflecting how the lunars ride the tides of the solar.

Are there any other newer developments that I missed?

No.

Side note... What do you think of scoring via Time Matters strength percentages? It doesn't line up exactly with your original system (since there's no way to distinguish between 6 and 7), but it feels like there must be a way to make that work...

I tried that. It gave screwy results. I think the main characteristic was that non-foreground planets effectively "don't exist" in the chart - they shouldn't have low scores, they should have NO scores. So I tried just using the scores of foreground planets, and they were too scrunched, not a clear spread.

In theory, some gradient like that should be the real measurement. But, when I didn't find one, the "block" approach gave a working answer. Also, it is a steeper climb - notice each "ground" steps up 2 points, not 1.

Oh, possibly a refinement (I don't know if I mentioned it): If an orb is near the outskirts of it's "ground," I drop a point. No hard rules, and I let myself vary it according to what other planets are doing. Most often I drop from 5 to 4 when Class 1 passes 2°45', drop from 3 to 2 when Class 2 drops past 6°. It doesn't make a big difference, but it makes more sense to me.

I threw this together as a quick and dirty conversion system:

100% = 7 (probably overweights most of the time)
99% = 6
98% = 5
90%+ = 3
90%- = 1

Oh, I thought you meant using the score numbers (percentages) themselves. (That's what my answer was about.)

Something like this probably will be good in the long run. I haven't gotten completely comfortable that our strength scales are exactly right, but I think they're pretty damn close to being right. I think the 7 is hard to get this way, because that 10' threshold (or just under it) really marks the difference in practice and you don't drop below 100% until after 40'. Excluding the 7 factor, it would roughly match what I'm doing to use 6 at 99% (out to 1°07'), 5 to 90% (out to 2°57'), 3 out to 45% (about 7°). But that's just another way of calculating the Class thresholds, rather than let the user select the boundaries.