zuli wrote:

Deb wrote:But I should declare my prejudice - my own experience would never allow me to give up the 5 degree orb, because with horary I constantly see planets falling into the 5 degree orb of the house cusp of the quesited. So much so, that it is one of the ways that I recognise a chart as valid. But I extend this approach to natal charts too,

So, and what orb do you allow?

Five degrees. (I did say that didn't I?)

Deb wrote:and I am personally convinced that planets are more powerfully placed just before the cusp than actually inside the house.

I'm not convinced.

It is your privilege, and your right, to be convinced by your own experience and not mine (though of course, this is a widely reported traditional principle, and not just my own opinion). But I will say this: if the Moon is sitting IN the 7th house, within 5 degrees of the 8th house cusp, this is not a good thing for relationships!

Papretis

As I recall, Gauquelin's peaks were not in the middles of the Cadent houses but accrued nearer to the angles.

As to why this should be - well - I used to content myself with the idea that a planet had been soaking up a house's influence for 25 degrees, culminating with an additional charge as it passed over the angle. It would then take a few degrees for that 'influence' to wear off, so to speak.

These days I'm not so sure, so don't quote me, but otherwise I'm with Deb on this one and, despite what other correspondents think about him, Ptolemy must have got it from somewhere. It's not the sort of thing you just dream up.

As for establishing whether a planet is 5 house degrees prior to a cusp...
well that's rather easy under Placidus - a lot easier than calculating a Camp or Regio position.

Formula is as follows: - M(eridian)D(istance) divided by S(emi)A(rc) x 90 = the planet's true house position.

As for software to do this, you need look no further than a Casio programmable calculator, which is what I use for this sort of thing.

And if I could just find that tame programmer, we'd be in business (Deb has sent me some suggestions)

Mw

MWackford wrote:Papretis
...
And if I could just find that tame programmer, we'd be in business (Deb has sent me some suggestions)

Mw

Janus provides these in its "rationalized semiarc" wheel. astro.com gives the Gauquelin sector positions (which are based on what Mike describes). My free application does these positions, and Placidus mundo and zodiacal primaries, but its based on a different approach than the semiarc method, and so deviates as geo latitude gets extreme. The deviations are very small at non-polar latitudes. http://mysite.verizon.net/vze6qirr/myindex.html. It's free speech and free beer software, runs on windows or can be built for various UNIX-like systems.

- Ed