Hi everyone I'm new to this forum

I'd like to ask if the Christian Astrology Vol I&II sold on this website
http://www.astroamerica.com/lilly.html
is the annotated version or the original version?
I want to buy the annotated version in modern English but it seems to be out of print here
http://www.debhoulding.co.uk/books.html#

Could someone provide me with the right link if you know
Thanks very much!

Hi Affinity,

The edition sold at Astroamerica.com is a completely different, more recent one prepared by the director of Astroamerica.com, Dave Roell, personally, and marketed through his own in-house publication label, Astrology Classics. I do not have this edition but as far as I know it is reset and with modernised illustrations (of natal figures, etc.), but I do not know the extent of the annotation. Suffice it to say that the annotations will not be the same as those on the Ascella annotated edition, which is the only reset edition I personally have. Dave used a copy of the original source text and worked on it from the ground upwards, and did not to my knowledge have reference to the Ascella edition. Nonetheless, I think you would find his edition a worthy one also.

The Ascella edition in two annotated large-format softcover volumes has become extremely hard to obtain at any price and you might be in for a very long wait. I do not know how many copies were originally issued, but I suspect based on observed used market scarcity (and stand to be corrected by those with inside knowledge of the true figure) significantly fewer than one thousand, and possibly no more than about 500, if that. Having said that, there appears currently to be a complete set of it available used on Amazon.com, and at something of a bargain price, but you'll have to hurry to beat other buyers as I suspect it is in much demand, including from other members of this forum. Good luck!

Philip

Thanks for answering this post Phillip, because I missed it myself.

I can confirm that the book is no longer in print and is unavailable from other publishers. I have a slowly progressing project in hand for preparing a new edition. Unfortunately the digital files were lost several years ago, so the project involves retyping and resetting, with additional footnotes, new diagrams, clearer charts, index and biographical material. It's not a project that I expect to be profitable or completed quickly, but it is something that I enjoy doing when I have available time, so I'm confident it will materialise ?soonish?. I recommend my students to purchase the Dave Roell edition because it is currently ?out there? and available at a very reasonable price.

Hi Deb and Phillip

Thanks for your reply. It's a such pity that the ascella edition is no longer in print. I'll buy the other version from astroamerica.com then.

Thanks very much for your info! =)

I do not have this edition but as far as I know it is reset and with modernised illustrations (of natal figures, etc.),

Roell's version is neat. easy on the eyes, and the spelling is modernized in order to make reading comprehension easier. I believe he used the Regulus edition for his work. He duplicated the charts as best he could using a computer. This is nice, if the reader is, like me, square chart phobic. These are at the end of each volume. The original charts are reproduced in the text. These volumes are of a high quality that justifies the price.

I didn't notice much in the way of annotation. There is a very helpful glossary at the end. These are good serviceable copies.

Tom

The Roell addition isn't annotated except he adds the modern positions of the fixed stars (and a glossary like Tom said). Regardless, if you're like me, I don't like reading books on a computer screen, a nice bound book is a good thing. It's not expensive either.

My daughter was just here, said I should google my name, Dave Roell. No, I'm not the Dave Roell on Facebook.

But I chanced across this discussion, and as it is recent, I thought I should add some details.

My edition of Christian Astrology is not annotated. I have included a glossary of obscure terms. On the pages themselves I have added notations principally to update Lilly's fixed star positions. In the text I kept Lilly's original positions, adding their positions for January 1, 2005 in the margin. So far as volumes 1 & 2 are concerned, there is not much of this. I updated Lilly's language, as I saw no point in "hath" & "doth". I told myself that Jonathan Swift's books (the Dean himself) have been so treated.

One goal of my edition was to copy Lilly's page layouts exactly, as I found it difficult to use the Ascella edition for this reason. I am glad to hear that Deb is working on a new edition & am confident that she will correct this problem, as print on demand (which was not available then) makes this easy to do. I very much liked Deb's annotations, as I thought it helped place Lilly in his own times. Which, as a Yank, I knew nothing of.

So I used Lilly's woodcut charts on the same pages & in the same positions as Lilly did himself, and then because I couldn't make them out that well myself, I added an appendix with modern charts, giving the modern chart data for them, so that users could calculate them for themselves. I also reconstructed his many tables, again, to match the originals.

Because the page layouts were copied from Lilly, the page numbers match Lilly's as well. So if you see a reference to, say, page 151, you will find the same text, on the same page, in my edition. Because I then followed Books 1 & 2 with a reset Book 3, the appendices in 1 & 2 are separately numbered, so there are no conflicts in pagination between 2 & 3.

My one main reference in making my new edition was the Regulus facsimile, but I also consulted the Ascella as well as the Wiggers. Wiggers is available on-line and can be downloaded. I in fact used Wiggers as my framework for books 2 & 3, (thus sparing the need to retype) but, as Wiggers is unreliable, I went back over it, again & again, comparing it to Regulus until I was satisfied that every single one of her many horrible errors & omissions had been eliminated. (To date I've not had any pointed out.)

Lilly's Book 3 is easily the equal of Books 1 & 2, but needs much help. In this book I added numerous marginal notes, in some cases explaining the calculations he had given, in others with fixed star positions, and in some others, correcting Lilly's own mistakes. I feel this is close to heresy, that "Lilly made no mistakes", but in fact, shortly after he began work on the volume, a plague broke out, killed two members of his household & forced him to flee the city. He was, if his own brief notes can be believed, in fear of his own life and so wrote in haste.

This is particularly true of the return charts he drew (but did not publish) for the Merchant, which have numerous errors. This is in contrast to the charts in the second book, all of which are exact, even by modern standards. In Book 3 I published all the return charts, as well as gave all the profections as charts as well, both in an appendix.

The results have been gratifying. Of the 25-odd books that I publish, Book 3 sells the best of all of them, followed by Books 1 & 2.

Rob Hand once supplied me with a CD containing a photocopy of the 1659 edition. Immediately I went to Book 3, to see if any of the mistakes had been corrected. Not a single one was. Which led me to the conclusion that the 1659 edition was pirated, as Lilly was far too proud of his work to permit any of those mistakes to stand. I had the distinct impression that while Lilly was happy to have finished the book, the trauma of the plague was far too strong for him to want to revisit the book & prepare his own second edition.

Again, I welcome Deb's new edition. As I profited from her earlier edition, I hope that she can profit from mine, as there is no point in stumbling again on the Bucker of the Ship on pg. 666.

I once had the idea of reprinting my edition, only on A4 / 8.5 x 11 format, with the marginal space available for expert commentary, such as Deb, or John Frawley, could provide. Alas, so far nothing has come of this.

Dave

Perhaps I should mention here that I recently began a serialisation of my annotated version on Skyscript ? the first part is available now at http://www.skyscript.co.uk/CA.html

This features the introductory pages, which are full of vital information but often skipped over by students who are keen to get to details of the techniques. For those interested, this is a good time to take in the details of the historical background, before the other pages are made available.

The next upload (next month or the month after) will cover Lilly?s instruction on how to calculate a chart. Again, that is mainly going to be of historical interest to modern students who have computer facilities, but it still gives some very interesting details on the traditional approach to chart calculation, such as historical calendar conventions, the nuances of recording dates and time in chartwheels, and the origin of some of the Latin terms used in the description of chart divisions. After that the work becomes directly instructional about the judgement of charts.

My intention ? at this stage ? is only to publish volumes I and II as I did before. I have never edited the third volume. I was off the astrological scene when that task was undertaken by Kim Farnell.

This material is not intended to replace purchasable books. At the moment I can only recommend it as a student?s aid to the sections covered ? I would still advise everyone to have a copy of Lilly?s work *on the bookshelf* However, no one really understands how good an astrologer Lilly was until they are able to look into the details behind his published chart judgements ? there are some amazing corolations that are not made obvious in the book, so I am looking forward to being able to publish the annotations to those sections.

I very much welcome feedback on what is liked or disliked about my approach. A thread has already been started for comments at

http://www.skyscript.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5074
(Thank you Gabe!)

If you want to provide feedback on the layout or question any of the comments in the annotations please use that thread instead of this, as it allows the comments that are specifically about that new edition to be kept in one place, and it is linked to the page where the downloads will be made available. Obviously, keep using this thread for general comments about other editions such as the one that Dave produces. His is the edition that I recommend to my students because its handy, reliable and a reasonable price. I don't recommend studying the free Word download because it has a lot of errors and it is not easy for a student to work from. However, it is very useful to have as a source for the text - for being able to run a search for terms, etc. I like the facsimilie version most of all, but I suppose it's like a very flavoursome cheese - it takes a bit of getting used to.