Hello Tom,

I dont have my copy in front of me but the book in question is The Sun and the Aspects by Maurice McCann. Its a series of articles. He has one one chapter which discusses what he regards as the pernicious influence of Kepler and subsequently the leading 19th entury 'modernists' who completed his work of destruction of traditional aspects. As I recall he discusses Chaney and Leo in particular.

I will post up a bit up next week if I get a chance. However, I dont want to infringe Maurice's copyright by putting up too much. I am never quite sure what the balance is with quotes.

The book only costs ?6.95 and I think there are still copies available from Midheaven Bookshop in London:

http://www.midheavenbooks.com/
If you have any difficulty obtaining a copy let me know.

Mark

Kirk wrote:The full impact of the circumstances is lost in simply saying that Chaney left home when young. When his father died the home was disbanded and the family dispersed. Here's an interesting account:

Chaney was born in a log cabin near present-day Chesterville, Maine, January 13, 1821. His father died when William was nine, and the fortunes of the family were radically changed. There was no one to farm his mother's land, and the family broke up, each going his own way. William was bound out to a harsh farmer in the area. He refused to submit to cruel treatment and ran away. By the time he was sixteen, seven farmers had used him as a "work beast."

www.jacklondons.net/Family/WilliamChaney.html

So death entered at an early age and pushed him out and onto his life path. There is the sense of ejection and being set on his trajectory. This fits well with the angular 4th house Mars-Sun conjunction in cardinal Capricorn with angular 7th house Saturn in cardinal Aries as dispositor. Saturn is linked to the Moon by sextile, the Moon's next applying aspect. And that leads to whether it's an 8th or 9th house Moon.

It looks quite possible that the quadrant charts with their use of the cross of the angles is more 'earthbound' or circumstantial, and Whole Sign houses are more 'essential'. I approached it in reverse. I should have considered how the 8th house Moon with Equal, Porphyry, and Placidus houses is drawn to being a 9th house Moon using Whole Signs. The 8th house state of death (of both father and family unit), fear (the poor kid) and lack of personal power (8th doesn't behold the ASC), could lead to a state of 9th house travel, quest and searching, astrology, and personal power by way of the 9th house trine to the ASC. The air and mutability of a Gemini Moon, helped by all the other cardinal, mutable and angular factors, was able to easily cut ties and move on.

Born in a log cabin? How accurate is the time of birth (11:33 pm)? Any Rodden Rating or source available?

Thanks to all of you for such a great forum

Born in a log cabin? How accurate is the time of birth (11:33 pm)? Any Rodden Rating or source available?

Chaney gives this data himself in his book A Primer of Astrology. I'm not sure about the log cabin, but they were a common fixture in early 19th century rural New England, so it would not be out of the question, and in fact is probable. Obviously it has no effect on the chart.

Chaney's book is a bit like Broughton's later work, a bit disjointed. It contains biographical information, and defenses of astrology against skeptics. Much of it, perhaps all of it, seems to be a joining of magazine articles and lectures given. Chaney being an argumentative type also piles heaps of scorn on astrologers with whom he disagrees, and their entire nation. During the 1880s "Raphael" launched a broadside in print against Chaney and Chaney responded in kind and included the entire English astrology community for criticism in his rebuttal. I have no idea who started this - it may well have been Chaney. I have resolved to, cautiously, read my copy of this book. I'll report interesting findings.

Mark thanks for the reference. I'll hunt for the book.

Tom

I did manage to find this time: 23:31 (11:31pm) from: http://217.160.138.166/DAV_Datenbank/C/CH.HTM

Where they provide this source: Miscellaneous data collections: M.E.Jones, The Sabian Symbols in Astrology, SAB PUB SOC New York, 1953

I know what happened. I adjusted the chart to match Chaney's figure. In other words if we use Chaney's time of 11:30 the angles are off a bit. I adjusted the time to get the angles to match his, and apparently didn't note that I did that.

Chaney himself makes the log cabin reference in his book on page 102.

Born in a log cabin, in a forest of Maine town of Chesterville and Franklin county.

The figure in the book gives and ASC of 12 Libra 47 and an MC of 15 Cancer (no minutes given).

On page 92 Chaney writes:

I have no table of houses for the latitude of Chesterville, Maine, where I was born, but I have one for Bangor, which is 19' farther north, but this would be near enough for a verbal delineation.

I adjusted the time.

Tom

Thank you Tom.

The time appeared kinda suspicious to me due to the family's dispersion after the father's death. Chaney probably rectified his chart .

MarkC wrote:He has one one chapter which discusses what he regards as the pernicious influence of Kepler and subsequently the leading 19th entury 'modernists' who completed his work of destruction of traditional aspects.

I'm sorry Mark but I couldn't agree with Kepler being put in the same box as the modernists. Part of his work is an intelligent attempt of applying old Pythagorean/Platonic principles on the new Copernican world view. For example the relation between the Platonic solids and the planetary orbits. And much more.

Tom wrote:The figure in the book gives and ASC of 12 Libra 47 and an MC of 15 Cancer (no minutes given).

I have seen tables which give the sidereal time and the ascendant for each degree of MC instead for each four minutes of sidereal time as usually is done nowadays. Perhaps Chaney also used such a table.

I have seen tables which give the sidereal time and the ascendant for each degree of MC instead for each four minutes of sidereal time as usually is done nowadays. Perhaps Chaney also used such a table.

I don't know what tables Chaney used. The book was published in 1890. Chaney had been studying astrology since about 1866, so he used what would have been available to him then. Since astrology was not widely practiced in the USA in the mid 1860s, he first would have used whatever Broughton had available to him.

He notes in the text that he did not have a table for his birthplace, a reference I'm not clear on as the table of houses I own covers more than one place. I believe he used Bangor,Maine for the text as it is close (within 19') of his birthplace. He wrote this would be close enough for the purpose of the text. Chaney was an avid practitioner of primary directions, so in his work I imagine he would insist on as much precision as he could get.

He gives sidereal time at Noon as 19.32
He then adds 2 minutes then adds 11 hrs 30 minutes since Noon and comes up with a sidereal time at birth of 7.04.

It's been a long time since I've done one of these.

Tom

They could have looked like this one of Raphael from 1828
http://books.google.nl/books?id=u4RF3OL ... #PPA111,M1

The tables I had seen were from a 1930's book of a Dutch astrologer, C. Gorter. Just as in Raphael's tables the intermediate cusps of that book also were given without arcminutes. Perhaps this could have been common practice till almost a century ago.

I'm sorry Mark but I couldn't agree with Kepler being put in the same box as the modernists. Part of his work is an intelligent attempt of applying old Pythagorean/Platonic principles on the new Copernican world view. For example the relation between the Platonic solids and the planetary orbits.

Hello Eddy,

I was necessarily oversimplifying Maurice McCann?s position. In addition please, understand I was relating the views of Maurice McCann not my own. Maurice devotes a full 10 pages in his book explicitly to the ideas of Kepler?s astrology so I would refer you there to get a correct understanding of his position. I was going to provide a quote from the book in this respect but I can see this might take us into a whole discussion on Kepler?s astrological ideas that doesn?t relate much to this thread. I will therefore send you this privately.

Mark

Hi Tom,

I have been re-reading The Sun and The Aspects by Maurice McCann where he discusses the development of modern aspect theory by nineteenth century astrologers such as Chaney, Leo, Raphael, Sepharial etc. In regards Chaney McCann appears to be more complementary to him than I previously recalled.

Very rarely in astrological literature do we find any questioning of techniques or beliefs . One of the few writers to do so was the Irish American astrologer W.H Chaney. He was obviously a man who didn?t accept the teachings that were handed down but scrutinized them for better understanding.

After discussing Chaney?s disputes with the English astrologers Raphael and A.J. Pearce McCann discusses his approach to aspects:

Other areas of astrology that fascinated Chaney were aspects and orbs of planets. He was not one to accept theories without question. It is obvious from his comments that he had given a lot of thought to the aspects and planetary orbs and was keen to learn more about them. In this respect he was one of a rare breed of astrologers. In the meantime , Leo had become aware of Chaney because of his comments regarding Raphael and Pearce. Leo?s magazine Modern Astrology had reviwed Chaney?s Primer of Astrology ( 1890) so Leo must have been aware of Chaney?s doubts concerning aspects and the orbs of planets. In 1892 he had commented ?there are many astrologers who express themselves dissatisfied with the orbs, and advocate a uniform distance of about 5 degrees for each planet. I do not profess to know for certain where the truth lies , but in my opinion is that the orbs vary considerably for each aspect?.

In fact , Chaney had instructed his students to use a 5-degree orb for aspects. ?
Did Leo in fact get his idea for orbs of aspects from Chaney? ?.Was Chaney the true originator of the orbs of aspects or did he get the idea from someone else? At least we can say that in 1890 Chaney published orbs of aspects for the first time. As we shall see later he was the kind of mind that could conceive such an innovation wheras Leo did not appear to have those qualities. ?Until futher research proves otherwise we can for the moment claim that Chaney was the first to publish the orbs of aspects.

In a later chapter in his book McCann returns to Chaney and spends more time discussing his contribution to modern aspect theory. Here is a short selection from McCann?s chapter:

There is a belief among astrologers today that orbs of aspects of planets were replaced with the orbs of aspects because of the supposed overlapping that would occur between the major and minor aspects. The case of this overlapping was thought to be the planets?s moiety of orbs. It seems that these minor aspects had grown in number and popularity around the end of the 19th century, Astrologers were concerned how to distinguish between them since the planets?s wider orbs would cause one to overlap with the another. In 1890 W.H. Chaney had discussed overlapping in his book Chaney?s Primer of astrology. It may well have been the first and perhaps the only ever to discuss this problem

In particular Chaney gives an example chart in page 20 of his Primer of Astrology (1890) which demonstrated a separating square and an applying quintle, all within moeities. The dilemma occurs McCann points out due to the abandonment of traditional ptolemaic aspect theory and trying to incorporate Kepler's aspect theory derived from geometry and mathematics into astrology.

If McCann is right Chaney is the single most important thinker on aspect theory since Kepler and the intellectual catalyst for other nineteenth astrologers like Leo and Raphael who popularised abandoning traditional moiety orbs with orbs for aspect. McCann suggests that there is a difference between Leo and Chaney as the former seemed to advocate a standarised orbs for all planets while Leo took this further into the modern notion of variable aspect orbs depending on aspect type. Leo's 'solution' was first set out in his magazine Modern Astrology (1892) was to shift the focus away entirely from planets to the varying strengths of different aspect types themselves. This is of course the position adopted by modern astrology.