Skyscript Astrology Forum

What interests me is whether Valens actually uses the equinox as the starting point of Aries anywhere. That would contradict his description of the signs at I.2.

In Anthology Book I chapter 6, when Valens describes the calculations for rising times of each sign, he does so in such a way that astronomically puts the spring equinox at zero degrees Aries.

Graham, did you notice that the chart didn't come through in your April 13 post?

Phil wrote:In Anthology Book I chapter 6, when Valens describes the calculations for rising times of each sign, he does so in such a way that astronomically puts the spring equinox at zero degrees Aries.

Yes, good point. The system of rising times is very ancient, and if you equate its 30-degree segments with the zodiacal signs, you get a 'Ptolemaic' or 'Hipparchean' tropical zodiac. So there is an inconsistency in Valens' writing here. In my opinion, based on the level of mathematics found in the Anthologiae, it seems very likely that Valens didn't quite understand what he was doing with regard to the rising times.

In case anyone is wondering, Mark decided to remove most of his posts from this thread; and as mine did not make much sense without his, I followed suit. Sorry for the temporary interruption of the thread.

Hello Graham,

First to correct a few misunderstandings. You wrote:

... whereas even in India, the divisional charts are often used more to look for conjunctions of planets, especially with the ascendant, i.e. as an aspectarium (in tight compartments, with wide orbs within each), and signs are often ignored.

No, this isn?t how harmonic charts are used in India. In India the divisional charts are used only to note the signs where planets are located. So, for example, If Jupiter is in Cancer in the navamsa chart, that adds strength to the natal Jupiter position. The concepts of degrees in harmonic charts and overlaps with the natal chart may have originated with Cyril Fagan.

I decided to go back and re-read Addey (Harmonics in Astrology), and was reminded that he maintains that the zodiac is an aggregate of a probably infinite number of harmonics...

Addey thus finds that various starting points can give significant results, as they all can represent different valid starts for the harmonic "waves". In the tropical zodiac, he finds the VP especially, and the other angles also, to be the most effective, but 0? of each 30? sign, and other points, could serve.

What Addey says is that in taking zero tropical Aries as the initial point of the phasing of harmonics, the higest distribution was found in sidereal signs. This is a most intriguing combination of zodiacs. He diagrammed this on page 196 of Harmonics in Astrology. In that chapter Addey also questions Donald Bradley's research.

I?m still not understanding what you?re doing here with the harmonics of the WTC chart, Graham. Try posting a bi-wheel with only the natal WTC chart and whatever harmonic you?re trying to describe. Two of your charts have not come through on Skyscript, so we still don't have a bi-wheel for WTC.

Hello Therese
Sorry I've been so long getting back, away from a computer and without my Skyscript login.

First just to clarify: you are right, of course, that the Indians do use the signs in Navamsa (particularly when it is "vargottama", the same in D1 and D9). But this is certainly not the "only" way they use them. In K.N. Rao's bookds, in Choudry's Systems Approach and many other places you see references to house positions: the division being used in relation to the ascendant without reference to sign, noting what is in the 10th etc, noting what planets become conjuct or configured in various ways with the ascendant ("hemming in", etc). My first teacher, Denis Labour?, encouraged us to work this way (as well as considereing vargottama, etc), and I found it more convincing, partly because I'm not sure that Aries is the right place to start a sidereal harmonic (but that's my problem).

I don't know why my charts dissappeared, and at the moment I can't get new ones up. Will try Imgur again soon. But really all you need to do is look at the triwheel that has survived on the prevous page of this thread and just ignore the US 4th July chart (radix, not harmonic) in the centre, if that one bothers you. They're all lined up to 0? Aries for easy comparison.
You write:

What Addey says is that in taking zero tropical Aries as the initial point of the phasing of harmonics, the highest distribution was found in sidereal signs. This is a most intriguing combination of zodiacs. He diagrammed this on page 196 of Harmonics in Astrology. In that chapter Addey also questions Donald Bradley's research.
I?m still not understanding what you?re doing here with the harmonics of the WTC chart, Graham. Try posting a bi-wheel with only the natal WTC chart and whatever harmonic you?re trying to describe.

I've done exactly what you describe Addey as proposing (though it's not the distribution in signs that then struck me, but the tropically-generated configuration itself, irrespective of sign placement): I took zero tropical Aries (the VP), generating a 9th harmonic, and then mapped the whole thing onto sidereal coordinates (Krishnamurthi). The reason it all sounds so complicated in my description (and was) is that, whereas with paper and scissors you could simply cut the tropical biwheel out and shift it round against the zodiac by the ayanamsa on that date, it's fiddly to "trick" Solar Fire into first generating such a harmonic (because it always defaults back to a 0 Aries start, whether tropical or sidereal), and particularly then to view a biwheel (when you save and reopen the "doctored" D9, it's hard to save the doctoring - you find yourself back to the sidereal H9 from Aries) doesn't reopen the doctoring, but calculates again). I think it would be easy with a program that has an offset facility, as well as a custom ayanamsa/SVP one - I think Delphic Oracle 7 has this, and Jagannatha Hora freeware does, but you cn'a do Western biw/triwheels). Anyway, what it boils down to is a tropical H9 on a tropical radix, then the whole thing offset to sidereal. The configuration matches (not just the sign placements) are not the same as in a straightforward sidereal D1/D9 biwheel.

The reason I got interested in this is because of your suggestion that comparing the H9 to the radix could help to confirm radicality (you used Ian Brady's chart). I found this intriguing, and decided to see what it gave with a chart for a highly characterised event, that we can all agree IS definitely radical. WTC seemd a good example. The sidereal 9th harmonic, whether usual Aries start or Fagan-style noviens starting with Taurus, was not very convincing. I noticed that the tropical radix and H9 were much more convincing in terms of conjunctions (of the sort you pointed out re Brady), so I tried Addey's idea of mapping a tropical harmonic wave (i.e. starting at the VP) onto sidereal coordinates (I should say that Addey said this worked for H5 and H7, but I thought I'd have a look with H9 since that what we were talking about). It looked more "radical", in terms of correspondences with the D1. I then out of curiosity compared it to a 4th July 1776 chart, and looked at correspondences to slow moving factors in that (the angles etc are of course uncertain and are best ignored).

But anyway, the upshot is, in this case a fully tropical harmonic looks much more "radical" in the terms you were presenting re Brady. It looks even more radical if you map them onto a tropical chart for 12 noon on 4th July 1776 (to avoid argument about the precise time), and more so again when you try a fully tropical quadriwheel including also the radix of first WTC attack (26/2/93 at 12:27:37pm) (haven't tried the H9 for that one yet). You simply don't get these "coincidences" (involving Saturn, Jupiter, the nodes, Neptune, Uranus, Venus, Mercury and more) when working sidereally, whether Aries or Taurus start, or even with VP start but mapped sidereally ? la Addey - though more of them get through with that of course, at least between 9/11 and its own harmonic). Try it if you're interested, or I'll see if I can post a tropical quadriwheel (but maybe this should now be out of the Sidereal forum, in "Philosophy etc"??)

We should also remember that Addey stresses that, for him, there could be a multitude of valid starting points (including sidereal ones) for the harmonic wave (though he says they should represent intersections of the ecliptic with some sort of great circle, of which he thinks the equinox one is the most useful). Also that he clarifies how harmonics work: while we tend to think we're dividing each sign into so many parts,he says we should conceive of the positions in the whole 360? circle being multiplied by e.g. 9. The 12-fold zodiac is already a 6th harmonic (with each sign representing the positive and negative half of a wave, starting tropically from the VP, or sidereally from wherever 0? Aries, or 0? Taurus for Fagan, is deemed to be with a given ayanamsa). So the H9 is really H(12x9)/2 = H54 (giving 54 negative half-waves and 54 positive ones = the 108 navamsa).

Graham

Graham, I'm still confused as to exactly what you are doing. I'll have to wait until you post a clear easy-to-read bi-wheel. The tri-wheel you posted is blurry on my computer screen, and we really need to see a valid ascendant. If you post a bi-wheel, then I can compare it to the actual WTC chart and the 9th harmonic which actually is very telling as Mars and Ketu are prominent. We have to stay with the symbolism of the chart, a mega fiery and explosive event which stunned the entire world.

...The 12-fold zodiac is already a 6th harmonic (with each sign representing the positive and negative half of a wave, starting tropically from the VP, or sidereally from wherever 0? Aries, or 0? Taurus for Fagan, is deemed to be with a given ayanamsa). So the H9 is really H(12x9)/2 = H54 (giving 54 negative half-waves and 54 positive ones = the 108 navamsa).

Addey's point that harmonic waves peak in the center of sidereal signs and then begin to fall off may be valid for the strength of polarity, triplicities, and the three modes. That would be easy to research. But though Addey found that the initial point of the waves seemed to be the Vernal Point, this was before computers, and we'd need to replicate his research. But I'm not sure Addey's principle works for singleton charts. Unfortunately we don't have the details of his work on this topic.

Hello Therese
I'm doing what Addey suggested - generating a tropical harmonic and remapping it sidereally, i.e. moving it along by the KM ayanamsa of the date. I.e. a 9th harmonic starting from the sidereal VP. Can you think of any other way of doing that? This looked more striking than the normal sidereal one, but I can't say that it's any more striking than the standard tropical one - same conjunctions, mostly dispositors changed due to sign change.

I'm afraid I'm having trouble uploading charts, but if you're interested, you have the data, and as you say, in the the normal sidereal (KM) radix/H9 biwheel with the harmonic started conventionally from sidereal 0? Aries, Mars is prominent - conjunct radix Rahu; and Ketu is nearly conjunct radix MC. This looks strong and appropriate, I agree.

If you simply now cast the (normal, standard) tropical chart, you will see that H9 Jupiter is on the radical Mercury/ascendant conjunction and H9 Pluto is on the PF.
This precise conjuction of Jupiter with the radix Me/Asc conjunction looks more significant if it is compared to the 12 noon chart for 4/7/1776: the Ju/Me/Asc conjunction falls on 4th July Saturn, the Pluto/PF conjunction on 4th July Mercury, WTC radix Rahu on 4th July Venus and WTC radix Neptune on 4th July Ketu. These are not of course aligned if cast sidereally.

Just out of interest, I then checked the chart for the first WTC bombing in 1993 (26/2/93, 12:27:37pm). Jupiter of that chart (WTC1) is within 1? of the Me/asc/Saturn/Jupiter alignment of the other three charts, while WTC1 Asc is on 4th July Jupiter (amongst other things, involving notably the outer planets).

A quadriwheel would no doubt be too fuzzy even if I managed to post it, and if you're interested I expect you'll want to check for yourself anyway.

I just thought these tropical alignments were interesting, following your idea of testing the radicality of a chart by comparing radix to H9.
Having found these alignments back to 1776, I didn't find the Addey idea of mapping a tropical harmonic sidereally so interesting, as of course the long term tropical alignments are lost, sidereally. You can probably make this out despite the fuzziness of the triwheel earlier on this thread, which is all Krishnamurti, with simply the outside WTC2 H9 "moved back" by the ayanamsa value so the VP lines up with radix VP - i.e. casting the harmonic from the sidereally-expressed VP, as Addey suggests.

Graham

Graham wrote:

I'm doing what Addey suggested - generating a tropical harmonic and remapping it sidereally...

Hi Graham

I've very short of time for the next few days, but I did want to mention that Addey didn't exactly suggest generating a tropical harmonic and remapping it sidereally. He suggested (based on his preliminary research) that harmonic waves measured from the vernal point produced peaks in sidereal signs. (No data on that research is available.)

However, this doesn't make much sense to me because if you initiate waves from the vernal point, the peaks aren't going to line up with the center of sidereal signs. So that is rather a puzzle which hasn't been further investigated. I do think it would be a good idea for astrologers to dust off John Addey's books and produce follow-up studies on his ground-breaking work in harmonics. At one time I was very enthusiastic about harmonics, so purchased all Addey's books and harmonic tables.

As time allows, I'll try again to look into the technique you're using. But as I'm very visually oriented, I need to see the chart comparison with the ordinary WTC 9th harmonic chart so I can discuss the differences. I have the WTC Krishnamurti chart and navamsa on my computer. I still need to see the bi-wheel you're using (not the ordinary WTC chart which I have).

Tinypic does a great job of uploading charts calculated on your computer. It always asks you to type in a code that it gives you to keep spam away. Then you upload the message board sized graphic (you click on that choice), copy the image code and paste it into your Skyscript typing window.

Graham wrote:

Just out of interest, I then checked the chart for the first WTC bombing in 1993 (26/2/93, 12:27:37pm). Jupiter of that chart (WTC1) is within 1? of the Me/asc/Saturn/Jupiter alignment of the other three charts...

Thanks for pointing this out, Graham. I had forgotten about the earlier bombing in 1993. Yes, the comparison of those two WTC charts is fascinating. I want to comment more on those charts when I have time.

Got this all wrong, see next post...

Hello Therese
You wrote:

Addey didn't exactly suggest generating a tropical harmonic and remapping it sidereally. He suggested (based on his preliminary research) that harmonic waves measured from the vernal point produced peaks in sidereal signs.

I think it must be the same thing, as his diagram in the book shows.

Addey purports to show (surprises me too) that a tropical harmonic projected onto sidereal coordinates gives interesting results (for H5 and 7 at least). Since I agree with Addey that the "beginning" of the zodiac, and the starting point for harmonics, must be an intersection of a great circle with the ecliptic, I thought I'd try your "H9 on radix shows radicality" hypothesis to the WTC chart, using Addeys idea of using the VP, but specified in sidereal coordinates (Krishnamurti). I'm getting in such a muddle with all these charts and trying to trick the programs into doing this, I'm not completely sure any more, but here's what I think that H9 should be (in biwheel on KM radix from SF (true nodes, parallax Moon): (To get that I had to trick SF into calculating a sidereal harmonic which starts not from 0? Aries sidereal, but from the SVP, 6?13 Pi, and thus leaves this the same in radix and harmonic)

Here's the usual 0? Aries based sidereal H9 on radix (Krishnamurti): But in fact rather to my surprise, on investigating further, a straightforward tropical harmonic on radix is most interesting, when compared with other singificant charts (see below). Here's a normal, undoctored tropical biwheel (as the first one above, but without the offset): Here's a triwheel (normal tropical) of the WTC chart + H9 on the first WTC bomb in 93: Graham