Skyscript Astrology Forum

As for the circumambulations in the Time Lords window, while Ptolemy is astronomically correct, it might just be missing the point. Schmidt has talked about what constitutes the ideal (eidos) versus real (hule) quite a lot over the years. He has made the statement that "as above, so below" doesn't have to refer to the physical heavens vs physical earth, but the "ideal/noetic heaven vs hule earth" and as such one might ask the question what constitutes "ideal motion". It might be the case that oblique ascension represents a sort of "ideal motion" for a sort of analog of directing to any angle, since the ascendant is the paradigmatic angle. So maybe Valens, Hermes, Asclepius, etc were not only interested in the motion derived from "hule" (material), since Plato said that the known comes from the realm of Nous. Therefore it is possible that the circumambulation method employed by Dorotheus might be with an eye toward "what should be". Therefore one might also assume that calculations that are physically exact derive from hule (material as opposed to noetic). If you notice that some time lord procedures have the default set for the year to a Solar year and some have the ideal (Egyptian) year of 360 days. The difference here might be that the latter derives from Nous, but that the former in the concrete particular. This difference leads to expectation of a potential versus the actual result. From this difference one might be able to get at a sort of "why" question which is very missing from the Hellenistic texts (except for some rather cryptic statements in some places, the readings focus on the concrete particular for the most part). This is the reason why Schmidt says that we study the natal planets in the natal angles (potential/eidos), but we study their lords relative to fortune (hule).

As for version 7, I'm being held up by a 3rd party company whose printing algorithms might go extinct. Tried contacting FastReports, but they have not responded to my phone calls. I don't want to take the wrong technology road only to find that the code will be obsolete, so I'm waiting for the dust to settle.

Hi Curtis,

Initially I was not going to reply, as not to derail Joao's thread in which I have nothing to contribute to, but your insightful post prompted me to.
While I completely agree about the "real" 365 vs ideal year of 360 days for general time lords such as Decennials and especially Aphesis from the Lots, which as you know has been proven to work countless times, primary directions being astronomical and not that symbolical require precision. For example, using the Dorotheus method in the Time Lords section in Delphic Oracle for the MC distributions the discrepancies are big, up to a few years and when one compares that method with the precise one in charts with notable event or changeovers, one sees very easily that the precise one is the correct one.
On the other hand the Decennials in the style of Valens, which I love, even though using 360 days year show me information from a different angle than the Firdaria, but I cannot yet tell what the difference is.
I have not tested the 28 day 13 profections per year as I was taught the medieval way of 12 monthly ones 365 days, but I am sure they show information from a different angle, otherwise practitioners would not have used them. Then we have the profections using the ideal year of 12 30 day months, not to mention the differences for the daily profections.
Questions, questions, questions.

What you wrote about actual results in the "real" year vs potential in the ideal one I find incredible. It looks so simple, as if how could one have missed it, but at the same time it is illuminating. Thank you!

I feel this topic ought to be continued in another thread some time. I will be on the lookout for some charts that illustrate the differences between Decennials and Firdaria in a strong way.

jventura wrote:
The "problem" of pyMorinus is not with converse directions (I don't use them in skyPlux), but with "direct" directions, specifically with planet-to-planet using the semi-arc method. I've tried to look at the source-code to see if I could find a problem, but I could not understand it (the source code is really

Morinus can deal very well with semi-arc directions (latitude 0). I (and many others) recalculated by hand and they fit with the traditional method.

I learned directions in Cieloeterra but they exactly fit with Kolev/Martin Gansten method, so the method is right.

margherita

margherita wrote:Morinus can deal very well with semi-arc directions (latitude 0). I (and many others) recalculated by hand and they fit with the traditional method.

I learned directions in Cieloeterra but they exactly fit with Kolev/Martin Gansten method, so the method is right.

margherita

Hi Margherita,

probably it's some bad configuration of my part, but my results were similar to pyMorinus results, for an older version of pyMorinus. But with the latest version of pyMorinus, the results are not the same anymore.

Have you recalculated by hand your PD results with the latests versions or for a previous version?

As i said, my "hand" calculations don't match pyMorinus anymore, but skyPlux keeps matching the results of a Primary Directions web service, called Primaries.jsp which is in Gansten's book as a "correct" software..
Something may have "broke" in pyMorinus' source code, it happens many times with software..

Or maybe it is just me doing something wrong, that is why I'm rewritting the PD's in skyPlux, taking extra precautions..

Zagata wrote:P.S. I could not understand how to show the calculations in Delphic Oracle. These screenshots are the best I can do.

Here is what it looks like when you drag the splitter down:
Click on the direction in the leftmost column and it will populate the internal fields. Explanations of each is in the readme.txt.

Got it and just did it, Curtis. Thank you. Very useful!

jventura wrote: As i said, my "hand" calculations don't match pyMorinus anymore,

Gimme an example, a chart with data, Ascendant and Moon and a direction you want to check.

margherita

margherita wrote:

jventura wrote: As i said, my "hand" calculations don't match pyMorinus anymore,

Gimme an example, a chart with data, Ascendant and Moon and a direction you want to check.

margherita

I've been testing it with my own data.. I'll check with other data, to see if the calculations match, and if not, I'll post them here.

Thanks,
Jo?o Ventura

Edit: BTW Margherita, what did you mean in your previous post: Morinus can deal very well with semi-arc directions (latitude 0), more specificaly, the latitude 0?

jventura wrote:
Edit: BTW Margherita, what did you mean in your previous post: Morinus can deal very well with semi-arc directions (latitude 0), more specificaly, the latitude 0?

semiarc directions could be calculated with planetary latitude. But Ptolemy method is with no latitude.

Obviously I have not checked everything but just what useful (and traditional). So I'm sure that semiarc without latitude are perfectly right in Morinus, but I have not checked all the latitude options, because I did not care.

margherita

margherita wrote: semiarc directions could be calculated with planetary latitude. But Ptolemy method is with no latitude.

Oh, you meant ecliptical latitude! For a moment I thought you were talking about equatorial latitude..

Thanks,
Jo?o Ventura

Good evening,

Perhaps astrology software developers might also find the three short books on primary directions by Dr. med. Rumen Kolev replete with formulae quite useful.

Best regards,

lihin

Hi everyone,

I've finished writing a new blog post about a simpler and generic formula for the calculation of Primary Directions using the proportional semi-arc method.

You can find the post here: http://skyplux.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/primary-directions-a-generic-approach/

People who have been doing hand calculations of Primary Directions know that there are three different classes of formulas to calculate PD's, namely directions to a meridian (easy one), to the horizon (quite boring, because of the oblique ascensions), and to a planet or point.

In section 4 of the post, I show one simple formula which is generic enough to solve the three mentioned problems in the same way. I demonstrate mathematically that the formula is adequate to solve each of the single "problems". The formula is just another way of expressing the semi-arc method, but it seems simpler to me..

[for software developers]

For software developers this means that instead of three different functions, you only have one, which is simpler. To people who like to calculate PDs by hand, it means less formulas (and no Oblique Ascensions!).
I've implemented this method in skyPlux and reduced my Primary Directions calculations from 800 lines to about 25 lines of code, including one function to compute the diurnal/nocturnal arcs of a planet and another to find if a planet is above/bellow the horizon.

[/for software developers]

I've compared my results to http://www.astrotexte.ch/sources/primaries.jsp by Dr. R?diger Plantiko, a resource identified as reliable by Martin Gansten in his book, and the results match with an error less than 1".

Later, I will compare them to pyMorinus, as promised, and if I find any errors, I should post them here so Margherita can check them, since I believe Margherita has been helping the programmer of pyMorinus on the PDs module..

Finally, I believe the formulas are correct, but if anyone detects any error, please let me know!


Thanks,
Jo?o Ventura