In 'The Birthday Book of Destiny', published by Nichols co., 23, Hart Street, W.C., London, can be found a charming dedication by Sepharial to his wife Marie, appearing on successive lines of a single page thus, albeit centred as I am unable to replicate here:

'TO
MY DEAR WIFE
MARIE,
THIS LITTLE WORK,
AN OFF-SHOOT OF MY MORE SERIOUS STUDIES
IN THE SCIENCE OF THE STARS,
IS AFFECTIONATELY
Dedicated.'

I am just curious as to whether this book is unique among Gornold's works in having been dedicated to his wife! Can anyone recall seeing another dedication to her in any of his other books?

Another point of minor curiosity to me: the dating of 'The Birthday Book of Destiny', since there is no date listed in the book itself.

In her exhaustive bibliography of Sepharial's published and privately available works at the end of her biography 'The Astral Tramp', Kim lists 1903 as the date of publication for 'The Birthday Book of Destiny'. The British Library, which has a copy, claims 1904 on its database. OCLC lists only two other copies worldwide in member library holdings, one at Oxford University and the other at the New York Public Library, and is fuzzy about the date, claiming '191?'.

In the copy I just purchased, an owner's signature is dated to January 1st 1907, proving that OCLC is far wide of the mark. I suspect that Kim has got it absolutely right, since unlike whoever catalogues materials at the British Library, she did thorough research, although a year of discrepancy is no major issue ultimately! In either case, this particular copy must have been sold or passed on to a new owner a few years after it was first printed, since 1907 is considerably askew from either 1904 or 1903.

Philip

Hey Philip-

What did Kim have to say about the Circle of Hermes?

Any luck with figuring out what the basis of this system Is?
Speaking of Sepharial , I just acquired the Astrology Book Center of America's reprint of Sepharial's book on Primary Directions (the reprint is called Primary Directions but the original edition had another title) and will be doing some alligator wrestling with this system soon.

I found on old textbook on Spherical Astronomy and hope that will help.

It seems to me me Primary Directions are about to become mainstream again as many of the more 'serious' atrologers I now are expressing an interest in learning more about them.

all my best,

Scott

What did Kim have to say about the Circle of Hermes?

Kim hasn't said anything much about anything for a while as she's been running around in circles, trying to meet a whole pile of deadlines simultaneously.

Normal service will be resumed in a week or so when I have the time to sit down and catch up on what I've missed. Just don't want people to think I'm ignoring them

Kim

Hi Scott!

I'll have to look through the various books on the fixed stars to see if I can find any other references to the 'Hermetic Circle', as well as in astrological history books. I'm sure there must be an explanation in some obvious place I just haven't checked yet! I wonder if it's something in the Liber Hermetis. Surely someone here must know?

Agree that primary directions are becoming more used again. I think this is partly because of the availability of software that calculates them automatically, the lack of which put off a great many astrologers in the 20th century since the manual calculation procedure is very tedious by lazy modern astrologers' standards. I must admit I haven't learned by heart the proper way to do it using the 'speculum' just yet, though I believe I have the books from which to do so if I take the time to search long and hard enough!

Dave Roell's publication 'Primary Directions: the Definitive Study' is certainly a timely reprint of Sepharial's 'Directional Astrology', which itself was an expansion by Sepharial himself of his very early and very scarce book 'Prognostic Astronomy'. Copies of the original editions of 'Directional Astrology' published during Sepharial's lifetime could recently be bought on the used book market for no less than $50 - roughly what I paid for mine - stretching up towards $80; and for working astrologers for whom value is more important than original bindings, the much lower-cost Astrology Classics reprint by Dave Roell must come as a welcome saving. There were a couple of copies of 'Prognostic Astronomy' when I last checked, priced around the $100 region - too expensive for me to bother, especially since it was little more than a prototype of what became 'Directional Astrology'.

Another cause and / or symptom of the recent revival in primary directions I would identify as being the AFA's recent reprinting last summer of the second edition of Alfred Pearce's 'Text-Book of Astrology' in a proper hardcover edition for the first time since 1970 (it was first printed in 1911). I don't know about you, but I think 36 years is a very long time indeed between printings, although 59 years was even longer between 1911 and 1970. I had been hounding various people such as John Ballantrae (who did respond favourably in due course!) to reprint it until this happened. But before he did, I bought a remaindered copy of the 1970 printing from L & S Trading (another of the few specialised astrological reprint businesses still trading, as you may know) about four or five years ago. They had purchased a small stash of absolutely mint copies, unsold since over thirty years before, and offered them for the reasonable price of $60 each. This was at a time when used copies of the second edition in any printing were almost entirely unavailable on the used book networks. Since then, the supply of used copies has increased quite a lot, but the Ballantrae and AFA reprints are still welcome in extending the availability of the book to astrologers who prefer their books new. [There was also a softcover edition in two volumes (but it was only another reprint of the one-volume 1911 second edition, just divided into two softcover volumes) published by the National Astrological Library some time in the 1950s before the 1970 hardcover one-volume reprint was first published by the AFA, but the National Astrological Library version is a much more workmanlike edition and copies are not likely to have aged so well.]

The holy grail for Alfred Pearce-seekers would be the original two-volume first edition from 1879 and 1889. Two or three of the chapters were entirely culled from the combined 1911 second edition, which was thus not quite as much as the sum of the parts of the original edition. Since it is the 1911 edition that has received all the reprints since, the 1879 and 1889 first edition has become very collectible to astrologers as it has never been reprinted. I'm still after a copy myself of the 1889 second volume, though I have the first from 1879. Two copies of the two-volume set came up for auction last year but I was outbid on both.

In common with Tom, I have a lot of admiration for Alfred Pearce as an astrologer, although his texts are certainly far from being easy reading, being highly technical, dense and concise; and primary directions were relied on by him more than any other technique to predict events in the lives of notables in the public eye. There are some fun practical examples of this in Volume I of his journal 'The Future' (published 1892). I don't have the later volumes yet - all three of them are extremely scarce, more so even than the first edition of his 'Text Book of Astrology', and I had to pay roughly $200 US for Volume I even, although this was fixed price from a bookdealer via Abebooks - at auction, I expect they would go for roughly half this price. But it's gripping reading for sure!

19th century and earlier astrologers tended to be competent mathematicians, with an excellent grasp of the celestial sphere and all its astronomical points and associated calculations.

I don't think we can hold computers alone to blame for astrologers forgetting these things, since primary directions had faded out of use long before even the humble pocket calculator came into almost every home in the western world!

Instead it seems now that computer software is reopening the doors to these older techniques that otherwise require more manual calculation effort than the average 21st century human is both equipped and motivated to withstand!

Philip

It's not that easy to trace the sources of Sepharial's list of star points for the days of the year. Only a few of the names are given in the proper form used by Vivian Robson in 'The Fixed Stars and Constellations', though I am having some limited success transposing Robson's terminology to Sepharial's using Allen 'Star Names and Their Meanings'.

The Liber Hermetis account of the names of the fixed stars in different degrees of the different signs does not closely correspond with Sepharial's tables either, even allowing for precession.

Sepharial claims that he has gathered his material from 'ancient Hermetic and Rosicrucian sources'. Does anyone have any ideas as to what other sources might be worth checking here? His use of the word 'Rosicrucian' might be a major clue to someone familiar with that tradition.

To give you an example, for the period approximating to the Sun's passage through the tropical sign of Cancer, Sepharial gives (my approximations to the tropical degree correspondences are added in parentheses - these are not given by Sepharial, and because there are 365 days in the calendar year and only 360 degrees each degree will last on average slightly longer than one day)

June 21 (approx. Cancer 0): Lactea
June 22: (1) House of Apollo
June 23: (2) Pelagos
June 24: (3) Olive Branch
June 25: (4) Club and Hand
June 26: (5) Shining Cloud
June 27: (6) Flail
June 28: (7) Arrow
June 29: (8} Bow
June 30: (9) Jaw Bone
July 1: (10) Telescope
July 2: (11) Canopus
July 3: (12) Finger of Apollo
July 4: (13) Lyre
July 5: (14) Hercules' Hand
July 6: (15) Scroll
July 7: (16) Sirius
July 8: (17) Eye-Piece
July 9: (18} Seals
July 10: (19) Apollo
July 11: (20) Olympus
July 12: (21) Waggon
July 13: (22) Castor
July 14: (23) Uriel
July 15: (24) Hierophant
July 16: (25) Rt. Hand Apollo
July 17: (26) Right Ear
July 18: (27) Club and Torch
July 19: (28} Press
July 20: (29) Spaniel
July 21: (29-30) Procyon

During the same period, Robson (in 1923 - only about 19 years and one quarter of a degree of precession later than the publication date of Sepharial's book) gives the following direct matches by name, but they are significantly off Sepharial's account by placement in the tropical zodiac:

Sirius (alpha Canis Majoris): 12 deg 59' Cancer (Robson, 1923)
Castor (alpha Geminorum): 19 deg 8' Cancer (Robson, 1923)
Procyon (alpha Canis Minoris): 24 deg 41' Cancer (Robson, 1923)

Robson's placements for Sirius and Castor are both three degrees earlier than Sepharial's, while his placement of Procyon is about five degrees earlier.

Now unless I am very much mistaken here, in which case I trust someone reading this will correct me at the earliest opportunity, the following is true:

Since with precession the tropical zodiac moves in retrograde motion against the starry background, at the rate of roughly five minutes arc every six years, or one degree every seventy-two years, so the stars move in direct motion through the tropical zodiac at the same rate. Thus, we cannot explain the disparity between Sepharial's and Robson's positions for Sirius and Castor by supposing that he had taken them from a source a couple of centuries old, since in this case it would be Sepharial's positions that were three degrees earlier than Robson's, and not the reverse. If Robson's are correct, then it would appear that Sepharial's were significantly less accurate in 1904 than they are today in 2007, but will reach their peak of accuracy not until about 2139, all of 216 years after the publication of Robson's book and 235 years after the publication of Sepharial's.

So did Sepharial, in working from an ancient source, overcorrect for precession in error? Or was he working from an ancient source that was itself faulty, and on applying the correct precession ended up with faulty positions for the stars?

The mystery also remains for me as to his probable source for all the 'star-points' he lists for all the degrees that do not provide an obvious match for stars listed in Robson. The Liber Hermetis does not solve this problem. So far as I can see at an early glance, nor do Bullinger (The Witness of The Stars) or Rolleston (Mazzaroth), and Allen (Star Names and Their Meanings) and Olcott (Star Lore of All Ages) certainly don't, though Allen can be helpful in providing alternative names for the stars referred to by their proper names in Robson and elsewhere. Were there any popular astronomy works that used terms like 'flail', 'arrow', 'bow', 'jaw bone' and 'telescope', for stars and sections of constellations, to which he might have had access? The more of these points I can identify to a precise astronomical position, the clearer the picture will become.

Any pointers to sources to help with this research would be very much appreciated.

PS: I made a couple of small edits for careless typing errors and to clarify potential ambiguities since first posting this - the sense is the same!

Philip

Hello Philip,

When in doubt, check the index in Robson. Telescope was the name of a "new" constellation at 5-16 degrees Cancer, dating from 1781.

The 27 Nakshatras are often referred to as "stars" & you should check Sepharial's suggestions against those as well. My favorite reference is a two volume set by K.T. Shubhakaran. De Fouw & Svoboda's Light on Life is very good, too, though you can doubtless find on-line references.

For real fun, you might check the subs & sub-subs as found in Krishnamurti astrology. Supposedly an invention of K.S. Krishnamurti, I suspect he found an oral tradition & popularized it.

Dave