Skyscript Astrology Forum

I am curious as to what the past authorities on the subject said regarding the orbs or moieties.

Sun?s beams extend

Lilly's Orb Table is interesting. We look on the size? of the planet in relation to the Orb. I?d like to be very particular on this.

A 65 degree sextile beween say Sun and Mars in modern interpretation is wide, and given rather a low priority and power.

A 65 degree sextile between Mercury and Mars is also given the same low priority.

But looking at Lilly?s table and Ptolemy, it?s quite a different approach. The Sun-Mars aspect is given an 11 degree span. While the Mars-Mercury aspect is given an allowance of 7 degrees.

I generally discount these aspects for being on the verge of too wide an orb. However, they are there and with regard to the Mars-Mercury, I am wondering what the texts would say about this aspect.


If the planets aspect then it has implications for the houses that they rule. I am interested in the take that anyone might have on this matter.

Thanks

The orbs are as follows:

Saturn - 9 degres
Jupiter - 9 degrees
Mars - 8 degrees
Sun - 15 degrees
Venus - 7 degrees
Mercury - 7 degrees
Moon - 12 degrees

Orbs and moieties are two different things. The orb is total circumference of the planet's influence.

The moiety is where you take the two aspecting planets' orbs and add them together, and then divide that number by half. That result is the area of influence for the planets.

For instance a sextile is 60 degrees. Let's say you have the Sun and Mercury. Add the two orbs together - 15+7=22. Divide that by half - 22/2=11. So a sextile happening within 11 degrees of perfection between the Sun and Mercury can be called a sextile. Obviously the closer the better though.

Hi Tom,

Interesting. So in Morin's system the Sun and Moon spend most of the time in either an applying or separating aspect with a moeity of 30 degrees! That makes the typical Al Biruni Sun/Moon moeity of just 13 1/2 degrees quite tame in comparison.

Mark

That is very interesting.

I like the idea of using nature as a guide.

This is where the idea of combustion in the Sun comes from. The simple visible light is what we are dealing with. Under such terms Venus is brighter than the other planets including Jupiter.

What interests me really is this area which is just on the edge of being within range. As I?ve said 65 degrees sextile aspect, or 129 trine.

With a Moon sextile Sun aspect even according to Lilly we get what 15 degrees allowance, what is know as the harmonic quintile falls under this, yet 72 is a sextile....

This is food for thought.


A 65 degree sextile: Applying. Effects won?t be vibrant, or phsyically too obvious. But what I?m getting at is that the houses ruled by these two are connected, that there is communication between the two.

Lilly made use of the quintile and semi-quintile aspects.


I?d like to know not what the orb that they give officially is, but rather examples of horoscopes cast which are shown to work using the wider orb.

Everyone says "this is the official orb" but in practice, a 129 degree trine ?
Also with the quintile aspect do the texts state, that they must be smaller or larger than any other?

MarkC wrote:Interesting. So in Morin's system the Sun and Moon spend most of the time in either an applying or separating aspect with a moeity of 30 degrees! That makes the typical Al Biruni Sun/Moon moeity of just 13 1/2 degrees quite tame in comparison.

Hi Mark,

this must be a misunderstanding: Morin (volume 16 chapter 13 of AG) speaks of:

"18 gradus pro semidiametro orbis sua luminis"

for the Sun. And that is 18 degrees before and behind him, as always.

Johannes

Hello Johannes,

this must be a misunderstanding: Morin (volume 16 chapter 13 of AG) speaks of: "18 gradus pro semidiametro orbis sua luminis"
for the Sun. And that is 18 degrees before and behind him, as always.

No argument about that. I was discussing the combined moeity of the Sun + Moon together. 18+12=30

That makes the typical Al Biruni Sun/Moon moeity of just 13 1/2 degrees quite tame in comparison

Actually, it is not so different, because Al Biruni?s orbs (typical of all the early lists) were 15? before and after for the Sun (ie, around the Sun), and 12? before and after (around) the Moon; hence a combination would total 27? as a 'whole orb' (but see below, because Al Biruni probably did not take this approach).

There are two common lists of orbs ? the one that Mithra6 mentions above seems to be by far the most popular, especially amongst the Arabic authors. But we also have the ?larger list? that Lilly mentions on p.107 of CA. Here Lilly says that some authors go up to 17? on either side of the Sun, and that is why, when Lilly offers a definition for ?Under the Sun?s Beams (or rays)' on p.113, he says it is when a planet is within 17? of the Sun, on either side. But I have also seen authors say 17.30?, and (as we seen here) Morin says 18? on either side. (It probably felt more satisfactory to have a 36? total orb for the Sun, rather than the odd-numbered 35?).

I have been looking into when this larger list of orb first started to become popular, but so far I haven?t seen any source older than the 12th century use the larger list ? I have checked all the classical sources and pre-9th century sources I have to hand, and the works I have of Abu Ma?shar, Sahl (or Zahel), Masha'allah, Alcabitius, Al Biruni, Ezra and Bonatti. All of these early authors seem to be consistent in their use of the smaller list given in Mithra6?s post. Georg Tannstetter, in the 16th century, recorded both lists, and said that the larger set of figures were given by Ptolemy in his Almagest ? but I have checked and there is no mention of any of the planetary orbs anywhere in that work. I suspect he was influenced by one of the large commentaries on the ?Tetrabiblos? that were being published around his time, but I haven?t discovered which one yet. Galileo also recorded the larger set of orbs, and his technique also seems to have been strongly influenced by the Camerarius translation and commentary on the Tetrabiblos. I am trying to strengthen my Latin before having another search.

One other interesting point that I found when researching this, is that far fewer traditional astrologers used the ?add two planetary orbs together and divide by two? ?moiety? approach that Dariot describes in detail, and which most of us see as the ?correct? way to calculate a traditional orb. Actually, Dariot only describes this as one of the ways that orbs were determined. A far simpler approach was to simply use the orbs for what they were. For example, any planet is under the Sun?s beams when it is within 15? of the Sun, regardless of what its own orb is (we all know that); but equally any planet falls within the orb of the Moon if it is within 12? of the Moon, regardless of what its own orb is. (This is relevant to my increasing conviction that the Moon could only translate its influence to the planets that were within this reach). It also leads to the sort of situation that Ibn Ezra describes, where Saturn, being 11 degrees away from the Moon, is within the orb of the Moon, and yet the Moon at the same time is not within the smaller orb of orb of Saturn. I think this is loaded with interpretative value, especially in regards to issues concerned with translating light and committing virtue.

Another point to bear in mind is that we are talking about the 'maximum limits' to the planetary effects. All traditional authors understood that the aspect was more effective the closer it was to perfection, and many stressed that an aspect really needed to be within 6 degrees to be effective, and within 3 degrees to be really effective. (So basically, the principle we use in combustion typified the approach to orbs in general). Also, although it surprises many people to realise this, we do have very clear statements, even in the ancient classical texts, that the planetary orb is counted, even if it crosses over a sign boundary. So if you have two planets in signs that are in trine to each other, but they are within, say 3 degrees of a square aspect, the planets are in a square aspect, just as modern astrologers would expect.

Anyway, it is probably worth flagging up in this thread that references to the larger set of orbs are either rare or non-existent in the ancient and early texts, so if anyone comes across a reference to a 17degree (or +) orb for the Sun in pre-renaissance works, I would be very interested to know the details.

In Sahl's Introduction (translated by Ben Dykes) it's actually explained that moieties are to be used only with conjunctions, and here also out-of-sign conjunctions are allowed as long as they are within those moieties (15 degrees for both sides for the Sun, 12 degrees for the Moon, etc.). I've understood it similarly than Deb that the body of a planet must be within those degrees, not only its own moiety. That may result in unidirectional conjunctions, when for example we have Mars in 3 Taurus and the Moon in 13 Taurus: Mars is under the influence of the Moon, but the Moon is not anymore under the influence of Mars. As Deb noted, these observations are loaded with meaning.

But with aspects Sahl talks only about whole sign aspects with no mention of moieties / orbs, and in that case out-of-sign aspects are not allowed. (Sahl: Introduction, pages 9 and 15-16).

I think this might explain many problems: for example does combustion extend behind the sign boundary? - Yes, it does. Is the Moon void-of-course, if there is another planet in the next sign already within its moiety? - No, it's not.

I like the idea of using nature as a guide.

This is where the idea of combustion in the Sun comes from. The simple visible light is what we are dealing with.

While this is the rationale for combustion, interestingly Morin, that natural philosopher, rejected combustion as having an influence at all, and simply used planets close to the Sun as conjunctions.

Tom

In Sahl's Introduction (translated by Ben Dykes) it's actually explained that moieties are to be used only with conjunctions, and here also out-of-sign conjunctions are allowed as long as they are within those moieties (15 degrees for both sides for the Sun, 12 degrees for the Moon, etc.).

I know that Ben Dykes implies something along the lines of what you are saying in his footnote, but this is one place where I consider his footnote misleading. The problem is that this part of the text talks about planets ?conjoining?, but in the Latin texts this could equally mean to join by aspect as well as by bodily conjunction. We can see that Sahl and Masha?allah did make use of aspects that perfected over sign boundaries by the example chart judgements in the book. But more importantly, we have other references, both older than this text and contemporary with it, to show that over-sign-cusp aspects were considered.

What Sahl explains is not novel to his text, it is part of a traditional theory that can be glimpsed in the older Hellenistic texts, and which appears in quite a similar form in the later texts. But the use of the word ?moiety? could be misleading, as many astrologers attach that to the notion of adding the amounts together and dividing them. I don?t believe that word is used at this particular period. What we do have, are many references to the orbs that extend, both in front and behind, but what they really mean is ?around?, just as the word ?orb? suggests.

Incidentally, one of the footnotes in Ben Dykes work (and I have seen this comment made by several other authors too) claims this is a different approach to that taken by William Lilly, suggesting that Lilly used 9? as the total orb of Saturn, rather than its radius. I know that Ben will correct this in a later edition, but just to be clear - this is very much the same approach that Lilly took. For example he says of Saturn (CA p. 60) ?His orb is 9 degrees before and after; that is, his influence begins to work when either he applies, or any planet applies to him, and is within 9 degrees of his aspect, and from that aspect?.

Hi Tom,

In case you noticed my earlier post and are wondering why my comment has changed, I just realised that your comment wasn't addressed to me, so my response wasn't necessary, and probably wasn't helpful.

Deb