Skyscript Astrology Forum

In Ptolemy's technique, a planet making a heliacal appearance is one of the candidates for significator of Action.

Personally, I use Stellarium to simulate the positions of the planets, and then look for a heliacal appearance either in the east or in the west, +- 7 days.

How do you guys check whether a planet is making a heliacal appearance?

Larxene wrote:In Ptolemy's technique, a planet making a heliacal appearance is one of the candidates for significator of Action.

Personally, I use Stellarium to simulate the positions of the planets, and then look for a heliacal appearance either in the east or in the west, +- 7 days.

How do you guys check whether a planet is making a heliacal appearance?

Hello.
Many software can calculate the heliacal rising of a planet. I use Phasis but for example curtis Manwaring's Delphic Oracle can calculate it.

If you don't want to use a commercial software you can try:

http://www.alcyone.de/planetary_lunar_a ... ility.html

There is a city database, but you can add whatever city you need.

Thank you, margerita. I will check out the free software.

So my guess is that most people use their astrology software to calculate heliacal appearances?

Hello again margherita (and everyone else).

I tried using the Alcyone software for planetary visibility. It's cool that it maps out the visibility of the planets visually, but I just want to make sure I am interpreting the results correctly.

First, here's a screenshot:

No, that's not a fish.

So, those long horizontal red lines are supposed to mark the first and last day that the planet (in this case Mercury) appears in the sky, either in sunrise or sunset. However, note that those lines always exclude a small part of the gold colour areas. I pointed to the excluded areas with the light green arrows.

According to the colour agenda below, gold shows that the planet is visible at that particular place and time. But what about those areas that are excluded by the red lines? They look gold to me, so the planet should be visible ...

My guess is that those areas are actually the 'invisible due to altitude' areas. I don't understand the colour agenda for this. But am I right, margherita?



Larxene Xenohart

Larxene wrote:
My guess is that those areas are actually the 'invisible due to altitude' areas. I don't understand the colour agenda for this. But am I right, margherita?

Hello Larxene, sorry for the delay in replying.
In effect I don't know. I always used "show dates of visibility phenomena" and calculated 7 days +/-
And now I'm referring to Phasis software, which gives a table.

Delphic Oracle shows heliacal phenomena in 3 different ways. One is as disappearance and re-appearance dots in the path lines of the graphic ephemeris as shown below...
The above graph is clickable and will show user defined charts such as transits and progressions, zodiacal releasing, profections for the date/time clicked upon within the graph compared to the nativity.

There is also another special graph that can be shown for the dates +/- 7 days in the month of birth which shows graphically the relevant phases.

The third is a tabulation of this data along with the greatest elongations of Mercury and Venus calculated for several years. The importance of these phenomena have to do with the idea of "phasis" which Schmidt called "an appearance which speaks". He calls this a complement to the concept of logos which is "a speaking that makes something appear in the mind". He also said that the +/- 7 = 15 day interval has special importance in Hellenistic astrology as a sort of "ideal" from which the planets derive meaning by actually setting earlier or later than that average due to such factors as visual extinction, limiting magnitude, latitude, etc... I programmed this into Delphic Oracle nearly 10 years ago.

Hello again, margherita.

Yes, I understand how to display those dates. The red lines actually show those dates in the graph. I suppose I can simply use the dates, but I'm just a bit confused by the graph, which seemingly contradicts the table. The next step would be to verify the heliacal appearance dates with Stellarium.

Thanks.



Greetings Curtis,

Wow, that image looks kind of complicated. I'm guessing the y-axis shows the degrees of the sign a planet is in?

I think I have read about your mention of phasis as being "an appearance that speaks" before this. I have also read about the concept of logos a bit. If I remember correctly, it is something like "the Universe is a mind that speaks with itself", and from there stems the concept of Oneness or the Monad, or something like that. It's a Platonic or Neoplatonic worldview.

Is there a recording of a conclave or something where Schmidt explains his thoughts on this matter?



Larxene Xenohart

Larxene wrote:Wow, that image looks kind of complicated. I'm guessing the y-axis shows the degrees of the sign a planet is in?

Yes.

Larxene wrote:I think I have read about your mention of phasis as being "an appearance that speaks" before this. I have also read about the concept of logos a bit. If I remember correctly, it is something like "the Universe is a mind that speaks with itself", and from there stems the concept of Oneness or the Monad, or something like that. It's a Platonic or Neoplatonic worldview.

Is there a recording of a conclave or something where Schmidt explains his thoughts on this matter?

I'm not sure where he says this, but probably. I used to live in Cumberland about 7 - 8 years ago and much of what Bob said was said on the back porch.