Skyscript Astrology Forum

Hello everyone,

One of the things that has been bugging me for a while is who is right - Masha'allah when he advises to Distribute/direct through the bounds the Giver of Life aka Hyleg or Abu Mashar who advises to Distribute the Asc. Unfortunately, deliberately or not, Dorotheus's example has the Asc as the Giver of Life, which he Distributes to know the longevity.

On top of it, Rumen Kolev has programmed his software Porphyry Magus 2 according to Ptolemy, he says according to the quadrants, so it offers converse Distributions when the significator/Giver of Life in my topic, is directed. I have not come across this in any author.

Planets/points directly on the angles are easiest to direct, the difficulty comes when the Giver of Life is not conj an angle as is almost always the case.

Here is the problem:

Delphic Oracle and the free program Morinus show one and the same result in the direct Distributions while Kolev's Porphyry Magus 2 shows another, the difference most often being not just months but years apart, while in the converse Distributions even Delphic Oracle and Morinus differ by 2 years.

Let me illustrate with the chart of killer Gary Gilmore which has AA rating

http://www.astro.com/astro-databank/Gilmore,_Gary

and Regulus Astrology has rectified from 6.30 am to 6.24.22 am, Asc 26.59 Scorpio, which is the time of birth I have used as well in the calculations.

The data is: 4th of December 1940, 6.24.22 am born in McCamey, Texas, USA, 102W13 26 31N08 09 CST 6. He commited murders in July 1976 and was executed on the 17th of January 1977.

Here are the screenshots with the Distributions. I am using the traditional ones - Placidus/Semi arc, no latitude, Ptolemy key. The first is the Moon in Porphyry Magus 2 (PM2):


This one is of the Moon in Delphic Oracle:


This is of the Moon in Morinus:

This one is of the Moon converse in Delphic Oracle, where for some unknown to me reason the bounds are direct while the directions are converse:


This one is of the Moon converse in Morinus:

To save space, I won't post Fortune's Distributions as they are the same in Delphic Oracle and Morinus (2 day difference which is understandable of course)


This one is Fortune converse in PM2:

This one is Fortune converse in Delphic Oracle (where for some unknown to me reason the bounds are again direct while the directions are converse)

The last one is Fortune converse in Morinus:

The conclusions are that:

Moon ? Delphic Oracle and Morinus are the same ? Porphyry Magus 2 differs by 1-2 years

Moon converse ? Morinus and Delpic Oracle differ by 2 years (the directions in Delphic Oracle are converse, but the bounds are again for some reason direct)

Fortune ? Delphic Oracle and Morinus are the same (2 day difference)

Fortune converse ? Morinus differs from Pophyry Magus 2 and Delphic Oracle with 2.5 years (here the C directions are the same as in PM2 but for some reason the bounds are direct not converse)


Could anyone please tell me which program has the correct calculations? Thank you.

As far as the Giver of Life vs the Asc and which one to Distribute (when they differ of course), I am inclined more and more to use the Giver of Life over the Asc, or at least to give it more weight, as I have seen cases where the Asc Distributions pretty much do not work, hence the topic, because it is not worth using it if the difference is 2+ years.

While I do not have firsthand experience with Delphic Oracle, I do believe that it calculates "converse" directions in the more traditional way of directing the promissor to the significator in zodiacal motion (as a test, the direction of the Sun to the Moon in Morinus occurs within two days of when the Moon makes a converse sextile the the Sun in Delphic Oracle). This is distinct from modern "converse" Zodiacal directions, which move the signifactor backwards through the Zodiac. As far as this goes, I believe Delphic Oracle is more consistent with the tradition, but calculation-wise both programs are correctly doing what they are doing - they're just doing different things under the same name!

I can't explain the discrepancy with Porphyrius, but maybe that "Secundum Ordinem" has something to do with it. It may be calculating something such as secondary motion that the other programs are not - that would explain how the directions seem faster. I can't tell you what is absolutely right, but I think Delphic Oracle and Morinus are more in line with the tradition, Delphic Oracle in particular when it comes to traditional converse directions.

Thank you for your comments, Eric L. I just made a comparison between Delphic Oracle and Porphyry Magus in the Distributions of the Asc, MC and the Sun, with the same chart, and they are the same, so this "Secundum Ordinem" is not the cause.

In this nativity at least the discrepancy is not misleading because neither the Distributor nor the Partner change in the case of the Giver of Life the Moon, but that is rare and in other cases either one is different or both.

Eric is right about converse directions. It is confusing that 'converse' has come (since the 19th century) to mean something completely different from what it meant before. The directions called converse in Morinus and in Placidus/Porphyrius Magus are not traditionally converse ones.

It seems likely to me that most of the other differences are to do with the position/motion of the Moon rather than the directions as such, so perhaps you should double-check the variables used by each program for the Moon and see if they agree. Parallax, secondary motion and disc size are all factors that may be relevant (though I'm not sure if any software corrects for disc size).

I don't believe Morinus allows converse direction through the terms (unless that's been implemented in a later version than the one I'm running), so if directions through the terms are chosen, they will only be shown in direct motion.

Incidentally, Ptolemy doesn't say that the hyleg has to be directed conversely if it is in the western part of the chart. He says that converse directions are only relevant when the hyleg is in the western part (but direct directions may always be used).

Thank you Martin Gansten.
I too understood Ptolemy to mean the western quadrants, yet Kolev, it seems, has programmed it the reverse. For instance, the Moon is in a western quadrant and Fortune is in an eastern one, yet Porphyry Magus directs the Mooon direct and Fortune converse.

As to Morinus the version I am using is from April 2012 and it does allow the converse Distributions. See the last screenshot which has Fortune converse in Virgo and the bounds start from Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Mercury etc.
In any case, if that is not Ptolemy meant, then I won't be using it.

As to the Moon, I can't explain it. I just went through the settings of Porphyry Magus and did not see any mention of paralax or disc.

In fact here is another chart that shows something has to be definitely wrong with Porphyry Magus.
American artist Jackson Pollock:

http://www.astro.com/astro-databank/Pollock,_Jackson

Regulus Astrology has rectified it from 12.06 pm to 12.04.20 pm Asc 26.11 Taurus, the Moon at 25.32 Taurus

Data is: 28 January 1912, Cody, Wyoming, USA 109W03 21, 33N31 35, 7h.

With the Moon conjunct the Asc within minutes, the Distributions have to be very close, yet here is what Poprhyry Magus shows:


And here is what Delphic Oracle shows (which is the same as Morinus -1 day difference due to Morinus not having seconds in the coordinates input)


Here are the Distributions of the Asc (the same in Delphic Oracle, Morinus and Porphyry Magus, so these are in Porphyry Magus 2):

There is a 3-4 year difference of Moon's Distributions in Porphyry Magus 2 compared to those in Morinus and Delphic Oracle. I can't believe how huge it is!
On the other hand the difference between the Moon and the Asc in Delphic Oracle and Morinus is only about 6 months (they are conj within 39 minutes).



So the bottom line is to use Delphic Oracle or Morinus and direct Distributions which, since the results coincide exactly, are correctly calculated for all the traditional significators, correct?

Zagata wrote:So the bottom line is to use Delphic Oracle or Morinus and direct Distributions which, since the results coincide exactly, are correctly calculated for all the traditional significators, correct?

Seems like a sound conclusion to me.

Hi,

I think there is a mixture between some moduls in the programs.
In Plaicdus there you can see in the "Semi Arc Placidus" this picture, which is same as in Morinus, but not with the terms. So aspects are the same!

http://www.screencast.com/t/HPIQbLiIqY2P

Wolfgang

Hi Wolfgang,

Thank you for the screenshot. I am dropping the converse Distributions.

Could I please ask you to compare Moon's direct Distributions in Placidus with the ones in Delphic Oracle/Morinus that are published at the beginning of this topic, for the same chart?
I want to know if the mistake or deviation is in Poprhyry Magus 2 only or Placidus shows the same result as Porphyry Magus, thus different from Delphic Oracle/Morinus.

Hi,

We see, there are other, or not the same results, by using different programs, which uses, by name , same directions. Where from does the difference between Porphyrius Magus and the other 2 programs come? Why is that difference?

Wolfgang

Hi,

I don't know why there is a difference, that is why I opened the topic, namely to find out which program calculates Distributions correctly. Since Delphic Oracle and Morinus coincide they are the safe choice. To clarify, I mean Distributions not of the angles, which are the easiest and every program shows the same results, but of Fortune, the Sun, Moon, Prenatal lunation and others.

Disregard the converse Distributions, there is also sometimes a difference in the direct ones. I am using the same traditional parameters: Placidus/semi arc, Ptolemy key, direct, no latitude for both.

With primary directions it's easy to go at variance between programs because of all the different options. You need to make sure that the settings are correct (using latitude or not, various keys, direction type, etc). In the case of the Moon, you also need to take into account whether parallax was used (topocentric or geocentric) which can account for up to 1 degree difference in position. Also, Delphic Oracle has 2 types of converse direction; one is traditional converse and the other is what Martin Gansten has called neo-converse. If you include traditional direct directions, then there are actually 3 different arcs being measured. Following in the tradition, I only programmed direct directions through the bounds, though I suppose one could go against the primary motion (before birth in time), though this seems philosophically inconsistent to me.

zoidsoft wrote:Following in the tradition, I only programmed direct directions through the bounds, though I suppose one could go against the primary motion (before birth in time), though this seems philosophically inconsistent to me.

I agree with that. But it would be possible to include the terms in traditional converse direction, too. From a perspective of observational astronomy, one would then be looking for the times when the significator crossed those points in its own diurnal circle corresponding to where the boundary lines between the terms were at birth. I'm not sure if that was ever done traditionally, though.