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1. The easiest way to get a correct chart for Morin is, with software that allows for that option, to enter the time 8:33 LAT (not LMT). That will take care of the seasonal difference automatically.
Solar Fire does not offer an option for LAT (Local Apparent Time) on its list of time zones on the drop down menu, but if you type LAT in the appropriate box it will calculate it properly. I use this for Worsdale's charts and the resultant charts work out almost identically to his (insignificant minor differences at most)

You can do the same thing with Delphic Oracle. LAT is not listed, but it can be typed in. Janus offers the option on its drop down menu.

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Thanks so much to Deborah for bringing all this exciting stuff up. I had been using 8:33 LAT, as Martin and Tom indicate (using Solar Fire), which gives an ascendant of 27Ar29.

Here is a translation of the French biography from 1660 that Deborah posted:

"We now reach the last of our reflections, which is the most important of all. Monsieur Morin died on the sixth day of November in the year 1656, and we cannot be content with simply asking if his death was marked out in that great book which determines the good or bad destiny of men under God's providence. Rather, we enquire if he himself had recognised it, if he had read something of it in these celestial characters; and I have already taken an affirmative position on this, and I will not unsay myself here, having in hand the original documents from which it is easy for me to convince those who might doubt what I have said about this.

Above the revolution of this year, in the place where on others he wrote only "revolutio solis", he wrote "status coeli undequaque pessimus vitaque meae periculosissimus" [the state of the sky everywhere for the worst and for my life most dangerous]; and alongside the figure describing the direction, which subsequently killed him, "a longo tempore timui directionem istam" [for a long time have I feared this direction].

And this unfortunate direction was that of Mars Lord of the radical horoscope in opposition to the Moon, [Mars] that Saturn has wounded by his opposition, and which in consequence can only signify mortal diseases: which finds confirmation in the solar revolution, where the horoscope falls on the cusp of the eighth of the radical, with the heart of the Scorpion, and the cusp of the eighth is [on] the radical place of Mars, which is diverging from the radical horoscope and applying to the square with the Moon, Lady of the eighth of the revolution, and from there passes to the opposition of the part of fortune."

The addition of "[Mars] wounded by Saturn" is needed in English, not in French, where the masculine "bless?" could not refer to the Moon.
The directions do indeed seem to fit, particularly with Regio/Ptolemy or Placidus/Naibod (Solar Fire):
Regio/ Naibod : Sa > opp Mars March 1652, ; Moon > opp Mars Jan 1657 (i.e. classical converse direction of Mars to Moon)
Regio/Ptolemy : April 1651 and December 1655 respectively
Placidus/Naibod: September 1650 and April 1655
Placidus/Ptolemy: September 1649 and April 1654

Graham

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There seems to be an error at the end of the French text: after squaring the degree of SR Moon, the SR Mars (which will just have passed a sextile to natal Mars) will move to a conjunction, not an opposition, with the natal PF.
I think the relocated (Paris) SR, which Morin would have used, looks more convincing than the one for Villefranche, as Paris has the SR PF partile conjunct to natal North Node, the SR MC being square to those, and trine to SR North Node.
Graham
Last edited by Graham F on Sun Mar 08, 2015 2:21 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Martin is doubtless right that Morin would have disapproved of whole sign houses had he known of them (though he might have liked the natal Venus in 12 by whole signs - in Regio, Venus is in 11 unless the 5? rule is applied).

I find the charts much easier to read in whole signs (I use the Equal settings in Solar Fire, to line up the horizon as in Morinus etc, but think whole signs). You miss the conjunction of SR Asc with radical Regio 8th cusp (it's in radical 9 by WS), but you get a tighter conjunction with the WS "sensitive point" (equal cusp) of SR 8 with natal Mars than you do with the Regio 8th cusp.

I know mixing techniques is often frowned upon, but I can't help noticing that the Paris SR has Mars a partile quincunx from its Asc (i.e. Mars throws a sinister aspect of 8 on Asc), and the NN trines its MC (throws a sinister aspect of 9). These are recognised "full aspects" for Mars and Rahu in Indian astrology (most Western aspects are not).

Graham

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(though he might have liked the natal Venus in 12 by whole signs - in Regio, Venus is in 11 unless the 5? rule is applied).
Morin said he didn't approve of the 5 degree rule then he equivocated. His point was that the house begins with the cusp - period, but he allowed for influence of a planet whose position was prior to the cusp. He argued that the planet's orb would spill over (my metaphor not his) to the next house and the planet would have influence in that house.

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Thanks Tom for clarifying. I think the 5? rule looks a bit like trying to have things both ways...

I realised that I checked the primary directions using parallax moon. According to Denis Labour?, who has worked and written extensively on Morin in France, Morin "advocated parallax without actually practising it" (perhaps because of complexity of calculation). Indeed, in Book 23 of AG, on Revolutions, Morin stresses that the person in the place, not the place itself or or the earth as a whole, receive the influxes of the stars, which are determined "by their relation to the horizon where the person actually is", which is why he advocates relocating the SR. The principle of parallax would seem to be implicit in this. (Bk 23, pp.9-11, Holden translation)

And in fact the radix that Morin gives has a moon closer to parallax than to no parallax (Morin: 17:0 ; Parallax: 17:05 ; no parallax (as generated by SF and used by Deborah): 16:48.

Whether this was an attempt at parallax or just a slight margin of error, who knows. But I notice that the directions mentioned in the 1660 book (Regio/ Naibod) without parallax fit best:
Saturn > opp Mars Feb 1652
Moon > opp Mars late Aug 56

Graham

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I calculated Morin's birth chart using Delphic Oracle and jiggled it a little bit to get the same angles Morin used. This gives a Moon at 16 Pisces 58 rather than 17 Pisces 00 as in Morin's chart (from book 23).

Using Regio primary directions calculated by the same program with the Naibod key, I get Mars in mundane opposition to natal Saturn on Aug 2. 1656. Zodiacal Mars directed converse to the opposition of the Moon on Sept 4, 1656 and Zodiacal Moon directed to the opposition of natal Mars on the same day. Moon rules his fourth house of endings.

Mars as Lord ASC opposing Saturn would have set off alarm bells in Morin's head.

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wolfgang - are you able to generate a chart to show the pds you have calculated? please do so if you are able to. thanks

here is morins chart in regio using solar fire.. you can see how i have jiggled the time to get the 27 aries 17 ascendant.. note that the midheaven doesn't match the one given in deb or morins example on debs link in her first post. i get 13 cap 05 using solar fire for the midheaven..

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here is the relocated 1656 solar return with regio houses to paris off the above chart data.

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here is a biwheel with natal on the inside and sr56 on the outside.. it's helpful to look at the biwheel in the reverse order too.. one can quickly see the 150 between mars and ascendant in the sr 1656 paris chart that graham mentions..

graham, thanks for translating the text.. this paragraph from your translation is seen fairly quickly using the biwheel chart down below..

"And this unfortunate direction was that of Mars Lord of the radical horoscope in opposition to the Moon, [Mars] that Saturn has wounded by his opposition, and which in consequence can only signify mortal diseases: which finds confirmation in the solar revolution, where the horoscope falls on the cusp of the eighth of the radical, with the heart of the Scorpion, and the cusp of the eighth is [on] the radical place of Mars, which is diverging from the radical horoscope and applying to the square with the Moon, Lady of the eighth of the revolution, and from there passes to the opposition of the part of fortune." for what it is worth - none of this changes using a number of other house systems, but regio is used here to highlight what morin was looking at.. i don't see the direction of mars lord of the radical horoscope in opposition to the moon in wolfgang or my own pds generated in the file pic i shared earlier.

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Tom wrote
Using Regio primary directions calculated by the same program with the Naibod key, I get Mars in mundane opposition to natal Saturn on Aug 2. 1656. Zodiacal Mars directed converse to the opposition of the Moon on Sept 4, 1656 and Zodiacal Moon directed to the opposition of natal Mars on the same day.
I get the same within a few days with Solar Fire, haven't yet looked with other programs. But wouldn't Morin have stuck to zodiacal directions? The French text's wording implies that on perfection of the direction of Moon > Mars, Mars had already been wounded by Saturn, so I don't think the zodiacal date for that wounding of end Feb or early March 1652 is too early.
(Moon directed to Mars direct and Mars directed to Moon classical converse will always be the same, expressing it as the second is just a way to emphasise which you are taking as signifier - the Moon).

James - I wonder if it couldn't be better to do as Martin and Tom suggest, and use the LAT feature in software, rather than LMT counted from 12:14 on the 22nd as Deborah suggests. Using LAT for Morin's stated time of 20:33 gives (Solar Fire) 27:29 Asc and 13:11 MC, a pretty good compromise beween Asc and MC as given by Morin. Of course it won't matter for interplanetary primaries.

Graham

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James - I wonder if it couldn't be better to do as Martin and Tom suggest, and use the LAT feature in software, rather than LMT counted from 12:14 on the 22nd as Deborah suggests. Using LAT for Morin's stated time of 20:33 gives (Solar Fire) 27:29 Asc and 13:11 MC, a pretty good compromise beween Asc and MC as given by Morin. Of course it won't matter for interplanetary primaries.
Using a conversion into 8:47 LMT gives a better correspondence with the angles and cusps though - the reason James' chart is not mirroring Morin's is because his is set for the latitude and longitude of Ville-Franche, but Morin set his chart for the latitude of 45?25, not 45?59. I am not sure why - perhaps he learned that he was born somewhere else - or were measurements of latitude less reliable at that time?

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Deborah wrote
Using a conversion into 8:47 LMT gives a better correspondence with the angles and cusps though - the reason James' chart is not mirroring Morin's is because his is set for the latitude and longitude of Ville-Franche, but Morin set his chart for the latitude of 45?25, not 45?59.
I'd forgotten about that anomaly, which I think Martin brought up in the other thread. I'd guess (as I think Martin suggested, if I remember right) that Morin got his lat/long slightly wrong (they would fall somewhere in the surrounding Beaujolais region), as it's very clear from the same chart that he was born "inside the fortifications" (bellerocentrum) of Villefranche. It's less easy to make a mistake about that. If we're trying to imagine how he would have looked at his chart, slight errors and all, I suppose we should use his given lat/long. If we want to to test different house systems, direction keys, Regio directions v. Placidus etc against his chart, perhaps we should put him in Villefranche.
Graham