Primary Directions

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I've developed a new interest, and may rue the day I did. I've heard the term primary directions, and even found that Janus software even purports to calculate them, but then I was directed to this website:

http://home.comcast.net/~babylonian_astrology/

Yes it is about Babylonian astrology, but the site's owner sells three booklets on primaries and a pretty impressive looking software program to calculate them in every direction method the author found in his extensive research. From his books I even learned exactly how John Worsdale calculated house cusps for his book Celestial Philosophy, a source of puzzlement for some of us.

The booklets even show an interested reader how to calculate primaries with a hand calculator preferably one that does advanced math. Those with an unusally strong Virgo nature and a lot of time on their hands may well work a few out. Those of us without such nature and time but have some extra money may do better by buying the program. But even without the program, with a little effort one will learn some valuable spherical geometry from the books (what is the horizon anyway?).

The site is fun. The author seems quite knowledgeable and the program is tempting.

Tom

Re: Primary Directions

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Hi Tom & all,

on his site Rumen Kolev says that
There are programs that claim they can compute the primary directions. However, when put on the test, it turns out that they compute either a very small portion of the primary directions or, very often, something that unfortunately, is not primary directions. These programs (in good faith, but without sufficient knowledge) call primary directions something that has nothing to do with the real authentic primary directions employed and described by all authorities on the subject.
Does this apply to Solar Fire? Solar Fire 5 calculates "Primary Mundane" directions and now Solar Fire Deluxe calculates also "Primary Van Dam" directions. Are these the real McCoy? If not, what's wrong with them? At least those primary directions don't seem to be the same than Ben Dykes has used in his Michael Jackson delineation
http://skyscript.co.uk/forums/viewtopic ... c&start=30

Thank you in advance,
Sari

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Does this apply to Solar Fire? Solar Fire 5 calculates "Primary Mundane" directions and now Solar Fire Deluxe calculates also "Primary Van Dam" directions.
Hi,

From what I can gather, Solar Fire 5.0 calculates one kind of primaries. The fact that they claim they are "mundane" primaries, rather than "in mundo" indicates that they don't know what kind of primaries they're calculating, or they figure you won't know what "in mundo" means. I did buy Kolov's program, but I did not compare it to Solar Fire 5.0 which I also have.

Quickly in mundo primaries calculate the actual position of the planets on the celestial sphere as opposed to their zodiacal positions on the elicliptic.
The math problem then becomes: when are planets and points or planets and planet actually conjunct (or in aspect) since they may and often do have different declination and latitude? There are a couple of methods of determining this, Regiomontanus being the one Lilly used and Kolov liked best.

I have no idea what "Primary Van Dam" means I've never heard the phrase before reading it here.

Kolov's books do a wonderful job of explaining the various techniques and even how to do it "by hand", if you have the patience and sufficient Virgo nature to work all this stuff out. Or you can buy the program. Caveat: if you do not know much about primaries (like I didn't and maybe still don't) and you buy the program, buy the books, too, at least volumes 1 & 2. Otherwise you'll be swimming in calculations and you'll have no idea what you're looking at.

Good luck,

Tom

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Hello Tom and thank you very much, this was really helpful. Now I see the difference between "primary mundane directions" and "in mundo primary directions" :). I might accommodate myself to calculate by hand, if I really had to, but now there is the temptation to start to save money for a new program... 8) I see that the books are essential.

In appreciation,
Sari

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I got the two booklets about primary directions by Rumen Kolev a couple of days ago and now I've familiarized myself with calculating directions to the angles by hand. It seems that Solar Fire has at least these kind of directions right - the difference between their calculations and mine was only few days in every case I calculated (both direct and converse), and I would say that the difference is more because of the inaccurancy in my manual calculations than because of the program. Fine so far!

The Solar Fire manual says that they calculate Placidian primary directions and they have three key options: one year per degree = Ptolemy, Naibod and Natal Solar Rate and this seems to be correct. Maybe they have corrected their calculations after Rumen Kolev has published his books... I cannot say anything about the interplanetary directions yet, but I'll check it out when I get there.

I recommend these Primary Direction booklets by Kolev warmly. He takes reader by hand and guides him/her step by step through the sines and cosines and what's even more important, he demonstrates the mechanism behind primary directions with clear pictures. It was a bit vague for me before, but not so much any more. If you have a program where you can get the declination and right ascension of a planet, that helps a lot.

So, thanks again Tom for recommending these booklets, they're really useful. I ordered them from AstroAmerica.com and it took only a week to get them from the US to Finland.

Sari (only a couple of outer planets in Virgo in my chart :P )

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In case you don’t know:
Martin Gansten “Primary directions–Astrology’s Old Master Technique???.
This book describes the development of Primery Directions over the centuries, teaches how to calculate both directions to angles and directions to planets both zodiacal and in mundo by hand (also without trigonometry). It describes the calculation of the Lenght of Life with Hyleg and Anaereta and finally how to refine the results of Primary Directions with other predictive techniques.

See a review by Deborah Houlding here: http://www.skyscript.co.uk/rev_pd.html