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The Assignment Is Below 14a Information: Here is a rough outline of the types of medieval astro-nomers-logers back in the Middle Ages A-List: The most proficient astronomers/astrologers knew and understood astronomical theory. They understood all the crazy spherical geometry... the excentrics, the equants, the epicycles, the spherical geography, etc. These would have been a few high-level university professors and a few highly educated professionals (typically employed by royalty). This class would have worked from actual observational data and been able to fit that data into some sort of mathematical scheme. These were the theoretical heavyweights. In the Middle Ages most of these A-Listers would have been Muslims, people like al- Tusi and Thabit bin Qurrah. These A-Listers are comparable to people like Kepler, Newton, Einstein, and Hawking. B-List: The next class down would be the university-level astronomer/astrologer professor. These people wouldn't usually work from raw observational data. This class would work from the Alfonsine Tables (or similar). They wouldn't really know how the raw data of celestial observation became codified into the Alfonsine Tables, but they would understand the general theory and would know how to use the Alfonsine Tables to figure out where a particular heavenly body was (or would be) at a given time and at a given place. They could apply the theory, but didn't actually come up with the theory. This class of astro- nomer-loger corresponds to the vast majority of professors who teach astronomy today. They don't come up with cutting edge theory, but they can work within the current theory just fine. C-List: The next class down would have been the standard practicing astrologer and some of the lazier university-level professors. These astro-nomer-logers would have more-or-less understood how the Alfonsine Tables worked, but would have avoided using them. Instead they would practice astrology using ephemerides. What are ephemerides, you ask? They are simply tables of astronomical information calculated for more limited times and places. They are based on the Alfonsine Tables (or other tables like the Toledian Tables which predate the Alfonsine.) The big problem with the Alfonsine Tables is TMI (too much information). They allow you to figure out the astronomy for any place on earth... any particular horizon... any particular latitude and longitude and any time what-so-ever. Most astrologers didn't move around all that much and neither did their clientele and most astrologers didn't want or need to know astro-information for the year 8000 BC or 2100 AD. They just needed the astronomy for one place... one latitude and longitude, and for a reaonable span of time. E.g. Paris or Rome or London or Cairo or Damascus for a century in either direction. The Alfonsine Tables are way too hard to use for day-to-day astrology. So, A- or B-Listers would do all the calculations for a particular location for a finite span of time and write that up into a handy-dandy book. E.g. Ephemerides for Paris covering the years 1250- 1450. Just look up a date and time and read off the celestial coordinates. That would cover most of the needs for an astrologer working in 1350 in Paris. Specialized ephemerides might just cover a few years in minute detail or might contain information useful for navigation. Ephemerides take much of the work out of using the Alfonsine Tables by doing the calculations for you. I might qualify as a C-List astro- nomer-loger back then. Note: Some sources call the Alfonsine Tables, "Ephemerides." I make a distinction between the two. The assignment is below.... 1 14a Homework: Birth Chart, a Basic Method 1) Watch this video first: 14a-BirthChartOnlineDemo-19min. 2) Now it is your turn. Go to the Astro-Seek "BirthChart Calculator ". [https://horoscopes.astro-seek.com/birth-chart-horoscope-online] For some reason this website displays better in Safari over Chrome. If it doesn't display well, try another browser. 3) Enter your birthday: time (hour and minute) and location. If you don't know your birth time, call a family member or make up a time. Before you hit "Calculate Chart" click on "Extended settings: House system, Aspects, Orbs." This will bring up more options. Set the "House System" to "Equal" and uncheck various boxes to match the image below. [You can play around with these settings later if you are interested, but for now, just use the settings seen below.] Your "Extended settings" should look like this. Optional: The Equal Sign System is explained here: https://www.astro.com/astrowiki/en/Equal_house_system. 4) Now hit "Calculate Chart." A modern circular chart will appear with lots of specific astro-location data on the right. Essentially what Astro-Seek.com did was run the clock backwards and calculate where all the planets were at the time of your birth, calibrated for the location of your birth. A medieval astrologer would have done this using the Alfonsine Tables or from ephemerides derived from the Alfonsine Tables. For our present purposes (medieval astrology) you only care about data from the following planets: Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. 5) This is your birth chart. Check out the aspects in your chart... the important angular relationships between planets (and a few other locations). The Ptolemy reading briefly discusses aspects. Feel free to read the stuff that appears below the chart and get a feel for how one might read a chart. We'll discuss houses and some interpretive stuff next week. Also check out the horizon and what is near it. 6) Now that you are comfortable with using the online Birthchart Calculator, I want you to do the birthchart of somebody you consider to be evil or a person you consider to be truly good. Because the calculator 2 only goes back to 1800, you'll have to find somebody born in 1800 or later. The only information you need on this evil/good person is a birth date (no hours or minutes needed) and a birth place. Wikipedia often has this information. When filling in the information into the calculator, check the box "unknown time". This is important. It will make all the charts orient the same way, but you will not get a horizon, just the arrangement of the planets. Also use the "equal" system and uncheck all the boxes like you did before. Here's an example: I chose Pol Pot as an evil guy. Below is his data. Once you have a birth chart of your evil/good person, put an image of his/her chart into this GoogleDoc: Astrological Observations on Evil/Good. I made up a table for each of your entries. Also put all of the medieval planetary data with it. [See GoogleDoc for an example I put up.] Also put in the "Main Aspects" for the medieval planets. [No need for Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto. Medieval astronomers didn't know about these planets.] Try to mimic the formatting I used if you can. Then compare charts. Make comments off to the side. Do evil people have anything in common. Do good people have planets in particular signs? Etc. If you put up your evil/good person early, you won't have much to compare it with except the one I put up and maybe a couple more, so you might need to check back later in order to comment. 3 This is sort of informal crowd-sourcing. Let's see if we can figure out why people are the way they are from an astrological perspective. Let's see if we can invent a way to interpret astrological charts. ... do an informal statistical analysis. Here is a list of the primary aspects (the harmonics): Orb (acceptable margin of Exact measurement error) Aspect Symbol of separation. This is highly subjective. Conjunction ☌ 0º Off by less than 10º. Off by less than 10º. Opposition ☍ 180º Off by less than 10º. Trine △ 120º Off by less than 10º. Quartile ☐ 90º Sextile ✶ 60º Separated by less than 5º. The "orb" is the margin of allowable error. E.g. You can call it a trine if Venus is 128º from Saturn. But it won't be considered a trine if the separation is 131º. Why? Because a trine requires a separation of 120º, but with an allowable deviation. So anything 110º to 130º will be called a trine. Any relationship not in that range will not be considered a trine. Allowable "orbs" differ from astrologer to astrologer. Some astrologers are finicky and have small orbs. Others are much more loosey-goosey and allow much larger orbs. 4 .
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