Rectification by Trutine of Hermes/Animodar

[Deb]

Has anyone else has tried the rectification methods outlined in the nativities section of Lilly’s CA, and if so, what kind of results have you had?

Lilly says that the best way to rectify a chart is by the correspondence of directions and life events, but he also details the Trutine of Hermes, which says that the sign the Moon is in when the child is conceived should become the ascendant at birth; and the eclipse method of Animodar, which uses the angular distance of the almuten of the preceding syzygy.

Neither of these methods struck me as having any basis of reliability, purely from a theoretical point of view. But I calculated my day of conception according to the tables Lilly gives on p.502 and the Moon was in Cancer (my ascendant) on the day it determined. I also rectified the degree of the ascendant according to the Animodar method and it produced a result that is within 2 degrees of what I get according to my mother’s memory. So my experience was similar to what Lilly demonstrated in his example chart, which didn’t rely upon these methods but showed a good correspondence with them.

I’m still not convinced but interested to hear whether anyone else has found any substance in these methods.

[Andrew]

[Tom]

Hi Deb,

[Deb]

Hi Tom,

I think it’s like a lot of the passages in the early part of his nativities section – they don’t always make a lot of sense until you follow the step by step instruction that he gives in his example, where you can actually check out what he’s doing. I’ll happily walk you through it if you don’t mind me putting your chart up (or send the data to me privately and I’ll just mention the bits I need to refer to).

With the Trutine of Hermes the first thing is to find the so called date of conception using his table, and for that you need to know if you were born in what he calls a common or bissextile year (what we call a normal or leap year). If your year of birth is evenly divided by 4 it’s a leap/bissextile year, if not it’s a normal/common year.

More anon…

Hi Andrew,
I can well imagine why someone would dismiss the theory of this. (I only tried it out to satisfy myself that there was nothing in it). But I can’t help being curious about the fact that this table in Lilly’s work produced reasonable results in his example and the one time I tried it out. I’m wondering whether it’s like those tables that give you a fairly reliable indication of your ascendant without having to work out the full chart.

[Tom]

Hi Deb,

Why not? Go ahead put up my chart: Feb 20, 1948, 5:22 PM EST, Newark, NJ, USA 40 N 44, 74 W 10. Leo rises at about 29.16 I think. Different programs vary the minutes by one or two.

Now 1948 was a leap year (Thanks for explaining the difference between common and bisextile years), but the leap year doesn't begin until Feb 29, 1948. So is my birth common or bisextile? I would imagine common but then those born from Jan 1, 1949 until Feb 28, 1949 would be bisextile. Correct?

If I recall correctly in the mid 17th century, the New Year didn't begin until March so this little anomoly wouldn't have presented itself to Lilly. In any event, I'm looking forward to seeing how this works out.

Tom

[Deb]

Trust you to be awkward. From the way Lilly explains this I think you just take the year and don’t worry about the date within the year for this calculation. I'm not entirely sure though
I’ll get onto this tomorrow.

[Andrew]

[Sue]

[Deb]

Lilly’s instruction on p.502 , for the Trutine of Hermes, is to first of all calculate the angles and the Moon’s position for the time given:

If the Moon is above the earth you subtract the absolute longitude of the descendant from that of the Moon; if it’s below you subtract the ascendant from the Moon instead. Yours is above so we use the descendant.

Absolute longitude of Moon = 97.55 (add 360 to allow the subtraction)
= 457.55
Absolute longitude of desc =329.16
Result =128.39

Which is 4 signs, 8 degrees and 39 mins. We only need this to the nearest degree, so 4 signs and 9 degrees.

This is what we look up in the first half of the table on p.502. Under the first column headed ‘signs and degrees’ we find the nearest number to 4 signs, 9 degrees; which is 4 12 (5th entry up from the bottom). Then because the Moon is above the earth we go to the 3rd column headed ‘Moon above the earth’ and find the number alongside it: 269 – this is known as “the number of days of the child’s mansion” and we need to remember this for the next part. We’ll call it A.

Next, on p.503, Lilly tells us to refer to the second half of the table and find the month in which we were born. There are two sets of numbers, one is for common years and one is for leap years. I am taking yours as a leap year, so we take the number alongside February in the ‘bissextile year’ column, which is 60. We add this number to the day of the month you were born. You were born on 20 Feb so that’s 60+20, giving a result of 80, known as ‘the number for the day of birth’. We’ll call it B.

Finally, subtract the number of days of the child’s mansion (A) from the number for the day of birth (B) to find the number of days for the conception.

B = 80
A = 269

A is a bigger number than B so to ease the calculate we have to add a year to B. Normally this would be 365 days but because you were born in a leap year we add 366 days (80 + 366 = 446).

B : 446
- A: 269
Result = 177

Now this is where it’s easy to get confused but it’s straightforward once you understand the table. We have to take this number (177) back to the second half of the table – the Table of Months – and find the month whose number has the closest match to ours. June in a common year has the closest match with 188. This number corresponds to the last day of June in the common year before your birth; that is June 30, 1947. Each number corresponds to a day so because this number is 11 over yours, you take 11 days off this date to find the date of your conception (30 – 11 = 19), so your date of conception is supposed to be 19th June 1947.

The Moon was in Cancer that day, not Leo. This method is only supposed to confirm the sign of the ascendant, not the degree. Unfortunately yours is close, but doesn’t match, but Lilly mentions that many have erred by a day when a leap year is involved. If there’s anything you don’t understand in the calculation let me know and I’ll be a bit more explicit.

I’ll look at the Animodar method tomorrow.

[Deb]

Thought I’d pop a graphic of the table in for anyone who doesn’t have the 3rd volume of CA.



I’m fascinated by this table. Not because I expect it produces perfect results but because it seems to determine a date for conception that is at least feasible – how does it do this when a substantial part of the calculation depends upon something as variable as the number of degrees between the Moon and the ascendant/descendant? It’s even more bizarre when you consider that if someone is needing to rectify their chart to clarify the sign on the ascendant, then the ‘guestimate’ they’ve used to calculate the distance between the angle and the Moon is unlikely to be accurate anyway! I’m thoroughly perplexed and intrigued by the logic of it.

Anyway, the Animodar method. I’ll get onto that now.

[Deb]

Animodar Method

This is supposed to correct the degree of the ascendant, not the sign – you use the sign of your estimate.

You base this method on the degree of the previous syzygy. If it was a new Moon, you take the degree of the New Moon, if it was a full Moon you take the degree of the luminary that was above the earth.

Your chart was preceded by a new Moon on 9 Feb 1948, 10:01 PM (EST – your location) at 20.17 Aquarius.
You see which planet has most essential dignity in that degree. The chart for your lunation is nocturnal so:

Saturn has 5 points for sign rulership
Mercury has 3 points for triplicity rulership
Jupiter has 2 points for term rulership
The Moon has 1 point for ruling the face.

Therefore Saturn is the strongest planet by essential dignity in the degree of your previous lunation.

Now you go back to your own chart and look at whether Saturn is nearer to the ascendant or midheaven.

If it is nearer to the ascendant you alter your ascendant to the degree position of Saturn (disregard the signs involved). If it is nearer the midheaven, you alter the midheaven in your chart to the degree position of Saturn and then adjust your ascendant accordingly.

Saturn in your chart is very near to your ascendant so your rectified ascendant, in whatever sign you have estimated it to be, should be in the degree of Saturn in your nativity. Ie., 18.17. You have your estimated ascendant in Leo so the result is 18.17 Leo.

Thinking about this as I was working through your example made me totally convinced there is no real merit in it. The good news is my brain has clicked and I’ve suddenly realised what Galileo was doing in the 2nd chart of his own nativity. I’m not sure if you’ve looked into this but there is confusion over which chart is correct for him because he left two hand-drawn versions of his own nativity which are reproduced at http://www.skyscript.co.uk/galchart.html

Notice that the bottom chart has the ascendant at 14.33 Leo. Although it’s the second chart on the page (making it seem like a rectified version), we can be fairly positive that this was the first chart he calculated because the part of fortune in the top chart is wrong and has obviously been copied over from this one.

The previous lunation in his chart was a new Moon (on 12 Feb) at 2.53 Pisces. The planet with the most essential dignity at that degree was Venus, which ruled the sign by exaltation and the degree by term. Venus is at 21.37 Pisces, so Galileo has attempted to rectify his birth chart by this method, to 21.37 Leo. The one remaining anomaly is that Venus is close to Galileo’s descendant. If his method was exactly as Lilly has written it he would have changed the MC to 21.37, which would have put 28.42 Leo on the ascendant instead. But what I suspect has been omitted from Lilly’s instruction is that if the planet is closer to the asc-desc axis rather than the MC-IC axis you amend the ascendant degree (and change the MC if it’s vice versa). That makes a lot more sense so I feel pretty positive about this but if anyone has seen the animodar method explained in other traditional texts and can shed a bit more light on this, I’d be very grateful.

[Tom]

Hi Deb,

Thak you so much for doing all this work. I'm all wraped up in a project at work and won't be able to dig into this right away, but I will. I think I'll try to work out mine as though it were not a leap year and see if that works any better.

My birth time is from a birth certificate. In order for my ASC to be at 18 Leo, my birth time on the birth certificate would be off by approximately 40 minutes. For 18 Cancer it would be more than two hours off. It is interesting that my natal Moon is in Cancer though. I doubt that. My mother would quote our birth times from memory. She would tell people I was born at 5:25 pm and my brother Michael was born at 5:25 AM 16 months later. I can understand a 3 minute memory error especially under the circumstances, but there is no way she would have been 40 minutes off and the birth certificate backs her up.

Thanks again Deb. I'm glad this helped you with Galileo.

Tom

[Ida]

Dear All,

This is a very interesting topic - thanks for posting Lilly's table, as I don't have the 3rd volume of CA. Anyway, I did the calculations for my own chart, and found it totally wrong. Herewith the calculations, as a matter of interest:

Moon is above the earth at 0Taurus11, Descendant is 20Pisces04. So absolute longitude of Moon is 30.11 and absolute longitude of Descendant is 350.04

So 30.11 (plus 360=390.11) - 350.04, gives 40.07. Thus 1 sign, 10 degrees and 7 minutes. Closest to that in the first columm, would be 1 sign 6 minutes, which, as the Moon is above the Earth, gives me 261 as "the number of days of the child's mansion" (A).

Next, born in November in a "common year", I get 334, plus the day on which I was born (the 1st), gives me 335 as "the number of the day of birth" (B). Subtract A from B (335 - 261) and we get 74. That would put it right about evenly between February and March, February being 1 day closer, so let's take February 28 of that year (1963), plus the 15 day difference and we end up with 15 March 1963. On that day the Moon was in Scorpio - not even close, as I have a Virgo Ascendant!! If I use March and then deduct the difference (which is 16 days in that case), I still get 15 March. The birth time will have to "move forward" with at least 2 hours for Scorpio to rise - I can accept a few minutes difference with the birth time, but not 2 hours...

I also note that, according to these calculations, I would have been born rather prematurely - being "conceived" on the 15th March and born on 1 November - well, that's about 7 weeks early - which is definately not the case!

Ida

[Deb]

Thanks for the feedback on your own chart Ida. Lilly stressed that he was only explaining these methods because they were taken seriously by other, very knowledgeable astrologers. He maintained that the only reliable way to rectify a nativity was by looking for correspondence between directions and known events and it was standard convention for astrologers of his time to begin a chart judgement with an explanation of how the chart had been verified and proved this way (ie., through 'accidents' directions and relation to 'revolutions').

But he does say that some astrologers swore by the results this ancient method produced. Either way it’s been a productive exercise for me to explore it a little more deeply than I have before. I think we can learn a lot from the techniques of the past – even the dud ones if they illuminate what an astrologer was doing in a chart, and why.

[Papretis]

Funny, I hadn't looked at the forum for a couple of days and then I found out that someone has studied exactly the same thing that I've been doing in the last few days, this Trutine of Hermes. I was reading a Finnish astrology book by Paul von Gerich, first published in 1925, and there this method is explained in a way that's easy to follow. The method of calculations differs a bit from that of Lilly's, but I think the basic idea is the same.

First you note the degree of the ascendant and the Moon in the horoscope calculated with the given time. We have four options here:
The Moon is waxing, it shows the degree of the ascendant in the conception chart.
- If the waxing Moon is above the horizon, the pregnancy lasts less than 273 days
- If the waxing Moon is under the horizon, the pregnancy lasts more than 273 days
The Moon is waning, it shows the degree of the descendant in the conception chart.
- If the wanign Moon is above the horizon, the pregnancy lasts more than 273 days
- If the waning Moon is under the horizon, the pregnancy lasts less than 273 days.

Then you count 273 days back from the birthday. You have to note the 29th of February only if the pregancy time includes it; if we take Tom as an example, he is born before the 29th of February, so we don't have to take that into the consideration.

If we go on with Tom's birthday, by counting 273 days backwards we get 23th of May 1947. Because Tom's Moon is waxing and above the horizon, it shows the degree of the ascendant in the conception chart and the pregnancy has lasted less than 273 days.

We start to look for the day after 23th of May 1947 when the Moon has been around Tom's given ascendant 29 Leo 16 (this is easy to do with Solar Fire5 Animate Chart option) and we get 26th May 1947 around 2.44 PM. Then we tune the ascendant of this conception chart around the degree where Tom's natal Moon is, 7 Cancer 56, and look where the Moon is now - it's 25 Leo 22.

So, according to the rule, this should be Tom's rectified ascendant. It doesn't differ much from the original 29 Leo 56 and it gives 5.02 PM as the birth time; that's twenty minutes earlier than the given time.

I don't know about the relevancy of this method but somehow I like it. My own birth time is by minute and from the hospital archives, but the Trutine of Hermes still claims that I've actually born 29 minutes earlier. Somehow I like the "new" birthtime better and when I check transits and directions with it, it's not bad. Actually I think it works better than the "real" time.

I've been wondering, that because I've born by Cesarean, should the "real" birthtime had been 29 minutes earlier than it now is? The Trutine of Hermes might give one explanaiton to the fact that our ascendant reflects our appearance and body, because scientifically those traits cannot in any way be determined at the moment of birth, but at the moment of conception, when the our genetical composition is outlined. Still our ascendant does reflect our appearance and body.

My wildest guess is that actually our "real" time of birth is determinded at the time of conception and no matter of the moment we're actually born, it's this moment derived from the conception moment that our life reflects. I've been wonderíng that maybe one reason for astrology in the past days being more exact was because they worked with the (by one method or the other) rectified birth times, not with the exact ones! Well, seriously, I really don't know how it is.

By the way, when I read the discussion about Michael Jackson, I checked out his birth time mentioned here and noticed that most likely it's rectified by the Trutine of Hermes. If we assume Jackson has Gemini rising, this method gives exactly the same ascendant for him as is discussed here.