Non-Reciprocal Aspectual Orbs

1
Like most people coming into traditional astrology I first encountered Lilly's approach to aspects with his use of moiety orbs. The first author I am aware of proposing this was Claude Dariot but perhaps the idea had earlier precedents?

In any case as my studies progressed I became aware of the earlier technique which was to use fixed orbs set out by sources like Sahl ibn Bishr. Going further back I have looked at the eariest system of fixed orbs used in hellenistic astrology.

Interestingly, even as late as the 17th century you find some astrologers like Richard Saunders and Morin (?) adopting fixed orbs rather than moiety orbs. Saunders has the rather quaint term 'Menographick Aspect' for an interesting situation when fixed aspects orbs are not reciprocal:
The Menographick Aspect is, when two planets do behold each other, and yet the distance between the Centre of both their Bodies doth not differ from a perfect Aspect above the Semidiameter of one of them, and yet it must exceed the Semidiameter of the other of them ... if Venus were in the 4th degree of Cancer, and the Moon in the 12th degree of Aries: here the difference from a perfect Aspect is 8 degrees, which is less than the Moon her Semidiameter, and more than the Semidiameter of Venus, so that the Moon by her beams toucheth Venus, but not Venus the Moon, and therefore in that respect, the configuration between them is not so perfect.
I know some outstanding astrologers like Lilly worked with moiety orbs and seem to have got some remarkable results with them. Although I tend to think that says as much about the genius of Lilly than his chosen technique. Still. I have never been able to escape the feeling moeity orbs are something of an arithmetical fudge. Fixed orbs have always made a lot more sense to me.

As discussed by Saunders above the practical issue you commonly confront with fixed orbs is the scenario where one planet will be applying to another planet while the other is still not within orb. Its most common with aspects from the luminaries which have much larger orbs than the planets.

I tend to call these non-reciprocal fixed aspects orbs. A bit cumbersome I know. I wondered if anyone else here works with fixed orbs? If so how do you treat these kind of non-reciprocal aspects in delineation terms?

I am very interested in hearing any practical experiences from any branch of astrology ie horary, natal, electional etc.

Thanks

Mark
Last edited by Mark on Thu Apr 16, 2015 11:10 pm, edited 5 times in total.
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly

2
hi Mark,

I tend to use fixed orbs as well, if for no other reason than convenience. I can't be bothered to slow down during a consultation and do half-maths to get to a moiety.

but of course, you do run into situations where the planets are not in each other's orb. I personally notice this more with the Moon, though that's merely a function of 1) the Moon's extended orb over other planets, therefore a greater chance of this phenomenon occurring; and, 2) how much focus I place on her in delineation.

I haven't encountered much by way of a traditional explanation of how to interpret what Saunders is calling a menographick aspect. it's likely out there somewhere, so hopefully someone can contribute who knows more. from a practical point of view, I generally look at this as a metaphor: I'm locked into you, but you're not yet locked into me.
- say Moon is at 10? Gemini, applying to Venus at 22? Gemini. Venus is already locked into the Moon and is able to be impressed by her influence. the Moon, however, is out of Venus's orb. we can say definitively what the Moon will be doing (because she's doing the applying and has caught Venus in her rays), but there could be some uncertainly with how Venus might respond to the Moon.

generally I don't find that this adds some interpretive value, or perhaps I'm looking at this relationship wrongly. over time I've stopped paying too much attention to it because my focus has become more specific over time: the Moon is applying, the Moon wants something, how will Venus respond? so either way I treat Venus's response as variable, and use a combination of planetary nature, zodiacal and accidental placement, and relationships to other planets to determine how it all shakes out. the menographick aspect, or non-reciprocal aspect as you've coined it, would still cause me to go through the same process of determining Venus's response in this hypothetical, so I tend to step over the non-reciprocal detail these days unless it's very visible in how the situation has developed.

there could be some history here that would be useful to us. I hope that someone is able to weigh in with specifics about how this was treated traditionally, and how it might be used to good effect today.
http://wadecaves.com | hello@wadecaves.com

3
Interestingly, even as late as the 17th century you find some astrologers like Richard Saunders and Morin(?) adopting fixed orbs rather than moeity orbs.
Not true in Morin's case. He used moieties. See pages eight - ten in Book 18 of Astrologia Gallica.


Thus in my opinion, we would be correct in sayingthat the intrinsic strength of each planet should be determined according to the radius of its sphere of virtue [orb of influence]. - page 8 brackets probably indicate translator's explanation.

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Tom wrote:
Not true in Morin's case. He used moieties. See pages eight - ten in Book 18 of Astrologia Gallica.
I toyed whether to add in Morin as I wasn't sure. I still haven't really studied him much. But I reckoned you would step in if it was wrong!

Thanks

Mark
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly

5
Mark you have me thinking a little bit about orbs or moieties, whatever we wish to call them. The theory seems to be on the side of using moieties and not using fixed orbs. Morin was a natural philosopher, so he would seek a natural explanation for the distances used for the influence of aspects and I'm sure that, like all authorities, he believed the tighter the aspect the greater the influence.

But like others, Morin used huge orbs. Anthony Louis, translator of Book 18, thoughtfully provided a table of Morin's orbs. The Sun, for example, has an orb of 36 degrees or an 18 degree moiety! With this system the Sun at 15 Aries would be in conjunction with a planet at 27 Pisces through 3 Taurus. To be fair I don't know of any examples of his using anything quite so distant from the Sun. He even uses orbs of considerable size for first magnitude fixed stars (12 degrees (6 degree moiety). I could find examples of some generous orbs with fixed stars, but I don't recall any that generous.

But once we gravitate from theory to practice, I wonder if fixed orbs aren't more sensible, and using tight fixed orbs more sensible yet. There is enough information in the chart that we don't need to delve deeply into aspects between planets that are 8 or 10 degrees apart. I couldn't back up what follows without extensive documentation and a decent amount of research, but it is modern astrology that places a great deal of emphasis on aspects and therefore needs wide orbs in order to work with charts the way they are taught to work with them: emphasize the aspects. Traditional astrology gives us plenty to work with. We don't need huge orbs and a multitude of aspects and bodies that are in aspect to each other. Knowing the theory is important. It gives us context with which to work with the aspects, but using all of them is neither necessary nor desirable. I think we can safely drift a bit from the authorities on this one.

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Tom wrote:
Mark you have me thinking a little bit about orbs or moieties, whatever we wish to call them. The theory seems to be on the side of using moieties and not using fixed orbs
I am not so sure about that. If you accept the idea that planets have orbs at all mixing them up in an astrological smorgasbord called a moeity is undoubtably a neat but rather artificial solution to me.

And lets keep in mind the whole idea of moiety is fairly late in traditional astrology. As far as I am aware it doesn't occur in the hellenistic era, Person-Arabic sources, or early Latin medieval astrology. It seems to be a development which first appears in renaissance astrology. Or am I wrong?

So the weight of the astrological tradition points to fixed orbs not the notion of moeity at all. And even into the renaissance there seem to be refusniks like Richard Saunders who still continued to work with fixed orbs. I suspect the practice on the ground may have often been much less uniform on orbs than we often assume in hindsight.

Tom wrote:
But once we gravitate from theory to practice, I wonder if fixed orbs aren't more sensible, and using tight fixed orbs more sensible yet.
Well of course in hellenistic astrology we have the notion of 3 degree orbs for the planets ( the luminaries were treated differently) which is considerably shorter than the standard medieval orbs. I know you have long favoured this kind of approach yourself. More radically traditional astrologers like John Frawley and Benjamin Dykes seem to have dispensed with orbs in practical terms.

The acid test to me seems horary. Clearly horary questions revolve around perfection of aspects. Still, what if say the Moon applies to a planet like Mercury? The Moon could be applying to Mercury but Mercury itself might not yet be be in orb of this Moon yet. This gives an interesting nuance within the concept of an applying aspect.

And what of a separating aspect in consideration of void of course? A planet may still be under the orb of the Moon or Sun but may have have actually separated from that body in terms of its own orb. Again I think this raises intriguing delineation issues too. At least to me it does! I have never even seen fixed orbs discussed in terms of the notion void of course. Yet surely, this would have been the consideration for the older pre-renaissance authorities?

I think fixed orbs offer a less black and white approach to planetary interaction. Its seems to allow a more nuanced assessment in judging the power of planetary aspects.

Does anyone out there work with fixed orbs in horary or electional charts?

I also wonder how these ideas are resolved (if at all) in the Indian astrological tradition?

Mark
Last edited by Mark on Thu Apr 16, 2015 11:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly

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I think this definition of the term ' moeity' written by Deb in the Skyscript glossary elucidates the distinction I am making. In addition though it also clarifies how the understanding of orbs between planets originally had a different meaning to what it later assumed under writers like Claude Dariot:

http://www.skyscript.co.uk/gl/moiety.html

Mark
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly

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Mark wrote:I also wonder how these ideas are resolved (if at all) in the Indian astrological tradition?
To the best of my knowledge, there is no concept of orbs as such in classical/pre-Islamic Indian astrology, although tighter aspects are considered stronger than wider ones. In the T?jika or Sanskritized Perso-Arabic tradition, fixed orbs are normally used (the same ones referred to in Deb's article), although one also finds the idea (derived from Sahl ibn Bishr) that anything within 12? goes.

I've not so far seen any explicit discussion on situations where planet A is within the orb of planet B but not vice versa.
https://astrology.martingansten.com/

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So the weight of the astrological tradition points to fixed orbs not the notion of moeity at all.
If by "weight" you mean number of astrologers, you might be right, but I was referring to theory not number of theorists. Fixed orbs are arbitrary. I doubt there is enough weight, by numbers to agree on specific distances. They only agree the number should be fixed.

If, like Morin, the astrologer is a natural philosopher or just believes astrology is part of nature, then there should be a rationale behind the distance. The Sun is a disk and throws out light in all directions from that disk. The distance it covers is converted into degrees and from there we have the influence of the Sun. I'm not saying that is 100% accurate. I'm only noting that there is a reason for the orb and moiety. That's the theory. Assigning a number without something to back it up is arbitrary.

I know you have long favoured this kind of approach yourself. More radically traditional astrologers like John Frawley and Benjamin Dykes seem to have dispensed with orbs in practical terms.
Yes but on a practical not a theoretical matter. What I like best is what was done with the chart we recently discussed on another thread. The astrologer took a quick overview, saw all the planets in cardinal signs and angular houses and realized the strength of personality of the individual and worked on it from there. The aspects were secondary and only filled in some of the blanks. If we had large orbs, fixed or otherwise, and tried to add all that into the delineation, I can't help but think we would have missed a lot of the important stuff. Simplify. Things work better that way.

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Tom wrote:
If by "weight" you mean number of astrologers, you might be right, but I was referring to theory not number of theorists. Fixed orbs are arbitrary. I doubt there is enough weight, by numbers to agree on specific distances. They only agree the number should be fixed.
You call fixed orbs 'arbitrary'. I disagree with you on that comment for two separate reasons.

Firstly, do we actually know that for a fact? How do you know they were not an earlier attempt to capture the naturalistic heliacal appearance of planets Morin later describes? And couldn't the differences in sources in part reflect different understanding of these phenomena in medieval sources when astronomical measurement was less precise?

Secondly, I do think there is basic confusion over the use of the word moiety in this discussion. You seem to be describing it in the original sense of moiety which is the half orb of the planet (without combination with others) since it has an orb both before and behind it. For example, the Sun traditionally, had an orb of 30 degrees and half orb or moeity of 15 degrees. I dont see this as controversial.

In contrast I was using the term ''moeity orb'' in the later sense of renaissance astrologers like Claude Dariot who used the moiety or combined orbs of two planets and divided them by two. We can contrast its use in that sense to distinguish it from fixed orbs that did not combine with other planets.

The so called fixed orbs and combined or moiety orbs were were derived from the same traditional orbs for each planet. They were simply calculated differently. In other words fixed orbs were no more arbitrary than the mixed or moiety orbs.

Maybe we need new terminology to describe this distinction?

Tom wrote:
The aspects were secondary and only filled in some of the blanks. If we had large orbs, fixed or otherwise, and tried to add all that into the delineation, I can't help but think we would have missed a lot of the important stuff. Simplify. Things work better that way.
Lilly and his contemporaries seemed to get by very quite well with the traditional system of larger orbs! Maybe I am misrepresenting you but you seem to be in the bizarre position of arguing vs the astrological tradition on this topic. I am not clear if you object to traditional planetary orbs in theory or just in practice.

Mark
Last edited by Mark on Fri Apr 17, 2015 12:56 am, edited 3 times in total.
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly

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Maybe I am misrepresenting you but you seem to be in the bizarre position of arguing vs the astrological tradition on this topic. I am not clear if you object to traditional planetary orbs in theory or just in practice
.

I don't want to get too far off base here, but first this business of "the tradition." There isn't only one way of working with "traditional astrology" as this discussion indicates. We have some authorities using fixed orbs some using moieties. Is one traditional and one not? I think either way comes down on the side of tradition.

But that has nothing to do with my point. I used the word theoretical to indicate that there was a basis in nature for using moieties. Since there is none for fixed that we know of, until we know of it, it's arbitrary. That doesn't rule out the possibility there is a natural explanation, but until there is, arbitrary is what fixed orbs are. Regardless both are within the tradition.

And yes, with a full realization that some traditionalists use fixed orbs and others do not, I chose a side and I chose it for the sake of expediency, in an effort to hold together another tradition: aspects are of secondary importance, if that. I'm not arguing that wider orbs do not have any significance. I'm only arguing that there is enough in the chart that we can limit ourselves to tight orbs and maybe even one aspect, if it is important enough, and get sufficient information out of a chart to satisfy ourselves and the native. There may be more in there of less significance, but if we go to a doctor and we have a cold and a raging infection, he's going to treat the infection and ignore the cold.

Think of it this way. Arabic parts or lots are part of traditional astrology. Yet we don't use every lot in every chart. We pick on the relevant ones. To me its the same with aspects.

Text books: when we read and study with the authorities we use their books because they're dead and its all we have. We can't speak to them. But books give examples of the point they are making in the lesson. So if a wide orb works with a particular chart, they use it, not, in my opinion, because they always use wide orbs with everything, but because that helped make the point they are trying to make. This isn't dishonest. Its teaching.

The problem with looking at a technique and applying it universally to every chart we ever see is that it gives us the impression that what we see is perfectly acceptable in all conditions. A wide orb worked in this chart, therefore it is of the same profound importance in every chart. That's not true. What is true is that the particular aspect helped make the point in the lesson, not its orb.

Morin does this a lot. He uses what I consider to be massive orbs for fixed stars when they help his point, but the same orb to a fixed star perhaps even the same fixed star, is ignored in another example because it does not fit his point. Yes, they cherry pick examples. So when we look at a chart for the first time, we cannot use large orbs in all instances because it will give us a bunch of useless information and we will be spending hours sifting through information which has no value, when, by using a technique everyone agrees with, tight orbs are more influential than weak ones, we can save a lot of time and energy. There is nothing nontraditional about that.

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Tom wrote:
I don't want to get too far off base here, but first this business of "the tradition." There isn't only one way of working with "traditional astrology" as this discussion indicates. We have some authorities using fixed orbs some using moieties. Is one traditional and one not? I think either way comes down on the side of tradition.
I agree there is no uniform tradition. And yes either moieties or fixed orbs are both respectable positions. I just remain unclear if you work practically with either.

Tom wrote:
I used the word theoretical to indicate that there was a basis in nature for using moieties. Since there is none for fixed that we know of, until we know of it, it's arbitrary. That doesn't rule out the possibility there is a natural explanation, but until there is, arbitrary is what fixed orbs are. Regardless both are within the tradition.
I was updating my last post when you posted. I suggest you take another look! I think there is some confusion on the use of the word moiety here. I know you admire his ideas a lot but I suggest we leave Morin out of this for now. I think its confusing the issue. He was an idiosyncratic and peripheral figure in his time who came right at the end of the traditional period. He also seems to have had very little influence on his contemporaries. I think he left a valuable contribution behind on how he approached orbs. But I think you are using him to create a generally false dichotomy between fixed and moiety orbs in historical terms.

Excluding Morin, the planetary basis of fixed or moiety orbs amongst traditional writers are basically identical. I thought Claude Dariot's innovation was not the idea of orbs but rather the notion of combining the half orbs of two planets together hence the renaissance moiety orb? As I see it this was a philosophical change of how orbs were understood but I dont see where you get the idea this was philosophically superior to fixed orbs. A different method of calculating orbs in aspect? Yes. Superior? no.

Mark
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly