Tables of Houses, Atlases,
Calculation Aids, page 2

See this life size, in great detail (pdf).

AFA, oversize, 25 sheets.

See this life size, in great detail (pdf).

AFA, oversize pad of 50 sheets.

Contents:

Preface
Preface to the revised edition

1. Getting ready
2. Preliminary birth time calculations
3. Preliminary sidereal time calculations
4. Calculating the house cusps
5. Calculating the planetary positions
6. Calculating the Part of Fortune and the Part of Spirit (aka Daimon - Dave)
7. Detecting and correcting errors
8. Copying data to the blank wheel
9. What do I do now?

Practice exercises

10. Calculating progressions: preliminary steps
11. Calculating the progressed planetary positions
12. Calculating the progressed midheaven and ascendant
13. Calculating the date & time of progressed contacts

Practical exercises

14. Interpreting progressed charts
15. Transits, returns, and other simple calculations

Worksheets for natal charts, progressed charts, and solar returns

Comment:

Before I got my first computer program many years ago I had already calculated over 100 natal charts by hand and had found various short-cuts to the process. So I initially opened this book to natal chart calculations but was disappointed with what I read. So I next turned to the progressed section, to see if it might be different.

Regret that I am still disappointed. Page 86, the start of the instructions for progressed charts, table 14, Leap Years. There you will see the year 1900 given as a LEAP YEAR. It was, in the Julian calendar, which was in use in Russia at the time, but it WAS NOT in the Gregorian. Which has been in use, in England and America, since 1750, and in many other countries as far back as 1582. The change, from Julian to Gregorian, concerned century years not divisible by 400. Such as 1700, 1800 and 1900, NONE of which were leap years. The year 2000, evenly divisible by 400, was a leap year as we all remember. This book is the Revised Edition. Such an obvious mistake, in a book on calculation, should never have occurred.

So we have another fuzzy-headed book. I see a lot of books, I've come to think that "fuzzy" is all we can expect. On the back of the book it says,

The Math of Astrology is a simple, methodical, step-by-step guide for manual chart calculation with pencil and paper.

This is exactly true, but, regrettably, not of this book. Here is the simple method: My own.

• You have the time of birth, am or pm
• To the best of your knowledge, deduct an hour if it was daylight (summer time). If not, leave the time alone
• You are in America, which is west of London. Subtract the proper number of hours (EST=5, PST=8, etc) to get GMT. For an early morning birth this may result in a GMT on the previous day. You will get used to this.
• Go to your atlas. Look up the place of birth. There will be a number there. For New York, the number is 4:56. For Chicago, 5:50. For Los Angeles, 7:53.
• ADD that number to your GMT
• RESULT: The local mean time of birth (LMT). With this you can calculate planetary positions.

You want house cusps? This is rough'n'ready, not exact: Take your LMT. Go to your ephemeris for the day of birth. You will find the Sidereal Time listed there (ST). ADD the sidereal time to your Local Mean Time to get the Sidereal Time of birth. There are two minor adjustments to get that exact to the nearest second, but what you already have will be within four minutes of exact. If your birth time is approximate, you might as well stop here. Take the result, go to your Table of Houses, find the table with that Sidereal Time, then find the latitude of birth, and you have your house cusps.

In a nutshell, that's Dave's way of constructing a chart. You still have to figure out how to use your noon or midnight ephemerides and put up with adding & subtracting simple logarithms, but LMT and ST are the major steps.

In the Murphy/Rosato system, before you start you must know:

• Base 60 !
• Conversion of Base 60 to Base 10 !
• The 24 hour clock !
• All the world's time zone meridians !
• If the place of birth is EAST or WEST of its meridian !

The East or West bit is important, because instead of a clean, simple conversion to GMT and then reduction to your LMT, as I showed you above, in the Murphy/Rosato system, for a New York chart, you must subtract 4:56 from 5:00 to get 0:04 (four minutes) and then figure out if you must ADD or SUBTRACT four minutes to your time of birth. The Eastern Standard Time Meridian, at 75 degrees west of Greenwich, happens to run darn near downtown Philadephia, but if you're in New York and a degree east of Philly (which is four minutes of clock time), do you ADD four minutes, or SUBTRACT four minutes? I've been in this biz a quarter century and off the top of my head, I STILL don't know. I have to look it up. Every time.

Well, if you guessed wrong and added instead of subtracted, you'll only be eight minutes wrong. When you're just starting out, a chart that accurate will be a godsend (trust me, I've been there), but if you were born in central Kansas, like me, the interval is 28 minutes. Get that wrong and you will be nearly an hour off, and there are many places on the globe where the clock on the wall is nearly a full hour from its proper (LMT) time (western Kansas), which makes for nearly two hour mistakes.

Which is why I invented my own system: Figure out if it's daylight or not, if it is, subtract an hour. Figure out how many hours it is back to Greenwich, which will always be the same for your time zone. Subtract that, then add the number in the atlas to your GMT (subtract if you're in Europe & therefore to the east of London), and, hey presto, you've got LMT. It's simple, it always works, you can't be fooled.

Murphy/Rosato's instructions for southern hemisphere house cusps are dreadful. Instead of having complete instructions at one place on a single page, with the reasons clearly stated, instructions are split between two pages, 14 and 21. For the southern hemisphere you are first told, in what amounts to a footnote, to add 12 hours to your Sidereal Time (pg. 14). Then, in what amounts to a second footnote on pg. 21, you are told to reverse the numbers of the resulting houses, where the MC becomes the IC, the ASC becomes the DSC, the second house becomes the eighth, etc. If you don't catch either of those footnotes, your South American charts will be somewhat wrong. If you only catch the first, your houses will be upside down. This is a common mistake. And, so far as reading a chart, it's a fatal one. For thirty bucks, we expect a book to help us avoid traps like this.

With progressed calculations, Murphy & Rosato are still murky. Page 88, they give instructions for the Adjusted Calculation Date (ACD), which makes looking up progressions in the ephemeris a snap. Only they don't call it that. They call it the "Midnight Date and Time". No one else does.

I've been in this biz a long time & if a casual glance finds errors and complications like these, how the heck can you, complete novice that you are, possibly understand what Murphy and Rosato are trying to teach you? You will flee back to your computer programs.

AFA, 172 pages, oversize.

Contents: This is an appendix to (out of print) volumes 1 & 2.

Appendices: Acknowledgements, Feedback, Index to figures in the text; A. Raphael's ephemeris, sample page; B. Map of US time zones; C. Time zones of various countries; D. Systems of coordinates; E. AP [Aries Press] tables of houses, sample pages; F. Degrees or hours into decimals; G. How to use the electronic hand calculator;

H. Diurnal log tables; I. Latitude & longitude of various cities; J. Pluto ephemeris, 1900-1960; K. Correction factor table; L. Longitude into time; M. Declination of the Asc & MC; N. Synopses of calculations; O. Aspects; P. Sample chart form; Q. 360 chart form; R. Days of the year numbered; S. List of planet dignities; T. Decanates & their rulers; U. Table of mutual receptions;

V. Chart of the US (Gemini rising); W. "Ingrid's" chart; X. The Stockholm chart; Y. Encyclopedia of planets, signs & houses.

Comment: This book is mute testimony to the extent that computers, and Thomas Shanks, have changed astrology. Not so many years ago, a book like this would be indispensable.

AFA, 152 pages, numbered from 397 to 540 (includes 9 Roman numeral pages).