the-astrology-book

Astrolabe
chart and its harmony or discord.” According to the astrodynes technique, the
amount of power that a planet has is determined by the house that the planet resides
in and by the aspects that the planet makes or receives. The orb for the aspects varies
depending on which planets are involved, from which houses the aspects originate,
and what aspect is being considered.
Due to such complicated considerations, calculating astrodynes by hand for one
chart takes about ten hours. In the 1970s, Astro Numeric Service and Astro Communications
Services began to offer computerized printouts of the astrodynes (also known
as cosmodynes) tables and summaries. Then in the mid-1980s, Church of Light member
John Molfese wrote a program for the IBM personal computer to calculate and
print the astrodynes tables. To quickly provide accurate planet longitudes and declinations
for his calculations, Molfese linked his program to John Halloran’s public domain
program for calculating and saving charts. Users of Molfese’s program could display the
names of all the charts saved with Halloran’s ASTROL96 and pick the charts for
which the astrodynes program should print its tables. When Halloran released Astrology
for Windows in 1994, Molfese followed suit and in 1995 released Astrodynes for
Windows, which adds screen tables, bar graphs, pie charts, and other features to the
astrodynes results. Halloran Software continues to distribute Astrodynes for Windows.
Sources:
Benjamine, Elbert. Astrodyne Manual. Los Angeles: The Church of Light, 1950.
Doane, Doris Chase. How to Read Cosmodynes. Tempe, AZ: AFA, 1974.
—John Halloran
ASTROLABE
An astrolabe is a mechanical device that, prior to the development of the sextant, was
widely used by mariners. Said to have been developed by Hipparchus, greatest of the
ancient Greek astronomers (although some scholars give Ptolemy the honor), the
astrolabe was used by astrologers when they erected horoscopes to determine the positions
of the planets. (Prior to the development of ephemerides, it was necessary to
actually look at the heavens when casting a horoscope.). The term astrolabe means
“taking the star” in Greek, so it could be used to refer to any instrument for observing
the stellar dome. Thus, in the early medieval period, astrolabe was often applied to the
armillary sphere, a different instrument. The device now called an astrolabe is more
properly termed a planispheric astrolabe. Originally Greek, this instrument was lost to
western Europe until its reintroduction by Arabic sources.
Sources:
DeVore, Nicholas. Encyclopedia of Astrology. New York: Philosophical Library, 1947.
Tester, Jim. A History of Western Astrology. New York: Ballantine, 1987.
ASTROLOGER
An astrologer is one who practices astrology. The term is usually reserved for individuals
who read charts for clients, although astrological researchers can appropriately
[70] THE ASTROLOGY BOOK