This is the third part of my series of extracts from Lilly's "Easy and familiar method" of judging eclipses. (Part 1: Part 2:)
The following discussion is effectively a kind of constellational zodiac, which divides sidereal “signs” into 3 areas of differing planetary influence. You could alternately consider it an extreme version of fixed-star astrology. Lilly’s use of “asterism” to refer to the sidereal signs may be adopted with profit by modern sidereal astrologers.
Lilly included it in this book, because he notes in the first part, that if fixed stars are prominently placed in an eclipse chart, the nature of the stars would often tell you something about the nature of the eclipse.
Lilly the word ‘asterism’ to refer to the constellation that bears the name of the zodiac signs; so the tropical sign of Aries is distinct from the Asterism of Aries, its sidereal counterpart, and in Lilly’s time ran from 28 Ari to 17 Tau (tropical). These coordinates cannot be used as-is, for the reader must precess the coordinates/add ayanamsa to them, in order to bring the values up to date.
Lilly further divides each asterism into three smaller parts, and describes the stars that occupy each part, as well as the weather that accompanies the part when (I presume) the Sun transits in that area.
It should be noted, that like the Chinese Lunar Mansions, Lilly’s Asterisms were extremely uneven in size. The following table will make this plain: Nonetheless , this system cannot be considered as a full-fledged sidereal zodiac, as he did not subdivide the asterisms into degrees.
Modens who would revive this system should note that there is an ambiguity in the numbering: Does Lilly use ordinal or cardinal numbering for the degrees? Or, put it another way, Do Lilly's signs run from 0-29 degrees, or 1-30 degrees? Much work needs to be done on this, work that would doubtless reward anyone who would undertake it.
For the sake of completeness, here is a copy of the original. Numbers in square brackets represent page breaks in the original.
The following discussion is effectively a kind of constellational zodiac, which divides sidereal “signs” into 3 areas of differing planetary influence. You could alternately consider it an extreme version of fixed-star astrology. Lilly’s use of “asterism” to refer to the sidereal signs may be adopted with profit by modern sidereal astrologers.
Lilly included it in this book, because he notes in the first part, that if fixed stars are prominently placed in an eclipse chart, the nature of the stars would often tell you something about the nature of the eclipse.
Lilly the word ‘asterism’ to refer to the constellation that bears the name of the zodiac signs; so the tropical sign of Aries is distinct from the Asterism of Aries, its sidereal counterpart, and in Lilly’s time ran from 28 Ari to 17 Tau (tropical). These coordinates cannot be used as-is, for the reader must precess the coordinates/add ayanamsa to them, in order to bring the values up to date.
Lilly further divides each asterism into three smaller parts, and describes the stars that occupy each part, as well as the weather that accompanies the part when (I presume) the Sun transits in that area.
It should be noted, that like the Chinese Lunar Mansions, Lilly’s Asterisms were extremely uneven in size. The following table will make this plain: Nonetheless , this system cannot be considered as a full-fledged sidereal zodiac, as he did not subdivide the asterisms into degrees.
Modens who would revive this system should note that there is an ambiguity in the numbering: Does Lilly use ordinal or cardinal numbering for the degrees? Or, put it another way, Do Lilly's signs run from 0-29 degrees, or 1-30 degrees? Much work needs to be done on this, work that would doubtless reward anyone who would undertake it.
For the sake of completeness, here is a copy of the original. Numbers in square brackets represent page breaks in the original.
