Using Declination in Astrolog32

by BLH

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    Entering the Parameters   

Many of the classical astrologers have stated that parallels and contraparallels are as powerful as conjunctions and oppositions. It is a good idea to study these "connections" in declination. This article will show how this can be done using Astrolog32.

Our goal will be to display this list in Excel. We will mark the commands for Astrolog32 with a .

First, open a chart, or enter the details of the natal chart of interest - the time and place.

Then set the default location and time zone to the location and time zone of the chart we are considering. If you omit this step, the transits will be inaccurate.

If you wish, you may view the longitude to the nearest second.

Normally, Astrolog32 displays the longitude and latitude of the natal planets in a chart. You can view declinations by switching to the Equatorial Positions. This step is optional. Astrolog32 will not show the declination of the houses.

Then select only the natal points that we want to receive the parallels and contraparallels.

Then select only the transiting planets that we want to make the parallels and contraparallels.

Select the aspects you want to study -- parallel and contraparallel.

Astrolog32 1.10 seems to have an oddity when calculating parallels and contraparallels. If you wish to find the parallels made by a transiting planet, that SAME planet must be activated in the Object Selections. Let's assume you only selected Jupiter in the Object Selections, and you selected several planets in the Transit Selections. The generated output will ONLY list the parallels and contraparallels between natal Jupiter and transiting Jupiter. Any aspect made by the other transiting planets will not be listed.

If we are using the Moon's North Node in the natal chart, or as a transiting "planet", then select whether we want to use the mean node or the true node.

If we want the accuracy of the time of day that the transit occurred, then make sure times are displayed in 24h time rather than am/pm. Excel will recognise the date and time as a "date" if it is in this format. Also, make certain that the date is in the format that Excel recognises as a date in your country - m/d/y, or d/m/y.

Set the view to text mode rather than graphics mode.

Ensure that the colours are turned off. If we save a chart as a colored text file, the file will contain a lot of unwanted characters.

    Calculating the Transits   

Now we are ready to calculate the actual transits. Press Enter to bring up the command line. We can calculate the transits for a single month, or for several years. If we wish to calculate the transits for a single month, we enter tm m yyyy. The m is the number of the month, and the yyyy is the year. If we wanted to know the transits for April 2001, we would enter tm 4 2001.

If we want to calculate the transits for several years, we would enter tY yyyy n. The yyyy provides the starting year, and the n states the number of years we want to calculate. If we wanted to know the transits for 2001 through 2003, we would enter tY 2001 3.

If we want to save this transit list, or manipulate it in Excel, then we need to save the list as a text file first.

Astrolog will save the list and then re-display the list on the screen. This may take quite a while, so be patient. When Astrolog has finished this process, you should turn off the transits by using the same command (simply tm or tY will also work) before you try to do anything else. Otherwise, Astrolog will calculate the entire transit list again. This can be annoying if you want to make more than one change to the settings.

    Manipulating the Output   

We may want to manipulate and/or sort this data in Excel. After you have opened Excel, open the text file with the fixed width option in the text import wizard. Click next, go down past the natal chart locations, then select where we want the column boundaries to be. Remember that Excel will not recognise dates before 1900. If we want to sort these dates, the best format would be yyyymmdd. If we want yyyymmdd as our final date format, we need the month, day, and year in separate columns with no "/" between them. You should also place the time in a separate column. If all our dates are on or after 1/1/1900, we have no problems; the date and time can be in one column. Click finish. We can delete any unwanted rows or columns.

If we have dates before 1900 and want the date in the format yyyymmdd, then in another column we can sum yyyy*10000 + mm*100 + dd to get the date in the right format. Remember to copy this column and paste special -> values in another column before deleting the 3 columns with the years, months and days, or before using these dates for sorting purposes. If any planet names or aspect names need changing, then this can easily be done using the Edit -> Replace feature.

Now we can manipulate and sort the data as we wish. Data can be sorted by date, transiting planet, natal planet, aspect, or sign of the natal or transiting planet. If we want to sort by sign, then we must remove the brackets around the sign if we still want them to be sorted by date as well. Excel will distinguish between the round brackets used for direct planets and the square brackets used for retrograde planets. Simply use Edit -> Replace to do this.

    Determining the Declination of the Houses   

Astrolog32 does not display the declination of the Houses. It is possible to determine their declination manually. The Ascendant and the Midheaven are always considered to be located on the ecliptic. Therefore, we will use the the Sun to determine the declination of the Ascendant. These are the required steps.

First, open a chart, or enter the details of the natal chart of interest - the time and place.

Then set the default location and time zone to the location and time zone of the chart we are considering.

Request that the longitude be displayed to the nearest second.

Write down the exact longitude of the Ascendant in the natal chart.

Change the date of the chart so that the Sun is located at the same longitude.

Request that Astrolog32 display the Equatorial Positions (declination).

Read the declination of the Sun in the current chart. That value is the same as the declination of the Ascendant in the original chart.

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last modified on February 9, 2020

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