Comparative Planetology

Figure 1 shows a screenshot of a cool animation depicting the rotation, tilt and relative sizes of the planets in the solar system. Click here for the animation.

Figure 1: source

What is doesn't depict of course are the orbits of the planets, their eccentricities and the angle that these orbits make the plane formed by the Earth's orbit. Figure 2 is shows a table of eccentricities along with perihelions and aphelions (closest and furthest approaches to the Sun).

Figure 2: source

Notice how the perihelion of Pluto takes it inside the orbit of Neptune. Ceres is not listed in the table but it has an eccentricity of 0.0758 with an angle of inclination to the plane of the Earth's orbit of 10.59°. Here is a YouTube video that explains these angles inclination and is fact part of a 33 episode series on comparative planetology.

Figure 3 displays the values of these planetary inclinations:

Figure 3: source

One could well ask what is the relevance to Astrology of all this astronomical detail? Let's use the planetary orbital inclinations to address this question. The angles correspond in an astrological chart to the maximum possible celestial latitudes, both North and South, that a planet can have. Figure 4 shows today's celestial longitudes.

Figure 4: from Astrolog

As can be seen, the celestial latitude of the Sun is 0°00' as it should be because the ecliptic plane from which the angles are measured is defined by the Earth's path around the Sun. Notice how all the absolute values of all the latitudes conform with the values shown in Figure 3. The North Node of the Moon is where the Moon's orbit intersects the Ecliptic and so its value, like that of the Sun, is always 0°00'. The orbit of the Moon itself has an inclination of 5.145°. The orbit of Chiron has an eccentricity of 0.3823 and an inclination of 6.93°. Like the Moon, all the planets, centaurs, asteroids and dwarf planets have north and south nodes where their orbits intersect the plane of the ecliptic. Some astrologers take these nodes into account but most don't.

The point is that these angles are commonly displayed in an astrological chart for a reason and that is that two coordinates (celestial latitude and longitude) are needed to define an astronomical body's position. Much attention is given to the longitude. For example in Figure 4, it can be seen that Mercury is in 27°37' of Virgo. Far less attention is given to the latitude but when planets are conjunct both in terms of latitude and longitude, this aspect can be particularly potent. One has only to look back to mid-January of 2020 to realise this. See Figure 5.

Figure 5: from Astrolog

It was the spectacular conjunction in Capricorn, occurring in January 13th/14th of 2020, that marked the onset of the Covid pandemic. Notice how the positions of the Sun and Pluto differ by only 0°01' of longitude and that Pluto's latitude is -0°40' (0°40' of south latitude). Remember that Pluto's latitude ranges between -17° and +17° but at this time it was almost zero. Similarly Saturn was not only a mere 0°04' away from an exact conjunction with the Sun but it was also only 0°02' away from the plane of the ecliptic. It is the closeness, in terms of both latitude and longitude of the planets involved in this conjunction, that made it so potent. Its effects will be felt for decades to come.

All the astronomical details concerning the planets are relevant in some way astrologically. To take another example, it has always struck me how Venus, the planet of harmony, and its higher octave Neptune, both have orbits that almost perfectly circular. This means that the eccentricities of their orbits are almost zero (0.007 and 0.009 respectively). Astrologers must know their astronomy, first and foremost before anything else.

Space, Time and Cosmic Cycles

I watched an interesting video by Randall Carlson titled Hidden Mathematics: Ancient Knowledge of Space, Time and Cosmic Cycles:

There was an interesting section of the video which I took a screenshot of and which I've displayed in Figure 1:

Figure 1

What struck me was that One Decan of the Great Year constitutes 720 solar years, equivalent to 10 days, 240 hours or 1440 minutes of a Sacred Year (the Great Year viewed in terms of 365.25 days). I was reminded of Meher Baba's words:

My next advent, after I drop this body, will be after 700 years, and that will mark the end and the beginning of a cycle of cycles. All cycles of time in illusion end and begin after 700 to 1400 years. There have been and will be millions and billions of such cycles in a cycle of cycles. Thus, there is no end to illusion, which always remains illusion. Lord Meher.

Baba's time span of 700 and 1400 years correspond closely to length of one and two decans of the Great Year. Three decans constitute an Astrological Age such as the Age of Pisces and the Age of Aquarius. The shape associated with the decan is the tetrahedron that has four triangular faces, each with 180°, making for a total of 720°. See Figure 2.

Figure 2

It's interesting how four of the five Platonic solids are linked to the Great Year, with the icosahedron being linked to the 3600 year Saros cycle. Most the major catastrophes over the past 150,000 years have occurred as the vernal equinox enters the constellation of Leo or Aquarius. The last one occurred about 12,900 years before the present era. See Figure 3.

Figure 3

The video also reminds us of the prominence of the number 108 in the dimensions of the Sun the Moon and their distances from Earth. See Figure 4.

Figure 4

Randall Carlson also makes the point that its important to retain awareness of the old systems of measurement. If we used only the metric system then a lot would be lost. We can thank the United States for retaining use of some of the old Imperial measurements.

Planetary Associations

In this post, I want to look at planetary associations, particularly those between Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn as well as the luminaries (Sun and Moon). The first association I'll examine is that of metals. What metals are associated with what planets. 

PLANETS AND METALS

To quote from "Letters and Numbers Book" by Zachary K. Hubbard:

To the Greeks, the word planet meant “wanderer”, and they earned this name because they were the only objects in the sky wandering to the naked eye. It is for these 7- heavenly bodies that we have the 7-days of the week, as we learned about in Chapter 5. In Alchemy, the sun is associated with gold, the moon with silver, Mars with iron, Mercury with quicksilver (what we commonly call mercury), Jupiter with tin, Venus with copper, and Saturn with lead. Above all, notice it is the sun representing gold, and Saturn

representing Lead. The moon representing silver is also fascinating and later you will learn about The Wizard of Oz and why Dorothy wore silver slippers on the yellow brick (gold) road in the book version of the story, which is entirely related. Dorothy and Toto aside, most commonly in Alchemy you will hear the reference of Lead into Gold, meaning from one end of the spectrum to the opposite, playing on the principle of Polarity. As we mentioned earlier, it is the sun that is 93-million-miles from earth, the true keeper of time, and it is ‘Saturn’, the most distant of the planets to the ancients and having Ordinal Gematria of 93 that is considered to be the keeper of time by the occult. Understand, it is no coincidence that these two heavenly objects, the bookends of time of the 7-Luminaries, represent Gold and Lead in this ancient study, and share overlap in letters and numbers. Instead, it is a reminder of duality, and how everything in this world has an equal and an opposite. 

Figure 1 summarises this information in a table:

Figure 1: source

In terms of atomic number (the number of protons in the nucleus), we have:

• ☉ Au Gold: 79 
• ☽ Ag Silver: 47
• ♂︎Fe Iron: 26
• ☿ Hg Mercury: 80
• ♃ Sn Tin: 50
• ♀︎Cu Copper: 29
• ♄ Pb Lead: 82

Figure 2 shows the position of these metals in the Periodic Table:

Figure 2: source

Of the atomic number of the planets is not related to their numbers as derived from Gematria, mentioned in the earlier quote. This brings us to our second association: what numbers are associated with the various planets when Gematria is applied to their English names? 

PLANETS AND GEMATRIA

There are various ciphers that can be applied and all of them are accessible via an Internet site called Germatrinator. I'm going to use Ordinal, Reduced Ordinal, Ordinal Reversed, Reduced Ordinal Reversed and English Extended. See the previous link for a detailed explanation of these ciphers. Figure 3 shows the results for the Sun.

Figure 3: source

Figures 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 shows the results for the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn.

Figure 4: source

Figure 5: source

Figure 6: source

Figure 7: source

Figure 8: source

Figure 9: source

The English Extended cipher is closest to the Greek and Hebrew system of assigning values to numbers. In this system, once ten is reached the progression is 20, 30 etc. until 100 is reached after which the progression is 200, 300 etc. The English Ordinal is probably the most straight forward cipher with numbers assigned as A=1, B=2 etc. until Z=26 is reached, after which the numbering returns to 1. In Full Reduction, 10 is treated as 1, 11 as 2 etc. For these three ciphers, the results are:

• Sun: 450 and 54 and 9 - common digital root of 9 with 450 being a reflection of 54
• Moon: 210 and 57 and 21 - common digital root of 3
• Mars: 231 and 51 and 15 - common digital root of 6 with 51 being a reflection of 15
• Mercury: 1228 and 103 and 40 - common digital root of 4
• Jupiter: 684 and 99 and 36 - common digital root of 9
• Venus: 855 and 81 and 18 - common digital root of 9 with 81 being a reflection of 18
• Saturn: 741 and 93 and 21 - common digital root of 3

The digital roots of all three numbers must always be the same. Reflections are important in gematria, hence my comments above. The Reverse Ordinal and Reverse Full Reduction are the same as their non-reverse counterparts except that counting starts from Z and proceeds toward A. Again, digital roots for both are the same. However, the results for the Moon (51 and 15) are the same for Mars listed earlier which is a bit confusing. It's probably better to ignore the Reverse ciphers when it comes to the planets.

PLANETS AND MAGIC SQUARES

Another association of interest are the magic squares and their associated magic constants. Figures 10 and 11 show the magic squares of the various planets and luminaries.

Figure 11: source

So to summarise, the magic constants for the planets and luminaries:

• Sun: 111
• Moon: 369
• Mars: 65
• Mercury: 260
• Jupiter: 34
• Venus: 175
• Saturn: 15

PLANETS AND THE DAYS AND HOURS OF THE WEEK

Another association is that between the planets and the days and hours of the week. As this Wikipedia article explains:

The planetary hours are an ancient system in which one of the seven classical planets is given rulership over each day and various parts of the day. Developed in Hellenistic astrology, it has possible roots in older Babylonian astrology, and it is the origin of the names of the days of the week as used in English and numerous other languages.

The classical planets are Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury and the Moon, and they take rulership over the hours in this sequence.

The sequence is from slowest- to fastest-moving as the planets appear in the night sky, and so is from furthest to nearest in the planetary spheres model. This order has come to be known as the "Chaldean order".

As each day is divided into 24 hours, the first hour of a day is ruled by the planet three places down in the Chaldean order from the planet ruling the first hour of the preceding day, that is a day with its first hour ruled by the Sun ("Sunday") is followed by a day with its first hour ruled by the Moon ("Monday"), followed by Mars ("Tuesday"), Mercury ("Wednesday"), Jupiter ("Thursday"), Venus ("Friday") and Saturn ("Saturday"), again followed by Sunday, yielding the familiar naming of the days of the week.

In other words:

Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, ...

This same system works for the hours of the day as shown in Figure 12:

Figure 12: source

PLANETS AND THE PARTS OF THE HUMAN BODY

Yet another association is that between the planets and the human body. Figure 13 summarises information about this:

Figure 13: source

There's are many other associations of course but this post is at least an introduction to the topic. I may add some additional information at a later date.