Name: Directional Astrology
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Directional Astrology is a book that deals with a technical subject, and the scope and purport of it cannot very readily be apprehended by the casual reader. It is essentially a book for the astrological student. To the astronomer, it is particularly informing in that it brings out the more scientific part of the subject and shows the mathematical basis underlying the “lucky hits” to which many of our astrological exponents have an undisputed claim.

The general scope of Directional Astrology embraces all that is essential to the art of “directing” as practiced by Cladius Ptolemy and Titus de Placidus, and more recently by Sir John Wharton, Mr. John Gadbury, Commander Morrison, R.N., and Mr. A. J. Pearce, all of whom pursued the same general principles of astronomical directing, and differed considerably in their application of the celestial arcs to the measure of time. These points are reviewed and critically examined in the following pages.

Introduction:

An attempt having been made to bring the Arabian system of a day for a year into accord with the astronomical system of a degree for a year, some suggestions have here been made as to their rapprochement, the feeling is that, where credit is claimed for one system over another by exponents of either, the probability is that there is truth in both and hence there must be a coordinating factor. In the attempt to scientifically extend our horizon to include a prescience of coming events, we have primarily to remember that there are many ways up a mountain, but there is only one top. A study of these various methods may lead to the conclusion that they are all leading in the same direction.

It is as if one should say there are three hundred and sixty paces from end to end of the path, and another should say that there are three hundred and sixty-five. Both may be right according to their count and the measure of their tread, but the actual length of the path will remain the same whatever they make of it. This pathway is that which a man has to travel from his cradle to his grave; and there is nothing that concerns a man so vitally as that he should know its trend and gradient, its pitfalls and rocky eminences, in advance of his going, so that experience may be laid by the heels and made to serve instead of to subjugate.

And in the direst extreme of human experience, we have to remember that “the wise man foreseeth the evil and obscureth himself, while the ignorant pass on and are hurt.” The author of Directional Astrology has used a well-known and thoroughly authenticated horoscope for purposes of illustration, and anybody following the rules here given in relation to that horoscope will have no difficulty in following them out in respect to any other horoscope.

Particular care has been taken to define the principle underlying each operation and to give a clean-cut rule of procedure. Unlike most authors, who proceed by befogging the mind of the student with technicalities and afterwards explaining them by means of an appendix, the author of Directional Astrology has devoted the first chapters of his work to technical definitions which are essential to the proper understanding of the subject; and until these are clearly apprehended and understood the student need go no further.

To save further expense and trouble, the publishers of Directional Astrology have completed the authors work by the insertion of a complete set of tables, which include tables of Right Ascension and Declination for every degree of the zodiac, together with the ascensional difference due to the latitudes of London, Birmingham, and Liverpool under the present obliquity of the Ecliptic; also tables of Sines and Tangents, and tables of Proportional Logarithms.

These are all that are essential to the present treatise and in themselves constitute a very valuable addition to the volume. It is, of course, presumed that the student of “Directional Astrology” will have mastered the preliminary task of setting a horoscope for any given time and place with adequate precision, and hence that he is familiar with the use of an ephemeris. The present work is intended to replace the supersede Prognostic Astronomy, which is now out of print.