The energy is reinforced. But it is the hidden aspects, such as the semi- sextile mentioned above , with its opposition, that you will not see unless you use the declinations.

Astrology is always a matter of weighing and judging the relative strengths of aspects and planets and is a subtle art only learned by experience. The declinations are an important refinement. Unless you are using all the tools of the trade, so to speak, you will miss out on much needed information.

When we erect a traditional chart using the tropical Zodiac which has a measurable starting point at 0 Aries, the intersection of the ecliptic and equator , we place the planets in their longitudinal positions according to the signs.

The signs are the area of space, divided into twelve segments, where we view the planet from a horizontal perspective.

But declination is the placement of the planet vertically, above and below the celestial Equator. It is the measurement of how far into the pie-shaped wedges of the zodiac a planet lies.

If you take your chart form with its markings for each 30 degrees dividing the signs, and place an "X" on one of those lines, you notice you have room along that line for many other "X's".

Place another "X" on that same line to represent a different planet that is conjunct the first. Planets conjunct by longitude run along the same line that appears to emanate from the chart wheel center. However, another planet located along this horizontal line would be in the same declination, and therefore, equidistant from the horizon.

Not only is a planet and I use the term planet to also describe the Sun and Moon for convenience sake in a segment of the sky, but it also has a location up and down in relation to the Earth. This is an easy way to look at declinations for astrologers before we attempt the astronomical theory.

In truth, the Earth turns and views the Sun from an angle. Those 23 degrees and 27 minutes are the declination. The midpoint of this approximate 47 degree swathe is called the celestial equator. The Sun has reached its maximum declination North of the celestial equator. The Sun, of course, never goes "out of bounds", but sets the boundaries. The activity of the Sun is most powerful within these demarcations known as the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn.

Planets with declinations outside this path are perhaps not challenged by the strength of the Sun and can operate more independently. Perhaps we could also say that the planet cannot express itself along normally accepted lines.

The premise here, according to Kt Boehrer, is to translate the declination north and south into longitudinal equivalents since astrologers are accustomed to using degrees of longitude to view a chart. If you've ever played the game Battleship you know you have two sets of coordinates to locate the hidden submarines and destroyers in the waters represented on a grid.

In somewhat the same manner, you have the "grid" of the zodiacal positions and you will have two points of longitudinal coordinates to deal with when translating declinations, one being the declination converted into a degree of longitude and the other the solstice point.

The solstice point will be important because we are relating the declination to the celestial equator and the 0 point of origin. The solstice point is the relationship to the 0 cardinal points of Cancer and Capricorn and marks the place when the Sun will be in the same declination but going in an opposite direction along the ecliptic. That line will cross the chart wheel boundaries at TWO places.

In somewhat the same way, we equate the declinations to TWO points in space, except in this case we use the ecliptic for the chart wheel. We are locating a planet in space not only by area of the sky, but also north or south of the celestial equator and relative to our Earth. A three dimensional figure requires the planet's longitude and the two coordinates of its declination.

Three points are needed for the true location of a body in space. Captain Kirk of Star Trek set off into space using three sets of coordinates and so should we. Using the path of the Sun as the basis for conversion we correlate the degree of declination of another body to the same longitudinal position as occupied by the Sun in that degree of declination.

Ability to graph historical currency conversion rate changes and transits. Regular First Trade charts database updates Research Module : Statistical analysis for commonalities and differences in chart groups.

Advanced Transit Search. Ability to search by Position, Aspects, Aspects to Points, Phases, Speed Ability to search in different coordinate systems Ability to combine search criteria Ability to create Calendars and Timelines from search results. Multi-calendar: combined transit calendars for groups of charts. AI Artificial intelligence search for positive and negative reactions in press, happy and sad faces recognition on ACG and Geodetic astro maps. World Instability index timeline Database of Mundane events Horoscopes of countries, horoscopes of cities and states, charts of diplomatic relationships, inaugurations, wars, battles, etc.

Some of the Tools: AstroScribe - this is a unique tool that allows you to take notes and build reports during your consultation sessions and share them in real time with your clients. Ability to find the best place for relocation by clicking through the World Map - with automatic relocated chart preview. You can see that the Sun and the Moon are in a close conjunction, so you could guess that there was either a New Moon, or a solar eclipse a couple of hours ago.

So the Sun and the Moon are in more or less the same spot both in longitude and in declination, which means they are indeed close to each other in the sky. And you can guess that it was not just a New Moon but an eclipse of the Sun a couple of hours ago. Which indeed it was. In longitude, there are many different aspects that differ by degree value: conjunction, opposition, trine, square, and so on.

There are also systems of orbs that help to define whether the aspect is close enough to precise, to be considered existing, or not, and different astrologers prefer different orbs, sometimes depending on which planets are in aspect. So when it comes to the aspects of longitude, things can quickly become complex.

Fortunately, the aspects of declination are much-much simpler. If declinations of two planets are close to each other by value and are both either North or South, it's a parallel. In the picture above you can see that the Sun and the Moon are in a parallel to each other. If declinations of two planets are close to each other by value but one of them is North while the other is South, it's a contraparallel.

In the picture above, the Sun is in a contraparallel to Pluto. In the traditional astrology books, we can find an indication that a parallel of declination is similar, in the sense of the kind of interaction it creates between planets, to a conjunction, whereas a contraparallel is similar to an opposition. Yet other well-known astrologers believe that parallel and contraparallel are in fact the same aspect, there is no difference between them.

Charles Carter, Ronald Davison, Roger Hutcheon, Sepharial and the Magi Society belong to this group although Magi Society started to recognise some difference between a parallel and a contraparallel relatively recently. My personal opinion is that there is a difference between these two aspects, but it is not as substantial as the difference between a conjunction and an opposition.

I'd say a contraparallel is somewhat more stressful compared to a parallel. What if you want to find out the declinations of planets at your birth? Well, you can use the ephemeris in a book form, they are available in many book stores, for example Amazon.

Just bear in mind that not every kind of ephemeris has an information about declinations in it. The American Ephemeris do not offer this information. On the other hand, Raphael's Ephemeris do have it, both in a yearly format and the year ones. You can also use the free ephemeris in PDF format offered by the Astro. Just go to their Years Ephemeris page and open the section for the century you are interested in.

Then find the year you are interested in under with declination and latitude subheader. This image shows where you'd find the ephemeris with declinations for the year Once you've downloaded those ephemeris, you'll find that they have one page for each month, and on that page there are two tables.

The upper one offers the usual ecliptic longitudes while the lower one has in it the declinations and the latitudes we haven't discussed those latitudes yet, and we won't be using them most of the time. This image shows the table for June , and the arrows are pointing out the columns we are interested in, they are titled decl :.

You can find at least some information about declination in all popular astrological software packages — at least in those I am familiar with, they include Solar Fire, Astro Gold, Sirius, WinStar, Janus and a few others.

As my main computer is a Mac, I am using Astro Gold for Mac most actively, and in it, you can find information about declinations either by going to Listings and viewing 'Basic Details', or by displaying the Grid — you'll then see all the aspects of declination in the top right part of it. One of my favourite tools when working with declination is the scale of declinations displayed in Solar Fire.

To view it, you would need, after displaying a chart, to go to Pages, General, and then pick the declin design. You will find the scale on the lefthand side.

Here is how it looks:. In case of Disney, there are so many planets in a parallel to each other that their symbols overlap and are impossible to read. Still, this little tool is the best I know when it comes to clearly displaying the aspects of declination.

Those planets that have a southern declination are shown on the right hand side, whereas planets with northern declinations are on the left hand side, so you can easily see that Disney's Neptune makes contraparallels to a whole bunch of other planets.

You might have also noticed a dashed line labeled 'Ob'. It shows the obliquity of the ecliptic, or, in other words, how far can the Sun reach in declination. Anything above this line, like Mars in Walt Disney's case, gets and 'out-of-bounds' status. You can read about it in my article discussing the out-of-bounds planets.

Many of us appreciate the free charting services at Astro. You can find the declinations of planets there as well, just follow the 'Additional tables' link.

To summarise so far, information about planets' declinations, and sometimes even about their parallels and contraparallels, is widely available. So why am I telling you that support for declinations isn't adequate in most software packages? One reason is that the aspects of declination are not displayed in the chart anymore.

In a much older version of Solar Fire you could choose to show parallels and contraparallels in a chart, they looked like grey arcs then. Now that option isn't available anymore.

Another reason will become clearer when we'll come to a practical example in the end of the article. Although in most cases it is sufficient to only know that declination is simply the second dimension, to complement the ecliptic longitude in order to know where exactly the planet is situated in the sky, sometimes you do need to know more about it, and in this section I'm going to define it properly.

The Professional can look for times when there are many Harmonious aspects to the second house for money and the MC for publicity, etc.

It will also work for rectification when the time is unsure. All past events can be looked at and the Natal chart can be adjusted to fit the peaks of energy for each Event in the past to confirm the birth time. Since the quad wheel can have three different sets of changing Midheavens and Ascendants, version 6. These choices allow the astrologer to move the dates and times and see the effect on the desired chart's Midheaven and Ascendant angles without recalculating the whole quad wheel.

Only the transiting Midheaven and Ascendant can be changed directly to the desired angle positions - the Midheaven and Ascendant positions for a progressed chart will be shown in grey and be unchangeable, but they will reflect changes that the user makes above to the Date or Time values. Previously, the default time period for an ephemeris table was the current year. I changed it so that the program now defaults to the current month. The sliding orbs help to solve the same problem that is addressed by turning the declinations into their longitude equivalents and then looking at the resulting aspects, which AstrolDeluxe does at Options, Declination Equivalent Chart.

The problem is that when the Sun, for example, moves from 0 Aries where it is at 0 degrees declination to 5 Aries, its declination increases by 2 degrees. But when the Sun is at 0 Cancer and moves to 5 Cancer, its declination decreases by only 5 minutes. Jayne asserts that astrologers should try to use orbs for parallels that correspond to the amount of zodiacal motion of a normal zodiacal aspect, which means wide orbs of declination near the equator and narrow orbs of declination near the solstice points.

Jayne does not address what declination orbs to use for Out of Bounds planets, but it makes sense to use mirror orbs just like we draw the mirror points on the Declination-Longitude Equivalent charts. If you turn on the checkbox to Use Sliding Scale Orbs of Declination [you must do this separately for each of the categories of aspects, such as Natal , Transits , etc.

This formula would set the orb to 1. If you have the Parallel and Contraparallel orbs set to 1. If you increase or decrease the Parallel and Contraparallel orbs above or below 1. When you have a chart or multi-wheel on the screen, the Display menu now gives you the choice Planet Strengths.

This will pop-up a small form on the screen with a colorful bar graph of strengths for all the planets that are marked in the Include column at Customization, Planets. The program calculates and displays the relative strengths simply by looking at the exactness of orb of all the aspects in which the planets are involved.

Each strength bar is divided into two differently colored sections, where the strength of the lower section derives from inharmonious aspects and the strength of the upper section derives from conjunctions and harmonious aspects.

So, at a glance, the astrologer can see, not only the prominence of the planet, but the discordant or harmonious nature of the energies affecting it. If you have a biwheel on the screen, the program will calculate the strengths based on the synastry aspects between the two charts, such as between Current Transits and the natal chart or between the charts of two people. If the outer chart of a biwheel is a progressed chart, the strengths will additionally include aspects between the planets of the progressed chart, although since these aspects are fewer in number these aspects naturally contribute less to the total.

If you have a triwheel on the screen, the middle chart is assumed to be a major progressed chart - the strengths include its aspects to itself and to the natal chart. The program then calculates and adds strengths from the planets of the outer wheel to both the natal and major progressed chart.

The outer chart could be either transits or minor progressions. In any case, these faster-moving aspects will be weighted at just two thirds the weight of the major progressed chart aspects. If you have a quadwheel on the screen , the inner middle chart is assumed to be a major progressed chart, the outer middle chart to be a minor progressed chart, and the outer chart to be a transits chart. To the strengths described for the triwheel, the quadwheel adds the aspects from the outer transits chart to the natal and major progressed charts, weighting these quickly-moving aspects at just one third the weight of the slow-moving major progressed chart aspects.

If you have the Planet Strengths window open on the screen when you click on Edit, Rotate Chart , you can watch the strength bars change as you move forward or backward in time , including in Auto animation mode.

I am excited about this new feature. The combination of the Sun, Moon, and Ascendant gives a very accurate reading. To give examples of how this works, the first ten degrees of Aries is the Aries Decan, the second ten degrees is the Leo Decan, and the final ten degrees is the Sagittarius Decan.

So if the Sun for an unknown birth time chart is between 10 and 20 Aries, the program will insert text for the combination of their Moon sign and the Leo Decan. The first ten degrees of Taurus is the Taurus Decan, the second ten degrees is the Virgo Decan, and the final ten degrees is the Capricorn Decan. If the Sun for a sunrise birthtime chart is between 20 and 30 degrees of Taurus, then the program will insert text for their Moon sign and the Capricorn Decan.

I have tested this on a few charts where the birth time is unknown or where the Ascendant is identical to the Sun sign and the interpretations read well and appropriately for the individuals in question. An example is given for Senator and Presidential candidate John Kerry at the report samples page. As of version 6. These commands must precede the DoAspectsStrengthSorted command in the report order section of the Standard template or the DoPointAspects commands in the Intermediate templates.

With Kt Boehrer's permission, version 6. The eye-shaped ecliptic is shown relative to the equator on a graph of longitude and declination.