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Morin's method of making predictions of
events in the life of a particular individual is set forth in the main in
four books of the Astrologia Gallica, namely Book 21 on
Determinations, Book 22 on Primary Directions, Book 23 on Revolutions, and
Book 24 on Progressions and Transits. To understand the method fully, it is
necessary to read all four books, preferably in sequence.
The present Book 24 on Progressions and
Transits follows naturally after Book 23 on Revolutions, since Morin says
there that transits can be used in connection with solar and lunar
revolutions (or returns, as they are called nowadays) to
determine the exact day on which a predicted event will occur.
However, he begins Book 24 with a lengthy diatribe against what he
calls "progressions," by which he means both methods using equal
degrees for years or months and methods using the elaborate systems set
forth by the Arabian astrologers, some of which, unbeknownst to him, had
been taken from Greek astrology books that were written during the
classical period. These systems are properly called profections,
but that term has fallen into disuse among modern astrologers, and they are
now usually termed symbolic progressions. The
more common ones in use today are the radix system and the
so-called solar arc. Aside from these, there is a little-used
system of symbolic progressions called tertiary progressions.
Morin's complaint against all of the profections
is that they are not based on anything astronomical - what he calls "true motion." He does
not mention Placidus's Secondary Directions, which
had perhaps not come to his attention, since Morin died only a few years
after Placidus's books were published. His
general complaint against symbolic directions would not have been
applicable to secondaries, since they do depend
upon "true motions."
Having stated at length his objections to symbolic directions, Morin
sets forth his doctrine of how life events - accidents, to use the technical
term -
occur and how they can be predicted. Minor events can sometimes result from
transits alone; but in general, Morin says that to attempt to predict
important events in a native's life that happen at specific times we must
consider several things. The first of these is the nativity itself, which
predicts in a general way everything that will happen to the Native, the
second is its primary directions, the third is the solar and lunar
revolutions and their directions, and the fourth is the transits. We may
perhaps illustrate Morin's explanation of how transits operate by offering
an analogy. The nativity is like a gun of a certain type and caliber. The
directions and revolutions are like shells of a particular type, and the
transits are like the trigger of the gun.
For an event of a particular type to happen in the life of a native,
it must first be indicated in his nativity. Next, it must be made possible
by a concordant primary direction, which establishes the time within plus
or minus a year when an event of that type can happen. But without a
concordant solar revolution in one of those years, the event still cannot
happen (or at least only in a very minor way). More strength is given to
the manifestation of the event by primary directions of the annual
revolution and by a concordant lunar revolution. But the final impetus is
from a concordant transit. By analogy then, the general nature of the event
is one that could result from a gun of a certain type and caliber, the
possibility of the occurrence of the event is the loading of a particular
type of shell into the gun, and the actual manifestation of the event is
accomplished by pulling the trigger.
Thus, we can see why a certain type of direction or revolution or
transit may occur many times in a particular chart without producing any
noticeable effect. For an effect to occur, there
must be a complete combination of concordant factors. To return to the
analogy of the gun, if we wanted to kill a large animal, we must have a
large caliber gun, and it must be loaded with a heavy caliber shell, and we
must aim the gun precisely, and pull the trigger. If any one of these
actions is not taken, then we will not bring down the elephant. Obviously,
pulling the trigger on an unloaded gun will accomplish nothing. And this is
why a particular transit may occur numerous times without any noticeable
result, but now and then it does produce a result. And looked at from the other direction,
in order for a certain event to occur in the life of a Native, that event
must first be signified in his nativity. Again by analogy, we cannot bring
down an elephant by firing a B-B gun at it, nor by
pulling the trigger on a gun of whatever caliber loaded with blanks. The
former case corresponds to a weak nativity and the latter to a nativity
with no operative direction and a concordant revolution.
But this is enough to give the Reader the basic idea of Morin's
doctrine. To understand it fully, he must read the text attentively and
think about what he has read. Morin illustrates the procedure with actual
example charts set for the time of significant events in the lives of
several persons. These deserve close scrutiny.
I should mention that Book 24, Section II, Chapters 12-14 were
translated previously and published in the Addenda to my translation of
Book 22. But I have revised the earlier translation for the present work.
The translation itself is fairly literal, but it is less elegant
than Morin's Latin, which has a very extensive vocabulary that I have not
tried to emulate by using uncommon English words. I do waver between referring
to a planet as "it" and as "he" or "she." I
have done this to make the referents as specific in English as they are in
the Latin. And I have preserved some of Morin's astrological terms that are
now obsolescent, such as "accident," "figure,"
"nativity," "virtue," "revolution," "syzygy," "constitution," etc. Those who
have read my translations of Books 22 and 23 will be familiar with these. I
do not use the term "horoscope" because Morin uses the Latin word
horoscopus only in its original
sense of "ascendant," which I translate uniformly as
"ASC." Instead, I translate nativitas
as "nativity," and another term that he uses, genesis,
sometimes as "chart" and sometimes as "nativity." I do
not believe that he intended to make a distinction between nativitas and genesis, but he
merely used them as synonyms to avoid the constant repetition of the same
word. It would have been appropriate to have translated another frequent
synonym figura as
"chart," but since this is after all a 17th century work, I
thought it better to render it simply as "figure." The word locus
usually means "place," which can be a house or the cusp of a
house, a planet, the aspect of a planet, or the Part of Fortune. In this
book, since he is frequently referring to transits, revolutions, and
directions that share some similarity and thus coordinate to
indicate the same event, he often uses the Latin word congruus
'agreeable' to indicate that similarity. In my translation of Book 23, I
sometimes translated it as 'conformable' and sometimes as 'concordant'; here,
I have usually translated it as 'concordant'. And of course I have kept the
frequently used word Caelum as a technical term rather than
translate it as "sky," and I have also retained Primum Mobile
in its Latin form.
I might also mention that in my translation of Book 22 I translated
the word morbus as
"sickness," but in my translation of Book 23 and also here I have
translated it as "illness." In American English
"sickness" and "illness" are more or less
interchangeable, although "illness" is perhaps more formal and
consequently less often used. But in British
English "sickness" more often refers to indigestion, while
"illness" is the generic term.
Furthermore, Morin's printed text often uses the astrological
symbols for the planets, signs, and the Part of Fortune, and sometimes uses
them for the aspects. I have not done this; instead, I have spelled out
their names.
Finally, the Reader who takes up this book without having read the
translations of books 21, 22, and 23, will no doubt find it hard reading.
He may then wonder if the translation was properly done. I can assure him
that the Latin text is more difficult to read than the translation and that
without resorting to unlicensed paraphrase it would be difficult to render
it into easy English. Morin had a thorough command of Latin and had learned
to write what are called "periodic sentences." These are
sentences that go on and on with a dozen or more clauses. (Those who have
struggled to decipher Cicero's
speeches to the Senate in Third Year Latin will know what I mean.) I have
occasionally broken those monsters into two or more parts, but usually I
have kept them together with a liberal use of commas, semi-colons and
dashes. I have also added words in brackets here and there and even added some
explanatory footnotes to make the translation more understandable. Still,
it is not easy to read, and the Reader who wants to understand what Morin
was trying to impart to him will from time to time find some sentences that
he will have to re-read and think about. I believe that if he does that he
will understand them, and he will be glad that he took the trouble to do
so.
As practical examples, Morin
inserts several charts in this book that are set for the time at which an
important accident occurred in the life of a native. In the associated
discussion, reference is made to the natal horoscope and to solar or lunar
revolutions (returns), but those charts are not given, since Morin had
included them in earlier books of the Astrologia Gallica.
Most of them are shown in my translation of Book 23, so I did not think it
necessary to repeat them here.
The charts in this translation are facsimiles of the charts in the Astrologia
Gallica and are therefore in the old square form. The Reader should
note that in the center of the charts the day of the month and the time in
hours are given, both reckoned from the preceding noon. I have given the
date and time reckoned from the previous midnight below each chart. The
times are all stated in Local Apparent Time. If the Reader wishes to
recalculate the charts with a modern computer, he must first convert the
time in LAT to the equivalent time in Local Mean Time. This can easily be
done by reference to the Equation of Time table in Appendix 1.
Finally, I would like to emphasize what
I said at the beginning of this Preface: Morin's complete method of
prediction is set forth in Books 21-24 of the Astrologia Gallica.
The Reader who tries to learn it by reading only one or two of those books
will not acquire the whole method but only pieces of it. The method itself
is straightforward in theory but complicated in details. Admittedly,
reading four books to learn how to predict one event seems to be both
daunting and excessive. But the diligent Reader's patience will be rewarded.
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