Harmonic Analysis of Midpoints for Windows (HAM-W)

(Version 2.0)

User Manual

Rajeev Upadhye, July 1999

© Copyright 1999 Rajeev Upadhye

This document is property of Rajeev Upadhye. However, permission is granted to freely circulate and use this document along with the software product without modifications to it in any form.

Preface

"The reasonable man tries to adapt himself to the world. The unreasonable man tries to adapt the surrounding world to himself. Therefore, all the progress in this world depends on the unreasonable man..."

- George Bernard Shaw

I am extremely happy to release HAM-W 2.0 and its long awaited User Manual. The hits to the HAM-W web page hosted by C. Michael Smith, SOS Counsulting http://users.netonecom.net/~sos (home page), encouraged me take up this task and complete it on the war-footing level. However, I enjoyed a feeling of attaining satori while working on it in the midst of heavy planetary activity such as transit Uranus conjunct my natal Saturn!

This version of HAM-W and its user documenation are completely free. You can use it freely for educational, research or commercial purpose purpose. However, if you use this tool for commercial purpose and find it useful, I would be grateful if you could send small donation to promote this effort further. Also, I would appreciate if any one who is using this tool sends me an email stating his/her comments and expectations in future versions. I am confident that with this software tool Astrolog fans will be able to derive maximum benefit from their favorite software.

I am planning several advanced features to this product in future so that astrological analysis could be done intelligently as well as with minimum user interaction.

I wish to thank C. Michael Smith/SOS Consulting for his generous support in hosting a web-page for HAM-W.

I am grateful to Sushmita Guha, my friend, for performing the sacred task of going through the entire document and making it readable! My special thanks to Mary Durkin Spencer and Tyrin Price, fellow astrologers on the ‘Festival’ discussion list, who responded to my request and took out some time from their busy schedule and contributed very valuable and constructive suggestions for improving the utility of this manual.

Rajeev Upadhye

July 11, 1999

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

1.1 Background knowledge expected

1.2 The Scope of HAM-W

2. HAM-W: A Quick Start...

2.1 Installing HAM-W

2.2 Changes required in your autoexec.bat

3. Getting Acquainted With The Interface

4. The Menus of HAM-W

4.1 The Main menu

4.2 The Toolbar Menu

5. The Panels On a Dial

5.1 Panel 1

5.2 Panel 2

5.3 Panel 3

5.4 Panel 4

6. The Files In HAM-W

6.1 Changes required in Astrolog.dat

6.2 Creating midpoint data files

6.3 Creating daily positions data files

6.4 Creating New Moon/Full Moon data files

6.5 Creating aspect data files

6.6 Creating midpoint data and chart data for a given date

6.7 Instructions for users of the Windows version of Astrolog

7. Midpoint Analysis Using HAM-W: Working With A Dial

7.1 Open a dial

7.2 Load midpoint data file

7.3 Load chart data file

7.4 Set harmonic

7.5 Scroll dial/ zodiac

7.6 Search the dates when a midpoint cluster is active

7.7 Using the ephemeris data to predict the events

7.8 Finding transits to natal midpoints

7.9 Finding hits by transiting midpoints to natal planets

7.10 Using the keyword/theme generator

Introduction

I am a great fan of Astrolog, designed and developed by Walter Pullen, and I am sure there are many more like me in the astrology community. I have been studying astrology since 1984. I am convinced that the quality of any study is dependent on study material available. I could study astrology in depth and with seriousness because of this wonderful software tool, made freely available to us by Walter Pullen.

During my encounter with Astrolog, I was also greatly impressed when I came across the Western astrological thought, the idea that astrology is more about patterns of planetary cycles (than planets having effects on us) and some predictive techniques that were evolved in the West for their "inner consistency". These were the techniques of Cosmobiology, the dials, harmonics and aspects. I was introduced to these techniques by many gurus (Mary Downing, Michael Munkasey of NCGR) whom I never met personally but I could communicate with them through email.

However, I faced a major hurdle while studying Cosmobiology. Astrolog is capable of providing us all the necessary calculations with great flexibility, but this software doesn’t help much in analysis if one wants to work with dials, midpoint trees, etc. Walter may have his own valid reasons for not including these features in the Astrolog but it made me restless as my enthusiasm to learn more about these techniques was getting dampened. Hence, the only alternative before me was to develop my own tool that will help me to utilize the power of Astrolog to maximum.

With this motivation I developed Harmonic Analysis of Midpoints (HAM) for DOS in January 1997. This was received well by the astrologer community on the Internet and I received many suggestions for modifying it further. Then I decided to shift to the Windows based environment where I could do justice to the suggestions of the well-wishers. Two versions of Harmonic Analysis of Midpoints for Windows (HAM-W) have been released before this version. The previous versions had some bugs and some essential features were absent. I have tried to take care of all these points in the present version of HAM-W.

This document covers not only the operational instructions, but also covers variety of tricks for doing the dial work based on the data generated by Astrolog.

Background knowledge expected

It is expected that you are familiar with Astrolog ver. 5.20 or above, changing of parameters that have effect on the Astrolog’s performance. You are also expected to have knowledge about dials, harmonics, aspects, midpoints and planetary pictures (midpoint trees). This document does not intend to explain these concepts.

The Scope of HAM-W

It is very important to understand the scope this tool so that there are no over-expectations from the user’s side. Hence please note the following:

• HAM-W works only with the output of Astrolog 5.20 and above
• Only planets allowed are Sun, Moon up to North Node, Asc, MC
• Uranians are not included in this version
• It is recommended that you are reasonably familiar with the parameters in Astrolog.dat file. If you are not, please go through the Astrolog documentation.
• Orb used for internal calculations is 1 degree.
• This version of HAM-W is expected to work with the standard 78 midpoints covered in COSI by Ebertin.

HAM-W: A Quick Start...

Installing HAM-W

Please go through the following steps for installing HAM-W on your computer:

First down load HAMW20.ZIP from the HAM-W web site; unzip it using Winzip or pkunzip (ver. 2.04 or above), in a directory named \hamw created on a suitable drive on your hard disk. This zip file contains HAMW.EXE, sample midpoint data files and chart files, MC.BAT, a utility (bat file) to generate chart data and midpoint data for the transiting planets on a given date.

Make sure that you modify autoexec.bat with the changes suggested elsewhere in this document.

Also make sure that you have made changes to the astrolog.dat as suggested elsewhere in this document. You may create a copy of your astrolog.dat before making suggested changes.

Re-boot your computer after the installation.

Changes required in your autoexec.bat

Your autoexec.bat also needs some minor modifications. It is essential that you include the following two lines in the autoexec.bat on your computer:

astrolog n os c:\hamw\n.chf R asc mid

astrolog n ma os c:\hamw\transit.mxf R asc mid

Go through the following steps for launching HAM-W:

• Create midpoint data file in \hamw directory
•  
• Start HAM-W by clicking on hamw.exe or its icon
•  
• Open the midpoint data file in HAM-W

Getting Acquainted With The Interface

If you have successfully completed the installation procedure described earlier, then click on the HAM-W icon to launch it. This will display the screen as displayed in Figure 1. The graphical user interface of HAM-W is divided in to five parts. They are:

• Toolbar menu - This area has several buttons which may be used to open a file, to save the contents of Panel 2 to a file, to cut, to copy and to paste the contents of Panel 2 to clipboard, to generate keyword, to know the name of the current transit file, to clean the entire scratch pad, and to print the contents of the Panel 2.

• Panel 2 - This area has various controls to work with a dial. You can set the harmonic (harmonic 4 for the 90 degree dial), scroll the zodiac, search planetary pairs on the dial, rotate or reset the dial, move current zodiac position on the dial forward or backward by a degree or a sign.
•  
• Panel 3 - This area shows the points of the zodiac which form the conjunction on a given dial. For example, planets at 0 Aries, 0 Cancer, 0 Libra, 0 Capricorn form conjunction on a 90 degree dial.
• 
• Panel 4 - This area shows the midpoint data file immediately after it is loaded. Subsequently, it shows selected midpoint and planets aspecting it when you have selected a pair from the harmonic groupings, listed in Panel 3. The midpoint, its positions and the planets aspecting it are displayed here.

The Menus of HAM-W

The Main menu

The Main menu of HAM-W has the following options:

• Dial
• File
• Edit
• Hits by
• Ephemeris
• Windows

Each of these menu options is explained below:

Dial

File

Edit

Hits by

Ephemeris

The Toolbar Menu

These buttons on the toolbar are explained below (from right to left):

To open a midpoint data file or a chart data file.

To save planetary picture or other content of Panel 2 (scratch pad).

To cut the contents of Panel 2 (scratch pad) and copy them to clipboard or any other application.

To copy the contents of the Panel 2 (scratch pad) and copy them to clipboard or any other application.

To paste the contents of the clipboard to Panel 2 (scratch pad).

To generate suggestive themes based on keywords for interpretation of midpoints.

To find out the name of the file that is being used as transit file.

To remove the contents of Panel 2 (scratch pad).

To print the contents of Panel 2 (scratch pad).

The Panels On a Dial

Panel 1

Setting the Harmonic - You can set the harmonic value between 1 and 32.

Search a Planetary Pair - You should have a midpoint data file loaded before using this feature. You can select planets (P1,P2) in any order. But as you select the second planet, Panel 3 will show the position of the midpoint generated by P1 & P2 and also any other planetary pairs that are harmonically equivalent to this position. You can also search for the dates when a transiting planet is hitting a particular zodiac position (see Search the dates when a midpoint cluster is active).

Total Points - Total no. of midpoints present at a particular zodiac position (within one degree orb) as listed in Panel 3 are displayed here. Useful for locating the highly clustered areas of the charts.

Scrolling the zodiac - Just move the button on the scroll bar, or click on the arrows at the end of the scrollbar to set the dial position at the desired zodiacal degree in Panel 3. If you want to move forward or backward on the dial by a degree, then click on the +degree or - degree buttons. If you want to move forward or backward on the dial by 30 degree (sign), then click on the + Sign or - Sign.

Reset the dial - The dial position is set to 0 Aries by clicking on the Reset button.

Rotate the zodiac - When you click on the Rotate button the dial position is set to the next harmonically equivalent degree. For example, if you are using a 90 degree dial (Harmonic 4) and your current dial position is 0 Aries, then if you click on the Rotate button, the current dial position changes to 0 Cancer and then to 0 Libra and so on.

Panel 2

This area is multipurpose. The result of all the important operations while working on a dial are logged here. Also the reports you may want to create on the hits by transiting planets are generated here. You may also generate midpoint trees (planetary pictures) here.

When you load a new midpoint data file or a chart data file you get a message with the name of the file. You can do standard editing operations (Edit menu) in this area. You may save the contents of this area as ASCII files or send the text to a printer from this area.

Panel 3

This area displays a list of harmonically equivalent points on the zodiac. If midpoint data is loaded, the midpoints formed at these points and the name of the transiting planet hitting these points are shown in Figure 4.

If you find a midpoint pair in this area then click on it to find out the list of natal planets aspecting this midpoint position. This is displayed on Panel 4.

Panel 4

This area serves two purposes:

a. Midpoint data is displayed here immediately after loading a midpoint data file.

b. When you want to construct a midpoint tree, this area is used to display a midpoint and the list of planets in the natal chart aspecting this midpoint, as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 4

1.  
2.  
3. The Files In HAM-W

There are five types of files that are generated using Astrolog which are used in HAM-W for dial and midpoint related work. They are:

• Midpoint data files having .mxf as their extension
• Chart files having .chf as their extensions
• Aspect files having .txt as their extension but it is recommended that their names are as given in the aspYear.txt. For example, the file containing all the aspects in the year 1999 will have the names asp1999.txt.
• Ephemeris files having .txt as their extension. It is recommended that their names are given as Year.txt. For example, ephemeris for the year 1999 can be stored in the file having name 1999.txt.
• New Moon/Full Moon data having .txt as their extensions. It is recommended that their names are given as nfmYear.txt. For example, file containing all the data of New Moons and Full Moons in the year 1999 will have the name nfm1999.txt.

It is strongly recommended that you make the changes to astrolog.dat before generating any one of these files.

Changes required in Astrolog.dat

Insert the following lines at the end of astrolog.dat file. You can mask (comment) this part when you don’t want to use my settings.

; DEFAULT RESTRICTIONS:

YR 1 10 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ; Planets

YR 11 20 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 ; Minor planets

YR 21 32 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 ; House cusps

YR 33 40 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ; Uranians

These settings will ensure that you generate a midpoint data file covering standard 78 midpoints covered in COSI by Ebertin.

Creating midpoint data files

Suppose your chart data is in the file ‘YourData’ then use the following command at the DOS prompt ( window ) to generate the midpoint data file. The midpoint data file should be given extension mxf (very important). It is recommended that these files are stored in the directory where HAM-W is installed.

The Astrolog command to generate midpoint data:

astrolog i YourData ma os YourData.mxf

Note: Here YourData.mxf is the midpoint data file ( in text format ) which can be invoked in HAM-W. You can use -RA switch to choose the desired aspects to appear in the midpoint data (mxf) file.

Creating daily positions data files

Use the following command to generate Daily positions data:

astrolog qy year Ey os year.txt

where the year is 1998, 1999 etc.

If you use the recommended file naming convention then it is easy to identify the ephemeris data file, if you have several of them. Thus for the year 1999 the data should be in the file 1999.txt.

Please note that these files are for handy reference only. You can not perform any operation at this point except looking for the positions of planets. Look at the position and scroll the zodiac if any midpoint cluster is affected.

Creating New Moon/Full Moon data files

Astrologers believe that New Moon/Full Moons are the triggers to events. Hence you may be interested in finding out if any midpoint cluster is activated on a particular New Moon/Full Moon day. Therefore, it is handy to keep this information while doing the dial or midpoint analysis.

Go through the steps listed carefully:

1. Copy the following text in a file and name it as nfmoon.dat.

@0308 ; Astrolog (5.30) default settings file astrolog.dat

-RA 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 YR0 1 1 R0 sun moon

; astrolog.dat

2. Then use the following command to generate New Moon/Full Moon data:

astrolog qy Year i nfmoon.dat dy os nfmYear.txt

where Year - same as above

nfmYear - name of the file that contains data about that year, ex., NF Moon data for 1999 could be stored in nfm99.txt

Please note that these files are for handy reference only. You can not perform any operation at this point except looking for the dates. Note the positions of Sun and Moon on the desired date using ephemeris and scroll the zodiac to see if any midpoint cluster is activated.

Creating aspect data files

Same as above but don’t include the file nfmoon.dat, instead, use the following command:

astrolog qy Year dy os aspYear.txt

If you want to restrict the aspects in a year to only two planets use -R0 switch, i.e.,

astrolog qy Year dy R0 planet1 planet2 os aspYear.txt

If you want to find the hard aspects occuring between planet1 and planet2 in a given year then you could do the following :

Copy the following script in a file sqr.dat.

; Astrolog (5.30) default settings file astrolog.dat

-RA 4 5 6 7 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

; astrolog.dat

Then use the following command to get the hard aspects between the desired planets.

astrolog qy Year i sqr.dat dy R0 planet1 planet2 os aspYear.txt

Note : It is recommended that these aspects may be calculated for outer planets as hard aspects between them are likely to give rise to events.

Please note that these files are for handy reference only. You can not perform any operation at this point except looking for the dates. Note the positions of the aspecting planets on the desired date using the ephemeris and scroll the zodiac to see if any midpoint cluster is activated at these positions.

Creating midpoint data and chart data for a given date

This can be easily done with a utility provided with HAM-W installations. This is a file with name mc.bat in the \hamw directory. For example, if you want to create the data for Oct 4, 1999 then type the following at the DOS prompt in the \hamw directory:

mc 10 04 1963 041099

and then press Enter. Here 10 04 1963 is the date entered in the American format and 041099 is name of the output file files, mxf and chf.

You will find that the files with names 041099.mxf and 041099.chf are created in the \hamw directory.

The chf file may be loaded to see if any planet is hitting the natal midpoints on Oct 4, 1999. The mxf file may be used to find out if natal planets are hit by transiting midpoints on Oct 4, 1999.

Instructions for users of the Windows version of Astrolog

Special thanks are due to Tyrin Price, who kindly brought the following points to my notice while reviewing the pre-release version of this document. These are relevant to the users who use Windows version of Astrolog. I am reproducing them from his email verbatim:

"However, from my experience with Astrolog in Windows, you should explain to the users about running the Windows version from a command prompt. If they have ANSI color enabled, their text files will be filled with ANSI escape sequences. Also, output files (with the "os" command switch) will not be generated unless graphics is turned off (they can use the the "_X" command to turn graphics off). Finally, after running the command, they will have a window which appears to be frozen... they should make sure to activate that window then press the "q" key to cause astrolog to end its processes."

"As an example... you provide the following line for generating midpoint data...

astrolog i YourData ma os YourData.mxf

This will not generate a file if graphics is enabled and it will befilled with ANSI escape sequences if ANSI color is enabled.

This command will do what is desired, whether graphics (or ANSI) is enabled or not...

astrolog _X _k i YourData ma os YourData.mxf

Note: The user must still press the "q" key for astrolog to finish processing."

Midpoint Analysis Using HAM-W: Working With A Dial

Open a dial

Click on the HAM-W icon appearing on your desktop if you have not already loaded it. In case you have already loaded HAM-W then select Dial|New Dial from the Main menu or press Ctrl+N. When a dial is opened, a midpoint data file (transit.mxf) for the current moment is immediately loaded by default if you have made necessary changes to your autoexec.bat. The contents of transit.mxf can be seen on Panel 4.

Load midpoint data file

Click on the first button from the left on the Toolbar menu or select File|Open form the Main menu. This will open a standard file selection dialog box. A list of midpoint data files is displayed as a default. Select a file and press OK button on the dialog box.

Load chart data file

Same steps as above except that you have to select ‘Chart files’ in the List of files of type in the dialog box.

Set harmonic

Explained earlier in Figure 3 and Section 5.1.

Scroll dial/ zodiac

Explained earlier in Figure 3 and Section 5.1.

Search the dates when a midpoint cluster is active

Select Ephemeris|Load... from the Main menu. This will open a standard file selection dialog box. Choose ephemeris data file and click on the OK button. When you load an ephemeris data file the Find button on the Panel 1 is enabled. Select a planet from drop-down list (P1) above the Find button (and keep P2 blank) and press Find or select Ephemeris|Search dates from the Main menu. If the selected planet hits the first zodiac point in the list displayed in Panel 3, the dates are displayed on Panel 2. You can rotate the dial if you want to find out if other harmonically equivalent points are hit by the selected planet.

Note: This feature works with all planets except Moon.

Using the ephemeris data to predict the events

The ephemeris data consist mainly of the daily planetary positions, New/Full Moon information, and aspect information. Out of this, daily positions are for reference. The other data is extremely useful in predicting the events. You may want to find out whether a particular New/Full Moon is activating any midpoint cluster, whether any midpoint cluster is triggered by slow moving planets, when they are forming an exact aspect.

To achieve this you need to have all the necessary files displayed under the respective tabs on Ephemeris screen (Figure 6) which can be invoked by selecting Ephemeris|Show ephemeris from the Main menu. You can click on the following buttons to load and display respective files on the Ephemeris screen:

• Daily Positions
• New Moon/Full Moon
• Other Aspects

Find the positions of the planets forming an aspect on a particular day using the Daily Positions data. Set the dial to a position of one of these planets after loading the midpoint data file for the chart you are investigating.

Finding transits to natal midpoints

There are two cases here:

a. You may be interested in the hits by today’s transiting planets to the midpoints in a given natal chart. In that case you may load a midpoint data file for the natal chart you are studying. Then invoke the option Hits by in the Main menu followed by an appropriate option (All Planets, Transit Sun etc.). The chart data for today’s position is loaded automatically.

b. You may be interested in finding hits to midpoints in a natal charts for a given date in this case you have to load the chart data file after loading natal midpoint data. And then invoke the option Hits by in the Main menu followed by an appropriate option (All Planets, Transit Sun etc.).

Finding hits by transiting midpoints to natal planets

Again there are two cases here:

a. You may be interested in finding hits by midpoints formed by today’s transiting planets to the natal planets. For this purpose load ‘transit.mxf’ as midpoint data file and natal chart as the transit file. Then invoke the option Hits by in the Main menu followed by an appropriate option (All Planets, Transit Sun etc.).

b. You may be interested doing the same exercise for a particular date. In this case load the mxf file followed by the chart file. Then invoke the option Hits by in the Main menu followed by an appropriate option (All Planets, Transit Sun etc.).

Using the keyword/theme generator

This feature is useful to interpret or investigate the themes represented by planetary signatures A/B=C. To use this feature you need to have files having following names present in \hamw directory:

• sun.txt
• moon.txt
• mercury.txt
• venus.txt
• mars.txt
• jupiter.txt
• saturn.txt
• uranus.txt
• neptune.txt
• plu.txt
• asc.txt
• mid.txt

These files contain the themes represented by each planet. You may edit these files using Notepad.

To invoke Keyword generator select File|Keywords from the Main menu or click on the sixth button from the left on the Toolbar menu. This will display the Keyword combinations screen as shown in the Figure 7. Select the planets from the drop-down lists. Click on More themes to get list of themes. These themes are generated randomly. So if you don’t get anything relevant or useful, then click on Clear to wipe out the theme list. You may repeat the procedure or come out by clicking on Close.

Appendix

Recommended settings in Astrolog.dat

; Astrolog (5.30) default settings file astrolog.dat

_s ; Zodiac selection ["_s" is tropical, "=s" is siderial]

:s 0 ; Zodiac offset value [Change "0" to desired offset ]

_k ; Ansi color text ["=k" is color, "_k" is normal ]

:d 24 ; Searching divisions [Change "12" to desired divisions ]

_b0 ; Print zodiac seconds ["_b0" to minute, "=b0" to second ]

=b ; Use ephemeris files ["=b" uses them, "_b" doesn’t ]

=C ; Show house cusp objects ["_C" hides them, "=C" shows them ]

:w 4 ; Wheel chart text rows [Change "4" to desired wheel rows ]

:I 80 ; Text screen columns [Change "80" to desired columns ]

_Yd ; European date format ["_Yd" is MDY, "=Yd" is DMY ]

_Yt ; European time format ["_Yt" is AM/PM, "=Yt" is 24 hour ]

=YC ; Smart cusp displays ["=YC" is smart, "_YC" is normal ]

=Y8 ; Clip text to end of line ["=Y8" clips, "_Y8" doesn’t clip ]

;-n ; Uncomment this line to start with the chart for "now".

; DEFAULT RESTRICTIONS:

; DEFAULT TRANSIT RESTRICTIONS:

; DEFAULT ASPECT ORBS:

; DEFAULT MAX PLANET ASPECT ORBS:

; DEFAULT PLANET ASPECT ORB ADDITIONS:

; DEFAULT INFLUENCES:

; astrolog.dat