Renaissance Natal Astrology Course

I put on a huge burst of speed and I have now finished all of the lessons in my new Renaissance Natal Astrology Course! We are ready to start taking pre-orders with shipment starting on May 16, 2011!

I was really pleased as I got into working on the Natal Course because I realized that the Renaissance method, which you could almost describe as "quick and dirty" really works well. The Renaissance Natal Astrology Course is based heavily on William Lilly and John Gadbury and could just as easily be described as a horary method of natal astrology, where our focus is on houses and house rulers, rather than the more individualistic, idiosyncratic medieval methods of Bonatti, based on the older Arabic methods. They work too, but take a lot more work to master. The Renaissance method is much, much easier to learn.

That's not to say that we don't use some more complex methodologies. For example, let's look at lesson 10; Manner of Death. This uses what initially seems like a complex technique using the Sun, the Moon, violent signs (?) and violent fixed stars. However, if you sit down and work through it, it's very logical and straightforward and what interesting results you get from it!

One of the things that was important to me in the Renaissance Natal Astrology Course was to strictly avoid "celebrity" charts. We will not be looking at Hitler's chart! Why? Because if you know the native (person whose chart you are reading) and their life you can simply fit the chart to what you know. This is not prediction! In the Renaissance Natal Astrology Course we use charts from real people, with the locations and their identities concealed, but most importantly, you don't know the outcome or results of these charts. You really learn how to predict! We take off the "training wheels" so to speak, go out on a limb and learn how to deal with charts whose results are unknown. If you want to be a true astrologer and particularly if you want to read for clients, this is KEY!

Let's look at the Course lessons

Lesson 1: History of Astrology & the Traditional World View

Lesson 2: Planets, Signs & Essential Dignities

Lesson 3: Traditional Charts & Houses

Lesson 4: Aspects & Accidental Dignities

Lesson 5: Natal Introduction & Temperament, Wit & Manners

Lesson 6: Income & Career

Lesson 7: Health & Illness

Lesson 8: Relationships & Children

Lesson 9: Spirituality

Lesson 10: Manner of Death

Lesson 11: Timing in the Natal Chart

Lesson 12: Natal Talisman Prescriptions

The Masterpiece: Final Readings

Just like my other full courses, we learn the basics of traditional astrology. You don't need to know anything to start my courses and in fact you are almost ahead of the game if you haven't studied modern astrology, since you don't need to unlearn anything. We go step by step, clearly and straightforwardly through the material. I fully explain everything in the lessons and since you are studying with me personally, if you have any questions about the current lesson you can ask me, either by phone or e-mail. There are no grades, you just need to master the material in each lesson before you go on. If you need more material to work with, I create it for you. You can take as much time as you want, there are no deadlines for completion!

Is this a "complete" traditional natal course? I don't think anyone can honestly say that their course is truly complete, the area is just too big to cover everything. What I have done is to focus on those areas which I feel I have mastered, where I can give a very precise, accurate answer. The Renaissance Natal Astrology Course teaches how to give my Full Natal Reading and clients have been very happy with these readings recently. "Astoundingly accurate" or even "Disturbingly accurate" is what they've been saying. Certainly the hot areas that clients want to hear about are covered, money, career, love, health & illness, children, spirituality, even manner of death and timing using firdaria and solar revolutions.


One of things I am really glad I dealt with in the course, however, is working with our 17th century texts. I explain how to read these texts and how to "translate" them, really not a big deal! This opens up 1000s and 1000s of pages of material and allows you to work with any area of traditional natal astrology that exists by making you savvy enough to use original sources. I should mention that included with the course are two free paperback traditional astrology sources Ferrier's Judgment of Nativities and Poole's Country Astrology

On the Course CD are the traditional texts in pdf:

* Johannes Angelus' Astrological Optics
* Al-Biruni's Book of Instruction in the Elements of the Art of Astrology
* Guido Bonatti's 146 Aphorisms from his Liber Astronomiae
* William Lilly's complete Christian Astrology in facsimile and
selections from Christian Astrology Book III in modern font
* John Gadbury's Doctrine of Nativities
* Henry Coley's Key to Astrology-Natal Portions
* John Patridge's Mikropanastron-Natal Portions
* John Gadbury's Collection of Nativities
* John Gadbury's Nativity of King Charles

This allows you to really become a "complete" natal astrology since you then have access to the whole range of traditional materials. This includes all of Ben Dykes' great translations of Arabic astrologers. Though if you read these you will find that the real problem with traditional sources is not the s's that look like f's or the the older style of modern English, but the concepts! This is what taking a course is really excellent for, mastering step by step the complex concepts and techniques.

It's not really a surprise, I guess, that my interest and expertise in astrological magic shows up in the Renaissance Natal Astrology Course! There are lots of cool magical areas you can delve into in natal astrology. For example the name of your guardian angel/spirit can be determined from your birth chart. Agrippa mentions this in book III of TBOP, but is very confusing. I teach how to do this process manually and the course also includes the great Daimon Name Calculator standalone software by quaero lux. Zip! What would take an hour or more is done in a second and all the English, Kabbalistic, Hebrew, evil daimon etc, etc, names listed by Agrippa are right there! I also include traditional images for each of the 360 degrees, very cool, 300 years older than the Sabian Symbols.

What's really exciting, however, is a whole lesson on prescribing astrological remedies based on the natal chart! Before now astrologers could just predict, now with astrological magic, we can actually DO SOMETHING with the birth chart. I explain how to analyze a chart for all types of talismans, in particular planetary talismans. How to figure out which planets are good, fair or to be avoided for a natal chart. But we go further in depth in analyzing problem chart areas and what to do about them, planetary charity for afflicted planets and planetary meditation. very, very useful for yourself and very helpful for reading charts for clients and unique to the Renaissance Natal Astrology Course.

So sounding pretty good! But I want to encourage you to pre-order the Renaissance Natal Astrology Course so there are some special bonuses for pre-ordering, which you can do until May 15, 2011.


First, pre-orders will include the following bonus pdf traditional natal astrology texts:

Christopher Heydon, the Wisdom of Solomon, 234 pages
Kirby, the Marrow of Astrology, 131 pages
Salmon, Soul of Astrology, 800 pages
Searle, Introduction to Astrology, 92 pages
Worsdale, Collection of Nativities, 59 pages
Worsdale, Natal Astrology, 261 pages
Young Student's Guide to Astrology, 270 pages

That's almost 2000 pages of material on traditional natal astrology! Some of these sources I have never even heard of before and all of them are available only from Renaissance Astrology and as part of the Renaissance Natal Astrology Course.

Plus there's more! I have created a special Renaissance Astrology Traditional Natal Astrology page for Solar Fire. This needs a copy of Solar Fire to run, but is very cool! This page has everything you need to judge a natal chart, right on one page. A traditional square chart, aspect grid, essential dignities set up just the way we use them in the Course, fixed stars, planetary speeds, a bunch of useful natal Arabic Parts, and very, very useful, lunar phases with the all important pre-natal syzygy (previous Full or New Moon) for the guardian angel name, PLUS, the complex almuten figuris calculation of Ibn Ezra built right in! Wow! Again, for now, this is only available if you pre-order the Renaissance Natal Astrology Course!

Ok, how much is the Natal Astrology Course? I went back and forth about this, but these prices will be the same whether you pre-order or not. I thought the most fair thing to do was to give a discount to all my students all the time and give the additional pre-order bonuses, too!

If you have never taken a Renaissance Astrology full course, then the Renaissance Natal Astrology Course is $299.95 plus shipping and you can order here

If you have taken either the Horary, Electional or Astrological Magic Courses, then the Renaissance Natal Astrology Course is $50 off!!! Just e-mail me at chriswarnock@renaissanceastrology.com for the payment link.

Pre-orders and bonuses end and shipping begins May 15, 2011. If you want to lock in the bonuses you can start with a $50 layaway payment, so long as you pay the first installment before May 15, 2011. Just e-mail me at chriswarnock@renaissanceastrology.com for the layaway payment link.

No One Practices "Astrology"!

It's one of those very useful tests. If someone says they are an astrologer and you ask, "What kind?" and they say "you know, astrology" then they are a modern astrologer. Those practicing Hellenistic or traditional Western astrology or Vedic astrology know enough to know that there is no astrology in general, just a variety of schools and systems.

Western or European astrology originated in Babylonia and Chaldea around 2,000 B.C. The planets were equated to gods and celestial events observed for omens. Most cultures observe heavenly omens, but Babylonian religion was particularly astral based and by 1,500 B.C. had collected systematic observations of Venus and other planets. The key invention was Zodiac around 600-400 B.C. which allowed for precise description of location of planets and complex system of delineation. This horoscopic astrology diffused to Greece and throughout the Hellenistic world and became part of the science and philosophy of the Roman Empire. The astrology of classical Greece and Roman from 400 BC to around 500 AD is Hellenistic astrology.

With the fall of the Roman Empire and the onset of the Dark Ages in the 6th and 7th centuries, astrology was preserved in Byzantium and the advanced Islamic civilization of the Middle East. This astrology, enriched by the addition of observations and techniques, some from the Vedic astrology of India, passed to medieval Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries. There it flourished until the Enlightenment and went of out fashion due to the new materialism and mechanistic philosophies introduced in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The phase of this astrology in Europe from 1200 to 1700 is referred to as traditional astrology while the first period, 1200 to 1500, is known as medieval astrology and the terminal period, 1500 to 1700, is known as Renaissance astrology. Arabic astrology, practiced from around 800 to 1000 AD is the source of Western traditional astrology.

It would be a shame to fall into the fallacy of modern astrologers that every style of astrology other than modern is somehow classifiable together as "other". Hellenistic and traditional astrology have many significant differences, For example, aspects, where Hellenistic astrology has sign to sign aspects, traditional astrology uses aspects by degree and applying and separating aspects.

For the modern other systems of astrology exist as a great boneheap of history, a huge jumpled dump of assorted techniques and methods that can be sorted through and bits and bobbles pulled out and individualistically crammed together in the mashup that is modern astrological technique. This compulsion to combine disparate methods and techniques from different schools & systems is the essence of modern astrology.

Hellenistic and traditional Western astrology, like the Vedic astrology of India are systems unto themselves. The pieces don't work separately, there is no "astrology" in general, there are a variety of schools and systems that are internally consistent. If one doesn't know what school they belong to, if one practices "astrology" then one is a modern astrologer! And certainly one is free to call themselves whatever they wish, Hellenistic, traditional, etc., though if one mixes and matches systems, this is a bit like me calling myself Catholic, because I do an Ave Maria daily, but never go to Mass, never take communion and never was confirmed.

Fossilized Techniques

I had a recent question about an oddity of traditional essential dignities, the exaltation of the Moon's Nodes!

The fact that the Dragon's Head, Caput draconis, or the North Node of the Moon is exalted in Gemini and the Dragon's Tail, Cauda draconis, the South Node of the Moon is exalted in Sagittarius, and in particular at the 3rd degree of these signs, does indeed appear in traditional sources. Al-Qabisi, Introduction to the Science of Astrology, 1.15, in Dykes, Introductions to Traditional Astrology (Cazimi 2010) page 45.

Ben footnotes this and notes that exaltation of the nodes derives from Persian or Indian lore, because this does not appear in Hellenistic astrology.

An excellent example of fossilized technique in traditional astrology! What do I mean by fossilized technique? Often our sources will mention some technique or method in passing, but then not explain how to use it or not use it at all. The exaltations of the Nodes are indeed mentioned, but I've never seen them used in a delineation.

This is a bit odd to modern thinking. There is this sense that everything should be open and obvious and logical in a linear fashion. If I don't understand something clearly the fault lies in the material, throw it out! That there are these pockets of technique that we know about but whose origin or use are mysterious is simply wrong.

However, the traditional astrology mindset is more appreciative of the past and willing to take a wait and see attitude. Through translations like Ben Dykes the really old Arabic techniques are being unearthed and revived. Even if the technique is not revived however, there is no harm, for the traditionalist, in recounting what the sources say even if we ourselves don't understand it.

Of course the automatic modern response will be to speculate about the origin and use and start spinning theories to understand the exaltation of the Nodes. For me, I just file it away for possible future study when more has been revealed to me!