Planetary Sub-Lord of the Hour

Over the years I’ve experimented with the Lord of the Hour of Birth and found it useful in chart analysis. Planetary hours are calculated by dividing the total amount of daylight, or nighttime, by 12 to arrive at the duration of each day hour and each night hour. As such, they rarely measure exactly 60 minutes, as do the hours on a clock. Each hour is assigned to a planet in Chaldean order, beginning with the planet that rules the day associated with sunrise. There are only seven planetary rulers of the hours because there are only seven classical visible planets.

At some point it occurred to me to subdivide each hour into seven sections and to assign a planetary sub-lord to each of the seven segments, starting with the actual Lord of the Hour as sub-lord of the first segment. Experimenting with sub-lords of the planetary hour of birth revealed interesting nuances in natal interpretation.

Recently I was speaking with a colleague about distinguishing between the charts of twins, and afterwards I realized that the planetary sub-lord might be useful in this regard. The case we were discussing was that of the Percy twins who were born 2 minutes apart. The first twin born was eventually murdered and the second twin (born 2 minutes later) escaped death. Could the sub-lord of the hour of birth distinguish between these two charts?

Both girls were born in Oakland, CA, on Sunday, 10 December 1944; the older twin at 5:25 PM and the younger twin at 5:27 PM. Unfortunately, we don’t have birth times exact to the second. Here are the planetary hours calculated by the program PlanetDance.

Both twins were born during a Saturn hour, which ran from 5:02:25 PM until 5:50:29 PM and had a duration of 48:04 minutes. Dividing this duration by 7, we find that each of the seven segments of this Saturn hour lasts 06:52 minutes. Thus, the sub-lords of this Saturn hour run as follows:

Saturn: 17:02:25 (PlanetDance)Jupiter: 17:09:17Mars: 17:16:09Sun: 17:23:01Venus: 17:29:53Mercury: 17:36:45Moon: 17:43:37End of hour: 17:50:29

Apparently PlanetDance measures sunrise as the moment the upper disk of the Sun crossed the horizon, and sunset as the moment the upper disk of the Sun descends below the horizon.

Checking Solar Fire, I found that this popular program uses the center of the Sun rather than the upper disk of the Sun to measure sunrise and sunset. According to Solar Fire, the Saturn hour begins at 16:58 and ends at 17:45. The difference between the PlanetDance values and those of SolarFire is about 04:36 minutes on the clock. A similar list of hourly sub-lords generated using the center of the Sun crossing the horizon to indicate sunrise and sunset looks like this:

Saturn: 16:57:49 (using the center of the Sun)Jupiter: 17:04:41Mars: 17:11:33Sun: 17:18:25Venus: 17:25:17Mercury: 17:32:09Moon: 17:39:02End of hour: 17:45:53

With this second method of calculating planetary hours, we see that the older twin, born at 17:25 has Venus as the sub-lord of the Saturn planetary hour of birth, whereas the younger twin, born at 17:27 has the Sun as sub-lord of her Saturn planetary hour of birth. Because they were born only 2 minutes apart, their birth charts are almost identical. Here is the chart of the older twin, who was murdered.

Born at 17:25, this twin has Saturn as the planetary hour lord and the Sun as the sub-lord of the hour. Her sister, born 2 minutes later also has Saturn as the hour lord but the Sun as the sub-lord of the hour.

We need to examine the Sun and Venus in this nativity. Of the two planets, Venus appears less difficult. She is the “lesser benefic” and forms a trine to “greater benefic” Jupiter. There is a square to Venus from the Moon, but Venus receives the Moon in her domicile Libra.

The Sun, on the other hand, is conjunct Mars and opposed to Uranus, as well as in square to Jupiter. Hence, the Sun appears to be a significantly more difficult planet for the native than Venus is.

In the solar return for 1966, the year of the murder, the Sun lies in a tight square to Pluto at 18 Virgo 26′ and Uranus at 19 Virgo 32′. Venus is not similarly afflicted.

In this experiment, measuring the planetary hours based on the center of the Sun crossing the horizon appears to be more effective. The use of sub-lords also appears useful in distinguishing the charts of twins in this case study.