A Review of the Predictive Astrology Textbook by Borealis

Last week I came across some comments by Penelope Sitter and Sharon Knight about a recently released book by Alexey Borealis. Intrigued, I ordered the book which arrived a few days ago. Alexey is a scientist with a strong background in mathematics and physics. He is also an astrologer who has studied medieval astrology with Robert Zoller and horary with John Frawley. What piqued my interest was Sitter’s mentioning that Borealis had made a careful study of Morinus, explained Morin’s methods in his text, and focused on Morin’s approach to primary directions, including the mathematics and spherical trigonometry involved in their application.

I first met Robert Zoller many decades ago at an astrology conference in New York City. At the time he was translating Bonatti from Latin into English in the basement of the NY Public Library and presenting his findings to the astrological community. During our conversation Zoller recommended studying Morin’s Astrologia Gallica because of its rigorous and logical approach to traditional astrology. His own mentor, Zoltan Mason, had made the same recommendation to him. Thus began my fascination with the work of Morinus. Fortunately, James Holden had been translating the work of Morinus into English — a daunting task given the immense volume of his writings and the need to translate technical Latin into English. When Robert Corre, a student of Zoltan Mason, offered a course on Morinus, I signed up right away. Corre eventually put me in touch with Holden with the proposal to translate Morin’s Book 18 into English. Fortunately there was a Spanish translation of Book 18 by Pepa Sanchis, which I read and used to guide me through the Latin text. James Holden then read each section of Book 18 as I translated it, to make sure it was faithful to Morin’s Latin.

Unfortunately, there were no really good books in English that explained Morin’s vast understanding and critiques of traditional astrology. Reading Morinus is not an easy task, at least to me, and I felt that a good explanatory text has been needed for a long time. For this reason I was delighted to read that Alexey Borealis had finally published such a book. Having read the bulk of it now, I think that Alexey has done a fine job. He comes across as an excellent teacher who, in Chapter 3 on Natal Astrology, guides the student step by step through the process of analyzing a chart as Morinus would. (Chapter 1 is introductory, Chapter 2 deals with horary, and in the final sections of the book he discusses the problem of “cherry picking” charts to support a technique, and also the mathematics and spherical geometry that underly Morin’s methods.)

This book will be of great value to students of Morinus. Alexey Borealis discusses his own birth chart in great detail to show how Morin’s methods work in delineating his natal chart and forecasting accurately based on Regiomontanus houses and primary directions (circle of position method), solar and lunar returns, and transits. He also uses and explains Morin’s modification of the 15th century method of Bianchini to calculate aspects according to an “aspect circle” based on the latitude of the planet with reference to the ecliptic. Morin argued that such an aspect circle should be based on the maximum latitude of the planet in the period under consideration rather than the just planet’s current latitude in the chart, as Bianchini proposed.

From the Blog of Alexey Borealis at Morinus-Astrology.com

Other than Morin, I don’t know of any astrologer who used Morin’s version of Bianchini’s “circle of aspects.” Morin, of course, felt that his circle of aspects was far more accurate than Bianchini’s and claimed that he found it to be so in practice. Unfortunately, as James Holden points out in his translation of Morin’s Book 16 on Aspects, even the best tables of planetary positions in Morin’s time contained errors in the Moon’s longitude that were equal to, and commonly greater than, the correction of the longitude of lunar aspects derived from Morin’s theory, making it scientifically impossible for Morin to have verified his theory experientially furing his era. In addition, Morin’s theory necessitated the use of the parallax position of the Moon but, in practice, Morin ignored his own postulate about using lunar parallax in calculating lunar aspects. As far as I can tell, Borealis also ignores the parallax position of the Moon, which can make a substantial difference in the timing of primary directions of the Moon in Morin’s method. Interestingly, Martin Gansten does use the parallax lunar position routinely with Placidean primary directions and finds the timing to be more accurate, as Morin had argued.

If you are interested in the method of Morinus, I recommend this book. Unfortunately, it’s rather expensive and may not be affordable for many students. Nonetheless, it’s quite well done and worth reading if you are an avid fan of Morinus. I did an internet search and found the following video by Borealis in which he makes a prediction on a “blind chart” for one of his students, using Morin’s methods as explained in this book; he is surprisingly accurate in his delineation and forecasting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwloctunTzE