Persian Nativities IV: On the Revolutions of the Years of Nativities

Great piece of translation by Benjamin Dykes. Really useful.

I wont trash this with a negative review. It was just not for me or what I was looking for.I had high hopes for the chapter on monthly solar returns as I have dabbled with quarterly returns. When I finally got to that chapter it combined a annual profections and the differences in time lords. Technically, sure there are many different techniques that may shows differences. That chapter was a mishmash of both. Personally, I didnt care for what Abu did with this. I wanted to see what can be extracted to use in the present. That would have entailed the author stepping in with his writing based on practical usage.Yet, when I started reading the translation portion, I became resigned to book.I understand the book was designed more as a translation of AbuM. I was hoping to see in practical use, not translated theory.This is not to knock BD's work. I can imagine the time and dedication towards this project required hard work. If you are a scholar looking for theory, great. If you are looking to apply this, it didnt help me.There are many books on the market on Solar Returns that focus on just that. I was hoping to fine tune my SR techniques. This book didnt do it for me.

This book arrived in today's mail, and since then I've had trouble putting it down. I was familiar with Ben Dykes' translation of the Latin version of Abu Ma'Shar's text, which was based on an incomplete translation of the Arabic text into Latin, and was eagerly awaiting this edition, which is thorough and complete. This new translation from the Arabic adds to and clarifies many of the concepts that were left hanging in the older addition. The book runs some 700 pages, so I haven't had time to go through all of it yet, but the sections I've read are informative and enlightening.There are a couple of things I don't quite understand (yet perhaps). On page 6 in his introductory remarks Dr. Dykes says that Ma'Shar's handling of a criticism about the use of different tables of planetary positions to calculate returns doesn't make sense, yet reading Ma'Shar's words (in this translation) on pages 156-157, it seems to make perfect sense. As I understand it, Ma'Shar is saying that we calculate the radical chart carefully so that we know the exact degree of the natal Ascendant. We then add the length of one tropical year (according to Hiparchus) to the birth chart for each year of life to find the moment of each subsequent revolution. We then use the same tables that we used for the birth chart to calculate the ascending degree of the return.On page 9 of the introductory remarks I found the downward pointing arrow in the diagram about distributions to be a bit confusing. This may be how Ma'Shar conceived of distributions but the fact is that the points between the Asc and the IC rise to the horizon by primary motion as the Earth turns on its axis after birth. The radical Asc doesnot sink down toward the IC after birth.I was a bit dismayed about Dr. Dyke's comments about the lord of the orb. He says that he has never seen an astrologer use this in practice and he advises students to ignore this techique. As an astrologer who routinely uses the lord of the orb as part of the analysis of solar returns, I have found it to be useful and informative. In many ways the lord of the orb acts with respect to the profected ascendant as the partner does with respect to the distributor. This technique is widely known in the Spanish and Italian literature and has been the topic of presentations at astrology conferences for at least the past 5 or 6 years. I myself gave a presentation about the lord of the orb this year at the 36th Iberian Astrologer Congress in San Sebastian.This minor nitpicking points aside, I find this to be a valuable and informative book and I look forward to many more hours of careful study and experimentation with its contents. Any astrologer interested in traditional methods should get a copy and read this book.

Abu Ma'shar's "On the Revolutions of the years of the nativities" is the single most comprehensive treatise on annual preditive astrology from the Hellenistic and Medieval astrological traditions. It is a shame that this work didn't come out very early but Ben Dykes,as always makes yet another significant contribution to the astrological community in terms of reviving ancient and medieval astrological texts. This is a scholarly translation with a strong foundation in the form of "Introduction" written by Ben Dykes himself which is almost a special feature in all of his books now.This is a must have treatise if an astrologer is interested in advanced annual predictive methods.

One of the most importante books for those who wants to understand deeply how to use the solar returns, profections and the ancient techniques on astrology. This is an extension from Benjamin Dykes first translation "Persian Nativities III. On Solar Revolutions".

Je suis Ben Dykes depuis ses premières traductions de Bonnari et nul doute que son travail de restitution d’anciens traités est remarquable à plus d’un titre.Dans cette nouvelle et complète traduction d’Abu Mashar sur les techniques prévisionnelles anciennes, Dykes a pris un soin tout particulier dans l’écriture d’une introduction claire sur ces méthodes qui permet une lecture plus aisée.Du très beau travail qui devrait intéresser tout astrologue intéressé par l’astrologie prévisionnelleUn heureux complément aussi aux ouvrages publiés en par Denis Labouré sur le même thème, pour ceux qui lisent l’anglais et, disons-le, le propos de Ben est très intelligible.Manque évidemment, car c’est la traduction d’un ouvrage ancien, des exemples de cas qui nous permettraient de jauger la validité du corpus présenté, comme les retours mensuels du Soleil de signe à signe à partir de la révolution solaire

Esta traducción directo de la fuente persa añade al acervo de la astrología predictiva herramientas invaluables. Mi única queja es que el papel es delgado y al subrayarlo se transmina el color al otro lado.

Another excellent work of B. Dykes, I am very thankful for having the opportunity to read ancient texts in readable English with helpful notes from Dykes. Must have for not only traditional astrologers !!!!