Planetary Powers: The Morin Method [ペーパーバック]

This book is a reissue of the author's 1980 text on Morin's method. It appears to consist of her notes from a class she took on Morin, which was taught by the late Gerhard Houwing who had devoted himself to a study of Morin's Astrologia Gallica. The chapters are mainly lists of Morin's rules with nicely done graphics to illustrate planetary placements. The text is extremely pithy, and everything is packed into 110 pages - the entire length of the book. Overall, this is a useful volume for students of Morin, with some caveats.

What is lacking are the classroom discussions and explanations by the teacher. A newcomer to Morin may find this book hard to follow, since it consists of reading many terse rules and seeing very sketchy examples of how they are applied. There is no discussion of Morin's overall philosophy of astrology, that is, his ideas about why the planets and signs seem to have influence on earth.

In addition, some of the examples are confusing. For example, on page 50, example 10, there is a chart with Saturn ruling the 6th and 7th houses but posited in the 9th. The interpretation is "travel caused an illness" but the rule being illustrated is that the house a planet rules represents the cause and the house the planet occupies represents the effect. By this rule, Saturn ruling the 6th but lying in the 9th should be interpreted as "an illness causes travel."

On page 71 there is an example of one of the author's clients who allegedly has Jupiter in Aquarius, Saturn in Libra, Mercury in Taurus, and Venus in Gemini. This distribution looked odd to me so I looked in the ephemeris to see what else was going on in the chart. It turns out that this combination of planets never occurred in the 20th century, and so the sample chart must contain a typo, but which of the four planets is the typo? The chart does not match the client being described, and it is hard to know what conclusions to draw from an inaccurate chart about Morin's method.

The final section of the book offers the student 18 charts of notable persons for study. Only the charts are presented with no discussion of how Morin's methods apply. It would have been very useful had the author discussed those charts to illustrate the points she was trying to make.

Another important point is that unlike Morin, the author uses the modern planets and the Placidus system of house division. Morin had carefully studied house systems and concluded that the Regiomontanus system was the most reliable in his method. My own experience has been that changing from Regiomontanus to Placidus frequently changes intermediate house cusps and thus the determinations of the planets, which are key to Morin's method. I would advise students first learning Morin's method to stick to Regiomontanus houses and initially to use the traditional rulers rather than the modern planets till they get their feet wet in the waters of Morinus.

With the above caveats in mind, this is a good book to have on hand and will prove useful to those who wish to study Morin.

The few inaccurate details mentioned in the prior review are correct. How many books are perfect? Critical expertise means noticing such occasional slips. Of course if would have been quite useful to have a set of complete delineations of some nativities. But in order to master the methods we must do some work ourselves. The prior reviewer is quite correct in pointing out that Morin had studied various house systems and preferred the Regiomontanus system. Morin developed his own late in his career.

Nevertheless, the book would basically deserve 5+ stars. It reflects very well one of the salient qualities of Morin: to strive for coherence, clarity and cohesion. Morin was the last author to write a complete series of books explaining astrology from an Aristotelian paradigm. When he departs from this paradigm, not often and to keep within the framework of the official doctrines of the Christian Roman Catholic Church, Morin explicitly says so.

The format, printing, etc. of the book are excellent, beginning with a nice large typeface easy on the eyes. The sequence of the matters handled is logical and clear.

The erudite Dr. Jean-Baptiste Morin de Villefranche was and is one of the beacon-lights of astrology. This book explains how temporal mundane factors in a native's life flow from the birth map, often indicating which phase of life is concerned. The often encountered 20th century self-restriction of astrology to psychology had, fortunately, not yet occurred.

This book is definitely worth studying and perhaps will whet the appetite for more of Morin.