Harmonic Astrology in Practice takes off where David Hamblin's previous book, The Spirit of Numbers: A New Exploration of Harmonic Astrology comes to a close. The practical advantage of harmonic astrology is that it offers a far richer and more complete insight into the interrelationship of planetary forces than is possible through using the traditional aspects - opposition, trine, square, etc. All of those are based on divisions of the circle by Two, Three, or multiples of Two and Three, but in harmonic astrology we can also study aspects that are based on Five, Seven, or any other number. Using copious case histories which include Amy Winehouse, Whitney Houston, Malala Yousafzai, Leonard Cohen, Winston Churchill, Hermann Hesse, Amma, Rolf Harris, and many, many more, David Hamblin unlocks secrets of the charts which might otherwise remain hidden. A fascinating and impressive study.
David Hamblin was born in 1935, and has a degree in Classics from Oxford University. For many years he was a Lecturer in the School of Management at Bath University, but he took early retirement in 1985 to work as a psychotherapist, having been trained at the Psychosynthesis and Education Trust and at the Bath Centre for Psychotherapy and Counselling. After taking up astrology in the 1960s, he became a Tutor for the Faculty of Astrological Studies and was also Chairman of the Astrological Association of Great Britain in the 1980s. His book Harmonic Charts (Aquarian Press) was published in 1983 and his book The Spirit of Numbers (The Wessex Astrologer) was published in 2011. Since his retirement as a psychotherapist in 2000, he has written several articles, and has also (his proudest achievement) walked the 630-mile South West Coast Path. He is married, with two daughters and two granddaughters. His email address is pigleystair@ yahoo.co.uk and his website is www.davidhamblin.net.
Title: Harmonic Astrology in Practice
Author: Hamblin, David
ISBN: 9781910531327
Binding:
Publisher: Wessex Astrologer Ltd
Publication Date: 2019-02-25
Number of Pages: 306
Weight: 0.4310 kg
The ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras famously said, All things are number. By this he meant that everything in the universe is composed of the interaction between numbers, and that the better we understand the qualities and properties of numbers, the better we will understand ourselves and our place in the universe. Astrology at its core is also about numbers, most readily seen in the various aspects between planets. This branch of our celestial art is referred to as Harmonic Astrology.David Hamblin gives us a useful and in-depth narrative on this subject in Harmonic Astrology in Practice, a well-organized reference on the harmonics up to and including the thirty-first harmonic.The division of the 360 circle by various numbers produces specific, recognizable qualities that can be expressed by the astrologer as an interpretive technique. The traditional aspects are made from the first, second, third, fourth, and sixth harmonics and are respectively equivalent to the conjunction, opposition, trine, semisquare, and sextile. In this sense, astrologers are using harmonics whether they are aware of it or not.Hamblin refers to the qualities associated with a specific number by adding the suffix -ness to the number. So the opposition is twoness and the trine is associated with threeness. But what about fiveness or sevenness ? This is the subject of Hamblin's Harmonic Astrology in Practice as he presents his findings on all the harmonics up to thirty-oneness. He presents many case studies to illustrate personalities colored by the various harmonics, and from this readers will readily grasp how the harmonics play out in real life.One of the basic principles of harmonic astrology is that each prime number introduces a new quality. From this basis, the fourth harmonic is closely related to the second harmonic, while the sixth harmonic is a combination of the second and third harmonics. Not until we get to the fifth harmonic is a new quality introduced. Some astrologers recognize the fifth harmonic as the quintile and bi-quintile aspects. It's associated with creativity and more specifically with the desire to create order out of chaos. Hamblin shows how this aspect works in the charts of several celebrities, including Nikola Tesla and Kurt Cobain.Another fundamental principle of Harmonic Astrology is that the greater the harmonic, the smaller the allowable orb. The formula is to divide the orb allowed for the conjunction by the number of the harmonic. If you allow a 10 orb for a conjunction, then by the time you get to the seventh harmonic, the allowable orb is less than 1 Degrees30'. And, of course, the tighter the orb, the more observable are the qualities associated with that harmonic. And although the author doesn't state it directly, readers might also notice that the higher the harmonic, the more specific are the correlated qualities. For example, thirteenness is about taking risks in the search for one's identity, seventeenness is about campaigning for a better world, and thirty-oneness is about delving into the unconscious mind. Perhaps it's not surprising that both Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung have horoscopes with strong thirty-oneness aspects.After the analysis of the individual harmonics, Hamblin presents several case studies that clarify how the number qualities work in practice. American readers will most identify with Whitney Houston's story. She has strong patterns of fiveness, sevenness, and fifteenness (threeness plus fiveness), but no twoness, which includes the squares and oppositions in traditional terms. The positive side of twoness is that it can spur us into taking action to resolve problems, and Whitney just didn't have this.Additional chapters on harmonics in mundane astrology, in synastry, and in transits and progressions round out the subjects covered in this exceptionally original and fascinating book.Chris Lorenz, Dell Horoscope magazine Nov/Dec 19
