Astrid Fallon’s Rainbow Ephemeris for 2011 has just gone on sale. For someone like me, who uses an astrological agenda anyway, I wanted to know if the Rainbow Ephemeris would bring something extra to 2011. So with my copy before me, the question is: What differentiates the Rainbow Ephemeris from the many other yearly astrological aids currently on the market? Astrid Fallon writes: “… this graphical tool helps the natural astrologer follow the current cosmic patterns. Diagrams and tables of longitude, declination, major aspects and heliocentric data bring to the reader a comprehensive and holistic view of the year.” (my italics). But does the Rainbow Ephemeris fullfil this promise?
I’m going to leap straight into January 2011. As a practising astrologer – who also writes articles for publication – I want to see quickly what is going on during the month. My astrological agenda doesn’t give an overview, only information on a day by day, week by week basis – so I generally spend a considerable amount of time animating Solar Fire charts. In the Rainbow Ephemeris, I can see at a glance, by looking at the colour coded graph on at the bottom of the right hand page (each month gets two A4’s), what aspects are coming up and whether they are hard (red coded), soft (blue coded) or conjunctions (black). This will come in very handy and will save me time for sure.
The Rainbow Ephemeris has a declination diagram on each page, which has a rose section top and bottom. When a planet line passes into the rose coloured area, then you know that it is Out of Bounds and therefore liable to express itself in extremes. I am interested in declination, but generally don’t have time to really spend on it. With the information at hand, it might become more of a routine thing to keep an eye on it. There is a whole half page giving the full details of the Moon’s position and aspects, which is useful information – for people like myself, who make weekly horoscopes. There is an apart column which gives the moon’s declination. I can see that on my birthday,for example the Moon is OOB, and approaching its maximum declination North. The Moon’s parallels are also given.
The right hand page gives the longitude and declination of the remaining planets, as well as the ingress data, which is also very convenient. The date, time and degree of the New and Full Moon is prominent (you can’t miss it) and both horoscopes are given. The right hand page also gives a circular longitude chart. To be honest I am not sure what this is useful for. I have written to Astrid, because maybe I am missing the point here.
Astrid Fallon’s Response: “I’m a bit surprised about your question regarding the circular longitude chart. I don’t know what to say! To me, it eases the view of the monthly ephemeris at a glance: like where planets join in the zodiac, where tight conjunction occur (dots on eclipses, occultations or very tight planet conjunctions).
Example: if your natal Sun is near 26 Cap, you see straight away, that the Moon transits there on Jan. 5th, and then Mars around the 10th and then the Sun around the birthday. More precision, is then listed in the daily ephemeris below.
We also see that Jupiter & Uranus are conjunct in the beginning of the month at the end of Pisces, that most planets are direct, or that the Sun approaches Mars, to the point of meeting the following month, on Feb. 4th mid Aquarius.
From page 32 onwards, astro-cartography maps are given for eclipses, as well as eclipse maps which show the actual area of the earth where the eclipse falls. January’s partial eclipse for example, starts in the South of England, and continues accross Northern France, Switzerland, and Northern Italy. Which under the current economic climate, could be viewed as slightly worrying.
Astrid Fallon’s Rainbow Ephemeris is, in my opinion, a very handy tool for astrologers, and considering all the information you get it is well priced at Euro 25,=.