DIY Ephemeris
Posted this on an email group late last month and thought it was worth posting here for prosperity, since I don’t write informative posts very often.
Well, first off, I decided to do this because I wanted to consolidate as much as I could into my control journal, which I’m certain is a lot thicker than would be allowed by FlyLady! :P And I was tired of buying ephemeris, calendars and diaries – especially when they were often not in my timezone or were and weren’t detailed enough.
So I started scouring the internet looking for resources and I found these.
Swiss Ephemeris
http://www.astro.com/swisseph/ where I got for the Sun and Moon Signs and other planetary transits
http://www.astro.com/swisseph/ae/2000/d5ge1_2006.pdf
Those are in UT (universal time) so you have to make adjustments for your timezone and daylight time changes. I found out how they work out the dates for our daylight savings start and finish from our government website.
Then I went to http://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/astronomical-applications (which is a brilliant site).
And after finding my latitude and longitude for the town I live in (Marton, New Zealand) via another search I grabbed the Sun Rise and Set and Moon Rise and Set (cause I might as well eh) from here http://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/astronomical-applications/data-services/rs-one-year-world
Also grabbed the all important Moon Phases from here http://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/astronomical-applications/data-services/phases-moon
And the solstices and equinoxes from here http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/EarthSeasons.html
Then I sat down with my printed out weekly calendar from http://www.diyplanner.com and my gel pens (gotta love’em) and started creating my ephemeris. Didn’t take me too long – I chose to go through each step entering it in before moving onto the next piece of information rather than trying to get all January done then Feb and so on.
I don’t have any aspects or their times written in cause I figure work with the basics first then after I understand them (probably a couple of years from now) I could move onto the aspects. I’m only new to astrology really and I wasn’t able to find a resource for Void-of-Course Moons, so that is also missing if it’s important to you.
I have a table showing the best times for particular types of spell/ritual work based on the moon sign and moon phase that I’ve also added and I’ve also added a table showing the best times to do things in the garden based on the moon sign and phase also.
Something else I learnt, if you have a Llewellyn’s Magical Almanac, the colours and incense mentioned each day are from a system created by Amber Wolfe detailed in ‘Personal Alchemy’ which I don’t believe is being published anymore. I personally haven’t seen Daffodil Incense in my travels anyway.
I like the result of my efforts – it has all the features I’d look for in an ephemeris with no extra “stuff” that I wouldn’t use.
