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://aa.usno.navy.mil/ (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://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneYear.html
Also grabbed the all important Moon Phases from here
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/MoonPhase.html#y2006
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.