Midpoint sort

Meaning

A midpoint sort is a single list of every midpoint in a chart, arranged not by planet but by position on the dial. The planets and angles are slotted into the same list at their own dial positions. Reading down the list, you see which midpoints lie close together and which planets sit on top of them.

The list depends on the dial. On the standard 90° dial, each position in the zodiac is reduced to its distance past the nearest cardinal point (0° Aries, Cancer, Libra or Capricorn), so every entry lies between 0° and 90°. This is the same as taking the longitude "modulo 90" (the remainder after dividing by 90). Folding the circle this way puts a conjunction, a square and an opposition on the same spot, so one list shows all three contacts at once. On the 45° dial the entries run from 0° to 45°, and semi-squares and sesquiquadrates are added. A sort on the full 360° circle shows only conjunctions.

With ten planets there are 45 midpoints (every pair once). Adding the Moon's Node, Ascendant and Midheaven brings the count to 78, and the Aries Point to 91. That is too many to read planet by planet; the sort makes them manageable.

Origin and history

The idea of reading midpoints by their position on a folded circle comes from Alfred Witte and the Hamburg School in the 1920s, and was taken over by Reinhold Ebertin's cosmobiology. In the hand-calculation era the work was done largely with a rotating dial and by writing out groups of planets as equations; Ellic Howe, describing the Hamburg School system from his own use of it in 1961, mentions both the dial-like instrument and the line after line of planetary equations it produced [3]. Ebertin shows midpoints worked out by hand, either from the full longitudes or directly from the 90° dial positions, and recommends checking doubtful ones with a small adding machine (pp. 25–26) [4].

A list of all midpoints in dial order does on paper what the dial does by turning: it puts every midpoint next to its neighbours, so nothing has to be calculated twice. Once computers took over the arithmetic, such a list could be produced in an instant, alongside the dial and the midpoint tree. Book-length English treatments of midpoint work include Harding and Harvey's Working with Astrology (1990) [1] and Munkasey's Midpoints (1991) [2].

How it is used

Read down, not across. Start with a planet or angle in the list and look immediately above and below it. Any midpoint within your orb is a planetary picture: the planet is "on" that pair's midpoint. The same entries, grouped by planet, are what a midpoint tree shows; the sort shows them in their natural neighbourhood.

Remember the ends join. The dial is a circle, so the top of the list continues into the bottom. A midpoint at 89° is only 1° from a planet at 0°.

Look for crowding. Stretches of the list where many midpoints bunch within a degree or two are sensitive areas of the chart even when no planet sits there (see midpoint cluster). Stretches with nothing in them are quiet.

Timing. Because the sort gives exact dial positions, it doubles as a lookup table for timing: when a transiting or directed planet reaches a given dial degree, the sort tells you every midpoint (and planet) it is touching.

Orbs. Midpoint work uses small orbs. Ebertin allows 1½° for natal pictures and about 1° for transits and directions (pp. 23, 27, 69, 107) [4]; other teachers use figures from about 1° to 2° for natal work. The site's default is 1.5°.

On this site. The Midpoints panel has an "All midpoints" view that is this list. Midpoints are taken on the shorter arc between the two points, and positions are folded onto the chosen dial as longitude modulo the dial: 90° by default, with 45°, 360° and 22.5° as options. The list covers the ten planets, the Moon's Node, and the Ascendant and Midheaven when the birth time is known (the Node and the angles can be switched off); the Aries Point (0° Aries) can be switched on. The planets are not separate rows: instead, each midpoint's row shows any planet or angle within the orb set on the slider (0.5° to 3°, default 1.5°). The site does not use the Hamburg School's hypothetical points.

Examples

Albert Einstein (14 March 1879, 11:30 local mean time, Ulm), ten planets only, 90° dial. Two short stretches of the sort, with the planets slotted in as in a printed sort (dial position, then the midpoint or planet, then its zodiac position):

• Reading the Sun. The Sun at 83°30′ has Venus/Uranus 0°38′ after it and Venus/Jupiter 1°16′ before it. With a 1.5° orb both are pictures: Sun = Venus/Uranus and Sun = Venus/Jupiter. Venus/Uranus falls in Gemini, so the Sun contacts it by square; Venus/Jupiter is in Pisces, a conjunction. The sort shows both in one place.
• Reading the Moon. The Moon at 74°32′ (14°32′ Sagittarius) has Mercury/Jupiter at 75°19′ (0°47′) and Jupiter/Saturn at 75°50′ (1°19′), both within 1.5°.
• Crowding. The stretch from 2°41′ to 5°43′ holds five midpoints and two planets in about three degrees. (Mercury/Saturn lying between Mercury and Saturn is automatic, since the two planets are only 1° apart.)
• The ends join. Sun/Saturn at 88°51′ is 1°09′ from 0°, the dial position of the Aries Point; if the Aries Point is switched on, the sort shows the picture Aries Point = Sun/Saturn.

See also

The same material is arranged by planet in the midpoint tree and shown graphically on the midpoint dial.