I saw his book on solar returns (which has been translated into English) last year but I thought he was a purely modern astrologer. Has anyone here read it? Is it worth purchasing?
http://www.solarreturns.com/
Mark[/quote]
Hi Mark and others who might consider buying this book,
I bought Ciro Discepolo? book Transits and Solar Returns more than an year ago and after seeing the content and reading his 30 rules put it down and did not open it until this week.
Now, from a strictly traditional point of view this book is pure garbage, but so it is from the modern point of view because it is sounds outright brutal to modern people?s psyche.
The book consists of his 30 rules for solar revolutions and then goes on to give cook book non-psychological ?delineations? for the 10 planets transiting through each of the 12 Houses. Of all the 550 pages these cook book descriptions take 385! Then he gives 100 natal charts of famous persons (95% Italians ? there is good internet data for at least 80% of the natives, for some there are only a few sentences both in English and Italian ? I don?t speak Italian and used google translator ) and 100 revolutions to these charts which include a notable event in the natives?lives. Prior to giving his 100 charts and their revolutions, he presents some research of his that uses lots of statistics put in a program using algorithms to calculate ?The Index of Risk for the Year?. In short, 20-40 ? threshold, 40-60 ?a fairly high score corresponding to difficult, tough years, but at a much lower level?, 60-100 ? ?an extremely high index, unfailingly corresponding to dramatic years for the native?.
At the end of the book he goes into a very very dangerous territory. Now, so that that there arise no misunderstanding, I have nothing against this guy, I have never met him, but this is an extremely sensitive issue and much more attention must be paid to it, because given enough knowledge one can mercilessly exploit human vulnerability. What I am getting at is human life its longevity and issues of predermination versus ?free will?. First Ciro presents some outrageous research that pertains to the spread of cancer and it turns out that instead of 1 out 7 women that has it in recent years it is 1 out of 3 that has it and later he says that: ?I think that with such a frightful pollution in our own organism, at least those who are over 50, those who are 55-60 like me ? we will all get cancer. All ? it does mean everybody, every last one. On the other hand I am also convinced that medical science has made notable progresses, thus a good amount of those affected by malignant tumour would be saved?. Then he says that: ? If you have in your body a disease that dates back ten years, an aimed birthday cannot protect you per cent. It could protect you, roughly speaking, 80 per cent, and it could protect you for the future, not for the past.?
Then he says that one must relocate for EVERY solar return, ?there is no use of making it every second year or so?. Do you see where I am getting at? Do you see how easy it is to frighten people and take advantage of their fear of death? I am not saying he is purposefully trying to scare and manipulate people into booking consultations with him every year. For the record, I think he really believes in what he writes and after all ? he has relocated 16 000 people to other parts of the world on their birthday, which is an impressive experience, but the thing is that clients do not know Astrology and can easily by mislead or influenced. Yes, he has written about 50 books, yes he has shared a great part of his knowledge so that practitioners at least can learn his rules and not have to pay money every year for a consultation, but still this is very dangerous and virtually impossible to prove that it will make a difference and you won?t get sick/die if you relocate because you cannot be in two places (at least in body) at the same time.
Now for the astrology part.
If you want to learn how to read a revolution (solar return) this book will NOT teach you, not at all! Still, you will learn that the positions of the revolution chart are more important and stronger than the transits, which is quite a revelation of his, addressed to modern practitioners.
This guy only uses revolutions, nothing else, as least as far as this book is concerned. No eclipses even. Of course, he uses 19-20 century techniques so nothing traditional. As for the more modern, he does not mention secondary progressions or solar arcs. Only revolutions!
Also and obviously, he uses the place where the native was/will be during the revolution, but in 95% of his charts he uses Italians or, more importantly, his examples spent their revolution in a close by town that does not alter the angles. There are only 1-2 cases which do. Yes, he has written many books on the subject and is considered a big authority (by whom?), but this is no way to prove that the local location chart is more important than the birth place revolution. He should have chosen at least 20% of his 100 charts in order to show that and note that I am not taking a position on this here.
His ?analysis? of the revolutions consists of naming the aspects the revolution planets make to the natal ones and the angles and indicating the number of the risk index for the year. That is it! I found that extremely boring and exasperating. Also, when a bad event happened in an example chart, he justifies it by quoting his index and some of his 30 rules. Note, he does not differentiate the nature of the accident, (say car crash, debt, resignation, disease etc,) nor does he show you how to, all that is enough for him to include this given revolution in the book is that it meets his risk index criteria and has some of his rules. No wonder that he says that he has hundreds and hundreds of such charts and planned to include them but changed his mind because the book would have been about 1000 pages.
He uses the outer planets, which is fine but then he makes use of the minor aspects and then we have a problem because each chart has many aspects and many ?events? when you look at it this way. Of course, all the cases are on hindsight. What is more is that he sometimes uses wide orbs for the outers, just to justify an event. In one chart he used a 3-4 degrees out of sign trine between revolution Pluto and a natal planet, which is outright ridiculous, knowing how slow Pluto moves.
In some charts where the revolution showed nothing significant (which would be shown by the more powerful traditional techniques he does not know about) he is just looking for something to find. In some cases when there are fewer aspects and he has nothing, he says that soft aspects of the outer planets in the revolution can be very damaging.
So, where is the merit in this book?
When I bought it and opened it, I was disappointed (the book does not allow one to see the contents, otherwise I would not have bought it), but now I am not. The reason for this is the charts and events he has shown (be aware that some charts include wrongly written year and that the program he uses does not directly show the degrees of the planets) are really significant and make for a nice database of cases. It took me 4 days to organize it and put it into my computer programs and now I am done and ready to investigate the cases using Medieval and Hellenistic Astrology. So if you are looking for investigation cases, that is, charts belonging to natives that went under investigation/arrest, or for prison cases, including life sentences, or for accidents like broken feet or violence and of course death and also seeing the death of someone close to you from your own chart or how the chart of a died native lives on and continues to show significant events to people close to them, then this book is worth it.
This book is also worth it for the direct and blunt language that you will find (no psychology): disease, death, debt, resignation, i.e. accidents that are a natural part of life. I also enjoyed the active approach he takes (he calls it active astrology)and the other alternatives he gives for mitigating malefic configurations, if one cannot relocate. It was also very refreshing to read how hard and miserable life can be and how on every lottery/promotion winner there are hundreds of losers.
At the end of the book Ciro expresses a view that is outright ancient, i.e. appeasing the ?gods?, that is, if you cannot relocate every year and you have nasty configurations, to look for something that might be giving you trouble in your body and to undergo surgery 1 month after the revolution, which is something I found really interesting. He calls this ?the exorcism of a symbol?.
So if you are looking for a book on revolutions/annual techniques, in order of preference, I would go with Regulus Astrology?s ?A Rectification Manual?, Morin?s Books 23 and 22, Abu Mashar on Solar Revolutions (translated by Ben Dykes), Zadanfarrukh-Al Andarazaghar on Anniversary Horoscopes (translated by Charles Burnett and Ahmed Al-Handy) and Dorotheus?s Carmen. The first 2 contain many examples, the last 3 have more than enough theory, although almost 50% of Abu Mashar? book remains to be translated.
