Customer Reviews

Midpoints: Unleashing the Power of the Planets

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The author's diligence in being thorough and lengthy is one downfall of this book: each midpoint becomes a forest rather than a tree. In his introduction, Noel Tyl mentions the derivation of astrological midpoints from Alfred Witte, originator of the "Hamburg School" (a.k.a. "Uranian"), filtered through Reinhold Ebertin, originator of the Aalen School also known as "cosmobiology".

Contrasting the latter with the former in the original German texts illustrates a process of, diplomatically put, "mildening", a process later accelerated, accentuated and exaggerated by many astrologers in the USofA. Alfred Witte's original short and where appropriate blunt delineations of midpoints (e.g. in the 3rd edition, 1935, of his "Rule Work for Planetary Pictures", that the German Secret State Police (Gestapo) almost entirely seized and destroyed) are not recognisable in Mr Munkasey's book. Mr Munkasay chose to ignore the German saying, "The spice is in brevity" ("In der Kürze liegt die Würze").

In fairness, Mr Munkasey clearly states this agenda in his Preface, "This book translates important astrological images into modern American ideas." Aside from incorrectly equivocating the second largest North American country with "America", "distorts" would be far more appropriate than "translates".

Mr Munkasey's very lengthy delineations of the midpoints can, like popular sun sign astrology, be used to say anything anytime to anyone, provided, of course, that the categories "nice, nicer, nicest" are respected. They are indeed a faithful representation of one-sided psychologised positivist approaches to Western astrology typical for the latter part of the 20th century and particularly common in the USofA.

Nevertheless, there are no one-sided coins. There is e.g. no "sublime" without "sordid" nor vice-versa. Reduction of astrology to positivist human psychology as exemplified by this book is not only a disservice to astrology but incoherent in view of basic Hermetic doctrine.

this work is rigorous and thorough.. something not always found in astrological texts and research.
it is a useful book for more than midpoints -- use it for keywords for planetary pairs, aspects, transits..
highly recommended!