The HolyTwelve - Hidden Treasures of Astrology

By Rev Pam Crane

From the author of "The Draconic Chart" comes "The Holy Twelve", Rev Pam Crane's second major volume of advanced Astrology. Her new work focusses on Astrology's fine tuning in eighteen chapters devoted to the Dwad (the "I" behind the eyes), the 12th Harmonic, and hidden zodiacs that add even more depth of understanding to the horoscope. Richly illustrated with example charts, this is an essential addition to any astrologer's bookshelf.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rev Pam Crane
• Release date: Feb 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9781999312312

Rev Pam Crane

Rev Pam Crane has been a poet since she was seven years old, and an astrologer for most of her adult life. The latter has involved a lot of writing for astrological journals and the publication of three books to date: Draconic Astrology in 1987, The Draconic Chart in 2000 and 2013, and The Holy Twelve in 2019. It wasn’t until 2011 that she realised she also had a talent for the short story, and over the past seven years her collection has grown to fill this book. Ordained as a Deacon in the Liberal Catholic Church in 1993, a non-dogmatic, esoteric Christianity runs through much of what she writes - in her stories, her poetry and her astrological work. She now runs the website of Llandudno & District Writers Club, also producing its bi-monthly in-house magazine.

Book preview

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

THIS BOOK WOULD NEVER have happened without the inspiration of Mark Pottenger whose detailed work and pioneering software showed me that we could fine-tune our astrology and learn far more than any purely radix chart made possible. Thank you, Mark, and also for your trail-blazing work on asteroids with your mother, the much-loved Zip Dobyns. Our understanding of the asteroids in astrology has also been greatly enhanced by the work of my dear departed friend Jacob Schwartz.

I miss your companionship and your encouragement, Jacob. Thank you for everything.

My gratitude also goes to the late, wonderful Lois Rodden who generously gave our community AstroDataBank, facilitating all kinds of research, and raising the standards of accuracy in everyone’s work.

But most of all I must thank from the bottom of my heart my beloved husband Gerard, who has been so very, very patient with me when thinking and writing have whacked my inner clock, delaying meals, leaving cobwebs undusted and washing not done! This, alas, is frequently the lot of a writer, whose family can be tested to the limit. Bless you, Best Buddy, for decades of love, inspiration, understanding and unwavering support.

Pam Crane 2018

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A Note on the Text

AS THIS IS AN E-BOOK, it differs in format from the printed version. I have done what I can to allow the text and diagrams to flow reasonably well, but there will inevitably be white space here and there. The alternative would have been a PDF of the print book, but it would have had too many limitations. I hope nevertheless that the occasional visual hiccups here don’t spoil your enjoyment of this digital version of The Holy Twelve.

Pam Crane

The Late, Great  ...

JEFF, JOHN AND RON -

All gone.

Mayo, Addey and Davison.

Charles Harvey and Charles Jayne;

Al H. Morrison.

The quiet teachers,

The mercurial out-reachers,

The wired-world explorers,

Sacrificing self for us.

Walker, Elliot, Woodruff

Achieved enough

And they are gone

To the real

With Jim, Howard, Neil -

Lewis, Sasportas and Michelson.

The men of presence,

The laid-back and the intense,

The spiritual mothers,

The many unforgotten others.

Rudhyar, Ruperti, Ebertin

Have now been

Where all is known

And Moby Dick is, Johndro, Maurice Wemyss

To whom we are dreams.

Ingrid Lind. Ada and Ivy. Margaret Hone.

Jacob, and Olivia, and Michel -

Schwartz and Barclay and Gauquelin;

Zipporah Dobyns, the great Lois Rodden

Shine on where all is well

With our wise-women and our starmen.

Now we are the teachers,

We are the out-reachers;

They before, beside us, behind us

Invisibly remind us. 

Pam Crane

Chapter One

Twelve Degrees

The sign, the turned wheel

Unlocking vaults of the soul

With twelve keys of gold

DODEKATEMORIA. NOW, there’s a word to conjure with!

Dwadashamsha. And another.

Twelve.

Ah. That’s easier.

You are presumably - like me - an astrologer. Or a student of astrology. Actually, there’s no difference or there shouldn’t be. Astrology is all about Twelve and its many relationships to the Circle ... indeed, the Sphere ... which since humans began to count has been divided into 360 degrees.

DwadDiagam.jpg

Twelve Twelves

WE AND MANY (MOST?) of the general public are familiar with the twelve Signs which we call the Zodiac - and that’s pretty well where astrology begins and ends for the majority. Oh, how much they are missing! For hundreds and hundreds of years the astrologers of the Indian sub-continent have been dividing the sky into smaller and smaller segments; the Greeks may even have beaten them to it, according to some sources. All their refinements add a level of detail to an astrological chart which otherwise would go unnoticed and unexplained. Among these refinements are the Hellenic Dodekatemoria - which may be the precursors of the Vedic Dwadashamshas - and these divide every 12th part of the circle into twelve smaller parts, each one a little zodiac in its own right, complete with precise degrees and minutes of arc.

Serendipity in astrology occurs in many ways. I first came across the Dwads back in the 1990s. My Mum had left this world a few days after my birthday in 1992 and bequeathed to me just sufficient money to buy my first PC and some top-drawer astrology software to go with it.  I am so grateful for the immediate help and encouragement I had from Martin Davis, who had previously teased me unmercifully about my mistrust of computers. Until then it had all been logarithms and pocket calculators, pens and rulers, photocopiers and filing wallets, and paper, paper, paper all over the floor into the wee small hours of most nights. The PC didn’t really get rid of the paper, however, as you only got to see a chart by printing it out on a slow, noisy monochrome machine from the calculated data in MSDos running Matrix Blue*Star.

Mercifully soon, the ever-enterprising Bill Gates developed and released into the so far blue-and-white world his new OS: Windows 3.1. It came to me on my first notebook PC (a monochrome Chaplet) which I bought at a huge computer show in London. Now we could all see what we were doing, and not too long after that the first dial-up modem came into the house and the astrological world was connected!

So I bought more software. Ever ambitious, despite being a relative novice, I chose to add to my toolkit what was then considered in some quarters to be the most advanced astrological software out there - Mark Pottenger’s CCRS92.

And it was here, in the complex printouts from Mark’s program, that a fascinating extra line of information appeared - a 12th Harmonic chart called ‘Dwad B’ that didn’t follow the usual rules.

You can see in the first diagram above, and in the table that follows here, how the Dwad differs from the 12th Harmonic. All the harmonic charts we use in the West are pretty straightforward; the circle is divided into a given number of segments, and each one becomes a zodiac in its own right, with the signs running as usual in order from Aries to Pisces.

But the Dwad - or Dodekatemorion - is different: each of its mini-signs covers 2½º of the originating (radix) zodiac circle as you would expect, but the zodiac sequence always begins with the radix sign, thus:

Aries – Taurus – Gemini – Cancer – Leo – Virgo – Libra – Scorpio – Sagittarius –

Capricorn – Aquarius – Pisces

Taurus – Gemini – Cancer – Leo – Virgo – Libra – Scorpio – Sagittarius – Capricorn – Aquarius – Pisces – Aries

Gemini – Cancer – Leo – Virgo – Libra – Scorpio – Sagittarius – Capricorn – Aquarius – Pisces – Aries – Taurus

Cancer – Leo – Virgo – Libra – Scorpio – Sagittarius – Capricorn – Aquarius – Pisces – Aries – Taurus – Gemini

Leo – Virgo – Libra – Scorpio  – Sagittarius – Capricorn – Aquarius – Pisces – Aries – Taurus – Gemini – Cancer

Virgo – Libra – Scorpio – Sagittarius – Capricorn – Aquarius – Pisces – Aries – Taurus – Gemini – Cancer – Leo

Libra – Scorpio – Sagittarius – Capricorn – Aquarius – Pisces – Aries – Taurus – Gemini – Cancer – Leo – Virgo

Scorpio – Sagittarius – Capricorn – Aquarius – Pisces – Aries – Taurus – Gemini –

Cancer – Leo – Virgo – Libra

Sagittarius – Capricorn –Aquarius – Pisces – Aries – Taurus – Gemini –Cancer –Leo –Virgo –Libra – Scorpio

Capricorn – Aquarius – Pisces – Aries – Taurus – Gemini – Cancer – Leo – Virgo – Libra – Scorpio – Sagittarius

Aquarius — Pisces – Aries – Taurus – Gemini – Cancer – Leo – Virgo – Libra – Scorpio – Sagittarius – Capricorn

Pisces – Aries – Taurus – Gemini – Cancer – Leo – Virgo – Libra – Scorpio – Sagittarius – Capricorn – Aquarius

So although in radix Aries the Dwad and the 12th Harmonic both run from Aries to Pisces, when we come to Taurus there is a hiccup where the signs join, and instead of Aries-Pisces again, the Taurus sequence is Taurus-Aries.  And so on, all the way through to radix Pisces and its mini-zodiac of Pisces-Aquarius.

I find this difference thought-provoking: so many astrologers like to see the zodiac as a wave-form, and in certain contexts - as in normal harmonics - I would agree.

But light has the physical properties and behaviour of both a wave and a particle; and here in the Dwad we see a zodiac, itself an energy-form, that with these discontinuities at the junctions of its signs is behaving for all the world as a circular series of particles.

Getting Down to Detail

With Draconic Sun in Virgo (see The Draconic Chart—Flare 2013) it had become increasingly clear that my job this time round was to deal with detail. And here was detail. Mark offered even more fine tools to work with, as he and Zip Pottenger Dobyns (stellar mother to him plus Maritha and Ricky, all super-contributors to astrology) were already busy exploring the burgeoning world of the asteroids. I bought into all this with a relish that hasn’t diminished over more than two decades.

Mark and I eventually met - as you do - at an Astrological Association Conference in 1999. This was in fact the wonderful Eclipse Conference on the Plymouth University campus in early August, probably the greatest international gathering the AA has ever hosted. When I said Hallo to my hard-working and self-effacing Californian friend for the first time, the Dwad Moon was on his radix Moon in Virgo, on my Ascendant. There. Detail.

Grateful for the precision of my first Dos software, Matrix’s Blue*Star, with Windows going from strength to strength and now in full colour, it was now time to move on, and I decided to try the new program from Esoteric Technologies, Solar Fire. I know that there is now even more excellent astrology software on the market, for Windows, for the Mac, for Android, and exclusively on-line, but Solar Fire - as you might anticipate for someone with her North Node in Leo - turned out to suit me better than almost any other program. It does nearly everything I could possibly ask of it, and keeps on improving without compromising the design that has made its use so intuitive and flexible for beginners and pros over the years.

In 2008 the story really starts, as Solar Fire Gold (v7) arrived, and with it a Vedic module in which - joy of joys - were all the Divisional charts, and among them the Dwadashamsha. This meant that not only could a Dwad chart be made from any radix chart (more on this later) but it could then be displayed in a biwheel with the radix to see how the two zodiacal levels interacted.

I quickly found that setting up the Dwad chart is really easy in Solar Fire: you select your chart, then choose Chart/Vedic, and in the list of Vedic charts select 'Vedic 12 Dwadashamsha' and click OK. In the box that comes up, you click 'No'. Then the Dwad of your chosen chart will appear in your calculated chart list as a Vedic chart.

Consequently I have ended up with a full-to-bursting database, as most charts saved tend to be tucked away together with their Dwad.

VedicScreenshot.PNG

I HAD BY THIS TIME been working with/playing with Dwads since the early 1990s and had become utterly convinced not only that they were interesting and useful, but that they were in fact extremely important, as the degrees that resonated between radix and Dwad painted vivid pictures of the chosen person or the event under scrutiny.

This all made sense in terms of current developments in physics and maths. As computing became more and more sophisticated, fractals were now a growing enthusiasm in the art world from their origin in graphical maths, and could be seen everywhere in the natural world.

In the Dwad we have astrology’s own natural fractal: twelfths of twelve ... potentially ad infinitum. And the term ‘resonance’ was being used in the further reaches of physics: its occurrence between non-local, self-similar systems both in the quantum world and in astrophysics made total sense of a lower vibrational macro-zodiac chiming with a higher vibrational micro-zodiac, particularly one that is its fractal.

Wholly, Holy Twelve

Twelve has been embedded in human culture for millennia, possibly originating in Mesopotamian civilisation - whence of course came the Chaldaeans. Not ten, not decimals - despite the ten digits on the human (and simian) hand. Twelve.

Wikipedia’s introductory paragraph on the ‘sublime number’ Twelve includes this description: The product of the first three factorials, twelve is a superior highly composite number, divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6. It is central to many systems of counting, including the Western calendar and units of time, and frequently appears in the Abrahamic religions.

Also: A twelve-sided polygon is a dodecagon. A twelve-faced polyhedron is a dodecahedron. Regular cubes and octahedrons both have 12 edges, while regular icosahedrons have 12 vertices. Twelve is a pentagonal number. The densest three-dimensional lattice sphere packing has each sphere touching 12 others, and this is almost certainly true for any arrangement of spheres (the Kepler conjecture)

Twelveness is fundamental to the physical world. Interestingly, the element with an atomic number of 12 is Magnesium, a mineral essential to healthy functioning of all life forms, especially the human brain and nervous system. When powdered it is highly flammable, and burns with a brilliant white light. Health, in astrology, is very much the province of Jupiter; Jupiter’s orbit of the Sun takes twelve years.

Going back to culture I am sure you have come across plenty of examples of twelve in myth and religion, including the 12 tribes of Israel, the 12 apostles of Jesus, the 12 labours of Hercules, Odin’s 12 sons, and so on, so I won’t labour the point; however the most celebrated example in Western religious literature has to be the wonderful imagery of the Book of Revelation of St John the Divine, twelve verses of which (10-21) surely can only be read as a spiritual astrological allegory ...

10 And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God,

11 Having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal;

12 And had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel:

13 On the east three gates; on the north three gates; on the south three gates; and on the west three gates.

14 And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

15 And he that talked with me had a golden reed to measure the city, and the gates thereof, and the wall thereof.

16 And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth: and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal.

17 And he measured the wall thereof, an hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of the angel.

18 And the building of the wall of it was of jasper: and the city was pure gold, like unto clear glass.

19 And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, a chalcedony; the fourth, an emerald;

20 The fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolyte; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, a topaz; the tenth, a chrysoprasus; the eleventh, a jacinth; the twelfth, an amethyst.

21 And the twelve gates were twelve pearls: every several gate was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass.

Here surely is the essence of the square chart still used in Vedic astrology, reflecting the twelve signs and their associated gemstones, lit by the Sun, its pearls mapping the twelve months of the year.

May I draw your attention to Verse 17; it is of special interest to us, as it refers to 12x12, 144. This brings us back to the Dwad. ‘The measure of a man, that is, of the angel ...’ the angel being the I behind the eye. (A cubit is 18 inches; 144 cubits = 72 yards ... 6x12 yards.)

Applied to a nativity, it unveils the Idea behind the Form, the inner, unseen reality animating the outer, more obvious life. When we live according to that literally higher vibration, we raise our consciousness, our own City is Squared.

If we can rise further, into the Cube of 12, the 'superdwad', we come even closer to the spiritual in ourselves. Still connected to our dense selves (for we are all, with the worlds, the condensation of great Ideas) mentally we have risen above these in meditation or other spiritual practice, and become apparently new people. Look at your dwads and higher, and begin to know objectively something of your Higher Self.

On June 20th 1998 I took my place among the tenors (my voice too low for an alto)! in Canterbury Cathedral to sing Holst’s Hymn of Jesus. I was standing right at the central cross of the cathedral where North and South transepts meet the nave and choir below the Bell Harry tower. And here I was, an astrologer and a Christian, singing ...

The Heav’nly Spheres make music for us;

The Holy Twelve dance with us;

All things join in the dance!

Ye who dance not, know not what we are knowing ...

... just as the transiting Moon in mid-Taurus, the most musical of the twelve signs, passed directly over the Jupiter/Sun conjunction of Jesus Nativity (see The Draconic Chart - Flare 2013.)

So three years later when I at last bought my own web domain it was called The Holy Twelve. In 2010 - after seven years of getting nowhere - at last The Holy Twelve website went live. Despite being superseded by The Adventurous Astrologer in 2013 - because the software was so complicated it became impossible for me to manage - it is still there.

AT THIS POINT, AFTER due reflection, hadn’t we better move on and look at some charts?

Chapter Two

The I Behind the Eye

I behind the eye -

On the twelfth step of Being

Life enters and leaves

RUSSELL GRANT stepped out from behind a screen on the Strictly dance floor in a golden suit as coruscating as glitter-balls. Beaming at his lovely partner Flavia Cacace, he danced the American Smooth like a small animated Sun. He was golden again as he finally bowed out after their Jive.

I have known Russell for over four decades, ever since that day in 1975 when he turned up on my doorstep in Walmer to learn astrology. He is extremely Aquarian, and with his rising Libran Saturn also in love with maps and boundaries. His collection of British local history and plans is impressive, and he campaigned vigorously for some years against many twentieth century county boundary changes.

But - even given that Aquarius will often play to the crowd - there has always been a suspiciously Leonine quality to Russell. After all, he started out as a performer; showbiz has always been in his blood and he has the temperament to match it. Where is that Leo? Not in his Tropical chart, where all the personal planets are wintry; not in his Sidereal either, as the same applies and even Pluto moves out of Leo. The Draconic? No: the shift from Tropical to Draconic is only 11º.

But it is emphatically there; just as Russell has always been conscious of his own flamboyant nature, his joy in performing. It isn’t obvious from the birth chart as it stands, despite his 5th House Sun – this can express itself in many ways not necessarily theatrical. No, we have to enter another dimension to meet Russell’s Leo Sun: the dimension of the Dwad.

The Dwad, as explained in Chapter One, is a harmonic of the chart, and an abbreviation of Dwadashamsha, the term for a 12th divisional chart in Vedic astrology. (It should not be abbreviated to ‘Duad’, as this is a complete, Latin-based word meaning ‘a pair’. The correct term for a group of twelve things is a ‘Duodecad.’ A twelfth is properly ‘Duodecimal.’) The oriental Vedic system has understood and embraced the harmonics of the birth chart for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. Modern western astrology has been indebted in particular to John Addey and David Hamblin for opening our collective eyes to the significance of harmonic charts, as well as my American friend, astrologer Mark Pottenger with his love of technical detail.

To clarify again - the Dwad is not just a simple 12th harmonic chart, but a very special version. In the straight 12th harmonic, with every one of the twelve signs in the celestial wheel becoming a mini-zodiac, running as normal from Aries through to Pisces, it is indeed a 12-fold higher vibration of the wheel, with its own significance. But the Dwad is different; it is the wheel at the same vibrational level, but phase-shifted so that it maps perfectly onto the western decanates. The Dwad series of mini-signs within each sign begins with the ‘parent’ sign, and finishes with the sign immediately before it, as you can see from the table in Chapter One.

RussellGrant-Dwad_Outer.jpg

EVERY 2½º OF THE 360º wheel has become a full sign, each 10º decanate now holding four of these, beginning with its own elemental sign. Every sign of the original twelve now has twelve distinctive flavours; so unless born within the same 2½º of the sign, no two Sun-Capricorns, no two Sun-Leos, no two Sun-Pisces are the same. The Aries flavour will always be more go-getting, the Taurus more stable; Gemini will be chattier, Cancer clingier; Leo will add a degree of self-importance while Virgo shows modesty; Libra engages in dialogue ... Scorpio engages in battle! ... and research. The Sagittarians are the humorous, adventurous and philosophical souls, their Capricorn fellows much more serious and competitive; Aquarius will contribute its oddity, and Pisces its dreams.

It follows that the first Dwad of every parent sign is truest to the archetype, and the seventh potentially contradictory.

Dwads have been used more widely in the US than the UK; but all too frequently only the whole Dwad sign tends to be taken into account. What Mark Pottenger’s tabulations silently and pointedly suggested was that the very degrees and minutes of each Dwad position should be calculated and mapped back against the ‘parent’ radix chart, just as we do with any other chart derived from, and adding information to, the radix.

So what about Russell Grant, then? As his birth chart is now in the public domain I can show you. His radix Tropical Sun is at 16º17' Aquarius; so the exact position of his Dwad Sun is Leo 15º24' – still aligned with charismatic Pluto, but now lighting up the radix 11th House. Russell knows he is a star, potentially on the world stage. Sagittarius the Entertainer takes the Dwad Ascendant. I do believe that in the Dwad, that higher vibration of the astrological chart which is its natural fractal, we are looking deep into the ‘I behind the eye’, the inner sense of identity that may or may not be perceptible to the outer world, but which nevertheless from the secret spaces of the mind animates the lower vibration of the body.

Who Do You Think You Are?

Why, you may ask, am I so sure of this? Because over and over again I couldn’t help noticing that most folk born on or next to my own birthday shared a very interesting trait: they, like me, looked on life with an often wry sense of humour – and these are Capricorns so late in the sign that there is no Sidereal Sagittarius to account for this, and not always any Jupiter-ruled personal planets either. Only the Sun in the final, Sagittarius Dwad of Capricorn could explain this consistent attitude, and also that un-Saturnine love of performing! And a tendency to philosophise. The Capricorn and Sagittarian traits coexist, and you get the Dolly Partons, the Jenson Buttons, the Gary Barlows, the Michael Crawfords, the Danny Kayes ... Federico Fellini, Patricia Neal, David Lynch, Liza Goddard, Tom Baker ... so different from the far more intense and combative Scorpio Capricorns only a couple of days before.

So each of us has a solar core of the secret self that is our conscious, thinking awareness. Not only this, but a complete constellation of planetary energies active at this higher vibration within the Dwad, and sometimes surprisingly different from the perceived outer personality, the vehicle that embodies it and gives it expression.

‘Ol’ Blue-Eyes’

Take a look at ‘Ol’ Blue-Eyes’ – Frank Sinatra. Born on December 12th 1915 at 03h03 EST in Hoboken, New Jersey; Libra rising plus the strong squares from his 2nd House Sagittarian Sun and Mercury to Jupiter and Chiron in the 5th midpointed by culminating Neptune, all signal a man in love with the Good Life.

The personality is open, affable, greedy and generous by turns, and might be described by more sober people as an undisciplined, hedonistic maverick. There is nothing much here to