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Raphael's Ephemeris is an ephemeris, or set of tables, used in astrology to determine the position of the Sun, Moon and planets. Raphael was a pseudonym used by the original author of the ephemeris, Robert Cross Smith.
An ephemeris is a table of the calculated positions of astronomical objects and various other data, usually for a specific time of the day, either noon or midnight. A uniform time measurement is needed to establish accuracy, and ephemerides will use variously Greenwich Mean Time, Universal Time or Ephemeris Time. Historically, the ephemeris was used for astrology and dates back to ancient Babylon. However, ephemerides became highly useful to navigators and astronomers, and were officially recognised by governments from about the early modern period. The first national astronomical ephemeris, Connaissance de Temps, was published in France in 1679. In 1767 came the Nautical Almanac and Astronomical Ephemeris, which is issued annually by the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. [1]
Raphael's Ephemeris was first issued as part of an almanac entitled The Prophetic Messenger in the early nineteenth century. 'Raphael', the name given to one of three archangels in the Old Testament, was used as a pseudonym by Robert Cross Smith (1795–1832), a former carpenter who had developed an interest in astrology. Smith first used the pseudonym in 1824 when he edited a periodical called The Straggling Astrologer, later re-published as The Astrologer of the Nineteenth Century. He also referred to himself as the ‘Royal Merlin’. [2]
The Straggling Astrologer was a relative failure, but by 1827 Smith had assumed editorship of The Prophetic Messenger, which was read widely by astrologers of the day, and contributed to a renaissance of interest in astrology in the nineteenth century. [3]
Raphael's Ephemeris was issued as a separate publication after Smith’s death, whilst others adopted and continued with the name 'Raphael'. The "second Raphael" was John Palmer (1807–1837), a former student of Smith's, who edited Raphael's Sanctuary of the Astral Art in 1834; the third was a Mr. Medhurst, the editor of the Prophetic Messenger between c. 1837–1847. Smith is sometimes confused with ‘Edwin Raphael’, who in fact was the pseudonym for the succeeding Raphael, (number four) a certain Mr. Wakeley (d. 1852). Number five was a Mr. Sparkes (1820–1875), editor of the Prophetic Messenger from 1852 to 1872, who even briefly edited Raphael's Ephemeris’ main rival at the time, Zadkiel's Almanac. ('Zadkiel' was the pseudonym of Richard James Morrison, an astrologer/inventor whose almanac dates back to 1831.) [4] Robert Thomas Cross (1850–1923) became the next Raphael, obtaining the copyright to the publication at some time in the 1870s. [5]
Robert Cross Smith was also responsible for popularising the system of astrological house division known as the Placidean, after the Italian monk Placidus de Titus (d. 1668). Placidus house tables, for locations in northern latitudes, are still listed in Raphael's Ephemeris, nowadays issued by W. Foulsham, a British publisher founded in 1819. (They first published Raphael's in 1836.)
The latest ephemerides have been calculated using data obtained from the astronomical ephemerides produced by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
The ecliptic is the plane of Earth's orbit around the Sun. From the perspective of an observer on Earth, the Sun's movement around the celestial sphere over the course of a year traces out a path along the ecliptic against the background of stars. The ecliptic is an important reference plane and is the basis of the ecliptic coordinate system.
The term ephemeris time can in principle refer to time in connection with any astronomical ephemeris. In practice it has been used more specifically to refer to:
The zodiac is an area of the sky that extends approximately 8° north or south of the ecliptic, the apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere over the course of the year. The paths of the Moon and visible planets are also within the belt of the zodiac.
A horoscope is an astrological chart or diagram representing the positions of the Sun, Moon, planets, astrological aspects and sensitive angles at the time of an event, such as the moment of a person's birth. The word horoscope is derived from the Greek words ōra and scopos meaning "time" and "observer". Other commonly used names for the horoscope in English include natal chart, astrological chart, astro-chart, celestial map, sky-map, star-chart, cosmogram, vitasphere, radical chart, radix, chart wheel or simply chart. It is used as a method of divination regarding events relating to the point in time it represents, and it forms the basis of the horoscopic traditions of astrology.
In astronomy and celestial navigation, an ephemeris gives the trajectory of naturally occurring astronomical objects as well as artificial satellites in the sky, i.e., the position over time. The etymology is from Latin ephemeris 'diary' and from Greek ἐφημερίς (ephemeris) 'diary, journal'. Historically, positions were given as printed tables of values, given at regular intervals of date and time. The calculation of these tables was one of the first applications of mechanical computers. Modern ephemerides are often computed electronically, from mathematical models of the motion of astronomical objects and the Earth. However, printed ephemerides are still produced, as they are useful when computational devices are not available.
William Lilly was a seventeenth century English astrologer. He is described as having been a genius at something "that modern mainstream opinion has since decided cannot be done at all" having developed his stature as the most important astrologer in England through his social and political connections as well as going on to have an indelible impact on the future course of Western astrological tradition.
Barycentric Dynamical Time is a relativistic coordinate time scale, intended for astronomical use as a time standard to take account of time dilation when calculating orbits and astronomical ephemerides of planets, asteroids, comets and interplanetary spacecraft in the Solar System. TDB is now defined as a linear scaling of Barycentric Coordinate Time (TCB). A feature that distinguishes TDB from TCB is that TDB, when observed from the Earth's surface, has a difference from Terrestrial Time (TT) that is about as small as can be practically arranged with consistent definition: the differences are mainly periodic, and overall will remain at less than 2 milliseconds for several millennia.
Newcomb's Tables of the Sun is a work by the American astronomer and mathematician Simon Newcomb, published in volume VI of the serial publication Astronomical Papers Prepared for the Use of the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac. The work contains Newcomb's mathematical development of the position of the Earth in the Solar System, which is constructed from classical celestial mechanics as well as centuries of astronomical measurements. The bulk of the work, however, is a collection of tabulated precomputed values that provide the position of the sun at any point in time.
Richard James Morrison was an English astrologer, commonly known by his pen name Zadkiel and best known for the series known as Zadkiel's Almanac.
Jeff Mayo was an English astrologer and astrology teacher/writer.
Robert Thomas Cross was a British astrologer.
The Astronomical Almanac is an almanac published by the United States Naval Observatory (USNO) and Her Majesty's Nautical Almanac Office (HMNAO); it also includes data supplied by many scientists from around the world. It is considered a worldwide resource for fundamental astronomical data, often being the first publication to incorporate new International Astronomical Union resolutions. The almanac largely contains solar system ephemeris and catalogs of selected stellar and extragalactic objects. The material appears in sections, each section addressing a specific astronomical category. The book also includes references to the material, explanations, and examples. It is available one year in advance of its date.
Jet Propulsion Laboratory Development Ephemeris designates one of a series of mathematical models of the Solar System produced at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, for use in spacecraft navigation and astronomy. The models consist of numeric representations of positions, velocities and accelerations of major Solar System bodies, tabulated at equally spaced intervals of time, covering a specified span of years. Barycentric rectangular coordinates of the Sun, eight major planets and Pluto, and geocentric coordinates of the Moon are tabulated.
The Nautical Almanac has been the familiar name for a series of official British almanacs published under various titles since the first issue of The Nautical Almanac and Astronomical Ephemeris, for 1767: this was the first nautical almanac to contain data dedicated to the convenient determination of longitude at sea. It was originally published from the Royal Greenwich Observatory in England. A detailed account of how the publication was produced in its earliest years has been published by the National Maritime Museum.
Robert Cross Smith (1795-1832) was an English astrologer, writing under the pseudonym of "Raphael".
Placidus de Titis was an Olivetan monk and professor of mathematics, physics and astronomy at the University of Pavia from 1657 until his death. Placidus popularized the system of astrological houses now known as the "Placidian system", current in modern astrology. He did not invent the method; it is acknowledged by the 12th century Hebrew astrologer Abraham Ibn Ezra as the system employed by Ptolemy, an attribution that was accepted by Placidus.
Johannes Stadius or Estadius, was a Flemish astronomer, astrologer, and mathematician. He was one of the important late 16th-century makers of ephemerides, which gave the positions of astronomical objects in the sky at a given time or times.
A fundamental ephemeris of the Solar System is a model of the objects of the system in space, with all of their positions and motions accurately represented. It is intended to be a high-precision primary reference for prediction and observation of those positions and motions, and which provides a basis for further refinement of the model. It is generally not intended to cover the entire life of the Solar System; usually a short-duration time span, perhaps a few centuries, is represented to high accuracy. Some long ephemerides cover several millennia to medium accuracy.
Rider's British Merlin was one of the earliest almanacs to be published, issued from 1656 until at least 1830.
George Parker (1654–1743) was an English astrologer and almanac maker, known as a controversialist.
‘The Seven Faces of Raphael’, by Kim Farnell
A Manual of Astrology, or The Book of the Stars, by Raphael (Robert Cross Smith) 1828.
The Familiar Astrologer, by Raphael (Robert Cross Smith) 1832.
The Guide to Astrology: containing a complete system of genethliacal astrology, by Raphael, 1905.