The 90° Dial: the Main Tool

A dial is a circle marked in degrees with a pointer that turns. The 360° dial shows the zodiac as it is. The 90° dial folds the zodiac in four, so points that are 90° or 180° apart in the sky land on the same spot of the dial.

The Hamburg School cares about which factors are in contact, and contact is more than conjunction.

Why fold the circle

Witte writes that two planets in square (90°) or in opposition (180°) form a picture just as two planets in conjunction do. In another article he says that every aspect divisible by 45° counts. The 90° dial shows this whole family of angles at once.

• Factors at the same place on the 90° dial are really 0°, 90° or 180° apart.
• Factors opposite each other on the 90° dial are really 45° or 135° apart.

So the pointer reads at both ends, and all five angles count as contact. The cardinal, fixed and mutable signs each take one third of the dial, which puts a planet at 10° Aries and one at 10° Cancer on the same mark.

On the 90° dial 1° of real distance is spread over 4° of the dial, so even a narrow orb of 1° is easy to read. Some books of the school narrow the orb to 0.5° for the 22.5° family of angles; the app's default is 1° on every dial, and you can change it.

Where the dial comes from

In an article of 1919 Witte explains how to make a paper disc: draw the natal planets, the Aries Point and the angles of the chart on a round sheet, and pin it at the centre so that it turns. Turning it onto one planet after another gives sums of positions without arithmetic. In 1925 he tells readers to draw the natal planets, the planets moved by solar arc and the transiting planets on a degree disc in different inks, and to turn it.

The disc on these pages is a full circle. The 90° dial follows the later practice of the school; that does not come from the pages listed below.

How to read the dial

1. Turn the pointer to the factor you care about, for example your Sun.
2. See which other factors lie on the pointer's axis. They are in direct contact.
3. Look for pairs at the same distance on either side of the pointer. The pointer is exactly on the midpoint of such a pair.

Step three is the heart of the system: the pointer acts as an axis of symmetry.

In the app

Open the "Dial" page and drag the pointer or tap a factor's mark. "What the pointer reads" lists the "Factors on the pointer axis" and the "Pairs symmetric around the pointer". "Orb" sets how far off a factor may be. Contact on the 90° dial does not mean two planets are close in the sky, and without a birth time the dial has no Ascendant and no Meridian.

Sources

Articles by Alfred Witte. Page numbers are those printed in the journal.

• "Sensitive Punkte", Astrologische Rundschau, 1919, page 28
• "Das Planetenbild", Astrologische Blätter, April 1924, page 16
• "Direktionen und Planetenbilder", Astrologische Rundschau, May 1925, pages 52 and 53

The app's own conventions: the 90° dial, the orb, the three thirds of the dial, and the pointer snapping to a nearby factor.