Re: Uranian Astrology Symbols

From: Asmus Freytag <asmusf_at_ix.netcom.com>
Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2016 13:54:11 -0800

Hello,

I'm investigating the possibility of adding more astrology symbols to Unicode. There is a branch of Western Astrology known as ‘Uranium Astrology’, or the ‘Hamburg School’, which among other things uses a set of 8 ‘astrological planets’ (Cupido, Hades, Zeus, Kronos, Apollon, Admetos, Vulcanus, Poseidon). These ‘planets’ have well defined symbols.

Here are some sites on Uranian Astrology:
http://theuranianastrologer.com/
http://uraniansociety.com/
http://arlenekramer.net/uranian.asp
http://www.uranian-institute.org/
http://eastrologer.net/uranian-astrology/
https://uranianastrologybooks.com/

The last one reveals that there are many published books on this type of astrology. However, blindly buying books just on the chance they might contain in-text examples of these symbols—to use for examples in the proposal—is not something I feel inclined to do.

Many books can be searched via Google Books. In that case, you should be able to take a screen shot of some text passage showing a symbol, and, with proper citation, add it to your evidence.

Therefore, I am hoping I can use pdf examples found on the internet, such as ...

The way to do this would be to give both the URL but also create a snapshot of the table or text passage showing the symbol.

http://uraniansociety.com/USIG_articles/article_history_of_uranian_astrology_michael_feist.pdf (page 13)
http://www.astrology-x-files.com/report/Johnny%20Carson-Asteroids.pdf (scattered use of symbols)
http://www.witte-verlag.com/media/djcatalog/TNE_1870-2070-Pages_4_5_7_199.pdf (not a very good example)
http://www.tonybonin.de/IQ-Jauch.PDF (Page 10)
http://holestoheavens.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/astro-copy.pdf  (page 2 lists a bunch of symbols)
http://www.rojn-info.com/images/1172753867/urephem2004.pdf (tabular data)
http://ridoux.fr/spip/IMG/pdf/-31.pdf (tables inside charts, not a very good example)
http://ridoux.fr/spip/IMG/pdf/-33.pdf (better tables, like on page 7)

In particular, I have found this page : http://www.astrax.de/download.html, which contains many downloads for what seems to be a German astrology magazine, and a quick check reveals that at least most of them contain in-text examples of the uranian planet symbols. This magazine might even have been printed — I can't really tell, since I don't speak german. 

"Hardcopy" isn't necessary as evidence for proposing characters. Again, if you can properly cite these and then include some excerpt (or screen shot) showing the use of the symbols. (Inlcude details on the nature of the publication, where available, in this case, it reads like back issues of "Kenner" are indeed offered in hardcopy from the site you mention).

Also, I've found a description of a TEX package which has them:
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/astrology/starfont/starfont.pdf

This document gives very clear depictions of the symbols and some people may know how one goes about searching for publications that might have used this package.

If the package covers all symbols you would like to propose, it would mean that it would be a good source for the fonts to create the initial list.

I would like some advice and input on whether this is okay, and if so, which block should receive these symbols.

If you can arrive at a well-defined set of these and document each member (with the screen-shots annotated to show which symbol it is evidence for) then that would be a good basis for a proposal.

Also, Eris:
http://www.moreplutos.com/AstroJournal-SeptOct2014_Eris-corr-opt.pdf
(The symbol used there can be unified with U+29EC)

When it come to unifying symbols, be sure that there's no "contrasting" use of them.

A./

Received on Sat Feb 06 2016 - 15:56:39 CST