Solar Fire v9

By Esoteric Technologies Pty Ltd

Getting Help in Solar Fire v9

Solar Fire v9 has been comprehensively documented in its built-in Help system file. This file contains detailed cross-
referenced and indexed descriptions of all of Solar Fire v9’s features, and is accessible anywhere from within Solar Fire v9
via the F1 function key.

The help information is context-sensitive, which means that the help file will open to the most relevant section, depending
on the context in which you have invoked it.

You can easily browse the help via its table of contents, scroll the help file via its index, or do a search using any word or
keywords that you choose to get a list of links to all relevant topics.

Installation instructions
Please find the full installer for Solar Fire 9.0.19 at
http://esotech.net/software/solarfire/SolarFire_9.0.19_Full.exe
The Patch installer (for those with earlier versions of Solar Fire 9) can be found at
http://esotech.net/software/solarfire/SolarFire_9.0.19_Patch.exe
Release Notes
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Version 9.0.22 (and Solar Maps version 5.0.5) - December 2014
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* Single bug fix for problem with inverted Asc/Dsc lines in Solar Maps in 9.0.21

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Version 9.0.21 (and Solar Maps version 5.0.4) - December 2014
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Minor improvements:
* General precision improvements across program. Dynamic reports previously
accurate to the minute now accurate to the second.
* Page Browser now shows helpful messages when there are no suitable pages
available in a category.

Bug fixes:
* Fixed, crash in editing user-defined points if a font was missing.
* Fixed, Dynamic report with Void of Course events was giving tropical angles
even for Sidereal Zodiacs.
* Fixed, Void of Course start time sometimes altered by applying aspect with
planet that moves to next sign before moon does.
* Fixed, slight Sidereal Difference inaccuracy over several millenia.
* Fixed, Solar Fire main screen time display can show the wrong Time Zone name.
* Fixed, Venus sometimes labeled Stationary on Helio chart.
* Fixed, Current Settings box on main screen has too small of a font.
* Fixed, crash when minimizing and restoring clock.

Eclipse Search bug fixes:

* Fixed, allow user to select multiple eclipses to add to chart list.
* Fixed, can't change Point set in Eclipse Search
* Fixed, changing points or aspects resets chart selection back to original
* Fixed, changing charts in Eclipse Search can lead to report with wrong
user-defined points.
* Fixed, "Include Aspects" checkbox should be greyed out when the search isn't
based on aspects.

Solar Maps bug fixes:

* Fixed, Solar Maps not remembering point color changes.
* Fixed, Star glyph boxes too narrow
* Fixed, Point and Star selection doesn't work on Windows Surface.
* Fixed, horizontal green-blue lines sometimes going across rectangular whole
earth map.
* Fixed, land sometimes miscolored as sea
* Fixed, PgUp/PgDown zoom often gets wrong cities (wrong detail map)
* Fixed, Solar Maps load parans has inactive "Create" button
* Fixed, Solar Maps doesn't support Mailto: email protocol.
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Version 9.0.20 - September 2014
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Bug fixes:
* Fixed, crash on startup when printer missing or inaccessible. (Sometimes
looked like a crash while writing to "Objects.dfn".)
* Fixed, occasional user getting missing "NakGlyphs.dat" file.
* Fixed, Electional search complains inappropriately when switching aspect set
and "Any Soft" or "Any Hard" aspects are used.
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Version 9.0.19 - August 2014
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Major Changes:
* The Appointments Manager has been redesigned to improve ease of use, with
separate feature windows for Appointments, the Client List, Client Details,
the Session Recorder, the Session Timer, Receipt Settings, and Client Import.
* Clients can now be imported from the existing Charts files, and can be
imported or exported to CSV.
* We've added support for display of the Nakshatra in Solar Fire wheels, using
a new "Et Nakshatra" font developed by Hank Friedman.

Smaller Changes:
* The Calendar and the Ephemeris are now both freely resizable.
* Added Chris Brennan's new design (the Greek Phi character) as an option for
the Part of Spirit glyph

Bug Fixes:
* Fixed, Dynamic Report sometimes generating aspects to many points at once.
* Fixed, "Parallels aren't parallel" in report results.
* Fixed a crash in Dynamic Reports when running a report with extra radix
asteroids.
* Fixed, crash when launching Animated Chart directly from Electional Search.
* Fixed, Sun reported as "Out of Bounds" on some Solstices.
* Fixed, "Beginning" items in dynamic report have simple degrees, rather
than signs and degrees.
* Fixed, changing the Dial Orb doesn't work the first time.
* Fixed, generating a second Time Map doesn't work if the first wasn't closed.
* Fixed, Zodiacal Releasing UI not going away when switching to Reports
* Fixed, Retrograde color not shown in color customization dialog
* Fixed, changing Display options doesn't update all the windows that need it
* Fixed, crash in Queue for Printing in Dynamic Reports
* Fixed, some users reporting error because of missing "Solfire9.mnu" file.
* Fixed, Dynamic Report interferes with existing Ephemeris results (&vice versa)
* Fixed, "Save Settings on Exit" should default to False in new installations.
* Fixed, multiple selection now possible for Composite Charts without using
control key. (Issue for Windows tablets.)
* Fixed, crash in TimeMaps when using stationary points.

Time Zone and Chart Animation bug fixes:

* Fixed, switching time zones in Clock leads to extra time shift when switching
to Animated Chart
* Fixed, stepping an animated chart by a month can lead to dates like April 31
* Fixed, current clock time used for transits even when default place has
different time zone.
* Fixed, current planetary positions on home screen are wrong when system
time zone doesn't match default place.
* Fixed, wrong time in "Now" chart when default place has different time zone.
* Fixed, stepping by an hour around Daylight Savings transitions doesn't get
the missing or extra hour.
* Fixed, daylight savings gets stuck in the default place.

Pages and Wheels bug fixes:

* Fixed, Page Browser blank after being dragged off screen and back on.
* Fixed, new page with Temperaments object crashes Solar Fire
* Fixed, can't save new page from Page Designer
* Fixed, screen not updating after creating new page size.
* Fixed, default Wheel Designer size too small.
* Fixed, Help not working in Wheel Designer.
* Fixed, newly created wheels from Wheel Designer crashing Solar Fire.
* Fixed, Wheel Designer not using user's custom color settings.
* Fixed, Wheel Designer crash on exit when used from Solar Fire

New pages and user files:

* Jessica Adams' Roman Astrology package (http://jessicaadams.com)
* New single-chart page, RomanAstrology.pag
* Aspects, wheels, and points used in that page, with file names beginning
with "AsteroidAstrology-JessicaAdams".

* Two-chart pages:
* DualCenterCap.pag - two wheels in different colors, with synastry tables.
* dualudp.pag - Two wheels, each with its own User-Defined point grid
* synastrygroup.pag - Four wheels: Chart 1, chart 2, a biwheel with 1 in the
center, and a biwheel with 2 in the center.

* Single-chart pages:
* Horary_trad_planets.pag - Horary chart using traditional (pre-Uranus)
planets, major aspects, and Ptolemy's fixed stars.
* Horary2_trad_planets.pag - a second arrangement of a traditional planet
horary chart.
* Tradit3.pts - traditional point set used by the above pages.
* LotsOfPtsGrids.pag - what it says, lots of grids of data, no chart.
* Whl_Ext_Usr_Ecl.pag - a wheel with Extra pts, User pts, and Eclipse pts.
* uniudpl.pag - a page with a larger user-defined points table.
* wheel.pag - A page with nothing but the chart, nice and simple.
* wheel_lat_dec.pag - Chart with Latitude, Declination, and Longitude
Equivalent Declination boxes
* New "Three Liliths" page
* Includes new glyph for the "Dark Moon"

* New wheel files:

* Uni11.wh1 - clean and minimal, with lots of space for writing.
* Uni12.wh1 - another simple wheel, similar to the old printed chart blanks.

* Updates to the Solar Fire "Et Symbol 3" and "Et Asteroids 1a" fonts, along
 with the new "Et Nakshatra" font.

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Version 9.0.18 - May 2014
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* Updated help files for Solar Fire 9 and Solar Maps 5

Bug fixes:
* Fixed, full install of version 9 was overwriting some user files from SF8.
* Fixed, "No text available" still turning up in interpretations.
* Fixed, transits not showing up in "Dynamic Item Summary".
* Fixed, 2nd point house info mistakenly included in Dyn Report Eclipses.
* Fixed, Calendar printout not using whole page.
* Fixed, user-selected font not used in Preview window.
* Fixed, user-selected font mistakenly used in Eclipse report.
* SF9 Background screen now higher resolution

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Version 9.0.17 - March 2014
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Bug fixes:
* Fixed, Animate page sometimes coming up blank
* Fixed, "Save As" failing in Page Designer
* Fixed, crash when attempting to run an Ashtkoot report.
* Fixed, Copy from Dynamic Report had a lot of blank lines.

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Version 9.0.16 - March 2014
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* Dozens of new wheels and dials
* Several new page files
* New house system: South node on 1st house cusp

Bug fixes:
* Page Browser was only showing single-chart pages when launched from
the main window of Solar Fire.
* Fix for crash when right-clicking in the background of certain pages.
* Removed "No text available" from interps reports, simply leaving the space
blank if there is no interp info for a particular aspect or position.
* Fix for house display in Dynamic Reports when using User-Defined Points
with special fonts.
* There had been some oversized text in certain pages.
* Using the Hyleg page was causing Solar Fire to forget the current aspect file

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Version 9.0.15 - March 2014
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* Page Designer and Page Browser in Solar Fire heavily revised to make it
easier to work with the wide range of pages available in Solar Fire.
* Page Browser now available in Page Designer as well
* Graphic backgrounds visible in Page Designer, and in Page Browser if
desired.
* Click-and-drag interactions in Page Designer more intuitive.
* Can Shift-Drag pages in the Page Browser to add them to a second category.
* 8 New Page Designs from Hank Friedman; loads of information available at
a glance.

Bug fixes:
* Page designs with BMP graphics were colormapped, and looked bad.
* Animated chart was still "twitching" after switching to Clock
* Animated chart always had "Pointer" menu in upper-left corner. (Should
just be a right-click menu for Dials.)
* It was possible to launch multiple animated chart windows, leading to
instability.
* Couldn't assign new Johndro glyph to aspect.
* User-Defined Points looked wrong in Dynamic Reports.
* Aspect report was using Point glyphs instead of Aspect glyphs.
* Couldn't click to animate when viewing a non-standard page style.
* Some Norwegian towns were not recognized in the atlas.
* Art_AngelPair page style was crashing on print.
* Art_BeautifulValley page style was missing the beautiful valley.

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 Version 9.0.14 - February 2014
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* Eclipse Report heavily revised and updated to match other reports in style
(both for viewing and for printing)
* New Background screen (SF9Back.jpg) to celebrate the release of Solar Fire 9
* Added an option to display the opposition between the North and South Nodes
of the Moon
* Automatically using our new glyph for Part of Spirit
* Fixed, Aspect file changes after using Calendar
* Fixed, Dynamic Report deletions cause problems in subsequent reports

User-Defined Points issues:

* Fixed, User-Defined Points lead to crash in Midpoint reports
* Fixed, User-Defined Points still showing up on Calendar after None.ptu
selected

Solar Maps issues:

* Fixed, Tooltip missing for Solar Maps Parans mode button
* Fixed, Solar Maps lines for Asc/MC not updating after relocation
* Fixed, Solar Maps needs to refresh the map after editing the city list.

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Version 9.0.13 - January 2014
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New features in Solar Fire 9:
* Zodiacal Releasings report
* Ability to graph financial data in the Graphical Ephemeris
* Chart file merging
* Lunar Gardening Calendar
* Primary Directions improvements
* Primary Mundane or Primary Zodiacal options
* Placidus or Regiomontanus methods for computing directions
* Several new Primary Directions Rate Keys
* Classical or modern definitions of Converse directions
* Whole Sign Part of Fortune house system
* Toolbar toggle button to switch between Geocentric and Heliocentric
* New improved icons for the Solar Fire suite of programs
* New symbols for Salacia, Orcus, Vulcano, Galactic Center, and
Super Galactic Center

* Charubel and Solar Returns interpretation files

* Email features (such as mailing a chart, email registration, etc) have been
extended to work with non-MAPI email systems.
* New Wheel Styles (Bizod2, Bizod3, Euro5c, Tri4)
* New Chart files
* Horse racing charts – 100 charts of well-known jockeys and horses
* Over 200 new chart files for Politics, Entertainment, Royalty, and more
* Aus2014 expanded selection of Australian charts

New features in Solar Maps 5:

* Viewport navigation has been substantially improved.
* The Move mode is now directly interactive; the map moves as you're
dragging, rather than waiting until you release.
* Zoom is now available in any interactive mode, by using the Page Down
to zoom in and Page Up to zoom out.
* Using Shift with Page Up / Page Down zooms by a more gradual amount.
* Zooming works around the mouse point. For instance, if you have your
mouse positioned over London, and you press Page Down to zoom in,
the new map is positioned so that your mouse is still over London.
* There's a new Paran command mode, with a symbol like an asterisk
* Using this mode, you can click on a Paran line to turn it off, or click
on the intersection of displayed planetary lines to turn that paran
line on.
* While in this mode, when you hover over an existing paran line, or over
an intersection that could be used to generate a paran line, the middle
line on the cursor lights up to let you know you can click.
You also get a tooltip indicating the two points involved.
* Any operation done with this mouse mode shifts you into a "Custom"
paran mode. This can be seen on the Select Lines dialog (Charts /
Displayed Lines), in the Parans section. You can click on the other
Parans options to undo your custom changes.
 * You may also save or load custom paran sets (*.paran files), if there
are particular parans you like to work with. (Save and Load buttons are
located in the Select Lines dialog.)
* You can now save a map image as a JPG (using the Chart / Copy To menu item)
* Support for more displayed points from Solar Fire (such as Selena, Sedna,
and Eris)
* Clicking on a point in "Relocate" mode will automatically display the
relocated chart.
* New "Options / Enable Chart Angles" menu item to enable display of a chart's
Ascendant, Midheaven, Vertex, and Part of Fortune (normally not displayed
in Solar Maps).

Bug fixes:
* Primary Directions bugs:
* "Beginning" values (for Enter/Leave Orb) were inaccurate
* Transits to Directions were broken for Primary Mundane
* Getting "Transits to Directions" and "Directions to Radix" at the same
time led to errors
* Dynamic Report issues:
* Aspect Selection was blank in Dynamic Reports after using Ephemeris
* Tertiary Progression setting was affecting Transits to Solar Arc
* Turning on Lot of Spirit was crashing the Ephemeris
* Asteroid font had problems in Windows 8
* Reporting many Lunar Returns (in Chart / Lunar Phase tool) led to
small cumulative errors
* Error in "Direction of Divisions" tabulation when using rate keys other than 1
* 12-12-1977 date format was not recognized
* Harmonic Age charts were not showing Descendant
* "View Stellarium" wasn't remembering where Stellarium is installed.
* "Import Charts and Settings" weren't working for current backup format.
* Firdaria reports were missing many entries, instead saying
"No text available - old interpretation file version."
* Inconsistent results in certain electional searches involving aspects
* A crash would occur if electional searches were interrupted.
* Email technical support wasn't finding all user files.
* The Asteroids "Amor" and "Amphitrite" had their symbols reversed.
* Solar Fire wouldn't let you create a file with spaces in the name,
it was replacing the spaces with underscores.
* Solar Maps "Relocate" line always started at the upper-left corner
Documentation of major new features
Primary Directions
We revised and expanded the range of Primary Directions reports available through the Dynamic Reports feature.
 We added “Primary Zodiacal” directions as well as revamping “Primary Mundane”.
 Previously, we computed primary directions according to the semi-arc technique promoted by Placidus.
We now allow the user to choose between Placidus’ semi-arc projections and Regiomontanus’
preferred projections based on hour circles to determine mundane position.

 Fixed an issue with Transits to Primary Directions

 Made Primary Directions to Radix much faster
 Make several more “rate keys” available in the Preferences / Settings / “Progs/Dirns” tab:

o Cardan’s key (59 degrees 12 minutes)

o Placidus’ key (based on the true solar arc in Right Ascension)
o Solar Birthday Longitude (similar to Kepler’s key, but longitude instead of right ascension)
o User-determined rate.
 And (also in the Preferences dialog) we added an option for the Classical Converse or the Modern Converse.
These are two different approaches to computing converse primary directions; the Classical converse is computed
by switching the two points being compared, while the Modern converse (in use since the 19 th century) is
computed by reversing primary motion.
For more information on all of these features, please see the help file article on Primary Directions.
Zodiacal Releasings
Zodiacal releasings is a new chart report, found in the “Reports” menu, “Current Chart”, “Tabulations”, near the bottom of
the list.

For background material that explains the use of zodiacal releasings, I recommend
http://www.projecthindsight.com/articles/Zodiacal%20Releasing%20-%20John%20Kerry.pdf
The user interface for Zodiacal Releasings introduces something new – the dates in the Level 1, 2, and 3 releasings are
clickable. Each level 1 period generates a set of level 2 periods, and so on; by clicking on a date in level 1, you get the
corresponding list of dates in level 2. In this way you can zero in easily on a time in a person’s life, or look for a particular
combination of zodiacal influences.
This feature also offers a “Target Date” option. If entered, this aligns the releasing periods with the date given, providing
a full description of the influences around that date.
Importing financial data in the Graphic Ephemeris
This new feature is activated by a new “Import Financial Data” button in the Graphic Ephemeris Selection screen.

When clicked, it launches a browser entitled “Select the CSV file containing your data”. The user can select one file or
cancel.
When the user selects a file, the program does some initial analysis to verify that it can make sense of the data contained
within. If it can’t, the user is presented with this screen:
If the analysis successful, the user gets a screen that looks like this:

The controls on this screen include:

 Selecting or de-selecting columns of data to display in the ephemeris by clicking on them.
 Using the “Pick the Date Column” button to pick a column with date information (in case the program
has selected the wrong column – usually it detects the first one with dates).
 Choose a range of rows to use – these numbers default to all the rows in the file.
 Base the minimum and maximum of the graphing on all columns, or on a particular data column.
 Display the vertical scale option – this defaults to checked, and means that there will be numbers from
the financial data posted next to the angles on the Graphic Ephemeris.

Clicking “Import” sets this data to be used whenever the ephemeris is displayed. The user is then returned to the Graphic
Ephemeris Selection screen, and can click “View” to see the ephemeris. The display looks like this:
The financial data’s scale is shown on the left – from 33 at the 40-degree line up to 126 at the 0-degree line.
Note – nothing about this process actually requires that the spreadsheet data be financial in nature. Anything you can put
in a spreadsheet over time is available for this feature; some users have mapped their weight over time, or their children’s
height.
Merging Chart Files
We now provide a way for users to merge their chart files together. This is especially useful if you’ve been working on
multiple computers, or working on a computer and on your iPad with the “Astro Gold” application; you may find that
you’ve added some charts on one machine and added others on the other, and want to bring them back into a single file
you can use on both machines.
To access this feature, from the Solar Fire main menu, click Chart / Open. Then click “File” in the upper-left corner to get
a list of your chart files. Select the “destination file” (the file you want to merge charts into), and click “Merge”.

You can then add as many files as you like from the left column into the set that will be merged on the right. The
Destination file is indicated in blue at the lower right. You can also browse to different folders on your computer, such as a
folder where you stored backups or a USB drive containing charts from another computer.
In the picture above, I’m combining my “Apollo_MyCharts”, “Apollo_2008_InnerBelovedClass”, and
“Apollo_2012_VenusTransitClass” files together into the “Apollo_AllMyCharts” file.
The Merge feature is also now a part of the “Import Charts And Settings” Utility which can be used to restore your user
files from a backup. There’s a checkbox to automatically “Merge chart files with the same name”.

Lunar Gardening Calendar

Our Calendar has been revised to include Gardening recommendations based on the phases and signs of the Moon. This
information is placed in the top center of each calendar day, in green text. This feature is turned on in Calendar Settings,
with the “Show Gardening Times” checkbox.
The gardening advice provided is based on the following principles:
 The actual days of the New Moon and Full Moon are considered poor days for any gardening activity,
and more appropriate for ceremony.
 The Third Quarter phase of the moon (from third quarter to full) is considered poor for planting, but
good for garden maintenance such as weeding or harvesting.
 The other phases of the moon are good for planting and transplanting, and the type of planting that’s
most suitable is based on the sign the moon is in. Water signs are good for leafy vegetables, Earth signs
for root crops, Air signs for flowers, and Fire signs for vegetables or fruits with internal seeds. (This is in
line with Rudolf Steiner’s approach to Biodynamic agriculture.) Note that the advice is provided based
on the position of the moon at noon; please observe the actual time of ingress of the moon from one
sign to the next for more specific planting timing.