Öner Döşer - The Author
Öner Döşer, founder of an astrology school in Istanbul, Turkey - has published more than 20 books in various languages and has been teaching astrology for more than two decades. While teaching experience gives him a distinct advantage in writing books, he also has a flourishing consulting practice that enables him to further investigate various astrological techniques from ancient and modern literature. Mr. Döşer, a student of recently passed Robert Zoller, is very popular in the lecture circuit of the astrological community as he himself has shown way for some of the students to shine and one such shining light that I know is Gaye Alkan.
Finer details, Aesthetics, Preface and Contents
The Art of Horary Astrology written by Öner Döşer and edited by Dr. Benjamin Dykes is translated by Sibel Oltulu and published by The Cazimi Press under which all the books written by Dr. Dykes are published. The book has a striking cover image with a red background depicting a horary chart from William Lilly’s Christian Astrology (A lady, if marry the gentleman desired?, Chapter LIX) which establishes that the book talks about horary astrology. The book is printed in 6 x 9 dimensions which is a very comfortable size to hold and read with reasonably good paper quality. The margin space in the book is good and is comfortable to read both sides of the book. The contents page gives us the chapters in the book but I felt like it would have been good to have the sub-chapters list as well.
Who can read this book?
Anyone who is into the basic astrology like planets, signs, houses and aspects can read this book. Those who are already into natal astrology but are willing and inclined to explore horary astrology, this book might clearly put them on track in terms of their preliminary studies in horary astrology. There are not many traditional horary astrology books by contemporary authors that offer insights such as this because Mr. Doser has strong roots in traditional astrology despite his usage of some of the modern concepts especially the outer planets and Chiron as Dr. Dykes points out in preface. Reading this book through is almost a classroom experience.
Into The Art of Horary Astrology
The Art of Horary Astrology begins with an introduction from the author where he mentions some of the important horary works from history followed by the history of astrology in the Ottoman empire. Following the introduction is the first chapter which is the most important chapter especially for the new students of horary astrology. The author addresses some of the important aspects of horary such as the time/place for which the chart should be erected which is always a debatable topic between traditional and modern astrologers. He then does on to talk about the lord of the AC and the lord of the hour which gives a strong hint to the classical roots of the author. Apart from the commentary by Benjamin Dykes, (referred as BD in the book), and citations of historical works by Lilly, Bonatti, Masha’Allah and Al Biruni, the author also quotes modern horary authors like John Frawley and Lee Lehmann which makes this book more closely aligned with the classical horary works rather than self developed concepts. This is one of the important advantages of using this book as a preliminary material to get a good hang of horary astrology.
After dealing with basics like significations and meaning of houses/planets, geographical attributions to signs and classification of signs, the author quickly makes a transition into giving advice on actually answering horary questions which is a perfect book from a teacher to his students. In the portion where the author gives practical advice, he almost follows the renaissance pattern where he talks about the questions related to all the 12 houses. The portion on 6th house questions has a nice table which projects the body parts ruled by each planet and sign and I am sure this is very useful for practice.
After spending 75 pages on practical horary answering, Mr. Döşer moves onto the example charts where practical application is depicted. The examples are so practical and easy to relate to the current period because most of the examples are from the recent times. There is also an example, “Will we setup the astrology webiste? What are the problems?”. The example charts cover various facets of horary questions ranging from situations to lost items to illness to money to marriage to what not! Appendix contains a table of dignities and glossary where some of the horary specific terms are briefly explained.
The AB Verdict
If you’re new to horary astrology, you may very well start with this book and move on to the classics as this work might give a good foundation. If you’re an intermediate student and you have read horary astrology but have not had a lot of practical horary experience, you might find this book interesting as it is packed with horary advice and practical examples. If you are an advanced student, horary examples are for you to have fun with. We all love horary examples, don’t we?
The book is available on amazon - click here
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© Aswin Subramanyan 2020
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