Robert Hand

This is a collection of thirteen essays and lecture transcripts from the 1970s and early 1980s. Most of them have held up well, despite their age. In fact, the essay that feels the most dated to me ("The Moon, the Four Phases of the Feminine") only seems that way because the topic has been well-discussed and is no longer as unusual as when Hand wrote the essay.

I found the strength of the book to be in the topics covered, because Hand wrote about uncommon subjects. Even today, I haven't seen much discussion of how house systems break down at extreme latitudes. In another essay, Hand discusses the dodekatemoria (thirteenth harmonic), a technique that may highlight important themes in a chart, which sounds like a practical application for basic chart interpretation.

What will limit the appeal of this book isn't the age of the essays but the highly technical nature of Hand's writing. Some of the essays are non-technical, such as his exploration of the father archetype in the chart or the transits of childhood and young adulthood. But for the most part, the essays address technical issues in chart calculation and interpretation. As most of these essays were written before the era of the personal computer, many of them include explanations of the math involved so that readers can reproduce the results or use the techniques themselves. I suspect that these essays will appeal mainly to astrologers who have a taste for the mathematics of chart calculation, and I admit that I skipped over most of the math myself.… (mais)