Background information on astrology
Enigma now supports primary directions, both according to Placidus and Regiomontanus. This is the last version before I rewrite Enigma into a cross-platform version.
On this site, you will now find an overview of all the functionality of Enigma and the plans for the first cross-platform version.
You will find more information on the Enigma page.
In June, I posted a survey on the Dutch Facebookgroup Astrology Blog. I was curious about favorite environments to run astrology software. 77 people responded and the results were as follows:
For me, this was a surprise. The once all-important Windows is still favored by only half of astrologers. And mobile platforms already account for a third.
Enigma is now only compatible with Windows, and that’s no longer enough. What you need is a cross-platform application, a program that works on desktops running Apple, Linux or Windows as well as Apple and Android mobile devices. I will try to create such a solution and make Enigma cross-platform.
An astrology application that works on all the aforementioned platforms has great advantages. In astrology courses, you can then work with one application that behaves the same on all students’ hardware. And in astrology publications you can use software that everyone can run.
Realizing this will take a lot of time. I don’t want the development of new functionality for Enigma to come to a halt for a long time, so for now I will continue to develop Enigma in the current way, that is, only for Windows. In parallel, I will start converting to another environment that is cross-platform. At the latest by the time Enigma is ready for release 1.0, and the main functionality is built, I will make the switch. I expect it will take a year or two. There is also a chance that I won’t get there and have to start over based on other techniques, but for now I am reasonably hopeful.
It would be nice if other astrological programs also become cross-platform. I am happy to contribute to that: the experiences I will gain will be available to everyone. Enigma is open source, which means that any programmer can see my approach and code, and reuse it in their own software. The only condition is that that software is also open source. In addition, I describe the progress of this process on the website https://radixpro.org . This site is about the technical and programming aspects, and aimed at other programmers of astrology software.
As of today, release 0.4 of Enigma is available. This release offers a lot of functionality in the area of declinations, both for analyzing horoscopes and for doing research.
The following functionality is new:
For research, you now also have the following methods at your disposal:
In addition, there are some minor changes:
Initially, I planned to include cycles in the current release, but I am moving that up to release 0.6.
Enigma 0.5 will focus on primary directives. This will cover a wide range of directions, so not just Wim van Dam’s method. I am also trying to add techniques from the legendary program Polaris – especially topocentric directions – to Enigma.
Enigma is free and there are no restrictions on that. You may use the program even if you make money from it, such as through consultations or publications. Enigma is also open source and built with up-to-date programming techniques. If I drop out, a good programmer can adopt it in no time. The program is extensively documented so you can quickly become familiar with it. And much of it is already tested automatically so the chance of errors is relatively small.
Check the Enigma page for more information.
A new release of Enigma is available. The previous release was only a few weeks ago but Enigma 0.3 still contains some important additions. You can now calculate Jean Carteret’s hypothetical planets Persephone and Vulcanus, as well as the corrected Black Moon according to the well-known green book of Duval and Font. For this, I use the formulas published by Cees Jansen in the Newsletter of the NVWOA.
Enigma now supports importing horoscopes from PlanetDance. You can export a complete database from PlanetDance and import the data into Enigma. Enigma then recalculates the positions so that you can always make new choices (house system, orbs etc.).
You can now specify which colors you want to use for aspects. For triangle and sextile, you prefer blue to green? No problem. You can also give a particular aspect a special color, which can be useful when researching that aspect.
Finally, I fixed two bugs: the menu for secondary directors was missing an icon. And the data files of Hygeia and Astraea were missing so you could not calculate these points. That is now fixed.
Enigma 0.4 will take a little longer and contain a lot of additional functionality. This mainly involves declinations. I am adding multiple techniques and also the ability to examine these techniques statistically. And I will start adding cycles. You can already calculate those via a separate program but I want to integrate this into Enigma itself, obviously trying to make improvements while doing so.
Release 0.5 will in principle contain several techniques for primary directions and the possibility of exporting Enigma data to PlanetDance, among others.
I am not yet looking much further ahead.
Enigma is free and there are no restrictions on its use. You can use the program also if you make money with it, for example through consultations or publications. Enigma is open source and written in up-to-date programming techniques. If I drop out, a good programmer can adopt it in no time. The program is extensively documented so you can quickly become familiar with it. And much of it is already tested automatically so the chance of errors is relatively small.
You will find more information at the Enigma page.
Due to personal circumstances, I was unable to work on Enigma for some time. But now, you can download a new release 0.2 which supports transits, secondary directions, and symbolic directions. Have a look at the Enigma page.
You can now download the first version of Enigma, in a new setup.
It is a basic version that I intend to expand greatly. See the page about Enigma.
You can download a new version 0.1.1 of Enigma Cycles. In the first version, something went wrong when calculating the heliocentric radius vector (the distance between Sun and planets), you got the right ascension as result.
In the new version, this calculation now goes correctly.
Enigma Parans 1.0 is a program for the calculation of parans.
The program calculates with high precision the times of rising, culmination, setting, and anti-culmination of both planets and fixed stars. It also selects the effective Parans based on these positions.
Enigma Parans is bilingual (Dutch and English). It is accompanied by a user manual and the program has a built-in help function. Enigma Parans is free and open source. More information.
Starting today you can download the application Enigma Cycles. This program allows you to calculate cycles for a large number of celestial bodies and other points. You can use longitude, latitude, right ascension, declination, and distance. You can work tropical or sidereal and geocentric or heliocentric. You can calculate cycles for a period of almost 30,000 years. The results are shown on the screen and saved in a csv-file. You can show the results in charts: both a line chart of the cycle and a bar chart of the frequencies. The program is bi-lingual (English and Dutch) and has extensive online help and a user manual. The program is free and open source. More information: Enigma Cycles.
A new version of EnigmaDedVM is now available. The program now supports the use of multiple combined control groups. The generation of control groups has been improved due to an improved handling of random numbers. See: Enigma DedVM.