Marc Jones looked at the Dial and decided against it, preferring to use the semi-sextile, sesquiquadrate and semi-square. Indeed now with modern software one can divvy up the whole chart into 22.5 – 45 or 135 degree angles very easily and ignore the dial, so it is a preference. Others go with John Addey and use Harmonics i.e.: the 90 degree dial is equal to the Fourth Harmonic because 360/4= 90 degrees but right now we are using the 90° Dial.
Back to the House Venture
When one decides to use the dial the first thing one must do is separate the various quadruplicities, qualities or quadratures (they are all basically equal) out. The common Placidean system makes that difficult as shown below because there are times when two signs are in a house and so Pluto at 29 Leo (fixed) and Jupiter 02 Virgo (mutable) are easily overlooked.
Worse is when two planets are in totally different houses like Mercury at 30 Capricorn in the seventh house, and the Sun at 13 Capricorn in the sixth. Obviously this is problematic when creating the Dial by hand, and to truly understand how a dial works, it is best to make at least your first dial, manually.
Whole House or Sign Per House
The best candidate for the dial is the Whole house method where every sign starts on the 00 Degree and spans exactly thirty degrees. The yellow houses are optional for our first Mel dial. We can add in the various points in later. The Part of Fortune falls at 28 Libra right next 0 Scorpio, so we can place that in as it is near a major star.
The Mel Dial
For the actual dial we make a circle and then divide it every 30 degrees for a quality: cardinal is red, fixed is yellow and mutable is blue. In the green perimeter are the Planets, Asteroids, Points, Fixed Stars, TransNeptunians that fall into each quadrature that we decide to use for our chart.
Mel has three planets in Cardinal signs: his Sun, Moon and Mercury, so we plot them on the Dial at their degree. We ignore the actual sign and house that the planet is in. We care only about their degree and quadruplicity, so the Sun is shortly after 10 Degrees on the Dial and Mercury is right at the Cardinal boundary. There are no other Cardinal Planets to plot so we done with that group.
Next we do the Planets that are found in Fixed Quality Signs: Taurus, Leo and Scorpio, starting at 30° for the zero point and 60° for the Sign boundary. After that we repeat the whole exercise for a final time for the Mutable Quadruplicities: Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces, starting at 60° for the start of the sign and ending at 90° (also our 0 point) for the sign boundary. You will notice that Mr. Gibson has no Mutable Planets so the Blue Area will be empty.
Download the Cardinal Mel Dial
At this point, creating the physical under-Dial is complete. Next to actually read and use this Dial you must make a replica one, download the Mel Dial and print out at 100% and the second one at 75% so the second one fits within the larger. Do not cut on the line but slightly outside of it. Put the 100% outer Mel on a cereal box and then take the smaller Mel and put it on top so it is lined up. Put a pushpin into the box and spin the outer small Mel dial around freely. The large Mel should be stationery.
You could use this setup for every Dial chart you create and that way get the dial midpoints but to know how to read those points, you would need Don McBroom’s Midpoint book next so you know how to create Midpoint Trees and know how to read them. Maria Kay Simm’s book, the Dial Detective does this too, thus it is matter of choice. Whichever way you go, look at used.addall.com for the best price.
You can make your “inner dial” or buy various ones from Penelope Bertucelli’s book store here. She has a lot of Uranian specific books too, but most of her inventory for Martha Wescott is out of stock, so check with Penny first.
