From: Ernest Cline (ernestcline@mindspring.com)
Date: Thu Feb 05 2004 - 18:29:19 EST
While Unicode currently supports some astrological symbols
in the Miscellaneous Symbols block, there are some others that
see reasonably common use that might be worth including as well.
First of all, there is an astrological Pluto of which I have observed
three glyph variants. It consists of a small circle at top with a upward
semi circle cupping the small circle below with the semicircle attached
to a + like the one at the bottom of symbols for Mercury, Venus, and
Neptune.
The variants that I have observed of this symbol are
1) The small circle touches the semicircle
2) The small circle is separate from the semicircle with the same center
3) As per 2) except the vertical stroke of the + pierces the semicircle
to touch the small circle.
Most of the freeware astrological fonts I have seen incorporate this
symbol, and most of those also have a separate character for the
astronomical Pluto sign U+2647, so it may be worth considering
adding a separate character for the astrological Pluto to Unicode
instead of simply treating this a glyph variation.
Secondly, the four principal asteroids, Ceres, Juno, Pallas, and Vesta
all have standard astrological symbols. Ceres's symbol looks like
a right half ring atop a +, Juno's symbol is an eight rayed aster with
the bottom ray connecting to a + below, The symbol for Pallas is
a diamond connected to a + below.
The usual astrological symbol for Vesta looks like a pair of nested
v's, with a right angle between the legs, topped by a vertical tilde
(representing a tongue of flame and in some fonts is replaced by
a tongue of flame). The upper v is smaller than the lower v and
is usually sans-serif. The lower v often has exaggerated outward
serifs, and is sometimes represented with a flattened bottom.
( \_/ ) The two v's and the vertical tilde, while nested, do not touch.
Thirdly, the centaur [1] Chiron, despite having been discovered in
1977, has also developed a standard astrological glyph as well.
Above is a capital K with the vertical stroke continuing down to an
oval, wider than it is tall. (One source I have seen indicates that
the ratio between the major and minor axes of the ellipse should
be the golden ratio, but I have observed considerable variation.)
While there are other asteroids and centaurs that are used by some
astrologers, as far as I can determine, there is no agreement
as to what the symbols for them should be, nor which ones are
significant, if any. The vertical stroke and golden ratio oval of
Chiron with a symbol of some type atop the vertical stroke is used
as a basis of the symbols for other centaurs by some but not all
astrologers.A character for this centaur stem might be of use.
I have also seen two alternate glyphs for Uranus and Vesta
which my sources indicate are older representations, but do not
appear to be commonly used today, The alternate Uranus is
a circle with a center dot and a vertical arrow extending upward
from the circle. The alternate Vesta is a square with an attached +
below and a v placed so that the top of the square goes through
the middle of the v.
***
So here is the rough draft of a proposal:
1) Add six symbols to the miscellaneous symbols block:
ASTROLOGICAL PLUTO
CERES
JUNO
PALLAS
VESTA
CHIRON
2) Also space should be tentatively reserved for:
HISTORIC URANUS
HISTORIC VESTA
CENTAUR STEM
but I can't see actually making the assignments for these
based on the information at my disposal.
3) These points should be assigned contiguously.
4) The alternate versions of Pluto, Uranus, and Vesta might be
handled by Variation Selectors instead of by a separate codepoint.
With tens of thousands of numbered asteroids (several thousand
named), over forty known centaurs, and a host of other objects in
the solar system, I cannot see trying to reserve space for
astrological symbols for all such objects in Unicode. (Doing so
would require over one full plane!) Beyond a few common
symbols, such characters are clearly private use in nature
for now. However, the nine I have presented here are I think
worth considering, especially the four asteroids.
Input from someone who studies astrology should probably
also be gotten. I came to this indirectly from looking at several
freeware astrology fonts, trying to decide which one to include
on my system, not because of any great interest in the subject
myself. While I have looked at quite a few astrology websites
in the past couple of days, so as to determine whether there
were characters worth including in Unicode, I can't say that
I have done an exhaustive search of this field of knowledge.
[1] centaur - an asteroid/comet with a perihelion located
between the orbits of Jupiter and Neptune whose orbit crosses
that of one or more of Saturn, Uranus, or Neptune. The first
known and largest of these objects is Chiron discovered 1977.
Observation has since shown that Chiron is a large
comet like body (150 - 200 km in diameter.)
Ernest Cline
ernestcline@mindspring.com
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