We live in an era where there is vast amounts of information available to everyone, but very little real understanding as to what it all means.
This statement applies to the world of astrology, just as much as it does to any other subject.
Sophisticated astrology software gives us all the capacity to follow our pet theories down the most complex series of rabbit holes, and we are able to find “evidence” that they work. We suffer from frequency illusion, where we see what we are looking for while conveniently not observing what we aren’t.
But despite all this no-one (to my knowledge at least) has come up with a program that will tell us clearly what the chances are of our observations and discoveries coming up simply by chance alone.
My experience with astrology has been spending 40 years researching and testing as many methods and techniques as possible, extensively using the “P” test to determine what were the chances of any planetary distribution or transit effect having statistical significance.
It was only after performing this herculean 12th house endeavour that I actually made any public statements in the world of astrology. Since then, I haven’t stopped making them.
I have often been told by other astrologers that I speak with authority, and many times that was not meant as a compliment. But when you have tested something again and again over many years, such certainty comes naturally.
I have written a thousand articles about transits over the last decade. In the last few years I have penned some on secondary progressions.
I believe I have explained the essential difference between these two methods but when I discuss them with my readers, I still feel that there is a lack of simple clarity around their distinctive differences. So I will try to use this article to remedy that.
Everyone is on board with the fundamental statement of astrology which says “anyone or anything born or begun at a certain moment in time will carry with them the characteristics of that moment.”
It might be the only thing we agree on but it’s a good starting point.
From this point it is a simple step to the idea that the astrology of other future moments will interact with the symbolism of that moment in a way that affects the person or thing begun or born at that time.
So this gives us planetary transits.
In what form transits work is open to much dispute.
Many astrologers will tell you that a planet entering a sign where you have a birth placement will impact on you for the whole period of its sojourn through that sign. Which could vary in time from a couple of days for the Moon to 20 years for Pluto.
Some astrologers will tell you that transits have regular periods that aren’t related to any planet’s movements themselves. These periods have more to do with numerology. An example of this is profections where year 1 corresponds to the 1st house, year 2 to the 2nd and so on.
My experience through testing them is that neither of these approaches work to any degree other than what would come up by chance alone.
Astrologers use a lot of subjective language to describe the impact of their favourite methods. This allows them to say virtually anything they want to. Very few restrict their observations to simple, verifiable events in the lives of people.
My experience is that if a planet makes an aspect to someone’s important natal placement within 1 degree (not the 30 that some people allow), this will result in a significant occurrence in their life.
The further away that planet is, the longer it will remain within 1 degree of that placement and the less frequently it will make such a contact.
So for example Pluto might make one or two major aspects to your Sun in your lifetime but they will last for about two years each.
The Moon on the other hand will make a major contact every week and will last for a few hours.
So it therefore follows that a Pluto transit is about 2,000 times more powerful than a Moon one.
Every planetary transit in between will have its own level of relative strength.
The Sun will make a major aspect every 3 months and last for a couple of days, so therefore is 12 times as powerful as a Moon transit, but about 150 time weaker than a Pluto transit.
Saturn will hit every 7 years and can last for anything from a few weeks to a year. So is probably about 5-6 times weaker than a Pluto transit.
In practice we can’t be so prescriptive because a lot will depend on the relative strength of the planets in the person’s natal chart.
For example if someone is born with an exact Sun/Saturn conjunction, their Saturn Return will have a lot more power than someone who has the ringed planet unaspected in their natal chart.
But you get the general picture. The outer planets wield the most power.
This makes total symbolic sense, because the whole point of transits is that it is the world “out there” that is impacting on us. We receive this energy and have to adjust to its demands.
Secondary progressions do not work in this way at all. They have no relation to what is actually happening out there.
Progressions is a symbolic method based on the idea that the movement of the Earth on itself in one day has some relation to its own journey round the Sun in one year.
So if we want to know what will happen in our 30th year, we look at the position of the planets 30 days after our birth.
It goes without saying that there are no actual planets occupying these progressed positions, so it has nothing to do with out there. It is a subjective method.
The idea behind progressions is that we carry with us something that is unfolding with its own momentum as we go through our life.
Transits are theirs, progressions are ours.
For transits to work there is no need to believe in karma. We get what we get simply because we were born in that moment and this is the way the Universe is interacting within that moment.
For progressions to work at all, it must mean that we carry a pattern with us that has its own growth plan. This inevitably means there must have existed something before we were born that created or caused that pattern to be constructed and followed through as we live this current life.
So transits are the outer impacting on us, while progressions are the inner unfolding outwards.
One method that is frequently put forward these days instead of progressions is solar arcs. This is some kind of bodge job hybrid that takes the basic principle of progressions but only applies it to one planet, the Sun.
Rather than allow the same system to work for all, it demands that the Sun’s progressed movement apply to every other planet.
Of course the “advantage” of solar arcs is it gives astrologers what they all crave, a method that gives them twice as many chances of explaining what they want to.
Because by secondary progression, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto move so slowly that they won’t make any fresh aspects through a person’s whole life, so they become redundant.
But the whole point of progressions is that its the inner unfolding out there, so while we use the outer planets for transits, we have to focus on the inner ones for progressions.
So Solar Arcs as a method is philosophically challenged as well as not actually working in practice.
When we look at secondary progressions in this way, we can get a feel for how they actually work. They operate from the assumption that from birth there is something to unfold so they can’t be divorced from conceptions of a past life of some sort or other.
Apart from the progressed Moon, all the others are only going to make one major aspect with any natal placement in our chart in our lifetime.
This statement is based on the fact that it takes the progressed Sun 91 years to move through 90 degrees.
Mercury and Venus are more irregular than the Sun but on average the will have to do the same. Mars has an even longer period so there is no guarantee that it will make progressed aspects with every natal placement in one lifetime.
Venus is the one planet that is to do with attracting other people.
In following this method over many years I have come to see that progressions, particularly those that involve Venus will invariably bring a person into our lives that plays an important part in our unfolding karma.
It is difficult to explain exactly how this works but the best effort that I can come up with is to say that progressions involving Venus will bring other members of our soul group (and sometimes even our soulmate) into our lives to help us with the experience that we are meant to have.
The planets that Venus aspects by progression are likely to symbolise these characters from our soul group and the part that they play in our lives.
The simple fact is, if you restrict yourself to the outer planets transits and the inner ones progressions you will have all the major themes and events in a person’s life amply covered.
It’s only natural that the most important aspects of progressed planets would be their conjunctions to natal ones.
Venus can never be further than 48 degrees away from the Sun, which means that everyone is going to get the progressed Sun’s conjunction with it, or Venus’ own to the Sun in their first half century on Earth.
But not everyone lives long enough for that.
Princess Diana had Venus in its own sign in the 5th house and the Sun in Cancer in the 7th, so you can imagine her biggest longing would be to share her life with her soulmate.
But her progressions would deny her.
Any progressed planet will carry with it the themes of its natal placement, so a 7th house Sun’s progressions will inevitably be focused on that person’s married life.
In 1981 when she married Charles, Diana’s progressed Sun was square to Saturn, which is about as unromantic as you can get.
This, and the fact that an eclipse in Leo occurred the day before their wedding, persuaded a younger Capricorn Research to not be fooled by all the astrologers of the day, who were falling over themselves to predict happy ever after for the royal couple.
They split up in 1992, when Diana’s progressed Sun was entirely appropriately square to her Neptune, symbolising the break up of that marriage.
But this relationship was not one of love at all, because there was no Venusian component.
Diana’s Venus is 45 degrees away from her Sun and it wouldn’t reach it by progression until 2002, five years after she died.
In fact from the age of 11 onwards, Diana had no major aspects at all from the progressed Venus.
Diana’s Venus is at the apex of a tight T square between the Moon in Aquarius and Uranus in the 8th house.
This is symbolic of her sudden death (Uranus 8th) while being pursued by paparazzi (Moon in Aquarius).
The only one she did have was right at the end of her life in 1997 when her progressed Venus was conjunct her Mercury.
This Mercury figure was a member of Diana’s soul group who came into her life at that time to help her with her Venusian themes.
Dodi Fayed, with a Grand Cross in cardinal signs and cadent houses, was quite simply an accident waiting to happen.
With an exact opposition between the Moon in the 9th and a Jupiter/Uranus conjunction in the 3rd, he is not the type of person you would be advised to have as a travelling companion.
Particularly not when Saturn is in the Grand Cross in square to this opposition as it was on 31st August 1997.
Diana had her own troubling transits at the time with Pluto square to her 8th house Mars/Pluto. For more information on this event see Princess Diana’s Death – Why?
So we can see from this that the major events in our lives will be triggered by transits of the outer planets, particularly to those that they are connected with at birth.
Progressions, particularly those involving Venus will bring in a member of our soul group to help us go through those experiences.
Solar Arcs have nothing to say about that fatal Parisian night in August 1997. There are no contacts from them to anything of significance in Diana’s chart.
In fact the one connection that is relevant, the progressed Venus conjunct her Mercury is not there, because for some unfathomable reason Venus has decided to move at exactly the same speed as the Sun.
Astrologers are constantly making desperate attempts to use more and more nonsensical methods to try and describe events in people’s lives.
They will chase you into all kinds of underground tunnels with their dumb theories. And we all know how that ends.
Posted on 13 Feb 2024
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