A continuation of the Facebook post theme

After looking at the planets we should then consider their aspects, their angular relationships, how they fit together.

This is where my approach to astrology differs so much from the books, because my experience is that in terms of life themes, aspects are key.

Many astrologers would say the purpose of studying the subject is to understand personality and that this alone would be enough to give us an insight into our lives, because character influences destiny.

Hence the focus on the signs to describe the personality.

I would say that life themes are clearly identifiable in a chart through the interplanetary aspects.

My view is that they are more important than personality, but that could be because as a Sun, Moon, Ascendant Capricorn, I don’t actually have one.

In simple terms, aspects are either uniting, supporting or challenging.

The conjunction is a uniting aspect.

This is when two planets are close together within 10 degrees.

The conjunction represents a unity of energies that greatly concentrates on and strengthens the particular area of the chart.

Generally this is an auspicious aspect but much depends on the planets involved and how naturally sympathetic they are to each other.

The Sun conjunct Jupiter would be a great blessing, but with Mars conjunct Saturn the planets are so different it would be like driving a car with one foot on the accelerator and one on the brake.

Oppositions and squares are challenging aspects.

When two planets are opposite each other (again within about 10 degrees), the energies of these planets are pulling in very different directions.

Oppositions are the polar opposite to conjunctions.

With a conjunction, the person is able to concentrate more resources into a chosen direction or mode of expression.

With an opposition, the individual will not be able to choose one path alone but will be compelled to deal with two.

Integrating oppositions into a life is difficult and can require quite a lot of energy to deal with the conflicts that can be created by these two opposing pulls.

For personal growth and achievement oppositions can be very useful and even essential.

Square aspects are when planets are 90 degrees apart (with an orb of up to 10 degrees).

These aspects work like mini oppositions mainly because of the houses, angles or signs of the chart involved.

Any signs that are 3 apart in the Zodiac will be of very different elements ( i.e Fire / Water, Earth / Fire, Air / Earth or Water / Air ) but they will have the same quadruplicity.

So for example the Sun in Taurus square the Moon in Leo would have the two planets working in very different directions but with the same persistent, fixed manner.

Likewise the houses. If the Sun is in the 10th house and square the Moon in the 7th, the person’s career path and plans will likely be at odds with their needs in relationship and this dynamic will create difficulties for them to address and deal with.

So again, tension and conflict is part of the square aspect but this generates activity in life in order to integrate the two different energies.

It is often said that squares and oppositions are aspects of achievement because people are forced to act in order to deal with the pressure that they create.

Trines are aspects of support.

Trine aspects are when planets are 120 degrees apart (again up to 10 degrees).

Signs that are 4 apart are in the same element so a degree of ease and harmony exists between them.

When planets are in trine to each other, things come easily to the person and these aspects are traditionally thought of as beneficial.

When occurring by transit they don’t tend to correspond to events as much as the challenging or uniting ones do.

They are more likely to produce feelings of ease and comfort along with a sense that nothing in particular needs to be done.

They don’t force a person to go out and achieve things in the way that the other aspects do.

Sextile aspects are also ones of support.

These occur when planets are 60 degrees apart (an orb of up to 6 degrees).

Signs that are 2 apart are not in the same element but are complimentary like Earth / Water or Fire / Air.

This is another aspect of sympathy and harmony and operates like a smaller scale trine.

Again they are aspects of ease and are less likely to force someone into action because there is no compelling factor.

With aspects, the tighter or closer they are, the greater the drama and then stronger role they will play in a person’s life.

An exact aspect (within 1 or 2 degrees) is impossible to ignore.

The major patterns of a person’s life are likely to be more defined by conjunctions, oppositions and squares than the other easier aspects.

Above all else, I wish to keep astrology simple.

I want to show people what absolutely does work and has been proven to do so again and again.

I don’t want these themes to be diluted by giving too much information about things that are subjective.

So I feel no obligation to describe the planets effect in the signs of the Zodiac or even the houses.

As I said at the beginning the overwhelming focus on these areas to the detriment of aspects is weakening the overall understanding of astrology.

If readers want that information they can find tons of it in literally any other book or website.

It is my contention that aspects are the basics of astrology not complex add ons that should be squeezed in at the end of volume three.

Planetary aspects are extremely simple.

The only reason people have been led to believe they are complicated is literally because they have been left to the end of all the books.

By the time students reach them they are already overloaded with new information and find it difficult to process more.

They already assume they have the important features so they don’t bother so much about the aspects.

Aspects are the things that describe life themes and they are the ones that trigger events in our lives.

This happens principally through transits.

Transits are extremely important. These are the movements of the planets during our lives and their interactions with our natal placements.

These identify what kind of energies are operating in our lives at any given moment.

What we are looking for are angular connections of these current movements to our natal planets placements.

This is not the same as identifying a planet moving into a particular house.

As I have said before, it’s not our house. It is a space, it only has specific relevance to us if we have a planet there.

So if Uranus forms a conjunction with your 4th house Sun, it is quite likely that you will move to a new home or experience some change in relation to your family.

This will not be the case for the whole 7 year period (approximately) that Uranus will be in that house.

A transit is seen to occur when it is within 1 degree of a natal planet.

So if we are born on July 1st and have the Sun at 10 degrees of Cancer, the transit would start when a planet reaches 9 degrees and continue until it gets to 11 degrees.

If that planet is also in Cancer, the transit is a conjunction, if in Capricorn it would be an opposition etc

There can be a bit of leeway here and effects could be noticed from about 8 degrees, but would still tail off at 11.

This is because an applying transit (where the moving planet is coming towards our natal one) is generally stronger than a separating one (where it is moving away)

The biggest problem that faces astrologers and students alike is one of weight.

How much emphasis do we give to the many different placements in our charts?

My take on this is it depends entirely on how unique those placements are to us.

If we have the Sun in Aries, this is relevant because only 1 out of every 12 of us have it even amongst people of our own age.

For Pluto in Leo for example, everyone in my generation has it, so it has little relevance to me.

But if I had the Sun in Aries in trine to Pluto that would be significant because only 1 out of 18 people born that year would have it.

This issue of weighting becomes critical when we are looking at transits.

The Moon moves very quickly so would form a transit conjunction with our Sun every month, which would last for about 4 hours.

Consequently in the overall scheme of our lives, the Moon’s transits mean very little apart from a passing change of mood.

Pluto on the other hand can take 250 years to get round the Zodiac so most people would not even have a transit conjunction with their Sun.

On average, a major Pluto aspect to the Sun would occur every 62.5 years, so many of us would only get one in our lifetimes.

It would also last for 2-3 years, as opposed to a similar number of hours for the Moon.

Consequently our experience of it would approximately 700 hundred times more powerful and impactful on our lives as a whole.

So the outer planets transits are much more powerful than the inner ones.

This might seem counterintuitive when you consider that the opposite is the case when simply looking at the sign placements of the Moon and Pluto.

But if we always consider any astrological phenomena in terms of how unique it is to us, we can easily get the picture.

Another important point about transits, particularly those of planets that are outside the Earth’s orbit are the retrograde periods.

The outer planets’ transits in particular will have 3 points of contact with our natal placements (occasionally with Pluto this can be 4 or even 5).

If we have our natal Moon at say 15 degrees Virgo we have already experienced the first stage of Saturn’s opposition to it.

This started when Saturn reached 14 Pisces (the opposite sign).

Saturn then continued to move forward as far as 19 Pisces, it is now about to turn backwards.

It will come back to oppose the Moon again between 16 and 14 degrees.

It then continues further back until it reaches 12 degrees.

Finally it turns round again and comes forward to the 14 – 16 area for the last time.

This whole transit can have a threefold emphasis, with each particular hit bringing something of the experience.

Even so we consider the period of transit activity to be the whole one, from the first point of contact to the last one.

There seems to be a strong division in astrological circles.

One camp is the media focused, Sun sign horoscope columnists who might cryptically suggest there is more to their subject, but most of their utterances are fairly banal generalisations of the type that you would find on any new age influencers YouTube channel.

As a reaction to that, there is the traditionalist movement that claims astrology as a highly academic and largely esoteric subject only really available to those who can read Ancient Greek.

Both of these approaches are (as I have explained before) top down in the sense that edicts are dished out about what certain placements mean and the punters are expected to swallow them as gospel truth.

There is very little attempt to test any of these theories in action in any kind of consistent way.
Astrology, it is claimed is not an empirical subject. It apparently does not work like that.

This is palpably untrue, it’s just that what real research that has been done does not support their own favourite theories.

My contention is that astrology is not complicated. There are certain things that work consistently and we would be doing the subject a serious favour by focusing on them, and not getting distracted by vague generalisations that mean nothing at all or obscure practices that have no use as a predictive model.

I believe that a brief description of the planets and their aspects is all you actually need to build your understanding of the major astrological themes that impact on people’s lives.

Once you have those basics up your sleeve, start looking at the lives of actual people, either ones that you know personally or famous figures whose major life themes are common knowledge.

Don’t start with what it says in the books and try to fit life to that.

Start with what actually happens and see if you can find an astrological connection to it.

Focus on actual life events rather than subjective character descriptions. See if you can find a predictive method that triggers these events.

In order to do this effectively, particularly in order to test transits etc, you will need your own astrological software.

This is a bottom up, scientific approach to the study of astrology rather than a religious, tablet of stone approach.

This is how to learn the subject.

This approach will teach you skills whereby you are able to reach the essence of a chart very quickly.

Most people that I have come across, even including astrologers who seek to make a living at their subject are not very good at doing that.

So having given you some basic introductory pointers, rather than continue to offer the prescriptive what X planet in Y sign in Z house means like all the books do, I will focus on some simple examples and try and extract the main chart themes in a straightforward fashion.

To be continued….

Posted 13 Jul 2024

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