Transits only tell us the exact timing of an event predicted by our Solar return or Directions. When transits are unsupported by the Solar Return or Directions they are a spark without gunpowder.

Transits can stand alone, but you probably should find something to back them up if you're looking for eye-popping events. It depends on the level of the event. Saturn transits can leave us short of cash for a couple of weeks. Mars square a natal ASC-Planet conjunction can produce events that are important enough at the time to upset plans or ruin a day, but are forgotten over the course of a life. That?s no ?spark without gunpowder?.

This hierarchical approach has been stressed lately after all the return to older sources, and in the older sources the ancients used primary directions. Apparently, varieties of them. First come the primary directions ? but which method of directing? To require something that no one can agree upon before using transits should seems kind of silly.

Secondary progressions aren?t really all that old, comparatively, and you have to accept the idea that a day can equal a year. Symbolic units of time ? that ought to make a person stop and think. It seems most people are computing the angles incorrectly. And there are those who say that originally the progressed angles weren?t even used ? only the planets.

Solar arc directions are possibly quite recent, and may have even resulted from misunderstood primary directing. Is it valid or useful to base prediction on the Sun?

I personally am partial to Solar and Lunar returns. But ? for the birthplace or current residence? (I go for the current residence ? but none of that I?m-so-clever birthday-weekend jet setting.)

I?m not saying that the methods above are wrong and useless, only that there are so many questions behind them. This hierarchical approach toward prediction probably is necessary, but if there are so many questions and unknowns concerning the preliminary, longer-term techniques, then we should probably let transits surprise us by acting alone.

Just a quick question on calculating progressions - are the retrograde motions of planets like Mercury taken into account (I'm assuming they are).

My earlier calculations were done with free software available on the Internet since I am at work. I simply progressed the chart 30-something days after I was born. Mercury was Rx at birth, so it advanced far more slowly than my Sun or Venus did. Did I do this correctly?

Hi Sunny Dawn,

Yes you did it correctly. Secondary Progressions are simply this: 1 full day in the ephemeris = 1 full year of life. The Sun moves approx. 1 degree/year (and it's this that solar arcs are based on -- moving all planets the same amount as the Sun has travelled); the moon from 12 to 14 degrees/year (approx. 1 degree/month). Everything moves just as it did back then when you were a baby. Assuming you live to be 90, that's just 3 months in the ephemeris.

Tara

Sunny Dawn,

Below I quote Michael Lutin from a conference in Brisbane:

[If you look at the Natal chart as the 'terrain' - the Planets as the vegetation and the Transits, Progs (where our growth come from ) as the weather it simplies things. ]

[Progressions will not bring in anything we dont have Natally but Transits will do this.] Bernadette Brady

Another way to look at things is to position the self in the very middle of the charts acting as the conductor of the various instruments and the music. One of my teachers.

Julie K

Sorry for my recent message!

I wish you a better learning experience than me!

Blessed be,
Bernadette

First:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds, then, like Primary Directions are very close to Solar Arc Directions, except that you only use the Hylegical points.

Do I have this right?

Yes, you are correct they are quite similar. The only difference is Directions are more specific (having degree & minute calculations, for instance 1 degree = 1 year and 1 minute = 6 days & etc.).

Primary directions and solar arc directions have almost nothing in common. Solar arc directions are measured one way only, in longitude, i.e., along the ecliptic. Primary directions are the measurement of the planets in diurnal motion along the primary path of the planet. Primary directed planets, then, when plotted on a conventional circular chart are moving in the opposite direction of a solar arc. The primary path is defined this way by Rumen Kolev, one of the leading authorities on primary directions:

The celestial sphere apparently is turning around the axis of the equatorial poles. As a result, any point on the celestial sphere describes a full circle around this axis in 24 hours. The circle will be largest if the poin is on the equator. The closer the point to one of the poles the smaller the circle. This circle is called the primary path, or the diurnal-nocturnal circle of the point.

In other words the primary path is the declinational circle. In Primary directions planets movement along this path is measured. In solar arcs the planets are all moved the same number of degrees as the Sun travels each day after birth (roughly 1 degree per day but there are slight variances). Primary directions are natural movment. Planetary movement using solar arcs, except for the Sun, is artificial.

The degree for a year mentioned by Ptolemy is one degree of diurnal arc not one degree along the ecliptic. There are several ways to measure primary directions and several keys. The degree for a year is a key. Naibod used 59' 08". Cardan used yet another. There are at least 10 known "keys" used in primary directions. Ptolemy measured movement (actually the formation of aspects) one way, Regiomontanus another, Placidus used Ptolemy's method, but others modified that method. Even Kepler got into the act.

Finally solar arcs for a 75 year life span, play out over a period of 75 days in real time. All the primary directions a similarly aged native will experience will play out in about 6 hours after birth.

Calculating primary directions requires a knowledge of spherical geometry and trigonometry, or you can spend nearly $400 for Rumen Kolev's program. Calculating solar arcs requires the ability to read an ephemeris. There are more differences but the above should make the point.

Contemporary advocates of primary directions claim great accuracy for timing and symbolism, and therefore the use of primaries requires excruciatingly precise birth times. However this does not seem to be the way they were used. For example Jean Baptiste Morin deVillefranche (1583 - 1656) discusses the chart of King Gustav Adolphus King of Sweden in Book 23 Revolutions (Returns)of Astrologia Gallica. He goes into great depth of analysis of the King's solar and lunar returns and almost in an off handed manner mentions that in the year under discussion (the year of the King's death) he was under the influence of a difficult direction. In other words Morin did not use the precise hit date of the direction in his analysis. Instead he used it for general influence, then he used the solar return, and then the lunar return and finally the transit as a trigger. Which brings me to the main point:

Are Transits even necessary? This will ring out as a blasphemy to modern astrologers who are brought up on transits as the most important of predictive techniques, but my experience is that transits are best used as triggers after directions/progressions, and returns. And as John Frawley pointed out in a lecture in San Francisco almost two years ago, they serve as accurate triggers "sometimes."

Yes I'm sure there are examples or at least claims that this or that transit coincided with this or that event and there was nothing else to explain it, and those claims, on occasion might be true. But I can counter with examples at a possible a 10:1 ratio of people who have lived through one major transit after another that coincided with nothing, and that includes outer planet transits, the supposed big bad boys of the cosmos. I'm old enough to have "survived" not one but two Saturn returns, a Neptune square, a Pluto square, and A Uranus everything and having all these planets form hard aspects to each other's natal positions and in only one instance did any of that coincide with a major life event, and that was shown by other things.

Rob Hand addressed this very problem in his book Planets in Transit and again in his book Essays on Astrology. In both cases he tried to find explanations for the lack of phenomena during major transits. The point being that he felt the lack of events occurred frequently enough to require explanation and that explanation was found in an equal lack of other things happening in the chart. He gave the example of Patty Hearst's kidnapping. Now if there was ever a major event in a life this was it, yet Hand claimed (I did not look at the chart) there is nothing in the transits at that time to indicate such an event.

So instead of worrying about Saturn doing this or that when it forms this or that aspect with this or that natal planet, look to directions, progressions, and returns to see how the life is unfolding. And if your Saturn return occurs at the same time as nasty solar return - then worry.

Tom

Bernadette,

I compliment you on your English! As this Uranus/Mars conj has occured before some years ago, you have 'grown' since then and you may be very 'surprised' at your ability to deal with the config. this time around.

Be Impeccable with your Word.
Assume Nothing,
Take Nothing Personally
Always Do Your Best.

The Four Agreements - Don Miguel Ruiz.

Julie K