And this is true about traditional astrology, as well. One might admire the techniques taught by Vettius Valens (Anthologies, book I), for example, without believing that "Saturn makes those born under him petty, malignant, care-worn,...deceitful, secretive in their trickery...sqalid, black-clad...with a natical bent, plying waterside trades."

You kind of have to pick and choose.

Yes I dont find his delineation of Aquarius one I will be using any time soon...

Men born under this sign are malicious, haters of their own families, incorrigible, self-willed, deceitful, tricky, concealing everything, misanthropic, godless, accusers, betrayers of reputations and the truth, envious, petty, occasionally generous (because of this sign?s flow of water), uncontrollable.

waybread wrote:3. The length of cycle problem.

This is one of the most attractive criteria. And indeed it bothers me that progressions (except the Moon) and directions don't fulfill their cycle during a lifetime. Still with the knowable-by-cycle-during-a-lifetime criterion, the classical planets could be said to have more effect in directions than the modern planets. Or this could give a reason to dismiss the use of progressions and directions and using returns and transits alone. Which I sometimes consider for this (amongst other) reason.

Even though I observed the outer planet transits till recently, when looking at natal charts, I got rid of them 13/14 years ago. In natal chart delineation 7 planets is enough and adding more gives us more excuses to explain anything one desires.

Another way of thinking about the invisible (to naked eye) planets/asteroids is like thinking about bacteria. Bacteria are invisible too but can cause any kind of disease or rather are essential to life, like the intestinal flora. In hindsight we can explain plagues and diseases of centuries ago with these invisible bacteria. On the other side, these diseases often sprang from big civilisations turned out of balance with nature. Before confronted with Western civilisation, the South-(and North) American natives were healthy but died of diseases, to which the Europeans were used to. So maybe a natural life doesn't need invisible planets, even if they work.

Another metaphor I like to use is that the three modern planets are like (recreational) drugs; they work and often in an intense way. Drugs differ with the traditional drug alcohol, in the small amount (of drops, pills or powder) which is needed to get an effect, as if the amount is almost 'invisible', compared to the bottle(s) needed to get you drunk. However this doesn't necessarily imply that you have to use the outers (or drugs). The countless asteroids are like the many popular vitamin pills and self-medication that can be bought at the chemist's. Most of them are ineffective and don't work at all, serving only the one who sells them, some might work but you don't need them if you use the normal food (classical planets) properly.

waybread wrote: I can really understand why traditional astrologers don't like Pluto, other outers, or asteroids. It is impossible to fit them into the astrologies (plural intentional) that developed prior to the discovery of Uranus. Domciles for the outers work for me, and possibly detriments in their opposite signs; but not the other detailed assessments of planets that a traditional astrologer would make.

But this assumes that the reason astrologers do not use pluto is because it doesn't fit into their framework of understanding. But Tom, as an example, has explicitly given his reason for not using pluto and it has nothing to do with frameworks - it's because he simply didn't notice anything major happening during the key periods that those astrologers which do use Pluto suggested he would. So in other words he doesn't use it cos he doesn't notice it actually doing anything. Not because it doesn't fit into his framework.
In any event, it COULD fit into the framework, we could continue using the same system of applying domicile and say that Jupiter rules Sag, Saturn rules Cap, Uranus rules Aquarius, Neptune rules Pisces and Pluto rules Aries.

2. The "visible" light problem. Of course the outers cast visible light. This is how they were discovered!

Well that's not quite true is it. We can discover planets by their gravitational perturbation upon OTHER planets that we know of. In fact, that's exactly how Neptune was discovered. Of course discovering a planet is different to observing it.

But I find it contradictory that individuals who enhance their communication abilities through computers and telephones; who enhance their mobility through cars, bicycles, or mass trinsit; or who put on a winter coat to enhance their body's ability to regulate its temperature--balk at the idea of enhancing our visual acuity through comparable technologies like telescopes.

Not really - we can argue that if one needs tools to see pluto, then why not argue that one needs tools to FEEL pluto's effect?

I cannot imagine that if the traditional astrologers of the past had access to telescopes, they would not have used them. They used other technologies available to them, such as astrolabes.

But their argument isn't "If I can't see it it doesn't exist", their argument is that perhaps because the light does not naturally make its way to earth so that it is visibly apparent to us, then perhaps so too does the influence of the planet not naturally make its way to us in a way that is observable/noticeable by us on this planet - at least not directly.

Moreover, the outers were predicted through mathematics before they were discovered, due to their gravitational pull on their neighbouring planet.

See above how this contradicts your own point (in pt 2)



Really one might suggest that until traditional astrologers actually DO make the claims that you've countered, all we've done here is attack straw man arguments. Again, if we take the original premise - do you feel pluto's transits or not - all of the above is irrelevant to the person who just doesn't feel those transits. So all of the above is really just a straw man argument against the possible WHYs that that person doesn't feel Pluto's transit.

But really we're not establishing (yet) WHY a person doesn't feel a transit, we're asking WHETHER they feel that transit. Once we know the answer to that, then we can SPECULATE upon why they do or don't.

One particular problem with Pluto is that its odd orbit makes it fairly obvious that it isn't a part of the regular astronomical planetary system.

Astrologically, its 17 degree variation in latitude takes it outside the Ecliptic as it is usually understood. Depending on how the house system you prefer is computed, a calculation based on the longitude / sign alone may end up assigning it to the wrong house; its north and south movement may mean that it's in another section of the tangerine than its sign and degree may indicate.

If anyone wants to know why traditional astrologers can't stand Pluto and to a similar extent the other two, I'll give you an example:

There was a recent discussion on an astrology list on the number of world leaders who have stepped down or been taken down in a short period of time and they even tossed Penn State into the discussion. Here is an entire post on the subject from a modern astrologer:

"Pluto, Heads are rolling for those in high places who believed they were 'untouchable' - no pun intended."

That's it: Pluto. Not even a transit to a midpoint between an unnamed asteroid and a hypothetical planet - just Pluto. That's all we have to know. And please don't try to persuade me that I've cherry picked an idiot to make my point. Several others praised this comment.

Now take out all your issues of TMA and lie them down on the floor. How many cover stories are devoted to one of the outer planets? I'll bet damn near every one of them. It's as though nothing else exists except maybe asteroids. Modern astrology has become homage to the outer three planets and every other bit of space dust they can locate. Rob Hand noted years ago in a lecture that he read a book on Chiron that, if taken seriously, the reader is left with the impression that Chiron is the most important body in the universe, but keep in mind this was said before the discovery of Sedna.

The late Maya Del Mar of TMA once opined that "Neptune is anything we want it to be." This is powerful stuff since it means we cannot be wrong if we assign credit/blame to Neptune for anything.

It isn't that Pluto doesn't fit into my framework (it doesn't), it is that modern astrologers their books, courses, and magazine articles have all but abandoned the classical planets and nothing but the outer planets and a large collection of space dust fits into their framework.

This is not astrology. This is hero worship at the level of Saturday morning TV cartoons, maybe not quite that high.

Today I was directed to a website article written in 2008 that predicted world revolution, war, the death of big business, virtually the end of religion and every other dire event we can think of (but not to be entirely negative predicted lots of good music perhaps in a vicarious attempt to bring back what he thinks were the 60s) based on one fact and one fact only: Pluto is transiting Capricorn. I thought Uranus was the planet of revolution? Isn't Jupiter the planet of religion and Saturn orthodox religion? Oh how silly of me. The solar system begins with Uranus. Those inferior to it are just flotsam.

This isn't a framework, it is a gelatinous mass. It has no form, no direction, and is anything we want it to be (Hey! why only Neptune?) It is projection of every pop psychology "issue" and current world problem onto three planets, so that no matter what happens, they can't be wrong.

There may be intelligent uses of these planets and bodies, but those using them intelligently are in the minority, and ought to be cheering me for pointing out what the moonbeam set is doing to our art. It ain't pretty.

I don't pump up the modern bodies, give them positions of "superhero".

But over and over again, in my own chart (life) and those of other people, I see their conspicuously contributory presence in return and transit charts.

1...Death (suicide) transit....nPluto 12th (self-destruction) square nSun....transit Pluto on date of death EXACT 45d00m to natal Sun.

2. Stabbing (serious threat to life)...Pluto Rx transit over nMars. Orb = 00d01m

3...Spirtual Enlightenment (Epiphany of long duration and deep effect)...transit/return Neptune in the heart of the Sun.

4...Legal problem resuting in serious financial constraints and other difficulties, .... Saturn transit over nPluto, timing 2 days....no other planet in chart was aspected by Saturn at the moment.


In a natal chart, it is certainly possible to omit the modern planets and in general attain the same results as with them. But as often as not the modern planets provide additional information, and often enough information that is not easily seen using only the visible planets.

Also, with reference to the eccentric orbital characteristics of Pluto, it is these very eccentricities from which the "meanings" of the planet derive. All astrological symbolism must be derived from actual celestial fact (as perceived by man on Earth...Mars is red) or the entire symbolical structure of astrology is reduced to hogwash. Astrological symbolism cannot and does not rely on mythology; mythology can help us understand the symbols more deeply, perhaps, but should never be a substitute for celestial fact as the source of astrological symbolism.

And, from my perspective, natal astrology is...first and foremost...psychological astrology (but perhaps not in the same sense that some of you have used the term.)

There are two things I have noticed in my seven decades of life here on this beautiful planet. First...ALL experience ultimately occurs ONLY within our own mind, and nowhere else. Second....our mind Literally Creates our reality. Our personal reality is nothing more than a projection of our inner self. Any event in life has its origin in the psyche, and when it occurs reverberates through the psyche, and our destiny is built up brick upon brick.

Therefore, a deep understanding of a chart as a charting of the psyche and not simply a chronology of Coming Events gives us a holistic perspective, and a meaningful one, on the life.

Events do not just happen to us. We go out to meet them, or draw them to us. That is why, even though the event is external and independent of us, it does not happen to us unless we "call it." The underlying cause of any event that "happens to us" is deeply rooted in our own psyche, and in that sense we create the event.

Story to Illustrate: Phoenix, Arizona, 1980s...I am driving cab nights. I ask my day-driver to trade shifts for a few days so I can use the cab to attend to accumlated business. He agrees. After two nights he says "Wow, night driving is cool." I say, "Yes, but...Stuff happens at night. Very dangerous." He ignores my advice and gets a night cab. Two weeks later I go into the office and he is showing everyone his new S&W .38 with the wadcutter bullets. He has found out that night driving is dangerous. I ask, "Tony, do you mind if I tell you why I don't carry a weapon out there on the streets?".....He tells me to go ahead. I say, "Tony, you have that weapon with you in the cab. In your mind, whether conscious or unconscious, you have the idea that you have so much power that no one will give you trouble. That very idea....that you hold power....will draw someone else's power to you just life a magnet. And there will be one hell of a collision." Two weeks later Tony got scared (he had drawn power to him) and shot some guy. He went to prison.

The cause of his going to prison was not the trading shifts with me. It goes back earlier and deeper and is rooted in is psyche. Something within him, within his character, brought this chain of events into being. I happened to be the "external" catalyst that initiated the chain. He ignored my advice on two separate occasions. That refusal to listen to advice is part of his psychological makeup, and had he been "made" differently, taken my advice, he would never have gone to prison.

Our lives are created in our mind.

Wow, that's quite a story.

Natal astrology is based on the concept (at least partially) that you get what you give, i.e., the person's nature determines his/her fate by 'inviting' events. At least that's what my father keeps telling me. He introduced me to astrology in the first place. He sticks with the natal astrology, I don't.

I'm writing this because weirdly enough he talks about the outer planets most of the time. Uranus this, Pluto that. Married this time, divorced that time. Government this, government that. Everything matches perfectly, timing, transits etc. In hindsight, sadly. My grandmother is very religious because of Neptune. My neighbor is an alcoholic because of Neptune. Uranus obviously caused demonstrations at the time.

So I have to agree with Tom. I didn't think about it that way, or any way tbh, but, yeah, there's something about those outer planets, people are obsessed with them. It will be called the Outer Astrology one day.

I am not obsessed with the outer planets. My only point regarding them is that over many years I have seen them act as primary indicators of SOME life events. That is, they are effective in horoscopy.

The single chart that brought me into astrology was a very crude solar return I was able to cast from my first book about astrology, Jess Stearn's A Time for Astrology. Stearn was not even an astrologer, but his book contained a rudimentary ephemeris and instructions on casting a solar return. I selected what I thought was a significant event in my life...marriage, and cast the chart.

Saturn, Venus and Mars were tightly conjunct and had all three just entered the natal 7th House. Saturn is lord of my 7th, Venus the natural ruler of unions, Mars carries the physical and passional into the mix. This seemed a bit beyond random chance. I decided to investigate astrology a little more thoroughly.

I am not advocating special status for the modern planets. The example above suffices to demonstrate the effectiveness of the traditional planets (P.S.: Mars moved from the 7th cusp in the solar return to his own return on the date of the marriage.) All I say is that over 4 decades I have seen the modern planets repeatedly act as primary indicators of events along with the traditional planets, both in concert and independently.

In the reading of the static natal chart they so often provide the key to the interpretation. Albert Einstein's chart is an example of this. Uranus stands alone against the other 9 planets; he is what is known as the handle of a bucket pattern and is the single focus of the life. Guess what Albert did? He "overthrew convention." If you read the textbook description of Uranus, you read a thumbnail of Albert Einstein...eccentric, self-willed, intolerant of pompous asses, rebellious....

Freud's chart shows the same feature...a single planet standing off from the rest...but in his case it is a retrograde Mars. Is it any wonder that this "explorer" did not adventure into the Amazon, but instead turned inward to the human psyche and explored it. Is it any wonder that his psychology turns on sex? And don't you suspect that if we look closely at Freud and his life, his own personal psychology, we will find exactly what it was he was exploring? Our lives and our creations are no more than projections of our inner self. Discovering the outer world is how we discover ourselves. The one is the mirror image of the other.

Jesus said, "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.... Wherefore, by their fruits ye shall know them." It i our innate nature that determines what we think, say and do in life, and those things in their turn determine what "happens to us" and what we produce, what our fruits are.

And this applies to astrology and astrologers. We get out of astrology what we expect, and what we expect is born from our inner nature. I can't understand the how and why some astrologers do not see the modern planets involved in events. That is a pretty objective thing and should be plain for everyone to see, or not see. For myself and my experience, I see these planets as effective "causes" for many events, very consistently, and the events and conditions that accompany their transits (or directions, etc) conform to the symbolism ascribed to them.

The long and short of it is that if it works for you, use it, and if it doesn't, discard it. I have a hunch there are two causes to "not seeing" the modern planets working. One is that the radix does not bring these planets to prominence, or determine them toward certain things -- so they don't work as might be expected without taking this into consideration. The other factor may be the psychological bent of the practitioner. If we are not inclined to see certain things, it is quite likely that we won't.

Last week with a friend, we decided to give a look to the chart of an Italian pilot recently died.

My Solar Fire is set "traditional 7 planets only", but we decided to switch on the outer planets.

In the meantime we started to read the chart and after hours when my friend was about to leave my house, we realized we forgot to switch outer planets on.

We could read that chart without even noticing outer planets were missing!

Anyway we had a traditional method to follow, in my opinion traditional astrology is not just modern astrology without the 3 outer planets, you can delete them if you have enough knowledge to do this.

margherita

In the reading of the static natal chart they so often provide the key to the interpretation. Albert Einstein's chart is an example of this. Uranus stands alone against the other 9 planets; he is what is known as the handle of a bucket pattern and is the single focus of the life. Guess what Albert did? He "overthrew convention." If you read the textbook description of Uranus, you read a thumbnail of Albert Einstein...eccentric, self-willed, intolerant of pompous asses, rebellious....

I wonder how much of this is predictable and how much is projection? "Overthrew convention" is pretty broad and in fact applies to a lot of people who have no such arrangement in their chart and given Uranus' slow movement a lot of people who never upset the applecart have similar patterns. Perhaps there is something in Einstein's chart that indicates he will trigger this Uranus activity that is missing from the charts of the others. If so that is where modern astrologers should be looking. The chart is unique. Given the slow movement of the outers, they are anything but.

I think that there are enough rational modern astrologers still around. In older books, the outer planets are just the new ones amongst the planets.

Probably it's rather the 'esoteric' stuff that turned astrology in a mess. This esoteric astrology started with Alan Leo, who mixed astrology with Blavatsky's ideas of karma, reincarnation, soul-evolution. This development increased after Rudhyar mixed astrology with Jung's ideas. Perhaps the English-speaking world was earlier and more affected by Alan Leo. Before the World Wars Germany was a major cultural factor on the European continent. I think that after WWII, on the European continent still most astrologers were more rational, before Rudhyar's works were translated.

I believe that the influence if these ideas on people's thoughts about astrology has been of such a great impact that even the traditional astrologers who formerly were modern astrologers, might sometimes catch themselves having some remnants of esoteric/psychological ideas.

I wonder how much of this is predictable and how much is projection?

Isn't this the problem of any kind of astrology? I mean, in hindsight we can easily see 'murderer's traits' in the chart of a murderer using any kind of technique. But could it be predicted?

First of all, when I said people are obsessed with the outer planets, I did not mean people on this forum. So sorry about that.

Secondly, that is exactly the problem I'm having with people using the outer planets as an excuse for everything. Again, by people I mean lots and lots of so-called astrologers who publish the same rubbish over and over again. The only thing that changes is the author of the book. Apparently, they have it made, they know it all, there is nothing else out there.

Neptune in a bad configuration means that you may have problems with alcohol/drugs, you can be a religious fanatic, or a mental patient, or have bad dreams, or you are delusional, or your illusions will be ruined, or you may drown, or you may have accidents with dangerous liquids and on and on and on. It's a test -- just pick your answer.

One of them authors wrote, though, that the outer planets are so slow that they affect either events on a mass scale or something very deep in subconsciousness. So I guess it's a diplomatic way of saying they don't affect much of anything.