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This One Is For Deb

1 by Tom
In a taxicab travelling through mid town Manhattan, Deborah confessed. Keep it simple she tells us. She uses transits for prediction. Woe is me. I've railed against using transits for prediction for so long, I've forgotten the arguments. She would not be moved.

Today at about 3:15 PM less than four miles from home I was involved in a minor traffic accident. I was hit from behind at a low rate of speed and the damage to my car is minimal. There were no injuries to me or to the other driver. So all we have here is an inconvenience.

Naturally I looked at the chart to disprove the influence of transits as this will not prove to be a life altering event. Well a funny thing happened on my way to the chart. I notice that Mars (accidents) is nearly exactly square my natal ASC (less than half a degree orb). Then I notice that the sign and degree on the horizon is almost exactly on my natal Sun. Jupiter ruler of my natal Sun and the ruler of the ASC in this event chart is almost exactly square his natal position. Mars, incidentally rules the 2nd house of possessions, my car, in the event chart.

Mars in the event chart is in the 9th house (it conjuncts my natal ASC). The young man (he's only 20) who hit me is not American born.

The Moon had just entered Cancer, the sign of my natal Moon. Her last aspect was an out of sign trine to Mars and her next is a trine to my ASC. As I said there were, mercifully, no injuries and damage was minimal. Moon and Jupiter are in their own signs and in trine.

So maybe, just maybe, there is a little something to this transit stuff. Nothing earth shattering happened mind you, just a fender-bender. Oh one last note. The Moon rules the 6th house and the 6th house represents the police. A policeman witnessed the accident.

Tom

Re: This One Is For Deb

2 by margherita
Hello Tom (and Deborah)
Tom wrote:In a taxicab travelling through mid town Manhattan, Deborah confessed. Keep it simple she tells us. She uses transits for prediction. Woe is me. I've railed against using transits for prediction for so long, I've forgotten the arguments. She would not be moved.


maybe we can use this information against her in the future :)

Jokes aside, transits work in traditional astrology, just they should be included in a more general context, what is called the "division" of times.

Says Ptolemy

"We must also pay attention to the ingresses which are made to the places of the times, for they play no small part in the prediction of the times of events; particularly to the ingresses of Saturn to the general places of the times, and to those of Jupiter to the places of the years; to those of the sun, Mars, Venus, and Mercury to those of the months, and to the transits of the moon to those of the days. "

I too believe that events indicate in a more general way from direction/profections/solar returns are activated by a transit, especially from the Moon. Let's say that when I'm in rush I search a transit on the solar return.

Hope you are ok after the car accident,

margherita
Traditional astrology at
http://heavenastrolabe.wordpress.com

4 by Deb
In a taxicab travelling through mid town Manhattan, Deborah confessed.
After the third slap I crumbled. But its probably good that I got this off my chest - who needs the guilt?

I don't even understand the discussion. Transits work, finetuning the details of greater cycles, and even all by themselves. Of course they do - many astrological techniques are simply snapshots of transits in force at that time. But its not so much about 'using them' but rather being constantly aware of them, as they express the phases of planetary cycles, and make relevant connections. Deary me Tom - I'm going to have to start prising your eyes open.
And next time we share a taxi I'm going to come armed with a defensive weapon. :-T

6 by Eddy
In a taxicab travelling through mid town Manhattan, Deborah confessed. Keep it simple she tells us. She uses transits for prediction. Woe is me. I've railed against using transits for prediction for so long, I've forgotten the arguments. She would not be moved.
I thought it was never a secret that Deb uses transits. On several places in the forum Deb tells about the effectivity of them and sometimes of the exactness of Moon transits in fine tuning events. (I'm thinking of that mystery chart of the motorcycle accident, but I'm not sure if it was in that thread.)

And when you track the 'Deb-files', ah got one, you'll see that:
Deb wrote:Incidentally, I?ve noticed in this forum lately there seems to be a sense of disapproval for transits, as if they are not a genuinely traditional tool for prediction. I can?t understand where that idea comes from. The book ?Dorotheus, Orpheus, Anubio and Pseudo Valens: Teachings on Transits? (PH, translated by R. Schmidt) should remove all doubt about the historical basis of transits. And of course the astrological notion that retrograde loops create a repeat of mundane events goes way back to the cuneiform texts.
When I started studying astrology, transits were actually the only thing that really convinced me of the effect of astrology. However the danger of transit lies in leading your life by the ephemeris, so you don't know anymore whether it's the transit that's doing you or you doing the transit. For this reason as well as I'm quite busy last few months, I must confess that I've decided to let the astrology rest for a while and hardly look in the ephemeris since a few months. Just to investigate whether they still will work or not.

7 by Tom
Let me make my position clear on this because there seems to be some confusion and that is, in part my fault. I did say "Deb uses transits for prediction," and I probably should have said, "Deb uses transits for prediction by themselves, i.e. without directions or progressions." And even that was meant to be teasing - not a philosophical argument. So to clarify a couple of things:

1) The post was somewhat tongue in cheek. I had a very minor traffic accident and looked up the transits as I would not expect to have a major primary direction that showed this. Sure enough there were some indications. So I posted it as having astrological interest and recalled the taxicab ride of a couple of weeks ago. There were three of us in the cab talking astrology and laughing a lot, so I brought it up in my post. I wondered and still do, what the cab driver thought of that entire conversation which probably made no sense to him at all.

During the conversation Deb was discussing the idea of keeping things simple in a reading and one of the things she said was that she used transits to that end. In other words, as she stated on this thread, that transits reflect the larger or more broad predictive techniques. That's true and I hadn't looked at it that way previously.

2) I never intended to disparage the use of transits or to imply that no traditional astrologer used them for any purpose. That would be utter nonsense. On the other hand one of the reasons I came to traditional astrology was because I was being taught transits, transits transits, I was told secondary progressions were useless except the progressed moon, and that primary directions didn't work. The problem was I couldn't get the transits to work. Oh they worked perfectly in the instructor selected in examples, but they rarely worked in my own. I found I was not alone. Rob Hand had wondered in print why sometimes major transits produced nothing (I think it was in his book of Essays on Astrology). I found that traditional astrology tended to use them as triggers of larger goings on and that explained things a lot better to me.

3) Therefore I do not believe and never have that transits are useless. I do believe they are one part of a larger whole, but when they are used to predict with no reference to anything else, I have my doubts. Deb is simply less doubtful than I.

Tom

8 by Tom
Part II

What follows is explained in depth by Morin. He did not develop it or invent it. I believe Lilly discusses this, too. The ideas go back a ways, and I'm not going to look this up but I think both Ibn Ezra and Abu Mashar discuss it and possibly it predates them.

1) We have the natal or other chart of the beginning of something. The idea seems to be that this chart "unfolds." All authorities agree that if it is not in the nativity, it cannot happen. This is why it makes no sense to set up an electional chart for a great time to win the lottery, unless your chart shows sudden riches. Yes I still buy tickets.

2) The three most popular methods of noting the "unfolding" of the chart are a) primary directions, b) secondary progressions, and c) solar arc directions. These methods give a broad overview of what is ahead.

3) To narrow things down a bit we look at solar returns particularly the returns that are concurrent with a major "hit" from on or more of the methods mentioned in 2). In other words we look to find things in the return that repeat in some fashion, what we see in the nativity and broad based method.

4) Although rarely used any more, the next step was to narrow down things even further with the lunar return. Find the lunar return within the solar year that repeats what is seen in the solar return, and nativity. This pinpoints or is supposed to pinpoint the event within a month.

5) Transits are used to trigger, more or less, all of the above and gives us the day of the predicted event. The theory is that without "all of the above" the transit will pass uneventfully. Trust me, this is rarely this accurate.

Morin argued that all of the above are necessary for precise prediction. He noted that those who used only transits would be correct on occasion, but that those occasions would coincide with all the other things the astrologer didn't bother looking at. When wrong, he believed, it was because the astrologer took the shortcut.

The most outstanding example of his thinking on this matter is in Book 23 of Astrologia Gallica regarding the chart of King Gustav Adolphus. If all charts worked this well, astrology would be a very easy subject. Still it is well worth studying this example as the epitome of the method.

No things don't always work out perfectly after doing all of this work. The indications are often subtle, when they can be discovered at all. Predicting an event to the day is very risky business. However this does echo the words of my first astrology teacher, Joan Negus, who told us over and over "Transits are not enough."

Tom

Re: This One Is For Deb

9 by dmause
Tom wrote:In a taxicab travelling through mid town Manhattan, Deborah confessed. Keep it simple she tells us. She uses transits for prediction. Woe is me. I've railed against using transits for prediction for so long, I've forgotten the arguments. She would not be moved.

Today at about 3:15 PM less than four miles from home I was involved in a minor traffic accident. I was hit from behind at a low rate of speed and the damage to my car is minimal. There were no injuries to me or to the other driver. So all we have here is an inconvenience.

Naturally I looked at the chart to disprove the influence of transits as this will not prove to be a life altering event. Well a funny thing happened on my way to the chart. I notice that Mars (accidents) is nearly exactly square my natal ASC (less than half a degree orb). Then I notice that the sign and degree on the horizon is almost exactly on my natal Sun. Jupiter ruler of my natal Sun and the ruler of the ASC in this event chart is almost exactly square his natal position. Mars, incidentally rules the 2nd house of possessions, my car, in the event chart.

Mars in the event chart is in the 9th house (it conjuncts my natal ASC). The young man (he's only 20) who hit me is not American born.

.

Tom
Tom
How can Mars be square your natal ascendant and conjunct it at the same time? :-?
Were you born on 17 march 1959 around midnight?

11 by Tom
Tom
How can Mars be square your natal ascendant and conjunct it at the same time? Confused

Were you born on 17 march 1959 around midnight?
Natal Mars is conjunct my natal ASC (3 degree orb). In the transit chart (I'm travelling and don't have the data with me). Transiting Mars is square the natal ASC.

Would that I were born on St. Patrick's day, 1959 making me 11 years younger.

Tom

12 by dmause
Tom wrote:
Tom
How can Mars be square your natal ascendant and conjunct it at the same time? Confused

Were you born on 17 march 1959 around midnight?
Natal Mars is conjunct my natal ASC (3 degree orb). In the transit chart (I'm travelling and don't have the data with me). Transiting Mars is square the natal ASC.

Would that I were born on St. Patrick's day, 1959 making me 11 years younger.

Tom
Oh I see. 20 feb 1948 around 17.30 i guess. I`m interested cause you seem to fit the Choleric archetype both in looks and style. I `d expect to see a lot of Fire in your chart
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