posted November 05, 2002 08:10 PM              

Actually, there is considerable overlap between Terri's first lesson and mine anyway so hopefully it will not be too great a confusion for folks if we zip back and forth between the two until all the material is recovered and everything gets back on schedule.

Like Terri, I'll be covering the Signs, Planets, Houses and Aspects among other basics of the chart, but from a slightly different angle: instead of looking primarily ant the symbolic meanings of the various astrological factors that you will encounter in a natal chart (although we'll talk about that briefly, too), we will be looking at what the natal char - the "Horoscope" - actually IS in terms of the physical world. Along the way we'll learn a little bit of physics, astronomy, geometry and other nasty stuff that you thought you left behind in school but actually turns out to be quite relevant when you are casting and interpreting a horoscope!

I am right now in the process of extracting the lesson material from my archives in another system format, and should have the first few lesson discussions up sometime later tonight ... but I wanted to stop in now and let everyone know that they are on their way! To start getting your heads in the right "frame of mind" for this part of the course, ask yourself this question:

Suppose you were a visitor to this solar system, and the only "map" you had to get around with was a chart of today's transits (which would be the same thing as a birth chart for someone born today) could you do it? What would the "rising sign" physically correspond to in terms of the actual planet Earth moving around the Sun? Where would you look to find the sign of Scorpio? How in the world would you be able to tell what "house" a planet is in? (and why are there so many different maps of the houses, anyway, were the mapmakers all drunk? )

These are the kinds of questions we'll be considering, and hopefully before we're through you will be able to look at a horoscope with a new appreciation for it as something much more meaningful than just a pie chart with a lot of symbols on it ... rather, you'll be able to see it as an actual physical MAP of the real physical world on the surface of our spinning globe and the surrounding space, at the moment you were born!

Thanks to Randall for the invitation to participate in this course, and thanks to all of you for being here. Back soon!

Love,
Greg

posted November 06, 2002 11:12 AM              

Here is a pointer to the lesson material for this part:

Part II Lesson Material

This was mostly taken from parts of lessons 1 and 2 from the old Linda Goodman Natal Astrology Course on the original LG site, mangled and massaged a little to fit the outline!

I suggest that everyone take a little bit of time to read through the lesson contents first ... and feel free to holler if there's anything that seems really unclear or confusing right off the bat! ... then over the next day or two we'll set up a more organized question-and-answer format here so we can cover the material as a group. There are some big advantages to everybody thinking and talking about the same subject at the same time, so if you can set aside a few minutes each day to visit here and participate while we're discussing these topics, you will get MUCH more out of it than if you just read the material silently and on your own. I really hope to see a lot of class interaction and participation, and I'll do my best to stay on top of it!

Now I'll leave you alone to get started!

Love,
Greg

posted November 07, 2002 11:19 AM              

You WOULD ask the most difficult question first! Actually it's not really a difficult question, but it can be a bit confusing because what you can actually SEE in the sky is not the Signs but the Constellations for which they are named ... and because of the precession of the Equionoxes (which is explained later in the lesson) the signs are not in exactly the same place in the sky as their namesake constellations!

Hwever, don't worry about that too much for now, and I'll see if I can answer your question in a simple way.

If you look straight up in the sky at midnight tonight (your local time), the brightest star you see almost directly overhead will be the star Alcyone, in the star-cluster known as the Pleiades (commonly called called "the Seven Sisters," the Pleiades looks something like a miniature little dipper, and is located just behind the head and horns of the Bull in the constellation of Taurus). Alcyone is the brightest star in this cluster, and it is right at the beginning of the Sign of Gemini. As you look at Alcyone, everything just to the EAST of it (the direction that all the stars are RISING) is the sign of Gemini, while everythign just to the WEST of it is the sign of Taurus. (There's a good article on Alcyone and the Pleiades in this month's issue of the Metamorphosis newsletter published by ConsciousEvolution.com, you can view it at this link: Pleiades article in Metamorphosis.)

When you look at Alcyone (or any of the bright stars overhead) if you draw an imaginary path in the sky from the place on the Eastern horizon where all the stars rise, up through the seven sisters and then down to the place on the Western horizon where they all set, that path is called "the plane of the ecliptic," and that is where all the Signs are, on that great circle in the sky.

Hope this helps a little.

Love,
Greg

posted November 07, 2002 11:29 AM              

Part II Lesson Material

(I'll repeat this link every few posts so it doesn't get buried and lost among the rest of the messages!)

Several folks emailed me yesterday to ask where they can get a copy of their own Horoscope (natal chart) if they don't already have one, since the lesson asks you to look at your own chart as we examine all the parts of the horoscope. The easiest way to get a copy of your chart without having to pay anything is on astro.com (http://www.astro.com). Go to the "free horoscopes" section and choose "chart drawing and ascendant" ... it will prompt you to enter your birth information, and then produce a graphic horoscope for your time and place of birth. You can print this out directly from the web page, or if you don't have a printer you can also save it on your computer for future reference.

Love,
Greg

posted November 08, 2002 12:55 PM              

When everybody has had a chance to read through the lesson material at least up to the first "assignment," I STRONGLY encourage you to complete the assignment, and to post any questions you have about it here. I know from past experience that it's hard to get discussion going about these topics, 'cause folks tend to think their questions will seem "silly," but let me assure you that everybody else is thinking the same thing! We'll all get a LOT more out of the course if we really use these forums to bounce the subject-matter back and forth until everybody has a good understanding of it. And incidentally, it will give you a real advantage in all your further studies, because understanding what all these elements are in concrete, physical terms helps you to "think" about everything else in astrology, so it's really well worth the effort!

Standing by ...

Love,
Greg

posted November 09, 2002 03:20 AM              

I have a couple of things I'm not quite clear on.

What kind of energy are we talking about with sesquiquaprrrrrr?
And the semisquare? And semi-sextile? Am I jumping the gun?

Regarding the 12th house - that would be a Cadent house - which is associated with communication. But isn't the 12th house where you keep your secrets and what you DON'T want communicated to the outside world?
Also, it would fall in the 4th quadrant, which expresses outwardly directed action. The 12th house is what's buried deep within you? So to sort things out there you would need to delve inward?

Thanks.

posted November 09, 2002 11:20 AM              

Actually, Terri will probably cover the detailed meanings of the aspects in more detail in her section ... but since we're here and you asked ... semisquare (45 degrees) and sesquiquadrate (135 degrees) are very similar aspects, both mildly discordant but much less powerful than the square, with the sequiquadrate the weaker of the two. Both tend to represent internal conflicts and obstacles more than the external challenges often represented by squares.

The semisextile is a mildly harmonious aspect related to the trine and sextile (but again less powerful. Semi-sextiles are nice aspects that generally "grease the wheels" of whatever the planets they involve are trying to express. They do not confer automatic success or great fortune, but with semi-sextiles on your side, things are more likely to go your way without undue struggle or strife.

Good question about the 12th house in relation to the quadrants and qualities! The cadent houses are related to the mutable signs, and in the case of the 12th it's the changeable, transitional attributes that are emphasized (more than communication). The 12th is the "seed" stage of the cycle, where the lessons of the previous cycle are distilled to carry forward into the beginning of a new cycle. As for outer vs. inner-directed, the 12th represents hospitals, prisons and institutions, all of which are about external rather than internal manifestation ... but again it's that transitional energy as the final letting go of the self and merging with the Universal that makes it more outer directed rather than internal as you might imagine. Here, though, is the real mystery of all cyclic manifestation: the seed is both the end of a cycle and the beginniong of a new cycle. Even as it is "cast off" and thrown to the winds (the ultimate externalization), so also it contains within itself the distilled essence of everything it "is" and has learned along the way ... its innermost "secrets" that will sprout again as concentrated new life in the first house (and sign of Aries). This is one of the most fundamental laws of manifested reality, that all things change into their opposites at the extreme. Extreme Yin changes to Yang, and vice-versa. If you go far enough to the East, you end up West of where you started!

posted November 11, 2002 02:05 AM              

Okay, about the sesquiquadrant - my sun is 6 Leo 58, and Nep is at 14 (it's actually 13, but I need it to be 14 to ask my question. )
So my sun is trine my Nep.
But, a sesquiquadrant aspect to my sun would be 135 degrees away from 7 degrees Leo, which would be 22 degrees Sag. 8 degrees either side of Sag would be 14-30 degrees Sag.

So, are my Leo and Sag sesquiquadrant or trine? Shouldn't I consider the major aspect rather than the minor? Or is 8 degrees too wide an orb for the minor?

Another thing ... if I have an aspect at the tail end of a sign, like Venus at 25 degrees Gemini, would a planet at 3 degrees Cancer be conjuncting it? It doesn't make sense somehow, but then, that means that someone with a natal planet either at the beginning or the end of a sign has a smaller orb for transitting planets to aspect , and that doesn't make sense either. So help me!

posted November 11, 2002 01:59 PM              

Took Sunday off, hope nobody minded!

Stella, you're getting to why I said this was a tough one to answer! Let's see ...

Yes, Alexander the Great would have had his Sun very close to exactly the same position as yours (assuming that July 22 birthday has been translated into the current Gregorian calendar, which it probably has)! And likewise, if he had gazed skyward at midnight in early November, the cusp of Gemini would indeed have been just slightly to the East of directly overhead, same as it is today. HOWEVER, Alcyone would NOT have been there ... it would have been about 33 degrees further West in the sky!

The Signs (in western astrology) are defined mathematically by the intersection of the ecliptic and equatorial planes on the Vernal equinox (first day of spring), which is always 0 degrees Aries. As a result, the positions of the Signs never change. On November 11 the Sun is always in Scorpio - this year, last year, ten thousand years ago and ten thousand years in the future! The constellations, however (that is, the "fixed stars") DO change slowly, moving backward in the Zodiac at the rate of about one sign every 2,000 years. Therefore the star Alcyone, which today is at just over 0 degrees Gemini, was a little more than a full sign earlier in the Zodiac in the year 356 B.C. (to be precise, it was at 27 degrees Aries). This means that when you look overhead and see the beginning of the sign Gemini at midnight tonight, Alcyone will be right there. But if you looked overhead at midnight on November 11th 356 B.C. the sign of Gemini would still be there just as it is today, but the star Alcyone - being then at the end of Aries - would already have passed beyond the mid-heaven and be about a third of the way down toward the Western horizon!

Don't let this discrepancy between the Signs and the constellations confuse you ... in practical terms you don't need to worry about the constellations at all, because it is the Signs that the horoscope records. Just a little bit of added astronomical lore to broaden your understanding!

posted November 11, 2002 02:24 PM              

Conjunction - 10 degrees
Opposition - 10 degrees
Square - 8 degrees
Trine - 8 degrees
Sextile - 6 degrees
Semi-sextile - 3 degrees
Semi-square - 3 degrees
Sesquiquadrate - 3 degrees
Quincunx - 3 degrees

This is not "cast in iron" -- some astrologers use slightly wider orbs, some slightly narrower. Some also make the "separating" orb (when the planets are moving farther away from the exact aspect) a little narrower than the "applying" orb. You can experiment with this to find the orbs that feel the most natural and useful for you, but always bear in mind that the farther away from exact, the weaker the effect. So if you use very wide orbs and the planets in a given aspect are at the outer limits of the orb, the aspect won't have very much power even if you consider it technically within orb!

The only time you might ever encounter overlapping orbs (as in your question about the trine and sequiquadrate) is if you later get into considering some of the "harmonic" aspects which are much closer together. But that's much more advanced stuff and nothing to worry about now! Really the most important thing to remember about aspect orbs is that aspects start to lose their strength very quickly as they get farther from exact. If you've ever played with magnets you can see this principle very clearly: if you hold the north and south poles of two magnets together, they will stick tightly to each other, and if you separate them by a fraction of an inch you can still feel a pretty strong pull. But as you move them farther away from each other the pull rapidly diminishes until you can't feel it at all! Same with aspects, and the stronger the aspect is (the more "major") the wider that area of influence is.

Now for your other question, two planets in different signs can definitely be conjunct each other if they are within orb. It just means that you have to consider the combined influences of the two signs as well as the combined qualities of the planets when you are interpreting them! Since adjacent signs tend to have incompatible qualities, this might weaken or de-focus the aspect in many cases, but you really have to judge it on an individual basis. Hope this helps.

posted November 11, 2002 02:59 PM              

This stuff is great! You really do have a talent for explaining astrological principles.

After all this time, I'm learing new things