Primary Directions in Traditional Astrology

Primary directions are a time-tested prediction and timing technique used in traditional astrology. They are similar to secondary progressions, but use degrees of what is called right ascension instead of degrees of the Zodiac. Right ascension degrees are different from Zodiac degrees in that they take into account the different amounts of time that Zodiac signs take to rise above the horizon. The differences arise from the fact that the Earth's orbit is elliptical, while the Zodiac is a circle by convention. In secondary progressions, one day's activity in the ephemeris after the birth time is taken to correspond to one year in the native's life (the native is the person whose birth chart is being examined); in primary directions, the planets move by one degree, more or less (there are different methods), per year of the native's life. The interaction between the adjusted (or directed) positions and the natal positions can mark events in the native's life.

Here's my chart. The house cusps are not shown because I use whole sign houses, where the entire sign where the Ascendant falls is the first house, the next sign the second house, and so forth. The arrow pointing to the left is the Ascendant; the upward-pointing arrow is the Midheaven. How it works is that the planets move clockwise through the chart as they would during the course of the day; a quarter of the way through will cover the native's entire life.

The first event I'd like to point out happened in September 1989 and was marked by Pluto advancing upward to meet the Midheaven. At the time I was starting my senior year of college, but I had to leave due to finances. That event completely transformed my career as Microsoft was recruiting heavily on campus at the time and I could very well have ended up working there had I graduated. So you can see that the event worked similarly to a Pluto transit of the Midheaven.


The next event also involves the Midheaven, this time with Uranus as the directed planet. This was in late 1993. At the time, I was working at an investment bank in Boston, in a department that managed stocks for pension plans. I developed stomach problems due to the stress levels, and in February of the next year, one day decided I couldn't do that job any more and gave notice. So the event was similar to a Uranus-Midheaven transit.

The last event I'll cover involves Venus, which was directed to the Midheaven in the summer of 1998. The major event was a trip to Russia to meet my future wife. I came back engaged and got married a year latter. The subsequent divorce ten years later was marked by an aspect between the Midheaven and what's called the antiscion (a shadow spot) of Mars.

If you'd like to try working with primary directions, I recommend using the program Pymorinus. Book Three of William Lilly's Chrisitan Astrology gives instruction on how to use primary directions.

Disclaimer: the first rule of predictive astrology is that no event can happen unless it is indicated in the natal chart. The technique given here is used to determine when events will happen, not if they will happen.

Free Astrology/Tarot E-book

It's time for a publicity stunt!

From now until the end of 2011, I will make the e-book version of my new book, Better Living with Astrology and Tarot, available absolutely free to anyone who requests it. To request it, send an email to all DOT are DOT wonders AT gmail DOT com.

Better Living with Astrology and Tarot

My new book, Better Living with Astrology and Tarot, is now available at lulu.com. The book explains astrology and Tarot starting with basic concepts, and shows you how to use both for planning personal development.

What is Divination?

For the purposes of this article, we will assume that the universe was not the result of a random incident, but was instead designed. We will also assume that the design is holographic; that is, information about each item and event also exists at other times and places. We will assume further that events in the universe are not all the result of random chance, that at least some of them were planned by the designer to provide learning opportunities.

Divination, then, is the art of using tools that work with the interconnected nature of the universe to get information about events and any lessons those events may have been intended to teach. Two popular examples of divination tools are astrology and Tarot cards.

Divination is useful because by getting information about future events, we can decide to learn the lessons those events are intended to teach up front, therefore mitigating the effects of those events, or in some cases, rendering the events unnecessary.

As an example, let's say that John Doe goes to see an astrologer. The astrologer notices that the planets Saturn and Pluto will soon be in a stressful alignment to where the planet Venus was at John's birth. In astrology, the planet Saturn signifies restriction, selectivity and focus, and sometimes fear, while Pluto signifies transformation, and Venus signifies how we value things and people. The astrologer tells John that he should examine his attitudes about what he owns and the people in his life. He tells John this because the alignment mentioned above is known to cause financial stress and changes in relationships.

Now John had been in the habit of making unnecessary purchases using credit cards.  John has a choice at this point: he can take the astrologer's advice or ignore it. If he takes the astrologer's advice, he would probably think things over and conclude that it's more important to have nice people in his life than nice things. He could then decide to put away his credit cards and spend more time cultivating friendships. If he ignores the advice, he will end up in bankruptcy court around the time the alignment happens, and eventually reach the same conclusion, but he will have learned the hard way.

What's important to note about this example is that the astrologer didn't simply tell John what was going to happen. He told John something better: what to do about it. Most importantly, he gave John the opportunity to learn a needed lesson the easy way instead of the hard way. This is how astrology and other divination tools are meant to be used.

The Twelve Houses

Learning about the houses in astrology can be overwhelming for beginners. I hope that what follows will provide a good foundation for further study.

Let's start with the four angular houses. The first house can be described in one word: "Me." Similarly, the seventh house can be described in one word: "You." The fourth house: "Inside". The tenth house: "Outside". This is a gross oversimplification, but it's a good starting point.

The other eight houses provide support to the four listed above. For each angular house above, we want to count four houses counterclockwise from the angular house, and we want to count four houses clockwise from the angular house. I'll explain why later. The counterclockwise house describes what the angular house needs to operate, and the clockwise house describes what the result of the angular house's operation will be.

I'll use the seventh house as an example. The seventh house describes interaction with others. A prerequisite of interaction with others is communication, which is governed by the third house, the counterclockwise house from the seventh. Results of interaction with others include friendship and group activities, which are governed by the eleventh house, the clockwise house from the seventh.

Now, let's take the houses in order. The first house has a base meaning of "Me." Other first house topics include personality and the body.

The second house is the clockwise house of the tenth house ("Outside"), so it will describe results of what you do outside the home, which for most people is work. So the second house describes resources and possessions.

The third house is the counterclockwise house of the seventh house ("You"), so it will describe prerequisites for interaction with others. Thus, communication and moving around in the immediate environment.

The fourth house has a base meaning of "Inside"; specific topics are emotions (inside you) and the home.

The fifth house is the clockwise house of the first house ("Me"), and describes things that come out of you, for example, creative work and children.

The sixth house is the counterclockwise house of the tenth house ("Outside") and describes prerequisites for activities outside the home: daily work habits and health.

The seventh house has a base meaning of "You" and describes significant relationships, including enemies as well as life partners.

The eight house is the clockwise house of the fourth house. Results of activities inside can include sex and death. The traditional other meanings of shared resources derive from a composite of the seventh and second houses, which I'll discuss briefly later.

The ninth house is the counterclockwise house of the first house, and provides support for you in the form of philosophy, religion, and higher education.

The tenth house has a base meaning of "Outside". The main outside activity for most people is work and career, but the tenth house also describes reputation.

The eleventh house is the clockwise house of the seventh house ("You"), and describes the results of interactions with others: friendship and group activities.

The twelfth house is the counterclockwise house of the fourth house ("Inside") and describes prerequisites for harmony inside: fulfilling karma, and getting past limitations.

There are supplemental meanings given to the houses by combining the house relationships. For example, if you were to use the second house as a starting point, the eighth house is directly opposite and therefore has the same relation to it as the seventh house would have to the first. So a common meaning given to the eighth house is the resources (second house) of others (seventh house).

Finally, I'd like to thank Robert Corre for the idea of using the angular houses as a base.

Traditional Astrology: Planetary Rulerships

I've been studying Hellenistic and Medieval astrology for about a year, and I've found some of the discarded concepts to still be useful today. One of those concepts is the set of traditional planetary rulers. This is a little different from modern rulers in that the traditional rulers not only gave their nature to the sign they ruled, but were also responsible for the activities of the house(s) where that sign was present in the chart.

Let's say, for example, that we are looking at a chart with a Scorpio Ascendant. Using the Whole Sign house system, that would place Leo in the Tenth House. In this case the Sun, or the native's basic identity, would be responsible for career and reputation. My special advice (it actually applies to everyone) for the native would be that he needs to decide who he is, and have all of his actions reflect that chosen identity.

The other difference, and this partially follows from the first, is that I don't assign rulerships to the outer planets: Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. My belief and experience is that these planets have far-reaching effects as opposed to being restricted to one or two areas of life. They change whatever needs to be changed.

There's also a basic logic to the way the Zodiac signs were assigned to planets. Each of the Planets, except the Sun and Moon, were assigned two signs, one active (Fire or Air) and one passive (Water or Earth). There's a good reason for the exception: since the Sun represents identity, ego, and self-consciousness, there is no passive side; similarly, since the Moon represents the subconscious and emotions, among other things, there is no active side.

The Sun and Moon, the two luminaries, or brightest objects in the sky, are assigned Leo and Cancer, which correspond to two of the summer months, when there is a maximum amount of daylight. The other planets are assigned one sign on each side, in order of their distance from the Sun. Mercury is assigned Gemini and Virgo; Venus is assigned Taurus and Libra; Mars is assigned Aries and Scorpio; Jupiter gets Pisces and Sagittarius; finally Saturn is assigned Aquarius and Capricorn, the signs corresponding to two of the winter months where there is the minimum amount of daylight.

The exaltation signs have a similar logic, but to understand it requires the concept of day and night planets. The ancients say that the Sun, Jupiter and Saturn are day planets; the Moon, Venus, and Mars are night planets; Mercury can be either depending on whether it rises before or after the Sun. The day planets have exaltation signs that are in a trine relationship to one of the home signs: Jupiter, for example, is exalted in Cancer, which is in a trine relationship to Pisces. The night planets have exaltation signs that are in a sextile relationship to one of their home signs: Mars, for example, is exalted in Capricorn, which is in a sextile relationship to Scorpio. Mercury is neither a day or night planet, so it is exalted in one of its home signs, namely Virgo.

Whether you use the traditional rulerships is of course up to you, but it may add some depth to your readings to at least consider the concepts above in addition to the modern rulerships.

Update on Proposed Q&A Site

I renamed the Astrology Q&A proposal to Divination, and included Tarot and Numerology. There's a lot of synergy between the three, and all three will be used in the book I'm working on. If you're interested in having a nice place on-line to discuss any of these topics, I encourage you to visit the site and sign up.

EDIT: The stackexchange site didn't happen, but it turns out that there's a new site devoted to astrology questions and answers: astroknowlogy.com.

New StackExchange Astrology Site

I've proposed a new site on stackexchange.com. If enough people sign up, they'll host the site free. Please visit and become a follower.

Work in Progress: Better Living through Mythology

Last Sunday, I was at a local Tarot group meeting. We were discussing correspondences between the Zodiac signs and the Court cards. Someone at the meeting asked for recommendations for a book covering the correspondences in detail, and none of us could think of any, so I decided to write my own. The correspondences will be the core of the book, but the book as a whole will be about the use of astrology and tarot to plan your personal development and spiritual path. At some point in the future, I'll have a draft on line. I'll keep you posted.

Book Review: Predictive Astrology

As I mentioned in a previous post, one of the things astrology can do for us is predict coming influences and their possible effects. If you are interested in learning how to do that for yourself and possibly others, Predictive Astrology: The Eagle and the Lark by Bernadette Brady is required reading. I've been following my own transits (the interactions between the current positions of the planets and their positions in the birth chart) for the past year and a half. With the aid of this book, I now have a solid understanding of how transits work and some familiarity with progressions, which model the continuing development of the planets in the birth chart.

The eagle and lark in the title are from a parable given at the beginning of the book. According to the parable, the lark wants to sing to the gods, but can't fly high enough, so he enlists the help of the eagle, who can fly higher than any bird, and together they visit the gods and the lark sings to them. The eagle represents reason, the lark intuition, and both are essential in the practice of astrology. The book, of course, can only help with the reason and technique part; on the other hand, you probably don't need help with intuition, though you may think you do.

The book gives solid explanations of both transits and progressions, how they operate, and how to predict their effects. A powerful tool given in the book is called a time map, and is a graph of transits and progressions during a time period. The time map uses another tool called the transit grid, which lists the transit type and the houses (which represent areas of life) that will show the causes of the related events, the place where the main action occurs, and the areas that will be affected as a final result.

This book isn't for beginners (they should read Astrology for Yourself: How to Understand And Interpret Your Own Birth Chart first), but I recommend it for anyone who seriously wants to learn astrology.

What Can Astrology Do For You?

Astrology is the study of cycles. You are familiar with the yearly cycle of the Sun, and the roughly monthly cycle of the moon, but there are other cycles that have been known for thousands of years, and they all can have profound effects on our lives.

The foundation of astrology is the natal chart, which records the positions of all of the cycles at the time of your birth. These positions are not only the starting point of your life, but they also outline your basic characteristics, and the issues you will have to address. Some of these issues are very deep-seated, and could take years of therapy to uncover, but a good astrologer can sometimes identify them within minutes.

In astrology, each of these cycles is assigned to a "planet." I use the word in quotes because in astrology, the sun and moon are also considered to be planets, according to the ancient definition, which is simply objects that change their relative positions in the sky. Each planet, and the cycle corresponding to it, represents a part of us. The sun, for example, represents our basic identity, while the moon represents our emotional needs. The Greeks gave the names of their gods to the planets, which is important because it shows that we should give attention and respect to all of the different facets of ourselves. Doing this allows what Karl Jung referred to as "individuation," which is realizing our true natures. Astrology can help us do that.

Your natal chart is based on the positions of each planet at the time of your birth. At this point, you are essentially given your own personal copy of the planets, which continue to move at slower rates. These slower movements are called progressions. Meanwhile, in the outside world, the continuing movements of the planets will at times interact with the positions given in your natal chart; these interactions are called transits. Both transits and progressions can cause changes in mood, and serve as catalysts for life changes. Advance knowledge of these events can help you prepare for them so that you can take advantage of favorable events, and minimize the disruption unfavorable events could cause.

In order to give you an accurate reading, you will need to have available the date, time and place of your birth. Ideally, all three of these items should come from your birth certificate. Relying on memory doesn't work well for this. If you can also provide a list of ten or so significant events in your life along with the dates on which they occurred, that list can be used to derive a more exact time of birth. This process is called rectification. Types of significant events for this purpose include births, deaths, accidents, job changes, marriages, divorces, and pretty much anything that had an impact on your life.

So what can be done with your birth chart? Two things: the first is tracking the continuing cycles of your transits and progressions to monitor and prepare for celestial events that will affect you; the second is to prepare a game plan for your future development. We are all gods and goddesses in training, and with astrology, your training can be conscious and planned.

So have your chart done, and change your life into a magical journey.

Astrological Consultations Now Available

Over the next few weeks, I'll be working on a website, new business cards and brochures. If you're interested in having a reading in the meantime, you can contact me at the e-mail address listed in my profile.

Book Review: Classical Medical Astrology

Warning: Don't try anything in this book at home. The medical establishment (or more accurately, its government representatives) may come to your house and confiscate your astrology books and throw you in jail. If this happens, it's not my fault. Ha, ha, only serious.

Now that the disclaimer's out of the way, I've posted a bit on my other blog about the health care industry in America, it's problems, and the purported attempts to fix it. I say "purported" because I haven't seen anything in the recent health care reform debate to indicate that the root of the problem is even known. Yes, there is waste, and it's also true that prescription drugs and hospital visits are appallingly expensive. But here's the thing: the prescription drugs and hospital visits would be worth every penny if they worked. By "worked," I mean that if you take a prescription or visit the hospital, the problem that induced you to seek help is gone, permanently, at some point in the near future. If you have to keep taking the drugs, the treatment didn't work; the problem is still there, it's just being masked by the drugs. If you have to go back to the hospital because your cancer came back somewhere else, the treatment didn't work.

Now, hospital visits and prescriptions work well for things like a broken arm, or strep throat. For other conditions like high blood pressure and acid reflux, treatment (not a cure) is the best we can hope for. But what if there are alternative methods that would work better and cost less? Should we really refuse to consider them just because they don't conform to our scientific model?

The alternative option I want to talk about today is outlined in Classical Medical Astrology: Healing with the Elements by Oscar Hofman. This book is not for beginners, but astrologers will find the basic concepts of medical astrology here and pointers to other sources. Non-astrologers may want to read the book anyway for a new perspective on what is possible using this method, and what was done in the past. The book starts with some background history, then goes on to explain the classical medical model, including the four humors, which correspond to the four classical elements. After describing how astrology fits in to this model, the book has some case studies that serve to illustrate the different concepts. There is also information about using herbs and crystals to help in treatment.

Now, none of this will ever be FDA-approved. Medical astrology just doesn't fit the model. Double-blind testing doesn't work if different people respond differently to treatments, which for that reason have to be customized. But please remember that the current scientific medical model got us where we are today. For better results, we may have to expand the model.

Divination and the F-word

I'm going to start this article with the f-word, just to prove a point. Here goes: fortune-telling. There, I said it. Those of you who do Tarot and/or astrology readings are most likely chuckling silently (or laughing out loud) right now, while the rest of you are wondering if you missed a joke. Well, you did. The joke is that tarot and astrology would be nothing more than slightly more effective psychoanalysis if they had nothing to do with fate and the future, but we as readers do everything we can to hide from that fact.

Let's start with an admission. All of us who do readings, if we are any good, at least at times know what is going to happen. We can argue about whether it's fated by the planets or our intuition is looking at a possible future, and we can hide behind archetypes and psychological complexes, but the basic fact that foreknowledge does occur is still there. And it's not going away.

Now that we've acknowledged the elephant in the living room, I'm going to tell you that it's not really an elephant. Here's what an old-school philosopher (Ptolemy) had to say on the subject:

For, first of all, it is necessary to consider that even for events that will necessarily result, the unexpected is apt to cause delirious confusion and mad joy, while foreknowing habituates and trains the soul to attend to distant events as though they were present, and prepares it to accept each of the arriving events with peace and tranquility.

This is true as far as it goes, but it leads to something we all as readers should consider: our clients worry about the future. That's why they come to us. If we can tell them what's in (or could be in) their future, they can stop worrying about it, and instead think about something more useful and important: what to do about it.

Book Review: Intuitive Astrology

I've been recommending Astrology for Yourself: How to Understand And Interpret Your Own Birth Chartfor people who want to learn about astrology, or at least about what their birth charts can tell them about their lives, but now I have an alternative for those of you who are more right-brain-oriented. It's Intuitive Astrology: Follow Your Best Instincts to Become Who You Always Intended to Be by Elizabeth Rose Campbell.

This book takes a unique approach in that it doesn't just tell you what the planets, sign, houses, and aspects mean, but instead give you questions to ask yourself, and encourages you to access your own intuition to find out what the components mean for you personally. Now we all need to relate the components of the birth chart to our own lives, but this book has you do that up front. You can always read the laundry lists given by other books later.

The best part of this book is the chapter on the planets. A description is given for what each planet does, and you are asked how this applies in your own life. This is a very useful exercise because it can show you parts of yourself that you didn't know existed. This alone makes the book worth the admission price.

I recommend the book to anyone who wants to learn about astrology, but especially to those who like to use their intuition and to those who are given to self-examination.

Book Review: MythAstrology

My recent discovery that the whole sign house system gives better results has lead me to believe that astrology is more of an art than a science. As such, mythology definitely has a place, and MythAstrology by Raven Kaldera is a good way to start incorporating mythology into your interpretations, or to understand your own chart better.

The book assigns one mythological deity to each combination of the 10 "planets" and 12 Zodiac signs. These deities are from a variety of pantheons, including African and Hindu. Don't worry if some of the names are unfamiliar; when you read the description you should find something to relate to.

As the book says, it's best to start by reading the descriptions corresponding to your planet placements. If you do charts for other people, you can also use the descriptions to help explain things to people who don't know much about astrology.

I plan to start using the descriptions in charts I do for people as soon as I finish reading the book. It's a good book even for beginners, because the myths are archetypes that everyone will be able to related to.

Book Review: Astrology and the Authentic Self

The two most popular systems of calculating house cusps are the Placidus and Koch methods. Both are mathematically rigorous methods, high-tech if you will. (Don't worry if you have know idea what I'm talking about. I'll explain about house cusps later.) But what if I told you that there was a more accurate method that was both older and simpler? Would I sound like a reactionary or an old curmudgeon? Well, there is such a method, and it's used in Astrology and the Authentic Self: Integrating Traditional and Modern Astrology to Uncover the Essence of the Birth Chart by Demetra George. This book uses the Whole Sign method, which is a throwback to the Middle Ages and before. But guess what? I've tried it on my own chart, and it works. Some of the planetary placements in my chart make a lot more sense under this system.

Now for those of you who don't know much about astrology, there are twelve houses in an astrological chart, each corresponding to a different area of life. The first house, for example, corresponds to identity and personality; the second house to money, possessions, and things of value, and so forth. The house cusps are the starting points of each house in the Zodiac. The Placidus and Koch systems start with the Ascendant (the point of the Zodiac that's on the Eastern horizon at birth) and the Midheaven (where the sun would be if it were "high noon") and extrapolate the other house cusps by either space or time. The Whole Sign system just uses the Ascendant, assigning the start of the sign it falls in to the first house cusp, the start of the next sign to the second house, and so forth.

At this point, I don't want to talk about the book (it's good, try it) as much as about the implications of the usefulness of the house systems. If a medieval house system works better than the two most currently used systems, what does that say about the usefulness of astrology as practiced today? Shouldn't there be a clear winner among the house systems? Or if valid results can be obtained with any of them, does it really matter at all?

Book Review: The Art of Predictive Astrology

In the past I've shied away from using astrology to make predictions, partly because of the free will thing, and partly because of the Oedipus Effect: the steps taken to prevent a predicted event are often responsible for enabling it. But mostly for the real reason, which is that I didn't know how to do it. The Art of Predictive Astrology: Forecasting Your Life Events by Carol Rushman may solve that problem.

The starting point for prediction is what the book calls "Natal Promise:" potentials as given by the birth chart. If the potential for a certain event is not indicated by the birth chart, it's not going to happen, so there's no point looking for it. There's a whole chapter devoted to determining natal promise, with an interesting formula for the number of possible marriages.

Two major tools used by the book are progressions and transits. Progressions are computed by rolling the birth chart forward by one day per year of real time; transits use the current position of the planets. In both cases, the planet's positions are compared to what's on the birth chart. The theory is that these positions can activate planets, houses and aspects in the natal chart. Also featured in the book are lunations (new moons and full moons) and eclipses.

I'm going to try the techniques given for a few months. I'll let you know how it works out.

Book Review: Advanced Astrology for Life

Once you've read a couple of the introductory astrology books, for example Astrology for the Light Side of the Brain, Astrology: A Cosmic Science or Astrology for Yourself: How to Understand And Interpret Your Own Birth Chart, and you've done some charts (including your own), you may be ready for the next step. In that case, a good book to read next would be Advanced Astrology for Life: Balance Your Life with Planetary Powers by Constance Stellas.

The book covers a variety of topics, including transits (how the current position of the planets interacts with your birth chart) and horary astrology (answering a question by casting a chart of the time the question was posed). Practical answers are given, for example, how do you know when the influence of a retrograde planet will be released? When the planet goes direct in a progressed chart. Don't worry if you don't know what that means; you just need to read one of the introductory books first. There's also a nice section about composite charts, which deal with relationships.

At its core, astrology is really about the study of cycles. When you are ready for it, this book will help you better understand those cycles.

Make Some Wishes This New Moon

I just picked up a copy of New Moon Astrology by Jan Spiller. I haven't finished reading it, but I'm going to try the program outlined in the book, and I think you should too. It's very simple; all you have to do is make some wishes (up to ten) just after each new moon. After the new moon in Aries, make a collage of pictures describing things you would like to have happen in the following 12 months. Also, during the period of the Sun's transit through the 11th house of your birth chart, you get an additional 40 wishes. Does this sound a bit crazy? No? It sounds like I've totally lost it? Well, let me explain.

Astrology is essentially the study of cycles. You are already familiar with daily, monthly and yearly cycles. For example, you wouldn't plant tomatoes in the middle of winter, unless you had a greenhouse with artificial lighting. Astrological cycles work the same way, they're just not as readily apparent. The cycles we'll be dealing with are the lunar and solar cycles. The lunar cycle is the basis of the system in Ms. Spiller's book. It's a well-known principle that the best time to start new things is after a new moon. Farmers in the old days even used to plant seeds just after a new moon. The new moon in Aries is even better for this purpose because it's also the start of the yearly solar cycle. I'm still not really clear on the 11th house thing, but I'll post again later after I've figured it out.

If you want to try it, there are a few details you'll need. The wishes should be written down by hand, not typed on a computer. This is from Ms. Spiller. Wishes that involve changing yourself are preferable to wishes for things or wishes that would change others. The wishes should be written down during the first eight hours after the new moon, with one exception that you can find on Ms. Spiller's website.

I'm posting this now instead of finishing the book first because there's a new moon in Aries coming up this Thursday, March 26, 2009. This will be an excellent opportunity to try Ms. Spiller's suggestions. Please leave a comment if you do decide to try it.