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.

Easy World: A Spiritual Path for the New Millenium

One evening after work a few years ago, I was driving home in the middle of rush hour, and suddenly noticed that there were very few other cars around, and that I was getting a lot more green lights than usual. At the time, I wondered if I had unwittingly entered a parallel universe.  It turns out that I did, and that the parallel universe even has a name: Easy World.


Getting to Easy World seems easy enough at first glance: "I choose to live in Easy World, where everything is easy." Just say that, breathe, relax, allow and enjoy. There's a catch: you have to leave a few things behind in order to stay in Easy World. No, not your money or possessions, it's actually a lot worse than that. You have to leave behind your fears, worries, anger, and (this is the one most of us will have a problem with) negative judgements.

Those of you who are fans of A Course in Miracles or who study Taoism will find yourselves in familiar territory here. So is the book a waste of time? Why not just buy, for example, the Tao Te Ching?

Here's why: the Tao Te Ching is a great book, but it was written a very long time ago, for people of a different culture, in a different language. I'm sure a Westerner could understand it to a degree after years of study, but I'm even more sure that it wouldn't be to the same level as someone who lived in China when it was originally written. The great books and myths of the past have to be restated periodically in current language and culture. Choosing Easy World is a perfect example of why: anyone can read this book and get the basic point right way, and they are automatically on the path just by trying to stay in Easy World for as long and as often as possible.

Modern Astrology and Hellenistic Astrology

For the past year, I've been studying Hellenistic astrology intensively with a long-term goal of determining how much of it is applicable to modern-day people and concerns. Hellenistic astrology is astrology as practiced by Greek-speaking people around the Mediterranean Sea between 1400 and 2000 years ago. Fate is much more emphasized than in modern astrology, but that is most likely a reflection of the philosophy (Stoicism) current at the time. Modern astrology, on the other hand, is very much about psychological issues and avenues for personal development. This suggests a synergy which I'll discuss shortly.

The cornerstone of stoicism, as I understand it, is the concept of the universe and the events that take place within it as being an orderly, interconnected system. In fact, some of the Stoic writings go so far as to say that the universe is the body of God. Events in this paradigm are not seen as random, but instead as planned by something much bigger than all of us. This brings to mind a modern saying: "Everything happens for a reason." The fact that we still say this even though we officially have free will and independent lives indicates to me that we're still (in America, at least) Stoics at heart. Because Hellenistic astrology is based on that philosophy, I think it essential that it be integrated into common practice.

That brings me to the synergy that I alluded to earlier. Hellenistic astrology is descriptive; it describes the native and a roadmap of the native's life. Modern astrology is prescriptive; it offers suggestions about issues that need to be addressed, and needs of the native that may need more attention. My contention is that the two styles of astrology are complementary. More on this later as I work out more of the details.

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.