How Important is Partility?

[Jim Eshelman]

How important is partiality in Sidereal Mundane Astrology?

We normally count partiality - contacts of angles and aspects within 1° or less - as one of the most important factors for filtering careful timing of the biggest events. Under the broad principle that the strongest results appear when the strongest (closest) aspects occur in the strongest (most acutely angular) places, the "gold standard" in much prediction for individuals is to have partile aspects in partile contact with angles - again, meaning less than 1°.

I would like, now, to document whether this is a necessary (or at least a filtering) factor in SMA. One might assume, in theory, that it is, although we may not be in a place to find out rather than to assume. Also, there are at least some factors that suggest it might not be as important.

In mundane astrology, we want to match charts to events so that so can see the converge of time, place, and nature of event. For example, Mars on an ingress or quotidian angle for a specific location where a fire occurs confirms that (1) a Mars-like event occurred (2) during a time period covered by the particular chart (3) at the location where Mars was adequately close to the angle. This filtered isolation of type of event, location, and time underlies much of my thinking throughout all of these years of SMA research.

I came into this renewed project four years ago thinking that quotidian contacts, in particular, had to be within 1°. I had to let go of that idea. Far too much was lost by not extending it to 2°, and only the rarest item (two or three out of a thousand or so charts) seemed to slip through our fingers if we stopped there, rather than extending to 2.5° or 3°. This, then, became the working threshold for quotidian contacts and transits to angles.

Planet angularity in ingresses themselves is demonstrably effective far, far past partiality. It's easy to demonstrate that "foreground" reaches 10° or so on either side of the horizon or meridian (in PV longitude). General planetary natures are operative at that level and, most important, aspects to planets within 10° of the angles are enormously important. It's also easy to demonstrate that most of that range is too wide to foster distinctive events, and we need narrower orbs.

The longitude difference between Portland, Maine, and Portland, Oregon is 52°. That means that a range of 10° stretches a fifth the distance across the continental U.S. (or a fourth the distance from New York to Los Angeles). Obviously, predicting a particular kind of event as occurring "somewhere between Maine-to-Florida and Ohio-to-Alabama" isn't very useful and, in fact, the charts have shown us that this is far too wide. Planets in that range add subtleties, have their say, share their aspects, add nuance to the larger picture - but they are not the primary descriptors of major events.

I think my most important contribution to SMA (besides just the raw labor of keeping at it) is the discover and articulation of the ideas of dormancy and flow-through. With the possibility of a dozen concurrently operative charts (four solar ingresses, four lunar ingresses, four quotidians), this, first, gave us the means of confidently saying which charts had distinctively strong voices in a given place at a given time. Secondly, defining these terms required experimentation to find thresholds for dormancy. Observation uncovered, and subsequent experience has continually confirmed, 3° for ingress angles (2° for the minor angles) and 2° for quotidians and transits to angles, as the relevant thresholds.

What that means is this: Planets within these much tighter orbs (3° of main ingress angles, 2° of minor angles, 2° of quotidian angles) are sufficiently strong to bring a chart to life and, by themselves, mark an event. I think knowing this one fact is enormously important to us.

And that's kind of where it has stayed. It's always nice to see closer orbs, always creates an ooh and an ahh when Saturn is 0°08' from an angle (or whatever) for an earthquake, but... once a planet is within that 3° window of an ingress angle, or a 2° window of a quotidian angle, it's good enough. We have a live chart. We have something happening that we can characterize. It will mark a particular character to a particular place at a particular time.


Which leaves the question, though... Does partility (as in every other main context we know in astrology) really matter, or is 2-3° our "new partile." If I answered in theory, I'd say, "Sure, of course it matters. That's the stronger stuff, the really big deal." But I've also seen thousands of ingresses and quotidians that had strong < 2°-3° showings, that were utterly expressive, that totally nailed the event.

So... here is what I'm hoping. I'm hoping partility lets us filter the really big events from other events. The acts of war from throwing a tantrum, the mega-flood rather than unusually greater rain, etc. I'm wondering if, within the whole stack of charts already describing the basic tone of a place and time, a certain threshold of partile contact is required to push it over the edge of mega-event. If we're this lucky... if it happens to be true... then we will, perhaps, have solved one of the great remaining problems, which is, how to have proportionate perspective on how big a deal a given chart might really be in the scope of things.

So... I'm off to look. I'm not recalculating all the charts, I'm just citing what I can tell from the text of Sidereal Mundane Astrology where, I think, I probably have mentioned all the partile contacts when they occur (and surely have mentioned most of them).

[Jim Eshelman]

[I then exhaustively recorded only the partile angular contacts and aspects, page after page. There is no need to replicate these, in bringing the thread over from the old site; all of the figures can be seen on the pages of SMA. Along the way, I recorded the following:]

After the volcanoes:
FIRST IMPRESSION: These are quite good! Except for Mt. St. Helens, and perhaps the last one also, all the partile contacts are descriptive and seem, on their own, sufficient to describe the event.

After the earthquakes:
FIRST IMPRESSION: Dropping from a 2°-3° orb makes a huge difference in many of these. Partile doesn't serve all that well for this category, I think; and there is a lot more Jupiter than seems right (although this has a side explanation). I suppose it's not too bad in the end, and does have some tendency to sort those with the greatest human impact from those that had the least.

After the coalmine disasters:
FIRST IMPRESSION: These aren't bad. Most are pretty good. There's too much Venus and Jupiter. I'm starting to notice a trend (fiction? real?) that the real reliance is on the current lunar ingresses plus daily factors, as we observed early in this project years ago.

After the floods:
FIRST IMPRESSIONS: Going strictly by partile, these aren't all that impressive except a few isolated cases. With the slightly larger orbs, though, they are all quite good. I suspect the difference in this category is that floods (literally) spread out across much vaster areas, diffusing orb concentration to angles.

After the fires:
(Etc. I read through the rest of these in transit, without copying notes here. Similar conclusion, nearly universal occurrence of high-impact appropriate partile aspects, especially for the stationary-location fires. Surprising to me is that the wide-region wild fires were only a little less likely to show the same sort of thing. The Peshtigo fire, of course, is a classic - one of the best examples. Even the widespread Yarnell Hills fire had Saturn exactly angular in the Week chart for Yarnell, AZ where it was most concentrated, and Mars and Saturn on quotidian angles for the original lightning strike - moment and spot specific - at 68' and 34'.)

After the bombs:
FIRST IMPRESSION: Despite a weakness here or there, mostly I'm impressed at the simplicity.

After some vehicular catastrophes:
And so forth. Reading through these, there is a startling propensity for these in-transit events to occur when the vehicle passes under a partile Mars (or similar) line. Nearly all of these are quite exacting.

After some explosions:
And so on... there are almost no exceptions, and the examples tend to look like the ones above.

[Jim Eshelman]

I looked at all the categories - just didn't retype the details here. Overall, the results are interesting. I can't draw hard lines in the sand, but I have a better feeling of the relationship and relevance of different orb zones, and have an idea for going forward.

It remains clear that the wider orbs (3° range etc.), on which we have been relying most heavily, are fully functional. There were also a lot of examples that fully came alive only when the quotidian orb was a full 2°, not 1°. There is no reason to change thinking about these orbs and their value.

OTOH, the vast majority of events catalogued (I'd estimate 70-80%, but didn't count) had highly precise (I'd almost say targeted) partile angularities of the right planets. In fact, one of the interesting things is that when there were partile contacts, they were almost always of the right kind - Mars and Saturn for bad events; Uranus and Pluto for rupture-disruption-shock events; etc. A couple of categories had more Jupiter than one would expect (e.g., earthquakes), but only a few and, usually, in a place that makes immediate sense. (E.g., the earthquakes are nearly always parallel major relief efforts.) I'd say that around 80-90% of the partile contacts were searingly correct (but I didn't count - I was going for a general feel - it was a lot!).

There were several cases where two planets were within 3° of angles, one was better fit than the other, and the one that was the better fit would be the one within 1°. I don't think I saw an exception to that. For example, if Jupiter and Saturn were both angular for a really bad event (perhaps in aspect), and one was within 1° of the angle, I think it was always Saturn. If Venus and Mars were both within 3° for a harsh, violent, destructive event and only one of them was within 1°, it was Mars.

That's valuable, since it does suggest that there is a sufficiently acute distinction between partile (or just-past-partile) and other close, viable aspects. In general, if a chart is complicated, it's quite justified to look at anything < 1° from the angles for the root feel, and only layer other things in atop that first impression. This isn't perfect. I saw almost half a dozen examples where, say, Jupiter was the only partile planet, and clearly did not mark the event; but a different chart had, say, Mars exactly angular.

There aren't any surprises in this, but I'm glad I "discovered" these things rather than just assuming them.


GOING FORWARD, I want to experiment with it in a practical way. I'm going to work under the general idea that big, singled-out events rarely occur unless a partile contact is present. I already know there will be exceptions; but I want to see how successful this is in giving proper weight to mundane charts for predictive purposes. For example, I think Mars < 1° from an angle in this month's Caplunar deserved the strong interpretation that this means war, or something much like war; but if Mars were 2°-3° from the angle (and still very powerful), perhaps it deserves a softer, "not necessarily for the history books" interpretation.

It's an experiment. At this point, we can learn as much by predicting (and succeeding or failing in it) as by studying past events. (We need to do both, of course.)

So... that's the shakeout of this inquiry, at least for now.