Hello everyone. Allow me to introduce myself. For the past year I have studied Tropical, especially Traditional Medieval and Hellenistic astrology (Mathesis, Tetrabiblos, the nine books of Valens, Dorotheus, parts of Lilly etc.). I had quite satisfying results at divination using seven planets, terms, whole sign aspects, arabic parts, house rulership, annual profections, primary directions, zodiacal releasing though I have been lurking on this forum from time to time until I read this post today:
Jim Eshelman wrote: Thu Jun 08, 2017 12:48 amI know I'm speaking strongly on this, but I don't mean to foreclose the idea that planets in houses have meaning. (I do mean to disparage house rulership/dispositorship, and the kind of thinking that goes with it, in the strongest terms.) Your statement above basically says, "Sidereal returns have planets in the right houses, and Tropical returns don't"... right? I got really really good at "house rulership Tetris" as a Tropicalist, and, looking back, see that I was doing more astromancy than astrology, i.e., using a horoscope much as I might use Tarot cards - unconsciously knowing the answer and continuing to stare until I found the right rulerships and similar connections to justify my conclusions. (I did get into writing before 1972 that Nixon wouldn't survive his second term, though it wouldn't be because of his death; but I don't really want to take credit for that being an astrological prediction, though it came entirely from looking at his Tropical-Placidus horoscope <g>.)
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1463&p=8659 - I can say from experience that mixing horary and astrology was disastrous. Morinus and Kepler were going in a right direction by focusing more on mathematics than cleromancy.
Jim, this is exactly how I feel about what I am doing with Hellenistic Astrology for the last 6 months. Tetris sortilege.
Having taken a look at most interpretations of my planets in the signs and their aspects - http://www.solunars.org/interp/, and some charts of my friends, relatives and famous people I much prefer your method of working.
A few questions about my natal chart:
1. Foreground Sun and Mercury in Virgo conjunct exactly IC - their different interpretations from the forum are spot on. But what about when they are considered together as an exact conjunction with their sextiles to Moon/Pluto and Neptune/Uranus?
2. Moon in Scorpio - with the exception of music and somewhat maths (I am not terrible at it though) your description is right - is this because my Moon in Scorpio is somewhat afflicted or near its fall degree?
3. Also in traditional astrology the Moon has a much larger orb than the rest of the planets, would you pay closer attention to its wide sextile to Venus and trine to Jupiter in sidereal?
4. Jupiter is exact trine to Ascendant (Venus has close sextile) - in Traditional Tropical that just means the planet is very active, but I am curious about the aspect from a sidereal perspective.
Most things on the aspects from the forum are true, but a bit too broad, though I understand ''cookbook'' style doesn’t take the entire chart into account and you have connect things yourself. I think there are lots of aspects in my chart (? - don't have much experience with the outer planets), but I am most curious in the area of occultism. I would appreciate information in this area.
My sidereal placements make sense compared to modern tropical nonsense. That is what got me in traditional astrology in the first place, the signs don't play much of a factor at all aside from sortilige reasons). Though I haven't given up astromancy as a viable divination method, I much prefer sidereal astrology.
I have many questions (paralels, parans, progressions, transits etc.) but I will try to research these myself before bothering anyone with my neophyte enthusiasm. Thanks.
(And the Neptune is foreground also, only about 7° above Descendant.)