Fagan's Alphabet Soup

[Jim Eshelman]

"Fagan's Alphabet Soup" was the affectionately ribbing term that Donald Bradley and Gary Duncan sometimes used to describe Cyril Fagan's long list of techniques designated by acronyms (usually the ever-popular TLA variety, i.e., Three Letter Acronyms). From SSR and SLR forward, these have been a mainstay of communication among Siderealists concerning a long list of methods and sub-methods.

For progression rates, these became quite numerous, so I thought I'd give a simple summary. All of the following is some variation of classic Secondary Progressions - "day for a year" - calculated with true angles, angles that rotate through the entire zodiac in a year, just as angles naturally rotate through the whole zodiac every day. The main distinctions are:

1. Does the technique apply to the natal chart or the Sidereal Solar Return?
2. Is it a Q1 or Q2 variation?
3. Does it flow at a mean or apparent solar rate through the year?

While alternative labels have been used by different people over time, my goal in this post is to document Fagan's usage, which I think should be our standard.

The term quotidian itself literally means "daily." These are "daily" charts because the angles change about 1° each day, and they therefore are useful daily timing charts. The term was surely Fagan's adaptation of the old (early 20th Century?) technique called the Diurnal Chart, which was his inspiration for the SNQ technique.

NATAL vs. SSR

The quotidian progression of the natal chart is called the Sidereal Natal Quotidian (SNQ). As there is nothing inherently sidereal about it, the first letter is unnecessary, and some of us will casually write NQ occasionally with the same meaning; but, in the spirit of using Fagan's language for standard techniques, the correct term is Sidereal Natal Quotidian.

When the same technique is applied to the Sidereal Solar Return, Fagan called it the Solar Quotidian (SQ)

WHAT KIND OF YEAR?

On the equation of "a day for a year," the question that is almost never asked is, "What kind of year do you mean?" - because there are different definitions of the year.

This is mostly a geek question - it has little real effect in day-to-day work, but it has some as we get older - we should address it in any case. I hold that if one is using a tropical zodiac, one should use the Tropical Year; and if one is using a sidereal zodiac, one should use the Sidereal Year. These are minutely different lengths. They both reflect the Earth's journey around the Sun, but the Tropical Year measures the return in a precessing framework (it's the average time between two Tropical Solar Returns), and the Sidereal Year measures it in a precession-free framework (it's the average time between two Sidereal Solar Returns). I got this changed decades ago in Mark Pottenger's CCRS astrology software, but I'm sure Solar Fire (and probably everything else available today) just uses Tropical Year for everything.

As, on average, the Sidereal Year is 20 minutes longer than the Tropical Year, this difference does amount to one day of timing difference by the time one hits 72 years of age. Normally, this wouldn't matter for Secondary Progressions in general, but, using quotidian angles, using the Tropical Year makes the angles 1° later in the zodiac than they probably should be.

Q1 vs. Q2

The question of Q1 vs. Q2 involves the question: In a "day for a year" equation, which kind of day do we mean? I explain this in Sidereal Mundane Astrology, but the bottom line is quite simple:

Q1: 1 sidereal day = 1 sidereal year
Q2: 1 mean solar day = 1 sidereal year

The sidereal day is the time it takes Earth to spin on its axis - to come back to the same exact Midheaven degree (for example). A mean solar day is the time it takes to return to the same clock time (say, from noon one day to noon the next), what we normally think of as "a day." (The astronomical definitions are a bit more precise than this, but what I just wrote is entirely accurate. BTW, "sidereal day" doesn't make it more Sidereal; it's actually defined in practice in terms of what we would call a tropical measurement, return to the same RAMC. It's just a name.)

The mean solar day is about 4 minutes longer than the sidereal day, so the Q1 loses 1° for every year of life (approximately: the exact value is 3m 56.56s of RAMC per year).

Q1 vs. Q2 HISTORY

This post is about definitions, not theory; but, to make the definitions clear to the well-read Sidereal astrologer, I think I need to give some history, which I am isolating in this separate section so you can conveniently read past it if you want.

The Q1 is the SNQ that you get if you apply Fagan's Bija correction as instructed in the Primer and elsewhere. That's really the whole story: The Bija, exotic as it sounds, is just one means of adjusting the Q2 to a Q1. It's an easy way to make the difference, but not necessarily the easiest (even pre-computer).

Fagan conceived of the SNQ as a Q1 because he was adapting an old technique already popular from his Tropical days called the Diurnal Chart. A Diurnal Chart feels (to the non-technical astrologer) like it's in the same spirit as a solar return or lunar return. Specifically, it is a chart cast every day for the same time you were born. I was born at 4:13 AM CST, so I would (for wherever I'm located) cast a new chart every day for 4:13 AM CST (2:13 AM PST) to get my "daily chart." Sounds simple, for a simpler time and less technical minds. What's cool and important to the present discussion, though, is that - for that exact minute - the Diurnal Chart is identical with the SNQ as a Q1! The SNQ approach just "smoothes it out" through the day, i.e., makes it continuous.

Fagan was very sold on the Q1 through most of his career, and frequently reiterated that you had to use the Bija correction to get your quotidian results right. However, by the end of his life he was changing his mind. Bradley inherited Fagan's personal chart files, and told me that, in the last several years, Fagan increasingly noted that the Q2 was better.

Bradley did several studies (I think none of them large) over decades and always found the Q2 better two or three times more often than the Q1. His means of assessment was to look at the things that change most: progressed Moon aspects and quotidian angles. I've walked the same path several times over the years, always with small batches, and found the same ratios - if you place the better chart on a Q1 or Q2 stack, the Q2 stack always ends up at least twice as high, and usually three times as high.

Personally, I distrust the Q1 entirely and think it is a mistake. Lunar progressions in particular are strikingly better at the Q2 rate. In watching quotidians on a day-to-day rate during different periods, a planet on a Q1 angle essentially never describes the tone of the day (I'd expect better from coincidence), whereas the Q2 does so, at least in a minor way, much more often. (I consider all of these quotidian methods very weak influences (at best) for day-to-day tone-setting but my Q2s at least accumulate points, and my Q1s essentially never do.)

The one thing - the only thing - that keeps me from dismissing the Q1 entirely is the U.S. natal chart for about a quarter hour past noon on July 4m 1776. Lewis Howard (Donald Bradley) wrote a book about this chart and its progressions and transits, using entirely the Q1 - with detailed, wonderful tables in the back itemizing exact progressions from 1776 to 1974. It was on the basis of this chart, and the Q1 rate that Bradley predicted the Kennedy assassination in print, for the simple reason that exactly lunar progressions were the same in November 1963 as they had been at each prior murder of a U.S. president. I can't dismiss this, and yet I don't see these same Q1 lunar progressions working effectively (better timing) in personal charts. Calculating crudely, progressed Moon's position is displaced half a degree for every 15 years of life, so this accumulates quickly.

A good example is coming up: My progressed Moon, by the Q2 rate, is already in orb of square my natal Sun, and will hit exactly May 10. By the Q1 rate, it won't square my Sun until July 12.

Anyway, that's the history. Back to definitions.

MEAN vs. APPARENT

Though not an example of Secondary Progressions like the SNQ and SQ, the PSSR (Progressed Sidereal Solar Return) is

The final consideration, and one that occupied Fagan heavily in the last years of his life (at least, if his "Solunars" column is any indication) was the issue of the argument of time flow for quotidians. That is, do these progressions move at the mean solar or apparent solar rate?

The Sun does not move exactly the same speed every day. Because of orbital mechanics, Earth (like every planet) goes faster during part of its orbit and slower in other parts.

One could create a theoretical argument for either variation if necessary. I won't concern myself with that here. My main point is to help the reader understand the difference, and what these terms means.

Mean solar rate refers simply to the linear flow of time. It doesn't have anything directly to do with the sun - "mean sun" refers to the manual method of calculation, not to the theory of the technique itself. The mean solar rate is what Solar Fire uses. Any software that doesn't go out of its way to tell you it's using something different is surely using the mean solar rate for progressions.

Apparent solar rate means that time (as most obviously reflected in the SNQ or SQ angles) moves at the same speed as transiting Sun, which speeds up and slows down throughout the year. In theory, this could be measured in longitude - much like Solar Arc Directions - or in Right Ascension. Fagan and his collaborators always used Right Ascension, but it would be a fair test to try it in longitude.

Fagan "got on the apparent Sun bandwagon" at the end of his life. The last few years of "Solunars" contradicted what he had written in all previous stages of his career. He seemed to be moving deeper into the idea that all quotidians should be apparent rate.

I haven't retested this in years, but did a few small-batch tests in decades past. I came to the same conclusion Bradley did: that mean rate produced better results about three times more often than apparent rate, when there any difference.

As for labelling, if apparent rate was used, Fagan appended the prefix Neo-. Thus, in Fagan's terminology, "SQ" means the quotidian progression of the SSR using the mean rate, while "Neo-SQ" means the quotidian progression of the SSR using the apparent rate. (The Neo- charts are always going to be Q1, by the way.)

NOTE: An important thing to note: 100% of the work Bradley did on Capsolar Quotidians, and all that I have done here on the site and in SMA, is based on mean rate. In the (I think) highly unlikely scenario that apparent rate were deemed the correct approach, we would have to throw all of that out. Not only are these some of the most striking examples of astrology I have ever seen for anything, but they are the exact charts on which the SVP determination is based. In the (I think) highly unlikely scenario that apparent rate were deemed the correct approach, we would have to throw out the SVP determination and discover it anew. (The good news: (1) We have enough data to do that, if necessary - far more than Bradley used. (2) The refinement would be in terms of seconds of arc, surely under half a minute.)

CALCULATING APPARENT RATE FOR TESTING

I want to show you how to see the difference between these different approaches. A simple example should give at decent idea of how these different theories work. You can do the actual calculations by hand, with an Excel spreadsheet, etc. (My PSSR spreadsheet, posted on this site, calculates the Neo-SQ while it's doing everything else, so you can use that as an aid.)

Here is how it looks in theory:

SAMPLE 1. My natal chart: I was born October 10, 1954, 4:13 AM CST, Rochester, IN. I live at 34N03'46", 118W18'47". Let's calculate three variations of my Q1 for noon today (April 28, 2017, 12:00 PM PDT) for that location.

Mean Rate. Just calculate a Q1 Secondary Progression in Solar Fire, with angles set to Quotidian. This gives a Midheaven of 18°24' Scorpio (RAMC 251°03').

Apparent Rate (in RA). At noon, transiting Sun is 13°41'30" Aries, RA 36°17'. My natal Sun needs to be subtracted from this - if we were using longitude, we could subtract it directly, but RA needs to be adjusted for precession. The easiest way to do this (accurate to within less than 01' of arc) is to use Sun's RA from the Sidereal Solar Return. My last SSR had Sun at RA 196°04'.

t Sun 36°17' + 360° (for subtraction) = 396°17'. Subtract my Sun's precessed RA, 196°04', get an increment of 200°134'. Add this to the RA MC of my natal chart for this location (53°25') to get the Neo-SNQ RAMC of 253°38'. Compare this to the Mean Rate RAMC shown above (251°03') and see that it is 2°35' greater, meaning that progressed MC is going to be about two and a half degrees later in the zodiac (we have to do some tricks or trial and error to work it out exactly). It also means that the planets of the progressed chart would be calculated for about 10 minutes later (the time it takes the MC to move 2°53').

Apparent Rate (in longitude). We calculate this exactly the same as the last example, except using longitude. (Neither Fagan nor Bradley - or anyone else I know - used this approach. I'm just giving it for sake of completion.) At noon today, transiting Sun is 13°41'30" Aries. My natal Sun needs to be subtracted from this, and is 22°27'42" Virgo.

t Sun 13°41'30" Aries minus r Sun 22°27'42" Virgo = 201°13'48". Add this to my natal chart's local MC, 1°37'59" Taurus, to get a progressed MC of 22°51'47" Scorpio. This is 4°28' later than the mean rate MC calculated above, and a couple of degrees later than the RA apparent rate one immediately above.

SAMPLE 2. I was going to do this for my SSR, to get a Neo-SQ, but I think you have the idea by now.

WHAT ABOUT THE PSSR?

Though not a quotidian in the sense of the charts discussed above (i.e.,
a form of secondary Progression), the PSSR (Progressed Sidereal Solar Return) should be discussed with then. I think it is the champ (or tied with the SNQ2 as the champ) of the entire set, and it is quite regrettable that PSSR capability does not exist in Solar Fire. It has led to a situation where I almost never consult what is arguably one of the crown jewel's among Fagan's discoveries.

The PSSR is not a "day for a year" method. It is more like "a day and a quarter" for a year. As each year is not 365 days long, but 365 and a quarter long, the Sidereal Time between two SSRs averages a little more than 30 hours (1 day, 6 hours). An old Tropical technique - Wynn's "Key Cycle" - only paid attention to the 6 hour residual, and applied it to the Tropical Solar Return - so that the TSR is progressed about half an hour a month, or about a minute of clock time per day.

Fagan's method differs from this in two ways. First, it uses the Sidereal Solar Return, not the TSR. Second, it uses 24 hours + the residual, or the whole 30 hours plus. (The ST difference between two SSRs is not 6 hours, but 24+6 hours.) This progresses the chart by about 5 minutes of time per day, or 1 1/4° on the angles.

Furthermore, the PSSR has always been based on the apparent solar rate, not the mean. In this sense, it stood out from the others. I have never done an exhaustive, attentive comparison, but spot check in the '70s and early '80s was enough for me to take Fagan's word for it. If we had PSSR capability built into Solar Fire I would investigate this exhaustively and have a firmer opinion. Even with the help of my Excel spreadsheet, it's still too tedious for me to do more than an example here and there.

The PSSR has its own stand on the three issues above:

1. It applies to the SSR, not the natal. (NB: I have a theory I've never been able to test about applying it to the natal - subject for another time.)
2. It is inherently based on the sidereal year, but is not party to the Q1 vs. Q2 debate.
3. it flows at the apparent solar rate.

Therefore, the PSSR has always been the Neo-PSSR; and, at least one time in his last "Solunars" installments, he called it as much, to make his language consistent.