My Octiles

[sotonye]

I have several octiles a bit over 2°, and I've usually ignored them, but for the sake of due-diligence I'm wondering now if they have any influence at all. I have an octile between Venus and Pluto at 2°05, an octile between the Moon and Uranus at 2°04, and an octile between Mercury and Venus at 2°21. I have a closer octile between Jupiter and Uranus at 1°32 as well. Is it appropriate to ignore these aspects?

[Jupiter Sets at Dawn]

How strongly do you feel those aspects? Not at all? It's a constant influence? Or?
I think out past 2° there's very little effect, but if you have no other aspects that are close, maybe you'd feel them more.
Another question is are the planets involved angular? An angular Moon octile an angular Uranus (maybe on the Vertex or something) will express a lot more readily than a background Moon and a middleground Uranus. Is one planet angular and the other background?
The aspect orbs are just one part of it.

[sotonye]

How strongly do you feel those aspects? Not at all? It's a constant influence? Or?
I think out past 2° there's very little effect, but if you have no other aspects that are close, maybe you'd feel them more.
Another question is are the planets involved angular? An angular Moon octile an angular Uranus (maybe on the Vertex or something) will express a lot more readily than a background Moon and a middleground Uranus. Is one planet angular and the other background?
The aspect orbs are just one part of it.

I'm not sure I feel these aspects at all. But, since I have other aspects in my chart, a Moon-Jupiter opposition which is both partile and angular for example, which I can't feel at all, I don't think my being able to feel a thing is a metric for whether or not it has influence. We can be so close to a thing that we can't see it as Chesterton said, but he puts it better than I can now.

And every octile here mentioned is formed with one angular planet. Moon 1°06 away from the ascendant, Mercury conjoins the East point by 0°11, Jupiter is partile conjunct the descendant at 0°29, and Pluto conjoins the descendant by 1°08 as well. The only background planet involved is Uranus, and Venus is more or less in the middle ground.

[Jim Eshelman]

I wouldn't go past 2°.

[Jupiter Sets at Dawn]

So, you don't notice them, even though most of them involve an angular planet. I'd say you can safely ignore them.

[sotonye]

So, you don't notice them, even though most of them involve an angular planet. I'd say you can safely ignore them.

Okay thank you

[sotonye]

I wouldn't go past 2°.

Should I ignore the Jup-Uranus octile as well? It's not 2° but it's close

[Jim Eshelman]

I wouldn't go past 2°.

Should I ignore the Jup-Uranus octile as well? It's not 2° but it's close

Jupiter-Uranus semi-square has an orb of 1°33', which is less than 2°.

[Jupiter Sets at Dawn]

I wouldn't go past 2°.

Should I ignore the Jup-Uranus octile as well? It's not 2° but it's close

Although your Jupiter-Uranus aspect is under 2°, in general, when Jim says he wouldn't go past 2°, he's saying in his research work, the effect drops off sharply after 2°. Sort of like stepping off a cliff. So yes, ignore "octiles" over 2°, even if they are "close".

In my experience, there aren't as many soft edges in astrology as people think.

[Jim Eshelman]

In my experience, there aren't as many soft edges in astrology as people think.

This is a keen observation. I have a theory about it.

Generally, I agree with the point of view that such orbs are gradually, tapering matters, but I disagree with Bradley or others who say there is no absolute drop-off.

Decades ago, I started thinking of "relative strength of an aspect" as percentage of its likelihood to manifest. At partile (I mean about a 1°, not 0°00' precision), odds are very close to 100% of manifestation, and it drops from there.

I don't know for sure that it is "odds of manifesting" in the probabilistic sense that those words should mean, but, if not, then it is something very close to that. If you think of it in these terms, you get some very interesting results. As a setup: For the sextile, square, and trine, you can't have an orb larger than 15° because then you would have two different aspects at the same time (both sextile an square, both square and trine). Therefore, the maximum aspectivity for these (score 1.00, meaning 100%) is at 0°00' orb and the minimum aspectivity (score 0.00, meaning 0%) is at 15°. If you plot this as a sine curve, the drop-off isn't linear but the place where it crosses 0.5 (50%) happens to be right in the middle, at 7°30'. - This is just an example to set you up for what comes next.

In a since, that 7°30' orb isn't a hard edge because a little less than this orb is a 51% chance of manifestation, while a slightly larger orb is a 49% chance of manifestation. This 2% difference, in one sense (the sense Bradley, Duncan, and others mean) is not a big deal and shouldn't be treated any differently than the difference between an 89% and 87% difference - a difference you would never perceive in real life.

Yet, in another sense, this 51% to 49% gap is quite a different thing. At 51%, a manifestation is still more likely to occur than not, while at 49% it is a little less likely to manifest than not. Stripping away extra words, 51% is still likely to manifest while 49% is unlikely to manifest.

Forget the numbers and think of the concept: The gap between likely to manifest and unlikely to manifest is a quantum leap across an immeasurable gap. Therefore, I think there is a distinctive, precise line exactly there, a "fall off the cliff" point.

Now, in practice we don't encounter this much because we're usually no longer paying attention for quite a stretch of the slope down to that bottom (especially with the major aspects). With minor aspects (defined for convenience as those that have tighter orbs), the curve has a tinier base and is nearly acute, so the drop-off comes upon us much faster when we hit the edge.