Quotidian crossings - ecliptico not mundo ?!?!

[Jim Eshelman]

(Sep 14, 2012)

In astrology, as in life, there is always something new to learn. While it is too soon to draw final conclusions, I wanted to alert you to a bit of a shock that has appeared from the Quotidian Anecdotes thread:

In that thread, I'm tracking, day-by-day, planet crossings of my SNQ (Q1 and Q2), PSSR, and SQ angles. I'm also including any other anecdotes that people submit to the thread (Steve, notice that I added your Saturn example up into the anecdotes sections for transiting Saturn. I'd rather that thread didn't turn into a discussion thread (we can use other, separate threads for that) so that it stays "crisp" as an anecdotes listing, but I do encourage people to post quotidian anecdotes. I'll add concise summaries in the anecdotes listings.

But (using only my own chart, so that there is a consistency in how I'm tracking it), I'm also scoring each crossing and building a cumulative score for each of the quotidian systems. So far, they're all in the 70% or better range, and usually much better. (After a few weeks I dropped tracking the Neo-SQ because it was tracking pathetically low - about 8% accuracy - whereas the Mean Rate SQ is scoring comfortably high. This matches every other comparison I've ever seen btw.)

But I'm also seeing another pattern that has quite surprised me. For 40 years or so, I've had the opinion that quotidian crossings should be calculated in mundo,. That's not what I'm seeing in these day-to-day examples. I'm tentatively coming to the almost heretical conclusion that Q-crossings are ecliptical. I'll give it more time to build a better track record, but that's what the last few weeks have been showing.

"So, hey, Jim, why haven't you noticed this in the past? I mean, c'mon, you've had over 40 years to see this, so what's wrong, man?" If this is the question floating through your mind, it's quite a fair one. The explanation is that during my years of most assiduously following quotidian crossings day-by-day - when Anna-Kria King and I did this during the late '70s - we just hopped right into measuring it mundanely. Never looked at a chart, per se. Once a year, I'd calculate a new precessed speculum for the two of us, and then we'd calculate a month's crossings right off that. There was no comparing mundane to ecliptic, we just did it mundanely. In between, I've not had long periods of day-by-day tracking but, rather, have spot-checked specific events, and this kind of spotty anecdotal checking was insufficient to differentiate the two approaches (especially since, most of the time, they give roughly the same results).

But on the day-to-day tracking I've been doing, I've been noting both the ecliptical and mundane crossings of natal and transiting (and other) planets. I wait until both the mundane and ecliptical crossing have occurred before drawing a conclusion, at which point usually one of them was a clear event (or "quality of day") and the other wasn't. I record the one that 'worked,' and list the discrepancy if it was wide. So far, in nearly every case, the ecliptical has been the 'winner' when there has been a significant difference.

For example: My Pluto has sufficient latitude that it crosses an angle quite separate from the point where it's zodiacal degree crosses. Pluto is at 2 Leo 06, but crosses the MC and IC (and EP and WP) in RA when those angles are at 5 Leo 52. In Los Angeles, it rises when the Ascendant is 29 Can 13, and sets when the Descendant is 17 Leo 36. A week or so ago, I got a piece of news that had a hard impact on me, that could eventually significantly change my life. While the emotional impact (excessive 'downer' rumination, morbid ideation) in the subsequent days was shown by Neptune repeatedly crossing Q angles, on the day itself one of my Q angles was 2 Leo - Pluto ecliptically. This is quite consistent with a "blow that stuns" and that potentially marks a life-change (or at least feels like it at the time of the event). I waited a few days to see what happened when 5 Leo 52 crossed the same angle (Pluto in RA) and... nothing in particular. No significant Pluto event or even emotional tone. The ecliptic crossing was decisively better.

The last few days, Venus has been running close to one of my Q Ascendants. It has enough latitude that it was conjunct the Ascendant in mundo for two days before it came within a degree by longitude. But there was no particular Venus characterization to those two lead-in days. OTOH, yesterday t. Venus was within a degree of the Q Ascendant by longitude and we saw (opening week performance, fantastic seats) "Book of Mormon" at the Pantages. A theater night with a great musical-comedy in a beautiful and classic theater, and with my mate, is dead-on for the Venus event. (There was also MC of the same chart square my p. Jupiter to pair with the Venus - but that was also in orb the day before when Venus was only on the angle in mundo, and there was no event.)

There are other examples, such as my recent r. Moon crossings. (There is at least a day, sometimes more, between the ecliptical and mundane crossings by my r. Moon.) My Moon is at 27 Aqu 24, crosses the MC/IC at 25 Aqu 22, and in LA rises at 20 Aqu 02 and sets at 28 Aqu 19. The recent passes have all had the hyper-sensitive, hyper-responsive, "empathy off the charts" days at the ecliptical crossings. (In some cases, these overlapped with Neptune, but one or another Neptune was on the angles on both the Moon ecliptic and Moon mundane days.)

So... I'm thinking I might end up changing my mind. I have no explanation as to why it would work this way. But it does appaer (so far) that Quotidian angles grab the ecliptical crossings exclusively - that the mundane one's aren't worth calculating where there is a significant difference.

If this turns out to be true, it gives one easy way to track quotidian crossing: You can make a 90 degree graphic emphemeris for a month and put the Q angles on it as straight lines (just plotting the first and last days of the month).

[Jim Eshelman]

I never came back to this thread to add that this view was solidly confirmed by the subsequent work with quotidians of the solar ingresses. The CapQ and CanQ results (where there was a significant difference) all had the ecliptical crossings working, not the mundane crossings.