Location and Progressions

[Jupiter Sets at Dawn]

If you are progressing a chart, especially a year for a day chart, you should locate the chart where the person was at the day for which you're drawing up the chart. Right?

So if the person was born in the hospital, kept overnight and discharged to the first home, remained in the home for two months, then moved to another home for several years, the progressions should be drawn up for

The hospital for the first year.
The first home for the next 60 or 61 or 62 years (or 58, 59, 60 if one of the first two months was February and you all can figure out leap years yourselves)
The second home for the rest of the life-span.

Or, if, after being discharged from the hospital after 3 days, then remaining in the first childhood home for 13 years, progressions would be located at the hospital for 3 years, then the childhood home for the rest of the life-span.

Is that right? Or weird?

And Solar Returns remain where they set up for PSSRs and SQs because they only last one year, so moving around doesn't matter. Probably? Or relocating the progressions might be valid, but that's hard to figure, and a bit over-invested in calculation so can be ignored in every day use?

[Jim Eshelman]

If you are progressing a chart, especially a year for a day chart, you should locate the chart where the person was at the day for which you're drawing up the chart. Right?

So if the person was born in the hospital, kept overnight and discharged to the first home, remained in the home for two months, then moved to another home for several years, the progressions should be drawn up for

Yes if by "where the person was at the day for which you're drawing up the chart" you mean the current-time date.

I could read this two ways so I want to be clear:

Scenario: A person stays the first 20 years of their life in Indiana then moves to California. Quotidian progressions (what I think you mean by "a day chart") for a date when they are, say, 25 years old are calculated for where they are then living in California, not where they were in Indiana 25 days after birth.

Primary angles - those that progress the chart at one or another rate approximating 1°/year - have proven themselves for both birthplace and current location. Quotidians, though, are specifically operative for where you are located at the time of the event.

And Solar Returns remain where they set up for PSSRs and SQs because they only last one year, so moving around doesn't matter. Probably?

SQ and PSSR, like the natal quotidian, stick to where you are at any given moment. Example: My SSR set up in an obscure nick of Arizona near St. George, Utah, at 36N52 113W58. That defines the SSR (and it seems that these angles are most responsive to transits). But within a day I was back at home in Los Angeles, 34N04 118W18. As long as I stay here, my SQ and PSSR are calculated here. If I went to Las Vegas for the weekend, then, for the time I was there, the SQ and PSSR (and the natal quotidian) would be calculated for Las Vegas.

Or relocating the progressions might be valid, but that's hard to figure, and a bit over-invested in calculation so can be ignored in every day use?

When I open Solar Fire, it automatically populates with certain charts: My natal, my SSR (for where it occurred), my SSR for home, and my local natal for where I now live; the same four charts for Marion; and the current solar and lunar ingresses for Washington. If I want to do a quotidian of Marion's or my natal or SSR (or, for that matter, the CapQ or CanQ), I click on the chart and two more clicks to get Dynamic | Animate Triwheel that comes up with quotidian cusps and three rings of natal, progressed, and transits. For example, my SQ (by doing this for my LA SSR) shows 21°36' Virgo for the moment, so I know my natal Sun (22° Virgo) is on the angle today.

[Jupiter Sets at Dawn]

So, since I was born in W Elm, taken home to Pine, and moved to W Elm at age almost 5, but now reside near Omaha, I should do natal progressions using my chart located to Omaha, ignoring where I lived before I was a year old?

I thought you said (somewhere here, at some time, of course I can't find it) that progressions should be calculated for where you lived in the first year of your life. It made total sense to me. Charts should be drawn for where you were at the time they set up, so progressions set up before you're a year old. Usually before you're 4 months old.

But you're saying that's not right. Wish I could find the post where I got this idea.

[Jim Eshelman]

So, since I was born in W Elm, taken home to Pine, and moved to W Elm at age almost 5, but now reside near Omaha, I should do natal progressions using my chart located to Omaha, ignoring where I lived before I was a year old?

Exactly. (For Quotidians.) For non-quotidian "primary" (roughly 1°/yr angles) use both West Elm and Elkhorn.

I thought you said (somewhere here, at some time, of course I can't find it) that progressions should be calculated for where you lived in the first year of your life.

I wonder what I said that sounded like that... could have been something... But no, this is a conversation I was involved in from the '70s on: The question was "When do progressions 'occur'?" In other words, do they "occur" in the first few days after birth or do they "occur" years later? If x days = x years, do they actually occur x days after birth or x years after birth?

I've always sided with the idea that progressions occur x years after birth. They occurred as transits x days after birth; but with progressions, time is unfolding at a different rate so that those planets x days after birth are actually occurring as progressions x years after birth.

Is it mud yet? <vbg>

Charts should be drawn for where you were at the time they set up, so progressions set up before you're a year old. Usually before you're 4 months old.

I agree that charts should be drawn for where you were at the time they set up; but I think progressions "set up" now, today, not the symbolic x days after birth from which the planets come. (This was even more confusing when everybody used an ephemeris and went back to the birth year ephemeris to calculate progressions.)

[Jupiter Sets at Dawn]

Yeah, I used to use an ephemeris, and sometimes check just to see what's coming up, since I still have them.

But the idea progressions are a different rate than transits so don't "set up" till the year you're progressing to makes sense.

Still a but muddy, but clearing some.

[Jim Eshelman]

There is a tendency to think of transits as "real" and "here right now" and to think of progressions as "symbolic."

However, I've often thought that maybe it was better to think of transits as another form of progressions but at the rate of "1 day = 1 day." Like even transits are symbolic flows of time!

One advantage of this (besides having a kind of "unified theory" of transits and progressions) is that it immediately give a simple explanation for converse transits. If transits are "real time," then you have to argue that time is flowing two directions at once (and perhaps it is or, more likely, is flowing many directions at once). But if transits are just "1 day = 1 day" progressions then converse transits are just "1 day backwards = 1 day forward" progressions. To me, that seems simpler, more elegant.

A disadvantage of this way of looking at things is that transits feel different from progressions. Fagan's original "incidents & accidents" from the early '40s seems a correct view that transits are a form of interaction with an external world and things that happen 'accidentally' in the course of life, while progressions are unfoldings of things innate and, at root, internal, unfolding incidentally through life.

[Jim Eshelman]

Another complication in all of this "where do progressions occur" question:

Alexander Marr introduced in Spica a "7-year lunar return." It's a return of secondary progressed Moon to conjoin, oppose, or square natal Moon. I never settled on where these should be set up - The same question you had, of "where I was back then" or "where I am now." (Let alone whether they move around as you move around within a 7-year period.)

However, I'm also not all that convinced they are valid charts. Marr gave some good examples but often in a flurry of many charts. I haven't particularly noticed people's lives changing around the times of lunar quarters to natal Moon.

My progressed Moon is in Leo so I'll be approaching a "demi" of progressed Moon to natal Moon in a year-plus. My "secondary progressed lunar return" - progressed Moon conjunct natal Moon - would have been about 13 years ago. These are a little cumbersome to calculate in Solar Fire - there's no direct way - but it goes something like this:

1. Look at current secondary progressions. See that progressed Sun is 29° Scorpio.
2. Find the day a couple of months after I was born when Sun was at 29° Scorpio, which was December 15, 1954.
3. Do my SLR for 12/15/54, which gives my SLR of 12/3/54 (12 days earlier). I know I was living in LA (at the Manhattan Place address) 21 years ago but, if I wanted to narrow it further, I could run a report to see when progressed Moon conjoined natal Moon around 2009: I get July 21, 2009 as the effective date. (Yes, I was living in LA on Manhattan Place at the time.)

So this tells me that my 12/15/54 SLR is the secondary progressed LR equivalent to July 21, 2009, theoretically applying to the 27 years beginning then (and especially to the seven years beginning then). The chart, set up for LA, is too vague to be useful to me, though: Jupiter-Uranus squares MC square Neptune on IC, natal Saturn squares Asc, etc. I can't answer the clear question, "Does this describe the 12 years since summer 2009?" Life is too complicated for that.

The quarti - my current "7-year lunar" - would be my Quarti-SLR for 12/9/54. This is even less clear (it's a boring chart).

If I set these up for birthplace instead, I don't get any clearer answers. This is the reason I've not made any use of 7-year lunars over the decades.

[Jim Eshelman]

Let's try another... where there is not so much difference between birth and residence.

Donald Trump's progressed Moon is currently 27° Leo. Within the month, it will square his natal Moon.

Progressed Moon opposed his natal Moon August 19, 2014, about a year before he launched his presidential campaign. Using New York City (his residence at the time, and not all that different from Washington), we get a "7-year lunar" as his August 21, 1946 demi-lunar. It has Mars-Neptune conjoined on MC and - get this a 0°00' Moon-Uranus conjunction. It's... interesting. Were it not for the 0°00' aspect, I'd have not given it as much thought, though the Mars-Neptune at MC certainly describes his presidency and, perhaps, the megalomaniacal style of campaigning that led to it.

So far, good enough... but I doubt this holds up.

His next "7-year lunar" is his August 28, 1946 quarti-SLR equivalent to January 18, 2021, i.e., almost the day he will leave office. What I like best about this chart is that, in theory, it puts an end to the last 7-year lunar. What I like least, though, is that it has Sun closely angular for Washington and even closer for Mar-A-Lago. In fact, for Palm Beach it has Sun 0°48' from IC, Uranus 2°22' from Asc, the two in close mundane square, natal Sun-Uranus also closely angular. I certainly hope this doesn't describe his next 7 years! It seems to exult him extraordinarily. Interestingly, for NYC the tone shifts and, while Sun and Uranus are moderately angular, the main feature is that natal Mercury rises.

(Biden's current 7-Year Lunar, the same as his 2/10/43 quarti-SLR, says a whole lot of nothing in particular.)