When are Static Aspects Valid?

[mikestar13]

I'll start with my working rules. Here I am discussing trines and sextiles and ignoring lesser 3 series aspects.

1. Static aspects are only valid in ecliptic longitude, they have no meaning in prime vertical longitude, right ascension, or parans.
2. Static aspects are valid in nativities (and event charts), and are roughly as strong as squares of the same orb, though less intensely driven to outward manifestation.
3. Static aspects are not valid in solunars and ingresses.
4. Static aspects are not valid in synastry.
5. Static aspect in progressions are valid or not, according to whether or not they are valid in the chart being progressed. (For example NQ Mood trine natal Sun = valid, SQ or PSSR Moon trine SSR Sun, not valid.
6. Static aspects are invalid in Solar Arcs.

My degree of certainty declines as we go down the list. I would appreciate correction if needed. A more philosophical question: Why are static aspects valid at all, when clearly they are not in the majority of contexts? I'm not disputing that they are valid (I have clear examples in my own chart), but why?

[Jim Eshelman]

I agree almost 100% but would (for myself) tweak it a bit here and there.

Static aspects are valid in nativities (and event charts), and are roughly as strong as squares of the same orb, though less intensely driven to outward manifestation.

Yes. Emphatically effective in nativities. I'd have to dance around the words 'outward manifestation," though they might be a good way to say it. (Against them e.g. is that hard aspects this way sound too much like angles. For them e.g. is, well, its Harmonic 4 which is like angles which may be innate to the hard aspects, etc.P)

My favorite current wording (in addition to the dynamic-static distinction) is that hard aspects in a nativity urgently demand expression and soft aspects have no particular urgency for expression. I'm intentionally using "expression" as I would for angularity because the DEMAND for expression doesn't guarantee the RESULT of expression, i.e., it gives us a way to understand close hard aspects that are background (inner DEMAND for expression while probably denied expression).

"Event chart" is an interesting, accurate - and loaded - pair of words. "Loaded" because I would say that soft aspects are always valid between ongoing transits, i.e., aspects in space. A day with Venus sextile Mars is always a Venus-Mars day for more or less everyone. Where this gets really interesting is that there may be aspects between two transiting planets that deceptively make it look as if soft aspect transits are valid. Suppose, for example, Mercury conjoins my Moon on a day of a Mercury-Jupiter trine. I get some really good news or feel blessed by putting some facts usefully together. I might be led to believe the Jupiter transiting trine to my Moon was operative, but I assert it wasn't: The hard aspect transiting Mercury to natal Moon is valid, and the soft aspect transiting Mercury to transiting Jupiter is valid (which colors the Mercury).

[*]Static aspects are not valid in synastry.

This matches how I treat them in practice. However, I allow that there really is an effect, though weaker.

I did a study 20+ years ago of relationships and Class 1 trine sextiles of one person's Sun or Moon to someone else's planets. They all seemed to work well enough, but not dramatically. What was interesting was that for the same chart pairs the trines and sextiles clearly weren't working unless Sun or Moon was involved. So this leads me to think they're valid in synastry, but not so strongly as to be worth mentioning.

Another thing that makes this unclear is that, in synastry, most INNER planet pairs (especially including luminaries) seem to make "aspects" by sign. (They aren't really aspects, but "aspects by sign" is the easiest way to say it.) This could be providing the illusion that the aspects themselves are workng.

But in everyday work, and in teaching people in a way that they will give right weight to things, it's convenient to say that trines and sextiles don't work in synastry.

My degree of certainty declines as we go down the list. I would appreciate correction if needed. A more philosophical question: Why are static aspects valid at all, when clearly they are not in the majority of contexts? I'm not disputing that they are valid (I have clear examples in my own chart), but why?

I think the answer is closer to: They ARE valid in most/all contexts, HOWEVER most of the contexts you mentioned are predictive techniques of the "something is supposed to HAPPEN" sort - and trines and sextiles don't work that way.

The fact that they DO work by transit is shown by Bradley's suicides study where trines and sextiles were among the most common aspects by transit etc. But that's the ONLY study I know that has ever shown it. From this (and watching them in natals), I've concluded that their nature is to give the sense THERE IS NOTHING I CAN DO. In most cases this comes up simply as "nothing happens," and whatever shifts in mood or "state" is too subtle.

So, bottom line, I think it's that their nature is not to stir action, so anything we look at that inherently STIRS ACTION has them worthless. Or something like that.

[Jim Eshelman]

Mike, FYI, I just rediscovered that I had addressed some of this in (what I think is) a better way here, as part of (but no overly dependent on) a larger discussion of mundane aspects:
https://solunars.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4540#p33980