I bring this up because the history of astrology's conversation on aspect types over the last eighty years (from the 1930s and '40s on, especially) has tended to polarize these ideas, so I thought I'd raise the conversation. Also (and perhaps this was my original motive), it provides an introduction to another passage from Charles Carter's "Introduction" in his book Astrological Aspects.
For those not so familiar with the history of thought on aspects, from around the 1890s onward (and to a lesser extent from Medieval times forward), the Western astrological paradigm treated oppositions and squares (etc.) as intrinsically bad (malefic, inharmonious, etc.) and trines and sextiles (etc.) as intrinsically good (benefic, harmonious, etc.), the conjunction being "neutral" or capable of going either way. This marked the majority of 20th Century astrology books and still persists in many quarters because of that legacy, so much that I've tended to think of it as the typical Tropical astrology view of aspects - not that there is anything zodiac related about it, but from the culture of Tropical astrology.
But Tropical astrologers were as instrumental in breaking this idea as were Siderealists. This was a trend of the more progressive leaders beginning in the 1940s especially. Cyril Fagan was one of those leaders, so it became the typical view in the Sidereal school of astrology that the nature of the planets mattered more than the nature of the aspect. In Bradley's Solar and Lunar Returns, written in the late '40s, you can see, especially in the discussion of Sun and Moon aspects, a tendency to regard trines and sextiles as softer but of the same general type and character of the oppositions and squares. Concurrently, Reinhold Ebertin's group in Germany, busy rebranding astrology as Cosmobiology, took exactly the same position, stating in the Introduction to his book The Combination of Stellar Influences,
Partly, Ebertin's view (and Koch's view) were influenced by similar thinking decades earlier by Alfred Witte, who must be considered an outlier astrological genius-innovator of his time, though Ebertin really anchored it. Ebertin, Fagan - and, as we shall see next, Charles Carter - paved the way on this new view of aspect types and, aside from the small percentage who outright adopted them, other astrologers at least started softening their view, not so much changing how they spoke of the aspects as changing how they spoke about people and challenges, e.g., (I simplify) still regarding squares as challenging obstacles but, more or less, reminding us that "obstacles are good for you." These different threads have wandered down the decades from especially the '70s forward and have given us the tapestry of Western astrological views we have today, in which Siderealists still stand on the radical edge. (It's just less radical an edge than it used to be.)Ebertin wrote:The signifying symbols + and - have been chosen purposely in order to avoid the terms "favourable" and "unfavourable", the use of which is becoming more and more obsolete in modern astrology. Hitherto, squares and oppositions have been termed unfavourable and sextiles and trines favourable. However, experience has shown that such a usage is not always correct.
I have attempted repeatedly to explain the difference in such a way that sextiles and trines represent a state of things, whereas squares and oppositions signify an action or an event. [Walter] KOCH says quite rightly that in modern scientific astrology all aspects must be considered equal but only that their potency or effect may be stronger or weaker as the case may be. He prefers a division into "soft" (sextile, trine) and "hard" (square, opposition) aspects.
Fagan and Ebertin, while highly respected by their peers, were definitely seen as radicals. Both were openly out to remake astrology in non-trivial ways, to reinvent it from the ground up. This always makes one a bit more suspicious to the crowd than equally respected people who stay in the mainstream. But, planted right in the middle of the mainstream, at the heart of mainstream astrology, was one of the most respected voices of all, Britain's "dean of astrology," Charles E.O. Carter... and, in an important book on interpreting astrological aspects, he came forward with substantially the same view, but framed more in the language of the mainstream and tradition, and therefore more easily comprehensible to most of his readers. I don't have much of Fagan's Tropical writings (or his thoughts earlier than 1944), and I recognize that Ebertin was influenced by Witte, but - those possible exceptions acknowledged, Carter may have been the first major voice to drive this new perspective home.
Here is a long excerpt from Carter's 1930 "Introduction." I don't endorse every word but, when you shake out the author-choices, I eventually agree with most of it. At the moment, besides sharing this long quote I'm also reflective on meta-communications in his words and wondering what assumptions, considerations, and definitions implicit in his writings might have driven the aspect conversation in the intervening decades and whether we have unconsciously accepted assumptions that aren't necessarily true. In any case, here is a lovely radicalism from one of Britain's gentlest (while most brilliant) astrological souls.
Charles E.O. Carter wrote:It must be noted that any configuration may be considered good or bad from two points of view - happiness and achievement. The benefic planets and aspects undoubtedly are most favourable to the former, but they are by no means good for success or attainment, in and by themselves, since they incline to tranquil and uneventful conditions and the less noble alternative of the "Choice of Herakles." On the other hand, a horoscope almost entirely dominated by the malefic planets and by inharmonious aspects will, as a rule, break the native through repeated obstacles and misfortunes. Hence, for achievement, a mixed map is best, affording both opportunity and incentive. Inharmonious aspects cause misfortunes, but they do not forbid success,whereas a natus of good aspects (such as that of the Buddhist Prince who became a monk, Notable Nativities, No. 178) indicates a shrinking from mundane responsibilities.
However, harmonious aspects to not denote slackness or indolence unless they pervade the whole map, and even then the prominence of vigorous planets, such as Mars or Uranus, will prevent this effect, for then the necessary energy will come from the planet, though not from the aspect. It stands to reason that, since to achieve anything notable is ex hypothesi difficult, the map of the man who does this must contain difficult elements; and as a rule we shall more often find in such cases Sun opposition Saturn, than Sun trine Jupiter. Most often we shall see a blend of both classes.
Unless the reader can see this point of view and to some extent accept it, he will find much that follows [in the book to which this is Introduction] to be rubbish, for in compiling this book I have sometimes found that inharmonious contacts between certain planets are not more noticeably worse, so far as success in true character go, than are the harmonious. I cannot carry on the old tradition that Saturnine afflictions mean worldly downfall and failures when I see such men as W.T. Stead and Lord Northcliffe with the Lights in opposition and Saturn in square to both. And, without postulating that either was wholly wise or good, I cannot see that they were particularly censurable in point of character. Hence I have tried to find what these configurations commonly do mean, as distinct from what they are said to mean.
I must frankly say that I doubt if anything has done sane Astrology more harm than or constant prating about "good" and "bad" aspects, like children talking of "lovely sweets" and "nasty medicine." Such a point of view is debilitating and unworthy, and it implies that astrologers are people whose chief concern in life is to find ease and comfort and avoid hardships. I do not mean that astrologers are of this frame of mind, but our language leads others to this conclusion. We must indeed employ the terms of ordinary language, but there is no need to speak as if comfort were the one good thing, and discomfort the one evil.
It will be noticed that I have usually found more to say about the inharmonious aspects than about the harmonious ones; this is not due to ant perverse preference for the former, but to the fact that these have more affinity with materiality and therefore manifest themselves more clearly and perceptibly.
