Example of Nelson aspect types & solar flares

[Jim Eshelman]

We are approaching a sunspot maximum (on the 11-year cycle) and today has been a particularly active day - I just got a notification of a new solar flare and there were radio blackout periods earlier today due to solar activity.

I've written previously about the well-known work of John Nelson at RCA predicting solar activity (which was important to their radio business). Though there are more complicated rules, the gist is that a helio hard aspect compounded by another aspect - hard or soft - is the baseline for triggering solar activity. Soft aspects become like hard aspects when compounding hard aspects and are energy-enflaming. Soft aspects on their own are energy-suppressive.

Here is a helio chart from a few minutes ago. I knew today we still have a Sun-Mars conjunction (geo) which would be a heliocentric Earth-Mars opposition. Notice that Earth-Mars is partile and exactly reinforced by soft aspects from Venus and Neptune (and a wider one from Pluto). In fact, the Earth-Mars opposition is the central axis of a "kite" pattern, meaning multiple soft aspects compounding and building the ferocity. The Neptune arm of the kite also has the Jupiter-Neptune exact semi-square (so Mars' trine and Earth's sextile add fuel to the Jupiter-Neptune hard aspect). Finally, the Mercury-Uranus trine doesn't have any suppressive potency because it's really just adding fuel to the fast Mercury-Saturn semi-square.

This seems to be an outstanding Nelson example! - I thought you'd like to see these energy-enflaming vs. energy-suppressive geometrics in play.

Helio.png

[SteveS]

Very interesting! I read his book a long time ago but forgot about his discoveries.

[Jim Eshelman]

Here are some excerpts from the new book's aspect chapters. The first excerpt is modelled after what I wrote in Interpreting Solar Returns.

I selected dynamic and static based on the most successful practical use of hard vs. soft aspect distinctions: John Nelson’s decades of work predicting sunspots. Nelson found that hard aspects are most important in triggering major solar activity. On the other hand, soft aspects, especially the trine, put a damper on the chance of solar activity, inhibiting solar energy release. An exception is when the soft aspect connects directly to a hard aspect (as when two planets are in opposition with a third planet trine one and sextile the other). In that case, the soft aspect intensifies and reinforces the energetic quality of the hard aspect, adding fuel to the fire. (See Nelson’s Cosmic Patterns and Zipporah Dobyns’ Finding the Person in the Horoscope. The latter summarizes Nelson’s practical results in a way that is particularly meaningful to astrologers.)

In natal astrology, these principles hold true, as summarized above.

From the next chapter:

The keys to rightly understanding multi-planet configurations are (1) the work of John Nelson and (2) basic midpoint theory, a topic given its own chapter later in this book.

John Nelson, working for the broadcast industry from the 1940s, learned how to predict sunspots and other solar disturbances. His work stretched over several decades and became increasingly complex with time, though always based on the simple principles developed during his early years. Because Nelson’s work involved natural energy movements (magnetic flux disturbances affecting solar surface features), the individual planets seem not to matter – only the geometry of the aspects. This makes his work uniquely valuable to astrologers.

Nelson’s first observation (working heliocentrically, since he was measuring the impact of planetary effects on the Sun) was straightforward: If two planets were in a close conjunction, opposition, or square and a third planet joined them – conjunct, opposite, or square either of them – a solar disturbance would occur. The third planet compounding the hard aspect structure signaled the eruption.

This was in line with what astrologers would have predicted. The most interesting new fact was how important the third factor was in amping up, or igniting, the simpler two-planet pattern.

What was not in line with astrological thought was that if the third planet formed a sextile or trine to either of the first two planets, this also would signal a solar eruption. Astrologers had thought the opposite: Regarding oppositions as harsh aspects (per the paradigm of the time), astrology texts routinely said that if two planets were in opposition and a third planet trined one and sextiled the other, it would ameliorate the harshness, softening the hard aspect. Not so! A trine or sextile to the initial hard aspect was simply another pile-on, working exactly the same as if the third planet formed a hard aspect.

The rule then became: If two planets are in conjunction, opposition, or square and a third planet makes any aspect to them, it ignites or heightens the discharge of energy, triggering an eruption.

However, neither a soft aspect by itself nor a multi-planet combination of only sextiles and trines would signal an eruption. At first, Nelson thought that the soft aspects did not have sufficient energy. Later, it became evident that they actively suppressed a solar eruption. Dr. Zipporah Dobyns reported that Nelson told her about one time he was watching a rip-roaring solar flare when a disconnected trine formed between two other planets. Suddenly, the storm calmed, as if a giant hand had lowered over it – and then resumed once the fast trine moved out of orb.

Therefore, hard aspects are primarily energy discharging while soft aspects are energy resisting. That, and the way three or more planets compound and intensify energy discharges, are the most important take-aways from Nelson’s work.

Three or more planets mutually aspecting each other alert us to think of them as a single unit, consistent with the Nelson findings.