Mike 2023 Solunar scores and thoughts

[Mike V]

I kept track of (nearly) all of my Lunars, Demi-Lunars, and 10-day Solars from mid-December 2022 through the end of 2023 - essentially, from my previous birthday to my most recent one. I was also keeping track of Quarti-Lunars for about 5 months, but they were very hit-and-miss so I eventually stopped. I did also keep track of the Ennead variants by type, i.e. distinguishing between full Enneads, Demi-Enneads, and Quarti-Enneads. It was often very ambiguous whether or not the 20- and 40-day versions of the NSR were really totally active for that long, so I interpreted them all as 10-days.

I recently went back and re-scored them all based on my descriptions of the time periods. I attempted to do this in Jim’s more objective style, whereas I was kind of just going with my gut on the first ranking pass through.

Here are those scores:

Lunars (scored mostly for the first half of the period):
+3: +++
+2: +++++++++
+1: ++
+0: +
-1:
-2:
-3:
Average: 29 / 15 = 1.93

Demi-Lunars:
+3: +++
+2: +++++++++
+1: ++
+0: +
-1:
-2:
-3:
Average: 29 / 15 = 1.93
(Yes, these have the exact same breakdown as the full lunars!)

Full Enneads (treated as 10-days):
+3: ++
+2: +++++
+1: +
+0:
-1:
-2:
-3:
Average: 17 / 8 = 2.13
(There are 8 because 2 of them were full solar returns, which I did not rank. Just from memory, they would be in this same ballpark if interpreted as 10-days.)

Demi-Enneads (treated as 10-days):
+3: ++
+2: +++
+1: +++
+0:
-1:
-2:
-3:
Average: 15 / 8 = 1.88
(I just forgot to do at least one Demi-Ennead.)

Quarti-Enneads (treated as 10-days):
+3: +++
+2: ++++++++++
+1: ++++
+0:
-1:
-2:
-3:
Average: 33 / 17 = 1.94

Lunars (re-scored for the whole period):
+3:
+2: ++++++
+1: ++++++
+0: +++
-1:
-2:
-3:
Average: 18 / 15 = 1.2
Notes: The chart of the full Lunar Return by itself seems to be fairly easy to overwhelm when the later-month charts come online. Still, it does seem to have a consistent voice.

Full Enneads (re-scored for the full period):
+3: +
+2: +++++
+1: ++
+0:
-1:
-2:
-3:
Average: 15 / 8 = 1.88
Notes: One of the +2s was simply transiting Saturn and nothing else. There were smaller non-Saturnian windows during this period, but the overwhelming majority of the tone was Saturnian, so I decided to give it a +2 rather than a +1. In general, my last entry for each of these (usually a Demi-SLR) was the least relevant. The last Ennead before my Solar Return was also quite clearly the weakest of the bunch, which is interesting to see.


Demi-Enneads (re-scored for the latter half of the Ennead period):
+3:
+2: +
+1: +++
+0: +++
-1: +
-2:
-3:
Average: 4 / 8 = 0.5
Notes: What a huge departure from the other scores! These seem on balance to be slightly descriptive of the full 20-day period, but it’s a crapshoot and I have no particular interest to view these as such anymore. I note that this lines up with Jim’s opinions on these (at least in the “Diverse Solunars” post in this thread) that they are just another 10-day chart.

Total averages:
Lunars and demis as mostly separate 2-week charts: 1.93 (as they had the same scores)
Full lunars co-occurring with demis: 1.57
All Ennead flavors as separate 10-days: 1.97
Full Enneads co-occurring with 10-days: 1.91
Full Ennead flavors as co-occurring full-period charts: 1.58

My conclusions:
I am far from an expert at interpreting these shorter-period Solunars; one of the bigger challenges for me has been interpreting what “intensity scale” they operate at compared to SSRs, which I feel very confident in interpreting. However, I have definitely learned quite a lot about interpreting individual charts by doing this.
I should also note that I noted hard aspects by transiting Moon in the Ennead variants, and that they were typically rather important. Most of their scores would be lower if I had ignored them.

I plan to treat charts like these going forward:
Lunars and demis are treated as mostly separate charts. The full lunar does count in the second half of the month, but I have trouble keeping all of that in my head at the same time, so I’ll let the full lunar fall to the wayside in the latter half of the month in most cases.

Full enneads will count for the full 40-day period, but everything else is just a 10-day segment. The demis are strikingly disappointing when treated as such. (Kinda interesting in light of demi-SSRs performing so poorly.)

What I plan to do going forward:
I will probably start tracking these charts more meticulously, separating foreground planets and aspects by orb, as well as paying attention to strongly background planets (I mostly ignored this in my 2023 analysis). I would also like to test KLRs (I really would rather not pay attention to them but I’m curious as to their relative efficacy) and Anlunars (mostly as a point of comparison rather than expecting actually good results). We’ll see if I have the stamina to do all of that.

Given that I’m also already tracking 4th-harmonic transits to my TNOs, and frequently spending a lot of time contemplating Eris’s involvement in the nativities of people I know, I think this is plenty to keep me busy for the next year!

[SteveS]

Good learning exercise for you Mike.

[Jim Eshelman]

This is gold, Mike. Thanks for doing and sharing the analysis.

Unless I missed something, I think I agree with every one of your final conclusions.

I know that, even for myself, I don't track the Ennead series at all anymore (unless I'm researching a specific point in time). It's not because I think they aren't operative but, as you say, there's a lot to track here! (For routine tracking, the SLRs and Demi, plus day-to-day transits, cover what I need, it seems.) I'm curious whether you have a conclusion on the relative weight/impact of the Ennead series over the SLRs.

[Mike V]

I'm curious whether you have a conclusion on the relative weight/impact of the Ennead series over the SLRs.

I feel like I could use either one and probably catch all the important stuff. SLRs as a concept feel like they would be more fundamental than Enneads - it's hard to be more "basic and obvious techniques only" than a pure Moon conjunction to natal Moon - but it doesn't seem to play out that way in practice. The two categories feel distinct to me but equal in strength pretty much all of the time. I will say though that the Ennead series, treated as completely equal, sequential 10-day returns, seem to be at least the easiest to parse for me, and it's possible that they are the single clearest return of the bunch. Perhaps it's because that's the shortest span of time. 10-days are just really, really consistently useful and clear.

It's still strange to consider, though, that full 40-day Enneads scored so consistently well despite being the longest block of time.

I've tended to interpret the two categories slightly differently, though I have difficult explaining exactly how. I'm not sure how much is bias on my part, and how much is intrinsic to the return series in question. The Ennead series has always shown up for me as "mini Solar Returns," usually showing higher-level and more obvious trends that seem appreciable at the ego level. But this distinction is pretty subtle and is not super obvious at a glance.

I have personally always felt much less sure interpreting Lunars - especially returns where there are a mix of strong malefics and benefics, seemingly multiple messages - which was my primary reason in doing all of this. I don't think that has anything intrinsically to do with the SLR series per se, only that there's something about the level of manifestation, or my implicit expectations about it, that make it more nebulous to interpret. (Or perhaps it's due to my strong Moon-Neptune making all of these inherently fuzzier than the Ennead series.) Trying to see each SLR variant as possibly talking about more than one thing has been helpful, but I still tended to score SLRs with complex factors the lowest. A few of those 0s were for complex Lunars where my notes were "I slept poorly and things went kinda slow, I dunno what most of this is talking about." In going back and re-scoring these, I did feel significantly more clear about many of them than I did on the first pass, but sometimes Lunars seem to have really strong messages and I just don't know what it ended up corresponding to.

That does lead to an interesting hypothesis... My Sun aspects Uranus (comparatively) closely, and my Moon aspects Neptune tightly. I have reported that the Solar Return series is clear and insightful, while the Lunar Return series is (often for me) difficult to pin down, nebulous, and vague... I wonder if the more subjectively useful series might depend on a person's solar and lunar aspects.

I would also like to test KLRs [...] and Anlunars [...].

I realized that I don't have to start tracking double the charts for the next 12 months - I already have regular notes for the past 12 months, and can retroactively calculate and score these. They'll be a bit fuzzier since the times for my notes won't line up neatly with the times when the charts activate, but there will also be no implicit bias in my notes themselves in this case, so perhaps it'll roughly even out. I'll probably do that over the next week or so and post those scores here as well.

[Jim Eshelman]

This might help with the difference between the charts:

I have long thought (but never doctrinized) that planets angular in a lunar return blend a quality of being conjunct Moon, while planets angular in a solar return blend a quality of eing conjunct Sun.

All the transiting planet foreground interpretations in Interpreting Solar Returns were written by starting with my three-line summaries of what the planet foreground in a return meant and blending in traits of that planet conjunct Sun. This tweaked the overall effect. I wrote the full interpretation from that starter formula.

There wasn't an exact path that I followed - I just used that blend as my basic idea. You have to read very carefully to detect it anywhere, but I would have written interpretations for angularity in a lunar return differently.

[Jim Eshelman]

I should also note that I noted hard aspects by transiting Moon in the Ennead variants, and that they were typically rather important. Most of their scores would be lower if I had ignored them.

Mike, when I read this, I thought, hmm, yes, we know this. Like the SSR, Moon aspects are really important in the Ennead series.

But maybe that agreement was too slight. I saw a great example just this morning of how really important Moon aspects in these can be.

Our site member Element has been going through a really rough patch, a long stretch of transiting Neptune opposite his Sun, within which is a shorter long period of Saturn crossing his Descendant. His SSR is better this year than last, its best indications being shaking things up, but still difficult.

Yesterday, though, was a really good day for him. He got a permanent position with his employer, which gives him security of continued employment. It was a pretty big deal for him. Of course I was interested in what patterns triggered it and find that I might not have picked this as an unusually positive period for him (aside from Jupiter opposite his Pluto, which is vague). For example, SQ Moon is at 8° Scorpio, so spending weeks being squared by Saturn. His SLR has Saturn rising. So does his 10-Day solar.

The Demi-SLR January 4 was the best chart, with Jupiter exactly on Zenith, so, yes, sure, especially in trying to give him good news I surely would have said this is a great two-week period; and the result came the first workday after the chart set up. As usually happens, the SLR/DSLR set has the most straightforward correct message.

But, the new Demi aside, what really caught my eye (probably because of your post above) were the Moon aspects in the Ennead series. The December 9 Ennead had a Moon-Vens conjunction opposite Jupiter (Moon-Jupiter being partile and both aligned with his Pluto and near his Venus):

10°45' Lib - t Venus
11°11' Lib - r Pluto
11°18' Ari - t Jupiter
12°09' Lib - t Moon
15°31' Lib - r Venus

Then his 10-Day on December 29, despite having Saturn about 1° from Ascendant, had 1°13' Moon-Jupiter square. The angular Saturn (overlapping the Saturnian SLR) would have suggested a totally different result, while the Moon-Jupiter square (again setting off Jupiter to his Pluto) would have gotten this quite right.

I've noticed BTW that the Novien Lunar Return (still in experimental phase) often doesn't have the tightest angularities (though usually has the right angularities), but it is often Moon's aspects (even with it being a lunar return) that impress me. FWIW. - I'm Chuckling because my NLR (as I write this) has Moon 0°04' from conjunct my natal Mercury, with a Venus-Neptune paran on the angles. (Yeah, I'd say I'm feeling enchanted by all this.)

Anyway, thanks for turning the spotlight on the NSR Moon.

[Mike V]

Wow, those are really cool results for Moon aspects. Thank you for sharing. I'm intrigued by the idea that perhaps a good chunk of this Saturn can be seen as increased security and responsibility at least as much as "you're depressed."

I've also noticed NLRs are not the best places to find exact conjunctions to the angles - but I never gave any special attention to Moon. I'll start doing that, as I remain quite intrigued by the NLR as a chart. Glancing at mine today (10:56am)... it's heavily transiting Mars square Neptune, and natal Sun-Uranus. Transiting Moon conjoins Venus closely (though Venus is background) and squares natal Ascendant. I find the Mars-Neptune to Sun-Uranus stuff very appropriate, but it's a pretty polarized chart and is just one example.

I appreciate your guidance on SLRs vs NSRs. I am also slowly working through retroactively scoring KLRs and SARs. What I ended up deciding to do this year is to just make a short summary for each day, so at the end I can retroactively score any weird charts I want. I'm checking but not dwelling on SLRs as they happen, and for big events I will probably consult the Ennead series as well.

The big thing this year is my huge pile of 4th harmonic transits to TNOs. I am really hoping to get at least some rough inklings about at least a few of them. My thoughts on Eris continue to churn and I feel like some of them are interesting, but I'm holding onto them until there's a good reason to philosophize some more.