Moon-Saturn interpretation

[Parto]

Which of these two interpretations would be more accurate for a transiting Moon-Saturn aspect in a SSR? While they're similar, the first one seems harsher, and the second one at least suggests the native will have some drive and willingness to struggle.

• The one based on Bradley's interpretation in Solar and Lunar Returns.
• The one from Interpreting Solar Returns.

[Jim Eshelman]

Which of these two interpretations would be more accurate for a transiting Moon-Saturn aspect in a SSR? While they're similar, the first one seems harsher, and the second one at least suggests the native will have some drive and willingness to struggle.

Of course one will (at least, most people in most conditions).

Of course, I'm biased.

I could point out though, in direct response to your question, that "hardship" does not preclude struggling against that hardship (and usually includes, or even requires, it). "Little incentive to gain or worldly betterment" is another way to write "some incentive to gain or worldly betterment."

[Parto]

On point as always. Thanks!

[Parto]

Rereading this, I figured out what I saw that prompted the question. "Hard working, furious self-drive, insistent" sounded more like natal Saturn to me. I now note that most of the interpretations for solar Moon aspects with solar planets have some elements of that. The interpretations for solar Moon with natal planets, on the other hand, sound more specifically evocative of natal planets.

I'm wondering if this observation is just an artifact of the solar Moon interpretations being longer (than, say, the standard interpretations for foreground planets in Solunars), providing more of a chance for reading things into them.

It might just be that sometimes the difference between a transiting vs. a natal planet is not that straightforward, as a transiting planet can trigger a corresponding response from within even if the respective natal planet is not directly involved (as you alluded to above); in the same vein, a natal planet might mean that there is a corresponding outside trigger for it even if the respective transiting planet is not directly involved. Then again, often (most of the time?) the difference is quite pronounced.

In any case, to get to the point, this made me wonder about the particularities of the solar Moon compared to the actual angles. I thought about opening a new thread on that, but there might not be much to it.

[Danica]

I have been watching how the progressed Solar Moon during exact hits to natal vs. to transiting planets, throughout the year, behaves - whenever there a case to be observed.
No particular conclusions as of now, research in progress - throwing ideas out there for whomever might feel drawn to do a similar research on their own.

[SteveS]

Danica wrote:

...throwing ideas out there for whomever might feel drawn to do a similar research on their own.

Moon hits mainly the 0 & 180, both SSR & PSSR Moon to Natal Planets fires off the Natal Planet aspects relative to the Natal Chart with its whole aspect structures combined with main environmental life patterns molding one’s life. The same for planets in a SSR but only relative for one solar year with SSR planetary aspects. A sharp inner focus for the main emphasis of “what’s happening” in one’s immediate environment at the time of these partile SSR Moon hits. SSR partile Moon hits isolate very short periods of time, but most important for incidents or events.

[Jim Eshelman]

Rereading this, I figured out what I saw that prompted the question. "Hard working, furious self-drive, insistent" sounded more like natal Saturn to me. I now note that most of the interpretations for solar Moon aspects with solar planets have some elements of that. The interpretations for solar Moon with natal planets, on the other hand, sound more specifically evocative of natal planets.

It might just be that sometimes the difference between a transiting vs. a natal planet is not that straightforward...

The missing piece for you is that (despite its label) this is not a transiting planet. It's a Solar Return planet. That's a different critter. I should probably all them "solar planets" (the conventional Fagan-Bradley shorthand for "planets in the solar return" but, when I wrote Interpreting Solar Returns, that would have been too confusing to the larger audience.

In contrast to the natal chart, the SSR is a set of transiting planets. However, it is also a new natal chart for the year, interpreted on its own without any reference to the natal. Furthermore, the SSR is then, itself, subject to transit (quite powerfully), so "transiting" is one ring further out than the SSR planet.

I took all of this into consideration when writing Interpreting Solar Returns. I had a series of bullet points I filled out on paper to frame the basic approach, then took these to a small collection of actual return charts to see how they worked out (finish the finer points). Those notes were thrown away 40 years ago, but I probably can recreate them, since you seem interested in the minutia of how these were distinguished.

But the main point here is that "transiting planets" at the time of a solar return aren't really transiting planets alone - they are also their own new nativity.

[Jim Eshelman]

My approach in writing the SSR Moon interpretations was something like this (and similar in writing the angular planets):

Start by jotting down the basic couple of lines of what a natal vs. transiting planet means in a return chart (e.g., natal Mars is aggression expressed, transiting Mars is aggression received).

For both, write down the interpretation of a natal Moon-planet interpretation (but picking "event" language more than "character" language).

For Moon to SSR planet, add the interpretation of a transiting planet to natal Moon and weight the notes more toward it.

Reflect on what was on the sheet of paper, attempting to get the mind-space within which all the elements on the page were simultaneously true. (Sometimes this was just a concatenation, sometimes an entirely new feel or direction, a thing unto itself.)

Look at some Fagan-Bradley writings to see if they'd strongly caught something I'd missed in the first steps, and that I could now see in a new light.

Look at actual SSRs to compare the theory on my sheet of paper to what actually happened.

Write. Edit. Rewrite.



For the angular interpretations, the process was similar with a couple of distinctions. I would start by jotting down the basic couple of lines of what a natal vs. transiting planet means in a return chart (e.g., natal Mars is aggression expressed, transiting Mars is aggression received). Here (as a literary and psychological tactic, not a theory) I placed less emphasis (for SSR planets) on their being natal foreground. Instead, I took them as straight "transiting planet strong" interpretations but viewed through the perspective that nothing ever "happens" to us except that we create it - that transiting planet phenomena seem to be "something from the outside," but are actually consequences of our own character and choices that we conveniently experience as outside. That gave the transiting SSR planet interpretations something of the "new natal" feel while keeping them distinctive.

Then - this is the most important part - for the SSR planets foreground along (not for the natal planets foreground) I added a Sun-planet interpretation. For example, for transiting Jupiter angular in the SSR, I wrote down Sun-Jupiter notes (some natal, some transiting). I do still think that the simplest way to distinguish the quite different feel of the SSR and SLR is that planets on SSR angles have, besides their basic nature, the feel that they are conjunct Sun, while those angular in the SLR feel like they are conjunct Moon. This went into the blender with the other notes, got filtered through actual chart examples (and especially meditating on what years of my own life felt like when each thing was angular), and out came the interpretations.

[SteveS]

Here is a recent example of one of my clients who now has progressed SSR Moon at 6,57 Scorpio partile conjunct has Natal 8th House Mars at 7,26 Scorpio. In the last 2 weeks he has called and reported he has ran into 3 different women who have become very emotionally angered at him in “out of the ordinary ways” relative to normal everyday living. All 3 of these angered women incidents has to do with 8th House issues pertaining to money. Bottom line manifestation of his p SSR Moon partile conjunct his Natal Mars: Angered Women over money issues. In app 5-6 months, p SSR Moon will partile conjunct his Natal Saturn
AA Birth: 2/5/1986; 9:02 AM CST; Birmingham, Al; 33n31,14; 086W48,06.
Current residence: Birmingham