Why travel for lunar returns?

[Jim Eshelman]

On my return from travels this week, I found a post on another thread awaiting approval. It was snarky and a little incoherent, but it asked what I take as a sincere question. I deleted the post without approving it, since its tone mismatched the welcoming, helpful vibe I try to consistently maintain on this site, but I decided to answer the question it asked.

The question was why I relocate every single lunar and demi-lunar throughout the year. I think a secondary question (or perhaps the real question) was: Don't I trust the universe enough to sort this out on its own?

First - just a clarification, not even a start on an answer - I don't relocate every lunar and demi-lunar I have during the year. Of the 26 or 27 fortnight charts each year, I customize the set-up location for a few of them. (This next year may have a few more than average, and it probably won't even a fourth of them.) I didn't relocate this week's demi-lunar for myself (I was perfectly happy with the boring, efficient, curious demi I would have had in LA), but my wife had a downright brutal SLR the day before and, in any case, we were going to be away from home for a wedding. I picked a spot to maximize her SLR - a place we loved going in the past - and paused long enough to see that it wouldn't stick me with something hurtful in the process.

So, the question I'll answer is why I expend the cost and effort to relocate any of my lunar and demi-lunar returns at all - perhaps as many as half a dozen a year.


The main answer: Why in the world would we knowingly expose ourselves to hurt or harm when we have an alternative?

If I were standing in the street with a car speeding straight toward me, I would back out of the street: no reason to get hit and injured. We build and occupy houses to shield us from the elements. We skip a party during a virus outbreak (or lock down and take strong precautions during a pandemic) so that we don't get sick and perhaps die. I could (and you could) name a thousand things we do (habitually or selectively) so as not to get hurt when we have an easy opportunity to simply step out of the way.

Besides the obviously self-serving aspect of "don't get damaged if you can help it," there is a larger purpose. I believe we are each responsible to make the best, fullest use of what is given to us. This especially means our lives and our opportunities for service. For example, I still have work to do in this life and need to be alive, well, and mentally and physically fit to complete it. This is analogous to, say, taking care of our cars to prolong their lifespan and serviceability.

A further consideration is that, with increasing age, the impact of some sorts of negativity weighs more heavily. For example, smaller health vulnerabilities become a bigger deal. Whereas the young and nearly young may daringly take the position, "I don't care if I get sick: I'll just get better," the odds change in later years. The better move is, "Just don't get sick if you can help it!" Financial or occupational "bad surprises" when young are unpleasant, but one can expect to have recovered in a decade or two; but, after a certain point, one stops counting on having an extra decade or so to recover.

For the most part, the answer to the posed question seems obvious. Perhaps I've wasted space elaborating it in this post. However, I decided to invest in treating it as a good-faith question for whatever good might come out of that.

The universe has forged each of us uniquely for a particular thing. It is ours to understand what that is, to consciously align our choices with it, to be true to ourselves, and to fulfill what is asked of us.

Within this, Sidereal lunar returns (including the demi-lunars) are the fundamental devices that best frame our lives. Transits persist, dynamically flowing, regardless of returns - we get the transit no matter what - but solunars (especially SLRs atop the trend lines of SSRs) are the primary framework by which the universe ranks ongoing transits and declares their scope or importance in our individual lives. Nothing else comes close to so accurately portraying the flow of a person's life.

Since we have choice of where to be - the one modulating factor for the returns - it is certainly ours, if we wish, to make use of this option, just as we might make any other strategic decision in life from how to dress for a given occasion, to which job offer to accept or whether to pursue or surrender to a particular relationship.

I live in Southern California in part because I can't see why I should ever want a single day of bad weather. We get a few days of bad weather each year anyway, and just endure it (or go somewhere else for a few days or stay in the sheltering homes and offices where it has less impact). In short, we do what we can about it and accept the rest. - To me, this is more or less the same way I manage my relationship to the life-framing conditions of my solar and lunar returns.

This choice of location is one of the most powerful ways that astrology assists us to engineer our life experiences. When it looks like it may make a really big difference, I choose to use it.

[Veronica]

I've read this post a few times now. I walked away and came back. I wanted to say thank you, I now feel validated in a way, or maybe it's like now I know the words to respond to How could you, why did you....

As a person who suddenly gets up and moves quite frequently I really feel seen.

[Jim Eshelman]

[Mike V]

Although I wasn't the person who asked the original question, I also had this question and so I appreciate you answering it. I'm still trying to get friends to travel for Solar Returns I don't think they (or I) are ready for routine travel for Lunars yet.

[Jim Eshelman]

Solar establishes a base line for the year - a trend line, so to speak. With a fantastically positive solar, it isn't very likely that even a terrible lunar will be terrible. As I round the corner to my next birthday and review the last year's lunars, I'll draw some conclusions on how well the methods I've been testing assess this. Getting the SSR right is the best investment in the year one can make, usually.

From one of my class PowerPoints:

• Solar Returns are most important for setting a baseline for the year, against which Lunar Returns operate.
• A markedly good SSR means that the year (with its ups and downs) will overall function at a higher / better / kinder level. -- Compare this to the stock market overall rising, even though individual days can be up or down within that trend.
• A markedly bad SSR means that the year (with its ups and downs) will overall function at a lower / poorer / harsher level. -- Compare this to the stock market overall falling, even though individual days can be up or down within that trend.

And on the next slide:

This gives us some convenient "rules of thumb" for giving weight or intensity to lunar returns:

1. Our best times are when the Solar Return and Lunar Return are both clearly positive.
2. Our worst times are when the Solar Return and Lunar Return are both clearly negative.
3. A bad SLR under a good SSR will be not so bad.
4. A good SLR under a bad SSR will be not quite as good.

[Venus_Daily]

I know this is pure speculation, Jim, but the fact that we can consciously manipulate these energies begs the question, could the fact that there are so many possibilities dependent on the location hint at the possibility of a multiverse? I think we discussed this in the past about converse returns and the possibility that time may indeed flow in multiple directions, hence the strange accuracy of some converse charts.

[Jim Eshelman]

Quantum physics seems to say that any choice at all in life creates branching alternative, concurrent realities. What this means in practice, of course, is something uncertain. But I think, yes, there is (e.g.) a reality in which you didn't go to Japan for your birthday and live a different next year.