Ancient astrology anyone can do

Let’s have some fun with Ye Olde astrology, shall we? Yes. Great.

Astrology has “aspects,” right? Those are when various planets make angles toward other planets, which is why when your chart gets drawn up, red and blue lines appear on it to indicate “good” (usually blue) and “bad” (usually red) aspects. Today, we are talking about “applying” and “separating” aspects. This is going to sound complicated, and it takes some squinting to get used to, but it’s pretty easy once you get it.

“Applying” simply means that the faster-moving planet is heading for an “exact” 0.0° aspect with a slower moving planet. So if you have Uranus at 28° Taurus and Mars at 26° Taurus, which one of those is the faster planets? Mars. Which one is “ahead” of the other? Uranus, since 28 is a bigger number than 26. A week later, Mars is at 1° Gemini, or on the other side of Uranus, so that’s a “separating” aspect.

Conjunctions are 0°, Sextiles are 60°, Squares are 90°, Trines are 120°, Inconjuncts are 150°, and oppositions are 180°. All of those end in 0. So all you need are eyes to see whether the planets in other signs match, or if the numbers are bigger or smaller.

Here’s planetary order from fastest to slowest: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.

Applying aspects have aspirational energy to them: Mars headed for the sun really wants to bother that damn sun. Venus heading for Jupiter really wants you to spend more money than you originally intended. Saturn heading for Uranus wants you to dress down that unruly hippie. Separating aspects are more of an exhale and a “well thank god that’s over.” You may notice as you follow along with your own transits that sometimes immediately after the exact aspect, pent up tension seems to dissipate, as though you were waiting for post-exactitude.

So, now you can look at your chart with slightly different eyes. Both aspects are still valid! I’m not here to say that your Jupiter-Mercury trine is invalid because Mercury’s 2° ahead. No sir-ee.

The ancients had some interesting ideas about these applying or separating aspects, which are as follows:

The sun’s first applying aspect in a woman’s chart supposedly spoke of the man she would marry, or at least spoke of husband potential. Having the sun in the early degrees of a sign gave a lot of potential mates, since the sun makes a lot of aspects. Having the sun in a later degree of a sign, or a sun done making aspects to other planets before it changed signs (usually a sun at 25° or later) was said to have less marriage potential (or none if there were no more aspects).

Same thing for men, but exchange “sun” for “moon.” You’ll note that the moon is the fastest moving planet, so will make more “applying” aspects than suns.

Please remember that different sexual orientations weren’t recognized by the patriarchy in the ancient of days, nor was the spectrum that is gender, but I bet this moon/sun thing might apply somehow if you played around with it. My intention is not to be exclusionary but just to educate AND GET FEEDBACK. Ancients had hard and fast rules for these things, so you’d go see the astrologer in her hut and if you had a sun or moon at a late degree of a sign you might walk away feeling like you’d be forever alone. Was that true for certain? Maybe. Probably not. But I do find that this applying aspect theory does track for a lot of people.

The ancients also discovered and used progressions, which is the a-day-for-a-year method of prediction in astrology. If you’re 30, you look at what the sky was up to on the 30th day of your life and that has bearing on the 30th year of your life. They work! It’s weird! When I learned about this, my reaction was “you can’t be serious.” There’s a second type of progression, called “solar arc” in which everything is progressed at the same speed as the sun, which is still a-day-for-a-year, but gives a lot more motion to planets that don’t move fast as all. These types of progressions also work very well in predictive work! Both types of progressions have something to say about your overall life plan and rhythms. Reading charts means reading ALL of this stuff: the chart itself, the progressions, the solar arc progressions, and the solar returns.

Anyway, looking at the progressed moon before birth, meaning progressing it backwards to before you were even born has something to say about the events while you were in utero. So if you have a separating aspect between your moon and Pluto in your birth chart, maybe…don’t…ask your mom what was going on several months before your birth? Probably something dramatic.

With solar arc progressions, planetary speed does not matter, because everything moves at the sun’s speed. You can look at a chart with your eyes, and if the person has Saturn 14° off the ascendant in the 12th house, they probably have something to say about taking on some responsibility or having authority issues at age 14. It’s that simple. (Only do this with solar arc progressions. Regular progressions are a different matter.)

Just a couple of thoughts to play around with.