posted November 12, 2002 02:40 PM              

I am tied up for a couple more hours with some unavoidable tasks, just wanted to pop in and let everyone know I'm not ignoring you - I'll be back asap to answer the questions that are piling up (that's a good thing!)

Love,
Greg

posted November 12, 2002 05:57 PM              

Of course there are many extenuating circumstances that can modify any general guidelines in a particular chart. For example, if the planet that has only weak minor aspects is strong in the chart in some other way (for example, if it's the only planet below the horizon), then its minor aspects ARE more significant than the minor aspects to planets not so powerfully situated!

Have I confused you enough?

posted November 12, 2002 06:17 PM              

The exact time and place of birth are needed to calculate the exact ascendant, because it changes from minute to minute. Linda Goodman's Relationship Signs book contains tables that let you figure the "approximate" rising sign and house cusps based on the time of birth at different times of the year, but these are not exact ... and they also don't tell you the degree of the rising sign. Relationship Signs was first published before astrology software was widespread and anybody could get their chart calculated for free on the internet, so it was a good approximation if you didn't want to take the time to learn how to erect your own chart or pay a professional astrologer to do it. Nowadays, though, it's very easy and much more accurate to just go to astro.com as you did and have it calculated exactly!

posted November 12, 2002 06:44 PM              

With Sun and Saturn 12 degrees apart, they are not within orb of any standard major or minor aspect ... although you COULD consider them to be in conjunction with a VERY wide orb!

It's all a matter of how deeply you want to dive into analyzing interactions that are comparatively weak. In the strictest sense every planet is in some angular relationship with every other planet in the chart, and every angle CAN be considered an aspect even if a very weak one! Harmonic astrology focuses on these many, many aspects, and provides guidelines for interpreting them. For example, your 12 degree Sun-Saturn aspect is a 1/30 aspect (12 degrees is one-thirtieth of the full 360-degree chart). Since it is divisible by three, it is called a "third harmonic" aspect, and would have qualities related to the trine, sextile and semi-sextile (but again, not as strong as any of these.)

My strong suggestion is that you do NOT worry about harmonic aspects for now, until you are VERY comfortable with all the basic tools of chart analysis and feel the need for techniques that will make more subtle distictions. There is a real tendency in the beginning stages of learning astrology to want to understand and use every technique you hear about which is understandable but not necessarily productive, since it can distract you from really mastering the fundamental tools that will give you 99% of all the interpretive power you will ever use. Many astrologers (myself included) never use harmonic aspects and many of the other techniques you'll hear talked about a lot on the internet. There is a real explosion of interest in fine-grained analytical tools in modern astrology, mainly because the MOST important tools have already been explored pretty thoroughly and people need to feel like they are "pioneering" something new. You might like this to the situation in classical music, where the major elements of harmony and structure have been completely worked out, so many modern composers are experimenting with discordant or atonal music structures. (I don't disparage that, but I don't particularly like to listen to it either! )

Love,
Greg

posted November 14, 2002 10:30 PM              

PART II LESSONS

The first goal is to work through the lesson up to the first assignment ... and then post your answer to that assignment here!

Love,
Greg

posted November 15, 2002 10:42 PM              

I've only gotten to this lesson today because I wanted to pay attention to it.

wow!

Okay right now I'm only up to memorizing the sign and planet symbols. I'm doing alright. I just have to get the Leo-Libra and Saturn- Pluto symbols down. heh!

But the questions I am seeing people ask are boggling my mind!! I don't have any questions like that yet ~ but maybe because I haven't gotten to the last couple pages of the lesson yet!

btw, thank you Greg! Thank you to everyone doing this course! I think it's fantastic!

------------------
it's the start of the season ..the dawning is near ..the age of fish comes announcing the news of the year ..there's an open horizon before us ..there is a rainbow under my eyes ..we shall be one ..under the sun ..right here in the power of the light

posted November 15, 2002 11:27 PM              

Love,
Greg

posted November 19, 2002 09:15 PM              

Blank Chart Template

Thanks to an angel faery who came to my rescue with a nearly complete template while I was slaving over a hot graphics program building one from scratch! You should be able to print this out directly from your browser, but please let me know if anybody has problems with it.

Love,
Greg

posted November 21, 2002 12:47 AM              

If not, here's another email address you can use for me: gregory@gypsyheart.net

If none of those suggestions work, holler and I'll figure something out!

posted November 21, 2002 06:21 PM              

I actually didn't intend for manual calculation of the aspects to be a part of this lesson, since they are so easy to get on a computer printout! On the chart I sent you, your aspects are listed in the grid at the bottom of the page, can you see them there?

However, for quickly scanning a chart to see the aspects if you don't have them printed out, the easiest way is to first look for "whole sign" aspects, then look at the degrees to see if they are within orb.

For example, suppose a chart has the Moon at 15 degrees Aries and Mars at 11 degrees Leo. Starting from where the first planet is (in this case Aries), count the number of signs to the second planet, so you would count Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo. That's 4 signs between them, and since there are 30 degrees in each sign, 4 signs is 4 times 30, or 120 degrees ... so this is a trine by whole-sign calculations.

Now you want to look at the exact degrees. If the planets are in the same degree of their respective signs, then the whole-sign aspect is a perfect aspect by degrees! If not, you want to look at how many degrees difference there is between the two. If the difference is smaller than the allowable orb for that aspect then it's good, but if it's more than the orb, then it is not a valid aspect by degree.

In this case your first planet (the Moon) is at 15 degrees Aries and Mars is at 11 degrees Leo, so the difference between them is 4 (11 - 16 = 4). That's within the orb, so this is a valid trine!

This is a good way to figure the aspects if you are looking at a chart with no computer handy! Even if you do, it's good to sometimes pick out the aspects in a chart from looking at it, to help you get used to seeing the various features of a chart when you look at it.