Thanks Minderwiz. That's a lot to digest. Without utilizing the outer three, do your clients find your prognostications and personality profiles accurate? I suppose you don't bother with asteroids, or do you? I find some of that irrelevant while some is spot on.
No I don't use asteroids either. My hit rate increased dramatically once I stopped using the outers! Your question implies that the outers have genuine meanings of their own. As Rob Hand points out, most of those meanings were taken from other planets. Look at the Medieval or Sixteenth Century key words for Saturn and you'll find a lot that were transferred to Pluto. Look at the key words for the Moon (especially the Moon badly placed) and you'll think you're reading a description of Neptune. Uranus takes key words from Mercury and Mars.
Exactly the same happened for asteroids. There are so many of them that purely by chance there are going to be hits.
Hayley said:
Where did Uranus get the reputation as being an unsettling planet; something that may cause a sudden disruption in whatever house it falls? Because it is known to have that reputation. From personal experience I have to say I respect this viewpoint.
The planet we now call Uranus was discovered in 1781 by William Herschel. He actually called in Georgium Sidus - The Georgian Star (after King George III). It was also often referred to as Herschel, after it's founder. It wasn't till 1850 that it was given the name Uranus. It was first linked to Aquarius by Raphael - the author of Raphael's Almanack - and Raphael did this on the basis that Mercury rules Virgo, Venus rules Libra, Mars rules Scorpio, Jupiter rules Sagittarius and Saturn rules Capricorn, so any new planet had to rule Aquarius. The same argument was used to link Neptune to Pisces and it should have led to Pluto being given Aries. Indeed there was a very hot debate at the time with a hard core of Astrologers arguing that Aries was the place but the Scorpio group won out. This broke even the unsubstantiated new modern system of rulership. It's one of the main reasons why even those traditional Astrologers who do use the outers don't assign rulership to them.
Those nineteenth century Astrologers, took the meaning of Uranus (which up to then was not settled) and gave it the meanings of revolution, violent and dramatic upheaval by looking back at the period when it was discovered and linking that discover to the American War of Independence and the French Revolution. There's still a strong belief that the meanings of new bodies should be taken from the events of the time of their discovery. That of course should have equated Neptune with modern warfare as it's discovery in 1846 presaged the American Civil War (the first modern war), the Franco Prussian War, and the First World War. Instead it seems to have been linked with other current discoveries such as hypnotism and anesthetics and of course the increasing interest by Astrologers in Indian Mysticism.
Hayley said:
This is a lot to work on. If all astrology is based upon a mythology whether Babylonian or Greek, how do we account for its startling accuracy at times. Or is it all a crap shoot?
My point is that it
isn't based on mythology nor was that ever the case till Jungian psychologists began to adapt Astrology in the 1950's to help them in their work. That's why Richard Tarnas, who isn't an Astrologer, devotes so much of his massive tome to the mythology of the outer planets.
Of course those Jungian psychologists would argue that their psychology is also dealing with eternal truths or archetypes that are ever present in the human condition.
Astrology is accurate because it addresses the perennial issues of human life; health, income and work, family, children, marriage, friendships, etc. And it does so in a structured way.
Hayley said:
I'm just a novice, reading for myself, family & friends which is so easy to do with software that pulls up all the info and draws the whole chart for you. I understand a lot of it. Putting it together lucidly and positively is the skill I'm working on.
That's how I started!! Your point about putting it together in a lucid way is what you should be aiming at. The trouble with Modern Astrology is that it makes that very difficult. There's a welter of bodies, aspects, hypothetical points and no really organised structure for managing it. What you find is personal approaches to this. The tradition is much more structured in putting the information together and initially, there's less of it because there are only seven planets to deal with. There are more things that you can add in. The Lots (Arabic Parts) conjunctions with stars, eclipses and a whole lot more. But it's clear that the planets come first and that's what you address. The others are secondary (though there's a strong argument that the Lot of Fortune is very important) and are added in once the basic picture is established.
If you take a look at the parallel thread
http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=235399
You'll find it develops into a discussion of resources for aiding that process of chart synthesis.
Although it might seem it, I'm not trying to say that the traditional approach is the only 'real' approach. What I am saying is that Modern Astrology is in a mess. There's little system or structure, nor clear distinctions between what is important, what is less important and what isn't important.
The dissatisfaction with the psychological approach has led Astrologers to try a variety of alternatives. Dave, who commented earlier, is one who has his own distinct approach with a systematic structure.
