by Robert Wilkinson
Today we’ll review the essentials in astrology as a prelude to a more thorough examination of the septile series aspects and how they work in part 2.
As I gave you last Summer in the Basics of Astrology, there are really only four factors, or primary “building blocks” involved in the craft. There are planets, signs, houses, and aspects. While we’re all familiar with the planets, signs, and houses, today we’ll take a new look to set the foundation for exploring the aspects in the next part.
The planets are our "lights" symbolizing the different parts of our personality makeup, and each of the 7 Sacred Planets has a duality of function. These are the planetary lights. To list a few, the Sun is our Light/Life, our power plant, the source of illumination and our integrity. The Moon is our personality package, Mercury how we coordinate various life affairs, Mars what spurs us forward or aggravates us, and Jupiter our expansive principle, how we view opportunity and a greater life adventure.
All the planets occupy a sign. There are 12 signs, and every chart has all 12 somewhere positioned on the wheel. The 12 signs are the filters through which the planetary lights shine, whether in healthy or dysfunctional ways.
To offer three examples of how a planet works through a sign, a Sun in Aries is illuminated by Aries experiences and people, and illuminates others via Aries ways of being, whereas a Sun in Virgo is illuminated and illuminates others through Virgo experiences and people.
Venus is what we like, both in art, people, and life. Venus in Taurus likes Taurus types of art and people, whereas a Venus in Sagittarius likes Sag types of art and people. Someone with Venus in Gemini will like vastly different things than a Venus in Capricorn. To note only one difference, it could be said that the former is a love of learning, whereas the latter is a love of personal accomplishment.
Saturn is what we fear, our “Ring Pass Not,” the lessons we must learn whether we want to or not, and our bottom line regarding boundaries and responsibility. So Saturn in Virgo finds its limit through Virgo experiences, while Saturn in Aquarius finds its limit through Aquarian experiences. Saturn in Taurus has its “bottom line” regarding Taurus things, whereas Saturn in Pisces has its “Ring Pass Not” in the realm of Pisces experiences, people, and activities. (The link takes you to pt. 3 of the series, with links to pts. 1 & 2 at the bottom of that article. After you’re done here, have fun exploring “The Ring Pass Not.”)
The third building block in the art and science of Astrology are the houses. The houses represent the various areas of life. They are our “window on our world” of things, and the sign on the house cusp (the edge leading into that life area) shows our orientation to those life areas. Therefore each house has a sign quality, and sometimes two if a sign is “intercepted” in a house. This is determined by the time and place of birth, and shows our bias in that department of life.
The first house, or Ascendant, indicates our self-image, and our body. The second house is our values and wealth, the third house our siblings and environment, our seventh house our partnerships, the eleventh house our friends and ambitions, and so on. We all have all twelve houses, though each of us has our unique approach to those life areas due to planet(s) and signs involved in any given house.
The fourth essential building block in the art and science of Astrology are the aspects. These show the angular relationships between the planets and various points in the chart. An aspect shows us the relationship between the departments of our inner self as well as our outer life, and indicate when the timing on critical choices will occur. Through the aspects we can find out when we will be challenged, when things will proceed harmoniously, when things will specialize or hit a fork in the road or finally come to fruition.
Each aspect series results from division of the circle by the numbers 1 through 12. 1 results in the conjunction, 2 in the opposition, 3 the trine, 4 the square, 5 the quintile, 6 the sextile, 7 the septile, 8 the semisquare, 9 the novile, 10 the decile (or semi-quintile), 11 the elftile, and 12 the semi-sextile.
There are harmonics of these, of course. For example, in the specializing series represented by the Decile and Quintile, there is also the Tredecile (108 degrees) and the Biquintile (144 degrees). All four of the aspects in this series show unique specializations, whether partly developed gifts or unique qualities (decile), fully developed gifts or unique qualities (quintile), interactive complementary gifts or unique qualities (tredecile), or interactive fully developed gifts or unique qualities (biquintile).
I know that some books credit the quintiles with qualities other than what I've just offered. Though there is general acceptance of the better known angles (dating from Ptolemy), there is some confusion about the more obscure aspects, such as the quintile, septile, and novile series aspects. I've just given you what I believe are some qualities of the quintiles, since 5 represents specialization, expansion, and "quintessence."
I wrote more extensively about the septile series and novile series in my long out of print 1978 book “Astrology and the Spiritual Path.” (This shouldn’t be confused with another work released years later by different authors. Their work had literally nothing to do with the spiritual path, and the title was a mistranslation from the German.) I have already begun to re-write my book with the intention of publishing a second edition as an ebook sometime this year.
In that book, I elaborated on the meaning and applications of the septile, biseptile, and triseptile, as well as the novile, binovile, trinovile, and quadranovile. I also assigned glyphs to all of them, based on what I saw as the symbols operating in each instance. I will be doing a webinar class on these spiritual aspects, where I will give the class the glyphs for each aspect. One hint: the septile series glyphs are all based in the circle, whereas the novile series are all based in diamonds. See you in class!
In part two, we’ll begin an exploration of the septile series aspects, since I use them a lot, both in my chart readings as well as in my interpretations of various events I write about here. When you’re done here, you should have a greater understanding of how the septile, biseptile, and triseptile work.
See you soon for the septile series express!
© Copyright 2014 Robert Wilkinson
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