THE FUNDAMENTAL RULES OF ACTIVE ASTROLOGY

After my notes on Obama's Solar Return, some people wrote to better know from which planetary positions I've found out my considerations. Many, in the world, in fact, use the Solar return system to predict events but, as it often happens in any branch of knowledge, there are different Schools and methods to reach a certain forecast. Well, I follow the method of interpretation by the Italian astrologer Ciro Discepolo, who has also published several books in many languages, including English. It's always hard to find out in few words what he wrote in many books but the most important things are the rules he has studied to interpretate a Solar Return and this rules you can find below with the permission of the Author.

1) The twenty days before one’s birthday, and the twenty days after are extremely important days, both positively and negatively. The most important events of the year of one’s life often happen exactly during these forty days.

2) The day of one’s birthday is a really special day in which even extraordinary events may take place. In his memoirs, Giacomo Casanova (who reported scrupulously the events of his own life) writes that extraordinary events happened on the day of his birthday not once, but seven times in his life. They are both positive and negative events that changed Casanova’s life dramatically. For instance, one of them is his escape from a jail (Casanova was lodged in most of the jails in Europe); another event is his becoming a millionaire (he became a millionaire several times, and several times did he become broke). I don’t know why the birthday is such a special day; though I have a conceptual idea on this, I prefer not to mention it because I am not so sure. Nonetheless, even if I am not able to give a theoretical explanation of this fact, I simply ascertain that it works. From now on, listen carefully to the news on TV or read carefully the papers keeping in mind this rule: you’ll come across several pieces of news reporting e.g. about the Russian Mafioso arrested in a luxury hotel on the very day of his birthday; the Italian magistrate who specialised in prosecuting mafia crimes, Giovanni Falcone’s killer being arrested on the day of his victim’s posthumous birthday; or the soccer player who scores a decisive goal on his own birthday, and so on. These are only a few examples out of thousands.

3) If there are a series of birthdays one after another within a short span in the native’s family, those days must be considered as ‘explosive’ ones: in a way they light a fuse and cause the most significant blast of events of the year during those days.

4) Remember that if the Ascendant, a stellium, or the Sun of the Solar Return lies in the 1st, the 6th, or the 12th House, with almost no difference of strength between them, you should expect to have a very burdensome, dangerous, critical and gloomy year in one or more aspects of your life – not just specifically concerning your health, work or love alone. In almost the totality of cases, it will be an annus horribilis, a year that you’ll remember for many years more, and yet a year to forget. I understand that with these words of mine I emphasize this rule extraordinarily – but it is exactly what I intend to do. It is my opinion that no author has ever declared this fact with such a stress, but I find it correct to write down certain rules with exclamation marks – and this is one the rule that needs to be written down so, more than all the others. Some have talked about the 12th House as a fairly negative House, but none has ever demonized it. Also, no one has ever criminalized the 6th and the 1st House either. Simply try and follow this rule, and then let me know. When these Houses are involved in a Solar Return you should expect troubles all around you, in any field of your life: troubles in love, troubles with health, with justice, with money, with a death, and so on.

5) The very same rule applies to Mars in the 12th, 6th, or 1st House of the Solar Return. This position alone may be enough to spoil a year that other elements of the Solar Return or other transits made out to be a very good year.

6) When reading a Solar Return I suggest that you to consider only a few, but extremely important, elements: a) in which House of the natal chart lies the Ascendant of the SR; b) in which House of the Solar Return chart exists a stellium (if any) of the SR; c) in which House of the Solar Return chart is the Sun of the SR located; d) which Houses of the SR are occupied by the malefics (especially Mars) of the SR; e) then, and only then, should you consider the other positions of celestials in the Houses of the SR. I wouldn’t recommend considering other elements, such as whether a planet is retrograde or if it forms a good aspect or a bad aspect; not because such elements have a null value, but because their value is extremely low. If we assign integers to the strength of the positions formerly listed, the strength of the elements we are talking about (retrograde, aspects…) is a decimal fraction. Here is an example: Mars in the 12th House of the SR of a sixty–year–old man is always extremely dangerous, regardless of its being retrograde or not, and regardless of its being blemished, in exile, in fall, or in any other condition. The Solar Return is a window clearly open on the twelve months it embraces, but you must avoid the typical mistake of reading it as a natal chart, looking for the dispositors, the derived Houses and other minor stuff. If you do, not only the whole chart of SR looses clarity, but you also run the risk to hide the other extremely clear meanings of the chart.

7) The 7th House almost always refers to printed paper. With this expression I mean troubles with the law, possible conflicts with justice, wars of all kinds, various tensions, strong quarrels, misunderstandings with your partner, separations in certain cases, or declared hostility. In certain cases it may also announce acts of terrorism or violence, such as being kneecapped, wounded, your goods being stolen or being a victim of Mafioso intimidations.

8) Jupiter and the Sun (both transiting and in a Solar Return) in the 2nd, 7th, and 8th House work as a bistable oscillator, namely, they tend to invert the current situation to its opposite. They bring tempest where there is calm, and they bring peace where there is war. In order not to mistake fully the analysis of a certain astral situation, read carefully the related sections, but above all keep in mind this rule.

9) When the 2nd and/or the 8th House are involved, in the majority of cases they forecast a heavy outflow of money, real drains of money; quite rarely do they announce incomes.

10) The 11th House is often correlated with death and bereavement, much more than the 8th House which mainly refers to money and only secondarily to death (in 90% of the cases, the 8th House involved in a SR or in transits forecasts financial trouble, not death). I discovered this rule many years ago and I still wonder how it can be that no colleague of mine had ever seen it before me. It is such a clear reality that only a blind person or a member of the Council of Sceptical Organizations may not realize it. If you look into about twenty losses that have happened in your family or to your friends, you’ll see the infallibility of this rule.

11) Very often Uranus and Neptune, and above all Pluto, transiting in trine and sextile forecast troubles. I hear already the general outcry: ‘How so? So you intend to theorize that in the life of humans there are much more negative aspects than positive ones?’. This is what I answer: Are you realizing it now? Haven’t you ever realized before that for every person who wins the pools or the lottery there are at least a thousand others who fall down the stairs, who lose their post, who are victims of a serious disease, or who find that their boy in on drugs or that their companion is unfaithful to them? This is the plain, frank, although terrible truth. For any happy event there are at least a thousand other wretched events. Thus even the trines and the sextiles often herald bad news.

12) Keep in due and high consideration that among the transits, the semisquares and the sesquisquares are very significant, exactly the same as the squares and the oppositions. Do not undervalue them because otherwise you run the risk of underestimating situations. On the other side, according to my experience semisextiles, sextiles, and quincunxes are of less importance, if any at all.

13) The Ascendant of SR falling in the 10th House radix brings virtually without exception very positive events, as you will read in the related section. In contrast, Jupiter at the Medium Coeli of the SR has a much weaker effect, which is definitely much lesser than the impact of the SR Ascendant in the 10th House of nativity. Still, I don’t know why it happens but it is absolutely so and you’ll see it for yourself.

14) The Ascendant of SR falling in the 10th House along with a bad transit of Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto with the MC radix, in the 10th House radix, or in dissonant aspect with the Ascendant, with the Sun or with the Moon (including conjunctions) announces noticeable damages: they are quite relevant trouble that one cannot underestimate.

15) During the days in which there are many simultaneous aspects, either positive or negative, you should expect rather special events to happen. You should direct your antennae towards those days, and be on the alert for something.

16) Some of the most dramatic moments of one’s life arise when you have a dissonant transit of Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto towards the Sun, Ascendant, MC, or radix Moon in addition to a Solar Return with the Ascendant, a stellium, the Sun, or Mars in the 1st, 6th, or 12th House of Solar Return. You can not miss this coincidence.

17) Transits and Solar Returns heighten what already exist potentially. Say that a person was born with a bad Uranus in his 8th House: when Uranus transits opposite to such a position at birth, one can legitimately expect acute financial crisis for this individual.

18) The positive effect of the 10th House of the SR may refer to a single event, not necessarily to a succession of positive happenings. Read the related section.

19) Never forget that the three variables that describe the evolution of a man’s life are as follows: genetic information (i.e. your parents’ biological heredity conveyed by Deoxyribonucleic Acid); astral determinant; and the cultural, monetary, historical, political, and social conditions of the period and the place where one was born and where one lives. If Napoleon Bonaparte had been born on a highland in Africa in 1400 he would have not become the ruler of the world. According to certain biologists there is a fourth variable (although they consider it as the third variable, for there is no influence of the stars for them) based on the ‘casual’ connection of the neurons. The bottom line is: how can you assert that there are ‘casual’ phenomena at all in a world in which everything appears to follow precise universal laws? And how can you assert that such phenomena are not determined by the position of the celestials at the moment of one’s birth?

20) When you try dating of events of the year relevant to a specific Solar Return (which is a quite hard task) you had better keep in consideration the lunar returns as well as the transits of the faster moving planets. For example, if a Solar Return heralds highly negative events, you should watch the movements of Mars during the year, i.e. its aspects with the Sun, the Ascendant, the Medium Coeli, and the Moon above all. If the Solar Return heralds a good year, you watch the transits of Jupiter and Venus instead.

21) Many people believe that the explanation of the transits in the Houses of birth may also be applied ‘as it is’ to the positions of the celestials in the Houses of SR, while is not so, as you’ll read in the related sections.

22) If the reading of the transits and the reading of the Solar Return set each other off, do as follows. According to my practice, if the transits are very bad and menacing while the SR is less incisive, neutral, not risky, in other words if the SR is a SR ‘without praise or blame’; then the year should not bring dramatic events and you should not worry about it. In contrast, if the transits are less important, virtually neutral, not menacing at all, while the Solar Return is bad, burdensome, unsafe (even if it is solely because of an Ascendant falling in the 1st, 6th, or 12th House of nativity); then you should certainly expect a definitely negative and treacherous year.

23) What orbs have to be considered for the transits? There is no fixed rule. Anyway, it depends on the speed or slowness of the aspecting planet. The action of a quick moving celestial such as the Sun, the Moon, Venus, and Mars may generally be perceived up to five degrees before and five degrees after the exact orb of the aspect (i.e. conjunction, square, sextile, etcetera). The transits of Jupiter and Saturn may be considered generally in force within an orb of three degrees, always reckoned before and after the close orb. Concerning Uranus and Neptune you should take into consideration a maximum orb of two degrees, although sometimes you’ll see them operate with wider orbs. This is due to the additional effect of simultaneous transits of faster celestials. Pluto may remain on the same spot for ten years: thus you should take into consideration a maximum orb of one degree, with the aforementioned exceptions. As far as the semisquares and the sesquisquares are concerned, their orbs have to be considered at their minimum, specifically two or three degrees for the faster planets and one or two degrees for the slower planets.

24) The transits of Mars tend to anticipate, i.e. they manifest when Mars ‘arrives at’ a position, more than when Mars ‘leaves’ the area. But please, do not take it as an absolute rule.

25) Transits have to be regarded in some ways as both negative and positive at the same time, regardless of them being, say, a square or a trine. In order to understand whether a celestial passage would reveal its positive or negative side, you have to study the Solar Return – which is a really ‘open book’ of exceptional predictive clarity. If you read the Solar Returns and the transits according to the method described in this volume, you’ll seldom make bad mistakes in your forecasts.

26) Remember: often the 8th House refers to jail.

27) Triple transits are much more severe than the simple ones. A planet may become conjunct to another and go on without ever coming back. In contrast, some times a planet first transits over a point in direct motion; then it becomes retrograde and comes back a second time to the same position; eventually it becomes direct once more and passes over the spot for the third and final time. These triple transits are much more important than the others.

28) The transits of the planets (particularly the slow planets) in the Houses (even in empty Houses) are of extreme relevance, providing us with important pieces of information. Read the relevant section of this book.

29) For a correct evaluation of most planetary passages it is useful to look back on what happened during the same transit in the previous cycle. For example, the passage of Jupiter in the 2nd House may deliver you much money both as revenue and expenses. Thus, if you want to produce credible forecasts, it is convenient to ask the native what happened to his/her monetary situation twelve years before, when Jupiter passed over his/her 2nd House.

30) It is my opinion that one of the fundamental pillars of the analysis of a Solar Return is that you have to assign minimal importance to the aspects (i.e. the angles) among celestials in the chart of SR. An example will make it clearer. Say that Tom has got a Mars lying in the 6th House of SR, making wonderful aspects. Nonetheless it is a Mars in the 6th House of SR, therefore is a generally lethal Mars, very little affected (if influenced at all) by the angles that it makes with the other elements of the Solar Return. In other terms, say that we assign a negative numeric value of 100 to Mars in the 6th House of SR. We then can give it a value of +1 for each trine, and –1 for each square connected with it. Therefore you had better have no illusions about it: there is no use in gilding the pill. Mars in the 6th, 1st, or 12th House of SR is an awful Mars, regardless of its being ‘harmonic’ or ‘disharmonic’.

31) Every planet, when situated within 2.5 degrees before or after a cusp will work in both houses.Th is is true in Aimed Solar Returns as well as in Aimed Lunar Returns, in the transits and in the radix positions.

32) If there is a stellium between the fi rst and the twelfth Houses--also of positive planets such as Jupiter, Venus and Mercury--we must read it precisely as if we had an Ascendant in the twelfth house.

33) If there is a stellium in the eighth house--also of positive planets such as Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury--we must read it precisely as if we had an Ascendant in the twelfth house.

34) It is not possible to place Mars and Saturn in the same house of a Solar Return or of a Lunar Return, whatever it is, except for the third and the ninth House. Many students underestimate  this rule, resulting in serious damage to themselves and others. 

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