Progressing
Charts
August 20, 2004
http://cainer.com/ericfrancis/aug20.html
Dear Eric:
What do you think about progressing charts? How relevant are arbitrary
measurements such as year for a day in interpreting our destinies? Please
enlighten...blessed be.
Natasha x
Dear Natasha,
I was recently entrusted with the office of a brilliant, genuinely competent
astrologer. While he was out, a friend of the astrologer's stopped by for a
visit, and related to me some difficulties she was having with her child. I
cast the natal chart and the progressions, which I will always look at, and saw
something in the progressed chart that was astonishing, and which pointed to
some clear advice for the person, as well as information about timing. In
particular, the progressed Sun was about to pass from the 12th house to the
1st, making a conjunction to Pluto (in Scorpio) in the process. Everything was
conjunct within one about degree progressed Sun, natal and progressed Pluto,
natal Scorpio ascendant -- clear and powerful.
Then the astrologer came back. I showed
him the chart and the progressed event I was considering and he said something
like, "Progressions? I don't use them, I don't believe in them." The
astrological community is not unanimous on the theme of progressions, or much
of anything. It is however always interesting to see how different astrologers
develop their methods of working. Each must deal with all the oddities of
astrology that seem to defy belief, science, common sense and the rest of it.
But as it turns out, progressions have a
distinct basis in science that I will get to in a moment, which helps us
understand how astrology works at all.
Yet whether scientifically sound or not,
I have yet to seriously experiment with an astrological method that does NOT
work. Thing is, some astrologers are more sensitive to some methods of
astrology than others. Everyone has their preferences and fetishes. Also, some
clients are more sensitive to some methods than others. Therefore to young
aspiring astrologers I would say that a good craftsman should be versed in as
many techniques and have as many tools in the toolbox as possible. Don't worry
about how they work or whether they work, just use them, experiment, and get a
feeling for the method.
Progressions are nothing new; they are
one of the oldest methods in astrology, and they are well established by both
tradition and modern experience.
First, what are progressions? Astrology
generally begins with the birth chart. The birth chart is based on a particular
day, time and place. Progressions are, in turn, derived from that information.
The most common form of progression is called "secondary progression"
and it is very simply done by advancing the natal chart one day from the birth
time, per year of life. So if you are 22 years old, your current progressed
chart is the chart for your 22nd day of life (factoring in fractions of a day
down to the hour and minute, for a very exact calculation, thankfully done by
computer). Therefore, if you're born Jan. 1, 1980 and are 22 years old, your
progressed chart will be set for some time on the day of Jan. 22, 1980.
Progressions are an important part of why we need a good birth time, but they
can also help us rectify a missing birth time.
There are probably two dozen methods of
progressing charts, with various timing methods (a day per month, and so on),
but they all amount to the same thing: some formula by which time is advanced,
and where one timeframe symbolically represents another.
Progressions are different than transits.
Here is how. Transits are based on the movement of the planets in real time, as
related to the natal chart. You can actually look up in the sky and see Jupiter
in Libra and if your ascendant is Libra you know Jupiter is crossing your
rising sign. If you are born with Pluto in Virgo at 21 degrees and Pluto gets
to Sagittarius 21 degrees, you are having a transit called your Pluto square.
Transits often have an external quality; they are in fact external; and they
often relate to events and turning points that happen to us. On the other hand,
think of progressions as the natal chart itself unfolding from the inside. They
are entirely specific to the individual in question and are, as a result, an
extraordinarily personal, even private method of studying the movement of time.
They are about something happening within
us, and that something may expresses itself outwardly. This is why
progressions help us see the timing of events.
There is no special trick to reading
progressions except to say that you must look at the chart very carefully. You
look carefully at the degrees, and exactly what happened last, and what is
about to happen next. Well, that's the whole trick. One must be extremely
precise and not miss much. Really, one puts the chart under a microscope and
looks at every little subtle movement. Tradition holds that when using
progressions you work with extremely small orbs, within one degree on either
side of an aspect. As the aspect applies or forms, some kind of development or
experience is approaching; as the aspect is perfected, the experience is in
full strength; as the aspect separates, the experience wanes and gives way to
the next one. Progressions train an astrologer to look at the chart very
carefully. That is a fine habit and it only supports intuition.
In addition to talking about inner growth
and often pointing to corresponding shifts in the outer life, progressions help
us understand the natal chart. Usually the progressed chart is cast as a
biwheel around the natal. When you look at the natal chart alone, you cannot
generally find out much about any planet's movement; the planet is just sitting
there. But when you look at the secondary progressed chart in relation to the
natal chart, you can tell if (for example) the natal planet has stationed
retrograde or direct in the weeks and months after birth; you can tell about
how fast it's going; you can basically get a sense of its movement. It is no
longer merely a static particle in space: it is a wave form with energy and
momentum. Progressions give you a picture of that wave form and remind the
astrologer that the universe is constantly in motion.
If you want to learn progressions, the
most vital notion to get over is that you don't know how to do it. The
progressed chart is merely a chart, like any other; when reading a chart, you
read the thing and get the information you need. The more you practice, and the
more you relate astrology to life, the more information you get.
If you want to test this method, and see
it in action, here is what I suggest. Choose three vitally important dates in
your life. Marriage, the birth of a child, a big move from one city to another,
graduation from university, a major promotion, the death of a parent, that kind
of thing. Then cast your secondary progressions for each of those dates and see
what they are doing at the time. Look at the progressed chart's aspects to both
itself and to the natal chart. Take at least half an hour for each chart so you
know you're really taking your time. Make some notes. Don't interpret; just
note the aspects. Interpretation comes later.
Study the progressed Moon carefully. What
sign is it in, and what are its closest aspects? When did it last change signs,
and what in your life changed along with that? Is the Moon waxing or waning? Is
it near the Full Moon or the New Moon phase? Perhaps cast your progressed chart
for your most recent progressed Full Moon or New Moon some time in the past and
look at your life history at that point.
For fun and intrigue, cast your transits
as well and see how they tell the same story in different ways. For example,
you can look at your progressions at the time of your Saturn return or Uranian
opposition and see how all these levels of astrology work together.
Okay, now for the scientific part. Anyone
familiar with the concept of a fractal will recognize how this concept relates
to progressions. A fractal is an image of a pattern in nature. The idea was
developed by an IBM research scientist named Benoit Mandelbrot, who in the
1970s was working on graphic representation of complex geometric patterns. The
work had the potential helping discover a method for how to store extremely
complex images in very small amounts of disk drive space. What scientists soon
discovered as a result of Mandelbrot's work is that nature is entirely a
phenomenon of patterns. Even the most seemingly chaotic movements of nature --
the bubbles under a waterfall, the millions of twigs in a tree, or the shape of
a coast line -- exist in distinct patterns.
Mandelbrot - http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Mandelbrot.html
Essentially, if you look at a small piece
of the whole -- a sample of the tree's branch system, for example -- you can
use a computer and predict the shape of the tree. Studying the patterns in
small samples of a shoreline will tell you something about the shape of the
whole coast. There are no truly chaotic patterns in nature; they all reveal an
underlying order if you know how to look for it, or rather, let yourself see
it. This is called fractal geometry. A fractal is an image of a chaos pattern.
This phenomenon extends both to the study
of astrology. Applying fractal theory to the progressed horoscope, we have a
basis for the idea that a small sample of life (the first 90 days) is going to
tell us something about the whole pattern of experience (the first 90 years). I
believe that the progressed horoscope represents the first use of the concept
of fractal theory even though it was discovered a thousand or more years before
fractals were discovered.
Astrology is ultimately the art of
pattern recognition. Time and the movements of the planets are based on natural
patterns, as are our lives. This is why astrology works, and it's the best
explanation of progressions I've personally ever come across.
More information is at this link:
Holographic Astrology - http://www.ericfrancis.com/articles/holographic.html
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