Natal and Progressed Chart, How to Find Your Way through the Interpretation Maze continue…

1. Venus: As per Pluto. Venus transits last for up to a month, but take note of those times when Venus is retrograde, because this can lengthen and intensify its effects.
2. Mercury: As per Pluto. Mercury’s transits last for a couple of weeks; however, watch out for retrograde times.
3. Chiron: This planetoid has an eccentric orbit, but it usually spends a couple of years in a sign. Its transits can therefore last for several months, especially when it turns retrograde and back again.
4. The nodes of the Moon: These take about a year or so to work through each sign, and their effect can last for a few months when aspecting a particularly sensitive spot.
5. The Moon: The Moon takes two and a half days to work through each sign, so its transits are very short lived. However a new Moon, a full Moon and especially an eclipse will have a powerful effect on anything that it aspects. An eclipse which conjuncts a subject’s Sun, Moon or ascendant is bound to be strongly felt.

You will soon notice, if you haven’t already, that the outer planets are virtually useless for this kind of progression, while the inner planets are not much use for transits. This is why a combination of progressions and transits is so good: it covers just about everything.

A cautionary tale

When I was in the early stages of working as a professional consultant, I read anything and everything I could get my hands on. All these wonderful (usually American) astrologers went to great pains to explain that they prepared a pile of charts and worked hard on them, well in advance of their clients actually coming for their appointments. All I can say is that these great astrologers couldn’t have come across some of the idiots with whom I have had to deal.

Time after time, I would prepare my charts (by hand in those days, of course), only to be told when the client turned up that they had given me the wrong details. My client would cheerfully announce, ‘I phoned my Mum and she told me that I wasn’t born at three in the afternoon but at two thirty in the morning’, or ‘I thought I was born in Birmingham but it was my sister who was born there, I was actually born in Bristol.’ Many people didn’t know the difference between am and pm, and admitted that they had given me the wrong meridian! This was often accompanied by the ingenuous comment, ‘does it matter?’ Needless to say, I soon learned to put a hand-drawn chart together with the client actually sitting there alongside me. Oddly enough, the clients enjoyed watching me draw up `their’ details, and the time spent quietly sitting and watching this process helped them to relax and to forget the cares of the world they had left behind outside my workroom. It is probable that looking at their charts opened a chakra or two in the same way that occurs when looking at tarot cards being laid out, and that helped me to reach into them psychically as well as astrologically!

A far more frustrating and all too common situation was to actually do the job and see the client happily off the premises, Only to have them ring back the next day. The tentative voice on the phone saying that mum has now told him/her that the birth time (or date or place — or all three) was wrong! They took it very badly when I told them that, if they wanted the job done again, they would have to pay for it again. They couldn’t see why two or three hours of my time shouldn’t be thrown away. Astrologers are usually kindly souls who want to go out and help people, but there are times when we could happily strangle them!

Oddly enough, if the birth time as given is wrong, this isn’t quite the disaster in progressed work that it is in natal charting, This is because, most of the time, you are looking at planetary movements rather than worrying too much about the nature of the person. Events will be fairly easy to spot even with a mistaken birth time. The same goes for cases where the birth time is not known at all, because it is still possible to get some useful information from a ‘flat’ or ‘natural’ chart where your ascendant or starting-point is always nought degrees of Aries. In these cases, you won’t have the houses to play with, and the Moon position could be out by a few degrees, but it is surprising how much information you can glean out of even this kind of half-hearted job. You may even find yourself gradually rectifying the chart and actually finding the ascendant as you go along. The moral of all this is not to become upset when things are not perfect, and to be prepared to ‘jiggle’ a suspect chart in order to get things right. Time and practice will give you a feel for this kind of work. It may also make you realize how much nicer it would be to work as a crossing-sweeper!

Other types of progressed chart

If you are dealing with a solar arc type of chart where all the planets and other features have been moved forward by one degree, simply find an order that seems logical and proceed with it. If you need a suitable method, try each of the following progressed planets and see if they have changed sign or house or if they are aspecting anything else on the chart.

Solar and lunar returns can be dealt with in the same order or in any other order that you feel is logical. Remember that different methods of progression place differing emphasis on the planets, angles, etc. For instance, the day-for-a-year method places an extremely strong emphasis on the progressed Moon. The sign and house through which this is travelling is vitally important, and a lunar aspect is often the trigger for any number of important events. When dealing with the returns, the midheaven and ascendant move up the scale of importance. In solar arc progressions everything seems to be of equal weight, with the Sun being just that little bit out in front.

The progressed planet or angle

The Sun

The Moon

Mercury Venus

Mars

Jupiter Saturn

Uranus Neptune Pluto

The ascendant (also the descendant)

The midheaven (also the nadir)

The nodes (if you wish)

Chiron (if you wish)

The part of fortune (if you wish)

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