Astrological Progressions & Transits

How Progressions Work

Secondary progressions are “zodiacal aspects formed by the orbital motions of the planets on successive days after birth, each day accounted the equivalent of one year of life.”[Nicholas Devore, Encyclopedia of Astrology (New York: Philosophical Library, 1947) P. 346]

Astrological transits and progressions require exact timing for either a nation or a historical personage, or any event like a journey to the Moon. If you do not have the exact time of birth, for either a nation or a historical personage or event, then your calculations and all that is deduced from them will be faulty.

Progressions

This method of forecasting the future was possibly developed by Ptolemy (some of his books may have been lost). It was used by the Arab astrologers in the last millennium A.D. In one form or another, they use directions, which are “the changing influences resulting from the various moving bodies of the solar system” [Devore, Op. Cit., P. 121] .

 

Witnesses were present at the birth of John F. Kennedy. This event was published the next day in the Boston Globe. [The Boston Globe. May 30, 1917 ed.] We know down to the exact minute when he was born; all directions for the events in his life are valid.

Kings and others born during the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Reformation, were lucky: Their birth times were recorded with acute precision by court astrologers. Lucky chances sometimes happen. The chart for the Constitution of the United States, for example, drawing from the diary of James Madison, we have a precise time for that birth. The precise birth time of Franklin Roosevelt is a matter of public record.

Then come the rest—the murky times, when we don’t have an exactly noted birth time. Adolph Hitler falls into this category: What proof is there that he was really born at sunset? As a head of state, as a believer in astrology, with all the awesome power at his disposal, he could easily have manipulated his birth data.

An original source has a direct connection to the event recorded.

If a record from an eyewitness exists, from someone who was there, then your chart will be precise.

What if you don’t have that data? Actually, an original source chart is a rare gift anywhere in history. Let’s take Abraham Lincoln’s example. The midwife, at his birth, said that he was born “a few minutes before sunup”; thus, we do not have a precise time for Lincoln, and never will. We do have a close time, however.

The Law of Sources: If you do not have an original source for birth time, you cannot use secondary progressions or other directions.

Astrological Transits and Progressions: About Transits
When I began studying astrology some years ago, I was taught that transits, the actual movement of planets through the sky, had not nearly the effect on a person or an event like the founding of a nation or the birth of a king as did secondary progressions. Yet, with my years of experience, not only in astrology but in astronomy and history, I find that after examining thousands of charts that I no longer agree with this premise. Let’s look at it again historically.

When astrologers attempted to make estimates of what was coming for kings and matters of state—and there were some who were masters at this, like Nostradamus and John Dee—they complained that they were never able to be precise. Sometimes

the planet Mars was not located in the sky where the ephemeris said it would be. Saturn had the same problem. This conundrum was never solved until Kepler took his protégé Tyco’s studies that consisted of accurate and detailed observations of the motions of Mars through the sky. Using them, Kepler developed equations showing that the orbit of Mars describes a slight ellipse around the Sun. This makes the planet move faster or slower, and closer or further from the earth, in its apparent motion through the sky.

Because of this development, for the first time in history, science possessed the astronomical knowledge of exactly where a heavenly body could be found. For astrology, that was as great a revolution as learning that the Earth orbits the Sun.

Despite these great advances, astrology stayed chained to the archaic Ptolemaic system, which it does to this day. Through the years, the Ptolemaic practices continue to die a slow, quiet death. But secondary progressions continue to be used.

I have found that the power of transits exerts an unending influence in world affairs. I find several arguments in favor of the use of transits. First, a chart does not have to be exact in its time. Take the U.S. Declaration chart (July 4, 1776) for example. No one has ever agreed on the exact time for that chart. There have been plenty of rectifications, yet none of them agree with each other. This makes everything not only confusing but ridiculous, because everyone is speaking a different language.

The Sun of this chart is placed at 12° or early 13° Cancer. Whenever an outer planet transits this point, many times something happens of major historical significance. If you are working with transits, you can use any of those charts—Gemini rising, Libra rising, Virgo rising, Sagittarius rising. It doesn’t matter; you are still going to get results.

What you can’t do, if you don’t have a primary source birth time, is use the houses. But you can still use the planets, and that will tell you an enormous amount. If you have a time within a half hour, you can use quadrants. If you have the day, but no time, you can still apply transits to the planets.

The Law of Events: Transits will always manifest an appropriate historical occurrence.

From transits you get a meaning and significance that directions can never provide. For example, when Saturn conjuncts a politician’s natal Sun, he or she will begin something new or end something old. When transiting Saturn crossed George Bush II’s natal Sun, June 5, 2004, he found that everything he was doing grew to be far more difficult than he had imagined, and he began a whole new process of making it work. It would take him years before he worked out the problems he had in Iraq.

The historian watching a transit like this is given background, a framework in which to judge what is happening.

Secondary Progressions work fine, if you have the exact time. However, if you do not have a verified time for an event or a person’s birth, your secondaries will be worthless. As for transits creating or not creating events, in 1890 and 1891 Thomas Edison invented the phonograph and the motion picture camera, which he called the kinetoscope. The transit going on at that time in the US Chart (July 4, 1776 Declaration chart) was the synodic conjunction of Pluto/Neptune conjuncting America’s natal Uranus located at 8° Gemini. This conjunction, which lasted at 1° for four years, opened the doors of invention in a way that had not happened for centuries. This transit meant that America would supply new inventions that would change the world forever. Yet neither transits nor secondaries could predict what would be invented. That kind of prediction is beyond the capacity of astrology.

So, was this conjunction defining a mood or actually bringing in specific new things? Probably both. I could quote numerous other examples like the invention of printing, the assassination of kings, the fall of civilizations, the beginning of wars. The art of it all is in the reading of the transit and in knowing the history surrounding the situation.