Significator in Via Combusta. North node conjunct 7th house.

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I have just drawn up a really promising chart, but the sun, which is my significator is the the via combusta. Everything else is a "yes" really and the moon is strong too.
Is that a real "no no" or should I be only worrying if it was the moon in Via Combusta?
Also the nodes straddle across the asc/dec and are just one degree off exact conjunctiuon with the north node in the 7th house. Seems pretty significant, but I can't find any info on this on the net. The question is a relationship one.
Anyone have any ideas?

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Hi Urania

The Via Combusta is traditionally considered an ominous area for the luminaries, because it overlaps the area between Sun and Moon?s fall. But it is just one of the factors to build into your reading, and it doesn?t mean that the chart gives a ?no no? to whatever you ask. To give an analogy, this is the time of year that I dislike the most. I really dread this time of year, and I am always glad when this month is over. That reaction to the season and the weather underlies my thinking and my energy level, so I?m generally debilitated, but that doesn?t mean that everything I do during this time of year is going to be a bad thing. If everything else seems positive, then don?t worry too much about this one thing.
Also the nodes straddle across the asc/dec and are just one degree off exact conjunction with the north node in the 7th house. Seems pretty significant, but I can't find any info on this on the net. The question is a relationship one.
Anyone have any ideas?
Traditionally the north node brings increase and the south node brings decrease but Ben Dykes recently made a comment to me about the nodes which made me think twice about how I?ve been using them. He said that traditional authors did not take notice of aspectual connections with planets, they only took notice of conjunctions. I hadn?t realised that, so now I am not even sure if traditional authors took notice of the placement of the nodes on angles or house cusps. This is one of the things that I cam currently looking into, so if anyone has anything further to add with regard to their traditional use, I?ll also be very interested.

Welcome to the forum
Deb

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Deb,

Specifically horary? For natal charts Partridge in Mikropanastron [1679], The Second Part, Chapter IV lists factors to consider in determining temperament (?complexion?). Here are the first two:

1. The Ascendant and his Lord.
2. The planet or planets placed in the Ascendant, or beholding the same with a partile aspect; among which the [Moon's North Node]* and [South Node]* are also numbrd [sic].


So here we have nodal aspects to an angle.

I first heard of this of this on p. 43 of Greenbaum's temperament book.




*The original text was printed with the symbols for the nodes.

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Thanks for that, it?s a good reference. That?s the kind of thing that I?ve probably seen before but failed to note. But I think that Ben might argue that Ramesey is fairly late in the tradition, and could have been paraphrasing other authors in a clumsy way. There is a comment in Lilly on page 167 where he talks about the Part of Fortune emitting no rays and therefore being unable to cast aspects to planets, and then he says the same is true of the nodes. But in the same passage Lilly makes clear that planets can cast aspects to the Part of Fortune, so the comment is generally seen as being relevant to the matter of who casts the aspects and who receives. Lilly certainly considers aspects between the planets and the part of fortune, but I would have to re-check to see if he did the same with the nodes.

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Hi Steven

Thanks for contributing to the discussion. You have triggered some stirring in my mind about references to the square of the bendings of the Moon in Dorotheus, but because I?d never doubted this before I never kept any references and so I need to check to be sure. I have to go through Dorotheus again soon anyway, so I?ll report back on what I find.
Robert Zoller believes it was compiled in the 5th/6th centuries. Pingree on the otherhand believes it was much later in the 10th/11th century.
Either way I would take that as a credible precedent.
For some reason I seem to remember Valens making a judgement somewhere based on a planet in the square of the nodes.
That would be a good reference to demonstrate its use in the Hellenistic period, and would probably settle the matter as far as I?m concerned.
Personally what I think motivated this was not so much the Hindu concept of the nodes as places of "shadow", but when the planets are with their own nodes then they are on the ecliptic and therefore their effects would be increasing or decreasing whether or not they were descending or ascending! You see complimentary judgments concerning the harm of the planets with regards to their own cycles and ascending or descending in their epicycles etc.
I agree with you - at that level it makes a lot of sense. I wouldn?t want to be adding more nodes into a chart wheel, but I think it?s very useful for horary astrologers to keep a sense of increase and decline in latitude, so why wouldn?t the point where they cross the ecliptic be critical points for them too?

Thanks to both of you for the informative posts,

Deb

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Hi folks,

Offhand, the only traditional reference to aspects to Nodes I can think of is a brief statement by Masha'allah in his work On the Revolution of the Years of the World, Ch. 24 (p. 342), where he says to "look for the square aspect of a malefic and the Tail, and their conjunction." There may be another stray reference here and there, but nothing comes to mind. I'm not very familiar with the Liber Hermetis, but it is striking that, for all of the statements made about the Nodes throughout the traditional Persian/Arabic and early Latin period, references to aspects are practically non-existent among the major astrologers I have read/translated. There could have been some minority school of thought they were drawing on, or some other explanation for this rarity.

Steven is right that sometimes they will talk about planets in their own jawzahirr, which is the point at which planets cross the ecliptic (i.e., the planets' own Nodes). You can read about this in Bonatti's Book of Astronomy pp. 201-02, 243, 1156, 1277, and 1391, which give some guidelines for using them. Some of Bonatti seems to be cribbed from Sahl's Introduction, p. 44 in the Sahl-Masha'allah book.

I hope this helps by way of reference!

Ben
www.bendykes.com
Traditional Astrology Texts and Teaching

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I was just rummaging around Tetrabiblos and figured we should have Ptolemy here for the sake of completion. Underlined emphasis is mine.

From Book III, Chap. 12. Of Bodily Injuries and Diseases (Robbins translation):
Again, if the luminaries, together or in opposition, move toward the maleficent planets upon the angles, or if the maleficent planets move toward the luminaries, particularly when the moon is at the nodes or her bendings, or in the injurious signs such as Aries, Taurus, Cancer, Scorpio, or Capricorn, there come about deformations of the body such as hunchback, crookedness, lameness, or paralysis, congenital if the maleficent planets are joined with the luminaries, but if they are at the mid-heaven points, elevated above the luminaries or in opposition one to the other, the deformations will result from serious dangers, such as falls from a height, the collapse of houses, or the attacks of robbers or animals.

From Book III, Chap. 13. Of the Quality of the Soul.
While the foregoing is true as stated, nevertheless the condition of the moon itself also makes a certain contribution. For when the moon happens to be at the bendings of its northern and southern limits, it helps, with respect to the character of the soul, in the direction of greater versatility, resourcefulness, and capacity for change; at the nodes, in the direction of greater keenness, activity, and excitability; again, at rising and in the increases of its illumination, towards greater natural endowments, renown, firmness, and frankness; and in the waning of its illumination, or its occultations towards greater sluggishness and dullness, less fixity of purpose, greater cautiousness, and less renown.

I suppose those have to do with the Moon and its own nodes, but it's nice to have Mr. P here anyway.

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Thanks for that.

It is interesting though, that we are not finding references to trines and sextiles. The bendings seem to be taken as a concept in their own right in ancient astrology - so are we actually only finding conjunctions afterall, (either to the nodes or to the bendings)?

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A question to the more experienced members in the tradition:

As the nodes don?t have their own light, I always assumed that they don?t have any aspects, either trines, sextiles or squares.

But, when the moon crosses the north node, she is crossing the ecliptic, and going north, and when she crosses the south node she is again in the ecliptic, so, I always assume that the importance of the "bendings" was not about "being squared by the nodes", but being close to the position of maximun latitude of the moon.
Meu blog de astrologia (em portugues) http://yuzuru.wordpress.com
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