Eclipses and traditional natal astrology?

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I have recently become very interested in eclipses. I know they are an important tool in mundane astrology but I was wondering about their use in natal astrology from a traditional approach?

I have read Bernadette Brady's excellent book Predictive Astrology: The Eagle and the Lark and Celeste Teal's book on eclipses but neither of these books are written from a traditional perspective.

I understand the pre-natal eclipse is important. However, would traditional authorities use solar and lunar eclipses to key planets/angles/houses the way modern astrologers do? If not how did they use eclipses? Would they only consider the eclipse points through contact and opposition to key points or also look at other aspect relationships such as the square?

I would really appreciate feedback from anyone with some knowledge in this area.

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Hello!

What an interesting topic!

I came across a couple of quotes to complete the discussion. The first one is from Valens from his Book IV where he treats the solar returns. At some point he suggests to consider the relationship between the universal charts and the individual solar returns/nativities:

« It is necessary to know ahead of time the universal conjunction <of>, the rising of Sirius, the Ascendant (if the Ascendant is at a tropic point), and the ruler of Sirius’ rising—because this <star> is considered the
overall houseruler of the year. (The cyclical rulers are the rulers of the Places. Likewise for each nativity or each later recasting, the ruler of the year is the overall houseruler; the rulers of the new and full moons are the cyclical houserulers.)
It is necessary to determine if the overall (i.e. universal) ruler is favorably related to the overall ruler of the nativity, or if it is the same. Likewise determine if the universal (i.e. cyclical) rulers are in harmony, or if they are the same. Moreover, the places of the nativity in which eclipses happen (i.e. in operative or inoperative places), plus the risings and phases of the stars, must be noted, because it is from these that distinguished, governing, and royal nativities derive their distinctive differences in occupation and glory; it is from these that great and marvelous forecasts usually come, carrying some to unparalleled fortune, others to a lowly and easily-ruined condition. »


(Marc Riley translation)

As to eclipses/nativities we only have this phrase: « the places of the nativity in which eclipses happen (i.e. in operative or inoperative places) ».

(NB: operative and inoperative places according to the same translation are: " The operative and effective signs are the Ascendant, MC, <the> Good Daimon, <the> Good Fortune, the Lot of Fortune, Daimon, Love, Necessity. Signs of moderate activity are <the> the God, <the> the Goddess, and the other two angles. The rest of the signs are mediocre or bad. The influence of a Place is weakened or is strengthened depending on the benefics or malefics which are in conjunction or aspect. <The> Bad Fortune, incidentally, seems to be better than <the> Bad Daimon, because of its <Fortune> position trine with MC.")

So this is it.

I did however give the full quote, because it seems to me that these two paragraphs give a better idea as to how Valens sees the way the individual fate is written in the universal picture and how it should be considered.

The first thing we can get from here is the idea that if we want to get some individual forecast from a general event we should better correlate it with the current changing situation of an individual (nativity + solar return and the rulers of profection, etc) rather than just nativity.

Also, he suggests to analyse the relationship between the universal rulers and personal periodical rulers. That’s not explicitly stated for eclipses, but I wonder it it’s not implicitly meant by the whole logic of it (that is to say, if it’s not meant that we can consider the eclipse case just like the rising of Sirius - that’s an interesting idea anyway).

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Next quote if from Abu Ma’shar On Solar Revolutions (translation Ben Dykes):

« And if the Sun and Moon were eclipsed in some one of the aforesaid places, and their Lords were in the sign of the eclipse, they signify worries and anxieties, and illnesses, and (his) enemies’ overcoming (him), and especially if the sign and the Lord of the sign were impeded », p. 157

The « aforesaid places » seem to be 1) the Asc of the nativity or the sign of the profection or the Asc of the revolution or the sign in which the distribution has arrived or with the Lords of places of the kind (places cited in the previous paragraph) 2) may also be the Midheaven of the revolution (the second previous paragraph)

Again, this idea of considering the eclipse within the individual solar return. Also the same idea to look if the eclipse falls upon angles/effective places. The difference is that Abu Ma’shar seems to concentrate himself on the Asc here and to give a more detailed description of consequences while Valens speaks of all active places/houses and only give a general idea of what it brings.

Also, Valens is a bit more optimistic, as he mentions one’s ruin, but also un « unparalleled fortune », which means that Valens thinks that an eclipse can bring some great things. Abu Ma’shar only cites all kinds of problems (maybe because he considers mainly the Asc?).

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because it is from these that distinguished, governing, and royal nativities derive their distinctive differences in occupation and glory; it is from these that great and marvelous forecasts usually come, carrying some to unparalleled fortune, others to a lowly and easily-ruined condition. »
The above is from Valens quoted in a previous post. I've said here and elsewhere that I think eclipses are overrated in natal astrology. The exception is that they seem to be effective in the charts of distinguished people particularly national leaders. I submit Valens agrees or seems to. The above, to me, doesn't imply (or shouldn't) that the eclipse is a significator of great things or spectacular failure in every chart where they hit a sensitive point, but that in the charts of prominent people they could indicate these things, since in his day, prominent people were usually the ones an astrologer would be concerned with. In other words, an eclipse hitting something significant in the chart of a British PM or an American President deserves our attention; in my chart - not so much.

They also appear to be a factor, sometimes a very important factor in mundane astrology. An eclipse hitting an important point in the Aries Ingress is worth looking at. But "worth looking at" and "harbinger of Armageddon" are two different things. Perspective is important, too.

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Hello, Tom!

I pretty much agree with what you say. The point however was not about who is influenced by an eclipse, but rather how we do assess this influence.
And so it seemed to me that the traditional techniques really had a sort of slight, but interesting differences.

Ex: not just look for sensitive points (which is what is widely used in the mundane astrology), but rather to see if falls in an operative place.
A sensitive point in a strong place, we may say. Looks like an evidence and a subtlety, but it makes sense: say an eclipse hits something, but this something may just be out of power in the radix. So in this case, the one who is not attentive enough can just see some important developments out of something that can't give big developments.

The difference which looks more interesting to me is the attention given to the relationship of lords and personal time lords. I don't really see people practising it widely nowadays...and it may be interesting to explore.

And so on.

P.S. As to the prominent people there is though one thing to add: some are born prominent (= in a prominent family), but some become over time or for a period of time. So I wouldn't discard all non-prominent people. Personally, I just tried to check casually some fiction writers' charts that I know about this "operative places". And as I did it really casually for fun, I just checked the eclipses that hit the natal or solar axes in a year of the first publication or prior to the first publication (publishing is a long process), and I did indeed see something about it: some eclipse series activating the same angles over a period time more or less precisely or loosely.

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The point however was not about who is influenced by an eclipse, but rather how we do assess this influence.
And the snarky answer is, "Why bother?" My point is that in natal astrology, by themselves, there isn't much influence. It becomes more involved with prominent people. I don't mean simply "well known." For example, I don't think Rock stars matter all that much regardless of how popular or wealthy they are. Even the most well known reflect changing tastes at most, and our lives would be pretty much the same without them.

Morinus once opined that the chart of the kingdom is the nativity of the King. If we take that route, an eclipse in the king's chart is very important because it affects so many others.

But your main question is important because there isn't a whole lot of agreement on that, and even less written about it. Again I lean on Morinus, who correctly defined an eclipse as a more powerful lunation. After all, he noted, an eclipse is a lunation that takes place on the ecliptic, and planets are considered more powerful the closer they are to the ecliptic. But in the end it is just a lunation. So we take the influence of a full or new moon then we note it has increased power or the influence of this full Moon is greater than that of a typical full Moon. That's about it. How often do astrologers use lunations in natal astrology? Not often and when they do they use them as triggers for other things they've noticed in the chart.

Tracy Marks, a thoroughly modern astrologer, wrote a book on eclipses that I have around here somewhere. I think it was in this book that she said wherever an eclipse occurs in your natal chart, that's where you feel "wiped out." If that's all we can do with them, then we might as well ignore them.

Morin mostly wrote about eclipses in terms of mundane astrology. But if you wish to try to apply this to natal astrology, go for it. He said in a lunation or any syzygy or synod, we pay attention to the lighter planet. So in an eclipse we would pay attention to the Moon and in the case of an eclipse what we're looking at is a very strong lunar transit. That makes as much sense as anything else I've read on the subject.

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And the snarky answer is, "Why bother?" My point is that in natal astrology, by themselves, there isn't much influence.
Oh well, but then it's not about the quotes I've found, but about the whole topic: Mark was the one who bothered himself with this question. I've only found some elements about how the eclipses were or could be used in the natal astrology. :)

You're not interested in bothering with this, sure, but maybe someone else is. Why not?

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Now, I somewhat disagree with you about "well known people" vs prominent people.

The astrology of the world is not only about elections or wars or agreements signed and "changing tastes" is not such a small thing. Like you may not know who was the French president when Edith Piaf died or Brigitte Bardot became a movie star, but they both give you a certain idea of France.

Every person has its own way and scale of influence over the world around him. In my opinion being "well known", that is being known to whole lot of people, already indicates a certain scale of influence (different from the most of people). It may be of interest, depending of what you are looking for.
Again, if I take that example of writers' charts from my previous post, we can safely say that the world didn't go upside down because Agatha Christie published her first book (so if you just want to know how's the world going you just skip it), but in her life it was certainly important that she got that "access to the world" (I'd put it this way). So...it depends. It depends on what you are focused on.

But coming back to the eclipses: thanks for the hint about Morin, do you, by chance, remember in which book it was? I think I've already seen it, but I'd gladly reread it.

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We're missing each other. Yes each person has something to offer. I am aware of certain things because I know my next door neighbor that I might not be aware of, had I never met them. But My neighbors, as good as they are, do not influence the state of New Jersey much less the US and the world. I'm not devaluing the individual, but only observing that there are a relative handful of people who do have a rather large impact on the lives of a rather large number of people. An eclipse in their chart might be significant. Movie Stars, Rock Stars, professional athletes, meh.

Strange that you should mention writers as I was about to say that, unlike Rock Stars, writers do influence quite a bit and they don't have to be writers of classics either. In the same way, script writers or movie producers probably have more of an impact than the celebrity actors and actresses.

As for why am I bothering? Well to make the point that eclipses in natal charts aren't all that important. The fact that you and I are the only ones discussing this is telling. People don't discuss the general influences because there isn't much, past or present, written about the subject, and hoopla by astrologers about an upcoming eclipse is quickly forgotten. Eclipses have good PR - that's about it.

But coming back to the eclipses: thanks for the hint about Morin, do you, by chance, remember in which book it was? I think I've already seen it, but I'd gladly reread it.
Book 25, which is on mundane astrology and in particular Part 1 Chapter 7. However he spends quite a bit of time in various places on lunations, so given his belief that eclipses are just strong lunations, anything that applies to lunations would also apply to eclipses. There is way too much to even try to summarize. Despite the fact that Astrologia Gallica is over 800 pages of mostly double columned pages, Morin doesn't give as many specifics as we might expect. Our job is to apply the generalities specifically.

The Title of Book 25 is "The Universal Constitutions of the Caelum." A "universal constitution" is one that applies for the whole world Take an eclipse at 18 Leo as part of a grand cross such as the one of Aug 1999. That eclipse and grand cross is identical regardless of where on earth we happen to be. Morin would argue that the influence from those bodies would be universal and indiscriminate throughout the world. This is what he means by "universal constitution." Yet there would be a difference of effect depending on where the eclipse occurred in the mundane houses. The houses determine the particularity significance of the eclipse, and those effects can and do vary depending on the observer's position. On the other hand my natal chart is a particular constitution and only applies to me.

I took a quick look through the table of contents in Book 21, which is entirely about natal astrology, and couldn't find anywhere that eclipses were mentioned specifically, and I doubt they are mentioned at all. However something did occur to me. If an individual has an eclipse in his natal chart or was born on the day of an eclipse, a direction to the Sun or Moon in that chart might produce a lot more than it would for any other direction or lunation if the native was born on a new or full Moon. This might be worth looking into particularly as the current US President was born on the day of an eclipse.

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Thank you, Tom, I'll take a look at the book 25!

Well, I checked writers' charts because publishing is what I learned professionally, so I'm always curious about how writing/publishing works out astrologically.

From what I've seen so far (although I didn't go into great detail): several consecutive eclipses over a year that "activate" the angles of the radix and/or the solar return chart (especially if the solar return chart is angular to the angles of radix), rather than hitting any precise point. Asc/DC as well as MC/IC. I only checked some bestselling authors + those who spoke quite a lot in the media about having been published for the first time (to see in which solar return it falls and where they were at the time, etc). That's not much, but here it is.