Author: Charlie Obert

Detriment and Fall

It is common to hear modern astrologers criticize the traditional astrology concepts of debility, detriment and fall.

For those of you who do not use these interpretive terms, a planet in a sign opposite to the one it rules is in detriment, and a planet opposite its exaltation sign is said to be in fall. To be in rulership or exaltation is called being dignified, and to be in detriment or fall is called being debilitated. In traditional astrology both detriment and fall will tend to hinder or create problems in the expression of that planet.

There is much criticism of the negative connotations of these terms, and much insistence that a planet in a debilitated state can be a strong asset in a chart. Let a planet just be as it is; any sign placement of any planet can be used positively.

What I maintain here is that the concepts of debility, detriment, and fall can give useful information as to how a planet will play out in a person’s life. They can provide useful information on how to deal with the planet’s expression.

To illustrate that, I want to take a detailed look at a debilitated planet I know very well from experience – Mercury in Pisces in my own natal chart.

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What I’m Trying to Do Here

This is the first post for calendar year 2016, so it seems like a good time to rethink for myself the purpose of my writing here.

Credit where credit is due – this piece was triggered by reading a phenomenal blog entry by John Michael Greer on his occult blog, The Well of Galabes. This particular piece is titled The Twilight of the Neopagan Era.

He chronicles how we are at the end of a pop culture version of the Neopagan and Occult communites, and as that fades, serious committed followers of neopagan paths will need to weed out the core of their practice from the pop trappings, the candles, unicorns and medieval costumes.

I am a child of that era.

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Rethinking Spiritual Transformation

This post was triggered by an incident a friend of mine told me. (*Please see the note at the end of this post.)  She had a sense of foreboding and ill fortune, and visited an astrologer. She found out that the transit going on was Pluto opposition Sun, and the astrologer told her, Don’t worry, you’re just having a spiritual transformation.

It turns out that “spiritual transformation” was a diagnosis of stage 2 breast cancer.

The point I wish to make here is that the astrologer was correct in what my friend ended up experiencing, and completely false and misleading in the statement she was trying to make.

What the astrologer meant was something like – oh, don’t worry, nothing bad is going to happen to you, this is just a Spiritual Experience.

She meant Spiritual as opposed to something real or physical. No threat there.

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A Study in Aversion

This post is about the traditional astrology concept of aversion, and how it plays out in interpreting a chart. I used this example in the webinar I did for Kepler on October 24 of this year, and it intrigued me enough that I want to study it a bit more closely here.

In traditional astrology aspects are primarily by whole sign, and the only aspects that are used are the classical Ptolemaic aspects – sextile, square, trine, opposition.

Signs that are not in a classical aspect with each other – either 30 degrees or 150 degrees – are said to be in aversion, meaning they are turned away from each other, out of the line of vision and hence out of contact.

Aversion as an interpretive concept can play out in some interesting and significant ways, and here we are going to look at the chart of the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud.

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Ladder of the Planets

My practice of astrology today is based on what I learned during a period of several years in which I confined myself to rules and techniques from traditional astrology. As part of that, I eliminated the 3 modern outer planets from my practice. Obviously this also means that I used only the traditional rulerships, where Mars rules Scorpio, Saturn rules Aquarius, and Jupiter rules Pisces. There is a beauty, symmetry and power to the traditional rulership system, with the planets arranged in pairs around the two lights, Sun and Moon, in the order of their distance from the Sun.

During the past year I have been exploring, and re-discovering, some of the techniques and viewpoints of modern western astrology.  Along with that study, I now place a very high priority on having the different approaches to astrology all respect and learn from each other. While at one point I was convinced that traditional astrology was superior, I now think that was arrogance on my part, and that the different astrology systems are each different points of view, and have their own respective strengths and weaknesses.

So, as a (mostly) traditional astrologer, I want to be able to dialog with modern astrologers, speak their language, and use the best of their techniques and insights.

That means coming to terms with the modern planetary rulerships, where Scorpio is now ruled by Pluto, Aquarius is ruled by Uranus, and Pisces is ruled by Neptune. That is the system used by most of the astrologers I know. The problem is, introducing those new rulers disturbs the symmetry and integrity of the traditional system, and that is far more important than you might think if you don’t have experience in traditional astrology.

However, if I am going to dialog with modern astrologers, I need to be able to speak the language of modern rulerships, so I always have my eye out for a framework in which I can make sense of modern rulerships while still keeping the symmetry of the original system intact.

I think I have found an interesting and possibly fruitful approach, and I want to examine it here.

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A Change in the Cosmos

I was a philosophy and religion major in college, and that shaped my perspective on the world. Whenever I examine any subject at all, there is always a part of my mind that is standing back, observing and asking all kinds of questions.

What kind of worldview does this imply? What kind of ethical values does it hold up as desirable, and what is considered undesirable?

In working with astrology I am fascinated by asking the same kinds of questions of our astrology tools and language. We use sets of words and concepts here – what kind of value system do those words imply?

It is very, very important to me to attempt to become aware of the assumptions and implications of the language I use.  I want to make sure that the message I am giving really matches the kinds of values I hold.

The tools we use in our astrology imply a worldview, and that changes as our tools change.  For instance, when the three outer planets, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, were added to the pantheon of the Sacred Seven, this was more than just the addition of three new rulers to divide up among the sign rulerships.

This is a whole new world, a whole different cosmology – and, a whole different set of values.
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Fate and Free Will

This is a sequel to my previous post on Comforting Fate, where I talked about a situation where the concept of fate, a larger order outside of my control, could be very positive, comforting and supportive.

In this post I want to examine the complementary position, thinking in terms of free will and the power of choice and attitude to shape our experience.

This is an issue that I’ve been wrestling with for a very long time. Sometimes the traditional stoic attitude of accepting fate makes the most sense, and sometimes the whole modern astrology attitude of consciously working with intent to cooperate with it, as a way to shape it to manifest in the best way, makes the most sense.

I’ve experienced both.

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Comforting Fate

This meditation is about Fate, and about Free will, both. I happen to think both are useful concepts.

Feel free to run for the exit now if you want; I know a lot of modern astrologers react to any mention of Fate like touching a hot iron. It runs against the grain of our modern affluent American culture.

With the modern, optimistic view of astrology there is a very heavy emphasis on choice, and on people being able to choose how they deal with the energies in their charts, and how they live their lives. The power is yours, the responsibility is yours, to make of your life what you will.

Encouraging and comforting, yes?

Well, No – not always.

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