astrology

Astrology is a fairly important piece of ceremonial magic, in fact without it you aren't really performing ceremonial magic, (see previous post.)
However, there are many versions of astrology which makes is hard to decide which to follow. Firstly I'll just make it simple and let you know what I follow as I have had a lot of success with it.

Astrology and the zodiac:

In Western Astrology the reason for the zodiac and placement of planets was incorrectly ascribed by Ptolemy which lead to a lot of stupid assumptions by modern "traditional astrologers" and this has lead to ties between the aspects and the zodiac rulerships which have no real relationship. Because of Ptolemy's waffle most people trying to study astrology don't believe in all the aspects as it goes against his assumption of why things worked. The first part then is to explain how things actually were done in Western Astrology.

The signs were ascribed to the zodiac in the usual planetary order which was based on the apparent speed of the planets. Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, and our Moon. The planetary order is important and repeats throughout the day in planetary hours as well. It was seen that things that move further away from you move slower so speed made sense to give the order . Hence the order is basically the actual order of the planets. Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Earth, Venus, Mercury, the difference being the Earth in place for the Sun as we orbit it and it doesn't orbit us. Please don't do away or disregard with the planetary order as mumbo jumbo, it's fairly accurate by what we know today.

The planets then we're laid over the zodiac from the winter solstice, (longest night, we see stars in the dark) which at the time was between Capricorn and Aquarius. If you count rulerships in any direction from the old winter solstice it follows the planetary order. The only difference is that the Sun was moved to the summer solstice as it only appears in the day, which at the time was Leo. If you were led to believe it was because of coldness or wetness or any other bollocks just ignore that.

Now the aspects were entirely separate things. The aspects  were distances or angles between planets from our point of view. The traditional aspects were the Sextile, Trime, Square and Opposition oh and of course the conjunction. The Quincunx is also mentioned sporadically which is 5 signs distance as is the semi sextile which is one sign distance.

Over time there were various forms of astrology which dealt with aspects and Orbs. Orbs  are the amount of degrees from the exact aspect that's allowed to maintain an aspect. For example a square is 90* separation but the orb allows it a few degrees out. Over the course of Western astrology systems have had different rules for orbs, but in Greek astrology all orbs were 3 degrees. Also if a planet was outside of the sign aspect then the planets weren't aspect. For example a planet 30* Capricorn and a planet 1* Taurus are square as they 92* apart. However the signs are not square so despite it being in the orb range it was not considered still an aspect. Later western astrology did away with this thinking and so have I but I'm just putting it in here to show "western astrology" isn't as uniform as people think.

I do however stick to the Greek thinking of set orbs depending on the aspect. All traditional aspects I use have a 3 degree orb and all Keplan have a 2 degree orb. I add two for conjunction with the sun or the moon and aspects between the two luminaries themselves are larger too.

I honestly believe that there is no truth for terms or decans. These were smaller break ups of the zodiac with their own planetary rulerships, but I think were how people got confused not using all the aspects.

Now this takes me to the aspects which many consider modern despite being older than Lilly which many people consider traditional, go figure. Keplar notes similarities between planetary aspects and music harmonies, and based on this looked for an observed extra aspects. I swear by these. If you dont think they exist you haven't monitored for them. The aspects I use in total then including Keplan aspects are:

Conjunction: Orb depends on planet.
Semi Sextile: 2* orb
Semi Quintile: 2* orb
Sextile: 3* orb
Quintile: 2* orb
Square: 3* orb
Sentagon 2* orb
Biquintile 2* orb
Trine 3* orb
Sesqui Quintile 2* orb
Quincunx 2* orb
Opposition 3-4* orb.

Reception:
example: The Sun is in Cancer the Moons sign. The Sun is receiving from the Moon as it is in the Moons sign. This is good. The better condition the Moon is in the better it can help the Sun. If the Moon is in bad condition then the reception is pointless as it can't help the Sun anyway.


Mutual Reception: Two planets are in each others rulerships. They can help each other. This is very good.

Negative Reception: A planet is in another signs detriment or fall degree.

Please note a lot of people don't count reception of any kind unless they are aspect too. I am one of those people.

Reception is whether a planet can help another, but whether a planet "wants to" is based on the aspect between planets.

This is a very basic understanding of astrology to get you started, but I will go into it's uses specifically for magic at a later date. Please also follow my astrology weather page OccultAstrology type that in Facebook search as it's a Facebook page. There will be updates for each week on it. It's blank at the moment.