The Draconic Adventure
Once you have grasped the vibrational nature of the universe in which we live, that the human condition is intimately related to the twelve-fold standing wave we call a zodiac, and that sensitive points on the Earth’s orbit, the Ecliptic, naturally generate these waves, you realise that you are only at the beginning of a huge astrological adventure.
Mine really began with Dennis Elwell’s Cambridge lecture on Draconic charts in 1977. Studying these led to the idea of the Current Draconic. But this set of crucial Directions begged yet another question - if a transiting Node can direct a birth chart, then why not the Nodal axis in another person’s chart? After all, we are - as we have seen in the article on Q-charts - each other’s transits!
What would such a rearrangement of the natal chart actually mean? Why would we do this? There would surely be some kind of spiritual or karmic implication; or a connection with commitment, conscience, principles. In moving the Lunar Nodes from their natal place to a sign and degree in someone else’s chart, surely we would be radically shifting the sense of spiritual direction and altering the deepest priorities.
Because this would also work both ways in the synastry of a couple, for want of a more imaginative term I have called these new patterns the Exchange Draconic; but we can shorten this to X-charts.
Starting Close to Home
Looking into the phenomenon means that we touch on some very private issues, so it isn’t easy to find couples in whom its effects are obvious. So I shall begin at home, because my own life is my laboratory. I was born with the Dragon’s Head in Leo and Draconic Sun in Virgo. My father, thirty-seven years older, had almost exactly the same pattern, and I can see the similarity of our paths and those fundamental principles that guided both of us - in different contexts - to be of practical help to other people and develop the most useful tools for the job in hand. We had a lot in common, my Dad and I, even though he was a businessman and I became an astrologer. My Mum was his second Marjorie, his first having decided after only a few months that marriage didn’t suit her! There were the inevitable strains in the relationship, but they stuck together till death did them part the night after their fifty-first wedding anniversary. Dad followed Mum home a year later. I was holding his hand. That was very special.
My first foray into the realm of X-charts, then, is to look at the patterns of my parents, and me. As I have no birth times for them, the only sensible thing to do is employ a Q-chart in each case, for my own birth moment. The result when applying this to my mother is quite unexpected and startling: here is a triwheel of Mum’s own Draconic, generated from her natal Pisces North Node, with the two very similar X-charts yielded by me and Dad, using our North Nodes in Leo.
Once you have grasped the vibrational nature of the universe in which we live, that the human condition is intimately related to the twelve-fold standing wave we call a zodiac, and that sensitive points on the Earth’s orbit, the Ecliptic, naturally generate these waves, you realise that you are only at the beginning of a huge astrological adventure.
Mine really began with Dennis Elwell’s Cambridge lecture on Draconic charts in 1977. Studying these led to the idea of the Current Draconic. But this set of crucial Directions begged yet another question - if a transiting Node can direct a birth chart, then why not the Nodal axis in another person’s chart? After all, we are - as we have seen in the article on Q-charts - each other’s transits!
What would such a rearrangement of the natal chart actually mean? Why would we do this? There would surely be some kind of spiritual or karmic implication; or a connection with commitment, conscience, principles. In moving the Lunar Nodes from their natal place to a sign and degree in someone else’s chart, surely we would be radically shifting the sense of spiritual direction and altering the deepest priorities.
Because this would also work both ways in the synastry of a couple, for want of a more imaginative term I have called these new patterns the Exchange Draconic; but we can shorten this to X-charts.
Starting Close to Home
Looking into the phenomenon means that we touch on some very private issues, so it isn’t easy to find couples in whom its effects are obvious. So I shall begin at home, because my own life is my laboratory. I was born with the Dragon’s Head in Leo and Draconic Sun in Virgo. My father, thirty-seven years older, had almost exactly the same pattern, and I can see the similarity of our paths and those fundamental principles that guided both of us - in different contexts - to be of practical help to other people and develop the most useful tools for the job in hand. We had a lot in common, my Dad and I, even though he was a businessman and I became an astrologer. My Mum was his second Marjorie, his first having decided after only a few months that marriage didn’t suit her! There were the inevitable strains in the relationship, but they stuck together till death did them part the night after their fifty-first wedding anniversary. Dad followed Mum home a year later. I was holding his hand. That was very special.
My first foray into the realm of X-charts, then, is to look at the patterns of my parents, and me. As I have no birth times for them, the only sensible thing to do is employ a Q-chart in each case, for my own birth moment. The result when applying this to my mother is quite unexpected and startling: here is a triwheel of Mum’s own Draconic, generated from her natal Pisces North Node, with the two very similar X-charts yielded by me and Dad, using our North Nodes in Leo.
The astonishing thing is that even on the Ascendant of the Draconic Q-chart, using the same time for myself and Dad, the relationship of each of us to her is graphically displayed: with me, her Moon is swung round into Sagittarius within 5' of that Ascendant, and with Dad her Sun conjoins the same Ascendant by less than 1º. I am her daughter. He is her husband. I wasn’t expecting this at all.
Certainly, both Dad and I shift her focus in a big way; natively her Draconic Taurus New Moon really did mean that stability was crucial to her, as was loyalty to her friends and family through thick and thin, and that other delightful Taurean trait - looking one’s feminine best and smelling beautiful! We, however, pulled her into Sagittarius; she found herself travelling, her horizons widening, her social circle expanding as Dad’s business brought increased money and status. How do we identify this shift? Can we say that these things were experiences required for her when we were in her life? Can we say that she became ‘driven’ by the Sagittarian principle when we were around? Bear in mind that Queen Elizabeth II has been perfectly described by Gyles Brandreth as “driven by duty” - the very phrase I would have chosen for this remarkable woman with Draconic Sun in Capricorn conjunct her country’s Tropical Sun. I am ‘driven’ by a love of detailed technique (Draconic Sun Virgo.) We are driven by the things in which we most deeply believe.
Elsewhere in this wheel the X MC meets radix Draconic Mercury in Aries: yes, there were a lot of arguments as both Dad and I could rile her to boiling point. The X Ascendant in Cancer is on Mum’s Draconic Saturn ... most closely with me. I can’t be sure how this was working, can only surmise that she took her role as my mother very seriously, did it very well, and was consequently disappointed when I showed little enthusiasm for helping around the house!
As for Dad, my presence with an almost identical Node would simply have encouraged him to stay on track with whatever he had come to do; and that is how I remember our relationship - enjoying sharing the gardening, concreting, DIY - all the interesting stuff that didn’t count as housework. And I loved going to the office and the factory with him when I could. You can see this paradoxical relationship so clearly in his Q-chart with me: the Ascendant conjunct Moon and opposite Ceres - I am his daughter - but also with Mars setting, bringing him a girl who was almost a son to him. He had no son; he could have built on this side of our bond and trained me to follow him in the business. But all he saw was a daughter, destined in due course for domesticity. There is one small but crucial shift that my Node brought to his X-chart: the Sun, Virgo in both our Draconic radices, is moved to the end of Leo. That would explain a lot: as my father he would have been extra conscious of his archetypal position as head of the household, adopted a conventional view of the father-daughter relationship, and seen anything I achieved as a matter of personal pride.
I, on the other hand, remained firmly Draconic Virgo in his presence, ever helpful but incapable for many years of doing anything that wouldn’t meet with fatherly approval.
Mum’s Pisces North Node drew Dad’s X Sun into Aquarius. I think I know what was going on here; for it was largely she, joyously making friends everywhere we went, who made a social creature out of that otherwise very self-sufficient Capricorn. I can vouch for this from my own point of view as I was just the same, very solitary, very quiet, always had my nose in a book and hated ‘performing’ for visitors; which of course I was driven to do by my Mum who refused to be the mother of an apparently rude and antisocial child.
Certainly, both Dad and I shift her focus in a big way; natively her Draconic Taurus New Moon really did mean that stability was crucial to her, as was loyalty to her friends and family through thick and thin, and that other delightful Taurean trait - looking one’s feminine best and smelling beautiful! We, however, pulled her into Sagittarius; she found herself travelling, her horizons widening, her social circle expanding as Dad’s business brought increased money and status. How do we identify this shift? Can we say that these things were experiences required for her when we were in her life? Can we say that she became ‘driven’ by the Sagittarian principle when we were around? Bear in mind that Queen Elizabeth II has been perfectly described by Gyles Brandreth as “driven by duty” - the very phrase I would have chosen for this remarkable woman with Draconic Sun in Capricorn conjunct her country’s Tropical Sun. I am ‘driven’ by a love of detailed technique (Draconic Sun Virgo.) We are driven by the things in which we most deeply believe.
Elsewhere in this wheel the X MC meets radix Draconic Mercury in Aries: yes, there were a lot of arguments as both Dad and I could rile her to boiling point. The X Ascendant in Cancer is on Mum’s Draconic Saturn ... most closely with me. I can’t be sure how this was working, can only surmise that she took her role as my mother very seriously, did it very well, and was consequently disappointed when I showed little enthusiasm for helping around the house!
As for Dad, my presence with an almost identical Node would simply have encouraged him to stay on track with whatever he had come to do; and that is how I remember our relationship - enjoying sharing the gardening, concreting, DIY - all the interesting stuff that didn’t count as housework. And I loved going to the office and the factory with him when I could. You can see this paradoxical relationship so clearly in his Q-chart with me: the Ascendant conjunct Moon and opposite Ceres - I am his daughter - but also with Mars setting, bringing him a girl who was almost a son to him. He had no son; he could have built on this side of our bond and trained me to follow him in the business. But all he saw was a daughter, destined in due course for domesticity. There is one small but crucial shift that my Node brought to his X-chart: the Sun, Virgo in both our Draconic radices, is moved to the end of Leo. That would explain a lot: as my father he would have been extra conscious of his archetypal position as head of the household, adopted a conventional view of the father-daughter relationship, and seen anything I achieved as a matter of personal pride.
I, on the other hand, remained firmly Draconic Virgo in his presence, ever helpful but incapable for many years of doing anything that wouldn’t meet with fatherly approval.
Mum’s Pisces North Node drew Dad’s X Sun into Aquarius. I think I know what was going on here; for it was largely she, joyously making friends everywhere we went, who made a social creature out of that otherwise very self-sufficient Capricorn. I can vouch for this from my own point of view as I was just the same, very solitary, very quiet, always had my nose in a book and hated ‘performing’ for visitors; which of course I was driven to do by my Mum who refused to be the mother of an apparently rude and antisocial child.
She made me mix, she made me socialise ... and in so doing woke up my radix Draconic Aquarius Moon conjoined by that X Sun! This happy collision of Lights fell on my Tropical Venus, so what did we do together? We danced! In classes, on stage, in the lounge on Sunday mornings when our friends all came round. She really got me going. Just look at all the activity between my Draconic radix and this X-chart! Mercury is in Aquarius on radix Jupiter, radix Uranus at the X IC, X Moon in Cancer on radix Mars (opposite Tropical Sun), X Mars on Saturn, X Chiron on Mercury ... So I learned my manners, and how to perform to an audience, to take the initiative and to value my own ideas, all with this invaluable help from my mother. The curious and interesting thing in this context is that she always insisted I was more Aquarius than Capricorn; yes I have inners there, but even so, Aquarius is what she was driving me to be!
Being Oneself
The antithesis of all this developmentally persuasive energy is the relief of simply being oneself. This is what I suddenly found when I met the man who was to be my much-loved second husband, Gerard. “Just be,” he would say after watching or listening to me making the latest effort to live up to some apparent requirement or other. “Just be.” He was born with the Dragon’s Head smiling at 1º Aries. He just was, and just is. He is, like all of his kind, WYSIWYG. Because through his lack of complication and his utter integrity I realised that there were people, surprisingly, whose lives and characters directly expressed what they believed in without any of the inner arguments that beset the rest of us, it became obvious to me that Jesus must be one of them (and so is Our Lady) ... and that was the start of thirty years’ work!
The point I want to make here is that in relationship this makes a huge difference to the partner. His North Node at 1º Aries blesses everyone he meets with an X-chart only 1º off their natal Tropical pattern; we are all given permission when we are with him to “Just be.” Every eighteen years and a wishy bit, a select generation of assorted folk comes along with this characteristic. With them we can be ourselves. And of course in inward communion with Jesus and His Mother, those two most beautiful and loving of spiritual beings, we can also be simply and fully ourselves.
What was going on with my first marriage? It would be unfair to go into detail, but briefly because we were born only months apart my radix Draconic and the X from my ex were not dissimilar. However, the X Ceres was pulled onto my Draconic 7th cusp while the X MC met radix Draconic Saturn, so motherhood ruled and any other achievement was hard won. I felt constantly put down. When the two X-charts are put together the one planet that stands out a mile in the strength of its contacts is Mercury. We talked our way into that marriage; and we talked our way out of it.
Gerard’s first marriage had also skewed him badly. (I have his permission to write freely about his life.)
The X-chart with his first wife had swung his Sun back into Scorpio, his Ascendant back into Leo - and his Moon into Capricorn. He spent his years with her emotionally starved, suffering intensely from her psychological cruelty, and working every hour God gave climbing the corporate ladder to keep her in the way to which she was accustomed. She drove him to the very brink of suicide. He just stopped himself crashing his company car into the pillar of a motorway bridge. In the X-chart his conjunction of IC with Mars and Mercury was dragged by her into Scorpio, opposite radix Chiron - one of whose domains is suicide. It doesn’t get much more graphic than that. That X IC, and the X Sun just to its east, fell close to his first wife’s Tropical South Node. There must have been karma in that relationship (she had had her eye on him since school) but it certainly brought out the most destructive side of her.
Suffice it to say that with us things are very different.
Right Royal Examples
I need not write much more here, as there is a very full account in the Articles section, "FOR BETTER OR WORSE ~X CHARTS", which also goes into the calculation.
But I shall offer you one more couple whose X factor was dramatic.
The Private Secretary
Being Oneself
The antithesis of all this developmentally persuasive energy is the relief of simply being oneself. This is what I suddenly found when I met the man who was to be my much-loved second husband, Gerard. “Just be,” he would say after watching or listening to me making the latest effort to live up to some apparent requirement or other. “Just be.” He was born with the Dragon’s Head smiling at 1º Aries. He just was, and just is. He is, like all of his kind, WYSIWYG. Because through his lack of complication and his utter integrity I realised that there were people, surprisingly, whose lives and characters directly expressed what they believed in without any of the inner arguments that beset the rest of us, it became obvious to me that Jesus must be one of them (and so is Our Lady) ... and that was the start of thirty years’ work!
The point I want to make here is that in relationship this makes a huge difference to the partner. His North Node at 1º Aries blesses everyone he meets with an X-chart only 1º off their natal Tropical pattern; we are all given permission when we are with him to “Just be.” Every eighteen years and a wishy bit, a select generation of assorted folk comes along with this characteristic. With them we can be ourselves. And of course in inward communion with Jesus and His Mother, those two most beautiful and loving of spiritual beings, we can also be simply and fully ourselves.
What was going on with my first marriage? It would be unfair to go into detail, but briefly because we were born only months apart my radix Draconic and the X from my ex were not dissimilar. However, the X Ceres was pulled onto my Draconic 7th cusp while the X MC met radix Draconic Saturn, so motherhood ruled and any other achievement was hard won. I felt constantly put down. When the two X-charts are put together the one planet that stands out a mile in the strength of its contacts is Mercury. We talked our way into that marriage; and we talked our way out of it.
Gerard’s first marriage had also skewed him badly. (I have his permission to write freely about his life.)
The X-chart with his first wife had swung his Sun back into Scorpio, his Ascendant back into Leo - and his Moon into Capricorn. He spent his years with her emotionally starved, suffering intensely from her psychological cruelty, and working every hour God gave climbing the corporate ladder to keep her in the way to which she was accustomed. She drove him to the very brink of suicide. He just stopped himself crashing his company car into the pillar of a motorway bridge. In the X-chart his conjunction of IC with Mars and Mercury was dragged by her into Scorpio, opposite radix Chiron - one of whose domains is suicide. It doesn’t get much more graphic than that. That X IC, and the X Sun just to its east, fell close to his first wife’s Tropical South Node. There must have been karma in that relationship (she had had her eye on him since school) but it certainly brought out the most destructive side of her.
Suffice it to say that with us things are very different.
Right Royal Examples
I need not write much more here, as there is a very full account in the Articles section, "FOR BETTER OR WORSE ~X CHARTS", which also goes into the calculation.
But I shall offer you one more couple whose X factor was dramatic.
The Private Secretary
The power of the combined Q-Chart and X-Chart is vividly apparent when we look at another young woman who fell utterly under the spell of one of the most deluded and criminal individuals ever to walk this Earth. (CHART) The girl was Traudl Junge; the man was Adolf Hitler. We have no birth time for Traudl (who died on February 10th 2002) so the Q-Chart with Hitler is required viewing. As in so many unfortunate or restricting relationships here again is Saturn on an angle, the IC this time, and Pluto rising. She was propelled into the Fuehrer’s life by Bormann, a family friend, and nothing could ever be the same again. She worked as Hitler’s youngest private secretary from December 1942 until the very end in the bunker in April 1945, sharing all the drama and all the trauma with unquestioning loyalty. Her life ceased to be her own. Very Pluto-rising.
|
When we turn this into the X-Chart from Hitler’s Nodes, the roots of their relationship appear to go way back into the past: Traudl’s Draconic Q-Chart responds vividly, its Scorpio Pluto/Ascendant aligning with the X MC/Uranus -Saturn, and Mars picked up twice - X Mars on Draconic MC and Draconic Mars near the X Ascendant. Even if there is no actual past-life link between them, she would certainly feel as if there were with these intense impacts on her chart, and carry out her duties with a sense of mission. Also, With the X Sun in Sagittarius, X Moon in Libra, she would cheerfully go along for the ride, come hell or high water. In her filmed memoir of those days she is deeply regretful that she accepted the Nazi leader and his regime so uncritically ... but Pisceans can live in a dream, and only realise it was a nightmare once they have wakened. And just for the record, although it's not in this chart, her Sun is conjunct Eris.