location, location, location!
All the way down the River Nile, my Jupiter was culminating. Oh joy! We could take the boat for three weeks, photograph temples, plumb the pyramids, and not get gyppy tummy. It was 1981, and the first time I had relocated my birth chart, That journey was one of the richest experiences of my life, culturally and spiritually. Fast forward a few years: Martin Davis's book is out and I've read it from cover to cover, entranced. I'm into my mapping program, following the Jupiter lines that run through the happy places, marking the Mars lines that always led to ructions, reflecting gloomily on the limits of island life ... Relocation charts were all very well for globe-trotters, but what earthly use were they to us Brits moving house by only a few degrees? Local Space lines were certainly helpful, but relocating one's chart made very little difference at all. Supposing the chart could be fine-tuned?... Of course it could. For years I had been working obsessively with the Dwad, the Dwadashamsha of Vedic astrology that turns every Sign into a mini-zodiac and each 2.5 degrees into a mini-sign, each sequence of the twelve starting with the 'parent' sign and ending with the sign preceding. The Dwad is so important! It expresses not how you present yourself (the personality of the radix chart) but who you think - or know - you are. As the Dwad multiplies everything in a chart by twelve, then the dwad MCs of two places only 1 degree of longitude apart would differ by twelve whole degrees ... and have totally different contacts with radix or dwad planets! Surely this would reflect different experiences or attitudes in the separate locations? Eventually, when Solar Fire turned up trumps with a Vedic module including the Dwad, this notion could be tested. Having moved house at least 15 times and seen a fair bit of the world, my own travels came in handy. Over years of rectification I had pinned my own time down to the second, knew where I'd been, and knew how I felt about being there. The differences were noticeable. (See Sign Language - Relocationx3!) The range of my dwad UK MCs extended from early Sagittarius here in Llandudno to early Aquarius at Walmer. Ascendants ran from Llandudno's 18 Aries to Walmer's 29 Taurus. In both Kent and Cornwall the dwad Moon/Mercury opposition is angular, first on the horizon, then on the meridian. (I was pretty busy!) I'm not going to comment further on my own patterns except to say that this agreement between dwad angularities and experience continued overseas. Thus encouraged, let's have a look at some people we all know.
(There is a caveat - AstroDataBank spells out in detail the unreliability of data for Wallis Simpson; yet the following patterns suggest the date and time quoted in 'Profiles of Women' may indeed be accurate. Or it may be a happy coincidence!)
Both Wallis and Grace were born with radix Jupiter at the dwad IC, implying that each woman knew in her heart that she was born to have it all - luxury, privilege, status. But Grace's dwad Sagittarius Ascendant touches radix Saturn, and dwad Saturn her rising Mercury; here is a confident woman who nevertheless will always expect constraints on her liberty and responsibilities attendant on her wealth and position. Wallis, by contrast, has Virgo rising in the dwad. She knows she is a 'commoner' ... with aspirations. Squaring this Ascendant is the alignment of radix MC/IC with dwad Chiron, echoing the radix Moon/Chiron conjunction, mark of a maverick, and close by, dwad Mercury and N.Node in Sagittarius oppose dwad Gemini Moon and S.Node with the radix 4th-house trio of Pluto/Mercury/Neptune. She will say and do anything to fulfil an old, old dream - even though the voice in her head would be telling her that as soon as she gained the world she could lose her own soul. She was never to be Queen. Her extravagant life as Duchess of Windsor, in permanent exile, was essentially empty. London propelled her into Edward's embrace and into the spotlight. But these are squares to the romantic dwad Ascendant - Wallis is heading not for an easy ride into a royal bedchamber, but for a major constitutional crisis.
Again, contrast these patterns with Grace Kelly:
with lovely trines to the dwad 5th-house Venus/Chiron, a Taurus dwad Ascendant with the radix N.Node faces the setting conjunction of radix Sun and S.Node with dwad Jupiter, in turn conjunct dwad Moon and close to radix Mars. At the radix MC is dwad Saturn. In Monaco her royal soul-mate was waiting for her to give him the family he longed for and an heir to the succession, in exchange for a wonderful, stable, disciplined life in which she could truly find herself.
...And Two Funerals But in some places, Death awaits. On the 1st of May 1994 Ayrton Senna lost his life at Imola, 20 minutes into the Italian Grand Prix. The young Brazilian (with asteroids Senna and Fama at the MC, Phaethon (who raced the chariot of the Sun) at the IC and Atropos - death - in the S.Node) was the finest and most fearless racing driver of his generation; the loss was catastrophic. It led to a whole raft of new safety measures in race car construction.
Unfortunately in her South Node lurked Mars in Scorpio; sitting on a rocket was never a good idea. Even an adventurous North Node in Taurus advises keeping your feet firmly on the ground. The dwad brings her Sun and S.Node into conjunction in Capricorn; here is a mind set on ploughing her own furrow, rising to her own challenges, and setting a selfless example - but inevitably at risk of making big mistakes and throwing everything away.
At Cape Canaveral on January 28th 1986 Christa McAuliffe found herself in the place where her Nodes, Mars radix and dwad, and the dwad conjunction of Moon, Venus and Ceres all met on the Ascendant/Descendant axis around 5/6 Taurus. Here too her radix Venus/Ceres came right onto the IC with dwad Jupiter. She would have been feeling thrilled, happy, fulfilled, loving all the attention, and high on adrenalin. But deeper inside, didn't she feel a chill of dread? Close to the relocated MC lay her dwad Sun/S.Node. And clustered round the dwad Ascendant in early Cancer were a sombre trio of Uranus, Chiron and Saturn. Neptune was already transiting 4 Capricorn. In her heart of hearts she must have known this was a suicide mission. At 11h39 am EST under Christa's own relocated angles, the Ascendant squared by Mercury at 6 Aquarius and opposed by Pluto/S.Node at 7 and 3 Scorpio, space shuttle Challenger exploded. Mr. Obama Goes to Washington It's a long way to Washington DC from Honolulu! But one man, born with a mind to serve the American people, made the journey and didn't change his mind. This, the significant repetition of an angle, is an occasional quirk of dwad astrology, and it turns up in the charts of President Barack Obama.
In Washington DC, plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose! The orator's Moon has risen to his relocated Ascendant with the dwad Mars/Uranus; and the Sun, opposite dwad Jupiter/Neptune, is angular at the IC. His fame follows him to the nation's capital, where he argues his cause with fluency and intelligence, and holds up to the electorate the ideals, ideas and principles which inspire him. In contrast to Honolulu, at the White House radix Jupiter/Saturn conjoining dwad IC, and MC with dwad Jupiter, tap into his innate optimism, common-sense, and the wisdom of experience. With that dwad Sun/S.Node there will be much self-sacrifice involved in his career, but amid the heavy demands of domestic law and international politics his Presidency will have moments of deep fulfilment, and shared joy. Constant discussion, negotiation and speaking is mapped on that angular Gemini Moon and radix Leo Mercury on the dwad MC. Add to this zest for communication the magic touch and the unassuming charisma of radix Pluto opposite Chiron on the dwad 5 Virgo Ascendant- almost unaltered in the transition from Hawaii to DC - and his revolutionary style in the dwad Uranus/Mars with rising Moon, and you have a formidable leader, to start steering the Western world out of its self-inflicted chaos.
Well ... trying. Dwad and Superdwad One more thing. Going back to my own travels, I was still bemused by one town. Here more than in any other place I had to experience deep sadness and final partings. Yet, in common with all the other towns with shared angles nearby, the radix/dwad pattern there showed nothing of this. Many years ago, however, I had experimented with an extra layer of fine-tuning; I had tried the dwad of a dwad, calling this a 'superdwad'. As it required an extremely accurate birth time (multiplying every factor by 144!) there seemed little point in pursuing it. But my own time is now as precise as I can make it - so I had another go. I mapped the dwad of the dwad of the relocation chart. And there at last was all the emotion and all the pain and all the separation: not found at any other place nearby was an Ascendant/Pluto/Venus conjunction with radix Ceres (so often the harbinger of grief) opposite Descendant/Mars and radix Neptune. Very unsettling - but very satisfactory. We have a working Fractal Astrology. .......................................................................................................................... A note on the charts: each biwheel has been put up to display the dwad at the centre and the radix in the outer wheel. It is always worthwhile swapping their positions as this can bring different alignments into focus. A workaround: The dwad can also be calculated for a progressed chart. Select the progressed chart, click on File/Locality,enter the original location, and click OK. The new chart you have made is now a radix chart instead of a subsidiary chart and can be manipulated like any nativity. Superdwads: These can only be done by hand so far. It would be wonderful if Solar Fire and other programs included the facility to create dwads of dwads and of any/all subsidiary charts - it could lead to some exciting work. Relocated Angles: When watching transits to natal and progressed angles, remember to check for contacts to their relocated degrees - quite a few timing puzzles should be thus resolved! Data: Wallis Simpson 19th June 1896 22h30 EST Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania (Rodden in P.O.W./R.H.Oliver in American Astrology/'attending physician') Grace Kelly 12th November 1929 05h31 EST Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (BC/Clifford) Ayrton Senna 21st March 1960 02h35 BZT2 Sao Paolo, Brazil (BC/AstroDataBank) Christa McAuliffe 3rd September 1948 22h13 EDT Boston, Massachusetts (BC/AstroDataBank) Barack Obama 4th August 1961 19h24 AHST Honolulu, Hawaii (BC/AstroDataBank) .......................................................................................................................... |