|
 It’s
Not On The Map!
-- The
nature of
composite charts means you can’t map them
– because they’re not real charts at all,
they’re
artifacts. Here's how and why...
By John Townley
If
fortune isn’t
smiling on you where you are and you’d
like to give it a try elsewhere, the traditional astrological solution
is to
pick a potential place and do a relocation
chart – that
is, your instant
of birth viewed from that new place. Same planets, different houses.
Perhaps
someplace that has your Sun on the Ascendant and not in the twelfth
house, for instance, would be an improvement. Not everybody uses the
method,
but those who do swear by it.
Finding
the best place to go can be a
tedious process,
however, requiring that you cast and recast new horoscopes for
different
prospective places until you come up with a winner. In the 1980s,
astrologer
Jim Lewis came up with a clever piece of cartography to solve the
problem. He
called it, cleverly, AstroCartography
and it is a program that
calculates global maps
with lines over them that show where
each of your
natal planets will be rising, setting, at the MC, or on the IC. It
saves a lot
of time casting around, so to speak. You can even do it with natal
midpoints.
Various software programs are available that will plot such maps to
help you
out.
But how
about
relationships? What if you and your honey
need to skip town and want to find a good place to hide out? Someplace
that
that’s cozy, private, and not on the map. How do you find a
place
to relocate
yourselves, together? Simply plug in your composite
chart to an
AstroCartography program and off you go?
Alas,
it’s not
that easy. You could easily do that with a Davison
relationship chart (a chart of
the midpoint in time
between
the births of the two
of you), but a real composite
(a chart derived of
mutual midpoints in
space between your actual
charts) isn't so easily moved,
since it doesn’t
have a location to begin with, unless you were both born in the same
place. So
what to do?
The
original solution is to simply make
relocation charts
for both of you, and make a composite from those. Of course, to start
with that
probably makes the composite chart where you already are different than
your
regular one, and it’s hopeless if you’re carrying
on a
long-distance affair.
A
Composite
Map?
Another
way to do it
might be to make a composite
map,
a la AstroCartography, of lines made of up of midpoints of your
relocated
planet lines. That, however, opens yet another can of worms. Making an
ordinary
composite chart of mutual midpoints along the ecliptic is easy and
fairly
predictable, although it will sometimes turn up oddities like
oppositions of
the inner planets and some crazy house flips. But that’s
midpoints along,
essentially, a line. Try making line midpoints in three dimensions
around a
sphere and you get complete craziness, with planet and house lines
suddenly
vanishing and turning up, properly, on the other side of the globe or
even
beneath the earth – or, worse, off the map entirely. To
construct
a useful map
derived from a composite chart alone would seem impossible.
The
solution? There
isn’t an easy one – and there may not
be one at all. Matrix, in its Horizons program, has chosen a method that may not be ideal,
but it does have
the virtue
of deriving a map from a single chart. Here’s what they have
to
say about it:
"Composite
charts are not mappable in any
ordinary way, so some kind of innovation is
required. Not
looking for
controversy, Matrix has approached this problem cautiously. Instead of
inventing a new kind of composite chart, we are taking a normal natal
chart and
placing the composite planets into it so that Horizons can draw
composite
planet lines on a map. The critical point is that these planet lines
will
match the relocated chart as expected. No other approach to
this
problem
of composites has yet been found that produces an agreement
between chart
and map. We do look forward to exploring other approaches that we find
to have
merit."
This
approach gives you a feel of some of the
effects of relocation, and especially a read on the impact of the
composite on
one of the partners, but it’s a one-sided, artificial
construct.
Of course, if
you were both born in the same town or nearby, it gives approximate
results of
a true, idealized composite relocation – and it might yield
the
same thing
you’d get for individually relocating two charts to a third
location and then
doing a composite from there, if the program had that feature. Perhaps
future
versions will, not through a single chart algorithm, such as
traditional
AstroCartography is based upon, but upon an intensely iterative
approach. That
is to
say, to be accurate the program would have to draw the
lines by casting a vast net of relocated charts and then raising the
lines from
them, by connecting them point by point. The kind of stuff you do on a
Cray
supercomputer...and even then, you'd get lines that disconnect and
vanish at
odd points, surfacing somewhere else entirely or not at all. The
resulting map would still be by no means coherent. Right now,
and perhaps forever, the best method is to relocate both charts, then
do a
third – and if you don’t like the results, try it
someplace
else.
That's
one
of the problems with composite
charts. They’re not fully mappable -- there are places that
simply don't exist,
aren't on any map, because they aren't real charts to begin with,
they're
artifacts. You will discover this, for instance, if you try to
use
composites to extrapolate your perfect partner, something I suggested
in
my book that introduced composites back in 1973.
Let’s
say you want
to find somebody with a fifth house composite Sun with you
(lots
of fun
together). Depending upon your chart, you may find that it simply can't
happen,
or at best you may have to settle for an eleventh house Sun.
I’ve
had that
problem with clients looking to find someone that suits their
fantasies. And
it’s hard to explain to them that because of their own natal
charts, some life
options simply aren’t open!...
So,
if you still think there
“ought” to be a strictly
map-based composite solution, it’s probably because you
don’t understand what
composite charts really are and why they work, to begin with.
That’s OK, few
astrologers actually do -- they just go ahead and use them, because
they work
so well, and don’t ask questions. Yet, correct interpretation
of
what they
really mean is dependent on knowing what it is you are interpreting. So
here’s
an attempt at a brief explanation:
"Midpoint
Theory"
It’s
all about “midpoint
theory.” But,
unfortunately there seems to be no such
thing. The loosely-used term generally means midpoint application,
or technique,
or analysis,
but there is little, if any, published theory
behind
it. It’s just something you do that those rigorous Germans
made
up back in the
1920s. So what’s the story? Why do midpoints, as opposed to
traditional
aspects, have meaning, and from what do they derive it?
The
answer probably lies
in, and certainly has precedence
in, the ancient concept of “translation of light”
in which
the aspect from a
transiting planet moves from one planet to a second, making its
transfer of
influence at the midpoint -- along with the concept of a planet being
“besieged” or at the midpoint of two malefics and
thus
subject to negative
transit aspect-transfer of light and influence. Behind it all is the
idea that
there is a third party, and a third operation, going on –
something cyclical
that causes the midpoint to become sensitive and highlight the
relationship of
its parent planets.
Most
often that third
party is the Moon, which once a
month lends its rhythmic conjunction cycle to every other body in the
sky.
Similarly, each individual body does that in relation to the angles as
well
each day, and in both cases the body receiving the conjunction is
strengthened
momentarily by this monthly or daily pulse. Less frequently, but
inevitably,
the third party is the Sun or another transiting planet according to
its longer
cycle.
As the
Moon, for
instance, moves from strengthening one
planet to the next, it reaches a half-way point where its relative
strengthening power switches from one planet to the next, and that is
the midpoint.
It is where the hand-off of power between one planet and another
occurs, by
transit, regardless of any aspect or lack of it outside of the
conjunctions
themselves. It is the “shoreline”, so to speak,
between the
sphere of
influences between two planets, as crossed by a third body and defined
by that
crossing, and every other, as it occurs again and again.
By this
definition, this
constantly reinforced handshake
rhythm that happens at a midpoint invokes the qualities of both planets
and
links them during any transit. Further, however, if the point itself is
harshly
aspected natally or at the time of a transit, then whatever planet
touches it
is afflicted and afflicting as well and passes that influence along to
both
planets for whom this midpoint serves as a transfer point, or border
crossing.
It’s all about relative power exchange between two bodies and
what’s going on
at the time it occurs.
The
Composite Chart
This
reinforcing effect
of repeated transit cycles to a
natal horoscope may well be an integral part of cementing into place
the basic
patterns of the personality as expressed by the horoscope, which builds
itself
as it grows, starting from birth, according to the regular pattern of
the
original planetary birth positions. In fact, it is possible this
planetary
cycle phenomenon, and its tendency through repetition to entrain events
from
the gross to the subtle, comprises the main physical
basis for
astrology
and the only reason a composite works at all.
In the
case of a
composite chart, which is made up of mutual
midpoints between two natal charts, it is this that causes the
composite to
become clearly stronger the longer the relationship is actually
ongoing, and to
become a strong dynamic force in the relationship above and beyond the
basic,
traditional synastry contacts. A composite chart is, after all, only a
shoreline constructed between two real charts and lives only by the
reflections
of their repeated transits. As a couple, you live
on that
shoreline, and
build your entire relationship there as time goes by – it is
your
mutual
relative power dynamic. That is also why, for instance, progressed
composites
are a non-starter and have little or no meaning. The original
constituent
progressed charts are always in motion and therefore have no chance for
the
necessary repeated periodic handovers by transit necessary to build
composite
strength and significance.
This
is also why the Davison relationship
chart is a
totally different animal. It is a chart of a midpoint in time,
otherwise
unrelated to either natal chart, rather than a chart integrally derived
directly from the natals and the subsequent transits that affect them,
and for
that reason yields little useful information except where it coincides
with the
composite. A Davison chart, since it is a real single horoscope, can be
easily
mapped, but what would be the use?…
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