"Destiny" by John William Waterhouse (1849-1917)  

By John Townley

Although most astrology software programs include the option of the Vertex in the natal chart, few astrologers actually use it, so there isn’t much written about it. I was a student of Charles Jayne, who along with L. Edward Johndro pioneered its use, so here is what I learned about it from him and subsequently from my own practice.

What it is

The Vertex is the intersection of the prime vertical (the local perpendicular East-West plane) with the ecliptic in the West. Look straight up, then look West, and there it is, either above or below the horizon (7th house cusp) usually within a house or two.

How to calculate it

If you don’t have a computer that does it for you and have a table of houses, you look up the IC as if it were the MC and then go to the Asc for the co-latitude (90-birth latitude) of birth. That’s the Vertex.

When it got noticed

Astrologers never used this point for interpretation until electrical engineer and astrologer L. Edward Johndro and astrologer Charles Jayne began to do so in the 1940s. Johndro called it the “Electric Ascendant” as he believed the physical basis of astrology to be electromagnetic and so divided up its major components into electrical and magnetic natures, complementary to each other as they are in a wire conducting a current, in which the electric charge moves along a wire and creates a magnetic field at right angles to it. He believed the ordinary Ascendant on the horizon plane to be the Earth's magnetic component spatially, and the prime vertical at right angles to it to be the electric component, hence the title. After looking at it in various horoscopes, he and Jayne proposed a meaning for it which is important, unique, and rather vague all at the same time.

What it means

Jayne taught that it was a point of fate or destiny (older astrologers threw those words around a lot), at which things happened that determined the path of your life. They could be large and obvious or small and seemingly insignificant at the time, but you would look back later and say everything changed at that point, in retrospect. How that actually seems to happen depends on whether it is a transit or progression to a natal chart,  the comparison of one natal to another, or in a relocation. In a transit or progression, you can expect an event that will be life-changing, of the nature of the transiting or progressed planet involved, for good or ill. And, conveniently (or rather inconveniently), you may miss it entirely at the time, but it will begin to become clear as time passes. Hint: keep your eyes open to blossoming developments in the rear view mirror. I haven’t seen a lot of concrete effects here, but other astrologers claim  they have.

Comparisons are another matter, and here the Vertex seems to play a major role. People with a planet on your Vertex, particularly the Sun, tend to have inordinate effect upon you, regardless of who they are. Quite often you’ll find that contact in marriage charts and in repeated love affairs, the result of which can be you find yourself recurringly involved with the same rising sign, because that sign’s Vertex tends to fall on your Sun or other important planet. The contact can be with a spouse, an important teacher, or some other major mentor and obviously life-changing contact – or it can be with someone whom you hardly know but who does something that critically alters your life, like the stranger on the curb who sticks his arm out to block your path as you are about to step in front of an oncoming car. In synastry, it’s a factor to definitely include, as it’s usually important. If someone has a planet or angle on your Vertex, be particularly aware, as it may be stickier and have a longer-lasting effect on you than you might surmise. As in other crossovers, that may warn you against a number of problematic birth years which have the outer planets posited on your Vertex. People born then could be conduits for trouble, simply because of their age. Conversely, the day the Sun is on your Vertex in any year produces people who can help you immensely, even without meaning to, and in ways neither of you may immediately recognize. Of course, you probably won't see it clearly until it's already happened, which is what gives the "fate", "destiny", and "karma" flavor to the point, since you don't have the control and free will you'd like to, and are by definition blindsided. Along with nodal contacts, Vertex contacts give you a particularly strong feeling of being connected to a larger cosmic family that crosses the ages, connected by planetary degrees.

Perhaps equally important is its role as the third angle in locational astrology. A location is considered strong if you have one natal planet rising and another on the MC (sometimes called an astrodyne), so if you add another on the Vertex, it makes that spot even more important. When you’re there, you get a triple whammy each day when that set of three degrees hits all three angles. It would be useful to have it on AstroCartography maps, but no program includes it to date. The best you can do is look for crossing lines and then cast a chart for that spot to see if the Vertex is included as well.

In general, the Vertex falls in with the lunar nodes as having the feeling of fated destiny, contact with other worlds and other lives where there’s more going on than meets the eye and it’s critically important, to boot. Why it should be so is anybody’s guess, but then, why not? The prime vertical is not left out in astrology in other ways – the now-popular Koch house system is based on time measured along the prime vertical, so why not use the Vertex? Actually, more curiously, why is not the Anti-Vertex equally used, the intersection of the prime vertical and the ecliptic in the East, near the normal Ascendant? Actually, in my experience, it’s the axis itself that is important, not just one or the other, though the Vertex shows up more dramatically in partnerships, being the 7th house cusp in a complete set of houses projected upon the prime vertical.

So, go put the Vertex into all of your charts, if you haven’t already, and see if Destiny awaits you and your Fate is to have been missing it all these years…