Astrological Ramblings
**I know this post deviates quite a bit from the out of bounds stuff I was talking about last week. I’m not through there at all, but the topic of orbs has come up many times on the forums that I creep on (and answer questions), and it struck me that this would make a good post.** What is an orb exactly you may be asking? An orb is how close together planets are in aspect in a natal chart (or any kind of chart, really). Why are they important? The tighter the orb between two planets, the more that particular energy may manifest in the person’s life. Which ones to look at first? I generally like to look at the orbs between the aspects made by the luminaries and the chart ruler (ruler of the Ascendant) first. An example of an aspect’s orb from my own chart can be found in the pictures below. In the first picture, circled in purple, you can see the conjunction between Pluto and Mercury in Scorpio in the 11th at about a 5 degree or so orb. The second picture is of the different aspects in the chart. You will notice next to the little symbols in the boxes there is also a number. That number is the orb between the aspects. Different astrologers have different ways of reading charts and reading the orbs made between planetary aspects. Some use a 10 degree orb across the board, and some use a slightly larger […]
The idea for this entry came to me when I answered someone’s question on reddit about stelliums. The question of “What is a stellium?”/“Do I have a stellium in my chart?”/“Tell me about my stellium!” seems to get asked a lot. Whether I’m being asked about this directly when reading a client’s chart, or I just notice people asking these questions on forums (like reddit) as I creep in the shadows and answer questions (hahahaha!), it seems like everyone has questions about stelliums. But….astrologers can’t really seem to come to a consensus as to what exactly constitutes one. This is probably because there are many different ways to read a chart, and really, it’s such an intuitive process that no one is really right or wrong. Over the 20 years that I have been doing this, I have come up with my own “guidelines” for reading stelliums in natal charts, and rules for deciding what constitutes a stellium in the first place. But before we get to all that, first a bit of pertinent information:**A stellium is a massive group of planetary/celestial body energy in one’s natal chart in one location (such as having 4 planets in the 11th House). All of the planets might be in one house or sign, or the planets may cross over into two signs and/or two houses (though some astrologers don’t count a stellium as a stellium if all the planets aren’t in the same sign or house). And with all that said, let’s […]