I probably agree with the vast majority of what post on modern astrology.
It's just that I prefer to work with the sidereal zodiac. The tropical zodiac doesn't work for me (except for horary I still use it but am about to switch there as well). IMO, it is the rise of tropical astrology that called for new innovations and a lot of new rules of delineation because as the two zodiacs started drifting more and more apart, sticking with the old rules and the new zodiac just wouldn't do it anymore in terms of accuracy. I see something similar happening with the rise of modern astrology and the use of all the numerous new data points. If you would delineate a chart according to traditional rules, you wouldn't really miss those extra data points.
If you work with the sidereal zodiac (and Vedic) that's fine by me. My only quibble is when occasional (other) people start insisting that tropical is worthless or meaningless, as it's worked well for me for many years. Philosophically, it does place the sun as more central to the horoscope, not in the sense of pop-schlock sun-sign astrology, but just in the sense that the chart is a more of a function of the sun's motion.
I've seen asteroids work really well, to the point where they can be uncanny. But they have to be used really judiciously. I use only the conjunction. I wouldn't splatter a natal chart with all of those lovelorn asteroids. Juno, OK. Similarly, in modern astrology, the outers have real meanings. I wouldn't use them in horary as traditional planets at all, but if one of them popped up in a highly salient way in a given horoscope, it does give reinforcement or extra meaning to the reading.
Basically any type of mature astrology demands that we be connoisseurs of what we read and practice.
Frankly, if anyone can explain the rationale behind the terms, be they Chaldean or Egyptian, I would like to see it.
That way you may have found a way of making use of the outers but it doesn't really solve the problem since you still can't treat the outers like the classical planets. As such, the outers remain a different class of planets, or in a more strict sense, they actually can't really be considered (astrological) planets even though they are planets in the astronomical sense (check out Hartmut Warm on this). The arabic parts though, as well as the nodes are only mathematical points. The outers, however, are actual physical/celestial bodies out there that are physically moving around and that can be observed with the naked eye or via telescopes. So that's different still.
I just don't have a problem with this. I've not heard of Hartmut Warm, but I'll try to find this. So lets not call the outers "planets." Let's call them Daffy Duck and see if that takes some of the onus off them.
One theory in some (not all) quarters of modern astrology is that the outers are "higher octaves" of the personal planets. Personally I have no idea what is the point of this, or how you would use it in a chart reading. But there is also good stuff coming out now on Eris (Henry Seltzer's book, not the evolutionary astrology) so we may soon be moving beyond Pluto. The issue is how to do this judiciously and sensibly.
Actually, in the original sense, aspect means aspect by sign (which was also a house). So this is already a later development. Vedic still works like this. Which means when you switch from tropical to sidereal and a planet changes signs, aspects usually also change. However, because of the new house systems, the planets usually remain in the same houses. The exact aspects stay the same, of course. So if you should mostly work with houses and exact aspects, then you should get very similar predictions.
Anyway, as Oddity mentioned, modern astrology started a lot earlier than is commonly known, way before the 1700's.
I'm not sure what type of modern astrology this would be: Galileo and Kepler?
Good discussion, Muchacho, thanks.
