Article backstory: Between 1928 and 1936 Elbert Benjamine, who’s intellect, occult insight and spirituality defy comparison, rewrote the astrology textbook. Applying Aquarian age science and statistical research, he dispensed the old superstitious, Piscean age, fortune-telling type astrology to the annals of history.
In February, 1942 Elbert commenced to publish a series of articles, best described as teaching sessions, in the Rising Star magazine called Judging and Calculating progressed aspects. Having done away with traditional teachings he was obliged to explain and teach what he had discovered to be nature’s truths.
His progressed aspect teaching session articles continued through to 1945 but since his physical demise in 1951 the understanding of Hermetic astrology and progressed aspects has spiraled downwards.
In 1996 Dennis Sutton visited Los Angeles and in a shed on Elbert Benjamine’s home property he discovered a trove of Elbert’s original articles gathering dust. (His Uranus thought-cells attracted an astonishing event.) The articles included Elbert’s series on Judging and Calculating progressed aspects.
He returned to Australia with a suitcase filled with Elbert’s original writings but soon realized that much of the astrological information was essentially meaningless. It could only be understood by those who had a basic understanding of Hermetic astrology and their own birth charts. In 2000 he commenced to transform Hermetic astrology into a self-science.
In 2026 Astrology for Aquarius publishes articles and eBooks that anyone can download to learn about Hermetic astrology and to assess their own birth charts if they wish. So, Elbert’s series of articles on Judging and Calculating progressed aspects can now be published knowing that the essential information that permits their understanding is also available. The articles have been remastered: the calculation parts have been omitted.
Getting started with basic fundamentals
Elbert Benjamine: To start with you should clearly understand that birth chart and progressed aspects do not map inevitable conditions or specific events.
Your chief interest in determining the most probable events which your soul’s thought-cell activity will attract when stimulated by a progressed aspect is to enable you to intelligently divert this thought-cell activity into channels that will attract events and conditions that are much more fortunate than had you made no such intelligent effort.
Student: The thing that has always puzzled me is what makes progressed aspects work?
Elbert: There are really only three important factors involved and of these three planetary energies operate indirectly. The two immediate factors are the physical environment in which you live and your soul’s thought-cell activity. Operating from the inner-plane, these thought-cells work with whatever energy they acquire to attract into your life physical conditions and events that correspond to what they desire.
Student: What is the source of my thought-cell desires?
Elbert: They are derived from the past experiences of your soul, and are temporarily given a more harmonious or more discordant trend by the energy of a progressed aspect.
If the progressed aspect is harmonious, the planetary energy received by the thought-cells gives them more than their normal harmony; but if the progressed aspect is discordant the energy imparted to these thought-cells makes their desires more discordant than they usually are.
To the extent these desires are harmonious will the thought-cells work to bring fortunate events and behavior into your life; but to the extent they’re discordant they will work to bring unfortunate events and behavior.
I must stress that events are favored, but not foreordained; and that your birth chart is a map of inner-plane energies which, in order to bring things to pass, must exert pressure on your physical environment.
Student: What is the nature of the pressure which astrological energies exert upon the external environment that tends to cause events to happen?
Elbert: In the wider influence, the flow of astrological currents exerts a pressure upon the finer forms of all earthly things. It is easier for these things to move with the strong astrological currents then operating than to move across, or against them.
As applied to natal astrology this causes people to be born only at those times when the astrological currents closely conform to the thought-cell organizations of their souls. You were born at a time when your birth chart mapped the various mental relations within your soul. These comprise your character.
At all times these thought-cell groups – mapped by the planets – exert a pressure from the inner-plane upon your external circumstances that strives to attract into your life harmonious or discordant conditions that are similar to their own nature and the way they feel.
Within limits these thought-cell groups are intelligent, and they work to attract events and conditions they desire. If what they desire is beneficial, I call it fortunate. If it is harmful, I call it unfortunate. As a rule, harmonious thought-cells endeavor to attract events that are beneficial, and discordant thought-cells endeavor to attract events that are detrimental.
(The harmony or discord score given each planet on your birth chart’s planet power summary will closely match the functional status of its thought-cell equivalent in your unconscious soul-mind when you were born.)
Student: So how am I going to know what desires my thought-cell groups have?
Elbert: The thought-cells mapped by any one of the ten planets have desires that are characteristic of that planet; and the desires of a group of thought-cells relate to the departments of life mapped by the houses which the planet mapping the thought-cells rules.
But the specific things within these departments of life which the thought-cells desire, other than that they tend to be harmonious or discordant, are largely determined by your experiences and the habit systems you’ve developed since birth.
So, your formal education and the education of your thought-cells by experience is very important in determining (1) the degree of thought-cell activity which influences the importance of the events attracted; (2) the degree of harmony or discord which influences how fortunate or unfortunate the events attracted will be, and (3) the specific event, or events, which are characteristic of their planetary type and the house rulerships involved.
Student: As I understand it, I was born with thought-cells which possess desire energy that is characteristic of each of the ten planets, and the normal amount of activity of any thought-cell group is indicated by the power or prominence of the planet mapping it in my birth chart. So, does the amount of thought-cell activity, mapped by a given planet in my chart, markedly change at different periods of my life, and if so, what are the factors which accelerate its activity?
Elbert: As the thought-cells derived the energy they possess at birth from experiences in lower forms of life, they also acquire more energy from outer-world and inner-world experiences, of the same planetary type, which you have after your human birth.
The circumstances of your home environment build energy into your thought-cells and this makes them more active. And persistent thinking of a particular planetary type makes its corresponding thought-cells more active too.
Another potent inner-world experience is the release of planetary energy by progressed aspect. This only adds energy to the thought-cells during the period the progressed aspect is within a one-degree orb; but during this time its impact gives unusual activities to the thought-cells mapped by the planets forming the progressed aspect.
If your behavior and the events you attract are the result of thought-cell activity within your soul or unconscious mind, directed by their desires and operating on your physical environment, it is logical to conclude that the more energy a certain thought-cell group possesses the more work it can perform, which means the more it can influence your behavior and the events you attract.
Student: How successful are these thought-cell groups in attracting events they desire into my life?
Elbert: That depends on two things: How active they are, and how much resistance is offered by your physical environment to the particular event they desire. If your physical environment offers too much resistance to the particular event they desire, either little happens, or they expend their energy attracting some other similar type of event that belongs to one of the departments of life ruled by the planets whose energy they are expressing.
Student: It seems to me that in order to judge what will happen I need to know my birth chart; how I have been reacting to my environment since birth; and what my present circumstances are. But supposing I know these three factors, how can I determine what will probably happen at a given time? I assume this is a function of the progressed aspects in my chart.
Elbert: The thought-cells mapped by a given planet can only use the energy they possess to mold physical environment. They normally possess an amount of energy that is measured by your birth chart – (see your chart’s planet power summary) – although special conditioning since birth may give them more.
You only have so much Sun, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn energy, and so much second, fourth and ninth house energy, which is their normal amount – (see your birth chart’s planet power and house power summaries) – and this determines your normal attraction for Sun, Venus, Mars, Jupiter or Saturn events, and the normal trend of events associated with money and possessions, accommodation and home-life, and long journeys and religion.
But when a progressed aspect comes along it does two things: (1) It gives additional energy to the thought-cells mapped by the planets involved in the aspect and because they are now more energetic they can attract events of their type which are much more important than your normal life trend; and (2) by adding energy which is discordant or harmonious the progressed aspect causes the desires of the thought-cells to deviate from their normal harmony or discord.
Student: What is the significance of major and minor progressed aspects?
Elbert: An important event only comes into your life when energy is added to the thought-cells desiring the event by a major progressed aspect.
A major progressed aspect of the Moon, probably because it moves so swiftly, is unable by itself to stimulate thought-cell activity of sufficient intensity to bring a major event into your life. I call these progressed Moon aspects sub-major aspects, and from them, unless they add accessory energy to a major progressed aspect, you should only expect sub-major events.
Thought-cells that are energized by a minor progressed aspect can only acquire enough energy to attract a minor event into your life.
This teaching session by Elbert was first published in the February 15, 1942 issue of the Rising Star magazine.
All parts of Elbert’s Progressed Aspects Q and A series and other articles on progressed aspects by him are available here
Astrology for Aquarius – sharing our knowledge
