Student: It seems there are five factors which always need to be considered in judging what will probably occur under a given progressed aspect. So, could you present these in a definite order so that I won’t overlook any of them?
Elbert Benjamine: The judging of any progressed aspect can be handled in five definite steps that always follow each other in the same order. It could be done in four steps except that there are usually several progressed aspects currently in operation, and the more powerful progression often influences both the importance and the fortune of the others.
Student: What is the first step?
Elbert: Step 1 is to note the planetary characteristics and house rulership constants. (A planet or house constant is an influence having permanent value.)
Whatever predispositions are shown in your birth chart should always be considered general and not specific.
Your pre-human life experiences have been with fighting and running away – not with shooting guns and fleeing violence in a war zone. They have involved home building and raising the young – not installing electric lighting, a refrigerator and a gas stove, and sending your youngsters to college.
The very fact that it is your chart – the chart of a human being – predisposes it to those events that are common to most human lives. But as you move from the broad generalities toward specific events the predispositions become subject to a wider and wider number of alternatives events, any one of which may fall within the indicated category.
As a human being you have a predisposition toward receiving parental care in infancy, to being trained to use your brain and hands, towards working at something after maturity, and towards acquiring a philosophy of life, getting married and having children. But not everyone has these same six experiences.
Some fail to get parental care in infancy, some fail to work, some do not marry and some who marry do not have children. Furthermore, the degree of importance assumed by each of these experiences by those who have them varies widely. Work is very important to some people who have almost no parental care, and whose marriage and children are only of minor concern.
In the same way that each human being is predisposed to undergo the mentioned experiences each progressed aspect gives a predisposition toward affecting your life and the life of everyone else in six different ways. But some will fail to experience all six and those who do will do so in widely different degrees.
If Mercury in your birth chart lacks prominence you will notice little increase in cerebral activity while a progressed aspect to Mercury is in operation. And if Venus is weak and lacks power you will notice little change in your artistic appreciation while Venus is being stimulated by major progression.
And if Neptune has few aspects and lacks power you will notice little increase in your sensitivity while a progressed aspect involving Neptune is in operation. All of which is just another way of saying that the predispositions shown by your birth chart have a limiting influence on the predispositions indicated by any progressed aspect.
Furthermore, both your conditioning since birth and your environment influence the degree in which each of the three constants associated with each of the two planets involved in a progressed aspect affects your life.
Nevertheless, in the sense that you and all human beings are predisposed toward the six experiences previously mentioned, so are you and everyone else predisposed, while under a given progressed aspect, to be affected in the three ways indicated by the two planets involved in the aspect.
Student: How about the house constants?
Elbert: House rulership of the event is a constant.
Having established that the house rulership of the event attracted by any progressed aspect is a constant, you are immediately aware that any progressed aspect has access to the thought-cells mapped by more than one house.
Each planet involved in the aspect rules at least one sign and some planets rule two: and the energy of the progressed aspect has access to the common thought-cells of those houses where the sign is located.
In addition to the common thought-cells mapped by the signs, each planet in your birth chart maps a dynamic stellar structure, and the position of each progressed planet also maps a highly dynamic group of thought-cells.
The energy of the progressed aspect has access to the houses in which the planets involved are located in your birth chart and to the houses in which they’re located by progression.
The thought-cells mapped by the houses in which the two planets directly involved in the progressed aspect are located receive more of the energy than do the thought-cells of the houses in which the two indirect planets are located.
And other common thought-cells – stimulated by the aspect due to house rulership – receive even less energy but this is not significant enough to outweigh the influences of either conditioning or environment.
In other words, while an active birth chart house inclines toward its department of life and an event indicated by its ruler making a progressed aspect, almost no reliance can be placed upon the fact that the planets occupy certain houses while the aspect is active.
In Step 1 you gain some positive knowledge about the most likely event to happen which permits large categories of events to be eliminated.
You know the event will belong to certain general types, and this at once enables you to eliminate all events which do not bear the characteristics of the two planets involved in the aspect. You also know the event will belong to one of a number of departments of life, and this allows you to eliminate all events which clearly belong to other departments of life.
Student: What do I do in the next step?
Elbert: In Step 2 you eliminate events improbable to your birth chart.
The degree of activity of the thought-cells mapped by each of the 12 birth chart houses reveals their predispositions in terms of personal involvement and event importance.
The active houses have planets located in them and they reveal your predispositions toward events affecting their departments of life.
You can eliminate events ruled by the inactive houses where no planets are located. Events of importance are much less likely to affect them.
Student: It seems to me that the event is getting narrowed down quite rapidly. What do I do in Step 3?
Elbert: In Step 3 you eliminate events because of your conditioning
If the education, and the events which have already happened in the life, show that the thought-cells have been given specialized desires that have formed the habit-system of finding satisfaction in quite different ways, this makes it highly probable that the same thought-cells will continue to find satisfaction through somewhat similar events.
Student: In most instances progressed aspects do not occur in isolation. How do you gauge the influence of other progressed aspects on the indicated event?
Elbert: In Step 4 you appraise other progressed aspects as influencing the importance and fortune of the event
Depending on the degree to which you permit your thinking and feeling to be dominated by the most powerful progressed aspect does its energy find its way over the electrical currents of your nervous system to the thought-cells reached by other progressed aspects, giving them greater activity and making their desires more harmonious or discordant.
When you do not keep consistently tuned to the most powerful progressed aspect, each aspect tends to work out in its own terms; but when you do its energy tends to increase the importance of the events attracted by other progressed aspects then in operation, and tends to make the events they attract more, or less, fortunate than they otherwise would be.
Student: As the method being followed seems to be a process of elimination, I assume the last step eliminates still other events.
Elbert: Yes. In Step 5 you eliminate the remaining events not probable in your environment
When doing this you need not consider too wide a possibilities as both planets involved in the progressed aspect tend to attract events through definite environmental factors.
So, you won’t consider any environmental factors that are absent from your environment and you’ll only consider those that due to their presence can play a direct role in bringing the event to pass.
You should consider the environmental factors ruled by the aspecting planets and eliminate those that seem unlikely based on your past conditioning.
Astrology for Aquarius – sharing our knowledge
