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Declination Plotting
Why Declination Plotting?
This is perhaps the most overlooked area of astrology, and may well be the most important in the quest to understand why/how astrology works. True, traditional astrology has long had "parallels" and "contraparallels" and "solstice points", but these uses of declinations need to be expanded into a more associative examination of the NATURE of the interaction of the declination-waveform with life on Earth and on the Earth itself.
Consider this: astrology is all about the ebb-and-flow of natural energies. The Sun's "seasons" show themselves quite clearly, and are a sinusoidal waveform as shown below. So too, the planetary energies have sinusoidal waveforms, and when a planetary "energy" reaches its own "summer solstice" we should expect that it is at its maximum power. Take a look at the images below, created in AstralVisions, and ponder this.
Below are the annual Solar Declination, and the declinations of Saturn, Uranus, and Pluto 1900-2040. The historically unprecedented (for the past thousand years) triple-conjunction of the summer-solstice "peaks" of the Saturn/Uranus/Pluto declinations occurred during WWII.
So, in the Spring, the solar "force" causes the re-emergence of life into view on the Earth; in the peak of summer, the plants and fruits reach their full potential, and the harvest must be done. Then, in the Fall, the life-force disappears and returns to the earth. At the winter solstice, the life-force is in full "hibernation", but again begins to "stir" upward, to re-emerge in the Spring.
If we consider that each other planetary energy follows a similar sinusoid, with the effect of that energy in accordance with its own nature, then we may have a better idea as to the relative "strength" of these other energies --- in other words, where are they in their "seasonal" cycle? Here is an interesting example:
Look at 1941-1946. Note the triple-conjunction of the peaks. Uranus, associated with sudden and dramatic events; the element Uranium, for some reason, bears its name. Pluto, associated with transformation; the element Plutonium bears its name. Saturn, the energy of "control" and "structure". WWII was a battle for Control of the Earth, during this period. The absolute maximum "power" of Uranus and Pluto exploded in the A-bomb, in 1945, in which Plutonium triggered the transformation of Uranium into pure energy in a sudden and dramatic explosion. Look at the graph.
These kinds of relatively simultaneous occurrences are very rare, because of the long cycles of these energies, and have not happened in the past 1000 years.
Another extraordinary situation involving Uranus/Saturn/Pluto (a double-conjunction of summer-solstices, at the same time as a winter-solstice) will occur around 1934- 1935. Curiously, Saturn/Uranus "cross" the equinox points in late 2010 (turns out this is about Sept. 21, 2010, at the same time as the Sun's Fall equinox.)
Anyone who is knowledgeable about the interaction of different "frequencies" of waveforms should be able to fruitfully study this "music of the spheres".
Declination Plotting with AstralVisions software
AstralVisions v3.9 has declination ephemerides only for 2000- 2039, insufficient to reproduce the examples shown below. However, you can download (26MB) a larger declination ephemeris for 1000AD to 2063AD here: Ephemeris 100AD-2063AD. Just put it in your "AstralVisions\Ephem" directory, and unzip it there. AstralVisions v3.9 will automatically expand the declination plotting range of years (however, only 350 years at a time can be plotted).
The Solar System's "Seasons" with respect to the Galaxy.
The orbit of the Sun (and hence the Earth) around the galaxy also exhibits a "declination waveform", because the Sun's orbit is not precisely in the "plane" of the galaxy.
To those not familiar with astronomy, our galaxy of about 100-300 billion stars (and gas clouds not yet formed into stars) can be best visualized a fried egg, with that bulge in the center. The Sun is about 2/3 of the way out from the center, and here is an actual composite image of our current viewpoint of the galaxy (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way):
The solar system orbits the galaxy once about every 240 million years (see http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2002/StacyLeong.shtml); but the sun actually does several "seasons" (cycles of declination above and below the galactic plane per orbit, due to a harmonic oscillation. So, a "season", with respect to the Galactic plane, is currently estimated as about 64 million years,
At the moment, we are "crossing" the galactic plane, either Fall or Spring.
So, is there any known 64-million year Spring/Fall cycle on the Earth? Turns out there is: the extinction of life-forms: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18277613/
This galactic-plane effect was first proposed in the 1980s, by persons who were looking for something, anything, that might correlate with the Mayan calendar's end-of-the-world-cycle in 2012. Since the cycle is so long, it wasn't until some paleontologists spotted the connection with extinction patterns that serious research ensued.