Rectifying Ascendant using Sabian Symbols

[ariesmoon]

I've just made a discovery I wanted to share around rectifying Ascendants (in this case mine) using the Sabian Symbols. I've been given my birthtime as 3.10 am and have never thought to question it, until now. As my mum said, she wasn't exactly watching the clock!!

I've long wondered what Uranus was doing in my 4th house when it's so much more "at home" in my life in the 5th, so I tweaked my birthtime by 5 minutes. Which changed my Ascendant from 7.41 Gemini to 6.05 Gemini, with the symbol:

"An Old-Fashioned Well with the Purest and Coldest of Waters". Lynda Hill comments that "the water from the well has been available to all who come to draw on it ..feeling you can tap into the essence of a person a situation or knowledge, can be very nourishing, rewarding and illuminating". It's about inner wisdom, and the "pool of universal experience".

This is spot on for me - when people pay me a compliment, it's usually that I'm "wise" which has always puzzled me a bit, as I never saw myself like that. It's obviously how I come across. And I do love to learn from others' experiences, I'd far rather do that than learn from a book. I gravitate to older people, or people with a strong Saturn signature, I always have, I seem to have an affinity with them. (Draconic Ascendant in Capricorn - wise old Saturn!)

The Sabian for 8 Gemini - "aroused strikers surrounding a factory" has never felt quite right. As soon as I saw the one for 7 Gemini, it felt perfect, as if I'd "come home". It does of course change the Draconic Ascendant too, to 27 Capricorn instead of 29. The new symbol is "A Mountain Pilgrimage" which again seems perfect - it's about finding your spiritual grounding, and (like 7 Gemini) "following those who have gone before you".

A subtle shift, of just one degree, but it's instantly the right one. Learning about myself and others through studying astrology encapsulates both of these images -I'm tapping into a deep well of knowledge both ancient and modern, and following those who have gone before to help find my spiritual grounding.

[Aphrodite]

That's cool! Did you check the MC/IC axis, as well? Does the Vtx change?

By the way, my sun is at 6 GEM 06. Coincidence? I think not!

Aphrodite

[ariesmoon]

Hi Aphrodite I've just done that, and I'm blown away by the new symbols particularly for the Descendant and the Vertex. It's as if I'm suddenly seeing myself. None of them quite "fitted" before and I didn't know why. I do now. And I love the "coincidence" of your Sun being in the same place, and the symbol suits you perfectly!

The MC is now 3 Aquarius not 4 Aquarius and reads "A Deserter from the Navy stands suddenly aware of a dawning truth - freedom is never the result of compromise". Wow. I left a long-standing job - against a lot of people's advice - because I realised how much I'd compromised by being there, and I vowed I wouldn't do that again.

Vertex is one degree earlier so the symbol is "Mankind's Vast Enduring Effort to Reach for Knowledge Transferable from Generation to Generation". We're back to learning the wisdom of the Elders again, and it's no coincidence AT ALL that Tom Jacobs emailed me only yesterday with links to a site about the work of Bill Plotkin, who's doing amazing work in that area.

If I say that the symbol for my "new" Descendant is "Cupid Knocking at the Door of a Human Heart", and that I have an exact (to the minute) Venus/Saturn Fixed opposition - you'll know why I burst into tears of recognition when I read it. Lynda Hill talks about opening your heart centre (something I've found incredibly tough, and which my yoga teacher has been impressing on me for some time!) And about the need to find love and joy in yourself before finding it in others. Another hard trick, but I'm getting there. Lynda says "something wonderful is trying to get into your life. Are you resisting Cupid's knock?" I should imagine Cupid's knuckles are very sore, he's been knocking for donkey's years! I'm amazed he hasn't given up.. I finally opened the door this year, and was very glad I did.

What I can't get over is that I didn't look any of this up before I moved the birth time back. It was just enough to move Uranus into the 5th - it seems to have been "banging on the door" of the 5th all my life! I know why now!

[ariesmoon]

I just had to add this. I checked my progressed moon for the day I fell headlong in love last year. Yes, 7 Sagittarius, on my Descendant angle. I love astrology!

[boho]

Hey Aries..... Well done on finding your true self! It really works, doesn't it! I rectified my chart a few years ago using the Sabians and it's perfect. My true rectified birth time is seven minutes earlier than the time I had been working with up till then. The old time never felt quite right, and I couldn't relate to the Sabians AT ALL, but the new ones are perfect, and although no planets change house the three angular ones move just a couple of degrees away from the angles which feels like I have more room to breathe and to wriggle if you know what I mean . Also some of the SA's fit better now too.

[ariesmoon]

Hi boho thanks, yes it really does work! What I think happens, well what happened for me anyway, is that the themes for the major angles (both Natal and Draconic) complement each other, which is how you know you've got it right.

Quick recap on mine to illustrate what I mean:

Natal AC Gemini - "An Old Fashioned Well with the Purest and Coldest of Waters" - sources of wisdom and nourishment, reaching from very deep down [modifying this later, I've found Asteroid Birgit, the closest to Brigid, the Celtic Goddess presiding over wells, at 6.03 Gemini]

Draconic AC Capricorn - "A Mountain Pilgrimage" "getting back to the purer elements of life" - finding your spiritual grounding by climbing and leaving familiar comforts, exploring new territory. Mountains can be seen as symbols of the ancient wisdom of the Earth - millions of years old, they will outlive all of us.

Natal Vertex - "Mankind's Vast Enduring Effort to Reach for Knowledge Transferable from Generation to Generation" - reaching for knowledge, passing it on to others, "striving for answers"

Draconic Vertex - "In a Museum, a Large Achaic Volume Reveals a Traditional Wisdom" - Lynda Hill talks about this one being a symbol of wisdom being ignored - locked away, no longer relevant, and that effort to understand it is rewarded.

The theme is constant - tapping into ancient wisdom, and passing it on to future generations.

Have others experimented with this? Seeing if the symbols have a common theme across the angles?

[ariesmoon]

I'm hogging this thread, and publishing a poem (or part of it!) is a bit self-indulgent but it does help to illustrate this particular Sabian symbol. And I am really fired up with my discoveries on this! To find out that I have an asteroid linked with the Celtic #Goddess Brigid, on the same degree as my Ascendant, with the same symbology, has really caught my imagination. Brigid, as well as having a strong connection with wells as healing places, is also a Goddess of poetry, and of forging and metalwork.

I've started writing poetry - poetry which surprised me, and which is getting steadily more erotic, and which I've kept to myself up to now. About a month ago - long before I discovered the astrological connection with Brigid, or the Sabian symbols - I wrote the following. I'm only putting extracts here, not the complete poem, I hadn't looked at it in a while but something nagged me to get it out. I now know why.

"The words I want to say to you
live in still water at the bottom of wells,
in leaf litter in dark forests,
and in the fierce Earth heat
at the base of volcanoes ...
they will sear themselves into your skin and stay there
like the mark of a branding iron ...
this is fierce love that lives in the depths of things
and in the darkness of places,
not in bright light where others may see it."

I knew when I wrote the poem that there was a creative force behind it, one way beyond me - I've never written anything like it before. It came out of my brain and onto the paper fully thought out, with the images very clear in my head. I can still see them.

The asteroid Birgit is conjunct my Eros by 1 degree. I interpret this as Brigid needing passionate love to release her, almost to give her permission to come out and express herself in words (Gemini). She seems to do so by reference to wells, to deep water, and to deep and dark places in nature.

[ana]

My Mars/Sappho in 1st is 8 Gemini and the Sabian you mention for that is very me as I love going to rallies and marches I am rentacrowd when in the city But I have tried to rectify with the Sabians and just end up going nuts as I identify with ALL of them A bit too adaptable.............but I will have another look.............

[ariesmoon]

Hi Ana what I found is that I went with my intuition - it felt great too, it's very unusual for me, logic usually rules OK! but in this case I went for what felt right with another chart, which then clicked into place. So I tried it with mine, same result!

[ana]

Thanks for that I just got my second hand Lynda Hill from Amazon so here goes................

[ariesmoon]

Have fun Ana - it works on house cusps too I've found, and on composite charts ...