On Asteroids and Dwads ...

For a start, the tiny asteroids are a wonderful way to show the unbeliever the descriptive accuracy of astrology. Mark Pottenger's updated CD recently included the newly-named MadreTeresa. Where else to apply it but the chart of this remarkable, feisty and saintly woman? She was born on August 27th 1910 at 14h25 CET in Skopje, Macedonia (Yugoslavia). Her Draconic chart is the dominant, with its mothering Cancer Sun and tough-as-they-come Scorpio rising. The Tropical position of "MadreTeresa" is 1 Taurus 01, right on her draconic Descendant, its horizon position simultaneously identifying her and indicating her own identification with every one of those in her care.

In the next package, amongst other goodies will come asteroid "Martin Luther"; we already have "Martina" and "Luthera", and it's going to be fascinating checking out the accuracy of the chart for Martin Luther King - as well as the first Martin Luther if Mark is able to supply the elements to type into "Dance of the Planets" and run back to the 15th century.

- Like the dwad positions, for example!

I had a client a few days ago who was having difficulty opening up to her nearest and dearest, and found that at work her colleagues considered her somewhat forbidding. To the astrological eye this hardly came as a surprise, given the overgenerous serving of Scorpio, Capricorn, Saturn, Pluto and Mars in her very capable pattern.

But on the phone she was free, expressive, honest, good-humoured, generous of spirit, and far from the chilly, silent, controlling woman whom her husband had recently divorced. It struck me forcibly that here was the perfect example of the Dwad in action. Ever since I started working with the precise Dwad - 12 tiny signs mapped onto the Decans in each sign, with each planet and angle given its exact position - it has proved itself over and over again to fingerprint the individuality, through its own elemental energies, its integral geometry, and its contacts back to the radix chart. So clearly does it reflect the invisible, mental life, that I have come to think of it as "the Idea behind the Form".

My client, in stark contrast to her radix nativity, had a dwad rich in Sagittarius and Aquarius; her spontaneity, wisdom and freedom of spirit flowed through every word of that long conversation. What I was meeting audibly but invisibly was her mind, her thinking, her idea of herself and her life.

Applying that to my Virgo-rising husband, he collects dwad Sun, dwad Ascendant and radix Jupiter all together in late Leo in his 11th. And what is he? How does he identify himself? What governs all of his thinking? His authoritative position as Bishop, and the hundreds, maybe thousands of social contacts he has made and lovingly maintains through both the church and Masonry. (And he's getting very creative on his PC!!!)

Believe me, if you haven't included dwads in your work as yet, you are in for such an adventure! Astrology ceases to be a language of generalities and moves nearer and nearer to the highly specific - with which one can begin to offer the kind of repeatable patterns that for many necessarily constitute "proof". New Millennium, new astrology! Yes?