WHAT MAKES OUR ASPECTARIAN SO SPECIAL?

The New Standard Aspectarian is not the only one in existence.  There are others, generally incorporated as part of either a monthly magazine or an annual ephemeris.  But, for various reasons they all fall short of fulfilling the need for a truly good aspectarian.

To begin with, they are very limited in scope.  They do not make use of some of the currently known valid aspect categories.  In fact, within the category of dual-plant longitudinal aspects, they do not even make use of some of the currently known aspect angles.

Further, they often tend to be inaccurate and unreliable – and, in the case where they are treated as an "add-on" to a publication which is primarily intended to be an ephemeris, they also tend to be extremely inconvenient to use.

The New Standard Aspectarian remedies these problems by recognizing a greater number of valid aspect categories, utilizing an expanded set of valid dual-planet longitudinal aspects, and being consistently accurate and reliable as well as convenient.


WHICH ASPECTS ARE VALID?

Not all aspectarians make use of the same aspect categories.  This is primarily because there has been no concentrated effort within the astrological community to determine which aspects are actually valid – with the exception of the research we have conducted here beginning in the 1970s.  The research was begun as the result of a preliminary observation that many "nonstandard" dual-planet longitudinal aspect angles (namely, those which are not integral multiples of 30 degrees) correlated in an astrological sense with observed events.  We noticed that all of these aspect angles were integral multiples of the fraction 1/n of 360 degrees, where n is any integer from 1 to 12, and so we began to focus our attention on the entire set of 24 dual-planet longitudinal aspect angles between 0 degrees and 180 degrees which conform to this pattern.  

To check the validity of these aspect angles, we computed aspects based on the entire set on a regular ongoing basis, and made observations associated with the resultant preliminary aspectarian.  The result was that we noted consistent correlations between observed events and the computed aspects.  In this way, we learned that the entire set of aspect angles is valid.  In other words, we learned about their validity in substantially the same way that you probably learned about the validity of trines and squares.

Extending our research, we noted that other aspectarians generally had been applying several aspect categories only to the Moon and not to the Sun and planets.  Those categories were: stationary in declination, apogee and perigee, and equator crossing.  By adding those aspect categories to our preliminary aspectarian, we checked to see if they were also valid for the Sun and planets.  We found that they were.

As a result of our research, a great many valid aspects appear in The New Standard Aspectarian which do not appear in any other aspectarian.  This makes The New Standard Aspectarian the most complete aspectarian on planet Earth.

It should be emphasized here that there is an obvious difference between the symbology of an aspect and the validity of it.  Symbolizing an alleged aspect does not automatically confer the status of objective reality on it.  The symbology can represent a hypothetical aspect which does not in fact actually exist.  Past (and present) usage of the word "aspect" in astrology has not always differentiated clearly between these two meanings; it was generally assumed that when an aspect was referred to (i.e. symbolized), it signified an actual phenomenon and not just a theoretical concept.  But in truth this may not always be the case.

For example, within the category of dual-planet longitudinal aspects, one can refer to a 1/3 aspect (1/3 of 360 degrees; i.e., a trine), but the actual validity of the 1/3 aspect is established only by the systematic observation of events which consistently correlate in quality and timing with the considered meaning of the aspect symbology.  The validity of the 1/3 aspect has indeed been established in this way, but one should be wary of automatically assuming that an aspect is valid just because its symbology "looks authentic".  It should always be kept in mind that the central focus here is reality, not games with symbols.

It is emphasized that the aspect categories and angles which are included in The New Standard Aspectarian have been methodically checked for validity by means of observed correlations with events (including subjective experiences) and found to be valid.  However, this is in no way intended to imply that the aspect categories used in The New Standard Aspectarian represent the only possible valid aspects.  Indeed there may well be others, but we have not checked them out and therefore are not using them at this time.  Examples: dual-planet longitudinal aspect angles with denominators greater than 12, dual-planet right ascension aspects, dual-planet latitude aspects, ecliptic crossings, stationary in right ascension, stationary in latitude, geocentric actual-angle aspects, perihelion and aphelion and other heliocentric aspects, etc.  Future research from various sectors in the astrological community will undoubtedly uncover more valid aspects than those used in The New Standard Aspectarian.  And eventually, when the gamut of known-to-be-valid aspects is large enough, a pattern can be expected to emerge which should suggest the actual physics behind all aspect phenomena.


OUTLINE OF ASPECT CATEGORIES

For convenient reference, here is an outline of the aspect categories that are used in The New Standard Aspectarian.

A.  Longitudinal aspects (geocentric ecliptic coordinates)
B.  Declination aspects (equatorial coordinates)
C.  Distance from the Earth (geocentric distance)