Wednesday 26 September 2012

Empty qualities - frequency differences between signs

Several years ago, I decided to do a project on empty qualities in astrology. Those who study astrology will have seen empty qualities in the charts of famous people like Bill Gates, Demi Moore and Angelina Jolie, shown in the attached diagram on the left. However, in recent years I have not devoted any time to this work, though the topic is quite interesting and seldom noticed except in the old “Indra” reports, which are too tough to use for natal work.

A quality, or mode, is a major division of signs, second in importance to an element.

Typically, cardinal signs tend to be worldly, entrepreneurial and outer-directed, fixed signs stubborn, principled and steadfast, and mutable signs flexible and less concerned with material achievement. An empty quality, which is seen in the examples above and in some other charts such as those of south polar explorer Roald Amundsen, German politician Helmut Kohl, and singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, is defined as when no planets, the Ascendant or Midheaven are in signs of that quality.

The period surveyed for this and later series on empty qualities covers 1800 to 2050, roughly one Pluto cycle or half of a Neptune/Pluto cycle, in this case almost from waning square to waxing square. Such a lengthy coverage is necessary because the lengthy waxing sextile during Pluto’s recent perihelion makes empty qualities more difficult to achieve than during periods when Neptuen and Pluto are not consistently in signs of different qualities.

The other half of the Neptune/Pluto cycle is a “mirror image” of sorts, moving from waxing square to waxing trine to waxing quincunx at Pluto’s aphelion, before moving to opposition (1644, 2138) to waning quincunx and then to a continuous waning trine that has the same effect on empty qualities as the continuous waxing sextile between 1940 and 2030, though it would allow in theory at least for much higher concentrations of one element than possible during the waxing sextile.

The table below takes into account the “recurrence” of empty qualities due to the Moon’s transit of the empty quality every six or seven days. Days where this occurs are not counted, except when examining the “persistence” of an empty quality.
☉/
Empty Quality
Number of days
% of sign
% empty quality
Fixed
169
2.210
15.036
Mutable
135
1.766
9.622
Cardinal
241
3.097
13.562
Mutable
181
2.326
12.901
Cardinal
224
2.849
12.606
Fixed
120
1.526
10.676
Fixed
96
1.216
8.541
Mutable
156
1.976
11.119
Cardinal
225
2.871
12.662
Mutable
150
1.914
10.691
Cardinal
150
1.929
8.441
Fixed
157
2.019
13.968
Fixed
125
1.646
11.120
Mutable
246
3.239
17.533
Cardinal
252
3.349
14.181
Mutable
177
2.352
12.616
Cardinal
233
3.137
13.112
Fixed
155
2.086
13.790
Fixed
208
2.820
18.505
Mutable
146
1.979
10.406
Cardinal
196
2.638
11.030
Mutable
212
2.853
15.110
Cardinal
256
3.400
14.406
Fixed
94
1.265
8.363
The table above shows, as indicated by the coloured backgrounds, that the frequency of empty qualities varies greatly from sign to sign. The highest frequencies for empty mutability are seen for air signs and the lowest for fire signs, whilst for empty fixed mode the highest frequencies are for earth signs and the lowest for water. For empty cardinal quality, the highest frequencies are for water signs (♏,), whilst the lowest are for and .

These differences reflect two important features:
  1. that the maximum elongation of Mercury in the direction of Sagittarius can be about ten degrees or 75 percent further than towards Gemini.
  2. that Mars has much more tendency to be close to the Sun in signs from through than in signs from through .
  3. This means that empty qualities are concentrated in signs from through , and least frequent in signs from through .
  4. There are as noted above many differences in frequency of empty qualities depending on what stage of the Pluto cycle on is at, which I will discuss later.