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.