Historically .... 'just taking the Sun sign' never had the significance it has today . It would have been what was on the ASC ; ie at 0 degrees - your 'eastern horizon ' ; the 'first house' and not just what 'sign' was behind that house but any planet (which the signs and houses 'energies' of 'flavors' were based on anyway ) near 0 degrees would give the 'overall nature' that some see the 'Sun's sign' doing today . Even today one's 'Sun sign' is not considered to match the physical appearance of a person , it would be their 'rising sign' ; what sign (or planet ) is in the first house .
Eg . if one was born when Leo was on the eastern horizon ( the 1st house and Ascendant ), at Dawn ( the Sun is there too ) they might look like Brian Blessed
But the main resultant calculation was the angular relationship , the 'aspects' between the planets .
A bit more history ; How did this change ? Blame Brian Naylor in 1930 when he started the ' horror ' of 'horrorscopes ' in the newspaper and was done to make crappy newspaper predictions possible by dividing everyone up into 12 groups . AND he 'was' a Leo ( Not only that he recalculated his rising sign so he could become a Virgo rising ... thus indicating his balance and fairness
)
But how did he ever get that job in the first place ? he made predictions about Princess Margaret ; she will have an 'Eventful life' ... really ! A princess ?? An eventful life ? Turns out people thought she did and her 'bohemian lifestyle ' as they said back then also was fodder for the newspaper reading public . But he clinched it with the “events of tremendous importance to the Royal Family and the nation will come about near her seventh year '' ... when she was 6 Uncle (King) Edward nicked off with an American 'divorcee' . Then he sorta predicted the R101 airship disaster and the Sunday Express gave him a weekly column and the newspaper got flooded by personal requests for predictions and he came up with the 12 division idea to deal with all the requests ( near 28,000 per day ! ) .
But Naylor didnt start all this , he was just the most influential, he lifted the idea off William Allen , who was also a Leo ( and even changed his name to Leo .... Damn Leos , always gotta interfere and change everything with their big egos ) . Alan ' Leo ' began the shift toward focusing on the Sun sign in the late 19th century because it made his mail-order astrology booklets easier to write distribute and read . It was all about money and marketing . Actually , Allen 'Leo' made the world's first mass-market commercial astrology .
'' Leo dramatically shifted the focus toward psychology and character analysis. He famously re-branded astrology as the "science of tendencies, arguing that a birth chart reveals a person's inner potential rather than an unchangeable fate.
Before that , there was no 'feelgood solutions ' , no 'everyone is a winner ! ' if you had a badly aspected ( that is the angular relationships between planets ) chart , you were f***ed ! hence the old adage ; 'born under a bad sign ' .
But he HAD to make those switch because otherwise he would have been prosecuted for predictions ( under the Witchcraft act of 1735 ; getting money for making predictions about the future ) he also was in Theosophical society so it all got mixed in with 'spirituality' western ideas about 'karma' and 'reincarnation' and birthed 'astrology' into the ' New Age '
He navigated through a few legal trials , relying on his 'psychological ' use of astrology and its 'flexible outcomes' ( so not really predicting a set future ) He got acquitted in 1914 but in 1917 busted for, what was clearly , a definite prediction in a book . He then went into a furious panic attempting to rewrite and scour through everything he wrote to change it to avoid further prosecution but that blew his brain up ; 6 weeks after his conviction, while doing this rewriting , he died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 67 .
Apparently Gustav Holtz was inspired by him to compose 'The Planets ' .
Eg . if one was born when Leo was on the eastern horizon ( the 1st house and Ascendant ), at Dawn ( the Sun is there too ) they might look like Brian Blessed
But the main resultant calculation was the angular relationship , the 'aspects' between the planets .
A bit more history ; How did this change ? Blame Brian Naylor in 1930 when he started the ' horror ' of 'horrorscopes ' in the newspaper and was done to make crappy newspaper predictions possible by dividing everyone up into 12 groups . AND he 'was' a Leo ( Not only that he recalculated his rising sign so he could become a Virgo rising ... thus indicating his balance and fairness
)But how did he ever get that job in the first place ? he made predictions about Princess Margaret ; she will have an 'Eventful life' ... really ! A princess ?? An eventful life ? Turns out people thought she did and her 'bohemian lifestyle ' as they said back then also was fodder for the newspaper reading public . But he clinched it with the “events of tremendous importance to the Royal Family and the nation will come about near her seventh year '' ... when she was 6 Uncle (King) Edward nicked off with an American 'divorcee' . Then he sorta predicted the R101 airship disaster and the Sunday Express gave him a weekly column and the newspaper got flooded by personal requests for predictions and he came up with the 12 division idea to deal with all the requests ( near 28,000 per day ! ) .
But Naylor didnt start all this , he was just the most influential, he lifted the idea off William Allen , who was also a Leo ( and even changed his name to Leo .... Damn Leos , always gotta interfere and change everything with their big egos
) . Alan ' Leo ' began the shift toward focusing on the Sun sign in the late 19th century because it made his mail-order astrology booklets easier to write distribute and read . It was all about money and marketing . Actually , Allen 'Leo' made the world's first mass-market commercial astrology .'' Leo dramatically shifted the focus toward psychology and character analysis. He famously re-branded astrology as the "science of tendencies, arguing that a birth chart reveals a person's inner potential rather than an unchangeable fate.
Before that , there was no 'feelgood solutions ' , no 'everyone is a winner ! ' if you had a badly aspected ( that is the angular relationships between planets ) chart , you were f***ed ! hence the old adage ; 'born under a bad sign ' .
But he HAD to make those switch because otherwise he would have been prosecuted for predictions ( under the Witchcraft act of 1735 ; getting money for making predictions about the future ) he also was in Theosophical society so it all got mixed in with 'spirituality' western ideas about 'karma' and 'reincarnation' and birthed 'astrology' into the ' New Age '
He navigated through a few legal trials , relying on his 'psychological ' use of astrology and its 'flexible outcomes' ( so not really predicting a set future ) He got acquitted in 1914 but in 1917 busted for, what was clearly , a definite prediction in a book . He then went into a furious panic attempting to rewrite and scour through everything he wrote to change it to avoid further prosecution but that blew his brain up ; 6 weeks after his conviction, while doing this rewriting , he died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 67 .
Apparently Gustav Holtz was inspired by him to compose 'The Planets ' .
