ingress

[crimsoncurrent]

In the case of the Sun’s ingress into the cardinal signs, it is the entry into Capricorn that is
the strongest and most important. This is because the Capricorn ingress is the bottom, or
start, of the yearly cycle -- the “midnight” of the year. The winter solstice was the time of
the year when the ancient astrologer-priests really earned their pay. It was the time of the
longest night, of maximum darkness, and it was marked by fear, trembling and sacrifice.
If the Sun didn’t start to move northward, woe be to us all! As soon as ancient astrologers
saw that the Sun was starting to rise and set further north and to ride higher in the sky, it
was evident that life would go on. After the “death” of the Sun came the rebirth, and
celebrations ensued. The job of ancient astrologers was to mark this change -- as
evidenced in the Roman festival of Saturnalia.
For these reasons, the winter solstice chart is taken to forecast the entire coming year.
The other three cardinal ingresses are used to get further information about the
development of the yearly solar cycle, and are used to predict the coming quarter.
The concepts underlying the solstices and equinoxes are so central to astrology that they
could fill a lifetime of AUGuries issues. However, one implication is interesting here --
the importance of the angular house cusps. Ever wonder why we place so much emphasis
on the 1st, 4th, 7th and 10th houses? As we said above, these are analogous to the cusps
of the cardinal signs. In the manifestation of things, the succedent and cadent cusps are of
much less importance than the angular house cusps. The ancients knew this, but it took
the Gauquelins and their historic studies to confirm this statistically. (A typical case of “I
knew it all along”!)