The Astrology Of Parallels And Contra-Parallels
Up one side of the Celestial Equator and down the other
At long last, my two-part series on Astronomy For Astrologers finally pays off in astrological terms! If you haven't read it yet, click here for Part One and here for Part Two to get caught up. As a matter of fact, you might want to click on part two anyway, just to get it back fresh in your head.
When one is learning astrology, one soon learns about the aspects. You get familiar with the idea of what it means to have, for example, Sun conjunct Mars or Sun opposite Mars. But what usually gets skipped over is an important minor form of the conjunction and the opposition. I'm talking about parallels and contra-parallels.
Regardless of Sign placement or degree, two planets are considered to be parallel when they are the same distance north or south of the Celestial Equator. And if two planets are an equal distance from the celestial equator, but one of them is above it, and the other one is beneath it? That's what we call a contra-parallel.
Take a look at the picture at the top of this blog entry. That's my birth chart laid out across the Celestial Equator, as opposed to the usual circular chart one sees. There are some interesting things going on here that a regular chart simply wouldn't have spotted. Looking at my real birth chart, you wouldn't normally see a Jupiter-Ascendant conjunction -- and yet the two of them are parallel to each other. This tends to make me both more jolly than I would be otherwise and more prone to gaining weight. Jeez, and I thought having Moon in Cancer on the Ascendant was bad enough for that!
Likewise, looking at my regular birth chart, you wouldn't particularly see any aspect between Mercury and Pluto -- and yet here they are contra-parallel to each other. In general, I wouldn't give the same weight to a parallel that I would to a conjunction (or to a contra-parallel over an opposition), but they certainly do add an element of that nature to the planets in the birth chart.
Furthermore, this sort of thing is handy when you're doing synastry -- looking at the relationship between two people. If a couple does not have a conjunction between Person X's Moon and Person Y's Jupiter, that's still okay. But all else being equal, if X's Moon is parallel Y's Jupiter, that can add a lot of same mutual empathy for each other than the conjunction would.
Did you get all that? Good. Sit with it a while and have a look at your own birth chart and see what new degrees of depth the parallels and contra-parallels add to it. And if you don't have access to the software that can do those calculations? Go ahead and send me an email with your date time and place of birth. I'll have a look for you!
