Solar Arc Directions

Solar Arc Directions (SAD) is the name of an astrological technique. It’s used for looking at key life events, and it usually uses a natal (time, place and date of birth) horoscope as a starting point.

There are other techniques astrologers use for looking at life events. These are called transits, progressions and primary directions. There are other techniques, but these are the most commonly used.

In this article I’m just going to talk about Solar Arc Directions and how they work. I like SAD – they seem to more clearly indicate life events than either transits or progressions.

The mathematics of SAD is fairly simple, once you get your head around it. Imagine it this way… take a natal horoscope, and duplicate all its planetary positions on an outer circle or wheel. To show how this might look, below is Barack Obama’s natal horoscope (birth data from Astrodatabank.com), with the natal planets repeated in the outer circle. It’s fairly easy to display these kinds of charts using astrology software.

Then, for every year of life, the outer wheel is moved forward about 1 degree per year. Remember with SAD, all the planets and points move equally. As they move, we keep them in their same relative positions. While I say ‘about,’ 1°, you actually move the outer wheel at a rate determined by the Sun’s apparent daily motion on the day of birth. And this will be roughly 1°. Don’t worry about calculating the apparent daily motion – the software will calculate the exact daily motion for you.

The inner natal horoscope stays where it is. It’s only the SAD wheel or circle that moves, corresponding with the unfolding life. As it moves, at this approximate 1° per year of life, we look for aspects (particularly 0°, 90° and 180° ‘hard’ aspects, because these are more likely to correspond with actual events) between the SAD points and the natal horoscope.

Significant aspects between SAD and natal planets/points will show when important events in the persons’s life are likely to occur. The planets involved, and the houses they rule in the natal horoscope will indicate what ‘kind’ of life event to expect.

Let’s take a look at two key life events for Barack Obama and see what Solar Arc Directions were involved.

Firstly, February 10th, 2007. According to Wikipedia, this was the date Obama announced he was running for the presidency. Take a look at Solar Arc Directed (SAD) Neptune which is in square aspect (90° – green arrow)  to his natal Mars.

Mars rules Obama’s natal 9th (religion, higher learning) and 10th (career) houses. A keyword of Neptune is idealism, and Neptune reminds me of a word used in his campaign: ‘hope.’ Neptune here also stimulates his Mars, which is the planet of action. It is a time of acting on one’s ideals and dreams.

But wait, there’s more.

Move along to November 4th 2008 (below) – the day Obama won the presidency. SAD Mars has moved along and is now conjuncting (0°) natal Neptune. This is part two of a Neptune-Mars double-whammy – this time it’s SAD Mars (force, action) connecting to his natal Neptune (idealism). It’s the same message as above, told in a slightly different way. Here it’s Mars that’s stimulating his idealism, his wishes.

So SAD are a useful tool, and can given insight into life events. They are not at play in every life event, but they do seem to be involved in ones that are highly significant, dramatic or involve major change in one’s situation.