after many attempts to reframe polarity, i’ve come to the conclusion that the gendering of the signs is essentially useless and already covered by triplicity
the main thing worth noting is that the planets (minus the lumaniries) each rule two signs, one from team fire/air, and one from team water/earth
but you could see those split rulerships as designating two other teams: fire-water (jupiter, mars) and air-earth (venus, saturn)
personally i think conflating the gender doctrine with sect is confusing and pointless at best
why would the signs be arranged in a checkboard pattern of diurnal/nocturnal if the primary application of sect is A) planetary, not sign-based, and B) reliant on the horizon line
there is a tradition where the signs are divided by sect and taken into consideration as a further layer of a planet’s “rejoicing” by sect, but that consideration was secondary/tertiary to the primary application, which was essential to the planets, not the signs
and as chris brennan points out, the later elevation of that secondary consideration onto equal footing with the primary meaning actually muddied the meaning of sect and contributed to its gradual decline as a major factor of astrological interpretation
to spell out my point, i just don’t see what we gain by saying that libra is a diurnal sign ruled by a nocturnal planet
this renders diurnal/nocturnal meaningless, or rather forces those terms to serve two functions simultaneously
i forgot mercury (air-earth), and you could add sun and moon (fire-water)
the pattern stands
i suppose the best argument in favor of a sign polarity described by sect is the polarity of the sun and moon, which is the literal source of diurnal/nocturnal and sets the root pattern of the rulership pairing that the other planets/signs follow
but i still feel like not much is gained and it’s very messy
meanwhile the signs can all be described perfectly by planetary ruler, modality and triplicity
adding polarity doesn’t do any further distinguishing that wasn’t already distinguished
for instance, virgo and gemini are both mutable signs ruled by mercury, but one is earth and the other is air
they are differentiated
to also add “one is male and the other is female” is redundant and literally reductive
feels like...cool bro we already figured it out, thx tho
i guess i just find it kind of funny that this division of the signs which causes so much angst accomplishes so little in descriptive terms, aside from identifying a semi-binary pattern in planetary rulership
and i truly don’t think it gives us much to work with in our understanding of triplicity
if anything applying gender polarity to elemental qualities probably hampers our imagination and generates misleading ideas about motion, activity, and assertion
(active/receptive 🤮)
tl;dr - to the extent that polarity exists and/or matters, it is largely contained within and implied by triplicity, and the patterns of polarity which do exist overlap with sect more than with gender, but this polarity is not interchangeable with sect, just archetypally linked
lol maybe now i will finally be able to sleep?
slightly nervous i will wake up to lots of takes 😅
gonna add this here because i think this simple reframing really addresses what i’m getting at, while still acknowledging that polarity does exist and does overlap with triplicity
it’s not the same as sect; sect is just derived from the same conceptual polarity (spirit/fortune)
Recently, @chthonicbacchae contacted me, seeking my assistance in an investigation of profound importance. This thread is the result of a 2-week investigation into the intersection of two seemingly disparate phenomena: CATS the musical, and the Saturn-Pluto cycle. (2/X)
It started with a simple observation: the recent release of the widely panned film adaptation of CATS coincided with the conjunction of Saturn and Pluto in the sky, a relatively rare occurrence. The preceding conjunction was in 1982 - the same year CATS opened on Broadway. (3/X)