Thread by @mercuriusgeorge

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)

https://twitter.com/oracularjake/status/1389247983817011207

the other thing i ignored/avoided is the aristotelian qualities (which is not a coincidence because i’ve always had a hard time integrating them)

aristotelian heat is definitely helpful for describing the elemental polarity contained within triplicity, better than gender

https://twitter.com/emrosedeleon/status/1389253609649434632

thus far the response to my hot take has been largely constructive, collaborative and kind, and we love to see it

happy to say the replies have already shifted my thinking a bit

all of us can only hope to be a cog in the machine of wisdom

p.s. it’s not pointless, just misleading