August 2014 has seen a fascinating development in technique, thanks again to Solar Fire. I had been watching a Channel 5 documentary in their 'Born to Kill' series - this time on Peter Sutcliffe, the 'Yorkshire Ripper'. First I was determined to rectify his chart from the very approximate 8h30 pm estimated from a nurse's phone call, and wound the clock back to 20h13, which consistently behaved far better, and crucially gave him a late Scorpio Ascendant consistent with his dark and intense features.
In the process of checking the birth time, I looked at his Solar Arcs for June 1975, the birthday preceding his first hammer attack that July and first murder on October 30th. I thought, 'wouldn't it be nice to be able to look at the dwads.' But you can't make dwads of subsidiary charts. Except I had already found one way, with progressions, by selecting the progressed chart and clicking on 'Chart', 'Locality' - which turns it into a radix, from which the dwad can be made. All well and good - but directions??? So I gave it a try. And blow me, extraordinarily it worked! The only point which was in the wrong place was the Ascendant, which SF derived from the SA MC at the natal location. This problem was resolved eventually by changing the method of directing to User Arc, in-putting the required Solar Arc in degrees/minutes. This moves all points to the correct positions.
Having now a very unorthodox 'radix' chart composed of all Sutcliffe's natal points moved on by just under 28 degrees, I could hit the Vedic button and choose the dwad.
When I compared the radix dwad with the dwad directions I thought I'd made a mistake. They were almost identical. I did it again. Same result. Why? Then the penny dropped - the radix had been directed by more than 27 and less than 30 degrees to match his current age - and this is where in successive signs of the radix zodiac the dwad positions repeat! So we have a whole new type of Return chart, where the entire chart - that of the inner, 'higher' identity as mapped in the dwad - comes full circle every 27+ to 30 years as the arcing Sun moves from sign to sign; interestingly in approximate but not exact synchrony with the progressed Moon's return to radix (which in Sutcliffe's case occurred in the winter of 1973 as the self-destructive South Node was inexorably closing on his Ascendant.) The title of that programme was 'Born to Kill'. And here was the inner pattern Sutcliffe was born with, repeating itself in the very year when he began committing the terrible crimes for which he was eventually imprisoned.
Wouldn't this then apply potentially to all of us? I looked back to the year when I began in earnest the astrological work which I love and which has given my life continuing purpose - there was the dwad return. Another dwad cycle later, and the work bore some wonderful fruit. My husband met his life's mentor, an unforgettable, inspiringly spiritual and musical man called Joe Dempsey, at his first dwad return, and at the second return he discovered the Liberal Catholic Church which took him to its bosom and gave him the ministry he had longed for since he was a child. My astrotwin Janis Joplin was born to self-destruct - South Node was rising natally in both radix and dwad. She died of a drugs overdose in the same year that my astrological life began.
There is one interesting caveat: if you are born in the first 2½ degrees of any sign you will have to wait until you are 57½ before your first DDR! This is because of the discontinuity of dwad signs at radix cusps. For example, our dear late friend Howarth's Sun was at 0 Gemini 33, so the dwad at 6 Gemini 36. Nowhere else in Gemini is there a Gemini dwad ... but progress into Cancer at age 30 and still there is no Gemini dwad until the very last 2½ degrees of the sign, reached by progression at age 57½! The second DDR would then be with the Gemini dwad of Leo, at 25 degrees, at age 85. Sadly, our loved friend didn't quite reach that point. He left us last December.
If, like me, you are born in the last dwad of your radix sign, then the returns come regularly at 27½, then 55, then 82½. If - like my lovely Mum - you were born in the 2nd dwad of your sign, the first DDR is at age 27½ at the start of the following radix sign, and the next doesn't come until another 57½ years have gone by, and you are 85. Again, alas, Mum didn't see that age. But at her first DDR she had married my Dad and became pregnant with her only child. If you were born in the third dwad of your sign you will achieve DDRs 1 and 2 but miss out on the third.
Do take a look at these fascinating Returns!
In the process of checking the birth time, I looked at his Solar Arcs for June 1975, the birthday preceding his first hammer attack that July and first murder on October 30th. I thought, 'wouldn't it be nice to be able to look at the dwads.' But you can't make dwads of subsidiary charts. Except I had already found one way, with progressions, by selecting the progressed chart and clicking on 'Chart', 'Locality' - which turns it into a radix, from which the dwad can be made. All well and good - but directions??? So I gave it a try. And blow me, extraordinarily it worked! The only point which was in the wrong place was the Ascendant, which SF derived from the SA MC at the natal location. This problem was resolved eventually by changing the method of directing to User Arc, in-putting the required Solar Arc in degrees/minutes. This moves all points to the correct positions.
Having now a very unorthodox 'radix' chart composed of all Sutcliffe's natal points moved on by just under 28 degrees, I could hit the Vedic button and choose the dwad.
When I compared the radix dwad with the dwad directions I thought I'd made a mistake. They were almost identical. I did it again. Same result. Why? Then the penny dropped - the radix had been directed by more than 27 and less than 30 degrees to match his current age - and this is where in successive signs of the radix zodiac the dwad positions repeat! So we have a whole new type of Return chart, where the entire chart - that of the inner, 'higher' identity as mapped in the dwad - comes full circle every 27+ to 30 years as the arcing Sun moves from sign to sign; interestingly in approximate but not exact synchrony with the progressed Moon's return to radix (which in Sutcliffe's case occurred in the winter of 1973 as the self-destructive South Node was inexorably closing on his Ascendant.) The title of that programme was 'Born to Kill'. And here was the inner pattern Sutcliffe was born with, repeating itself in the very year when he began committing the terrible crimes for which he was eventually imprisoned.
Wouldn't this then apply potentially to all of us? I looked back to the year when I began in earnest the astrological work which I love and which has given my life continuing purpose - there was the dwad return. Another dwad cycle later, and the work bore some wonderful fruit. My husband met his life's mentor, an unforgettable, inspiringly spiritual and musical man called Joe Dempsey, at his first dwad return, and at the second return he discovered the Liberal Catholic Church which took him to its bosom and gave him the ministry he had longed for since he was a child. My astrotwin Janis Joplin was born to self-destruct - South Node was rising natally in both radix and dwad. She died of a drugs overdose in the same year that my astrological life began.
There is one interesting caveat: if you are born in the first 2½ degrees of any sign you will have to wait until you are 57½ before your first DDR! This is because of the discontinuity of dwad signs at radix cusps. For example, our dear late friend Howarth's Sun was at 0 Gemini 33, so the dwad at 6 Gemini 36. Nowhere else in Gemini is there a Gemini dwad ... but progress into Cancer at age 30 and still there is no Gemini dwad until the very last 2½ degrees of the sign, reached by progression at age 57½! The second DDR would then be with the Gemini dwad of Leo, at 25 degrees, at age 85. Sadly, our loved friend didn't quite reach that point. He left us last December.
If, like me, you are born in the last dwad of your radix sign, then the returns come regularly at 27½, then 55, then 82½. If - like my lovely Mum - you were born in the 2nd dwad of your sign, the first DDR is at age 27½ at the start of the following radix sign, and the next doesn't come until another 57½ years have gone by, and you are 85. Again, alas, Mum didn't see that age. But at her first DDR she had married my Dad and became pregnant with her only child. If you were born in the third dwad of your sign you will achieve DDRs 1 and 2 but miss out on the third.
Do take a look at these fascinating Returns!