Due attention must be paid to the position and aspects of those planets which are in aspect to the Mental Rulers, for if they be badly placed, in uncongenial signs, and themselves badly aspected by other planets, they will not act with the same directness and force as they otherwise would do.
It is of course admitted, in all astrological inquiries, that the effects of heredity, training and association count for something. A man who is generated from a vitiated parentage, badly nourished and imperfectly trained, cannot be expected, even with the best aspects, to manifest the highest faculties in their fullest or most perfect expressions. I have not the slightest doubt that many a clodpole was born under similar aspects to those which obtained at the birth of Shakespeare, Raphael, Newton, or Cæsar. I am not dismayed. Non gli astri muovono solamente per Roma! Who shall tell the tale of the world’s starved, neglected, and submerged genius? We are doing the right thing, at all events, in keeping the school-door wide open.
But to continue. The inspirational and ardent temperament is indicated by the majority of planets being in Fiery signs. The mental or intellectual temperament is shown by the majority in Aerial signs. The psychic or emotional temperament by the majority in Watery signs, and the practical or sordid temperament by the majority being in Earthy signs.
The rising sign at birth often impresses itself strongly on the mind of the Subject, and its characteristics are those which belong to the planet which governs it, and the “elemental” nature of the sign itself.
Thus you have the chief keys to the estimate of character in the individual, and when once the student is convinced by experience of the paramount reliability of this method of character-delineation, its uses will need no special pointing.
Mental and Brain Disorders.
When either the Moon or Mercury is afflicted by the malefic planets, that is to say, when Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, or Mars are in conjunction or evil aspect with the mental Significators, and there be no relieving aspect from the benefic planets, Jupiter, Venus, or the Sun, then there is every predisposition to affections of the brain and nervous system. This is the more to be feared when the Moon or Mercury is afflicted in the flexed or common signs. This observation has been scientifically established by Mr. A. G. Trent, in his little work entitled “The Soul and the Stars,” to which the student is referred for a mass of statistical evidence.