Ingress

IN-gres

Definition

An ingress is the moment a planet crosses from one zodiac sign into the next. In mundane astrology — the astrology of nations and world events — the most important ingresses are the Sun's entries into the four cardinal signs (Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn), which mark the equinoxes and solstices. A chart cast for the Aries Ingress in particular has been used since late antiquity to forecast the year ahead.

In Tradition

In medieval Arabic mundane practice, the Aries Ingress chart — cast for the moment the Sun reaches 0° tropical Aries — became the central tool for predicting the coming year for the world. James Holden notes that "the technique became very popular among the Arabs and later Western European astrologers," though the early Arabic ingress charts of Masha'allah and Albumasar were drawn against fixed-zodiac solar tables, which kept the signs and aspects accurate but threw the house positions off compared with true tropical-equinox practice.

In Practice

For mundane forecasting, the astrologer casts a chart for the exact moment the Sun enters 0° Aries, at the capital or another relevant place, and reads it as the figure for the year ahead — the Lord of the Year is taken from the Ascendant or other markers, depending on the tradition, and the condition of the malefics, the Moon, and the year's eclipses is weighed heavily. Ingresses into Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn are usually read as quarterly updates. In natal timing, an ingress signals a shift in how a planet expresses itself: when a slow planet moves into a new sign, and into a new house of the birth chart, that is read as opening a fresh chapter in the matters that planet rules. Lunar ingresses are tracked for short-term and electional choices — the choosing of favourable moments.

Historical Origin

Annual-ingress forecasting is attested in the Arabic mundane tradition by Masha'allah and Abu Ma'shar (8th-9th c.), whose Kitāb al-qirānāt and Kitāb fī taḥwīl sinī al-ʿālam (Book of the Revolutions of the Years of the World) set the genre in order around the great Jupiter-Saturn conjunction cycles. The doctrine reaches medieval Latin Europe through Hermann of Carinthia and John of Seville, is gathered in Bonatti's Liber Astronomiae Tractatus IX (13th c.), and survives into early-modern English mundane astrology.

Further Reading

  • Abu Ma'shar, On the Revolutions of the Years of the World
  • Guido Bonatti, Liber Astronomiae
  • James H. Holden, A History of Horoscopic Astrology