It is generally considered that a transiting planet is more likely to develop its negative
qualities when it is in retrograde. That it is turning back for a recheck of ground already
covered need not necessarily be bad, except for the fact that the future is held in abeyance.
Some people look upon any delay as a tragedy, but the real difference has to do with whose
neck is in the noose when the postponement of execution is decreed. In some cases it may
mean only a temporary delay that is compensated for when the planet resumes its direct
motion.
This proximity of Mars to the Earth may be one of the most important of considerations,
since it considerably augments the strength of its reception - what the radio engineer calls
signal strength. Wilson speaks of Mars Retrograde as Mars perigee, and attributes to it a wave
of robberies, vicious murders and calamities. At the Sun-Mars opposition of August 1924
Mars was closer to the Earth than it had been for 800 years.
It should be found, however, that the period of slower motion and of increasing intensity
when the transiting planet is approaching its First Station, and of slower but accelerating
motion after it passes its Second Station, are important arcs, because any birth planet which
falls within the arc over which the transiting planet will retrograde will receive three separate
and successive accents, of the combined nature of the radical and the transiting planet.
When Mars in transit retrogrades over a birth Saturn position, it means that this is already the
second transit of Mars over the birth Saturn position, and that when it resumes Redirect
motion there will occur a third contact. If a contact can be expected to crystalize into an
event, then three contacts can mean three events. Even if one resists the temptations, three are
certainly worse than one - particularly three slow ones that linger and thus burn more deeply.
There is the further and important consideration of declination to be taken into account, and a
parallel of Latitude reinforcing the first or third contact may render one of them more
effective even than the retrograde contact. Thus it would appear that the important
differentiation of a transiting planet's influence requires the dividing of its apparent orbit into
two arcs: that over which the planet will traverse but once, and that which it will traverse
three times in one cycle. These two arcs might be termed the Arc of Advance, and the Arc of
Retrograde. This distinction emphasizes the fact that it is not merely the slow motion of the
Retrograde which is involved, or the matter of replacing steps over territory previously
traversed, but that there will be three separate contacts with each degree within the Arc of
Retrograde, as compared to one brief contact with each degree within the Arc of Advance.
The Arc of Retrograde is thus marked by four points: (a) the Pre-First-Station point at which
the arc begins, when it first passes the degree which later marks the Second Station; (b) the