Ask an astrologer about the "angles" of the horoscope and they’ll promptly offer the ascendant and the midheaven, with maybe the descendant and the lower heaven thrown in as optional extras. But nobody tends to interpret planets in aspect to these latter two, it’s all about the rising and culminating degrees.

Yet the geometry of the horoscope offers four other important axes. Some astrologers have some familiarity with the weird, fateful Vertex-Anti-Vertex axis (a Vortex if ever there was one) and the finely poised Equatorial Ascendant-Descendant axis, which can show true balance but easily wobbles into the personality crannies where shadows lie. Two other axes, the Co-Ascendant-Descendant, and the Polar Ascendant-Descendant, are almost never discussed or used. That is a Big, Big Mistake.

For many years now, Roderick Kidston has quietly but firmly stated that in many respects the Polar Ascendant is the most important Angle in the horoscope. It’s a feedback loop with the world and any planets entangled with it express with huge power and panache –- or raise all hell, because there isn’t much to stop them. (Hints: Hitler’s horoscope reveals its dark collective Pluto horrors with the Polar Ascendant factored in. And we can only truly understand Eleanor Roosevelt as "Mother of the World" when we see what happens with her Moon and this angle.) Meanwhile, the Co-Ascendant seems to show an axis where the planetary energies involved have no functioning "off" switch. It’s all happening there, full-on and that’s that.

Tune in to this talk to get a new angle on the angles, especially the mighty Polar Ascendant.

This discussion looks at the idea of the angles as Power Points in a whole new way.