Holographic Transits
I came to astrology late in life. I owe my introduction to Carolyn Elliott’s course “Influence”. What began as an subtle appreciation of associations, of the links between (for instance) Venus and love and belonging, blossomed into a wholesale change of perspective.
I began to recognize how deeply planetary archetypes live within our psyches; how they extend through time and language, through words like “jovial” or “mercurial” or through the naming (in many languages) of the days of the week after planetary gods.
When I came across Robert Blaschke’s “holographic transits”, the idea immediately appealed. He describes it as complemantary to traditional transits, but I think he undersells it. I think their significance is far greater. The most important sentence in the book, in my opinion is this one:
“The Sun is the symbol of God in astrology and perhaps it is now time to restore the star of the solar system to its rightful place.”
Capturing a hologram of an object
In photographic holography, LASER light is split in two by a beam splitter. One beam (the illumination beam) illuminates the object, the other beam (the reference beam) does not pass the object, but travels another route to the same photographic plate. The plate records the diffraction pattern that forms as those two beams interact. Through some wizardry I barely understand, this means that the plate records a pattern that can reconstruct the object as if seen from all different angles. This is what gives those security stickers on identity documents that property of depth - of a 3D object floating just behind the surface, that changes as you move your head from left to right.
Substitute your soul for the photographic plate, the Sun for the LASER, and a planet for the object, and we have an equivalence to holographic transits.
The precise definition is this: A holographic transit occurs whenever the phase angle between the sun and that planet at the time of your birth repeats.
Difference to regular transits
The way I think about this is that during a planet’s holographic transit, the pattern of energy that arose from the interaction of the Sun and the planet at that time returns.
When I compare this to regular natal transits, it makes the regular ones feel like weak sauce.
A regular natal transit occurs when a planet occupies the same position in the sky (relative to the fixed star backgrounds) as it did at birth. So what? Without the Sun as a light source, we wouldn’t even be able to see the planets! It would be like trying to make a photographic hologram without a LASER.
During a holographic transit the specific interference pattern of the Sun and that planet (it’s worth remembering that the gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn also emit energy, they are not purely reflective) comes back. Your birth is obviously a moment of high significance - and it is intimately connected to that interference pattern. So I think it’s worth paying attention to every time it comes back - it’s perhaps a chance to re-visit and re-feel the reason you are here, incarnated in this earthly plane at all.
A metaphor of return
Think of how it feels to visit a place meaningful in your history. The place you went to college for instance, or a former workplace. There’s an emotional pull to that for sure, but not one usually worth a second thought. Compare that to going back to a meaningful place for a reunion on a special anniversary - or to catch up with an old friends. The place is alive once more. If a natal transit puts you in the right place, a holographic puts you in the right place at the right time, to meet the right person!
The following calculator will compute for you your holographic transits (just using birthday, so accurate to within a day or so), and email you a chart.
You can fold your understanding of astrology straight into these dates - each date may be opportunities to go more deeply into the quality of that planet, for example the holographic transit of The Moon could be a time to reflect on mystery and intuition, or the transit of Jupiter a time to begin projects of expansion.
Feel free to use however you wish, and enjoy!