Who is Soma's Voyage Astrology?

My name is Ivey, and I am a Seattle born artist and astrologer.  I practice sidereal Vedic Astrology from the Indian tradition (Jyotish) which has been practiced without interruption for thousands of years. This tradition uses a sidereal (star based) zodiac.  The sidereal zodiac is fixed to the actual ecliptic constellations in the sky. The Vedic tradition puts primacy on the path of the Moon through the 27 Nakshatras or lunar mansions (divisions of the larger zodiac constellations.) Soma was both a nectar of immortality, but also the Indian Moon Deity (the personification of the Moon.)  Soma’s Voyage is a reference to this tracing of the moon’s journey through its lunar mansions every 2.5 days.  

 

 I am also a certified Hellenistic Astrologer in the ancient Greek tradition. The Hellenistic tradition was contemporaneous with that of ancient India and shared many similarities and cross-cultural interactions. But these practices were lost to the history of Western Astrology until rediscovered ancient texts were translated into English in the 1990s. This practice is tied to the seasons and oriented around the Sun, hence when I use techniques from this tradition, I view the chart with a tropical (rather than sidereal) zodiac calculation as Modern Western Astrologers do while using ancient techniques rarely utilized amongst MW astrologers.

I sometimes utilize both traditional approaches when I want to check for congruency. Both systems are valid and effective and should therefore affirm similar results. 

  

No matter the approach I am using, I do so by starting with whole sign houses in the natal chart as the ancient astrologers did, relying primarily on the seven inner planets/celestial bodies and the nodes of the moon (the two ecliptic points.) They did not use the outer planets, which were only discovered much later, but are heavily relied on in Modern Western Astrology today. I consider them only when there is a strong reason for it in your chart (if Pluto is directly transiting or opposing an important point in your chart at the time in question, for instance.) I'm sure you will find that the traditional uses of the planets already provided a complex, nuanced, resonating understanding of your chart and life without them.