Star*Types: Aspect Patterns

Dec 12, 2025

By Michael Erlewine

For my astrological friends, here is a powerful astrological technique that only works heliocentrically, and this is because only the heliocentric planets are bound to the Sun by gravitation. The geocentric positions are not gravitationally bound, because the geocentric positions are but a snapshot of the solar system and the Sun from the view of Earth.

In the helio chart, we have the nine planets from Mercury on out to Pluto. And the positions of the nine planets in relation to one another describe an ever-changing kaleidoscope of aspect patterns as we all know.

What I want to consider and evaluate in this article is the space between each of the planets and the next planet as they are arranged around the degrees of the zodiac.

That empty space between planets can be evenly distributed, in which case we would have a nonagon, yet planets often tend to cluster in twos or threes, or whatever, so as to polygons, we then could have something like Triangle, Square, Pentagon, Hexagon, Heptagon, Octagon, and nonagon.

All of the above polygons, if they exist in a natal chart, that chart can be considered equally balanced. And I again draw your attention not just to the planets, but rather to the empty space between the planets. And when we find that kind of even balance in a helio chart, we will find that that individual is stable, trustworthy and can be counted to see and finish things through and through an through.

And further, as the space between planets becomes wider and wider, that wide space or gap contains more and more of the zodiac that we have no planet or representative in. IMO, those gaps are as important to us as the actual planet positions themselves. Why, because they indicate as certain kind of urgency or nervous energy in that life.

Back, when I was giving classes on astrology, I used to talk about the four elements, Fire, Water, Air, and Earth, and I would say:

We DO what we have to do, and we BECOME what we want or lack. In other words, we are fascinated not only by our talents or what we HAVE, we are also interested and fascinated by what we want, lack, and don’t have. What we don’t have concerns or worries us.

And I believe that fascination or worry with what we want or lack, we can’t help but to attempt to fill in those gaps, even though we can never fill that gap. Even so, we attempt to know or gain some experience of those gaps in our personal helio natal chart. We try to make up for what we lack or are missing.

And in some helio natal charts, when all the planets are gathered in one half (or more) of the zodiac, we have a huge gaping gap staring at us, waiting, wanting to be filled, and somehow known.

We can interpret these gaps, especially the very wide gaps, just as we can interpret the planets that enclose them on either side.

I have studied these gaps, openings, holes, or voids, and I have learned a lot by taking them into consideration.

While we can look for the more stable polygons (evenly spaced gaps), they are quite rare. More common are planets bunched together in several groups or stelliums that end up describing, however roughly or exactly, a trine, square or what-have-you.

And we might want to look and locate, going around the chart planet by planet, whatever large gaps we happen to have. In particular, if the gaps are NOT equal or balanced, we by definition have an imbalance. These imbalances call out to us by giving us a sense, urgency, or angst that drives us 24x7.

The imbalanced voids or gaps I interpret as an ‘urgency’ we feel, almost an angst or drive that seem always or too often present in our life. I don’t know if it is just caused by our trying to fill in the gaps in our life experience in that section of the zodiac, in the gap with knowing or some kind of authentic experience.

That emptiness attracts our attention, and perhaps subconsciously worries us.

If those gaps are very large and in particular if they are not balanced in one of the polygon forms mentioned, that sense of what I call urgency is always present and with us. It is almost like a buzz or a drone, amounting to almost a kind of energy or drive for us.

I include a chart of the 60 main chart types I examined in the early 1970s. If you study them or even casually look at them, you can see some of the ever-changing planetary patterns that we are confronted with. And you can also clearly see some of the gaps.

With those archetype chart patterns, next I want to discuss how these various planetary patterns, these chart types, fit together and even pair up with one another, in friendships or marriage.

[The sixty archetypes or planetary aspect patterns, and how they appear in my own natal chart.]

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