In 1941, astrologer Marc Edmund Jones identified seven planetary patterns which, like hemispheric division, operate without regard to specific signs and planets. Ever since then, students of astrology have been exploring the meaning of those patterns. Here they are:
The Patterns
If all your planets are concentrated within four signs or 120° (a trine), you have a bundle chart, regardless of which signs are involved or where on the wheel that bundle of planets happens to fall. This pattern grants you a clear focus, unwavering interests, confidence, and personal strength. It also limits you: You’re strong where you’re strong and thoroughly unconscious (or uninterested) where you aren’t.
If your planets cover more than 120° but no more than 180° (or half the zodiac), you have a bowl chart. This highly motivating pattern can create a frustrating feeling that something is missing, combined with a steely determination to fill that void. These people are activists.
A bucket chart is like a bowl except that one planet (or sometimes two in close conjunction) is separated from the rest. That singleton planet, the handle of the bucket, becomes the focus of the chart. Because its needs are always paramount, Marc Edmund Jones compared that lone planet to a toothache. It demands attention — and sometimes it hurts. That’s because its role is essentially to balance the rest of the chart. Its importance is so extreme that, both by sign and by house, it frequently describes a person in an uncanny way.
If the ten planets in your chart line up neatly over two- thirds of the zodiac, you’ve got drive, stamina, and practicality. The two most important planets are the first and the last — the locomotive, which leads the planetary parade when the chart is rotated in a clockwise direction, and the caboose, which picks up the rear.
Just like it sounds, the planets in this pattern are sprinkled more or less evenly around the entire wheel, with blank spots here and there only because there are ten planets and 12 signs. With this pattern, a wealth of life experience is yours for the grabbing. The drawbacks? You scatter your energy and divide your attention on many different interests. Also, you may be irresponsible and erratic.
In this pattern, the planets are distributed unevenly over the entire chart, with at least one clump of three or more planets. People with this pattern are individualistic, with a strong sense of their own interests and a refusal to bow to public opinion.
If you have two groups of opposing planets separated by a couple of empty houses on each side, you’re always riding up and down on the seesaw of circumstance and experience. An excellent mediator, judge, and administrator, you can view things objectively because you’re supremely aware of the two sides of your own nature. You may also feel internally split because you have two sets of needs and two sets of talents, and you may find it difficult to satisfy both.
