And anyway, I didn’t know if there were also other things that affected speed. But while astrological charts indicate retrogrades, which in and of themselves are considered accidental debility, they don’t indicate if something is about to go retrograde or has recently come out of retrograde. So clearly, during the time before, during, and after retrogrades are generally times of slower than average movement. I understood that planets slow down before going retrograde, and then speed back up to almost full speed during the retrograde, then slow down again when changing direction to forward motion.
Then last week I put together a class on essential and accidental dignity and finally had to figure this out! But how the heck do you know how fast a planet is moving? When I first came across this, I mentally filed it under “check this out later.” It came up again more recently when I heard someone speak on accidental dignity but didn’t address this topic other than to say that professional astrological software included the info. If you’ve ever studied accidental dignity in astrology, you’ve come across the idea that planets moving faster than normal have increased dignity and planets moving slower than usual are debilitated.
