On the Trigons and Eminence
© 2010 Curtis Manwaring
With regard to counting the ascensions of the trigon lords, I have heard that you find the ascensions of the weaker lord (not the one assisting) and that lord gives way to the stronger lord when the ascensions of the sign of the weaker lord comes to completion. Looking at trigon lords in this way is just a ballpark estimate of eminence (small, medium, large) and Schmidt thinks that this works on the level of heimarmene. I know of an example where both the first and second trigon lords are cadent, but the one that assists is on the MC to the degree conjunct fortune to the degree. This person had no wind in his sails, but reached destiny anyway under a different mode of power and through a different kind of fate (tuche / fortune). If a trigon lord is angular when it becomes active, it indicates that the winds (the nautical metaphor) have picked up and the native is getting somewhere in life, but when cadent, it indicates stagnancy and the succeedent periods are somewhere in between.
