An intelligent apercu of the principles of directing will greatly enhance the value of any prognostications made from the horoscope of birth, as it will enable the student to select those periods in the life when the effects due to any planet are most likely to eventuate. Thus, if Saturn be in the 2nd House at birth, it may be said that there would follow some periods of great financial stress, and the rising of Saturn by direction after birth would show the time when one, at all events, of such periods would be experienced. And here is the great fact upon which astrologers the world over are prepared to stand or fall. If the planets have no effect in the lives of men, their directions to the angles of the horoscope can have no effect; but never was it found that a man had evil fortunes at the period when the planet Jupiter was directed to the Midheaven or Ascendant, or anything but bad fortune when Saturn was similarly directed. The fact is there, and we cannot get away from it. The only question is as to how far we can intelligently carry our investigations beyond that point, and intelligibly convey our discoveries to the world by their application to the affairs of daily life. The reader may judge for himself from a perusal of these pages. The directions being calculated and tabulated in order of their occurrence, the time and general nature of the influences operating in successive periods of the life will stand revealed. The particular nature of the events indicated by the several directions may be known from (_a_) the House in which the directed planet is situated; (_b_) the Sign it occupies; and (_c_) the aspect it forms, considered in relation to the nature of the planet. For example: If Uranus at birth were in the 9th House and the sign Gemini, its direction to the Midheaven would be the index of litigation in connection with writings, publications, or means of transit; because the 9th House, among other things, has relation to litigation and legal affairs, and Gemini (the 3rd House sign) to communications, writings, &c., while Uranus denotes sudden and unexpected events, ruptures, alienations, and complexities. So if Saturn were in the 6th House in the sign Aquarius, its direction to the opposition of the Ascendant would indicate chills to the blood, anemia, &c., constituting a serious illness with probability of low fever; because the 6th House rules sickness, and Aquarius rules the blood, while Saturn is the cause of chills, paucity, and impediments. Thus the time and nature of events may be known with great certainty. CHAPTER II THE EFFECTS OF TRANSITS Among the number of important indicators to which Astrologers refer in making a forecast of concurrent events, there are the transits of the planets over the places of the Significators at birth, the positions of Eclipses, and those of the lunations.