Chart: a bi-wheel, with Coach Paul Westphal’s natal chart on the inner wheel and the angles and the Heliocentric transits in the outer wheel.

Coach Westphal has been under the influence of some very difficult heliocentric transits recently. The term heliocentric refers to the Sun (helios) in its place at the center (centric) of the solar system. Most astrologers use geocentric (Earth-centered) planetary positions. In other words, they view the solar system from the Earth-centered perspective. Hence, the retrograde planets! They’re not really moving backward, but from the Earth-centered perspective, they certainly appear to be. Perspective can change everything. For instance, a planet can appear to be in one sign from the geocentric perspective and in another from the heliocentric perspective, even though the planet hasn’t moved at all. The viewer has.

The heliocentric planetary positions tend to manifest on a larger scale, in more public or worldly affairs. The current heliocentric positions of Uranus, Saturn and Mars have put a lot of stress on Coach Westphal’s Ascendant-Descendant axis, and led him into Seventh House encounters with open enemies that have not gone well for him—in other words, four straight losses at home!