The composite chart
John Townley, The Composite Chart: The Horoscope of a Relationship, New York, 1974
An American technique of the early 1970s built on a German method. Midpoints — the halfway point between two planets — come from Alfred Witte's Hamburg School and its Regelwerk für Planetenbilder of 1928. Townley's move was to take the midpoint of each planet in chart A with the same planet in chart B, and treat the resulting set as a chart in its own right. Robert Hand's Planets in Composite (1975) supplied the interpretive bulk that made the technique standard.
What it measures
Not a moment in time. Each composite planet is the arithmetic midpoint of the two natal ones, so the result is a constructed figure that no sky ever showed: it has no speeds, no retrogrades, and its houses have to be derived rather than observed.
Where practitioners disagree
- Where do the composite houses come from?
A midpoint Midheaven with the Ascendant derived at the latitude midpoint — or the birthplace of one partner, or whole-sign from the composite Ascendant
There is no observed sky to read them from, so every answer is a construction. The choice moves every house cusp.
This engine: Midpoint MC, Ascendant derived from it at the latitude midpoint, whole-sign houses — stated on the page. - Shorter arc or longer arc for each midpoint?
The shorter of the two arcs between the planets (usual) — or a fixed direction
The two answers sit exactly 180° apart, so the choice flips half the chart.
This engine: The shorter arc.
Still open
Townley's own account of the technique's origin is the main source for it, and it includes a hearsay chain to an unnamed 1920s German astrologer that could not be verified. His first edition is dated 1973 by Townley and most accounts, 1974 by the catalogue record.
Sources
- John Townley, The Composite Chart: The Horoscope of a Relationship (1974)
- Robert Hand, Planets in Composite (1975)
- Alfred Witte, Regelwerk für Planetenbilder (1928)