from Astrologers Apprentice
When one is looking at a chart, one of the things that can give you an indication of particularly strong influences in the person’s life are the critical degrees. Now, there are many degrees that are considered critical or of importance, but today I’ll be looking at the Anaretic degree. The anaretic degree is 29 degrees of any sign excpet Leo (more on that later).

The word Anaretic is a Greek word that means ‘destroyer�?or ‘that which kills�? It signifies a dying principle or a process of disintegration, the end of an old cycle and the beginning of a new one. A person with any planets in an Anaretic degree is (for all intents and purposes) between a rock and a hard place. The point of delicate balance where you need to make a decision between action and non-action, neither of which are necessarily the right decision or the one that will make your life easier. An image that comes to mind when I think of this is a person who is stretched over a yawning precipice - desperately clinging to the one side of the gorge with his fingertips and hanging on for dear life to the other side with his toes. No matter which one you let go of first, you’re going to go plummeting down the mountain side with no idea whether you’ll reach the bottom alive.

The anaretic degree is seen as a karmic degree - something that you have to work through in this life time or lose the opportunity altogether. In essence, this is your last chance to deal with and integrate the energies represented by the planet in that sign and that house before the cycle ends and a new one begins - the planet is on the verge of changing sign and therefore changing expression in the chart.

Not a pretty picture.

So why not Leo - because 29 degrees of Leo is the position of the fixed star Regulas - otherwise known as the Heart of the Lion. It’s one of the few fixed stars seen as benefic and represents courage, nobility, dignity and generosity. Which isn’t all that bad. So, an anaretic planet is one that sits at 29 degrees to 29 degrees and 59 minutes of any sign except Leo (with Scorpio and Taurus being particularly strong). Some astologers use a 1 degree orb, but my feeling is that the number 29 needs to appear.

And what do you do when you have an anaretic planet? You could hide your head in the sand and hope that it goes away. But, it isn’t called the Karmic degree for nothing. You have a lesson to learn and an interplay of energies to master. Failure to do so will hamper your ability to move on and grow, both spiritually and physically. Anyway, hiding won’t stop the planetary energies from hunting you down and forcing you to face them. And the longer you run, the more harsh the lesson.

Better to gird your loins, tackle the bull by the horns and try to deal with it as best you can.