The astrological year begins at the moment of the spring equinox, when the Sun as seen from Earth crosses the celestial equator on its way into the northern half of the heavens. In astrological terms, that point in the sky is the first point of Aries—the zodiacal sign Aries, not the constellation. (If you have trouble understanding the difference between those, please reread this post.) According to the theory of mundane astrology, the position of the luminaries (Sun and Moon) and the planets (Mercury through Neptune)* as seen from the capital city of a given nation at that moment predicts certain things about the way the politics of that nation will unfold for a certain period of time thereafter.
(*Yes, I know this doesn’t include Pluto. It also doesn’t include Sedna, Eris, or any of the other Kuiper belt objects; nor does it include Ceres, Pallas, or any of the other asteroid belt objects. More on this in an upcoming post.)
Other points in the astrological year, the autumn equinox and the summer and winter solstices, are also influential, but they’re secondary. Depending on the details of the spring equinox ingress chart, as we’ll see, the conditions covered by that chart may remain in place for three months, six months, or a year. There are also minor ingress charts cast for the new moon each lunar month, and much larger-scale charts cast for conjunctions of the outer planets that have effects reaching over decades, but the spring ingress chart is the bread and butter of mundane astrology, the tool that tracks political moods and their expressions in events most closely.
Why? Nobody knows. That’s the first thing that has to be grasped about astrology, and more generally about most of the occult sciences. We don’t know the causative mechanisms that underlie them. In some cases there are theories, more or less far-fetched, but by and large what we know is that they work, not why they work. That’s a valid kind of knowledge; Isaac Newton was able to explain precisely how gravity functions, even though he had no idea why—and in fact people had been perfectly well aware that rocks fall when dropped for countless millennia before Newton figured out how to say the same thing in numbers. (I like to imagine an early skeptic, circa one million BCE, who insisted to his fellow hominins that it was irrational to claim that rocks always fall when dropped unless they could tell him the reason why they fell, and kept insisting that until he was brained one day by a falling rock.)
In astrology, we’ve gotten beyond the falling-rock level of knowledge to something like the Newtonian level: a detailed quantitative model that allows us to predict certain regularities in phenomena. That’s the level at which we’ll be working with the mundane chart shown here.
Those of my readers who don’t know their way around an astrological chart may benefit from some pointers. The chart is an abstract representation of the belt of sky through which the luminaries and planets move, as seen from a certain spot on the surface of the earth. The horizontal lines represent the points where that belt crosses the horizon; the one on the left is the ascendant, the section of the eastern horizon over which luminaries and planets rise, and the one on the right is the descendant, the section of the western horizon below which they set.
The not-quite-vertical line with an arrowhead on top connects the zenith, the point of the belt that rises highest above the southern horizon, with the nadir, the point of the belt that drops furthest below the northern horizon. (It’s not vertical for complex reasons having to do with the relationship of the ecliptic to the Earth’s curved surface.) The other dividing lines are the cusps (boundaries) of the twelve houses, which are divisions of the sky that relate to specific areas of human individual and collective life. The little symbols around the wheel are the luminaries and planets
Got it? Now let’s get into specifics.
In a mundane chart, as in any other chart, the two luminaries and the ascendant—the point of the zodiac that’s on the eastern horizon at the moment for which the chart is cast—are the most important features. These have different meanings in a mundane chart than they do in a natal chart, though. In a mundane chart, the Sun represents the person at the head of the government—the president, in this case—while the Moon represents the people of the nation, and in particular the more articulate and politically influential sector of the people. Their positions in the heavens and their relationships with one another and with the planets tell you a great deal about the way that the political leadership of a country will relate to the people and vice versa.
It will come as no news to anyone who’s been watching the US political scene that the relationship in question is one of intractable conflict. In this chart, the Moon and the Sun are in an applying square aspect. The square aspect is an angle of 90 degrees from the perspective of Earth; an aspect is applying when it’s close enough to have effect (“within orb” is the astrological jargon for this) but has not yet become exact, while it’s separating when it’s already passed the exact angle but is still within orb. The applying square aspect means that the two things thus indicated are at loggerheads, and it’s just going to get worse over the six months to come.
There’s a wrinkle to the conflict, though, and it has to do with the houses. In mundane astrology, the first house—the house immediately below the ascendant—is assigned to the people, and the tenth house—the house immediately to the left of the zenith—is assigned to the government. In this chart, though, the Sun is in the first house and the Moon is in the tenth! This means that the president speaks for, and is supported by, a significant though otherwise relatively inarticulate fraction of the population, while the institutions of government are allied with the more articulate and influential sector of the population and opposed to the president. Here again, this isn’t exactly a surprise, but it’s intriguing to see it expressed so clearly in the chart.
The ascendant is something else again. To begin with, it tells you how long the conditions covered by the mundane chart will remain in place. In this chart, Pisces is rising, and since Pisces is classified as a mutable sign—the signs of the Zodiac are categorized as cardinal, fixed, and mutable—this chart is good for six months, until the autumn equinox. Pisces, though, also has a character of its own: changeable, sensitive, idealistic, easily confused and deceived, drawn in conflicting directions. That character is going to pervade the next six months. Thus, at least for now, we’re not going to see a clean conflict fought out straightforwardly over the issues that matter; instead, confusion, deception, loudly proclaimed ideals poorly anchored to everyday reality, and the kind of intractable conflict where no one is ever quite clear about what they’re fighting for, or against, will be the order of the day.
This is squared, cubed, and in spades because of another factor in the chart: Neptune rising conjunct the ascendant. Neptune, to my mind, is underrated by many contemporary astrologers; the Lord of the Great Deep and the outermost of the planets, it is the planet of unity, ruling the highest aspects of human possibility—but when you bring so elevated an influence down into the grubby realities of everyday life on Earth, the experience of being one with everything can all too easily turn into a blur where everything is muddled together with everything else, and fantasy and outright hallucination supplant reality. It’s going to be a very confused and murky time.
Neptune, though, also has a traditional connection with popular movements—the unity of the masses as distinct from the focused interests of particular groups. Neptune rising predicts that the masses will have much more influence than usual over politics and the national life. Mass movements for change can be expected as the people seek power over their soi-disant betters in both parties; it will not be a pleasant six months for either Democratic or Republican party leaders, as the movers and shakers find themselves moved and shaken by the people they thought they could lead. The confusion inseparable from Pisces rising will make it difficult to see exactly what’s happening, but massive realignments will be taking place below the surface.
Let’s move on. The Sun and the Moon both have aspects with planets, and from these much can be understood. The most important of these is the relationship of both luminaries with Saturn, who is square the Sun and in very close conjunction (four minutes of arc) to the Moon. Sun square Saturn in a mundane chart predicts quarrels within the government, conflict between the administration and the civil service, and an endless string of obstacles, hindrances, and delays with which the president and his administration must contend. The Sun is benefited, on the other hand, by a distant but still effective applying conjunction with Venus. Sun conjunct Venus in a mundane chart predicts that the president and his administration will have relatively good relations with foreign countries. This aspect is particularly beneficial for the head of state, and predicts some notable success for him.
Moon conjunct Saturn is an even less promising aspect than Sun square Saturn. It’s unfortunate for tax revenues and trade, and predicts disorder and economic contraction. An economic crisis of greater or lesser extent normally follows the appearance of this aspect in a mundane chart. The Moon and Saturn both get some benefit from their joint trine aspect with Uranus—a trine is an aspect of 120 degrees, and as favorable as a square is unfavorable—which predicts important reforms and changes in political life that will ultimately benefit the nation; both these aspects, though, traditionally bring increased power and popularity to the party in power, which will not be at all welcome to the groups signified by the Moon and Saturn.
Saturn in the tenth house generally is considered a dire omen, predicting crises and misfortunes for the nation. Its precise conjunction with the Moon, though, suggests that the largest share of these troubles will fall on the institutions of government and their supporters among the articulate classes, rather than on the administration or the head of state. One way or another, though, there will be serious difficulties, discord, and misfortune enough to go around.
Each of the other planets also has its story to tell. Mercury in the first house predicts that the next six months will be a time of ongoing political debates, witih meetings, rallies, political speeches and essays receiving much more attention than usual. The media will be full of discontent and recrimination. Mercury conjunct Venus is a favorable aspect predicting that all this excitement will lead to the settling of longstanding grievances. Mercury opposite Jupiter—opposition is an unfavorable aspect of 180 degrees—predicts serious trouble for the education industry, and much more public discord and division among religious bodies than usual.
Venus in the first house is a strong favorable influence, favorable for prosperity. Notice that this indication seems to contradict the ones given already. That’s common in astrology, and of course it’s just as common in everyday experience, in which different sectors of society benefit differentially from changes, and an economic crisis that brings serious trouble to one class can actually benefit another. The indication here is that the broader economic crisis predicted by Moon conjunct Saturn in the tenth house may actively benefit a significant fraction of the populace. (For example—and this is just an example, not a prediction—a serious real estate crash, which would batter the financial economy and cost a great many affluent people heavily, could benefit a great many people outside the circles of the affluent by forcing rents down from their current sky-high levels.)
Mars is in the second house of wealth and the national economy, and this is not a good indicator at all; combined with Saturn in the tenth conjunct Moon, it’s a pretty safe bet that the next six months are going to see some fairly sharp economic troubles. Mars in the second house is associated with declines in stock markets and bank failures, but also with high national expenditures and popular discontent over extravagant government spending. Mars’ only aspect is a minor one, a semisextile (30 degrees) with Mercury, and this reinforces the indication of a time of strong feelings and public excitement over political issues, with debate and discussion on public affairs taking center stage in society.
Jupiter stands all by itself late in the seventh house, predicting favorable relations with foreign powers and high-profile meetings with other heads of state. Jupiter is also within orb of the cusp of the eighth house, where it predicts the kind of celebrity death that produces widespread public reaction and stirs up a furor in the media. His only aspects are oppositions to Mercury and Uranus. We’ve already discussed the first of these; the second warns that new legislation will spend a long time bogged down in Congress and that foreign powers will gain in strength and influence relative to the United States.
Uranus, finally, stands at the very end of the first house, within orb of the cusp of the second. In the first house it predicts reforms and changes in political life, but also riots, strikes, and general discontent with the political order. Applying hard to the second, it provides another indication of economic turmoil and disruption. All of Uranus’ aspects have already been discussed.
That’s what the chart has to say. How should it be summed up?
To begin with, we’re facing six months of protracted political conflict out of which there will be no clear winner. The indications affecting the Sun are somewhat better than those affecting the Moon, so the eager predictions by Democrats of a prompt implosion on the part of the Trump administration are wishful thinking; if anything, the conjunction between the Moon and Saturn in the tenth house suggests that the Democratic party and the Washington bureaucracies will come out second best in the struggle. Even so, the Trump administration can expect to see much of its domestic legislative agenda stalled in Congress and tied up in the courts, and the conflict between the new administration and its opponents isn’t going away any time soon.
In foreign affairs, though, the next six months promise to be relatively calm; there will be at least one really high-profile summit meeting, from which it’s likely that some important agreement will proceed.
By contrast, the economic news for the next six months is going to be pretty dismal, with crisis and contraction on the agenda. Banks and the financial industry generally are likely to fare poorly. By contrast, significant groups among the general population who’ve been shut out of the narrowing circle of prosperity produced by recent “jobless recoveries” can expect to see their economic lot improve to a certain extent.
The big story of the next six months will be the spread of political debate, agitation, and activism among the American people. This won’t be limited to one set of agendas, or one end of the political spectrum, nor will it necessarily move in directions that make sense in terms of the political alignments of the recent past. Broad dissatisfactions rather than specific, narrowly defined issues will be central to the rising tide of political unrest, and a great deal of confusion and vagueness can be expected—though the extravagance of federal expenditures seems likely to turn into a lightning rod that will attract a great deal of attention. Where will it end? That’s not something an ingress chart can predict.
That last point is worth expanding on a little. As already mentioned, the chart I’ve just delineated is good for six months, and six months only. In September, we’ll have another ingress to deal with, and a sharply different set of astrological conditions will shape the political climate for three months afterward. (In that chart Capricorn, a cardinal sign, is rising, and cardinal signs only rule for three months.) In December, in turn, conditions will have shifted again; two placements we’ve discussed—Neptune conjunct the ascendant and Uranus conjunct the second house cusp—which aren’t in the Libra ingress in September are active again in December’s Capricorn ingress, but this time it’s the Sun that’s conjunct Saturn in the tenth house, while the Moon flounders on the cusp of the dismal twelfth house and applies to a square with Mars in Scorpio. After that—why, it’s time for another Aries ingress chart.
That’s the thing about mundane astrology. No matter how hard you try to make it foretell the end of the world, or the arrival of Utopia, or any of the other elements of folk mythology that play so large and unhelpful a role in the historical imagination of our age, it won’t cooperate. Those of my readers who took the time to cast a chart for December 21, 2012—the supposed end-date of the Mayan calendar, and the focus for a giddy rehash of all the usual fantasies—knew in advance that it was going to be a perfectly ordinary day, as in fact it was.
In the same way, according to all the rules of mundane astrology, the next six months are going to be an ordinarily troubled period in the national life of the United States of America, with bitter partisan conflict, economic dysfunction, and an unusual level of political engagement on the part of the masses filling roles that will be perfectly familiar to those who know their way around the ordinary processes of American history. That’s what the chart says, at least; is that what’s going to happen? Stay tuned and we’ll see…
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By now I think all my readers will probably be aware that The Archdruid Report, my weekly blog on current affairs and the future of industrial society, has wound up its eleven-year run. The Well of Galabes will continue as is for another two months. Thereafter—time not yet settled, but it won’t be too dreadfully far in the future—I’ll be launching a new blog (probably monthly) on a different platform, with a somewhat different theme, and also going to a slightly less formal social media platform for more frequent and less formal commentary and announcement. As the details get settled, I’ll be posting announcements here and on The Archdruid Report. See you soon on the new blog!
Good morning, JMG. I was eagerly awaiting this analysis, which seems very accurate, although I’m thinking that rural workers will not be seeing much improvement unless they are able to get a few years of work in newly deregulated extractive industries. Unfortunately, as the neighbors and descendants of this region’s miners and loggers are painfully aware, the resources run out, the investment goes to the next exploitable site, and the toxic mess gets left behind.
Your answer to my question on lodge history last month was very reassuring – we’re doing it right so far. We have been wandering very far afield to ensure that our new lodge’s symbols and ritual are 1) fitting for this location and community and 2) a radical departure from anything done in the former organization that some of us were ejected from so we don’t bring forward any of the issues that would corrupt our innocent young egregore.
A couple of us have read the Druidry Handbook and I am re-reading. We are adopting the Spirals, the Earth, Moon, and Sun paths, including cross quarter holidays, and are considering using some variant of the Grove opening for our Inner work.
We are not comfortable invoking gods or goddesses as you set forth and we are clearly far from Wales or Ireland where beings described in your book would obviously be part of and present in the natural world.
Can you recommend a good approach to exploring this area? We wait for something to be revealed to us? It’s well-known locally that there are Native American entities, but I’m loathe to engage in anything impertinent or foolish with regard to those beings, especially given how the local tribes were treated, not too long ago as it happens, and how their former sacred places are currently treated. I really don’t want to invoke a god or goddess we have no business calling upon. (I have acquired the “fear of God is the beginning of wisdom” approach from Black Elk Speaks as well as my own religious training.)
So I’m inclined to steer away from deities entirely, given my limited experience as a monotheist, and lacking much first-hand insight or wisdom in this area.
When you do resume blogging with a different theme, as you say, I hope at least some of the posts will focus on occult/druidry?
In other news, I'll be leaving to join the army in a couple months, so that seems likely to pause/stall my current progress in Druidry, at least for some time. Thank you for all your work, both here, and on your other blog.
I feel that a detail may have been overlooked, which is that Venus is retrograde right now, which takes it's virtues and turns them into vices. I suspect that USA relations with foreign countries may not go well at this time.
Several of the astrological sources I follow have been very interested in the total eclipse that is to occur in August this year. It is to be visible “from sea to shining sea” and it is within a degree or two of the President's ascendant. Does this ingress chart shed any light on what that eclipse might signify?
Fantastc insights , i have read a lot of Liz Greene astrology books which focus heavily on mythology . Being in the southern hemisphere , i find it works best for me as metaphor if i reverse the sun sign and keep everything else the same . ( would you reverse it all if you were going to do this ??) .
I had a thought when i read your statement that “Neptune is the planet of unity ” and associated comments . A voice in my mind whispered , ” there is a difference between being one with all things and all things being one ” . All things being one seems to be the primary delusion of neo liberal globalism , as is its tendency to promote the externalisarion of mythical archetypes rather than their psychic integration , e.g the mainstreaming of gender reassignment surgery , etc .
Astrolgo is a fantastic little app i use on my iphone which enables me to erect a chart instantly on any date from anywhere in the world , and it has led me to comparing charts of great people from history , nations and anyone else who pops up. I can superimpose one chart over another.
Great to see you still blogging in the more arcane end of the spectrum .
JMG, since I never said it on the final post of the other blog – thank you and best wishes.
I will admit that I am a skeptic about magic and astrology – but not a materialist fundamentalist – I do suspect that this reality is stranger than we can know without succumbing to madness. The fact that anything exists at all and that anything knows about anything else never ceases to vex me – of course if it were otherwise I wouldn't notice.
All in all, your astrological predictions about the trajectory of the USA seem reasonable to me. However, orange-headed and pant-suited meanies aside, the single biggest story that the human species is likely to live through is Peak Everything. Is there an astrological element here?
Roberta, glad to hear it. With regard to deities, yes, you pretty much have to wait for something to reveal itself; constructed deities reliably flop. You might try simply calling on the powers of the elements withour specific personifications, and seeing what happens.
Daniel, I expect to spend much more time on occultism than in the past, so yes, expect more on that. Best wishes on your time in the military!
Br. Christopher, that's a very modern way of interpreting retrogrades, and I haven't found it to be valid in mundane charts I've cast before now. Still, we'll see!
Breanna, for that, you'd want to cast a separate eclipse chart for the moment of conjunction between Sun and Moon, as seen from Washington DC. That's also a branch of mundane astrology, though I haven't found it anything like as accurate as ingress charts.
Barrabas, hmm. As I've never lived in the southern hemisphere, I have no idea how best to do astrology there — I'll leave that to astrologers on that end of the planet! As for Neptune, excellent — like every planet, it has its positive and negative traits, and your phrasing sums up important parts of those very well.
Interesting.
In looking at your delineation, I noticed that you didn't consider the condition of the sign rulers. Have you found them not to be relevant, or weren't they part of the tradition you're using? In that vein, would you use Jupiter (classical) or Neptune (new) as the ruler of Pisces? In the latter case, with Neptune in its rulership, I'd see a great deal of delusion – not anything surprising here.
On a rather different note, I prefer whole sign these days, since it's what was used in Hellenistic astrology and is still used in Joytsh (although that's rather different in a lot of ways). As you point out, we shall see.
Good Evening JMG!
More for you than the general post but I don't have an email address to send to directly.
There seems to be a mis-quote in the electronic version (on Google Play books) of your Art and Practice of Geomancy.
It concerns Tristitia.
On page approx 21-23 it is listed as inner element earth and outer element air.
On page approx 42-44 it is listed as inner element earth and outer element air.
On page approx 152-154 under predicting the weather it has “Tristitia, for example, has Earth as its outer element and so means cold and dry.
I have screen shots of the relevant passages if you do not have access.
Is this the same in the printed copy?
If you need the shots let me know where to send them.
Warren
JMG
Over on recent ADR taking in the essays and comments on philosophy I was just beginning to feel I was getting the hang of it. Ah well … those perspectives on ‘reality’are still yeasting away apparently in the caves and bolt-holes of my mentation … keep popping into conversation.
I like the seasons changing, and your chart reminds me severally of acceleration and our points of view and attributions nicely related as the year rolls on. There is a very reasonable selection of abstractions – e.g. people, influential people and government. We can still name names, I suppose. The Kagans rising could fit in somewhere – they seem neither confused nor incoherent along the continuum of challenge and opportunity. The process of mundane astrology seems to involve shrewd selection of see-saws, apposite continua (continuum plural?), like and unlike (differentiation), and so on. Different countries, different government and ruling circles would presumably need different selections of abstractions – query?
best
Phil
Phew. After reading last week of the end of the ADR I was feeling like an addict whose dealer had skipped town. How should we then live, indeed.
Many thanks JMG for both blogs and the immense effort that has done into them. Looking forward to the next chapter.
Re astrology and nations. You say you pick a point on the earth to observe the sky, in this case DC. But what is the relationship between a long/lat coordinate and the future of a whole nation? Could the USG pick up and move to San Diego and get a whole new future?
Can this type of reading by applied to Suva as effectively as DC?
Also, what do retrospective chart readings look like for say DC in March 2016, or Berlin in March 1939? Can we see a correlation between the predictions of the charts with are understanding of what then transpired?
“confusion, deception, loudly proclaimed ideals poorly anchored to everyday reality, and the kind of intractable conflict where no one is ever quite clear about what they’re fighting for, or against, will be the order of the day.”
That seems right on the money.
I'm interested to see what kind of social media platform you will start using. For the love of all gods please stay away from Facebook (I know how you feel about twitter). I have really soured on social media lately (I believe the phrase is close to an oxymoron) and I have a hard time imagining you involved in it.
I gather you are more inclined to the written format, but have you considered a podcast or a youtube channel? I think you could reach a lot of people that way. If your channel or podcast becomes popular that could lead to you appearing on more podcasts etc. Some of my favorite podcasts could benefit from hearing about limits, peak oil, and having the myth of progress challenged.
I have been toying with the idea of starting a youtube channel/podcast of my own where I moderate constructive dialogues between interesting people via phone/video chat. I have created a list of people I would like to hear talk to each other and your name cross references with more of them than anyone. I have a few people in mind who I think would agree to come on the podcast and from there perhaps more would be willing.
I apologize for the digression from the main subject of this blog, but I thought this might interest you.
Very interesting reading… I was thinking though that the aspects of sun and moon would be the same for all countries, as the ingress occurs, and that only the house placements vary depending on where you are on the planet – does this mean that the first things you said about the relation between leaders and populations apply to the whole planet?
Justin, thank you! The rise and fall of civilizations likely has a strong astrological element, but it would require a research program spanning many millennia to figure it out, and that hasn't happened yet. It took more than a thousand years of hard work to get from Sumerian priests noticing that some “stars” move relative to the others to the first horoscopes, and more than two millennia more to get from there to the fairly rich astrological traditions we've got now; so far, calculating the political “weather” of the next three to twelve months is about what we're up to.
John, the condition of the sign rulers isn't really addressed in the standard texts of modern mundane astrology, and of course the newly discovered planets are a perennial challenge — we're centuries away from having a really full grasp of their meanings, rulerships, and so on. Using traditional rulerships, both the first and tenth house are ruled by Jupiter, who's mildly dignified by triplicity, and just barely angular as well; that would put a slightly more favorable spin on the events predicted by the chart, but not enough to change the character of the chart.
Warren, yep. There are typos in most books, you know. Authors also make mistakes, and the latter's what happened here; I apparently glanced at the wrong column in the table I was using at the time. Correct the text accordingly!
Phil, it would indeed. If you were to do an ingress chart for Great Britain, you'd need to cast it for London, of course, and so all the house placements would be different. For example — I just looked it up — the Moon/Saturn conjunction is in the first house — a very troubling sign! — and the Sun is conjunct the nadir; I suspect the government is going to run into major trouble, and I wouldn't put a vote of no confidence in the House of Commons out of the question.
Darren, the political climate of a nation is largely governed by the political climate in the national capital so, yes, if the US moved its capital to San Diego, it would get a different set of events. Back in the day, nations did that from time to time for astrological reasons! If the US capital was in San Diego — again, I just looked it up — the Sun would be in the 12th house, meaning that the head of state would be so deeply mired in bureaucracy that he'd be incapable of doing much of anything, and Mars would be rising, which is a fairly reliable prediction of war. All things considered, the mundane chart we got is probably the better option.
Greg, good heavens, no, I'm not going to use Faceplant. My current plans are to set up a new blog on a new platform for monthly essays, and to use a service such as Livejournal or Dreamwidth for shorter pieces and conversation. Still, none of that's set in stone yet. A podcast or Youtube channel is more than I'm willing to take on now, or probably ever, but I'd be entirely willing to appear on somebody else's podcast — I do that all the time, as a source of free publicity. 😉 So by all means keep me in mind if you go ahead with your project.
An interesting meditative exercise, casting and interpreting a mundane ingress chart – if that's the term. Toynbee and your friend Spengler might be as helpful for prognosis.
So, probably no Reichstag fire before September as far as the stars indicate. Although Weimar is an easy analogy to draw, Germany was not at an Imperial Peak as the US is today. One could hope for Glasnost and Perestroika.
Greetings all!
Fascinating chart. I admit of knowing next to nothing to astrology, so my questions are really naive.
(1) The angular sectors of each house appears to be of different sizes. Why is that so?
(2) The moon, for example, is stated at being at 27 degrees and 29 minutes of arc. To what does this angle refers to in reality?
Many thanks
Playing it safe, I see. I'm sure there were plenty of astrologers that failed to predict the beginning of both World Wars.
I won't go as far as predicting WWIII will start in the next six months, but I give it a window of opportunity of any time between now and the end of 2019, with this year as the peak of probability. I have been saying since 2014 that that WWIII starts on 2017 plus or minus two years, and I'm not one to shift my predictions. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. But I have good reasons to make that claim.
What's certainly happening on the next six months is some very choppy waters for the States on foreign policy. Definitely NOT “relatively calm”. Germany is re-aligning visibly and need I say that Germany shifts the whole of Europe? Not that the Club Med countries like to be shifted all that much by Germany, but they're shifting for their own reasons. Do I need to explain that antagonising the whole of Latin American doesn't sit well in Spain or Portugal? And Italians and Greeks will more readily identify with Latin Americans than with North Americans. The only country in Europe that is going to remain in friendly terms is Great Britain, and even there, things are going to get a little colder. On the other side of the world, China is already making it plain that, either Trump changes his tune a lot, or they're going to start applying pressure to get their way. And if China wants, they can apply a hell of a lot of pressure. Russia is the main unknown here, they're playing their cards close to their chest, as they usully do. But with all of the above, there's enough to ensure that American foreign policy is going to need some delicate needlework, and so far, it doesn't look like Rex Tillerson is up to the task. I worried before about what the hell a Big Oil man's plan could be, but now it's looking like maybe he doesn't have much of a plan. I could be wrong, of course. As far as I can make sense of it, the general foreign policy strategy seems to be along the lines of befriending Russia and attacking China, perhaps in the hopes of getting oil from Russia and returning manufacturing from China to the States, which doesn't look particularly sensible or doable, but then, many things about Trump don't.
On the economic front, the claim that there will be a crisis but the lot of lower income people will improve, simply flies in the face of history. If there is a crisis, poor people will be screwed, like they always are in times of economic crisis. If the lot of poorer people improve, then we are talking about a recovery. It's true that there is a lag between the economic recovery for poor and rich people. Poor people recover first and fall first, and rich people recover after and fall after. But that wasn't what you said.
I don't have a very clear feel for which way the economy is going in the next six months, but I think it's quite possible it's going down, mostly driven by international trade disputes. If that happens, it's almost certain that low income Trump voters are going to feel it especially badly.
By the way, my opinions aren't based on reading the news or astrological charts. My opinions are based on some hard data. I'm one of those people who can tell, from the top of my head, which G-20 countries are the main trade partners of which other G-20 countries. A bit of info that comes in very handy at predicting geopolitics. And is one of the inputs for one of the computer models I do.
“and also going to a slightly less formal social media platform for more frequent and less formal commentary and announcement.” Good heavens, JMG, now you're scaring me. Please tell me that whatever platform(s) you use will be as thoroughly moderated as this blog and the ADR. I couldn't stand to wade through a bunch of trolling and flame wars…
Please do not use podcasts nor Youtube. I do far better with print than with audio or audiovisual media.
Pat
Slightly OT, but astrology-related: I have found, or believe I've found, that events in astrological predictions for my general sign (Libra) often hit and pass two to seven days before they're scheduled to do so, sometimes in a slightly more negative way than I think they will (or I interpret them that way at the time, and then get corrected later). Is this a “time is relative” thing, to do with my specific horoscope, or maybe connected to the fact that I was born at least two weeks late?
Shouldn't the chart for London be cast for 10:28 AM, local time? That would put the Moon/Saturn in the 7the House, which relates to… foreign relations?
Man, the end of an era. Ah, well; just another expression of the Laws of Flow and Limits. I wish you well in whatever life changes are going on right now.
This was a fascinating post. More political unrest is a very unsettling prospect for me, especially considering some of the unrest in my own life right now. Still, there's unrest and then there's unrest: I've been musing recently that if I were asked if I approve of Trump as a president, I could honestly say “Yes,” because my only real hope from him is that we not have a violent insurrection and so far that hasn't happened.
I'm really happy to hear that you won't be using Facebook. If you end up going with LiveJournal, that'll be quite amusing to me: it was the first social network I ever joined.
Belated Alban Eiler greetings to you, JMG!
Many thanks for sticking with the Well of Galabes blog – at least for a while longer. Glad to hear you intend to continue your presence on the Internet on occult topics – in my humble opinion I believe that is the area where you shine the brightest!
Thanks for having the confidence in mundane astrology, and in your interpretive abilities, by “putting it out there” on WoG. Interesting chart and interpretation!
As a person who is only superficially acquainted with Western astrology, I certainly have no quibbles with your post – however, I do have a question. Given the painfully slow orbits of Uranus (84 years) and Neptune (165 years), that means that these planets hang around in the same sign for 7 and 14 years, respectively. Would it not be the case that for several consecutive years, Aries ingress charts for Washington DC has had/will have Uranus in the same house as the Sun, with Neptune rising conjunct with the Sun? It should also be true for slowpoke Saturn being square to the Sun for several years (though not necessarily within a close orb), no? I therefore assume that these three planets will be governing forces or events that will have very long trajectories in the playing out of a nation’s or government’s “life”. But certainly the Saturn/Moon conjunction is a new “twist to the tale”.
On a related note, I have been in the habit over the past several years of casting an annual chart for my country’s fortune, via geomancy, every January 1st. I have simply borrowed mundane astrology house associations. The results have been quite satisfactory, though I wouldn’t say superb. Have you ever given “mundane geomancy” a try?
Greetings to JMG and all: When you mentioned a month back that you were going to write about the 2017 Aries ingress, I took it as my cue to erect that chart and a few others, and make what I could of them before you published your analysis. My take reading differed from yours in some specifics, but not in general.
I am familiar with using the Moon as a representation of a nation’s people, but not with the idea of making a distinction between the articulate and the inarticulate constituencies. That is certainly a useful distinction to make, and it is a distinction that can be made in just about any political situation I can think of, but I don’t recall coming across a discussion of it in any astrological literature.
If I read you correctly, you use the first house to represent the “inarticulate” part of the population, the Moon as the more vocal and articulate of the people, the Sun to represent the actual head of state, and the tenth house for the institutions of government. Can you point me to any astrological literature that goes into these distinctions?
What Luna predicts from hard data, I think I see in the next four cardinal ingress charts; and the 2020 chart for the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction would seem to mark the beginning of a global order that departs significantly from the one put in place after 1945. But things are changing so quickly around us right now, that it is not at all certain how the astrological stuff will manifest on the ground that far in the future.
And I really want to know about the astrological indications for the vocal and the inarticulate portions of “the people!”
Karen
Anioush, yes, though they'll be expressed in different ways in different countries due to the varying house placements.
Brother G., that is indeed the correct term. You're also quite correct that Weimar Germany doesn't deserve the role of universal political archetype it's been assigned of late!
Karim, the houses are of different sizes because of the complicated mathematics of house division; the Placidus system, which I use, is a way of dividing the ecliptic so that each house takes the same amount of time to rise above the horizon, and since the ecliptic is at an angle to the celestial equator, equal time amounts to unequal space. As for the placements, they're relative to the 30 degree sectors of the ecliptic discussed in the earlier post I cited; the Moon is 27 degrees and 29 minutes of arc from the beginning of the sector called Sagittarius, which is the ninth such sector in order from the point of the spring equinox.
Luna, this chart doesn't show a war in the next six months. Neither do the two charts covering the six months following. (You might want to take a look at the spring 2018 ingress chart, though.) Of course you're free to predict anything you like, using whatever data sets you find appropriate, but this post is about astrology, in case you didn't notice. This is what, to my eye, the current ingress predicts for the US for the next six months. Is that what'll happen? We'll just have to wait and see.
Shane, I plan on moderating my social media at least as harshly as I've moderated my two blogs, and my future blog, ditto. If I understand correctly, both LiveJournal and Dreamwidth have comment moderation, plus the capacity to slap a permanent ban on trolls et al. — that'll be welcome, as I have some clueless people who still keep on trying to post something a couple of times a day even though I banned them months ago for endless off topic blather and delete their comments without reading them. (Ed Boyle, yes, I'm waving at you here.) For a while I found trolls entertaining. Now? They're just dull.
Patricia, as I said, I don't plan on using them. On the other hand, you can find quite a few podcasts online with me as a guest, should you want to!
Izzy, where are you getting the predictions you've mentioned?
Rat, see my previous comment about authors making mistakes! You're quite correct — I fumbled, and did the time change the wrong way. The Moon/Saturn conjunction in the seventh would then suggest that the prime minister is going to be at loggerheads with some kind of bureaucratic foreign connection that's very popular with the more articulate and politically influential part of the population…I wonder what that could be? 😉
James, thank you. What I've heard from everybody who's used Faceplant is that I'd be better off with a pair of tin cans and a string.
Ron, Uranus and Neptune definitely take their merry sweet time rolling around the zodiac, and so yes, their aspects hang on for a good long time. Saturn's somewhat less so — it covers around twelve degrees a year, so an aspect present at one Aries ingress is usually gone by the next. As for mundane geomancy, it's quite traditional — geomantic texts by John Heydon and Christopher Cattan, two of the big names in Renaissance geomancy, include charts cast for mundane questions — so I'm not surprised you got good results; so did they.
Fascinating. I know absolutely nothing of astrology, beyond what one gets from reading the paper–that is, a bit of silly vague fluff based in, I think, a general desire to encourage people. Since my own birth was rather on the line between two of the signs, April 19, I always find a certain amount of amusement in reading both the following day. Is the idea that human events are reflected in the sky, that the sky is reflected in human events, or that no one knows?
I expect you've achieved much of your goals between the two blogs. Would you consider ever writing an analysis of your intent and objectives and how you went about it? Goodness knows I never would've considered magic a real world thing, as opposed to fantasy novel fun, back when I started reading The Archdruid Report, and look at me here!
Best wishes to you all.
Dear JMG, thank you for another fascinating post, hopefully I'll be able to do this for my own capital (Berlin) soon.
I also have to admit that I felt a bit like the rug had been pulled from under my feet when you announced that these blog projects are ending – I had not noticed how much they influenced my way of thinking over the last years.
In fact I started as a curious, but kinda wary reader of the Archdruid report, still wrapped up in a materialistic/progress driven world view, but also deeply unhappy with it and its obvious limits both on the economical and spiritual side.
The Archdruid Report helped me on my way towards the long descent – and your succinct political and economical analyses finally convinced me that it's possible to hold occult ideas and also be a reasonable individual – or even more reasonable than many others, in fact!
So I slowly started to dip my feet into the Well of Galabes – and apparently something clicked. I'm building up a good meditation and divination practice, I am preparing myself for getting started with basic rituals (hello elements/directions!) and I feel much more comfortable with just being myself.
So thank you very much for offering these ideas on a free platform!
Also another question more appropriate for an email:
My partner is a translator and considers doing/offering a German translation of your Green Wizardry / Slow Decent books to some smaller German publishers focusing on post-growth issues. As far as I can see, none of your books except your Occult encylopedia have been translated to German yet. I wondered if there are specific reasons for that and how you stand regards translations/ offerings of foreign publishers to publish a translated verson of your books. If you feel like answering, shot me an email to the email associated with this account.
Thank you and best regards!
@JMG: Generally The Witches' Almanac: they do a horoscope section that, to my relatively uneducated eye, seems fairly thoughtful and interesting.
Also amused by the prospect of LJ, for similar reasons to James. (A good half of my LJ posts are college-era drama over boys, complete with Evanescence lyrics. Hee.) For longer posts, I've found WordPress useful in my own blogging, but as with so much in life, YMMV.
I used an online page to cast the Ingress Chart for Argentina, but to confirm it worked correctly I requested the chart for USA and got the same results as yours.
Argentina has the following configuration:
Sun: Aries House 12
Ascendant: Aries House 12
Moon: Sagittarius House 9
Mercury: Aries House 12
Venus: Aries House 12
Mars: Taurus House 1 (The People)
Jupiter: Libra House 7
Saturn: Sagittarius House 9
Uranus: Aries House 12
Neptune: Pisces House 11
The Sun is not aspected
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Mars
The Government in House 10 with no associations
Mercury opposed to Jupiter and in conjunction with the Ascendant
Jupiter opposed to the Ascendant
Saturn in conjunction with the Moon
From my very basic knowledge of the subject (I'm going to miss a lot of the subtle details obviously) and my long experience with my country: The next three months will have a lot of conflict, caused by individual egos running rampart and the slow wheels of bureaucracy, causing prosperity to arrive slower than expected.
KKalbert, the distinction is one I evolved in reading ingress charts and comparing them to the politics of the period covered, when the Moon and the first house give different indications; I haven't seen it in the literature either. Give it a try and see if it works for you. As for future ingress charts and the 2020 Grand Conjunction, no argument there; as I hinted to Luna, the Aries 2018 ingress is pretty bleak — if I recall correctly, Mars and Saturn are conjunct on the 7th house cusp, which has a highly specific and ugly meaning in mundane astrology. That doesn't change the fact that this ingress, for the next six months, doesn't predict the kind of thing that Luna was talking about, or that so many people just now want to happen.
BoysMom, nobody knows! The standard theory among Christian astrologers, for what it's worth, is based on Genesis 1:14: “And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years.” On that basis, they propose that God intended the stars to give us signs of events to come, as an act of mercy toward his highly fallible creatures. As for what I was doing with these blogs and how, hmm — I'll consider it…
Utopia, glad to hear it. As for German editions of my books, I'd be delighted to see that happen — please note, though, that Blogger doesn't give me access to your email address when you put through a comment. If you'd like to put through another comment marked “Not for Posting” with your email address in the body, I'll be glad to respond promptly.
Izzy, fair enough — and for what it's worth, as sun sign astrology goes, the column in the Witches' Almanac is pretty solid. (Full disclosure; I've got an article on geomancy in next year's edition.) The time difference is probably a matter of where your planets are placed in your natal chart; that changes when they gets aspected by other planets, and that's not something that sun sign astrology can take into account. As for Livejournal, as I noted, that's for shorter pieces and conversation; the long essays will be on a dedicated blog.
@JMG: That makes a lot of sense! I should actually get a full workup done one of these days, when I remember to find out what hour I was born.
LJ/DW's comment threading features make it really good for conversations, IMO. As for the rest, don't mind me–I was just feeling old out loud. 🙂
Have I understood the 'quickie' reading for London? The moon/Saturn connection is in the 7th house not the first, so we are in for more unresolved negotiations, phoney manouvering – mostly EU – not some High Noon parkiamentary / government crisis event in the next 6 months? Great Britain and Northern Ireland in that case will stumble on. Coming over the horizon are threats to the Constitution of the British Isles – we must include Eire – not much oil or gas left in the North Sea, and the Stock Market in yo-yo with New York. I fancy a chart for Edinburgh and Dublin, perhaps even Belfast, in parallel with London!
very best
Phil
@JMG
Dreamwidth looks interesting. I second Patrica’s comment – I do much better with text than with either audio or video materials.
@BoysMom:
While I’m not a Christian, that verse from the opening hymn in Genesis sums up my understanding, as long as you don’t read too much specific theology into it.
@Izzy:
You can get a great deal of general information from the “chart of the day,” that is, a chart that’s drawn up for that day, without a definite time or location. It’s completely generic, and will fit many people somewhat. To make it a Sun Sign column the astrologer adds an “average” natal Sun for each sign. I understand that using the beginning of the sign is common, although many prefer using the middle, which would be my preference if I was going to do it. If you know your audience’s demographics (that is, age range and geographic distribution) you can tailor it a bit further. An age range will give you an idea of where the outer planets are likely to be (Uranus and Neptune).
As for the timing, if I’ve got it right (instead of backwards) I would speculate that you were born in the last couple of days of September or the first couple of days of October.
oh, wow, i wondered what happened to Ed. Ed is one of the few commenters I automatically skipped (long before you stopped putting him through) I just couldn't take the stream of consciousness…
Since JMG has been discussing the 2018 Aries Ingress from memory, I went ahead and cast the chart in Astrolog (hence the poor quality; sorry, it's the best free program).
You can view it here.
As JMG said, Mars and Saturn are in conjunction (within a 7 degree orb) around the 7th house cusp. Now, I'm barely even a novice in astrology, but according to this page, Mars governs the military, Saturn governs death, and the 7th house governs foreign relations. That seems like a pretty clear indication of war.
Thankfully, the chart has a cardinal sign rising, meaning that it's only good for 3 months. So, I fast-forwarded to the Cancer ingress, and got this.
Interestingly, Cancer is rising in this chart, and Saturn is still conjunct the 7th house cusp. Mars is now in the 8th house, which is not a whole lot better. There's a grand trine between Mercury, Neptune, and Jupiter. Given what those are said to represent, possibly the rise of (again, I'm not good at this) a Vietnam-era-style anti-war movement?
Mars' opposition with Venus is also interesting. If there is war, the deployment of women in combat and the subsequent death of many of them could be a major issue. I think Venus being in the 2nd house could also suggest that the war may temporarily revitalize the economy?
I'm probably completely off with some of these. Thought I'd just put this out there for discussion.
Thanks, JMG, for the comment and the info – glad to know I am in good company! 😉
First; how does this work when applied to state capitals rather than the political capital or if done in such things as the economic capital for those countries which have distinct cities like that.
And do you have any resource if mundane astrology was all that was wanted.
Hi JMG,
Thanks for the reading and the insights into the world of mundane astrology reading which was truly fascinating. My cold reading of the future events looks much the same, if it means anything.
Incidentally, I'm seriously looking forward to seeing what interesting things that you have contained up your sleeve for your next interweb adventures. I really enjoy the ongoing dialogues that evolve over in my little space of the interweb and I must say that I have always enjoyed my dialogue with you, even when we haven't seen eye to eye. As happens with all of us from time to time. We have even had a few difficulties of our own here this week which I'll speak about on my next instalment.
So, I always try to give as much as I take here, but seriously you know far more than I, so you do have a bit of an advantage there. Anyway, I read this morning in the delightful book that was recommended by the commenter here who goes by the handle: “Dylan”. Dylan, if you are here and reading this you are naughty as, because, well that book that you recommended is superb and the whole thing is written in narrative form, which I personally enjoy, as I get to live a sort of second hand view into the authors world. Amazing stuff.
What were we talking about? Umm. Oh! Narratives. That's right. So our Western culture is very fixated on understanding the world from an abstract perspective even when the abstract belief doesn’t mirror the real world. And you and I discussed philosophy recently and I asked the rather dumb question as to why philosophy didn't attempt to explain itself in the form of narratives. And there we were, pondering that question, although perhaps I was pondering it more than yourself? Anyway, the book that Dylan recommended stated that narrative was the closest form that language can come to that of the lived experience. To me, little alarm bells and warning sirens were going off in my head as I read that text because the lived experience is the thing that we use abstractions to pretend that the world is otherwise than it is. And perhaps that may be one reason why philosophy tended to ignore the tool of narrative when many other cultures and peoples tend to embrace it? Dunno. I like the tool of narrative.
Plus you asked me about song-lines and well, you know, I hate to be the one who tells you this, but you already know your own song-lines. As we have been communicating in this sort of backwards and forwards dialogue for so long now, I can't recall where I heard or read you mentioning that you have visited some older sites where ancient practices had been held and mate that is now part of your song line and your dreaming and, well, you are linked to that place now and it is part of you and you are part of it. One of the things that concerns me is that we humans are moving around the landscape way too much now, and that is not a good thing I believe.
The funniest thing that I read in the book – and it was also a very astute observation – was that money is the white-fellas dreaming. A top observation that one.
I enjoy your longer essays too as complex ideas are very hard to communicate in short form. I’m trying to get my head around what an essay from you would read like if you were limited to 140 characters? You have to admit that it would be pretty funny! But mostly we often just need deep analysis and thought to get to the core of an issue. But plenty of other people feel differently and that is cool for them, I guess. Oh well.
Cheers
Chris
(Deborah Bender)
I also tried to work out what JMG was alluding to in his remark, “if I recall correctly, Mars and Saturn are conjunct on the 7th house cusp, which has a highly specific and ugly meaning in mundane astrology.”
Being a total novice at mundane astrology, I went to the same site James M. J. II linked to and tried to work it out. I couldn't find any information online for interpreting cusps of houses in mundane astrology, so I just combined the associations of the sixth and seventh houses.
The most obvious meaning seems to be war with mass casualties. Other possibilities that occurred to me were biological warfare, a domestic insurrection sponsored by a foreign power, or assassination of a major public figure.
Looking at the chart James prepared helped me narrow it down. If I'm reading right, Mars is square the Sun in the 10th house. This strongly suggests death of the President or another important member of the government. The trine of Saturn with Venus in the 11th might suggest that ordinary people will be greatly moved by the death, and the 10th house aspect indicates that government institutions will care a lot too.
I'm just doing this for practice and hoping JMG will say more about it.
JMG: Your February 2014 post regarding Weimar America still is “not irrelevant”, Buzz Windrip or Fred Halliot quite aside. But if we miss that turning in even the next couple years, perhaps the balancing will still bring a less painful response. Admittedly, pain does have a feed-back function in maintaining health. The original rise of the Republican Party in this country, even tho sort of democratic, was not altogether comfortable.
On the occult side, not on topic regarding astrology but perhaps regarding the closing of the cycle of ADR and other changes: many initiation rituals include a commitment “for ever” to fidelity to a particular practice or path – often with some cinema-worthy curses on defectors. Yet not a few occult leaders/ teachers have clearly “moved on” time and again – accumulating and discarding along the way. Indeed, the whole pedagogical program seems to assume that the adept must develop something distinctive if not quite new in mastering the craft. Perhaps someday in some format you will discuss this aspect of evolutionary adaption.
OMG!! JMG!!
Political Astrology…. I don’t think that I would ever have put those two words together, but now that I think about it, I get the sneaking suspicion that politics was one of the main areas of study for astrology. (Is that true?)
If you are looking for a short project that could stimulate a great deal of interest, I would love to see you chart out the Trump years 2017-2021. It sounds like to me these astrological charts for the US are hinting at quite the ride to come …. Economic hardship, war, beginning of a new era.
Astrology could provide a really unique take on our political situation.
A question for you or my fellow southern hemisphere dwellers…
When you are doing a ritual and it says face north and do x etc … do you face north or south? I suppose the background query behind that would be are we facing north because it has an objective meaning in world soul or astral terms or because it points to the local pole or because we associate certain things psychologically with north. If someone gave you the wrong directions in a location and you set up your lodge/room/altar with what you thought was north facing east and did everything else correctly would it still work the way you intended?
I have a doubt about some of the elemental attributions in the Celtic Golden Dawn.
Air – East – Dawn – Spring – Yellow
Fire – South – Noon – Summer – Red
Water – West – Dusk – Autumn – Blue
Earth – North – Midnight – Winter – Green
Spirit – Center- The Now – Eternity – White
Should there be a reversal of north and south for dwellers of the Southern hemisphere? There, Sun is at the north face of a house. Tinkering with this by myself would lead to problems, but leaving it as it is makes me uneasy, since I live here in the south. What do you say, Mr. Greer?
JMG– An easy enough mistake to make… I recently got a call at 7:30 in the morning Pacific time from a person on the east coast. I asked them what on Earth they were doing calling me at 4am. There followed that pause that always means the other person is trying to keep themselves from calling you an idiot.
On a different topic– I was thinking of spending some time better learning the meaning of the signs, houses and planets by considering them in meditation. Would it be unwise to do this in a DOGD magical setting, since astrology isn't really a part of that system? I have to imagine, given what I know about you, that you spend some time working with astrological topics in meditation. If so, do you use a non-Druidic preparatory ritual– Hermetic maybe?
So, if I can generalize a bit, this year we should expect rising tensions, confusion, economic collapse, while next year the SHTF with perhaps a war that marks the beginning of the death of the US, as outlined either in Twilight's Last Gleaming or (pre)Retrotopia? Could that be what the Mars/Saturn conjunction in the 7th house signifies for 2018? 2018 will also be the year that secession could be on the ballot in Calif…
@James M. Jensen
Thanks for the charts, and I agree, they’re rather bad. There’s a switch in Astrolog that shifts the background to white (and probably changes other stuff) for printing, but in this case the blue is unreadable. Literally. I had to get the ephemeris off the shelf to find out where several of the planets were at.
I prefer small orbs to wide orbs. That Mars-Saturn “conjunction” is almost 7 degrees, which would be allowable for the Sun or Moon, but I think a lot of astrologers, not just me, would put it out of orb. I’m reading it that Trump is doing his usual bluster, bully act and the rest of the world is giving him the finger. I’d need a lot more confirmation to read it as a war chart.
That’s further emphasized by the Sun (Trump) square Mars and the Moon (the people) trine Saturn (the planet of restriction.) Trump is blustering and not getting anywhere (you have to work to make squares do anything good) and the people are putting on the brakes. I’m not sure who wins – the Moon is departing the aspect and the Sun is applying.
The other interesting thing in this chart is the very close Mercury-Venus conjunction in Aries in the 10th house. To me, at least, that indicates a conversation about funding the government. I’d put Uranus in the tenth (I use whole sign) adding to the fun, but most astrologers would put it in the 11th. In any case, it’s out of orb to the Mercury-Venus conjunction.
Conclusion: Sturm unt drang on the international scene, money problems at home. What else is new?
On the Cancer ingress, the big news is the Mercury-Neptune trine with Jupiter barely in orb and departing (it’s retrograde) to make a grand trine. This is a water (grand) trine, meaning that people’s emotions are running rampant and probably not all that in touch with reality. I’m reading Neptune as being in the 9th (whole sign houses), so the confusion is probably about religion, higher education or the philosophy of government. (Reading it in the tenth would definitely put it in the philosophy of government arena.)
Saturn in the 7th isn’t making any significant aspects: the international situation is still bad, but it’s holding steady, not getting worse.
Venus conjunct North Node opposition Mars. The North Node is usually regarded as a malific, the South node is simply weird. This looks like a continuation of the money problems from the previous chart, now in the 2nd (resources) and 8th (other people’s money, ie debt or taxes.)
Conclusion: I’m feeling like taking a vacation to Oz to talk to some sane people: Ozma, Dorothy and Glinda. I’ll be sure to take a box of Wheaties.
Good to see you well.
When the call came in, as to my partner’s daughter’s depression, it was as if I was already prepared. The Virgo full moon – solar eclipse in sad sack chaotic Pisces of February hinted to me the plain and simple fact that it was time to get practical and do the emotional work for those who chose to do so. His daughter, a brilliant woman, had bought the beautiful house in the desirable neighborhood, grasped the pinnacle of her career position making plenty of money in the health system, and found her existence; lonely, superficial, and empty living in the hollowed out shell of a city that still thinks of itself as the golden goose. As long time readers of your blog, we refer to this city as one of the last insulated cities within the country’s borders; her serpentine emerald energies now marketed into the latest shiny techno globalist homogeneity.
Suffice to say, Dawn did (and is doing) the work – she’s out – notice given, house ready for the market, new job for a pittance of the pay at an American Saddlebred farm near us, cargo container home to be set on our property, and all the other details required around the transformation. I reminded the three of us to go slow and steady (Taurus) moving the first load (2 Tons of A+ lumber) into the moving truck as we experience the energy of Mars, and not let the energy use us. When we had the chance to talk, she confided her observation of our life style and her strong desire to learn skills that matter, and despite every effort she engaged in, most of her friends wanted to talk about their fourth pair of Jimmy Choo shoes, not help her grow food in her double lot yard. And yes I cast her chart and she is good to go.
For the last four years during my own transformation I had allowed my interests in the astrological arts to languish; in part because I turned away from the (majority) consumeristic daily sun sign and astro love fluff that so many hacks and clients wanted to waste their time with, and began to turn a concerted effort in finding persons who could cast charts without looking at the world through a straw. As of the last three months – a renewed devotion – and I thank your words, and whatever assistance the Universe is offering me to guide me back into something that works, whether we know why or not is irrelevant.
So the loft is half way to its own goal as the new library takes shape, the chicken flocks are doing well, the rain catchment tanks are full, the nursery has 100 new treelings, hard cider in the basement, and the perennial pharmacy meets its second year of establishment in the yard. I look forward to the practical beauty and all of your future posts wherever they resurface.
Sheila & will
post script: not enough coffee this morning, I meant March for the full moon in Virgo in the month of Pisces. oops
Sounds like a rough continuation of the past couple months if I'm reading it right. Plodding advancement of the Trumpian agenda; lots of screeching from those afflicted with too much being reduced to still too much in favor of the dispossessed. Perhaps a student loan bubble earthquake with aftershocks shaking some of the cultural marxism out of public universities? That certainly seems like it ought to be on the agenda for reform. I can only imagine how loud that screeching is gonna get considering how much air it already displaces.
JMG,
It always fun to see how these ideas developed in the first place. As no doubt you know, all western astrology was mundane at the start, long before (and even well after) the zodiac was settled on.
Yes sir, back in those days, there were no houses as such. Not for us Mesopotamian types. Such new fangled ideas were something foreigners came up with. How can we trust them greco-egyptian types? Be Greek, be Egyptian, but both at the same time in a city founded by a Macedonian … ack!
Yup, back in the goode olde days when celestial omens were simple, and sheep livers added commentary, one could count on a good apotropaic namburbi to set things right. The real king would go for little holiday and the new king would sit for a spell on the throne (literally) until the bad juju was all over (think eclipse) and then the temp would “go to his fate” as temps always do. Think star fleet ensigns (pun intended).
Oh well, those days are over. Seven wanderers (count em 7!) not 8, 9, then 10, oh oh no … now back to 9, and lots of fixed stars … lots. Who heard of precession back then? The equinoxes stayed put where Anu put them. Give me that olde tyme religion any day.
Why in my day all one needed was a few “handy tables” and some idea where one was in the synodic periods. No computers needed! Try to get yer post-modern astrologer to even look at a night sky now a days. It was good enough for Ashurbanipal, it should be good enough now!
It was so much easier with just exhalations/debilitations, the odd triplicity, and conjunction and opposition. Who heard of “rulerships” (those greco types gain)? And retrogrades meant something back then! Let me tell you.
Ahh the good old days. But you can't stop progress 😉
@John Roth
Sorry you weren't able to read some of the chart. I actually had thought about reversing the background colors, but I found that made the yellow text unreadable, while I didn't have trouble with the blue text on the black background.
I was going to post a monochrome version, but then I found a new program, OpenAstro.org, that's less powerful but does what I need it to do and produces a nicer image. Here are the ingress charts from that software:
2018 Aries Ingress Chart for USA
2018 Cancer Ingress Chart for USA
Hope they're more readable. One of these days I'll have to get Kepler or Sirius, but I'm nowhere near the skill level where either would be worth the price.
Hey everyone, I thought I'd share some work I did in lieu of sleep tonight:
Astrology and the Runes.pdf
I was considering how to assign the Elder Futhark runes to the astrological signs, since I've never seen this done in a way that seemed reasonable to me. I hit on the notion that maybe half the runes correspond to the signs and the other half correspond to the house cusps. For example, ᛒ and ᛟ both seem like they could correspond to Cancer, but ᛒ strikes me as the more “spiritual” rune while ᛟ is the more “material” one; so I thought, what if ᛟ, the rune of home and hearth, corresponds to the 4th house cusp?
I'm not entirely satisfied with the results I have so far, but I'm submitting it in hopes of discussion and constructive criticism.
This being Holy Week for most of us Christians, our most important holy days, (we have a couple different calendars, so some celebrate a different week), I want to wish you all well.
To the Christians here specifically, His peace be with you as we mourn at the cross and celebrate in the morning that He is risen indeed and that we are reconciled to our Creator.
James:
I'm asking as a newbie – what does creating a correspondence between the runes and astrology get you?
This seems like a very common trend in occultism, with letters of the Hebrew alphabet being assigned to Tarot cards and so forth. Is it just an expansion of one's symbol set, or is there some other aspect that I'm not yet aware of?
Hi James. I can't download your PDF, so I may be missing something essential, in which case disregard my remarks. But if I were attempting something of the kind, I would probably try to find correspondences for the seven traditional planets, the four Hermetic elements, and, I suppose, Spirit, which counts for the fifth vertex of a pentagram in the Golden Dawn system, if I am not mistaken. Those plus the twelve Zodiacal signs make 24 characters. But maybe this is too Golden Dawn for you. It's just what I would do for myself, most likely.
Or I might choose the Fool in place of Spirit. I feel there should always be room for a Fool in my cosmogony.
This year the calendars match up for all Christians that follow liturgical (ritual) calendars.
Come receive Light from the never-fading Light! A blessed season to all, wherever you find seeds of Truth and Light. astral, astrological or otherwise.
I don't know if you'll have time to answer this, but I'm wondering how your analysis holds up in light of the attack on Syria and the sabre-rattling with North Korea that seem to have helped patch things up a bit between Trump and the establishment but is digging a big rift between him and many of his supporters.