Mundane Astrology Project: An Experiment

[ecosophia]

I'm sure most of my readers know at this point that I also do mundane astrology -- the branch of astrology that predicts the fate of nations and political figures -- and post the results to my SubscribeStar and Patreon accounts. (No, those aren't free, but they're cheap, and I do have bills to pay, you know.) A lot of that consists of ingress and eclipse charts, the bread and butter of a traditional mundane astrologer's work, but every so often I like to try something experimental -- and those tolerably often end up being free posts that anyone can read.

I've just posted another of those.  It's a bit of a complicated story.

The Roman astrologer Julius Firmicius Maternus included in his writings, among many other things, what was then called the Thema Mundi -- quite literally the birth chart of the world. According to his sources, a pair of otherwise forgotten astrologers named Aesculapius and Anubius, the world began with the Sun at 15° Leo, the Moon and ascendant at 15° Cancer, Mercury at 15° Virgo, Venus at 15° Libra, Mars at 15° Scorpio, Jupiter at 15° Sagittarius, and Saturn at 15° Capricorn. That's an interesting chart with implications that probably need to be teased out in a later post, but it ties in oddly with another project of mine -- exploring the use of solar returns in mundane astrology.

Solar returns are much used in the predictive end of natal astrology. The idea is that you cast a chart for the moment at which the Sun returns to the position it was in when you were born, and read that as a guide to the year ahead. Solar returns work quite well in natal practice, so it occurred to me that it was worth checking out whether they could be used to make annual predictions for nations that have known dates and times of foundation -- for example, the United States.

But the Thema Mundi raises a dizzying proposition: it should be possible, using it, to cast solar returns for the entire world.

So that's what I did. I used standard mundane methods, and cast it for Washington DC, since (a) we don't happen to know the location at which the earth first started coming into being (if there was one), and (b) the mundane methods I know focus on the fate of individual nations, and seeing what the next year of world history has to offer for the United States is an intriguing prospect. Will it provide accurate predictions?  I have no idea; if anyone else has tried anything like this, I haven't seen an account of it.

My predictions are therefore experimental and tentative. If the Thema Mundi is an accurate basis for mundane solar returns, and if standard mundane technique interprets such returns accurately, here's what we can expect.  You can check it out on SubscribeStar here and on Patreon here. After that, we'll just have to see what happens...

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Wow quite the set of astrological predictions.


It occurred to me that you should be able to find the last time you had the astrological set up described in thema mundi. Does anyone know what that date would be?

[ecosophia]

I have no idea; I can calculate a horoscope by hand -- I've done it -- but that's as far as my math skills will go. Anybody else?

[betwixttheworlds]

I once heard an astronomer say that the planets will never be in exactly the same position for the entire duration of the solar system.

[isaac_hill]

What a great idea... I have always thought that the Thema Mundi is more conceptual, but I don't see why you couldn't take it at face value. Interested to see how this pans out.

[ecosophia]

That was exactly my thought.

[francis_tucker]

I would love to know from JFM's two groundbreaking astrologers just what was their definition of "when the world began". Alas, they're not here for me to ask. What would you define as the beginning of a planet for the astrological purposes you mention above? The time when otherwise dispersed matter and energy coalesces into a definable body? When it hardens and develops a crust? When the first life shows up?

[ecosophia]

Aesculapius and Anubius were working with their own cultures' creation mythologies, not ours. In terms of our modern scientific myths, it was clearly after the planets finished coalescing, since their placement relative to Earth's position is referenced. My guess is that the best mythic event to use in terms of our modern stories of Zep Tepi, the First Time, is the genesis of life.

[(Anonymous)]

a) How's your Koine Greek? The Thema Mundi has seen a lot of discussion in Hellenistic Astrological sources which. as far as I know, have never been translated; some of which concern Mundane Astrology. I confess to having ignored or skimmed at best most of those, as my interests lie elsewhere, but I know that it was put to use in mundane astrology.

b) According to the Ephemeris Search Engine on astro-seek, this arranagmeent has never occurred in a period lasting from

https://horoscopes.astro-seek.com/ephemeris-search-engine-astrology-planet-positions

[ecosophia]

1) My Latin's pretty good but I've never tried tackling Greek. Do you know of anyone in the Hellenistic scene these days who knows that material, and will talk to a non-Hellenistic astrologer?

2) I gather that it's been longer than that; I read some time ago in a Reddit community a post by someone who'd gone looking around 10,000 years in both directions, with zero hits. On the other hand, if that's the birth chart of life on earth, those positions were current at the beginning of the Proterozoic Aeon some two and a half billion years ago...

[booklover1973]

It would be difficult to find out, because due to the chaotic character of the orbits of the planets, it is not possible to calculate their positions more than a few million years into the past or into the future.

[(Anonymous)]

1) Unfortunately I don't. I've been picking this up on my own, without much interaction with the community beyond using reference books.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,
I'm a graduate of Chris Brennan's Hellenistic astrology course and primarily use that approach in my own work. I'm not technically proficient in Koine Greek (especially from that period), but I've studied all the major translated works from the ancient astrologers. If I can be help, let me know.
- Procrastes

[ecosophia]

Thank you! My question is quite simple: do you happen to know how the Thema Mundi was used in making mundane astrology predictions in Hellenistic times?

If it matters, my focus in astrology is pretty much entirely on accurate political and economic prediction using classic mundane methods, drawing on sources from Ramesey through Raphael and Green -- no post-Rudhyar psychobabble, thank you very much. ;-)

[(Anonymous)]

The Thema Mundi was used, as near as we can tell based on the remaining texts, as an exemplar for planetary domicile, exaltation and aspectual/relationship schemes. It appears to be so foundational that more specific, detailed, predictive methods are not really tied to it. For example, Olympiodorus, commenting on another astrologer's work, illustrates the concept of angularity in a chart with reference to the Thema because this chart would presumably have been easy for even a novice astrologer to visualize. It's also worth noting that Firmicus Maternus, in the same book/chapter in which he details the Thema Mundi, repeatedly states that the individual nativities of human beings are judged against the Chart of the World. I think this is a legacy of natal astrology's primacy once the core system of astrology came together from Babylonian, Egyptian and Hellenic elements in Hellenistic Egypt.

For an "actual" time that the chart might correspond to, Demetra George writes, "The thema mundi is timed to the Egyptian New Year, which begins in summer with the heliacal rising of the star Sirius that announces the flooding of the Nile River.... Egyptian astro-theology held that the heliacal rising of a star represented the birth/rebirth of stars and hence the rebirth of the souls who were encased in stars--a fitting moment for the birth of the world" (Ancient Astrology, Vol. 1, pg. 172).

Conceptually, the birth of cosmos is a "perfect" moment against which the charts of imperfect human beings are compared, whereas the movement of time and the unfolding of a life within it rests on differing symbolism and thus requires a separate toolkit. It was really the early medieval Perso-Arabic astrologers, especially Abu Ma'shar, that really refined and developed solar returns as a predictive tool. I would dig into the mundane astrology of this period because the later European astrologers--including William Ramesey--often draw from them.

All that being said, I don't think you couldn't use the Thema Mundi for mundane astrological predictions (after all, contemporary magicians are using it to time planetary consecrations, a la Kaitlin Coppock). It would also be interesting to also see how the birth charts of individual nations fit into the Nativity of the World.

[ecosophia]

Thank you for this! My source for the Thema Mundi is the partial translation of Firmicius Maternus by Thomas Taylor that got included in one of Manly P. Hall's odder books; I'll have to doublecheck and see if the material on judging natal charts against the Thema Mundi is included there, and have a look at Firmicius Maternus more generally. As for Abu Ma'shar and his peers, they're already on the get-to list, because the great conjunctions are a branch of mundane work the classic mundane tradition I mentioned doesn't really do much with, and I want to give it more attention than I've done so far.

[(Anonymous)]

My pleasure! If you haven't settled on one yet, may I recommend Benjamin Dykes' recent translation of Firmicus, or even James Holden's? Don't bother with the Jean Brams translation--many important passages were entirely left out of the work.

[sdi]

Oh, don't go looking for the chart—you won't find it! Mercury and Venus station at most at 28° and 48° from the Sun, respectively, while the Thema Mundi has them at 30° and 60°. (Though I'll grant that I have no idea if the orbits of the inner planets have been stable for billions of years...)

Chris Brennan has an excellent discussion of the Thema Mundi, it's origin, and it's rationale, in Hellenistic Astrology, pp. 228–232. JMG, to your question, Brennan believes it to be philosophical or didactic rather than practical.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, the "Venus as comet" myths would have to be true, with her starting either in Earth's orbit or outside it.

[jprussell]

Fascinating, thank you for putting this together!

I know that due to workload reasons, you've eased off on the "how did it go?" reflective pieces on most of your mundane charts, but since this is a new experiment, do you plan on doing a retrospective in a year's time? I'd certainly be interested to see that, but I know you have very many demands on your time.

Cheers,
Jeff

[ari_ormstunga]

Super interesting! Thanks JMG.

[boccaderlupo]

Funny, and perhaps a bit of a synchronicity, but was recently reading about different variants of apokatastasis. It's typically equated with Christian universalism, the restoration and recapitulation of all things after the ages, but there's apparently another variant (Stoic, maybe?) that includes the return of the stars to their original point of embarkation.

Axé,
Fra' Lupo

[ecosophia]

It's been a while, but yes, I recall reading about a Stoic version of it with astrological dimensions.

Calibrating to History

[(Anonymous)]

Since the interpretations are speculative, have you considered looking back at historical charts? One way to avoid hindsight bias would be to have someone else generate the charts for, say, three randomly selected years in the past century, and send them to you with the dates removed. After delineating the charts, they can be "unblinded" and compared to actual history.

Some potential variations on the protocol:

1. If you'd need more context than "past century" they could be labeled with, say, which 25-year span they fall into.

2. If you want to make sure there's a pivotal year in the mix, a list of a dozen or so key years could be specified in advance (with due considerations for the difference between astrological and calendar year). The collaborator would then make sure at least one of the charts was from that list, but you wouldn't know until the end which of the key years it was, or which of the sample charts is a key year. (It's probably best from a proper practice standpoint to decide in advance whether you'd want exactly one, or at least one of the charts to be a key year.)

-- Mint Insipid Banshee

Re: Calibrating to History

[ecosophia]

That's one way to do it, certainly, but it's a lot simpler to cast a chart for a year that hasn't happened yet and see how the predictions work out. The rules of classic mundane astrology are pretty cut and dried; it's purely a matter of seeing whether this kind of chart, interpreted according to those rules, produces meaningful predictions -- and in a year, we'll have the answer.

[(Anonymous)]

> It focuses attention on military affairs and leads to significant changes and improvements in the nation’s military.

Does a return of militias qualify as a improvement in Nation's military?

[ecosophia]

Yes. At this point the US military is suffering a near-fatal case of bureaucratization -- the people who are running it have no idea how to fight (as witness Afghanistan and the failed NATO-planned counteroffensive in Ukraine) and the culture of complacency that pervades America's managerial caste makes it very likely that if we get into a shooting war any time soon, we will lose. (Not as in "have to go home without meeting our goals," but as in having to accept whatever terms the winning side chooses to dictate.) Returning to citizen militias and getting rid of most of the current military bureaucracy would mark a sharp improvement in America's capacity to defend itself.

[deborah_bender]

I'm in favor of well-regulated militias. The National Guard does not fill the bill. Nor does a police force.

My understanding of "well-regulated" is not a private army, but a militia under the supervision and direction of a democratically elected government. The jurisdictional size of the government is a practical matter: large enough to have the resources to muster, equip, train, and supervise the force, small enough to keep a handle on it.

So, something at least as big as a county that has a professional fire department, smaller than the State of California (California would have several regional militias.)

As our federal government becomes less able to handle all the responsibilities it has taken on itself since WWII, we are going to need those well-regulated militias. No legal reason I can see why a few states could not try setting up some well-regulated militias on a small scale and give them some jobs to do. There are plenty of military veterans who would be happy to lend a hand. I don't see this as being just a red state project.

[jprussell]

Not that I necessarily disagree with anything you say here, and you might be including this understanding in your recommendation above, but something that comes up a lot in Second Amendment discussions: "well regulated" at the time was understood to mean something more like "well-drilled" rather than "effectively controlled/overseen." At the time, for formations of musket-bearing soldiers to be effective, they had to move, shoot, and reload fairly precisely in unison and under command, because smooth-bore muskets are not terribly accurate. So, the emphasis was likely on "a group that gets together and trains enough to know each other, rely on each other, and likely to be effective in combat" as opposed to a hastily thrown together rabble with guns. As for how that came about, there were various approaches in the colonies - some militias were privately organized and run, some were privately run, but under charter from the colonial government, some were purely voluntary affairs, and some were directly organized by local governments.

Again, forgive me if you already knew this and you were skipping ahead to "what's the best way to ensure this outcome," it's just a topic I've encountered some heated discussion on in the past.

Cheers,
Jeff

Hmmm

[white_bear_chronicles]

A possible synchronicity here https://youtu.be/2jLgm6iNejI, unfortunately a longish video which I have only skimmed. Here Randal Carlson attempts to integrate archaic myth with developing astronomy and deep geology where he proposes that Sirius is the axis of The Grand Cycle cycle to which our Solar Logos is bound and offers the mathematical solution describing a possible proof of said relationship, yielding a subcycle duration of 12,960 years, in multiples of 50 leading (somehow) to an origin of 1.5 million years. I've always taken RC with a generous lump of salt but found him interesting and will be reviewing his presentation further. All that said to suggest that an adjustment of the 10,000 year estimate to 12,960 may bear fruit. For reading, RC references the massive Hamelets Mill work by Santillia as part of his inspiration.
Gawain

Re: Hmmm

[white_bear_chronicles]

Errp, should read by Santillana

Re: Hmmm

[ecosophia]

Should be "by de Santillana and von Dechend." I'm glancing up at my copy on the shelf right now. ;-)

Re: Hmmm

[white_bear_chronicles]

Nods his head mumbling, "should have known" ;)

[betwixttheworlds]

The next year for the executive of the US correlates really well with the six month Libra ingress you just posted.

[ecosophia]

I was intrigued but not really surprised to see this.

[(Anonymous)]

In both your Libra ingress and this chart you talk about the possibility of the death of the president or death in "high places", and in one of them I think you mentioned that there might be "more than one death."

Joe Biden is obviously not doing well, and both predictions spoke directly about the death of a current president. But I also just saw that the family of Jimmy Carter has just announced that the former president, who has been in hospice care since January, has entered the "final stage of life".

I wonder if we might be looking at some sort of double death of a current and former US president within the same few months, and if that is somehow suggested in these charts. It certainly would be dramatic for the US to bury two presidents in close proximity, even if one of them has been out of office for decades.

Just a thought that crossed my mind when I saw the news about Carter.