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?

[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.

[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?

[(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

[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

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

[(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?

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

[betwixttheworlds]

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