Toward Ecosophy

A year ago, as some of my readers may remember, I posted an astrological experiment: a set of predictions for the next year of American history based on the return of the sun to its position in the Thema Mundi -- the traditional natal horoscope of the world, as recorded in the writings of Roman astrologer Julius Firmicius Maternus. The experiment went well enough that I'll be doing it again. I should have the new predictions up in a few days.

First, though, here's a summary of how the earlier one worked out. I've posted it as a public entry on SubscribeStar here and on Patreon here. Let me know what you think.

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...

This has been a busy season for my subscribers/patrons-only mundane astrology project!  I've posted quarterly ingress charts for all five of the countries I'm currently doing -- USA, UK, India, Japan, and Australia -- as well as charts for the June 5 lunar eclipse and the June 21 solar eclipse; the final entry in this flurry of events in the heavens -- a partial penumbral lunar eclipse on July 5 -- is in process and should be up by the time the eclipse itself happens.  

In the two months or so before I start posting Libra ingresses, I plan on getting several more posts up on the upcoming Grand Mutation on December 21 -- the end of an era that's been in course since 1842, and the beginning of another that will last until 2219. I've already posted a first set of predictions, and gone back over the previous Grand Mutations in 1425, 1663, and 1842, as well as taken a look at the predictions made by Zadkiel (Richard J. Morrison) in 1842 for that Grand Mutation.  Now it's time to start looking at the destinies of individual nations as shown in the 2020 Grand Mutation chart. (Ingresses and eclipses are open to $5-a-month subscribers/patrons, the Grand Mutation charts are reserved for the $10-a-month level). 

I'd like to thank everyone who has contributed to this project and made it possible for me to devote many working days to traditional mundane astrology. Your support is deeply appreciated! Anyone who isn't part of the project yet and would like to be can find my SubscribeStar page here and my Patreon page here -- both have identical content, so choose whichever company you prefer. 

I know a lot of people are having to struggle to keep afloat in the current crisis. Among them is James, the host of the Hermitix podcast on which I've appeared fairly regularly. The joinery company that provided him with his day job has gone out of business, and he's hoping to make lemonade out of that particular lemon by making the transition to full-time podcasting. If you enjoy offbeat podcasts featuring thoughtful one-on-one interviews with figures on the fringes, and have a little spare change each month, consider becoming a patron of his via his Patreon account at https://www.patreon.com/hermitix. 

If it's any incentive, here are the four podcasts I've done with James so far: 

Collapse and Occultism (23 February 2019)

Occultism 101 (14 September 2019)

H.P. Lovecraft and Horror (22 December 2019)

Coronavirus and Collapse (21 March 2020)

Just a heads up to those interested in my posts on political astrology: the Capricorn ingress charts for 2019 for the US, UK, and Japan have now all been posted to my Patreon and SubscribeStar changes. It's taken most of a month to get all three up, and the London ingress was posted before the election -- no, the chart didn't predict the outcome, but it did indicate that Brexit is going to happen and that whoever won the election would be in a strong position. (As indeed it's turned out.) 

Next on the stack are charts for the upcoming annular solar eclipse on December 26 and the penumbral lunar eclipse on January 10. Eclipses are an ancient tool of mundane astrologers but I've done less with them so far, so my conclusions will be tentative. Still, the charts have a lot to say. 

If you're interested, and aren't yet a patron/subscriber, you can find my Patreon page here and my SubscribeStar page here.

Another quick update on the mundane astrology project -- the first of several papers on the current political astrology of the United Kingdom just went up on my Patreon and SubscribeStar pages. This one covers the 2019 Aries ingress, which is still in effect (and will be in effect until the Aries 2020 ingress replaces it). Regular readers of my blog will know that I posted a basic interpretation of the Aries ingress back in 2018; new readers can find that here; and subscribers of course can read the more detailed analysis on either of the pages linked above. 

In another week or so, when I've finished the delineation, I'll be posting the Libra 2019 ingress for London, which modifies the Aries ingress and sets the stage for six more tumultuous months of British politics, economics, and culture. Once that's done I have another piece on the Grand Mutation in 2020 on the to-do list, and then it's time to launch into the Capricorn ingresses -- USA, Japan, and the UK for sure -- plus a solar eclipse on December 26 affecting South Asia, and a lunar eclipse on January 11 affecting most of the Old World. After that I plan on assessing where I am in terms of time and income, and seeing if I can add additional countries to the ingress-chart list. 

Once again, my warmest thanks to everyone who's contributed to this project and made it possible for me to give mundane astrology the time it deserves!

I'm delighted to report that my venture into the field of political and economic astrology has received an enthusiastic welcome from readers -- enthusiastic enough that I'm going to be able to expand the number of countries for which I do forecasts and branch out a little into some of the other dimensions of mundane astrology. A hearty thank you to everyone who pledged to my Patreon or SubscribeStar accounts -- you've made it possible for me to take some time off from earning a living in other ways, and give astrology the hour or two a day it deserves. 

At my current level of pledges, I'll be doing three countries each quarter: the United States, Japan, and Great Britain. (The Libra ingress chart for Japan is in process right now; the one for Britain will follow promptly.) As pledges increase, I hope to be able to add more countries to the list. Each one of those takes a certain amount of study, astrological and otherwise -- to make sense of the Tokyo ingress chart, for example, I've had to put some serious time into studying the Japanese constitution and the nation's political history since the Second World War, not to mention the news -- but it's worth doing, and will likely feed into my blogging as well. 

I do have a question for readers. Aside from ingress charts, which are the bread and butter of the mundane astrologer, there are also eclipse charts, which predict political and social crises, and the charts for the grand conjunctions which mark the big phases of history -- and we have one of the most important of those, a Grand Mutation between Jupiter and Saturn, coming up in December of 2020. Would any of my readers be interested in a higher subscription/patronage tier, say $10 a month, with the benefit being access to my analyses of these other charts? Let me know.