Astrology, Prediction and Comment

Just a quick note about heliocentric astrology.  This is astrology that is based on a heliocentric rather than a geocentric perspective.  Heliocentric astrology is often used in financial astrology, and if one is tracking the unfolding of current events one should keep a close eye on heliocentric trends.

In terms of geocentric astrology, we know that there is a conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn on December 21 of this year.  Though at the moment, Jupiter is retrograde, and the two planets are getting further apart.  In heliocentric astrology there is no such thing as retrograde motion.  Jupiter and Saturn are therefore moving in the same direction, and their heliocentric conjunction is on Monday November 2 2020.  In other words, the day before the US Presidential Election.

However, we shouldn’t forget that there is a third planet involved in the conjunction, namely Pluto.  And on Friday June 12, in the early afternoon, New York time,  Pluto is exactly on the heliocentric Jupiter-Saturn midpoint – see the chart above.  This is a time when we can feel the full power of the Jupiter-Saturn-Pluto conjunction.  Reinhold Ebertin, in the Combination of Stellar Influences, wrote about this midpoint as follows: “A person unafraid of any trouble or work in order to attain the desired aims slowly but surely, the demonstration of immense effort. – Violent changes, separation, restriction”.

This is a time when we can feel the violent and tranformative energy of the Jupiter-Saturn-Pluto conjunction.  We can perhaps see this violence in the markets and on the streets, and for ourselves, we need to transform ourselves so as to make the very most of the times we’re living in.

There is no scientific evidience that astrology works, and there probably never will be.  The only largescale study that appeared to show statistical significance, by Michel Gauquelin, may have been methodologically flawed, and there was a possible problem with multiple comparisons.  Even if Gauquelin’s results aren’t flawed, they suggest a barebones astrological system, with no signs or aspects, where the only planets that one can use are the Moon, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

However just because there is no scientific evidence that astrology works doesn’t mean that astrology doesn’t work.  The aim of astrology is to paint a picture of a moment in time in such vivid detail that its fundamental meaning is obvious.  So obvious that it cannot be contradicted by other moments of time, where astrology fails to provided a good description.  I know that what I have just written is nonsense, from a scientific perspective, but if we practice astrology we have to go beyond the scientific method.

Let’s look at an event.  The discovery of Uranus on the evening of March 13 1781.  We don’t know the precise time, but it was between 10 and 11 pm, in Bath, England.  Here’s the chart, for 10.30 pm:

We would expect Uranus to be prominent in the horoscope, and it is.  It is above the horizon, opposition the  Mars-Saturn conjunction, and square the Sun.  These aspects give us an idea about what Uranus means.  The Mars-Saturn conjunction relates to accidents and death, and in Sagittarius it is a death that might be fiery and explosive.  The Sun-Mars square gives an image of wilfulness, and tied to Saturn it might be the violent attempt to escape restriction.  Overall, we get an idea that Uranus is a violent and perhaps malefic planet, and its link with earthquakes, explosions and revolutions makes sense.

Going back to moments in time, what is the most important event in the Twentieth Century?  That’s a controversial question, and some people might see the question purely in terms of technology and convenience.  For example, the invention of the internet or the launch of the first smart phone.  However in terms of lives and civilization, I am thinking more of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, in Sarajevo in 1914, or the detonation of an atomic bomb over Hirsoshima.  After these events, the world was never the same.  One event launched the First World War, the other actualized the threat of global nuclear destruction.

This is the chart for the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, set for 11 am on June 28 1914, in Sarajevo.  The time is close, but probably not exact:

It is the kind of chart that anyone who has entered the astrology mindset will understand, particularly if they use midpoints.  There is a Moon-Mars conjunction in the Twelfth House, which points to a hidden attack, or an ambush.  Saturn is on the Midheaven, indicating the seriousness of the event, and a Venus-Uranus opposition is on the Ascendant-Midheaven midpoint.

The Ascendant-Midheaven midpoint, along with the Sun-Moon midpoint, are the two midpoints every astrologer should include in their chart analyses.  The Ascendant-Midheaven represents the time and the place, and with Uranus on this point, we get a picture of what’s going on at 11 am on June 28 1914 in Sarajevo.  In the assassination chart, Uranus on the midpoint is given added strength by Venus.  The fact that Venus is the planet of love is irrelevant – it should instead be seen as a trigger.  And if the the assassination happened exactly at 11 am, Venus would be exactly semi-square the Midheaven.

Another midpoint to consider is Mars-Uranus.  This represents violent actions.  At the time of the assassination the Sun and Jupiter were in sesquiquadrate aspect (135 degrees) and both planets were on the Mars-Uranus midpoint.  In other words, we have the configuraton SU = MA/UR = JU.  This describes a successful assassination. Jupiter is about successful action – even though the action was murderous.  Witte and Lefeldt described the Sun on the Mars-Uranus midpoint as “Sudden bodily action.  The energetic or fierce man. Sudden injury to the body”.  Sounds about right.

Yet there is a problem.  I am an astrologer, and the assassination horoscope makes perfect sense to me.  However, a sceptic would argue that I am seeing what I want to see.  And I would accept that if you’re not up to your neck in astrological symbolism, the last few paragraphs I have written are pretty crazy.

So let us look at another chart.  A chart that is simple, beautiful and horrible:

This is the horoscope for the precise second the Hiroshima bomb exploded, at 8:16.02 am on August 6 1945, Hiroshima Time.  The bomb left the plane less than a minute earlier, when the plane was flying at 31,060 feet.  By the time of the explosion, it was 1,968 feet over the city.

It could be argued, from a technological point of view, that the Hiroshima bomb was not a major event, because the world’s first atomic explosion had already taken place, in New Mexico, the previous month.  However, it was the first atomic bomb to be dropped from an aeroplane, with the intention of killing people.  It was also the first uranium bomb – the New Mexico and Nagasaki bombs were made with plutonium.

The planet that rules uranium is of course Uranus.  When we look at the horoscope of the bombing, we can see that Uranus is exacty on the Midheaven.  The Midheaven is at 16 degrees 45 minutes Gemini, and Uranus is at 16 degrees 29 Gemini.  The Midheaven is the highest point on the ecliptic, and the horoscope clearly describes an atomic bomb, with a uranium core, exploding high in the sky.

We can mention other things about the chart. The fact that Uranus is conjunct Mars, is aspecting the Sun-Moon and Ascendant-Midheaven midpoint, and amazingly is only two minutes off the midpoint of these two midpoints.  Additionally, the Moon is making an exact conjuncton to Saturn, and the Sun is aspecting the Mars-Saturn midpoint.  However these are subtleties.  Uranus’s position right at the top of the chart, at the moment a uranium bomb explodes for the first time, leads to two alternative conclusions.  Either those planning the bombing used astrology to fine-tune the timing of the event,  or in some situations astrology works.

Technical note: A planet is considered to be on a midpoint when it is conjunct, opposition, square, semisquare or sesquiquadrate the point.  Orbs are no more than 1 minute and 30 seconds, though I generally use orbs of less than a minute.  

It doesn’t matter how you make predictions.  You can use astrology, economics, meteorology, whatever.  Some people even use seasonanality to predict things.  For example, there is a view that precious metals go down during the summer months – indeed, they call it “the summer doldrums”.  So I thought I would put this theory to the test.

I made use of daily data on silver and gold, going back to early 1968, and I divided each year into three: spring, summer and winter.  I then compared the trends.  As a measure of trend, I used Pearson’s correlation coefficient.  The coefficient ranges from 1 to -1, with a correlation of 1 representing a price that goes up in perfect unison with time, and a correlation of -1 being the opposite.  When the correlation is 0, there is no relationship between time and price.

I counted the spring months as January through to May, the summer months June through to August, and the winter months from September through to December – though probably I should have described this last period as the autumn rather than the winter.  In other words, the summer doldrums are June, July and August.  One can argue about the definition of this period, and some might say that the summer starts on July 4.  But already, in early June 2020, many pundits are saying that gold is done for the summer.

Starting off the with silver price, we can set up a box plot, which is based around the median:

As you can see, the season where silver performs the best is the spring, with a median correlation, between time and price, of +.10.  In the three month summer doldrums, the median correlation is -.003, while in the last four months it is -.31.  In other words, from a historical perspective the last four months of the year are far and away the the worst.

But are these differences statistically significant?  I tested this with a repeated measures test, because I wanted to look at relative performance, by comparing the data within each year.  I was not convinced that the data was suitable for a within subjects ANOVA, so I went for its non-parametric equivalent, the Friedman test.  By the way, this test was designed by Milton Friedman, which is appropriate, given that the precious metals are supposed to be a hedge against inflation.  This test showed that there is no signficant difference between the trends in the three seasons: chi square with two degrees of freedom was 3.23, the p value .20.  For completeness I also did three Wilcoxon signed rank tests, comparing the three seasons against each other.  None of them were statistically significant.

Then there’s gold.  Here’s the box plot:

Gold has a median trend of +.08 in spring, +.19 in summer, and -.02 in Winter.  In other words, summer is the best performing season, in terms of the median.  The mean gives a slightly different picture: +.07 for spring, +.05 for summer and .02 for winter.  When we do a Friedman test, we find that there are no signficant differences, with chi square at 2.42, p = .30.  Ditto with Wilcoxon signed rank tests.

At this stage, I will concede that there is a problem with the analysis.  If you buy gold on June 1, and sell on August 31, and there is a strong upward trend, measured by Pearson’s correlation, this doesn’t mean you have made money.  On August 31, just before you sell, the price might crash.  We therefore need to consider the absolute movement, across each season.

Here is the box plot of the price changes for silver:

We can see that in the summer there is less excitement, and the winter has some big outliers, with silver going up over 150% one winter.  This is reflected in the differences in the means and medians.  The seasons have respective medians of 2.56%, -0.54% and -0.89%.  Yet the means show a different picture, because of the influence of the outliers: 4.41%, 0.007% and  3.63%.  Using the means, we get the first hint that maybe the silver price experience  a summer doldrums effect.  We can then put the hypothesis to the test, by doing another Friedman’s test.   Chi square is 3.5, with two degrees of freedom, and the p value is .174.  In other words, it is not statistically significiant. And neither are the Wilcoxon signed rank tests used to contrast the three seasons against each other.

Let’s now move to gold.  Here are the box plots:

You can see that there is a less volatility in the summer, with the green box, representing the range between the 25th and 75th percentiles, being relatively compressed.  The summer months also have the lowest median and mean.  The medians are respectively 1.36%, 0.57% and 1.47%, the means 4.02%, 1.25% and 3.31%.  Yet the Friedman’s test is not statistically signficant – the chi square is .346, the p value .841.  It goes without saying that the Wilcoxon tests were likewise insignificant.

Yes, there is evidence that the price of gold and silver don’t move as much during the summer months.  However in terms of directional movement, the theory that the precious metals suffer from a summer doldrums effect is unsupported.

There has just been a Full Moon eclipse.  Theoretically, the places you’d expect this Full Moon to have the biggest impact would be the ones where it is on an angle – in other words, the Midheaven/IC or the Ascendant/Descendant.  The Full Moon on July 5 2020 was on the Ascendant through a swathe of Europe, which included Berlin, the German capital.  Here is the chart of the Full Moon, set for Berlin:

The Moon is exactly on the Ascendant, the Sun exactly on the Descendant.  So we might expect Berlin to feel the brunt of the lunation’s violent energies.  Having said that, in my experience this approach to astrology is hit and miss.  While in theory Berlin may feel the brunt of it, in practice we might see nothing.  Though if you’re German, and you’re interested in the machinations of German and European politics, you may notice that something comes out into the open, and something comes to an end.  And in general, there will be an atmosphere of instability and violence.

Looking at the world in general, it is worth having a closer look at the eclipse.  We can set up the chart using a 90-degree dial – a technique pioneered by the great German astrologer Alfred Witte.  This means ignoring the signs, and grouping the planets depending on whether they are Cardinal, Fixed or Mutable.  We get this:

When you see the Full Moon like this, you can start to see the underlying structure.  The Sun, Moon and Mars are all in the 16th degree of Cardinal signs, so they are clumped together.  They are in 45/135 degree aspect to Saturn and Vulcanus, which is why we see these two planets on the other side of the pointer.  This axis is in turn on the Uranus-Pluto midpoint.  We then have the following tree:

The tree includes the hypothetical planet Vulcanus, which is connected with massive power and the use of force.  Uranus-Pluto is about the desire for a transformative rebellion.  Overall, we get an explosive situation, where there is a strong temptation to use force.  Many people want to attack the status quo, but the forces of reaction are capable of striking back, with an iron fist.