"Unveiling a New Tool" (Garth Allen)

[Jim Eshelman]

A three-part article by Garth Allen, titled "Unveiling a New Tool," appeared in the May, June, and July 1957 issues of American Astrology Magazine. This article was historically momentous for two reasons:

First, and foremost: It documents how Garth Allen (Donald A. Bradley) "rectified" the Sidereal zodiac. Up to that point, the boundaries of the Sidereal zodiac were known to the nearest degre. By exploring the viability of Sidereal solar and lunar cardinal ingress charts, Garth Allen was able to demonstrate that a 0°06'05" adjustment was needed in the presumed boundaries. Ultimately, that is the gargantuan importance of the series.

Additionally, though, the article documented his earliest experiments with these ingresses, and what he learned. It is a rarely-tapped source. A summary of the articles have been on this site for years. I've decided it's time to type them up in their entirety so everyone can read the subtleties of the original presentation for themselves.

What follows is where it all began...!

[Jim Eshelman]

Unveiling a New Tool --
Entering a New Era in Mundane Forecasting
by Garth Allen

One question that must occur is that if the revolutions [solar & lunar returns] should be worked for the sidereal zodiac, so ought ingresses. That is to say, one should take the time that the Sun enters the cardinal constellations, instead of its entry into the signs. But the usual ingresses [equinoxes & solstices] have proved themselves, time and again, to be valid, and it must remain for the advocates of the sidereal zodiac to demonstrate that theirs are better. Such a demonstration would, to my mind, be more conclusive than many personal returns, because the times of the ingresses and the subsequent events are on record. If these new ingresses are better, then the sooner this is proved and acknowledged, the happier it will be for all of us. -- Charles E. O. Carter, Editorial, "Astrology," Autumn 1949

In the years since England's finest astrological mind penned the particular editorial from which we quote, the question he raised has been gnawing away at our intellectual vitals. His proposition was so fairly stated that the subject of Mundane Astrology has become almost a gadfly to advocates of the sidereal zodiac. Personally we have always been convinced of the validity of the Sun's tropical ingresses as they are charts struck for the moments of literal astronomical phenomena. In other words, they represent actual occurrences quite aside from the matter of "zodiacking" as such, in keeping with Elbert Benjamine's premise that all celestial "line-crossing" has significance in the Mundane sense.

We knew intuitively that Carter must be right because the superiority of the personal sidereal revolutions has been established by comparative statistics of such caliber that some advocates of the tropical zodiac have been citing this same material to scientific outsiders as proof that astrology in general is now on a scientific footing and easily provable. We were convinced of the rightness of his idea, that is, but confess to having done little or nothing about it until recently. The purely individual branch of inquiry has kept us to adventurously preoccupied, we kept postponing the investigation in the hope that some "George" somewhere would do it. We finally decided to take up the gauntlet ourselves and see if there really was gold in "them thar starfields" from the Mundane point of view. It wasn't wholly a blind plunge into unfamiliar terrain, as we had often made notes along these lines which indicated where to start the search for a workable sidereal approach to Mundane interpretation - if there was one.

Quite naturally, the ingresses were our primary concern, and our notes regularly point out a peculiar sensitivity of the 23rd and 24th degrees of the [tropical] signs, or, simply, the areas known to contain the dividing lines between the constellations. The best example we observed was the fact that Mars was stationary around the 24th degree of the sign Capricorn during much of August 1939. Using the longitude of the vernal point with the star Spica as fiducial [Spica at 29°00'00" Virgo], which is the best determinant of the zodiac's confines in popular use to date, we were impressed by a striking relationship between the Moon and Mars in the four "cardinal ingresses" during the lunar month climaxed by the outbreak of World War II.

On August 6, 1939, the Moon and Mars were square by 1°53' at the time of the Moon's entry into sidereal Aries a la the Spica-based zodiac, A week later on August 13th, the Moon and Mars were in opposition by 0°42' during the Cancer incursion. On August 19th, only 0°05' separated a perfect square of the Moon and Mars at the time of the lunar passage into Libra. To cap the series, on August 26th when the Moon entered Capricorn, the Moon and Mars were only 0°02' from a partile conjunction on the threshold of the constellation that is the exaltation of the god of war. Before the final lunar week was over, World War II had flared into grim reality! To our knowledge a similar series with comparable war potential has not occurred in modern times. But even this astonishing situation is not the whole story inasmuch as there had been a conjunction of the Moon and Mars within a degree of being exact at the time of the Sun's ingress of sidereal Capricorn earlier that year. And when one realizes that in the sidereal Cancer ingress, taking place in July 1939, there was a close opposition of the Moon and Mars [0°06'], the picture becomes fabulous, to rework that lately overworked adjective.

The standard Aries Ingress of 1939 [i.e., the vernal equinox chart] also contained a remarkable war-potential, inasmuch as Mars was only 0°07' from a perfect square of the Sun, with the Moon close enough to the Sun to further spark the configuration. The 1939 Vernal Equinox has always been the touchstone of our personal belief in the validity of charts cast for crossings of the colures. The reader will notice that our published "sidereal world forecasts" in the past have been based simply on the sideralized version of the same charts used by tropical astrologers. A new era in Mundane forecasting is now dawning for us all with the putting to use of the new tool being unveiled in this report.

Research projects of various sorts along quite other lines than the Mundane very clearly supported Cyril Fagan's contention that the zodiac with Spica marking Virgo 29° was correct or so very nearly the truth that it seemed futile to entertain other suggested frameworks. If Spica does not designate precisely 29°00'00" of Virgo, it is obvious that Spica does fall within a fraction of a degree of that point. But an even more certain certainty is the physical impossibility that the apparent body of any particular star can literally represent any universal zero-point. Individual stars are practical reference points and can be used as proxies for cosmic divisions, but no single heavenly body can have absolutely no proper motion and retain zero latitude for all time. Still, such bright stars as those used by astrology's originators are found to be such handy markers in the sky that modern students have had no alternative than to adopt the Spica fiducial as a tentative standard for all practical purposes. Meanwhile, our private conviction had been that it might be generations before an improvement of this value could be expected, if - and this was a big if - the idea of a purely sidereal-based Mundane Astrology turned out to be just wishful thinking. The refinement was inevitable, the facts at hand insisted, but it would probably not be made with our lifetime. Not unless... not unless the sidereal ingresses turn out to be "radical" moments. Random experiments with the solar ingresses in terms of the vernal point ordinarily used, however, got us nowhere. The aspects seemed fitting, but the cuspal contacts which logic demanded exist just didn't exist. Later on in our search the reason for this cleared up, for an adjustment of about two and a half hours solved the problem. This adjustment was not arrived at, though, by tinkering with the solar charts. It was made through study of the lunar ingresses that we found the answer, and the puzzle of the solars automatically solved itself.

[Jim Eshelman]

Following the course suggested by our notebook with such situations as those Moon-Mars patterns in the 1939 skies, and using the Spica fiducial for lack of anything better to work with, it took only a few sample mundane charts - the Moon's cardinal ingresses for various historic events - to prove that Carter's "so ought ingresses" was truly an accurate guess if not psychic foresight! To shorten a long story, we found that the Moon's entries into the cardinal constellations (Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn) produced charts which were often uncanny in their symbolic description of mundane affairs of the periods and places for which they were calculated. After having accumulated quite a batch of experimental lunar ingress maps for momentuous events of every kind ranging from tornadoes to assassinations, from conflagrations to royal weddings, we could see that only a minor displacement of a few minutes of arc in the Moon's longitude would yield awesomely perfect angular contacts in many cases and improve the "symbolic pictures" in many other instances.

"The ingresses with Spica at 29°00' Virgo seemed to be occurring a few minutes of time later than they should be. They were highly appropriate but the appropriateness could be improved upon. The charts as they stood were a "good fit" and not at all annoying like the Sun's cardinal ingresses, which were decidedly out of kilter when it came to the all-important matter of cuspal contacts. We had so many lunar charts suggesting that they needed only slight amendment, however, that the sensible procedure was to determine what particular position of the Moon would eliminate the bulk of the minor displacements that were evident. This correction, clearly, would give us a starting point for tackling the ore intricate problem of the solars. A correction was readily arrived at: all we had to do was push the Moon back about six minutes of arc, and, behold, the shoe immediately fitted. We've worn it comfortably ever since.

The Moon's contact of 29°54' of the mutable constellations of the Spica defined zodiac, therefore, represents the Moon's contact with 0°00' of the cardinal constellations of the genuine sidereal zodiac. This is now so certain that the discovery means that, probably for the first time in the history of man, we now know where the Creator's zodiac has its natural divisions. The clincher in making this discovery was the remarkable similarity between the lunar Capricorn ingresses covering the dates and places of the two most devastating volcanic eruptions of modern times. In fact, even before the statistical averaging was called for, our original choice of 29°54' as the true reference point resulted from two simple calculations which deserve description here.

The Krakatau eruption, at Lat. 6S10, Long. 105E26, on August 26, 1883, 3:00 A.M. GMT, claimed at least 30,000 lives. On the date of the Moon's Capricorn ingress prior to the catastrophe Saturn was on the Ascendant in mundo of the volcano when the sidereal time was 10:21:08, which equates to 5:42:17 A.M. GMT, on August 16, 1883. At this moment the Moon was in 23°07' of the tropical sign Capricorn. In terms of Fagan's Spica based zodiac, the vernal point was at 6°47' Pisces, so the equivalent position of the Moon was 29°54' of the constellation Sagittarius.

Though its destructive perimeter was smaller, the eruption of Mount Pelee on May 8, 1902 took as great, if not a greater toll, of lives than the Krakatau explosion. The monstrous blast took place when it was 11:57 A.M. at Greenwich, and six minutes later more than 30,000 residents of St. Pierre, Martinique were dead. At 14°51' North and 61°10' west, Saturn was in exact in mundo conjunction with the Ascendant at a sidereal time of 1:36:28, when it was 3:14:34 P.M. in Greenwich on April 29, 1902. The Moon at this moment was 23°23' of the tropical sign Capricorn. Since the vernal point was then 6°31' Pisces, this means that the Moon was at 29°54' Sagittarius - in exact agreement with the Krakatau case for an identical astronomical circumstance! Needless to say, similar checks made averaged out to the same reference point - progressively different in terms of tropical longitude but consistently within a minute or so of 29°54' when the Spica based equivalents were found.

A refinement of the new-found value, to seconds of arc, is necessary inasmuch as the moment of the solar ingress is shifted about a half-minute of time every difference of one second of arc. For students who wish to experiment on their own until the account of our "adventure in discovery" is continued next month, we suggest the use of 29°53'55". Angular cusps of the solar ingresses are very sensitive to malefic transits, as witness their synchronization with tragic happenings. Following this cue to correct our charts, tentatively cast for 29°54'00" pending refinement, we found from inspection of ephemeris positions for the hours of 27 major catastrophes of the past that an average displacement of ten minutes of time would yield the desired correction. But when it become conspicuous that the dating of events was a matter of progression via the "Quotidian rate," we were provided with a means to pinpoint exact sidereal times. This process soon led to the realization that only a two-minute difference sufficed. In other words, only a 5" correction of the 29°54'00" value was called for. Further research may alter this correction slightly but until statistics split this astronomical hair for us, we are settling on a vernal point increased by 0°06'05" over the Spica one. We have a list of the times of all Capricorn ingresses back to 1820, based on this determination and hope to make it available to all interested. As the critical times are all-important, most students and tropical fans will no doubt wish to study these same data in a more familiar zodiacal backdrop. By rights, all mundane charts should be cast in the form of "mundoscopes," and the question of zodiacs does not impinge upon mundoscopy - fortunately for all of us.

[Jim Eshelman]

Early in our evaluations of a wide variety of charts we had noticed a persistent tendency for the Capricorn and Cancer lunar ingresses to carry more weight than the Aries and Libra charts. Geting down to brass tactics on this cue, we decided to calculate the four preceding ingresses for each date and place at which something of great moment had occurred. This confirmed the suspicion that the Capricorn and Cancer charts were stronger than the other two. Then a process of separation proved that the Capricorn charts had it all over the Cancer charts, implying that the Capricorn charts were comparable in their impact with personal "conjunction lunar returns," the Cancer charts seeming to act like demi-lunar returns. As we shall see, this rule holds true for the solar ingresses, too, in which the Capricorn ingress stands out as a "master chart" for the whole year. It is as though the other ingresses are clinchers and timers, helping to narrow down the periods in which a series of stresses are most likely to precipitate as the event itself. Moreover, the cusps of the Capricorn charts are painfully sensitive to subsequent transits, often dating exactly the major event of the period in question. A rough rule we have devised in accord with the facts as we have found them is that there is a 4-1-2-1 ratio involved in estimating the power of the four cardinal points, Capricorn being twice as strong as Cancer and Cancer being about twice as significant as Aries and Libra.

Although weekly "stepping up" is characteristic of lunars, as witness the August 1939 series, do not get the impression that that a single chart for a given week is not wholly self-contained, for there is sufficient proof that each wheel is radical in itself. Our mass of data suggests that it is always worth-while, in fact, advisable, to study a given event in the light of the "chain of charts" leading up to it, with emphasis on the Capricorn and Cancer charts, in that order. Still, the immediate lunar is usually so lucid, alone considered, that prior links in the chain may be thought of as auxiliaries or backdrops. To illustrate our point, we drew up all the pertinent ingresses for the 126 worst coal mine disasters in U.S. history, using a list published by the government's Bureau of Mines. Even though about half of these occurred in weeks covered by lunar entries into Aries and Libra, there was a special "badness" about the preceding Capricorn and Cancer charts. Nevertheless, and this we want to emphasize, those mine disasters occurring after Aries and Libra ingresses hold their own, chartwise, without need for a supporting Capricorn or Cancer pattern.

Using the preceding lunar ingress no matter which cardinal point happened to be involved, a simple tally shows that 14 of the 126 mine disasters occurred with Saturn within 1°40' of an angular cusp, by straight ecliptic reckoning. This means that if astrological influences are a grand delusion, according to probability theory there should be 4.71, or close to 5, rather than 14 of the 126 charts with Saturn so precariously mounted in the wheels. Since the standard deviation is 2.13 and the excess over mean expectancy is 9.29, the test ratio amounts to a boisterous 4.36, much too big to be dismissed as a mere coincident. Scientifically, a ratio only half this size would be enough to give a skeptic pause, since a ratio of 3.89 marks the 10,000 to 1 level of significance while 4.42 means that the odds are 100,000 to 1 against chance being an explanation for the high number. As our actual ratio is very close to the 100,000 to 1 level, it is safe to declare that the weekly Moon charts are radical in themselves. For the record, with this article is a list of the dates and places of the 14 mine disasters for which Saturn was within a hundred minutes of arc of an angular cusp at the moment of the Moon's last preceding entry into a cardinal constellation. Note that the list includes the worst mine disaster in American history, that of the Monongah, West Virginia tragedy which snuffed out 361 lives.

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Lunar Ingresses and Fourteen Coal Mine Disasters
Event Date	Mine Site	Deaths	Ingress	Saturn’ Position
May 23, 1899	Cumnock, N.C.	39	Libra	1°15' West of M.C.
May 27, 1901	Dayton, Tenn.	20	Cancer	0°04' Below ASC.
July 10, 1902	Johnstown, Pa.	112	Cancer	0°46' West of M.C.
Feb. 20, 1905	Virginia City, Ala.	108	Cancer	1°35' East of I.C.
Mar. 18, 1905	Red Ash, Va.	24	Cancer	0°33' West of M.C.
Jan. 4, 1906	Coaldale, W. Va.	22	Aries	1°26' Below ASC.
Jan. 29, 1907	Stuart, Va.	84	Cancer	1°30' East of I.C.
Dec. 1, 1907	Fayette City, Pa.	34	Libra	0°56' East of M.C.
Dec. 6, 1907	Monongah, W. Va.	361	Libra	1°21' East of M.C.
Jan. 10, 1909	Ziegler, Ill.	26	Cancer	0°42' Under DESC.
Mar. 20, 1912	McCurtain, Okla.	73	Aries	1°26' West of M.C.
Mar. 28, 1924	Yukon, W. Va.	24	Capricorn	0°47' Above ASC.
Mar. 16,1940	St. Clairsville, O.	72	Aries	0°40' Above DESC.
Dec. 26, 1945	Pineville, Ky.	24	Cancer	1°40' Below ASC.

[Jim Eshelman]

The most "surefire" way to prove or disprove the worth of any proposed system is to test it by means of the most outstanding events in given categories. One has only to compute the ingress figures for such whopping big events as the Halifax explosion, the Texas City diaster, the Chicago fire and the San Francisco catastrophe, to appreciate the clarity and unassailability of the sidereal system. Even more conclusive than single examples, of course, are groups of charts having something in common, such as a series we have compiled of the 40 worst railroad wrecks in our nation's history, or another, that of the most tragic fires on record. The marvel of the sidereal approach is the manner in which the basic precepts of astrology are shown in operation at full throttle. The basic precepts to which we refer are the predominance of the angular cusps and the fidelity of planetary natures - precepts all but forgotten nowadays in this era of grab bag delineations where anything goes in the way of acceptable explanations as long as it sounds astrological. By fidelity is meant symbolic appropriateness of the astrological patterns. It is not enough to point out the numerous bad aspects involved in a situation, for astrology rises or falls with the fitness of the symbolism entailed. The planetary design in a chart must jibe with the event, else the interpretive frame of reference is not a valid one. In actual practice, the play of the malefics typifies unfortunate events o any kind and the exercising of the benefics is typical of welcome developments, so the arenas of planetary action are really quite simple to identify.

The limitations of space for illustrations is always a problem for a writer with a passion to teach and it has been a tough decision to select just four lunar ingresses to use as eye-catchers in this particular article. "Historical worsts" are clearly our best bets, so we will by-pass examples of happier events even though it is a temptation to exhibit such superb charts as the Capricorn entry of November 9, 1918, 7:36 PM GMT, which draped Jupiter, trine the Sun and Venus, across the horizon of the Western Front. Terminology is also problem, so for sake of brevity and easy identification we are calling the various lunar ingresses by quickly understood names, i.e., "Arilunar" for the Aries ingress, "Canlunar" for the Cancer one, and then "Liblunar" and "Caplunar." When we treat the more overriding solar ingresses, the same labeling device will come into use, the charts being called the "Arisolar," the "Cansolar," the "Libsolar" and the "Capsolar." Then there is the confusion regarding which reckoning of the vernal point is being referred to. So for the time being we wish to call the "new" and true vernal point by the qualifying term synetic to distinguish it from the Spica based value in current use. The word synetic has a flavor that hints grandly of the togetherness which is the very essence of astrology. The synetic vernal point has the distinction of being the only one discovered and established exclusively through observational methods. It would probably never have come to light were it not for the groundwork laid by Cyril Fagan which showed clearly where to build our observation tower.


Figure 1 is the Liblunar for the locality of Monongah covering the week of the most terrible mine disaster on record. It is so vicious a chart as to be self-explanatory, what with Saturn on the Meridian, explosive Uranus on the Descendant and Neptune rising.

The worst railroad accident in American history took a toll of 101 lives at Nashville, Tennessee under the Caplunar of Figure 2. Note the symbolic aptness of Mercury, the primary planet of locomotion, on the Descendant and closely squared y Mars, among other telltale items. Mercury prominent and afflicted is typical of travel tragedies of all kinds.

Figures 3 and 4 are the lunar ingresses preceding the two worst theater fires in national history, the Arilunar covering the 602-death Iroquois Theater fire in Chicago (Dec. 30, 1903) and the Canlunar prior to the Conway Theater conflagration in Brooklyn (Dec. 5, 1876) in which 289 patrons perished. These charts are loaded with indications of the tragedies, but the coincidence that Mars was on the Ascendants of both localities is virtually fantastic. Our collection of sidereal ingress charts for "worst fires" has Mars conjunct an angle so often that we are easily convinced that this discovery will rapidly become one of the basic tools of Mundane Astrology.

The industrious student will quickly see the merit in this discovery by casting, say, just the Caplunars for events of his own choosing. Capsule preview of the next installment of this report: The secret of actual dating of events lies in the Sun's Capricorn ingress. Lucid as the lunars usually are by themselves, they cannot hold a candle to the effectiveness of the solar ingresses, as we shall prove. In Mr. Carter's wise words: "If these new ingresses are better, then the sooner this is proved and acknowledged, the happier will be for all of us." Therefore, our first "mundane prediction" is to confidently forecast an increase in happiness for the whole astrological field.

(Continued next month)

[Jim Eshelman]

Last month we gave a summary of how we tested Charles E. O. Carter's proposition and found it rewarding beyond all expectations. In fact, there were moments during our adventure in discovery when we were emotionally moved by the sheer bigness of what we learned. It was clear from the outset that this new revelation was no mere "interesting sidelight," potentially worth only an article or two in the astrological press. The utter directness of the sidereal ingresses, the purity of their indications, is a guarantee that the field of Mundane Astrology is entering a new era.

The first major fact our investigation ferreted out was the efficacy of the Moon's ingresses of the cardinal constellations. A belief in Lunar ingresses in tropical astrology has never got off the ground, to our knowledge, or we would have heard or read about them by now. In professional circles there seems to be almost as much confusion as canonized knowledge in connection with Solar ingresses, when the subject is looked at in the light of differences between attitude and activity. After almost half a century of writing and publishing Mundane forecasts based on the tropical ingresses, Llewellyn George stated he was convinced that the Aries ingress had influence over only the three Spring months, so that all four of the seasonal maps boasted equal importance. In effect, at one whack by the best known Mundane specialist of the twentieth century, the prestige of the Aries ingress in standard astrology was reduced by 75%! In recent years the January issues of astrological magazines have been carrying forecasts of world conditions for the coming year based on the Winter Solstice chart which is seemingly supplanting the Aries figure as a basic "world horoscope." And not long ago one such cover-featured forecast stemmed from a chart for the stroke of standard time midnight of New Year's Day at the nation's capital, it being read somewhat like a horary figure in answer to the question, "What will this year bring?" There have also been zealous supporters of the classical Neomenia, the first New Moon after the Vernal Equinox, among them the late and great Elizabeth Aldrich, but there is a drastic departure between the ancient and modern concepts of the lunation. A spot-check through periodicals on hand shows that less than half o the featured "world forecasts" in the past ten years have actually been based on the Aries Ingress chart. It would seem that the present writer, an avid Siderealist, has more faith in the primary tool of tropical Mundane Astrology than most Mundane representatives.

Parade of Proof
What is probably the most basic tenet of Mundane Astrology, upheld throughout history and echoed by every text, is a rule bluntly worded this way in Manly Hall's Astrological Keywords: "A general calamity never afflicts any people but hat Saturn denotes it." The truth of this precept is borne out so much more vividly by the sidereal ingress charts than by methods heretofore advanced that there is hardly any comparison. In the sidereal Mundane system the rule means just what it says without need for mental figure skating to lace the proper network of correspondence together. The succession of great calamities in human history is a continuous dramatization of this rule. One has only to cast the 1923 Capsolar chart for Tokyo, seeing Saturn on the Midheaven, to appreciate this claim. On September 1, 1923, when transiting Saturn moved to partile conjunction with the meridian, the most famous earthquake of modern times took a toll of 143,000 lives in Tokyo and its environs. Another outstanding example is the position of Saturn on the 1914 Capsolar Ascendant of Avezzano, Italy. The Avezzano earthquake, with its death toll of 39,000, is an important case from the technical point of view, since the temblor struck on the very last day of the sidereal year (January 13, 1915), to corroborate what so much other evidence indicates about the Capricorn ingresses.

The Capricorn chart, endless data proves to our astonishment, is the master chart of the entire year for any locality, just as the Caplunar is a master chart for the whole sidereal month. Why this should be so we do not know, but the facts are incontestable and must be reported, and acted upon, without adulteration by preconceptions we might have had. We are obligated to believe an impressive parade of proof that, so far as mundane affairs are concerned, the Capricorn ingresses wield the baton. It might be said, rather facetiously, that the discovery of the true "mundane year" results in a kind of "lame duck amendment" for astrology!

What is surely one of the most incredible coincidences in astrological history is the situation involving the placements of Saturn in the Capricorn charts for the Krakatau and Mont Pelee catastrophes touched on in last month's article. At the very minute of the Moon's entry into sidereal Capricorn in both cases, Saturn was exactly on the western horizon of the volcanoes to the exact minute of arc. But the coincidence does not end there. The other half of the story is the Sun's Capricorn ingress charts for the years in question. Transiting Saturn, on the very dates of the eruptions, was on the angular cusp in the Capsolar maps - on the Ascendant of Mont Pelee and on the Midheaven of Krakatau! This is amazing only because such wonderful astrological performance is not commonly met with in systems previously used.

[Jim Eshelman]

Yes, Saturn indeed denotes calamity, both the Solar and Lunar ingresses for calamitous events of all kinds testifying to this truth. Take the Moon's entry into Capricorn on November 19, 1917, 9:30 A.M. GMT, for an impressive example. At 63°35' west longitude the Midheaven was 20°41' Cancer. Saturn was 20°54' Cancer. The bitter cold on the morning of December 6th in port city called Halifax was terrible even for Nova Scotia winters. Out in the Narrows, a waterway linking Halifax Harbor and Bedford Basin, a freighter rammed into a munitions laden vessel at approximately 8:30 A.M., Atlantic Standard Time. Tanks of benzine stowed on the main deck of the Mont Blanc caught fire. at just 9:06 A.M. occurred one of the worst man-blamed disasters on record. The gigantic explosion of the munitions ship killed a total of 1,266 people on shore, injured more than 6,000 and left 25,000 homeless in frigid weather.

The Halifax disaster would have been worth citing had Saturn been a full five or even more degrees from the Caplunar Midheaven. But as you can see, the meridian conjunction was exact. There's more to the Halifax story than this Moon ingress, for the Solar chart is also eloquent. On the day of the disaster the transiting Moon was conjunct Mars in the Capsolar Midheaven [He means: In the 10th house], both square the transiting Sun, and the progressed Capsolar is one of the many examples of the way in which the quotidian rate o progression accurately date the fulfilment of a radical indication. At the Capricorn ingress, Mars at 10°10' Capricorn opposed Neptune at 10°11' Cancer. On December 6th, almost eleven months later, progression brought this opposition to alignment with the meridian of Halifax itself. With the Caplunar so perilous at the same time, "all hell broke lose."

The Sun's entry into any of the four cardinal constellations produces a radical chart, but it appears that only the Capsolar wheel can be progressed. The reader will recall the rough rule we framed in last month's article to the effect that there seems to be a 4-1-2-1 ratio in the relative strengths of the four cardinal points, Capricorn being twice as potent as Cancer and Cancer having twice the impact of Aries and Libra. Moreover, we are certain that each chart is influential for the full cycle it inaugurates. This need not be viewed as a complication so far as the art of delination is concerned, for we have reason to believe that for general purposes the work involved in religiously casting all possible charts in a sequence is often more bother than it is worth. Having all the minor charts available for detailed reference is, of course, desirable in every instance, and far be it from us to encourage slothfulness in study habits. (The most popular coordinates with many of astrology's fans are "lassitude and lougetude"!)

The Capricorn charts stand out head and shoulders over all the others. For example, the horrible Ohio prison fire of 1930 was very clearly depicted in every ingress chart applying to the date and and locality, but the Capsolar chart does it so spectacularly, and dates the tragedy so exactly, the other maps seem to be but verification of the pattern. Experiment has shown this to be the usual state of affairs so that the degree of importance a student can attach to the individual links in the "chain of charts" is a matter of scholarship and thoroughness of approach. The angular cusps of the Sun's Cancer ingress appear to be almost as sensitive to transits as the angles of the Capsolar chart, particularly where natural disasters, earthquakes, tidal waves, tornadoes, and the like, are concerned. But only the Capicorn charts are "progressable," or at least that is what we have concluded thus far in our study. Any chart that is radical remains sensitive to transiting influences until its cycle elapses. Overshadowing and overhelming all the "static radicals," however, is the Capricorn ingress with its ceaseless dynamics.

Every horoscope contains twelve responsive points in addition to the house cusps - ten planets and those points on the ecliptic which are just ninety degrees from the Midheaven and the Ascendant, the latter being called the Nonagesimal. In the lunar ingresses for disastrous fires, by way of example, if Mars is not in the immediate foreground, chances are you'll find it exactly conjunct or opposite the Nonagesimal where it squares both the Ascendant and Descendant. For events of colossal consequences like seismic upheavals, Saturn is apt to be exactly square the meridian if it is not conjunct an angular cusp itself. This is illustrated perfectly by the 1900 Capsolar for Galveston, Texas - the year and site of the greatest single disaster ever to strike the United States. The hurricane whipped tidal wave that swept over Galveston the evening of September 8th, reaching its peak of fury at about 7:45 P.M. CST, took more than 6,000 lives and seriously injured twice that number. The Cancer ingress [Cansolar] is vivid enough, alone considered, showing Neptune exactly on Galveston's Ascendant in close opposition to setting Saturn, both in mundo square to the Moon in Aquarius ("the Deluge") at the Midheaven. The Moon in "the constellation of the waves" was closely square Pluto, which is interesting because Pluto signifies superlatives and unprecedented quantities. It is the symbolically perfect Saturn-Neptune opposition that rivets our curiosity most since nothing in astrology could better describe the vengeance of Poseidon! The Capricorn ingress occurred January 13, 10:44 P.M. GMT, with 23:56:40 as the sidereal time in Galveston. The following tells its own story:

Galveston Midheaven 5°45' Pisces
Transiting Saturn 5°07' Sagittarius
Transiting Neptune 5°46' Gemini

[Jim Eshelman]

The actual date of an event is predetermined by the progression of the Capsolar chart via the quotidian rate, to be defined and discussed shortly. Outstanding events are mirrored in several ways, however, and it is often a question as to what particular configuration in a chorus of possibilities actually screamed the loudest. Take the famous unsolved mystery of the Wall Street bomb of September 16, 1920, as a case in point. Again, every chart concerned is pregnant with significance and could be offered as the cause of the episode. New York was suffering an adverse Capsolar as it was, what with Saturn conjunct its Ascendant. When the Moon entered Capricorn prior to the event, Mars was in the exact degree on the Descendant of Manhattan. Just one minute pat noon on September 16th, with Mars having moved up to the meridian of the Capsolar, squaring Saturn in the Ascendant 39 persons died and 400 were maimed or injured in the blast that rocked the financial district. The deaths and damage resulted from flying clouds of shrapnel, for the murderer had covered his wagon load of dynamite with 500 pounds of broken sash weights. Every chart pertinent to this event glitters with appropriate indications of the detonation and it would have been theoretically possible to have predicted a crisis of malefic influences for the New York area by any of a number of ways.

Most events are precipitated by a similar unison of forces. Once in a while, however, you'll find what apparently is an astrological lone wolf - a single, acutely powerful circumstance synchronizing with a particular happening. A good example of "lonewolfery" of this type is the way in which Mars, quite free of qualifying or reinforcing aspects, will transit an angular cusp for a locality and give every fireman in town a good workout. It takes more than this to provoke an event of the first magnitude, however. Transiting Mars was conjunct the Capsolar Descendant of Boston the night of November 28, 1942, which is enough to worry any fire department. But the Capsolar chart itself shows Saturn right on Boston's Ascendant for the year, so the transit of Mars to the horizon also became a brutal opposition to the ingress Saturn. The holocaust at the Cocoanut Grove night club, starting about 8:30 P.M., killed 491 patrons in all. At that hour, incidentally, transiting Venus and Saturn were only 0°10' from exact opposition in Boston's foreground ("misfortune for merrymakers"), as though to echo the warning of the ingress itself which showed rising Saturn only 0°35' from a square to Venus in 27°12' of Capricorn. The degree is mentioned because it is the precise "throne of Mars" in classical astrology! At the hour of the fire the Moon was conjoining Boston's 5th house cusp [i.e., the 5th cusp of its Capsolar] while forming a zodiacal T-square with transiting Mars and ingress Saturn.

Let's get right on to the most fascinating feature of all, the progression of the Capricorn ingress. The method is so simple even those students who bemoan their lack of a knack for mathematics can handle the simple addition and subtraction involved with no trouble at all. The rate of progression, which changes the cusps of a chart by about a degree per day during the year, is what Fagan dubbed the "Q2" to distinguish it from the "Q1" which is identical with what is widely called the birth diurnal system. The letter Q is simply the abbreviation for quotidian, a word that means "daily." The Q2 is merely the birth diurnal rate of "turning the wheel" with a slight adjustment of ten seconds of time per hour or change in the right ascension of the mean Sun. The gimmick is more difficult to define in words than to use in actual practice. The right ascension of the mean Sun is nothing more nor less than the sidereal time given in the ephemeris, which, as you know, increases by 3 minutes and 57 seconds every day. On casting a chart of any kind, always make a special note of the position of the R.A.M.S. thinking of it as a celestial body that moves ahead at the steady rate of 0:03:57 per day. For every hour of time shown by a clock, the R.A.M.S. moves ahead about 10 seconds.

Well, the sidereal time of the progressed Capsolar chart for any date and hour of the year is found by adding to the sidereal time of the year's chart the difference between the transiting R.A.M.S. and the radical R.A.M.S. at the time of the ingress, and then adding a little correction of 10 seconds for each hour of this difference. The more fastidious student, of course, wishes to use the more exact value of 9.856 seconds per hour, for the fact that the correction is nor precisely 10.000 seconds means a tiny accumulated error of 3 full seconds by the end of the year, not enough to fuss about but enough to irk a scientific critic! We will not take time and space here to illustrate the calculations of the quotidian, since it is our pleasure to announce that any reader or student interested in testing or studying this system in the zodiac of your choice, since only the times are vital, can have a free list of all Capsolar data from 1821 to 1960 by sending the author the request accompanied by a self-addressed stamped envelope. With the list is full instructions, with examples, of the quotidian calculation.

[An observation: From these instructions, it isclear that Bradley was not calculating quotidian planets, which explains why there are no instaces of lunar progressions in this work. He could have IMO opinion simplified these manual instructions by telling you to add the difference (between natal and transiting R.A.M.S.) to the time and date of the Capsolar - no 10 sec/hr correction needed - and do a chart for the resulting time. Instead, he gave the slightly more tedious instructions for calculating only the angles and not the planets.]

[Jim Eshelman]

The Bombay disaster of April 14,1944 equalled if not rivaled the tragic devastation of the better-known Halifax explosion. Even in time of international peace, Bombay's waterfront is the hub of busy merchant marine traffic and trade. With the advent of war its harbor bristled with maritime and military activity. Because of its strategic position and excellent harbor facilities, Bombay became the pivot for Allied shipping and naval operations in the East. The fateful afternoon of April 14th was hotter and more sultry than usual even for the humid atmosphere that is peculiarly oppressive the year around in this seaport metropolis of the oriental tropics. Bombay is the principal navigational center of western India, a city of over one million people congested into the 22 square miles of Bombay Island which rises from the water just off the shore of Konkan.

Twenty-one cargo, munitions and naval vessels were berthed along its docks in a comparatively small area not exceeding a half mile in length. Many of these ships were engaged in the loading and unloading of explosives and fuel, cotton and other supplies essential to warfare. Fire broke out, cause unknown, in a hold stored with bales of Karachi cotton on board a British explosives laden vessel. The huge ship was moored alongside a pier in approximately the middle of the area occupied by the other ships. The exact time that the fire started remains undecided but records show that the Bombay fire department received the first alarm at 2:18 P.M. A fire-fighting brigade was dispatched to the pier where firemen, sailors and longshoremen battled the blaze for almost two hours.

Suddenly, at four minutes past four o'clock a cataclysmic explosion occurred which devastated the entire area, causing untold destruction and unnumbered deaths. Fires broke out in nearby warehouses and dock sheds already wrecked by concussion. Rallying to the emergency, the Bombay police, volunteering civilians and authorized militia rushed to the harbor basin to aid in evacuating the wounded survivors and to curtail the rampant fires which were fast reaching conflagration proportions. The city populace became panic-stricken when the fearsome detonation rocked downtown buildings, shattered windows and scattered fires in the residential and business districts. But Bombay's more appalling tragedy was yet to come. Hundreds of more self-composed individuals throned into the danger vicinity - the inevitable flock of curious spectators. Some thirty minutes after the first rending explosion, the second occurred with such fury and intensity as to dwarf the initial blast. The entire waterfront was reduced to a holocaust of blazing shambles. Vessels proximate to the exploding one were actually lifted from the water and crashed against each other and the docks. A pier railway train was blown into splintering warehouses. In the two explosions of the Bombay disaster, an estimated 1,000 to 1,500 persons lost their lives and the injury casualties mounted, to become countless. Property damages have been estimated to exceed one billion dollars and perhaps reach the billion and a half mark. Fires continued to rage uncontrolled for as long as seven days after the catastrophe.

[Jim Eshelman]

We think that figure 1, which is the progressed Capsolar, otherwise known as the Quotidian, for the Bombay disaster is self-explanatory. The planets in the inner circle are positions at the moment of the Capricorn ingress [In the illustration above they are the progressed ingress, not the ingress.] and the outer circle shows the planets as of the minute of the first big explosion. The first blast took place at the very minute the Moon and Neptune were completing their zodiacal square in the sky [This was a calculation error. The exact square was about an hour and a half later.], which is interesting since the square falls in the immediate foreground of the Quotidian for Bombay. The student can find the "static radical: cusps of the ingress chart itself, the latitude being 18°57' North and the Sidereal Time 18:04:36. He'll find that transits to the Capsolar cusps themselves are enough to "account for" the disaster. The Quotidian also dated it exactly, as witness the astounding placement of transiting Mars in the very degree of Bombay's Ascendant!


Consider now figure 2 which is as abominable a chart as could be imagined. It is the quotidian for 5:20 P.M. EST, April 21, 1930, for Columbus, Ohio, the hour of the shocking Ohio Penitentiary fire which burned 32 trapped men to death. Again the chart needs no commentary to persuade the reader that the discovery of the sidereal ingresses is a milestone in astrology's advancement.


Look at figure 3 and see the same culmination of transiting Mars in the Quotidian of another place at the moment of another historic tragedy. The place: New London, Texas. The time: 3:05 P.M. CST, March 18, 1937. The New London school disaster is still top gruesome a national memory to need description. Tis quotidian is bad enough but digest this fact: The Capsolar itself for New London had a sidereal time of 11:43:42 - placing 1°41' Virgo on the Midheaven. At the time of the disaster, transiting Saturn was 1°41' Pisces, exactly on New London's Midheaven while Mars in the quotidian was hovering overhead.


[I don't have a way to display one mundoscope around the wheel of another, so, despite the text, this chart is a horoscope.]
So far all our charts have been given in zodiacal terms for convenience, whereas it is a known fact, to us at least, that to be strictly scientific, all charts should be calculated in their mundoscope frames of reference if the true geometric relationships of the planets to a particular plane on the Earth's surface are to be appreciated. The adoption of mundoscopy does not saddle astrology with as many complications as one might think at first, for its advantages far outweigh the little extra work that is called for. When planets have more than a couple of degrees of latitude away from the ecliptic, the purely zodiacal version of a chart cannot take account of the departures. We'll go further into this matter if readers and students generally want more light and "do it yourself" instructions. Meanwhile, to prove how simple and startlingly clear a mundoscope can be, our fourth illustration is the quotidian for the time of the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. In a mundoscope the houses are each exactly thirty degrees in breadth. In view of the fact that the Capsolar progresses about a degree every day, we know you'll agree that figure 4 is breathtaking for its lucidity and the way it timed the disturbances exactly. Even the ensuing Great Fire which gutted the whole of downtown San Francisco is unmistakably represented.

(To be continued)

[Jim Eshelman]

The discovery that the Sidereal ingresses do work has raised the curtain on vast new vistas for astrological exploration. For one thing, the development of a method for the prediction of earthquakes now looms as a distinct possibility. What limited charting of past earthquakes we have done so far has been so impressive that we hope there are many students who will apply their talents to this special field of inquiry so that a list of "certainties" might ultimately be drawn up and form the basis for what could be called astro-seismology. By certainties we mean the drawing of precepts concerning factors which have been found to repeat so often in the chart work of past earthquake activity that the repetition can hardly be written off as coincidence.

Already, this soon after the pivotal discovery of the legitimacy of Sidereal ingresses, such precepts have come to light. The reader will recall the fourth illustration in last month's article, a quotidian mundoscope for the moment of the great San Francisco upheaval of 1906, how that transiting Saturn was within a degree of the horizon. There were numerous other eye-catching features of equal importance in this chart, of course, but our concern of the moment is to test this singular circumstance - transiting Saturn conjunct a quotidian angle - to see if it was a chance occurrence. If it was pure coincidence, it will not be in evidence often enough in the charts of other major earthquakes to have countered the rules of probability.

Champion Earthquakes
The U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey recently released to the press a brief list of what scientists consider to have been the greatest earthquakes in history, fifteen of which have taken place in the last hundred years. These were only the whoppers, the world champion shakeups of all time. One on the list was the Krakatau catastrophe, which we have already discussed, so let us drop it from our array. Four others on the list were not geographically identified other than as to continent, so it is not possible to chart them for the time being. This leaves us a test sample of ten dates and places, including the famous San Francisco temblor.

For the convenience of the average reader not yet able to handle sidereal calculations with ease, we are retaining the zodiacal positions shown in figure 1 in tropical longitude. [I can't draw this diagram for posting, so I'll quote the information on it.] This chart is a composite one, its Ascendant being that for the San Francisco quotidian shown last month in mundoscope form. Compare the mundoscope position in last month's chart with the equivalent ecliptic position used here [Asc TZ 13°05' Pisces, Saturn 11°34' Pisces] - Saturn is 1°41' above Ascendant by longitude, but is 0°38' under the Ascendant by mundane calculations. Also note this clincher: Saturn was applying to a conjunction of ingress Mars on the Ascendant by only 0°22' when the quake set off the fire that burned most of the city to the ground. By contrast, the zodiacal difference between the malefics was 2°18'.

Quite as impressive is the quotidian Descendant for the date and epicenter of the terrible Erzingan, Turkey earthquake of December 27, 1939, with its official death toll of 23,000, although news chronologists continue to carry the figure 50,000. The tropical longitude of the Descendant and Saturn are indicated in our composite chart [Dsc TZ 23°30' Aries, Saturn 24°265' Aries]. Compare the fact that the ecliptic distance of Saturn from the cusp is 0°55' with the fact that calculation places the actual mundane position of the planet at 270°02' above the horizon at Erzingan! It is obvious that one of the greatest single improvements in astrological methods will be the remedying distortions caused by latitude of positions in horoscopy. To depict a chart in easy-to-read mundoscope terms is the solution.

The third facet of our composite chart, its Midheaven, is the quotidian circumstance of the earthquake that enveloped Manila on June 3, 1868. Some 10,000 persons perished in this calamity, familiar to many students s one of the late L. Edward Johndro's prize illustrations in The Earth in the Heavens. Incidentally, Johndro was truly one o Sidereal Astrology's Johnny Appleseeds; were he still with us in the flesh there is no question but that he would be an enthusiastic front-runner in behalf of the Sidereal school. Again we see transiting Saturn precariously close to an angle of the quotidian chart for the locality on the exact date of an historic catastrophe [MC TZ 28°37' Virgo, Saturn 28°45' Virgo]. Surely, such repetition of the same malevolent feature cannot be dismissed as coincidence by the skeptic. Had our test sample been many times bigger than it is, the three recurrences would still represent a serious enough violatation of the law of averages to dispel any doubt as to the validity of our method.

[Bradley didn't break out how significant these three instances out of 10 would be. Since they were all partile, that means that there are 8° of the mundane circle (1° either side of four angles), with an expectancy of 8/360 for a single instance, or 10 times that for 10 examples. With only 0.22 instances expected, these 3 hits are 5.96 standard deviations above what is expected. This is an enormous figure. Of course, it's a tiny amount of data, so it's of no probative value, just inferential and suggestive.]

Naturally, in astrology a single factor is never sufficient by itself to spark a major event - hence the need for continous research, for continuous sorting, sifting, weighing, and testing of all possible factors until the "certainties" come to light as codified precepts. In the study of earthquakes, the role of Saturn is unquestionable, a certainty of the first order. Uranus and Pluto also appear to pull rank on the other planets where seismic disturbances are concerned, and we have many Lunar ingress charts for earthquakes showing Mars on an angle. The part played by Mars is probably more scenic than germane but we cannot be sure until research isolates its chief duties in this regard. Mars symbolizes fire, fright, and pain, or in one word from the purely humanized point of view, adrenalin. Those of you who have experienced a sizeable earthquake will appreciate our choice of adrenalin as Mars' most effective keyword.

The newspaper played up an anecdotal item in the reporting of the April 13, 1949 tremor that jiggled the Northwest, rather strongly exciting the Seattle area at 11:56 A.M. PST. Seems as how a college professor had just finished explaining to his class why the area was virtually immune to an earthquake of consequence when the shaking started. The Northeast quake was no "great shakes" as historic earthquakes go, but did enough minor damage over a wide swath to rank as the year's best in the west. Astrologically it was a Uranus affair through and through, for Uranus was exactly on the Descendant of the Caplunar chart for the period, exactly on the Ascendant of the Cansolar chart for the year, exactly square the Midheaven of the Capsolar chart for the year, and was exactly on the Nadir of the quotidian for the day of the event itself - in short, as astonishing a display of Uranian contacts as one could ever run across. Just the same, Saturn was really the ringmaster of the Uranian circus, transiting at the Nadir of the preceding Cancer ingress.

[Jim Eshelman]

Here we see a situation that would ordinarily be noticed, remarked about, and then let pass were it not for the fact that a similar setup is known to have prevailed where other West Coast earthquakes were concerned. In fact, Southern California's two worst earthquakes of modern times - the Long Beach one of 1933 and Tehachapi's 1952 nightmare - synchronized with identical performances by Saturn and Uranus. All the contacts involved were within a degree of exact phase. At Long Beach on March 10, 1933, at 5:15 P.M. PST, Saturn had been transiting the Descendant of the Cansolar chart of the period. The quake struck when the quotidian Nadir had moved around to a conjunction with transiting Uranus, the epicenter being offshore at Newport Beach. The epicenter of the Tehachapi disturbance was ten miles south of that stricken town. The quake occurred at 3:52 A.M. PST, on July 21, 1952, with Saturn transiting the Capricorn ingress Ascendant and Uranus conjunct the Nadir of the quotidian chart! Notice the repetition of pattern: Saturn crossing the horizon of a Sidereal solar ingress map and Uranus crossing the meridian of the quotidian map in each instance.

We have not as yet undertaken an exhaustive study of earthquakes in the light of Mundane Astrology's newly unveiled tool, but hope that by citing the foregoing examples we have whetted the interest of many students in this subject. Perhaps we have already unearthed a few preliminary rules, among them those just indicated and such guesses as the Uranus in the foreground of Lunar ingresses is a condition of earthquakes that might hold up under statistical analysis. That we are on the right track was just corroborated by the recent San Francisco quiverings, the scariest of which rocked the Bay area at about 11:45 A.M. PST, March 22,1957. Four days earlier a considerable jolt caused scattered damage in Ventura and Oxnard down the coast, and San Diegans reported minor shocks this same week. Uranus as usual was in the immediate foreground of California's Caplunar, with Mars in the exact degree of San Francisco's Ascendant where it guaranteed an overproduction of adrenaline in the population. The immediate Lunar ingress, however, spelled it out in the unmistakable language of astrology at its simplest: Saturn was exactly conjunct the Nadir of the great San Andreas fault. And what is more the quotidian for the San Francisco area that day had Pluto on an angle in mundo, repeating a feature in the quotidian of the 1906 shock!

[Jim Eshelman]

The transit of Mars in the immediate foreground of the Capsolar quotidian is undoubtedly one of the chief indicators of disasters, particularly of the fiery and explosive type. The record of past performance by this one configuration is so amzing that henceforth mundane forecasts published for advance periods will hardly be complete without a description of the geographic areas to be affected by such influences. Our first three illustrations in last month's article, you will recall, were the quotidians for three of the worst public tragedies in modern history, viz.. the Bombay waterfront holocaust of 1944, the Ohio prison fire of 1930 and the Texas school disaster of 1937. Because of the closeness of Mars to an angular point in each of these cases, the three examples alone would be justification for listing the circumstances as another astrological certainty.

Comparative rarity of this circumstance - transiting Mars conjunct a quotidian angular cusp - makes its high incidence in disaster statistics even more provocative. The quotidian chart for any given locality makes one full revolution in the course of a sidereal year, which means that all radical planets at the time of the ingress are carried over all four of the angular cusps in the subsequent twelve months. Every such passage has recognizable mundane effects, but it takes a compact of several more unique factors to actually bring about a momentous event. Transiting Mars, however, sweeps over roughly half o the zodiac in a year's time, which slows considerably it average rate of motion relative to the moving quotidian cusps.

Subsequently, for most localities, Mars can make only two contacts with the anglular cusps in a year's time. In some regions, it is possible to have three actual contacts with the angles before the sidereal year expires. When Mars is within orb of such cuspal conjunctions, the general area is dangerously exposed to the likelihood of serious fires and appalling public tragedies. The closer the contact, the greater the danger. And if malefics hound the angles of the current Lunar ingress figures, or the quotidian transit is reinforcedby a similar adverse pattern in the static framework of the Solar ingresses, the possibility of a conflagration of some sort becomes a virtual inevitability.

Bearing in mind the examples already used so far in this series, inspect figure 2 [Not reproduced here: I'll give the data below as we go.] which is another combination wheel showing transiting Mars conjunct the respective angles of the quotidians for famous fires and fiery blasts of the past. Again, for the convenience of most readers, and those newer students who want to retrace our examples via the standard material at their disposal, the longitudes given in the chart are Tropical. The Ascendant of this chart is for the geographic latitude description in the World Almanac news chronology: "Nearly every home and building in South Amboy was wrecked or damaged May 19, 1950 when 4 barges loaded with 467 tons of ammunition blew up at the Pennsylvania Railroad docks, showering the town with thousands o antipersonnel bombs. Thirty persons were killed; 350 injured; only 4 bodies were recovered.... Gov. Driscoll declared martial law and 500 Army troops from Fort Monmouth evacuated most of the residents.... Two days later, fire in a chemical plant 100 yards away set off 100 drums of phosphorus which again rocked the blast area and detonated 100 mines floating in Raritan Bay." That is about as Martian an experience as a town of 9,000 citizens could conceivably undergo! And Mars was right in there to the hilt! [Asc TZ 23°44' Virgo, Mars 23°30' Virgo]

The Nadir of figure 2 is that for Cleveland, Ohio on October 21, 1944, when a series of liquid gas tank explosions killed at least 135 persons, the exact number having never been ascertained because the incineration was so complete. [IC 6°07' Scorpio, Mars 5°35' Scorpio] Wartime 1944 in the United States was a year of tragic accidents and dreadful fires, the Sidereal ingresses for the dates and sites strewn from Port Chicago, California to a circus ground in Hartford, Connecticut, calling for lethal turns accurately in every case.

Though not the worst in American history, the flash fire in the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in New York on March 25, 1911 is surely one of the most notorious. Out o the public and official indignation that waxed so hotly after exposé of the conditions under which this fire was possible, grew many of our most far-reaching labor reform laws. No less than 145 employees, most of them women, met their deaths in this inferno, a needless mass sacrifice often said to be commemorated by the modern union label. The astrology of the disaster is clear-cut; a major contributing cause was the transit of Mars over the Quotidian horizon of Manhattan [Dsc 9°17' Aquarius, Mars 8°40' Aquarius].

The Midheaven of our illustration shows the proximity of Mars to the Quotidian meridian of Atlanta, Georgia the night of December 7, 1946 when the most disastrous hotel fire in our country's history engulfed the 15-story Winecoff Hotel, killing 121 guests trapped on upper floors. It is difficult to comprehend the horror of this event even after seeing newsfilm clips of people choosing to leap to their deaths rather than roast alive. In the 1946 Capsolar chart Mars and Saturn were closely conjunct and opposed to the Sun in Atlanta's immediate foreground. It took the Quotidian to focus the incendiary rays of Mars on the area, aided and abetted by an obviously fire-prone Lunar ingress. [MC 21°17' Sagittarius, Mars 22°59' Sagittarius]

[Jim Eshelman]

Our three-part progress report so far has only briefly or indirectly touched on the vital matter of socio-political effects of the Sidereal ingresses, and readers are no doubt wondering if our new mundane tool enables us to predetermine trends and eventualities of this nature with the same accuracy it has in connection with disasters and geophysical affairs. In plainer words, do they pre-shadow wars, revolutions, deaths o public leaders, economic crises and the like? The answer is an unqualified, resounding Yes, but woe to the writer who bursts into print with confidential worded "rules" based upon scattered examples of isolated cases which seem to ring true, only to fall down when given the statistical treatment. Astrological literature is already riddled with endless notions originating in inspired imaginations rather than verifiable reality, a cute example being "Aquarius rules stairways" based on the resemblance of that sign's symbol, when tilted, to flights of steps! Now, Aquarius might very definitely rule stairways, just as Cancer might very well rule crab apples, but if astrology is to deserve the title of science, let us have sounder reasons than magical associations for the ideas we put forth.

In months to come we plan to give our readers complete reports on the ingress statistics pertaining to such subjects as outbreaks of war, assassinations, changes of administration and governmental coups, and financial panics. Also in the immediate future if the demand for such labor-saving study material is great enough the warrant the project, we will publish a complete volume of the elements of all the Solar and Lunar ingresses of the four cardinal constellations over at least a sixty-year period. Already available to students is a complete ephemeris of the synetic vernal point, calculated to tenths of a second of arc for every ten-day interval between 1881 and 1960, with tables showing how to reckon the exact time of any date from 1760 to 2000 A.D. This ephemeris enables one to find the exact time of any of the Solar or Lunar ingresses with the same ease by which the Tropical ingresses are calculated.

One of the outstanding merits of the Sidereal approach is the way in which the traditional concepts of astrology - via basic planetary symbolism on which there is universal agreement among the several schools of thought - are demonstrated to be true. The simplicity of the demonstration is the thing to marvel at; meetings of heads of state, as with Eisenhower and Macmillan at Bermuda, for a recent example, occur when the ingresses show Jupiter right on an angular cusp at the conference place. An airplane crashes headlong into a skyscraper; Mercury is rising in square to Mars. A dam bursts and flood waters wash a town and its people into oblivion when a quadruple conjunction of the Sun, Neptune, Pluto, and Mars crowds the Nadir of the ill-fated valley.

The Sun is extremely emblematic of authority and political figureheads. So it is no surprise that Sun-Saturn angular formations in the ingresses, often supported by an ominous Neptune, are characteristic of charts spanning periods marked by the deaths of national leaders. It is startling to observe how effectively the planet Mars becomes intertwined in the pattern in cases of assassinations as contrasted with natural demise. Siderealists have been criticized occasionally for evincing so much enthusiasm in behalf of their findings and methods. This enthusiasm, admittedly, is difficult to restrain in view of such astonishing Sidereal charts as those covering the deaths of American Presidents and European sovereigns in the past. A student of astrology can't help being enthusiastic about an astrological concept wjhich has no trouble regularly throwing Sun-Saturn formations into the immediate foreground of places where and when the deaths of Presidents and Kings occur!

[Jim Eshelman]

The corollary to be drawn up from all the evidence is: planetary influences for given times and localities are mainly regulated buy and filtered through the foreground of the celestial sphere as defined by the Solar and Lunar ingresses of the cardinal constellations of the zodiac. But to what degree this means a qualifying factor on transiting influences where the individual horoscope is concerned remains to be seen. There is no doubt in my mind, after inspection of the charts applying to deaths of national figureheads, coronations and public festivities, and so on, that the charts of the individuals in question were very definitely affected. For instance, Presidents of nations do not get murdered unless their personal horoscopes, mainly via their Solunars, reflect it; astrology itself would be a farce were this not so. And yet the Sidereal ingresses also show this eventuality, often with an explicitness of planetary symbolism that could hardly be improved upon theoretically. Therefore, we are forced to conclude that the mundane atmosphere has a literal modifying effect on private, or rather personal, lives. This is what Mundane Astrology has long maintained by inference and innuendo. Public figures are a special breed, true, but they survive horrible patterns in their personal charts with nothing more drastic happening than catching a cold, just as they pass through remarkably fortunate periods with little more to glory in than a new suit - just as we all do. Perhaps the mundane framework at the time is a prohibitive, limiting element in people's lives, whether they are listed in the social register or not.

A good way to test t his would be to scrutinize the mundane backdrop of our personal horoscopic disappointments, a subject not often brought up openly. We've all experienced disappointment when some suspicious configuration in our charts failed to measure up to what we had looked forward to, treating us to a bottle of pop when the very least we had expected was a case of champagne. Then there are times when a seemingly trivial transit will go hogwild in heaping blessing on us, far out of proportion to what we could have anticipated in our most optimistic moments. Perhaps the secret of these strange, sporadic modifications and amplifications lies in the proximity of the transiting bodies concerned to the place one happens to be at the time. Maybe the reason Jupiter failed to work for you as fully as expected was that he was hampered from doing so, restrained from "vibrating at full blast," by being cadent (or doubly cadent, or triply cadent, as the case may be from the charts in current operation) for your locality during the partile phase of his transit. Or maybe that minor aspect of Venus behaved so beautifully in your behalf because Venus was able, at the time, via her mundane proximity to you, to turn on all her charms, thus magnifying an otherwise second-rate transit.

This is just dreamy theorizing, of course, a form of thinking out loud on the writer's part, but the possibility should be explored. The idea began to jell when the writer chanced to notice that the degree holding his natal Jupiter was on the quotidian Midheaven of his hometown on the day many years ago which he still considers the happiest day of his life If this means anything, and it probably doesn't, the tie-up between and purely impersonal mundane charts could go a long way toward accounting for what skeptics think of as one of astrology's weakest points - the advance evaluation of the strength of any influence.

In winding this report up, the thought also occurs that a most effective means of using the Sidereal charts as predictive instruments for published mundane forecasts would be through simplified geographical maps showing the zones on the Earth's surface where planetary impulses are heavily concentrated during any given period. For the ingresses themselves as radical epochs, the zones of such maps would be "fixed" for the period in question. Special maps for continental or national regions could easily be designed so that the paths of moving bodies, particularly that of transiting Mars in relation to the quotidian angles, can be represented on a time scale given the dates when the planet passes over the hrizons and meridians of cities and places of particular interest like fault lines and defense installations! This is just a suggestion; the vital thing right now is to continue vigorous research, forming our concepts and precepts from observation rather than from what just seems logical.

Toward this end we are repeating our offer of a free list of the elements of the Sun's Capricorn ingesses back to 1820. Any reader wishing to look into this matter himself, selecting his own examples and test cases, will be sent the list if the request ot the author is accompanied by a self-addressed stamped business-size envelope. It is not necessary to conduct your study in terms of the Sideral Zodic, for which reson only the data necessary to set up charts in the zodiac of your choice are cataloged in this list. Instructions on the calculations of the quotidian are included with our best wiehs that your harvest in the fields of knowledge be an abundant one.

[Jim Eshelman]

This completes the original three-article series which documents surely the single most exciting point in the entire history of astrology. I recommend reading it slowly, maybe many times (over the years I've read it at least a couple of dozen times), working all the examples for yourself noticing the subtlety of the remarks. It will reward close scrutiny abundantly.