Great Chicago Fire

[SteveS]

Great Chicago Fire:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chicago_Fire

Using 20-20 hindsight, the primary Sidereal Mundane Astrology (SMA) Chart for DC which symbolized the loss of one the Nation’s Great Cities to a tragic fire was DC’s 1871 Cansolar, with co-angularity of Moon-Saturn-Neptune as the prime planetary theme for the Nation. WP Sun was also angular.

For the Fire itself with par-excellent planetary symbolism, again using 20-20 hindsight, Chicago’s 1871 Cansolar with Mars partile Cansolar’s MC.

[Jim Eshelman]

Thanks, Steve. This is really interesting - to see the impact in Washington (or, as it probably means, the impact for the nation).

That Cansolar for Chicago is a prize even with an equally angular Jupiter - it gives a "stormy" Mars-Jupiter square only 0°02' in RA. Also a half-degree Moon-Saturn opposition in mundo.

Even more interesting to me, the Chicago fire started concurrent with the deadliest fire in American history, the Peshtigo Fire (October 8, 1871, Peshtigo, WI): Peshtigo is at the same longitude as Chicago, meaning that they both had that Mars exactly on Cansolar MC! In some ways, the Peshtigo charts (for that small difference in geographic latitude) are more interesting, e.g., transiting Saturn conjunct Capsolar Asc for Peshtigo as it opposed Cansolar Moon for Chicago (and everywhere).

[Jim Eshelman]

In Chicago, there's a lot of Neptune for this fire - the CapQ overflows with it, for example. In DC, the first thing I see is Neptune on Nadir in the Capsolar (then drawing out the Sun-Uranus opposition, which is more angular than it looks at first). The Capsolar also has a background Mars-Saturn square that one suspects might show up on angles during the worst parts of the year. We also get Neptune in the form of a mundane Moon-Neptune opposition, a lot closer on the prime vertical than it is ecliptically.

But, you're right: The Cansolar (always a strong chart, and in this case the Quarter chart) is horrible. Mundanely:

28°57' H3 - Neptune
0°40' H7 - Moon
1°25' H1 - Saturn

The 1°53' Moon-Saturn opposition on the ecliptic (for the world) is a 0°44' opposition mundanely in Washington. (Plus the angular Sun you mentioned.)

In addition to a partile Moon-Neptune square (worldwide), the Caplunar has Saturn within 1° of IC i close square to Venus - one of the two aspects most common for major fires. (I've inadvertently predicted fires elsewhere in the country in the past when DC had Venus-Saturn angular - I thought the fire would be in DC.) For the week, the Canlunar had Pluto 0°12' from square MC (and the recurring Moon-Neptune square only 0°02').

Daily timing for DC isn't great. The Cansolar does the best, but it's not all that helpful; e.g., the CanQ has all the right stuff just an extra degree or two off the angles, not quite giving us what we need. Transiting Saturn is still conjunct Cansolar Asc, opposite Cansolar Moon, but it sat there for a long time, not really narrowing te time frame much.

But with that Cansolar and the lunar ingresses, we would have gotten the idea of a serious national horror and known the likely time of it to the month, and perhaps to the week using current working methods.

[SteveS]

Jim wrote:

But with that Cansolar and the lunar ingresses, we would have gotten the idea of a serious national horror and known the likely time of it to the month, and perhaps to the week using current working methods.

Indeed, a "horror" Cansolar looked in the perspective for the Nation as a whole! No way we would have known that Chicago was going to burned down, but the Sidereal Mundane Astrologer would not have been surprised/shocked to see this tragic event occur in the Cansolar quarter.