Julius Caesar

[Jim Eshelman]

Julius Caesar's astrological data has always been ironic because we know, approximately to the hour, when he died, but there is a lot of mystery about when he was born.

He died March 15, 44 BC, in Rome. A good working time is 8 AM (give or take), since he was walking over to the opening of the Senate and was running a bit later than usual.

A consensus of historians places his birth at June 29, 100 BC. (Astro.com has a good summary of the historical notes.) I am proposing his birth was at 2:30 AM LMT. Since this was from one event (his death), consider it "playing around," but the resulting charts are quite astonishing enough to justify this post.

I won't go through the excruciating details, but here are the main points of how I arrived at this time.

First, at noon on his birthday, Moon was 1° Taurus. Nothing in the historical record of Caesar suggests a Taurus Moon, while everything suggests an Aries Moon. But as soon as we back Moon into Aries, we place transiting Jupiter on it for his death (29°22' Cap) which is all wrong. To have natal Moon at least 1° earlier than transiting Jupiter's square, the birth can be no later than 7:35 AM LMT.

If birth is between midnight and 7:35 AM, correct procedure is to set up a working chart in the middle of the known period, i.e., at 3:48 AM. Running his SLR and Demi-SLR for death, the aspects were quite right and the angles were an hour or so wrong. With a little calculating, I found that 2:30 AM LMT produced a natal that had mind-blowing SLR and demi for his violent death by betrayal. His SNQ and SQ then confirmed the symbolism: One showed the ideal birth time should be a few minutes later, the other that it should be a few minutes earlier. 2:30 AM was the sweet spot.

If you have a few minutes for fun, I suggest you calculate a natal for Julius Caesar of June 29, 100 BC, 2:30 AM LMT, Rome, and calculate the SLR, Demi-SLR, SNQ, and SQ for the date and place of his murder, given above.

[Jim Eshelman]

PS: TMSA gives Moon 1° different from Solar Fire. I'm surprised it's this much, but does highlight how much we should rely on TMSA for ancient charts. The layout of TMSA also immediately discloses something I'd missed in this proposed natal for Caesar: I knew Jupiter was in the rising foreground but hadn't run the mundoscope, so didn't see the close Jupiter-Pluto mundane conjunction in the rising foreground - a remarkable description of Caesar's life.

A few other planets have small position differences. We've previously confirmed that TMSA is the more accurate of the two.

So now I want to rerun all of those return charts

[Jim Eshelman]

TMSA gives a Solar Return with an Ascendant only 0°19' different from Solar Fire - not a bad difference - though, again, Moon is about a degree later. BTW, I can't calculate progressions with TMSA yet but I think this 1° difference will give an exact Moon-Mars SSR progression for his murder.

The SLR is off a bit more, with Asc more than 2° different. This still makes quite a good chart, but not as dead-smack-on as I thought from SF.

However, the showpiece Demi-SLR has less than 1° difference on the angles, and the key indicators are quite close.

I think when TMSA has SNQ, SQ, and PSSR options, I should revisit this entire thread. Nonetheless, everything is still pretty close.