LIBRA—1st Decanate. The first decanate of Libra is pictured among the constellations by SERPENS—the Serpent. This is the snake that sacred tradition asserts tempted Eve to her downfall. The serpent has been used from ancient times, however, not only as a symbol of creative energy, but also of cunning. In worldly matters those native to this decanate have no need of the admonition to be “wise as serpents,” for they have the innate ability to handle people and situations.
It will be remembered that the Biblical serpent told Eve that if she would eat of the apple she would become wise—and that subsequent events verified the prophecy.
And those born under this decanate well uphold all the serpent traditions of wisdom and subtlety, and besides possess the creative energy to pioneer in the realms of human association. Such people should never seek seclusion to be at their best, but should mix in the world’s affairs and come in contact continuously with their fellow men. In this field they can wield an enormous power for good through their ability to influence the thoughts and actions of others. But they should take pains not to become too engrossed in purely material aims.
Georges Clemenceau, the “Tiger” prime minister of France, was born with the Sun in this part of the sky. Wm. Ewart Gladstone, the great statesman, had the Moon in this place at his birth. And Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, who triumphed over so many difficult situations, was born with his Ascendant here. It is the decanate of POLICY.
From Letters to the Sage, Volume One:
Amant Henry Ohmann-Dusmenil was born September 30, 1857 in Dubuque, Iowa to French-born parents. After completing a bachelor’s degree at Christian Brothers College in St. Louis, he continued to acquire advanced degrees, including an MD and two PhDs. He was a chair of Dermatology and Syphilogy at the St. Louis College for Medical Practitioners at the time of his correspondence with Johnson. He authored several medical tomes including the 1894 Handbook of Dermatology. He died in 1919 and was buried at the Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis. Ohmann-Dumesnil’s single extant letter to Johnson is included here simply because of his connection with the early St. Louis TS, an important community in the history of American esotericism.
St. Louis
A.H. Ohmann-Dumesnil M.D.
May 5, 1885
Dear Sir:
Some time ago I applied to Mr. Page of this city to become an unattached member of the Theosophical Society, having been referred to him by Mr. D.K. Mavalankar, of Adyar, India. Nov. 9th 1884, Mr. Page informed me that he had received all the notes of the American Board of Control and failed to state whether the result was favorable or otherwise; but said that it was a question to be settled by myself whether I was admitted or not.[i]
I write to you to inquire if your note upon me was conditional and, if so, why? If you can, consistently with your duty, give me information upon this point and also what your note was, I would be under lasting obligations to you, for your kindness.
Hoping that you will favor me with an early reply, I remain,
Very Truly Yours,
Ohmann-Dumesnil
[i] Page’s October 27, 1884 letter to the Board of Control on the matter is included in this volume.
VIRGO—3rd Decanate. The last decanate of the northern signs is pictured by a crown of twelve iron spikes. This Venus decanate of the mental sign Virgo is the point from which the Sun passes into the winter section of the zodiac. And so the serpent, picturing the first decanate of Libra is represented with his fangs just before CORONA BOREALIS—the Northern Crown—as if to strike.
Virgo, as a whole, corresponds to the house of work. So this last decanate seems particularly given to working in behalf of others. People born here find their greatest possibilities in the realm of service. When they can lose sight of the reward, and labor enthusiastically for some noble cause, they live to their utmost. Even though the laborer is worthy of his hire, yet those born under this influence are often called upon to give up the things they would prefer to do for the sake of duty. Though the material reward is a crown of thorns, yet the gain in character and soul power always more than repays for all sacrifice.
Henrich Daath, who labored so steadfastly in the cause of modern astrology, was born with his Individuality here. Leo Tolstoy, who though born of nobility, lived so simply and made so many sacrifices in the cause of peace and purity, had his Mentality in this decanate. And Swami Triganiteti, the Vedanist teacher who was blown to pieces in his temple in San Francisco by a fanatic, while he was faithfully serving his religion, had his Personality polarized in this place. It is the decanate of RENUNCIATION.
Note—With a few exceptions, so that the student may have easy access to the charts cited and thus study the other factors contributing to character and accomplishment, I have used as examples persons whose charts may be found in A Thousand and One Notable Nativities by Alan Leo.
From Letters to the Sage, Volume One:
Anna Kingsford
Annie Bonus, born September 16, 1846 in a section of Essex now part of East London, was left a substantial inheritance in her teens upon the death of her father. She married Algernon G. Kingsford, a Church of England clergyman and cousin, in 1867 and gave birth to their only child, a daughter Eadith, the following year. Her defiance of conventional norms began with adoption of vegetarianism and opposition to vivisection, followed by conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1870. Ten years later she completed a medical degree in Paris. Her 1882 book The Perfect Way, coauthored by Edward Maitland, provided an idiosyncratic interpretation of the Bible based on visions inspired by ether. At the time of her correspondence with Johnson she was president of the British Theosophical Society and also of its Hermetic Lodge in London, but later that year she resigned from the TS and established her lodge as the independent Hermetic Society, which survived her death by a few years. She died February 22, 1888 of tuberculosis after more than a year of declining health. Kingsford and Maitland’s correspondence with Johnson ended before the creation of either Hermetic organization spawned by the British Theosophical Society in 1884.
The Vicarage.
Atcham.
Shrewsbury.
England.
10 January [1884]
Sir. I have to thank you for your letter dated Oct: 15th, in which you say you have sent me, Vol. I of the Platonist. I should have been very glad to receive this kind gift, but it has not reached me. I applied to the Post Master in London for it, giving him all necessary details, in reply to which he has written to say that “no trace of any such packet can be found, and that probably it has by this time been returned to the sender.” Believe me; Faithfully yours,
Anna Kingsford
The Vicarage,
Atcham,
Shrewsbury.
26 February 1884
Dear Sir.
I am so much pleased with the “Platonist” that I have this day sent a year’s subscription for it 10/ to your agent Mr. Foulger of Patermaster Row, who will I supposed, supply it to me from January. I shall send the two surplus copies you have kindly sent, (for this year) to friends who may thereby, I trust, be induced to subscribe also. When Mr Maitland wrote to you a few days ago, we had not had a proper opportunity of studying the Platonist, and were not so fully aware of its value as we have since become We are sorry that we do not know the private address of Hargrave Jennings.[1]—your readiest way of communicating with him will be to entrust a note to his publishers.
I am gratified to see that the Platonist intends including Kabbalistic doctrine and literature in its programme.[2] As the Kabbala represents that School of the Gnosis to which I properly belong myself, I shall hope from time to time, to be enabled, under this section, to contribute something to your pages. All exponents of the Kabbala do not, of course, agree, and the school I represent, takes a reading and view different from that of Eliphas Levi, and far more in accordance with Buddhist teaching; especially in regard to the transmigration of the Soul.
Believe me,
Faithfully yours,
Anna Kingsford
Mr Maitland hopes you will not be at the trouble of continuing to post him a gratis number of the Platonist, as he will always see that for which I subscribe. We hope you will be able in a forthcoming number to give a short notice of our new little book on 1881, of which we sent you a copy.[3] I shall myself shortly bring out another and larger work on Hermetic and Kabbalistic doctrine.[4]
AK
[1] On Jennings, see the introduction to this volume.
[2] This is a reference to Abner Doubleday’s “Kabalistic Doctrine of Spirits” article that appeared in the January and February 1884 issues of the Platonist.
[3]How the World Came to an End in 1881 (London, Field & Tuer, 1884).
[4]The Virgin of the World of Hermes Mercurius Trismegistos (London: George Redway, 1885; Madras: P. Kailasam Brothers; Spiritualistic Book Depot, 1885).
This news story from the summer of 1898 preceded the death of Sarah Stanley Grimke by only a few weeks.
from the First Eighteen Decanates Analyzed:
LEO—3rd Decanate. CORVUS, the Raven, is the constellation picturing the tendencies of people born under the third decanate of Leo. This raven is pictured with wings outspread as if in readiness to fly aloft, but with its feet firmly gripping the back of Hydra, the water serpent. This symbolizes the emotions that are associated with creative energy, for the raven appears to be making a meal from the flesh of the serpent.
In this last portion of Leo we have the love of power and rulership combined with the quality of leadership bestowed by Aries. As a consequence those born under this section of the sky are determined to rise in life regardless of obstacles. And when this tendency is carried to extremes they will sacrifice their associates, their family, and even integrity itself, in order to increase their power. But when their ideals are thoroughly for the welfare of humanity rather than for mere personal aggrandizement, they become of immense service to society through their natural gift of being able to handle others and use them to advantage.
Napoleon I, who attempted to conquer the world by arms, was born with the Sun in this decanate. Dr. Zamenhof, who invented a language, Esperanto, which was to supersede all other languages in the world, had his Moon in this section of the heavens. And Alan Leo, who attempted to give to astrology a world-wide recognition and power, was born with his Ascendant here. It is the decanate of AMBITION.
A documentary video based on this presentation is my goal for 2023. As an American whose scholarly research has been almost entirely about US history for 27 years now, I will be most indebted to the European conferees for any light they can shed on the search for Louis de B. Reviewing the list of presenters I see only one fellow American, one Cuban, one Brazilian from the Western Hemisphere. The programme is extraordinarily diverse in European speakers from Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, Russia, Sweden, and Switzerland, two of whom are now in North America.
Both my chapter and Patrick D. Bowen’s “The Real True Yog” are included in Imagining the East from Oxford University Press, and are referred to by the reviewer who also surveys the contents of another book, Theosophy Across Boundaries from State University of New York Press– Western Esoteric Traditions series in both cases.
From the first Aries decanate to the second Leo decanate, the Letters to the Sage correspondents abounded and we had examples every ten days (with the exception of the last Cancerian decanate). From August through February the pace slows considerably with fewer births, more concentrated in individual decanates. Elbert Benjamine singles out Helena Blavatsky as an example of a Sun in the second Leo decanate. Among Thomas Johnson correspondents born in this decanate, her colleague Colonel Olcott stands out as the most relevant. With an ascendant just inside this decanate, I can totally relate to this “explorer world traveler” aspect of both Olcott and Blavatsky, but for them it was a lifelong dislocation from home and family whereas for me it was a short-term detour from a life otherwise devoted to home and family history. (Four planets in the fourth in Scorpio plus two in the third in Libra equals “all the lies and truths told by our ancestors” and “everything the neighbors said about it both clarifying and muddying the record.”)
From The First Eighteen Decanates Analyzed
LEO—2nd Decanate. In the second, or Jupiter, decanate of Leo the inherent quality of dominant control characteristic of Leo is modified by the subinfluence of the sign of the higher mind, Sagittarius. The philosophical and religious elements are more in evidence, and those born here readily recognize the prevalent weaknesses both in current politics and in current religion. And what is more important, they have the courage of their convictions and the power to gain followers for their own progressive ideas.
To picture the ruthless onslaughts with which these people attack both persons and policies that seek to ravage society, CENTAURUS, a being having the lower parts of a horse and the upper parts of a man, is represented among the constellations as impaling on the end of his spear the wolf that pictures the last decanate of Libra. This wolf symbolizes those who use the brilliancy of their intellects to suppress truth and to foist ignorance and superstition upon society that they may profit by its exploitation. As those born in this middle decanate of Leo have the power to convince and lead others, it behooves them to put forth every effort to gain the truth, and to take great care that they do not disseminate erroneous notions.
Madam H. P. Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society, was born with her Individuality here. Mr. J. Malcolmn Mitchel, secretary of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage, had his Moon in this decanate. And Martin Luther, founder of the Protestant Religion, was born with his Personality polarized to this section of the sky. It is the decanate of REFORMATION.
From Letters to the Sage, Volume One:
Henry Steel Olcott
Henry Steel Olcott, first president of the Theosophical Society, was born August 1832 in Orange, New Jersey. He attended classes at New York University for one year before going to northern Ohio in 1848, where he spent five years and became familiar with various reform movements, including spiritualism, especially through the Steele brothers of Amherst, Ohio. Upon return to New York in 1853, he worked for James J. Mapes, a spiritualist who was his professor of agricultural chemistry and soon became Olcott’s employer as editor of the Working Farmer. Subsequently his three year tenure on Horace Greeley’s payroll at the Tribune coincided with the beginning of his family life. He married Mary Eplee Morgan, daughter of a New Rochelle Episcopal priest, in 1860 and they had two sons. Olcott was admitted to the New York bar in 1868, specializing in insurance law but also continuing journalistic work. His journalistic interest in spiritualism involved him with the Eddy Brothers of Vermont through whom he met Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in October 1874. He divorced his wife in December and in the following year he and Blavatsky formed the Theosophical Society with the support of about twenty colleagues. They two left New York at the end of 1878 and established TS headquarters in Bombay in early 1879, and subsequently relocated to Madras in 1882. Blavatsky left India permanently in 1885 and died in London in May 1891. A power struggle involving William Q. Judge and Annie Besant had led Olcott to resign his office briefly in January 1892, but he rescinded his resignation in August of that year. He died in office February 17, 1907.
The Theosophical Society expanded dramatically in India and Ceylon under Olcott’s leadership, and his letters to Johnson reflect different stages of its success. Olcott wrote four letters to Johnson in 1882, one in 1898 and another in 1902, which allows a longitudinal view of Johnson’s relationship with Olcott and the TS. He seems to have been interested in Blavatsky’s Mahatmas in Tibet only as teachers who could be reached independently of her phenomena. Olcott’s response to Johnson contains a deflection of Johnson’s inquiry on the issue and an assertion that the Tibetan Mahatmas were inherently inaccessible by normal worldly means. Olcott’s second 1882 letter reveals that Johnson had persisted in his effort to make contact with the teachings of adepts in Tibet through other channels than Blavatsky, inquiring about the “Stambroul” (a transcription of the source usually rendered as Kangyur/Tangur). In October 1882 Olcott was once again in Ceylon, one year after the publication of the Buddhist Catechism, and his activities there were over the objections of Blavatsky. Another several months elapsed before another letter in which we see evidence of Olcott admiring the Concord School of Philosophy and specifically Alexander Wilder’s contributions to its activities. Johnson’s Platonist had been intended to coincide with the first session; the session discussed in the correspondence of 1882 was the final one presided over by Bronson Alcott.
By 1898, several years had elapsed since Johnson abandoned the TS, and he continued to be actively involved with the H.B. of L., but he wrote to Olcott in a friendly manner as is evident from the tone of the reply. Johnson has inquired about obtaining a Buddha figure, which Olcott has attempted to do for him as reported from Ceylon four years later in 1902; the statue has not yet been provided but Johnson has presumably reminded Olcott of the promised “Buddha Rupa” and the colonel has now attended an auction but failed to find a feasible way to fulfill his promise.
To our great regret Madame Blavatsky has for the moment mislaid your friendly letter of recent date respecting the means of getting to L’hassa, and she asks me to answer it in general terms by the mail.
It is not only impossible to reach the Tibetan capital—a far inland city—by water, but also—except for initiates or their accepted neophytes of European [birth?] to get there at all. It is the present stronghold of Esoteric science, and any inroad of unmystical, not to say impure, foreigners would be Equivalent to the adepts being driven to some other and more inaccessible retreat. The devotees of material and spiritual study are incompatible with each other, and in close propinquity the less rude are crowded out as the fabled Indian was off his log by the paleface. Despite the position and resources of the British in India only three Englishmen ever penetrated to the interior of Tibet, and of these the one who really saw any thing of the kind you and ourselves are interested in—Mr Manning[2]—Kept his lips sealed until his death as to his experiences. The project, therefore, of yourself and friends for an ocean trip to Asia in search of occult knowledge is impracticable. The doors of the temple are assuredly open, but only those can enter who have learned the secret during the prescribed long course of neophism.
Sympathising most cordially in your unselfish effort to popularize Eastern philosophy in its Platonic garb among our American people
The venerable and universally respected Balm Peary Chand Mittra[4] happened to be in my room when I read your favor of the 20th Feb. He very kindly said he would send you copies of his three works on Spl philosophy,[5] so I gave him you address and you will no doubt hear from him. Should you review them please send him a copy of the paper.[6] His address is: Sec’y Calcutta Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 111 Radhabazar, Calcutta. My Buddhist Catechism (English Edn)[7] is out of print here and the new edn will not be out for some months, as time will not permit my revising it. You can get a copy from Messirs Trubner and Co, Publishers, London and New York. The Raja Yoga pamphlet is not to be had.[8] The Dnyaneshwari[9] I will cause enquiries to be made about at Bombay.
I am overworked. We now have 30 Branch Societies established in India alone, and 8 in Ceylon.
F’ly yours
H Olcott
Theosophical Society, President’s Office
Nellore
6 V. `82 [most likely May 6]
Dear Sir.
Yours of Mch 19th. The Stan-gyour is—so far as we know—not yet rendered into English. There is a translation of portions of it from the Bouriat version into Russian by the scholar Vasilief,[10] and for this you must address yourself to the Imperial Academy of Sciences at St Petersburg.
My colleague and I thank you heartily for your sympathetic expression respecting our work in Asia. You will be glad to learn that the venomous attacks of Mr J. Cook[11] have given our Society a marvelous impetus, and that we are growing stronger every day. We have just founded a Branch at Madras with over 100 members.
Ffy yours
H.S. Olcott
Theosophical Society, President’s Office
Keembiya (Ceylon)
October 6, 1882
Dear Mr Johnson.
Yours of Aug 15. Thanks, very much, for your approving remarks upon my answer to Swami Daynand.[12] His attack was as unexpected as would be that of a friend with whom one might be walking and who should suddenly turn and give one a whack over the head with his stick. We have “a hard row to hoe”, what with the missionaries and their friends, and the reactionists and humbugs of all sorts. But I must not expatiate to one who of course has been going through like experiences these many years.
What a noble discourse was Dr Wilder’s at Concord! But why do not your party go back of Plato and Plato’s Master and successor to Plato’s Masters and predecessors, the sages of the Himarat Himavat? The river-source is at the mountain spring, and the river of human though came from the Asian schools.
Ffy yours
H.S. Olcott
The T.S. does not print the volume of my lectures. I will ask the Madras publisher to send a few copies to Colby and R[13] on sale, and you can order of them.
Ontam in South India, Negapatam
August 15, 1898
Dear Mr Johnson
I was glad to hear from you once more after so long a break, and to feel that your vigor of body and mind is unimpaired. Yes, the T.S. is going ahead with ever increasing momentum. Last year I issued 64 new Branch charters—a larger number than in any one previous year, and our sky is more clear. You do not tell me how your Platonic movement gets on. Wilder wrote me recently and kindly offered to send me something for the Theosophist. If you are not too much engaged will you not do likewise for old times’ sake?
I shall keep in mind the promised “Buddha rupa” and send one when I can.
Yours truly
HS Olcott
Theosophical Society, President’s Office
Adyar
November 26, 1902
Dear Mr. Johnson
Yours of 26 Oct: thanks for kind words.
At an auction yesterday was sold a bronze sitting figure of the Buddha and I bid for it on your behalf. But the price ran up to R 28=$9 and that was too much for my purpose: besides which the weight was so great that it would have made the cost of transport prohibitive. So I let it go. When the chance appears I would shall send you a smaller statuette.
R.C. Bary[14] was alive at last accounts, but not taking an active part in the T.S. or the Arya Samaj.
I do not know if ever Damodar[15] will be sent back. Should not be surprised if he came at about the time when the Masters take me away.
[4] Peary Chand Mitra (1814-1883), an Indian writer and activist, first Bengali Theosophist.
[5] That is, spiritual philosophy. These works were presumably The Spiritual Stray Leaves (1879), Stray Thought of Spiritualism (1879), and Life of Dewan Ramkamal Sen (1880).
[8] This was almost certainly Sabhapaty’s Vedantic Raj Yoga book; see the introduction to this volume.
[9] A thirteenth-century commentary on the Bhagavad Gita.
[10]Vasily P. Vasiliev (1818-1900) authored a three-volume history of Buddhism that was published from 1857 through 1869 in Russian and later translated into French and German; he also translated a Mongolian travel book about Tibet in 1895.
[11]The Reverend Joseph Cook, an American missionary, had attacked the TS, Hinduism, and Buddhism in public lectures during 1882 that generated press controversy in both India and Ceylon.
[12]A supplement to the July 1882 issue of the Theosophistconsisted of a defense by Olcott against charges made in an attack by Swami Dayananda Sarasvati.
LEO—1st Decanate. The first decanate of Leo is pictured among the constellations by CRATER—a furnace, or cup of fire. In this manner did the ancient masters of starry lore portray the fiery love nature of those born under this section of the sky.
Their most notable trait is the desire and ability to rule others. And unless this tendency is restrained there is an inclination to dominate. Yet always there is a powerful love nature. And as love is at the foundation of all achievement, if this love energy can be directed into proper channels, it leads on to success. But due to its strength there is danger of turning to one extreme or the other—either permitting pleasure to dominate the life, or in rebellion at the tendency toward excess to become the avowed ascetic. As neither extreme permits of proper expression of the fine qualities of this decanate the watchword should be moderation.
Hiram Butler, author of Solar Biology, who founded and ruled a colony of esoteric students whose efforts largely revolve around sex repression, was born with the Sun here. Anna B. Kingsford, who wrote The Perfect Way, Clothed with the Sun, and other works of an occult character, and whose relationship with a prominent organization was severed because of her own dominant views and teachings, was born with the Moon in this decanate. And Adelina Patti, the prima donna, who dominated the multitude through the beauty and power of her voice, was born with this part of Leo as her Ascendant. It is the decanate of RULERSHIP.
From Letters to the Sage, Volume One:
Born in 1852 in Mystic River, Connecticut, Silas Herbert Randall was the only child of Silas Burrows and Emily Frances, who relocated to southwestern Ohio in the 1860s. Silas married Edith R. DeGolyer on April 6, 1876; they had two children, a boy and a girl. Silas died in 1901 in Charlevoix, Michigan, at age 49, and was buried in Cincinnati, Ohio. Randall was an inventor, working in his father’s Cincinnati machine business, Randall & Co. Patents in his name are on file for various industrial machinery inventions.
Silas first contacted Johnson as an admirer of The Platonist in 1882. His letters reflect the fact that he was one of the most active and successful promoters of Johnson’s Platonist and of the H.B. of L. They also give a great deal of insight into the development of both the American H.B. of L. and Cincinnati’s esotericist community, which was concentrated around Silas, Buck, J. Ralston Skinner, and Elmira Y. Howard. Finally, more than any other set of letters in this volume, his reveal the wide range of literature TS- and H.B. of L.-connected esotericists were reading in the 1880s.
Silas ended the correspondence in 1886 due to his wife’s objections to his H.B. of L. activity. Unlike the examples of Olcott and Judge, whose involvement in Theosophy was ruinous to their marriages, Randall ended his occult adventures when it became clear to him that his family life was at risk.
CANCER—2nd Decanate. HYDRA—the water serpent —commences as the middle decan of Cancer and extends through the sky all the distance from this home constellation to Scorpio, the constellation of death. Representing the Scorpio, or sex, decanate of the domestic sign, those born under it possess much resource and energy, as well as being strongly emotional. The serpent is the symbol of creative energy and the water in which it dwells is the symbol of the strong emotions displayed by these people. So the traditional struggle of Hercules with this monster is not without significance, for it represents the struggle with sensual desires, as well as a struggle to overcome the limitations imposed by death.
Thus we find that those born here have a natural aptitude for communion with those who have passed to the spirit side of life. And if they do not fall into the destructive forms of mediumship, but instead retain at all times full control of their bodies and minds, they are led, impressed, and guided from the spirit side of life in all their worthy undertakings.
W. T. Stead, who established the bureau for spirit communication and did so much for the spread of spiritualism, was born with his Individuality here. Dr. Luke D. Broughton, author of the well known Elements of Astrology, had his Mentality in this decanate. And Sarah M. Grimke, the fine seeress, and author of Esoteric Lessons, who contributed valuable work in behalf of spiritual enlightenment, had her Personality in this section of the sky. It is the decanate of REVELATION.
From Letters to the Sage, Volume One:
Thomas Docking
Thomas Docking was born on July 12, 1826 in Brigg, Lincolnshire, England. The son of a miller, he spent his own youth in mills and by fourteen was already in charge of a flour windmill. Lacking a formal education, Docking used his own earnings to purchase books, and taught himself enough that, at age eighteen, he was able to obtain a job as a surgeon for immigrants in Australia, where he was introduced to homeopathic medicine by an English captain. In 1860, Docking returned to Britain with his wife and daughter and, he would later assert, formally studied medicine in England and Scotland while continuing to research the science of homeopathy and joining the Swedenborgian Church.
Information about Docking’s life in America is sparse and sometimes conflicting. In 1900, Docking would claim that he had come to California in the early 1870s to investigate spiritualism[1] and that he studied it closely for ten years, after which he determined he could not agree with the spiritualists about the source of their phenomena. However, a September 1874 Sacramento newspaper article indicates Docking had arrived in California “a few months ago from Australia,” and afterwards moved into his brother’s Sacramento home, where he quickly irritated both his brother and several local residents who accused him of various malicious acts.[2] That same month, in San Francisco Docking was charged with mail fraud, though he was soon acquitted due to lack of evidence. Docking apparently had returned to San Francisco by the end of the year, as it was there where, in December, Randolph formed the San Francisco lodge of his Triplicate Order, and Docking was made its “Supreme Grand Templar.”[3] After spending several years joining and founding various homeopathic organizations and fraternal orders, in August 1886,[4] Docking became a member of the Theosophical Society, joining the Golden Gate lodge, and in the following year he established the Point Loma lodge, which he led for several years. Docking died on September 1, 1902.
As discussed in the introduction to this volume, Docking’s letters help further establish that Johnson was increasingly hearing about Rosicrucians and Randolph prior to his exposure to the H. B. of L. in 1884.
Oakland
March 21, 1883
Dear Sir
Yours of 14th inst came duly to hand yesterday and herewith I beg to acknowledge receipt of enclosed Green back again like a bad going [coin?] wh [with?] it having realized no Play to in return permit me to acknowledge in appropriate language, how beautifully you have done this with all & how keenly I feel it. Perhaps you will permit me to ask for information as to the best english translations of Plato & specially such as will leed me to Pythagoras I wd like to see the latters system of numerals. Do you belong to the Rosy +
With kind regards. Believe me as ever
Sincerely yours
T. Docking
Do you know of no other journal of the same kind in English published T.D.
821 Washington St.
Oakland Cal
December 6, 1883
Dear Sir
I have enclosed the ½ of a Postal note for $4.00/100 being payment for 2 subscriptions for the “Platonist” 1 for self & 1 for W.E. Dargie Oakland he is Post master here & one of the Proprietors of the Daily & Weekly Tribune, he has been from home but returned a day or so ago I saw him in person & he promised to publish the card you sent & paid me 2.00/100 I lent him my Vol 1 complete & I have not been able to get it returned & as far as you can, I shall be pleased if you will make this good I will mail the other ½ note on receipt of acknowledgement or 1 No of the Platonist. Have you heard anything more of the Rosicrucian’s in Boston or elsewhere?
Yours truly
T. Docking
[1] Docking’s 1900 census report has his him immigrating in 1872; in a brief biographical entry (probably written by him) published in 1900 it notes 1860 as the year of his immigration, but this appears to have been an error as other evidence in the biography suggests that he was still in Britain up until at least 1868; see An Illustrated History of Southern California: Embracing the Counties of San Diego, San Bernardino, Los Angeles and Orange, and the Peninsula of Lower California, from the Earliest Period of Occupancy to the Present Time; Together with Glimpses of Their Prospects; also, Full-Page Portraits of Some of Their Eminent Men, and Biographical Mention of Many of Their Pioneers and of Prominent Citizens of To-Day (n.p.: The Lewis Publishing Co., 1890), 275.
[4] Thomas Docking, member of the Golden Gate TS lodge, entered on August 22, 1886, Theosophical Society General Register Vol. I, http://www.theartarchives.org.
It was not my intention to create a youtube channel, but posting this conference talk as a video led to that result, and trying to post it on academia.edu put it behind a firewall where only subscribers could see it. So am restoring it as a blog entry with the promise of a sequel by the end of this year.
CANCER— Decanate. The first decanate of Cancer is depicted in the sky by a little yapping cur—CANIS MINOR—a mongrel without courage or loyalty. By it the ancient masters sought to convey the thought that those born under this section of the sky are particularly susceptible to domestic intrigue. They have strong emotions and may easily be carried away by them. Consequently, they should put forth a persistent effort to cultivate the qualities of faithfulness and poise.
Through the activity of the emotional nature, and their sensitiveness to all that affects life, they are often capable of remarkable poetic and dramatic expression. Unknown to themselves they are the mediums through which entities on the inner planes manifest. And because they are such perfect mediums they sometimes betray the trust placed in them, for they tend to yield to the temporarily strongest influence. They should learn to be positive and firm.
Louis XII of France, who divorced his virtuous and ill-favored queen, Joan, to marry Anne of Brittany, by whom he was dominated, was born with the Sun in this decanate. Nell Gwyn, actress and favorite of Charles II, had her Moon in this place. And Lord Byron, the poet, whose love affairs were none too conventional, was born with this decanate on the Ascendant. It is the decanate of MOODS. (From the First Eighteen Decanates Analyzed)
KPJ– Although we had an abundance of Aries, Taurus, Gemini birthdates among Letter to the Sage correspondence, things slow down at the Solstice, not so much due to lack of birthdates but to how the Cancerians, Leos, Scorpios and Sagittarians cluster in a single decanate and we have only one each for Virgo and Libra. Here is the entry for Doubleday from LTS:
Abner Doubleday
Abner Doubledaywas born June 26, 1819 at Ballston Spa, New York. He graduated from West Point in 1842 and served during the Mexican War in the US Artillery. His service in the Civil War began at Fort Sumter, where he was second in command when Confederate forces attacked with the opening shots of the war. Through the war his responsibilities increased with commensurate promotions, culminating in March 1865 as brigadier-general and major-general U.S.A. He retired in 1873 as a colonel and published two books in the next decade, Reminiscences of Forts Sumterand Moultrie (1876) and Chancellorsville and Gettysburg (1882). Doubleday is best known for his contested role in the creation of baseball, which led to the establishment of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, where Doubleday had been educated. He died January 26, 1893 at Mendham, New Jersey.
Doubleday joined the Theosophical Society in 1876 and was closely associated with its founders in New York. After Olcott and Blavatsky departed for India he became TS president pro tem in the United States. He was elected vice president of the TS, a ceremonial office, on April 17, 1880, and worked to keep the society alive during its dormant years in America. His correspondence with Johnson occurred as the TS was beginning to expand with new lodges in Rochester and St. Louis, and includes discussions of the Tarot and of his translation of Éliphas Lévi’s Dogme et rituel de la haute magie, which was not published in full until the 1910s when it was serialized in The Word magazine.
[undated, probably 1882]
Dear Sir
I certainly owe you an apology for my long delay in answering yours of the [blank space] inst, but before doing so I desired to examine into the condition of the T.S. here as I had been absent from the city nearly all winter.
Circumstances have been very much against us. Some of the difficulties which have impeded our material progress arise from the peculiarities of some of the members who have simply joined to have their appetite for wonders satisfied, but who seem to take but little interest in the philosophy which remedies the subject. I supposed when I accepted the direction of the society that I would have the cordial cooperation of those of the old members who had been associated with H.P.B. and Olcott. Of these I relied most upon Wm. Q. Judge, as he was the best informed and seems at times to receive interior communications from India. He is a pure high-minded and intelligent student of these mysteries, but like a number of others he has had all he could do to keep the wolf from his door. Several of our most valued members are struggling for a bare subsistence, and this necessarily prevents them giving that attention to our organisation which it ought to receive.
Our financial plans—upon which we relied to give us ample means—have not succeeded as yet. With money we could establish a central office here which would be of great value in disseminating the important principles of our philosophy. As it is, we must wait for better times, and make haste slowly. I will call another meeting of the Council and see what can be done.
November 12, 1885
Abner Doubleday
Dear Sir
What arrangement can I make to have 500 copies more or less printed of the impressions of the Magazine articles (translations Dogma and Ritual) after they have appeared in the Magazine.
Mendham, NJ
November 12, 1885
117
Abner Doubleday
Dear Sir
What arrangement can I make to have 500 copies more or less printed of the impressions of the Magazine articles (translations Dogma and Ritual) after they have appeared in the Magazine.
I enclose $5.00 for my subscription.
Yours Very Truly
A. Doubleday
December 3, 1885
Dear Sir
I am bothered about this question of publishing Levy’s book, I am not desirous of having it sent broadcast over the land but would like to confine it to those who need it and can appreciate it. It seemed to me therefore that your paper would filter it through the public mind gradually and would bring it before the right class of readers. Personally I do not desire any profit from it but I would have liked to have had a little to Wilder and Weiss for their services in aiding me in the translation and by their criticisms. Naturally all of us desire some extra copies, and yet these ought not to be used in such a way as to injure the circulation of your paper or rather to lessen it, by sending out separate portions of its contents. The extra copies if printed, might be distributed by us some time after their publication in your magazine. In this way the circulation of the Platonist could not be lessened. We all recognise its value and as for me would be very loath to do anything that would prevent its having a large circulation.
At all events I would like an estimate as to what the extra numbers would cost.
It seems to me too that Wilder ought to be willing to correct the work as you permit print it, if he is willing to do it proof reading; for he does that kind of work rapidly and is the only man I know that is competent for it.
GEMINI—3rd Decanate. A huge bear—URSA MAJOR—traveling about the pole star in a forward direction depicts among the constellations the Aquarius decanate of Gemini. The bear, whose restless activity and omnivorous nature is typical of mentality, in this case moves as does the objective mind, in the direction of events. And it is huge in size to indicate the immense power that may be exercised by thought.
This is the scientific decanate of the sign of thought. Those born under it are capable of accomplishing great things through the exercise of their minds. They tend chiefly to rely upon reason, therefore, should not only train their minds, which is readily accomplished, but should also cultivate idealism and religion. Otherwise their efforts crystallize and become self-centered.
Nero, the Roman Emperor, who had wonderful talent, but could burn Rome for his own amusement so self-centered had he become, had the Sun in this section of the heavens at his birth. On the other hand, as indicating the better qualities of this decanate, Nicholas Culpepper, author of the “Herbal” and by his friends said to be the best physician that ever lived, had his Moon here. And Jay Gould, whose manipulation of railroad securities wrecked so many others and made for himself such a huge fortune, had his Personality located in this last decanate of Gemini. It is the decanate of REASON.
From Letters to the Sage:
Josephine Warner was born on June 12, 1843, in Litchfield, Connecticut, the only child of Elijah B. and Fanny Harrington Warner. After the death of her mother, Josephine was raised by maternal relatives and Elijah took a second wife. In the 1860s, Josephine married James T. Cables, a Civil War veteran from Litchfield County, and was living there with him as of the 1870 census. By 1880 they had relocated to Rochester, New York where the census finds future Theosophist and H.B. of L. member William B. Shelley and his wife Caroline residing with the Cables family, which also includes James’s younger sister Cherry and her husband George Garland. After divorcing Cables, Josephine married William Farrington Aldrich on April 15, 1889, one month (or several, depending on the source) after the birth of their son William Farrington Aldrich III. She relocated with them to Shelby County, Alabama where Aldrich operated a coal mine and created a model company town named Aldrich, now part of Montevallo, where they built a palatial home called Rajah Lodge. William served two terms in the US Congress (1897-1901), during which Josephine resided in Washington, DC, where she was buried in Rock Creek cemetery following her death on August 12, 1917, in Birmingham, Alabama. When her correspondence with Johnson began she was corresponding secretary of the American Board of Control of the Theosophical Society. She was one of the first recruits to the newly formed H.B. of L., pledging on April 14, 1885, but after marrying Aldrich and moving to Alabama she abandoned occult involvements and focused her energies on philanthropy. An 1893 biographical directory identifies her as vice-president of both the Woman’s National Industrial League and the Woman’s National Liberal Union. The main theme of her correspondence with Johnson is the stress and tension within the American TS as a result of the creation of the H.B. of L., and the hostility she suffered from Theosophists over her involvement in the secret society.
Rochester
[undated, probably 1884]
Dear Brother
Yours came this morning. What shall I do send you the names of persons who I think will be interested in your work and might subscribe for it, or only even such as I know will surely subscribe. Can you send me a sample copy, I will subscribe myself and give you the name of Emily Hobbs[1] and may send more after hearing from you again and will send the piece soon as you tell me you are ready and will write Mrs Hobbs who is in Toronto and have her do the same
I sincerely trust you will meet with success. I would like to say more to you but time forbids but I will say just enough to let you know I have received and appreciate your letters
Very kindly yours
Mrs J C Cables
Rochester
[undated, probably 1884]
Dear Sir and Brother
Please find enclosed seven (7) dollars for which please send to the Coress’ Secretary theosophical society 2 Sophia Street Rochester NY—the eleven back numbers also the issue for the year—And please send the new issue to Miss Lucy A Laing[2] Williamson Wayne County NY—the amount enclosed covers the whole as I understand it If not correct let me know—I have been ill or should have attended to it before I can not promise more than this until the books come out and are seen then I may do more
Wishing you great success I am Yours Fraternaly
Mrs J H Cables
Corresponding Secretary
Ts—
Rochester
February 12, 188[4?]
Dear Sir
Yours came this morning You made the same request of me some time ago and I did try to send the names out I am so beset with letters to know about these strange “old new things” that I am nearly killed—I suppose I ought to give you the names of those who inquire of me and I will do so I will get Mr. Shelley or my husband to look over my file of letters and draw them off, or some of them at least. We are much pleased with the “Platonist” I wish we could offer fifty copys of to loan out—I will send some of the names with this of the Society[.] Parker Pillsbury[3] address is Concord New Hampshire Any of the persons in the list of names can be reached at my place as nearly all of them are in daily communication here I have no good list made out and if I wait for the proper “moment to get it done & pass along again as it has done before
Begging pardon for neglect and such imperfect work
I am Humbly
Yours
Mrs JW Cables
Rochester
[undated, probably fall of 1885]
Dear Brother
Send me soon as may be the copy of the Manuscripts you hold for me this you will do I know—O!! I have had such scourging about the H.B. of L. that I am threadbare. I would not care at all but I do not know—if I really did know I was right—I would fear nothing but if I should be a blind leader of the blind—Tell me truly my brother what you do think is this the real brotherhood of Luxor & is it well to gain powers by practices and if so is this the real pure Yog_[4] I have always feared for mirror gazing—so tell me what you think and why and I shall hold it sacred—I am lost in distress of these things I do hope you will meet with the ABC[5] next year unless you and I are both expelled before that time- four out of nine is not a proper representation I really do need to see you so much I do so wish you could come and stay some weeks with me you are welcome I could give you a room where you could write—I do not know what will be my jurisdiction at all if you do will you tell me when you can—Let me know soon you see I have as yet no instructions to give Mr Kenyon[6] will do so soon as I get them—
Very Fraternally
Yours Josephine Cables
The Theosophical Society
American Board of Control
Rochester
October 20, 188[5?]
Dear Brother
I was glad to get your letter this morning—and so glad that you at least are grand enough to wait and think before threatening to “publish in every paper in the union the smallness manner and fraud of the H.B. of L”.[7] please let me speak plainly to you –You are wise and great and I am obliged and expected to know all and see all from the beginning and say nothing which I have done—I hope our A.B.C. will not now make itself famous for its lack of prudence and malice and show its ignorance also—
I have begged of Mr Page to wait and not oppose himself to a wall which will surely crush him—I did expect the teachers here to have been appointed from America—hence the delay—Mr Davidson is unfortunate in some of his expressions and dislikes and some of them have reached some of our fellows and then he opened a very disagreeable correspondence with Mr W. Q. Judge who did not think well of the HB of L in the first place—I flew to the rescue but it was dreadfully unfortunate and I feel assured that all this present trouble has arisen from that—You know the headquarters of India are opposed to the H.B. of L. also. I don’t know what they will do with you and I but I am ready, all true masters must be friendly and to them I bend my gaze. I suppose we you and I must be as wise as serpents and harmless &c. & return soft answers as I am sorry to say some of our superiors have not done but we are all children and must grow I suppose—I hope the HB of L will give us great wisdom and teach us how to clear the clouds away by the light of Truth
Excuse me for speaking plainly to you as I have not done to any one before and trust it as perfectly confidential
In great haste
Fraternally yours
Josephine H Cables
The Theosophical Society
American Board of Control
Rochester
December 1, 188[5]
Dear Brother
I keep troubling you but I cannot get at things—And I neglect to ask you in my last this question—I am to accept people or only initiate them after they have been accepted abroad?[8] And what about the six mysteries?
We haven’t them—Mr Sasserville[9] has been ill for some days or he would have copied the papers so I could have returned them but we will attend to it soon. I suppose it will take time to get regulated as it has the theosophical work—
With Great Kindness
Josephine H Cables
[undated, probably late 1885 or early 1886]
My Dear Brother
The way seems dark to me but I shall not falter, I shall try to know and shall be so very careful but I have been advised by those dear to me in these words—You have thought the HB of L a good thing and have got your friends into it and to repair your wrong you must publicly declare that you renounce it and that its teachings are dangerous and will lead people into black magic &c &c &c This I cannot do without knowing. I am given to understand that I am to blame for the whole movement in America—and the blood of all will be on my head—I would not blindly lead the blind not for the universe but I must know—and I shall not be rash —I shall wait and watch and work my brother you can see what my position is and although women are rash and impulsive—I shall not disappoint you I shall be reasonable and resolute—I want you to call me soon as you get this if you know—and you and I to judge of the Eligibitely of the candidate, are they first to apply to headquarters—(sc)[10] I have two ladies here at my house one from California and one from Montana They wish to be initiated here get their instructions &c. Now how would you proceed in such a case and how shall I know I am not encroaching upon your territory I would not do this knowingly and what about the fees and dues I am very anxious to know soon as possible as these ladies are waiting your letter—Must all candidates apply be accepted pay their fees and then come to us for initiation—please tell me this soon as possible I shall hate to trouble you for I know you must like me be oppressed with many cares but others are waiting—
Always truly
Josephine H Cables
[1] Joined the Rochester TS lodge, entered July 27, 1882, Theosophical Society General Register Vol. I, http://www.theartarchives.org.
[2] Joined the Rochester TS lodge, entered October 12, 1882, Theosophical Society General Register Vol. I, http://www.theartarchives.org. She joined the H.B. of L. on July 9, 1885.
[3] Parker Pillsbury (1809-98) had been a Congregationalist minister when his license to preach was revoked in 1840 for his abolitionist activities. He edited two abolitionist periodicals, the Herald of Freedom in the 1840s and the National Anti-Slavery Standard in the 1860s, and later co-edited Revolution, a feminist weekly, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton. He was also active in support of the Free Religious Association. In January 1882 he was one of fourteen TS members applying to form a branch in Rochester. His memoirs, Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles, were published in 1883.
[4] This is the only instance in these letters in which the H.B. of L. is explicitly equated with yoga.
[7] A threat presumably made by Elliott Page in a letter to Cables, in light of subsequent references to him and malice on the TS Board of Control.
[8] This indicates that Cables was acting as an H.B. of L. lodge leader at the time, which dates this letter to 1885; see the introduction to this volume for a discussion.
[9] Ernest Sasserville; see his letter in this volume.
[10] I.e., Scotland, which was the H.B. of L. headquarters until Davidson left for America.
GEMINI—2nd Decanate. The second decanate of Gemini is pictured in the sky by a large dog—CANIS MAJOR. This noble looking beast is the emblem of faithfulness, and through its adoration for its master also represents the worshipping and serving of Deity—for to the dog his master is God. Therefore, we find those born under the second decanate of Gemini often possess a singular and admirable faithfulness, either to their human companions or to some high ideal. They have much veneration and seek to obey the voice of their conscience implicitly.
This Venus decanate also relates to twin souls. So there is greater likelihood of those born here finding a congenial mate than is the case with most. And to make the best of life they must espouse some principle or progressive cause, and work to get it generally acknowledged and accepted.
Robert Schumann, the musical critic and composer, who was so faithful to his ideal of musical interpretation, was born with his Individuality polarized in this decanate. Miss Florence Cook, whose faithfulness to the cause of spiritualism led her to become the medium through whom “Katie King” manifested to Sir. Wm. Crookes, had her Mentality pictured by this section of the sky. And Wm. Jennings Bryan, whose faithfulness to his political and religious convictions is the best-known feature of his career, was born with his Personality in this part of Gemini. It is the decanate of FIDELITY.
From Letters to the Sage, Volume One:
Mordecai Dawson Evans was born June 4, 1834 in Philadelphia, son of William R. and Mary Hause Evans. He married Mary Graves Bringhurst on November 18, 1868 in Philadelphia and joined the Theosophical Society on November 8, 1876. A year later H.P. Blavatsky addressed a letter to him dated November 18. 1877, agreeing to a request from Evans that he visit her in New York. The first volume of Olcott’s Old Diary Leaves includes a story witnessed by both Olcott and Judge in which Evans’s street address was needed by Blavatsky and could not be found, so “she took from the table before us a japanned tin paper-cutter, stroked it gently, laid a piece of blotting paper over it, passed her hand over the surface, lifted the paper, and there, on the black japanned surface of the paper-cutter was printed in bronze ink the facsimile of the inscription on the Philadelphia blotting slip that Evans had given her in that city.”
Evans’s insurance career lasted more than thirty years, and was a founding member and secretary of the Association of Fire Underwriters. His income enabled him to support charitable causes, including the Hayes Mechanics’ Home, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. At the time of his death he had served seven years as school director of Philadelphia’s Ninth Section, and five years as its board president. He died in Philadelphia March 23, 1898.
M.D. Evans
October 25, 1884
My Dear Sir,
Your favor of 20th is received, and is entirely Satisfactory— I subscribe to quite a number of magazines, Harpers, &c., and I scarcely have the spare time to do them all justice—Your “Platonist” is an Exceptionally attractive journal both in its typography and literary matter, so much so that I cannot decline asking you to place my name on your list of subscribers to Vol. 2, and for which I enclose $2.00 as per your postal bill—I have however, received this year only Nos. 1,2,5, and 6, so to complete my file, would be obliged for Nos. 3,4, and 7. I trust also to get the other Nos. as issued—
Allow me also to greet you as a Brother of the T.S. a fact of which I was only recently informed. I am a member of the American Board of Control, by recent appointment of Col. Olcott, the President Founder, in Conjunction with Professor Elliott Coues, of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., who has just retd. from Europe, and had the pleasure of traveling with Col. O. and Mad. Blavatsky over a portion of the Continent and was by them, initiated a member of the T.S.—
Believing that “There is no Religion higher than Truth”, I cheerfully aid your literary enterprise, if ever so little, by my individual subscription—
I am Dear Sir,
Yours Truly and Fraternally
M.D. Evans
F.T.S
Mordecai D. Evans
Insurance Rooms
No. 323 Walnut Street,
152
M.D. Evans
Philadelphia
November 3, 1884
Dear Sir and Brother.
I thank you for Nos. 3. 4. and 7 of “The Platonist” Read today—
Under a provisional charter given by Col. Olcott to Prof. Elliott Coues of Washn. D.C., a branch of the T.S. has been established with Prof. Coues as Prest. And the writer as V.P., to be known as the “Washington Gnostic T.S.” with head-quarters in that city, and embracing the cities of Wash. Balte and Philada. At a suitable time a distinct branch will be organized by us in this city—
Professor Coues has just left from Europe and hap the pleasure of journeying through England and Germany, with Mad. Blavatsky Col. Olcott. Mohini Chatterji and their friends— His impressions of “The Founders” was highly favorable, resulting in his initiation &c. into the T.S— His eminence as an author, and ornithologist as well as his rare intellectual abilities and formal merits, make him a great acquisition to our cause—
As we approach the first decanate of Gemini I have discovered this very fun and informative documentary about a man whose influence is enormous but now mostly forgotten. Noteworthy that Elbert Benjamine selects Richard Wagner as an example of an ascendant in this decanate, and that he collaborated with Edward Bulwer-Lytton whose natal Sun is there, on a six hour long opera. From The First Eighteen Decanates Analyzed:
GEMINI—1st Decanate. By means of a bear—URSA MINOR—whose restless activity and power suggest that of the mind, the ancients depicted the Mercury decanate of Gemini. And because the unconscious mind is not so obvious as the objective mind, this bear is small. So too, it travels about the sky backward. Thus must one direct his attention contrary to the trend of objective life to hear “the voice of the silence.”
Perhaps unconsciously, yet none-the-less effectively, those born in the Gemini third of Gemini tend to rely upon intuition. Their natural field of endeavor is the mental plane. They see, not merely the details of a problem, but view it completely, perceiving the proper relation of each part to the whole. And if they are not carried away by the restless desire to undertake too many things, they may become intellectual giants. For they assimilate all they contact and their deductions rise spontaneously from the soul.
Alighieri Dante, who intuitively grasped so many cosmic truths and portrayed them in his “Inferno,” was born when the Sun passed through this decanate. George Bernard Shaw, who comprehends in their entirety so many of the present-day world problems and presents them in his lucid literary style, was born when the Moon was here. And Richard Wagner, the composer, who saw and felt the great truths of nature and expressed them so adequately in music, was born when this decanate was on the Ascendant. It is the decanate of INTUITION.
Although I have not yet acquired them, these new books from academia represent a big step forward this year in what academic scholars call Western Esoteric Traditions and what this blog calls Ancestors of the Brotherhood of Light lessons. All are multi-author collections with predominantly European and Asian authors writing about European and Asian subjects. The biggest news event of the year for students of the lessons will be The CosmicMovement, edited by Julie Chajes and Boaz Huss. The ever-mysterious Max and Alma Theon become less mysterious but no less intriguing, judging from the table of contents. From SUNY Press comes Theosophy Without Boundaries, the first new study of Theosophical history in decades in its Western Esoteric Traditions series which includes three of my own books. From Brill Publications in the Netherlands we have a new study Kabbalah in America that includes a chapter from Vadim Putzu about Thomas Moore Johnson. A fourth new book of interest is now available: this multi-author international collection released in 2021 includes a chapter from Vadim Putzu about Thomas Moore Johnson along with many other relevant contributions. This page from the Palgrave Macmillan website describes all the chapters of Esoteric Transfers and Constructions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Ancestors can be direct or collateral, and when we examine the Cosmic Movement and the Theosophical Society after various partings of ways in the 1880s, they are not direct but collateral ancestors of the work of Elbert Benjamine and he refers to them with admiration but not particular warmth. The line of direct ancestry he emphasizes is the work of Emma Hardinge Britten, Thomas H. Burgoyne, Sarah S. Grimke, and Genevieve Stebbins, none of whom is likely to be illuminated much by the new books. But a great many “spiritual cousins” will come into much clearer focus thanks to these new studies.
My own interest in the Theosophical Society has been largely on its first ten years and American followers, and for more than 25 years my research has been almost entirely about US history. But the overwhelming majority of new esoteric scholarship comes from outside the US and focuses on non-US subjects, which can only be seen as a great sign for the international relevance and vitality of the subdiscipline Western Esoteric Studies. I ran into problems trying to order the book from its Israeli publisher online but meanwhile appreciate that the co-editors have generously made their own portions available for free access on academia, seen here on the page of Boaz Huss.
The bigger picture for this blog would best be provided by a US collection along the lines of Transcendentalist abolitionists and all their esoteric/occult/mind cure enthusiasms. The Alcotts, Peebles, Cables, the Grimkes, Posts, Douglasses, Wilder, Thoreau, LM Child, JH Wiggin, so many chapter possibilities come to mind. I especially look forward to Christine Ferguson’s chapter in the new Cosmic Philosophy collection because it touches on the theme of Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s female successors.
TAURUS—3rd Decanate. The third decanate of Taurus shows the reflective influence of Saturn, its subruler. And even as the key phrase of Capricorn is “I Use,” so those born under this decanate have the ability to use physical means to attain spiritual ends. The decanate is pictured in the sky by AURIGA, the charioteer, who with one hand guides the chariot of his soul and with the other protects and ministers unto the weak and needy. Auriga pictures the one who has triumphed over his environment and physical limitations and attained adeptship. Those born under this decanate have an aptitude for true spiritual attainment. And while the progress usually is not swift; yet, once undertaken, it becomes a sure and steady climb with seldom setbacks. What they receive, however, largely depends upon the use they make of the power they already possess in ministering unto the ills of others.
Elizabeth D. Benjamine, who labored so successfully as a teacher of Brotherhood of Light classes for twenty-three years, and was one of the three founders of The Church of Light, was born with her Individuality in this decanate. Fred H. Skinner, who labored successfully as a teacher of Brotherhood of Light classes for twenty-one years, and was one of the three founders of The Church of Light, was born with his Mentality in this section of the heavens. And Immanuel Kant, whose works on transcendental philosophy have not been surpassed, was born with his Personality here. It is the decanate of MASTERSHIP. (from The First Eighteen Decanates Analyzed)
[Alexander Wilder, 5/14/23 also has Natal Sun in this decanate and born the same month as Emma Hardinge Britten and William Oxley. All three are noteworthy for being sober researchers with a sense of accountability to standards of historical authorship; yet propagandists for Spiritualism, New Thought, and Free Thought. Elizabeth Benjamine provided the stable material foundation for The Church of Light by giving it a physical home on Coral Street. Alexander Wilder was the most steady, reliable advisor of all sixty correspondents of Thomas Moore Johnson in Letters to the Sage.–KPJ]
Emma was born May 2, 1823 in what is now London; in the absence of birth times she and Oxley could be a few minutes apart or many hours. From Letters to the Sage:
William Oxley—born to radical Methodist parents on May 1, 1823 at Doncaster, Yorkshire, England—was a prominent English spiritualist and amateur Egyptologist and Indologist. Around 1848 he married Jane Pettinger, with whom he developed an interest in Swedenborgianism, apparently without abandoning Methodism. Oxley, an inventor holding six patents for industrial processes, headed a machining and manufacturing company, Oxley and Co., which expanded steadily through the 1860s, but declined thereafter, and was bought out by one of his sons in the late 1880s. Jane died in 1893 and the company went bankrupt in 1899. Oxley died at the home of his son Henry on June 29, 1905, and is buried at St. Mary’s in Bowdon, near Altricham, outside Manchester.
In the early 1870s Oxley became involved with spiritualism, and over the next thirty years would author several spiritualism-themed books. Oxley first became involved with the Theosophical Society around 1879, though he later renounced the organization and was briefly affiliated with other UK private occult groups, such as the Order of Light and the H.B. of L.
The primary significance of Oxley’s letters to Johnson is that they provide information concerning the H.B. of L. One of them—dated October 23, 1884—is one of the earliest letters in this volume to mention subjects directly connected to the H.B. of L. This letter is a response to Johnson’s request to Oxley (penned on October 7) for information about Fryar’s Bath Occult Series and the person apparently connected to that series known to Johnson as “M. Theon.” Oxley advises Johnson that Fryar’s books are overpriced reprints and he promises to investigate this “M. Theon,” warning Johnson to—it seems—not rush to join up with Theon’s occult group. Perhaps the most valuable letter is that dated June 29, 1887, in which Oxley says he knew Burgoyne in England before the H.B. of L. had started, and that he (Oxley) had a fairly good opinion of Burgoyne at the time—Oxley even calls Burgoyne “one of the best” astrologers he knows.
Higher Broughton, Manchester
7 November 1881
Dear Sir.
I enclose po order payable at St Louis. Missouri—for 12/. for years subn. for Platonist of which you have sent me as few numbers. The book is very valuable, and I trust you will find sufficient subscribers to support the undertaking.
By same post I forward you a work I have just published—price 3/6 ea. including postage entitled The Philosophy of Spirit—Illustrated by a new Version of The Bhagavat Gita.[1]
I do not understand Sanscrit but I took Schlegels Latin version which is allowed to be the most literal—and after translating this, and comparing, sentence by sentence with Wilkins and Cockburn Thompson—(the only 2 English translations) I then put it into poetic form—and I think I have given the spirit of the work so far as our language permits.
Perhaps you will kindly review it in your Platonist The work can be had of E.W. Allen- Ave Maria Lane London F.C.
I am
Yours very truly
Wm. Oxley
Higher Broughton, Manchester
4 November 1882
My Dear Sir.
Yours of 16th ult. to hand. I have succeeded in getting the 4 numbers of Herald of Progress with my articles in, and which I have pleasure in mailing by some post to you.[2]
I find party spirit and dogmatic individuality now so high in this Country, that I feel more & more disposed to retire for peace into the recesses of my own inner world of thought and life. for, as you will see by last “Theosophist” Brahminism—as represented by its Modern Votaries, are just as dogmatic and overbearing as all other systems sects and isms. Put out a new thought or idea and you have a lot down on you at once.
I believe you have known some in your Country for the expression of new thought. and tho you may think it sometimes leads to vagaries yet better that than the old Conservatism which ever seeks to resist innovation.
I am
Dear Sir
Yours truly
Wm Oxley
Higher Broughton, Manchester
17 September 1884
My Dear Sir.
The receipt of the Platonist reminds me I have not paid for the new issue but I am sending the money to Foulger & Co. London to day
Per same post I send you copy of my new work on “Egypt and the wonders of the Land of the Pharaohs”. and will feel much obliged by your reviewing it in the Platonist.
You will see how I bring in the Platonic School—see page 243 and on. and what are important part it plays in the transitional age.
The work and subject is treated on new lines.
The published price is 7/6. what a pity your people place such a heavy tax on our Literature—the policy is as mischevious as it is utterly selfish. They have the run of our country & yet make us pay heavy in return
I am
Yours very truly
Wm Oxley
Higher Broughton, Manchester
23 October 1884
My Dear Sir
I am in receipt of yours of 7th inst. acknowledging mine enclosing payment of current years sub. to Platonist
My last number for current year 2nd vol is for June 1884 and I have not received No 2. the number for February. will you kindly forward this No 2. along with what follows June. my last number and also kindly send me 2 copies of the number containing your Review of my Egypt &c
of the 1st vol. I have spare numbers of No 1., 2, 4, 5, 6, 7. and if you should require these to complete sets for any of your friends you can have them.
I do know something of the “Bath Occult Series”—which I consider simply a swindle! they are merely reprints of works that are not by any means scarce—and they could have been printed for 2/ what they are getting 21/ for.
as to M. Theon. I am trying to get at the bottom of this thing & to know who he is. my advice is—Be very cautious! I will let you know the result of my enquiries.
Yours very truly
W. Oxley
St Marys Parsonage, Manchester
29 June 1887
Dear Sir
Thanks for your courtesy in sending on my letter to Miss Off. We shall see what comes of it.
In re H.B.L. I presume you know you know the history of the collapse of the Colony scheme in Georgia- I supposed it was genuine at the time but wrote to Davidson discouraging it.
From what I can gather with certitude the simple facts appear to be—that a youngish man real name I believe is Burgoyne—and who is without doubt an adventurer, after the collapse of Mad. B. in Madras (or perhaps before) the opportunity of trading upon the feeling which had arisen in the minds of many would be students of so called Occultism—this feeling was guided by motives which I suspect were directed towards the attainments of psychic powers! However the chief agent was this young man—Stella alias &c &c &c &c. who somehow got hold of P. Davidson an excursion in Scotland and these two concocted the scheme which bloomed out as the H.B. of L., the antecedents of Stella are not of the brightest or best—as I think there is little doubt but that he was imprisoned in Leeds for an advertising swindle—he served his time to a Grocer and his family are fairly respectable. perhaps this is the worst of him that can be said. I had him as a guest at my house several times & I found him agreeable, and was certainly surprised at the information he possessed on the occult. where or how he got it—he was too wary to impart. he knew exactly how to utilise the “mystery dodge” and all this part past when I questioned him was avoided. I would hardly go the length of calling him a clever scoundrel, but I have no hesitation in dubbing him a smart, cute, adventurer. that he has talents above the average is certain, and as an Astrologer I think he is one of the best I know—he taught me & I am of opinion that the Science is true—but overlaid by a vast mass of superstitious rubbish.
As to M Theon. I believe that Burgoyne, Stella and Theon are one & the same person & I no more believe in the Adepts of the H.B. of L. than I do in the Mahatmas of the Theos. Society. Neither one nor the other will stand the operation of close scrutiny.
as to P. Davidson. I think he was so far committed that he could not retreat—I sent my sub. to him according to address in Georgia but my letter was returned so —the Occult Magazine is now a thing of the past
[2] Over the course of its run, from 1880 to 1884, the Herald of Progress published far more than four articles by Oxley. He may be referring to a specific set of articles, or articles that appeared in the 1882 volume, which we unable to locate.
In light of my recent post about geographical proximity of Burgoyne to Britten, compared to how far he was from Davidson, it is significant that Oxley testifies to having met Burgoyne in Manchester which places him in Britten’s circle of Spiritualist allies opposed to the Theosophical Society at the time. Marc Demarest gathered a group of very helpful links on Oxley in this 2012 blog post.
Here is the second Taurus decanate as described in the Brotherhood of Light lessons:
TAURUS—2nd Decanate. In the second decanate of Taurus the fixity of purpose is given the analytical trend through the subinfluence being that of Virgo. Therefore, some condition in the environment is attacked and made the center upon which the physical and mental forces are focused. The result is a conflict. And this conflict may be to attain fame through literary or artistic production, to attain financial supremacy through business methods, or to rise in the field of science or politics. Thus it brings a combat for supremacy.
This thought is pictured by ORION, the most successful of all hunters, who attacked and slew the mighty bull. The bull represents material pleasures and physical limitations over which it is possible for those born under this decanate to rise supreme. They have at their command an unusual supply of electromagnetism, and can mentally attack with a force as great as the huge club wielded by the mighty arm of Orion. Thus they cause obstacles to crumble.
Thomas H. Huxley, whose work as a scientist was so painstaking and brought him so much opposition, was born with the Sun in this decanate. The Rt. Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, whose political life was spent in the struggle to gain greater freedom for the people, had his Mentality here. And another, who strove with armies, George Washington, founder of the U.S. of America, was born with his Personality in this section of Taurus. It is the decanate of STRUGGLE.
This lengthy and thoughtful review appears in the current issue of Nova Religio, pp. 134-136. Re older and younger scholars, Patrick Bowen and I both contributed chapters, his directly and mine indirectly based on Letters to the Sage research. Here are the opening and closing paragraphs:
University of Copenhagen professors Tim Rudbøg and Erik Reenberg Sand have edited a fine collection that sheds fresh light on the earliest years of the Theosophical movement. The choice of contributors balances older and younger scholars very nicely. But be forewarned: the contributors assume that their readers know the debates among historians on early Theosophical history. The contributors demonstrate the truth of this assertion in the way they arrange the information in their chapters.(p. 134)
In the third part of the book, contributors write about interactions between Theosophists and Indian intellectuals in the important years between the 1880s and India’s independence in 1947. Various movements among Indian thinkers and activists fed into the stream of the greater independence movement. Michael Bergunder explores Mohandas Gandhi’s relationship with Theosophists during his years in South Africa and in India until his death. Isaac Lubelsky considers the impact that Blavatsky had on Allan Octavian Hume, founder of the Indian National Congress. Sand traces the relationship between Theosophists and members of the Arya Samaj, a reform movement that promoted the Vedas as the basis for a renewed India. And K. Paul Johnson examines Theosophical figures involved in the Bengal Renaissance. This third part of the book contains persuasive arguments in favor of a new look at the role of Theosophists in the massive cultural and social changes leading up to Indian independence. Imagining the East is a landmark collection. It could easily become one of the most important scholarly texts in the study of the Theosophical movement. Although its chronological scope does not extend past the first two decades of the twentieth century, the early years of the movement’s history are still considered the most important era of Theosophical development. There are still many questions about that era that have not been answered satisfactorily. Hopefully this book will inspire scholars to take a fresh look at older issues and conflicts.
TAURUS—1st Decanate. The masters of olden times in tracing symbolic pictures in the sky, to convey to later generations their conception of the influence of the various sections of the heavens, sometimes pictured the highest attainment and sometimes pictured the greatest obstacle to progress. In LEPUS—the Hare—they symbolize the thought that timidity is the greatest bar to advancement of those born under the first decanate of Taurus. Being the first decanate of the sign naturally ruling the house of money, there is often a tendency to devote too much energy to the acquisition of wealth. And as this decanate is particularly mediumistic, those born under it easily acquire magical powers. Hence the various traditions regarding it as a place of black magic. Yet its children become adepts at white magic just as easily if they but overcome the lust for material things. It is only when they are blinded by physical aims that the place of the soul’s exaltation becomes an adverse symbol. Those born here have great natural healing power and ability to crystallize conditions to their desires by the power of the imagination to mold astral substance.
Ulysses S. Grant, whose fixity of purpose was his most remarkable trait, was born with his Individuality polarized in this decanate, the Sun being here. G.R.S.Mead, who edited The Theosophical Review and did an immense amount of laborious work to enlighten students, had his Mentality in this decanate, it being the place of the Moon in his chart. And Jerome Cardan, who became famous as a mathematician and astrologer, had this decanate Rising at his birth. It is the decanate of DETERMINATION. (from The First Eighteen Decanates Analyzed)
No natal Sun in this decanate is in the Johnson correspondent database, but Benjamine chose a man whose Moon position is there as an example, who does appear in both volumes of Letters to the Sage. G.R.S. Mead was friendly and respectful to Thomas Moore Johnson after the creation of the Quest Society in 1909, but unfriendly and disrespectful to Alexander Wilder as an official of the Theosophical Society. And far more overtly hostile to Thomas H. Burgoyne in the same capacity in his comments on The Light of Egypt. This entails an evolution away from occultism towards esotericism in my opinion, but Wilder did not live long enough to see it and Johnson did so fences were mended and amends were made.
William H. Hoisington was born April 10, 1813 in Buffalo, New York. His father was killed in the War of 1812 when he was eight months old. Partially blind from infancy, he was nonetheless able to earn a degree from Oberlin College and become a Congregational minister. He married Rachel Coleman in Wayne, Ohio in 1845, and his second marriage was to Lauretta H. Cutler in 1880 in Page County, Iowa. As of the 1880 census he lived in Janesville, Wisconsin where his first wife had died in 1878. At the time of his correspondence with Johnson, Hoisington, who had been a member of the TS since 1877,[1] was residing in Altamont, Dakota Territory (now in South Dakota), but he moved to Wisconsin where he died in July 1899.
Altamont Dakota
[undated]
Dear Sir
I have long desired to meet you for consultation on matters which naturally interest us. Although totally blind, and now seventy years of age, I am still in the lecturing field, and still able to do considerable work. I would like to give my remaing energies in this life to forwarding the object of your Platonist. I have passes over the Alton R.R. and several other large railroads. I could easily arrange to meet you at our mutual friend H.K. Jones[2] of Jacksonville Ill if you could let me know two or three weeks beforehand what time you would probably be there. Mr Jones informs me that you were accustomed to call on him. I am sorry you were obliged to retain the five dollars I sent you through my nephew Lyman C. Draper of Madison Wis. I would at once visit you at Osceola, had I passes over roads in your vicinity. I am too straitened pecuniarily to take to far trips beyond the extent of my passes. I have taken up a homestead in Dakota in my old age in which I live.
But it is too new yet to yield me income to any amount. I have no other property except my scanty Library. I write this with my own fingers, which is corrected by my wife Please write me immediately and let me know what time you intend to be at Jacksonville. If much more convenient for you, I could meet you at St Louis, Direct to Altamont Duel county Dakota
The enclosed hand-bill will show what has been my leading topic for the last five years. Hoping for a personal acquaintance at no distant period I remain with sincerest respect
Your brother and fellow laborer
W.H. Hoisington
Altamont
October 15, 1883
Dear sir
Yours of the 28 ult is at hand, bringing the glad tidings of the journal revival of the Platonist I was quite disappointed in not meeting you last July at Jacksonville. Can we not continue to meet somewhere before long. If you were situated on any railroad over which I have I have passes, I would visit you at once. I am pecuniarily too poor to travel beyond reach of passes. I have an anual pass over all divisions of the Chicg, Alton and St Louis RR’s I can easily go St Louis or Kansas City or any point between on the C A and St L. RR. I now call to mind but three names who, I feel sure would take the Platonist
1.Lyman C. Draper LLD. Secretary of the State Historical society. If he did not take it for himself, he would take it for the State History. 2. My friend Harry S Jones. Att at law at Sycamore Ill. 3 Also a Mr Reed at Demoins Iowa whose initials I have forgotten. His wife is an MD. practicing physician at Demoins. When I get out lecturing I shall present the interest of the Platonist and try what I can do for it I shall leave home in about a month. If you can name any place where we can meet, please write me at once.
Your Prospectus of 2nd Vol. of the Platonist came to hand this morning just as my husband was starting out to arrange for some courses of Lecturing So he has left it for me to reply
He is much pleased with your Plan or General design of Platonist will earnestly try to get Subscribers for it. It seems that a brighter day is dawning
Yours for the cause
Mrs. L.H. Hoisington
P.S. We shall not be in our Dakota home much this winter
Any letters or other matter can he directed to come Lyman C. Draper Sec. of Historical S. Madison Wisconsin
[1] See his TS membership, entered in 1877, Theosophical Society General Register Vol. I, http://www.theartarchives.org.
[2] Hiram K. Jones (1818-1903) was founder of the Jacksonville Plato Club and later of the American Akademe in both of which Johnson was a participant; other mutual acquaintances included Bronson Alcott and Alexander Wilder.
ARIES—3rd Decanate. PERSEUS, with the wings of thought on his feet, the helmet of courage on his head, armed with the sword of righteousness, protected by the shield of beneficence, and holding the blood-dripping head of Medusa in one hand, pictures the third decanate of Aries. The subrulership of Jupiter diverts the aggressive energies somewhat into religious and philosophical channels. Consequently, this Sagittarius division of Aries has vast spiritual possibilities when its natives espouse some progressive line of thought, or use their restless never-failing energy in protection of the weak.
Perseus gained renown through his daring exploits in relieving oppression. And even as he severed the head of the Gorgon Medusa, which turned to stone all who gazed upon it, so the people of this decanate have the power to destroy the crystallizing influence of licentiousness, and like the David’s version of the same tradition, cut off the head of the Goliath of selfish greed. They may become the valiant heroes who wage a successful fight against the sordid conditions that oppress civilized life. In the philosophical field of endeavor they find a useful work in releasing Andromeda, the human soul, which all too often is found chained to the rock of materialism to be devoured by lust and envy.
Of those born with the Sun in this decanate I may mention the pioneer Theosophist, Wm. Q. Judge. As expressing the Mentality in this section of the heavens, George Sand, world’s greatest authoress, and spiritualizer of common sights, is a fitting example. And Dr. Rajendra Lal, whose antiquarian and research work are known far beyond his native country, India, has his Personality polarized in this decanate, which was on the Ascendant at his birth. It is the decanate of PROPAGANDA.
The intersection of Plymouth Avenue and Porter Street now looks like this:
Throughout the history of this blog issues of secrecy have constantly arisen, especially since the private correspondence of a secret society of the 1880s was provided to Missouri State University, which led to their publication. Four decades of writing experience as a historical researcher included consistently friendly, open, constructive encouragement from esotericists. Occultists on the other hand often have behaved in precisely opposite ways. These two terms, used frequently as synonyms, refer in my experience to opposite poles of historical honesty and accountability. A new book, Secrecy: Silence, Power, and Religion by Hugh Urban, Ph.D., from University of Chicago Press, gives the best summary I have seen of the theoretical rather than practical difference between the two tribes:
The terms “esoteric” and “esotericism,” meanwhile, were first used in German and French literature of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to refer to traditions that were conceived as the “inner” or hidden teaching beneath outer, mainstream religious institutions. In contemporary scholarship, the phrase “Western esotericism” usually refers to a complex body of literature that developed out of Hermetic, Gnostic, and Neoplatonic sources of late Antiquity and reached its height during the European Renaissance and early modern period. These include esoteric practices such as alchemy, magic, astrology, as well as esoteric communities such as the Rosicrucian Fraternity, Freemasonry, and modern orders such as the Golden Dawn and Theosophy. While claiming to contain deeper “inner” knowledge, esoteric literature may or may not be “secret” in a sociological sense.
The correspondence between Wilder and Johnson and their friends is overwhelmingly that of esotericists, scholars of historical esotericism, and even though Johnson briefly led a secret society his passion was esotericism and not occultism, knowledge of the past and not predicting the future or practicing mediumship and divination in the present. But those who appear as adversaries of these esotericists, among their Theosophist and Spiritualist associates, were better described by this second passage from Urban:
“Occultism,” then, refers primarily to a more recent current within Western esoteric traditions that developed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in response to major transformations in modern European and American society, politics, and economics. While the term “occult” had appeared in texts since at least the twelfth century, occultism as a modern movement amid the secularizing trends of modern science, technology, and the ravages of the industrialization; it was, in short, a search for a deeper, hidden spiritual reality beneath the increasing materialism and rationality of modern life. As Antoine Faivre put it, “The industrial revolution naturally gave rise to an increasingly marked interest in the `miracles’ of science… Along smoking factory chimneys came the literature of the fantastic and the new phenomenon of Spiritualism.”
Many of the individuals named in reference to decanates by Benjamine in the Brotherhood of Light lessons and those appearing by birth date in the Letters to the Sage were either esotericists focused on the past or occultists focused on the present and future. Those with natal Suns in the third decanate of Aries, by far the largest single contingent, will be discussed in the upcoming blog post.
In retrospect the summer of 1994 was when I crossed the Rubicon beyond which esotericists would all be friendly and occultists would often be punitive in protection of secrets.
Born April 3, 1850 in the second decanate of Aries. From the Brotherhood of Light lessons, see link in previous post.
ARIES—2nd Decanate. The second decanate of Aries is pictured in the sky by ERIDANUS the River of Life flowing from the never-failing fountain of perpetual youth. Here we find the severity of Mars tempered by the magnanimity of the Sun, which has subrulership over this decanate. It is the Leo section of Aries. And as Leo is natural ruler of the house of love, so the water, symbol of the emotions, bespeaks the affectional influence. Only through the affections, only in the sacred precincts of love, does man quaff the coveted elixir that imparts eternal life. So those born under this section of the sky may well seek this most hallowed source of power. They become rulers of men through their inherent power to sway the minds of others. They are born to lead rather than to serve, for this subinfluence of Leo lends a persistent ambition for power. The heart is somewhat joined to the head, and the more this union is cultivated the better; for the greatest lever for attainment obtainable by the natives of this decanate is a noble affection.
Bismarck, who pioneered in statesmanship, had his Individuality in this portion of the zodiac, the Sun being there at his birth. Le Plongeon, who pioneered in archaeology, deciphering Mayan inscriptions and writing a work on Atlantis, had his Mentality here, the Moon being in this decanate at his nativity. And Annie Besant, leader of the Theosophical Society and economic pioneer, had her Personality in this decanate, it being on the Ascendant when she was born. It is the decanate of EXALTATION.
ARIES—1st Decanate. To picture the possibilities of the first decanate of the zodiac the masters of old traced in the sky a starry triangle. This constellation—TRIANGULUM —symbolizes the divine fire that those born under the first decanate of Aries have the capacity to inhale. When living in their highest they are true leaders in thought; for the triangle, ever used as a symbol of flame, is also used as a symbol of mind. And again, by its three sides united into one figure, it represents the union of body, mind, and spirit—thus teaching the importance of cooperation.
The pioneer spirit of Aries is expressed in this decanate in all its fiery fullness. Zeal and enthusiasm mark the progress of its children. The Aries decanate of Aries, subruled by the aggressive lord of war, ever seeks new worlds to conquer. And when the thoughts are permitted to soar untrammeled upward, even as the triangle points to heaven, those born under this influence become the harbingers of better things. But when the lower marital power gains sway they become the avenging agents of death and destruction.
Dr. J. M. Peebles, the great pioneer of spiritualism, had this as his Spiritual polarity, having been born when the Sun was in this decanate. Emperor Paul of Russia had this portion of the zodiac for Mental polarity, the Moon being there when he was born. And Proclus, the great Greek Neoplatonic philosopher, who scaled the height of occult initiation and so impressed his thoughts upon the times in which he lived, was born with the Mars decanate of Aries Ascending, this being his Physical polarity. It is the decanate of ACTIVITY.
The alienation of Peter Davidson and his family from Thomas H. Burgoyne and the entire governing body of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor is documented in Letters to the Sage, but not explained. As president, Thomas Moore Johnson investigated issues involving Burgoyne’s birth name during which all members were told to avoid contact with both Davidson and Burgoyne until further notice. When further notice came, Burgoyne was reinstated as secretary of the order and Davidson was never mentioned again in the Johnson letters. There may be an oblique and confused reference by Alexander Wilder who warned Johnson not to get involved in a proposed Theosophical colony in Florida. This article about Davidson in Georgia suggests why the US HBL leaders parted ways with him. (Tensions between Christian and Neopagan approaches to esotericism.)
The Thomas Moore Johnson Correspondence provides sixty biographical profiles of letter writers from around the world whose letters arrived in Osceola, Missouri in the mid-1880s, before family and career responsibilities led Johnson to relinquish his role as US President of the council of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor. Reviewing three dozen of these correspondents for whom we have birth dates, including a few non-correspondents discussed in multiple letters, I see a surprising and overwhelming number of fire sign births: 8 Aries, 6 Leo, 5 Sagittarius out of a total of 38 so 50% fire. Will post every ten days with profiles and/or newspaper stories about these several dozen individuals by decanate of birth starting with Johnson himself. Grimke up next as the only second decanate Aries but the third decanate includes five notable individuals in the spiritual family tree.
One perplexing issue about the literary alliance between “Zanoni” writing in California in 1889 and “Chevalier Louis” writing in England in 1892 has been geographical motive/opportunity for authorial collaboration. As of 1884 Britten and Burgoyne were this far apart. By contrast Peter Davidson was hundreds of miles from both, suggesting that Burgoyne is more likely to have spent considerable time with the Brittens.
Forres, home of Peter Davidson, is 743 miles from Manchester, home of Emma Hardinge Britten
Thanks to Vicki Brewer for scanning and sharing this most important of all biographical and historical articles for students of the Brotherhood of Light lessons. Future blog posts will refer back to this but for now my main “take” is that Elbert was recruited by Sarah B. Anderson and Belle Wagner to fill the vacancy created by the death of Minnie Higgin. An apparent falling out between the Wagners on one hand and the Andersons and Elbert on the other came later.
Pursuant to a formal call, a meeting was held at Kansas City, Mo., on the 12th day of July, 1886, at which three members of the Executive Committee only were present, this number not forming a quorum. The matter of certain charges involving the identity of one T.H. Burgoyne with one T.H. Dalton or T.H. D’Alton, was under consideration in connection with documentary evidence furnished by various persons, and also evidence furnished by Mr. Burgoyne.[1] Mr. Burgoyne was not present but indicated by telegraph his inability to reach Kansas City on the day named. All evidence presented was carefully examined, and the opinion unanimously arrived at was that T.H. Burgoyne, and T.H. Dalton, or D’Alton, was one and the same person.
It was also the unanimous opinion that until these charges shall have been refuted and proven false, it is our duty to advise all to whom this may come to have no further dealings, in any form, with either T.H. Burgoyne (Dalton or D’Alton) or Mr. Peter Davidson.
Thos. M. Johnson
President
St. Louis
September 5, 1886
Meeting of the Central Council of the H.B. of L. convened by T.M. Johnson.
Upon the motion of W.W. Allen, T.H.B. was appointed Secretary pro tem. Present: J.S. McDonald, W.W. Allen, T.M. Johnson and T.H. Burgoyne. Mr. Allen holding a vote by proxy from Mr. Kenyon.
Resolved:
That the president be requested to act as Sec’y. pro tem
Resolved:
That the constitution and by-laws as submitted by the President, and the same are hereby accepted and adopted, Subject to amendment at any regular meeting of the Council. Adopted unanimously.
Resolved:
That the charges against Mr. T.H. Burgoyne are not worthy of further attention on the part of this Council. The vote upon the resolution was as follows: All present voted in favor of T.H. Burgoyn[e]; their opinion being unanimous.
Vote,
For the resolution,
T.M. Johnson,
W.W. Allen,
J.S. McDonald.
––––––––––––
Against the resolution.
W.J.C. Kenyon: This vote was given against T.H.B. by proxy.
Mr W.W. Allen holding the proxy, Took this course as a mere question of honor to respect his proxy.
Ordered:
That W.J.C. Kenyon be appointed Secretary.
Ordered:
That the committee do now adjourn. Bro. E.B. Page was at this time a[d]mitted to the Council Room.
(Signed)
Thos. M. Johnson Thos. H. Burgoyne,
President Central Council Sec’y. Pro Tem.
[1] A copy of Burgoyne’s birth record is in the Johnson papers and may have been the evidence referred to here. A facsimile is provided in this volume.
Dalton photos presented by S.H. Randall to people who personally knew him and could not be misled by faked evidence
I have previously posted the birth certificate obtained by Johnson and his colleagues on the Council. While the earliest allegations against Burgoyne came from hostile sources in the Theosophical Society, Johnson, Randall and colleagues in the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor did not trust those sources and launched their own investigation. They were friends, not enemies of Burgoyne as attested by his reinstatement after three months of suspension.
Peter Davidson, on the other hand, is never mentioned again by Johnson or Randall, leaving us to wonder what Burgoyne told them about him.
Church of Light historical sources identify 1909 as the date of Elbert Benjamine’s recruitment by the leadership of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, and the Denver home of Mrs. Anderson as the location of the meeting at which this occurred. Her address was 1432 Grant St., now a parking lot but directly facing the east side of the Colorado State Capitol.
The 1910 census finds George Gray Anderson and his wife Sarah Beck Anderson, both 51, living with daughters Sarah and Helen, son Robert, Sarah’s mother Lorenzie Beck, and a servant named Shoff in a home just three blocks away from what is now the Molly Brown House Museum.
New Age Enclyclopedia, Gordon Melton, Editor, Gale Research, 1990, p. 51
The couple at whose home Elbert was recruited to the Brotherhood moved to Los Angeles around the same time he began private classes there.
The Andersons prepare to move to a new home in LA as reported December 19, 1914George Gray Anderson’s Entry in Who’s Who of the Pacific Coast, 1913
The 1930 census finds Sarah living with her three children and granddaughter Helen Richmond at 269 South Rockingham Avenue in Brentwood Park in a home valued at $35,000. She died here in 1941 so had been in Los Angeles for the first twenty five years of Elbert’s work in California. Stay tuned for further investigations.
Part One of The Light of Egypt, The Science of the Soul, presents itself as the work of a single author, an occultist and astrologer whose themes echo those of Emma Hardinge Britten. Part Two, Science of the Stars, refers to its authors as “we” and internal evidence as well as correspondence indicates a close collaboration between Burgoyne and Grimké. She had no prior astrological training or background in occultism, while he lacked her philosophical education and training as a writer. They complemented each other’s strengths.
The 1900 two volume edition added an entire new volume while leaving the first intact as a reprint of the 1889 one volume edition. The publishers took liberties with the name, reputation, and writings of Burgoyne which were expanded in 1963 with a new edition introducing more mediumistic interpolations. While these editorial actions make most of the writings attributed to Burgoyne questionable, Sarah appears to have been represented honestly by her publishers other than lack of credit for co-authorship of The Light of Egypt.
Much of Science of the Stars parallels Grimke’s A Tour Through the Zodiac, as can be seen by comparison of the language and content of the two tomes. The concluding chapter, more metaphysical than astrological in tone, provides the strongest evidence that Grimke played a major role in creation of The Light of Egypt. This suggestion was originally found in the earliest book publications of Elbert Benjamine from the 1920s, and confirmed by Grimke family correspondence in Washington, D.C.
[this appears as the introduction to a new appendix to the slightly revised Sarah Stanley Grimke Collected Works as available in print on Amazon or online free of charge at academia at the link provided in Recommended Reading]
These slides include quotes from my chapter in three cases, and from a crucial source in the fourth instance. Of the many characters who appear in the chapter, these four are the ones most relevant to this blog.
James Martin Peebles (1822-1922) is the only one of 32 individuals profiled in my The Masters Revealed (1994) as an important influence on Madame Blavatsky who might also have been a direct influence on Elbert Benjamine. His natal chart is discussed in the Brotherhood of Light lessons and the last years of his long life were spent in Los Angeles. Fifty years earlier he had met Blavatsky’s circle in Cairo in 1872, two years later was present at the Eddy Brothers farmhouse in Vermont when she met Henry Steel Olcott, and provided fateful introductions to Buddhists in Ceylon and Spiritualists in India who subsequently become prominent Theosophists.
New in this book is the information that the Calcutta-based Brahmo movement, and not the Bombay-based Arya Samaj, was the earliest source of Indian recruits to the TS and that Peebles had been the catalyst. Peebles was a longtime ally of Emma Hardinge Britten, who had written a glowing preface to a biography of him, The Spiritual Pilgrim, by Joseph Osgood Barrett in 1871. Peary Chand Mittra has received little attention in Theosophical history studies because he died so early in the Society’s existence in India. Yet his overall place in the Bengali literary renaissance of the 19th century as a highly influential novelist, editor, and activist reformer is increasingly well established. In 2o21 my attention will be focused on new projects but as 2020 ends I wanted to offer a brief glimpse of this publication from last January.
front cover, The Light of Egypt, Chicago: Religio-Philosophical Publications, 1889
Every version of The Light of Egypt that is available in print or online, until now, is of the two volume 1900 edition or twentieth century revisions thereof. For Elbert Benjamine, as expressed in his Brotherhood of Light lessons, the 1889 one volume edition was authoritative.
Christmas presents going through email today involve an Oregon publisher laboring on this text scanned by a Virginia editor for the benefit of a church and website in New Mexico and a coeditor in Colorado. Stay tuned for a link to the complete text when it is available online. The hard copy of the first edition will become property of The Church of Light in Albuquerque once the online publication is complete.
This review article of the 2019 film was written in early 2020 for a local Unitarian Universalist publication that was about to launch but was sidelined indefinitely by the pandemic. I share it with the information that my original research interest in the Alcotts was because Thomas Moore Johnson, Alexander Wilder, and Sarah Stanley Grimke were all acquaintances of Bronson who were influenced by his ideas and character.
The newest film adaptation of Little Women, the fourth I have seen to date, delves much more deeply into the life of the book’s author than any previous versions. Abigail May Alcott, Marmee in the novel as she was called in real life by her children, is the emotional center of the family in her daughter’s novel and the latest film adaptation. Long-suffering, patient, altruistic, loving– but also angry at injustice and skeptical of many of her husband’s crazy enthusiasms, Abigail/Marmee is earning the appreciation of a new generation of readers and viewers. In 2012 she emerged from obscurity as an author, thanks to Eve LaPlante, a descendant of her favorite brother to whom she wrote often, discovering a hitherto unknown cache of Abigail’s letters and diary entries in an attic trunk. These were published as My Heart is Boundless simultaneously with a joint biography of mother and daughter called Marmee and Louisa. While preparing for her role as Marmee, actress Laura Dern studied LaPlante’s works. The acting, the characters, the cinematography, surpass any of the previous versions in my estimation. The Oscar nominations for Saoirse Ronan (Jo) and Florence Pugh (Amy) in the leading and supporting actress categories are well deserved. (Dern is also a nominee this year but for a different film.) Orchard House in Concord, the real Alcott home where the book was written, is used as a location adding great beauty and authenticity to the scenes. The way the director slides back and forth between past and present, the Marches and the Alcotts, is intriguing to me as a Unitarian history enthusiast but I think might be hopelessly confusing to anyone who was unfamiliar with the Alcott family.
Abigail, called Abba by her family, met Bronson Alcott in 1827 in Brooklyn, Connecticut where her brother Samuel Joseph May was a Unitarian minister. They married after a long courtship, and several years later Abba was living in Germantown, Pennsylvania where Bronson managed a school. Louisa was born here in 1832. Writing to her brother, Abba confided that she had to be discreet about her faith because “the Unitarians here are held in such horror as being worse than infidels. My good house keeper told me that a lady had the wickedness to say that we were Unitarians. Said she, `Mrs. Alcott, I have disliked that woman ever since; I told her that you were as good Christians as ever lived.’ We pass I believe for kinder Episcopalians although we usually attend Friends’ meetings, preferring the silent communion with our own souls.” Samuel Joseph became an abolitionist leader and in 1834 Abba followed his example and joined the Female Anti-Slavery Society. An 1846 letter expresses her misgivings about the onset of war, imploring Sam “Oh Sam, dedicate yourself to Peace, keep your pulpit if it is only to secure a place from which to declare and testify this truth. It is the cornerstone of the true church. Our nation in its principles is becoming corrupt, abusive, warlike, and degraded. It will cut off its own head with its own weaknesses.”
Little Women is based on the Alcott daughters’ childhood and adolescence in the 1840s and 50s but set during the Civil War. Mother and daughters were apart from their father on Christmas day 1848, not because Bronson was away at war but because they were away at work. Bronson was an impractical dreamer who repeatedly failed to provide for his family’s needs, and finally Abba went to work in Boston as a pioneer of social work, funded by philanthropists as missionary to the poor, writing at the time “My heart has always been pledged to the cause of the destitute and oppressed; now my time shall be sacredly devoted to their relief.” The scenes of Marmee and the girls bringing food to a destitute family in the novel and film are in Concord during the Civil War, but such philanthropies really occurred in Boston during the Mexican War. Despite the changes in Louisa’s fictional accounting, the emotional bond between mother and daughters is absolutely true to history. In a diary entry written that lonely, poor Christmas, Abigail gives glimpses of the traits that will later be seen as those of Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March. “Christmas Day. Pass the day, which was wet, dark and dreary, with my family. Hopeful Anna cheering doubting mother. Loving Louisa trying by many quiet acts of comfort to make life more tolerable. Dear Lizzy by her repose and self reliance groping through this mist of things and adverse circumstance. And little Abba a `cricket on the hearth’ chirping, free from care or anxiety.”
Abigail died a few weeks after her 77th birthday in 1877. When Louisa and Bronson died two days apart in 1888, their funerals were conducted by Unitarian minister and Transcendentalist author Cyrus Bartol at Old West Church in Boston, just half a mile away from where Bronson had married Abigail at King’s Chapel six decades before. For contemporary Unitarian Universalists, Little Women provides vivid impressions of the lives and values of their spiritual ancestors in 19th century New England. Abigail May Alcott, with her Unitarian upbringing and lifelong commitment to progressive reform causes, including feminism and social welfare as well as abolitionism, became a role model as the fictional Marmee. It is gratifying now to see the actress playing Marmee openly discussing the character’s historical prototype and her exemplary life, and to know that only the accidental discovery of 150-year-old family letters enabled us to understand her in all her complexity.
The 1920 legal name change from Benjamin P. Williams to Elbert Benjamine was caused, he said, by ostracism from his relatives in Iowa motivated by religious antagonism. His Williams relatives in Iowa consisted at that point of his five children and ex-wife living on a poultry farm outside of Adel and his mother living in town, none of whom could be fairly accused of ostracizing their father, ex-husband, and son. And yet it is clear that SOME relatives wanted him change his name legally if he was determined to pursue a career as a writer and teacher of astrology, Tarot, and other things not discussed in Adel polite society.
The census records of the Williams and Benjamine families from 1910 through 1940 provide an interesting clue to events of 1920 as well as a reminder of a major mystery of 1910.
From top to bottom: 1910 census entry for Benjamin and Rita Williams, 1920 entry for Benjamin and Elizabeth Williams, followed by 1920 entry for Emma G. Williams, 1930 entry for Elbert, Elizabeth and Will Benjamine, 1940 entry for Elbert and Elizabeth Benjamine; 1910 entry for Grace, Benjamin, and William Williams, 1920 entry for Grace, Benjamin, William, Mary Grace, Norman, and Zilla Williams, 1930 entry for Grace, Zilla and Norman, 1940 entry for Norman, Grace, and Zilla
In the first entry we see that as of the 1910 census Benjamin Williams is not just divorced (as we see from his ex-wife’s status in the censuses of 1910, 1920, and 1930) but remarried to Rita or Reta, an Iowa native born around 1876, living in Steilacoom, Washington, doing odd jobs. Here is a 1910 photograph from Steilacoom looking across Puget Sound towards the Olympic Mountains.
Grace Williams was apparently opposed to her husband’s literary ambitions and interests from the start, and Elizabeth Benjamine was fully supportive of him throughout their marriage. But crucial years of his contact with the Brotherhood and beginning of public work (Denver in 1909 through Carmel in 1918) took place between the divorce from Grace and the marriage to Elizabeth, about which the best eyewitness account would be from Rita about whom we know nothing at this point other than what is in the 1910 census.
While the 1910 census raises many unanswered questions, the 1920 census points to an answer to a question– what was behind Benjamin/Elbert’s claims of being ostracized and harmed in business prospects by his family in 1920? Grace is at home on a chicken farm with five children in 1920, but Emma Green Williams is not at home in Iowa but rather staying at a boarding house on North Broadway, the main thoroughfare nearest the home of Elizabeth and Elbert in Los Angeles. We can surmise from this that she was not entirely antagonistic to her son and new daughter in law if she was willing to go to California to see what they were up to. That in the aftermath of this visit the legal name change occurred is likely related to Emma’s advice, but a new piece of evidence about her own sister’s family the Clarkes suggests where the real pressure was coming from.
Emma’s next younger sister Arletta Green Clarke was the wife of the governor of Iowa from 1913 through 1917, the period in which Benjamin fathered three more children with his ex-wife after marrying another woman. Since Rita was a native Iowan whose parents were also Iowa-born, it is likely that Iowa acquaintances of the Williamses and Clarkes and Greens knew her identity, although that story is now lost. Elbert had four first cousins in Iowa all of whom were also sons and daughters of the governor. George Washington Clarke had been Lieutenant Governor of Iowa from 1909 through 1913, so his combined tenure in the capital of eight years occurred precisely during the years when his Williams in-laws were probably setting tongues wagging in Adel and possibly Des Moines as well.
Emma Green Williams left Elbert Benjamine a substantial inheritance upon her death in 1932 which he used to build up the church of which his son Will was now an employee. Will likewise changed his surname to Benjamine, the only one of her grandchildren to do so and the only one to be publicly associated with The Church of Light. Her presence in Los Angeles in 1920 suggests that perhaps a legal name change was imposed as a condition of future inheritance, assuring that the Williams name would not be associated with astrology and occultism.
Here is a summary of Clarke’s gubernatorial career from a national database of state governors:
A birthday tribute to Elbert Benjamine’s hometown in the form of an aerial tour, two and a half minutes in which the scenic views of the town itself appear in the latter half.
On May 3, 1900, this story appeared in the Perry, Iowa Chief-Reporter:
This first known newspaper reference to the 17 year old future author of the Brotherhood of Light lessons illustrates some character traits that were still vividly evident four and five decades later. They also suggest why his first marriage, in 1903, reportedly occurred in Oregon. He was the only son of an only son, which rules out Williams siblings or cousins, but his mother’s brother Judge Sturgis Green had relocated to Oregon by 1900 with a primary residence in Portland. The judge had a stepson named Allen Hickey who had been born in Adel but was living in Oregon where he married in 1899. Hence Benny’s Oregon travels likely involved his uncle and cousin.
Judge Sturgis Green
The focus of this blog will remain the 19th century precursors of the Brotherhood of Light lessons, but events of the first two decades of the 20th, including the birth of five children, defined the context in which Benny’s public life as Elbert was lived after 1920. Dennis Sutton’s two studies of Elbert (available for sale on light.org) are exhaustive on his public life after 1920 but evidence on his early life as Benny has become much more interesting in the years since they were published, thanks to online ancestry websites. Thanks to Marc Demarest for finding this gem.
The planets in your chart are balanced on the two (East and West) sides of your chart. Your life’s course tends to be a mix of both molding and being molded by circumstances.
Planets Above and Below the Horizon
The line formed by the Ascendant and Descendant (opposite the Ascendant) divide the astrological chart in half, where planets and houses above the line are above the horizon and vice versa. The higher, or more elevated, a planet in the chart, the more publicity it gets. Planets below the horizon are more private and relate to activities in the life that are generally hidden from public view.
The planets in your chart are primarily below the horizon, and are related generally to private and personal matters that get little public attention.
6. Indicators of General Temperament and Disposition
The following analysis shows the distribution of the planets among the various elements and qualities of the zodiacal signs, which provides excellent indicators of general temperament and disposition.
(In the analysis below, note that the Sun, Moon, Ascendant, Mercury and the Dominant Planet carry more weight in a sign, triplicity or quadruplicity than the other planets and may override a ranking by astrodynes.)
Distribution of Your Planets Among the Triplicities (Elements): Fire, Earth, Air and Water Signs
Element
Sign
Planets in Sign
Element Power*
Fire signs:
Sagittarius
Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars
433.70
Earth signs:
Taurus
Saturn, Neptune, Pluto
334.98
Virgo
Uranus, MC
Capricorn
Moon
Air signs:
Gemini
Jupiter
150.57
Water signs:
Scorpio
Asc
119.81
The distribution of planets in your chart among the four elements shows a preponderance of Fire (Sun, Dominant Planet, Mercury, 2 other Planets) and Earth (Moon, 4 other Planets, MC) but with little Water (Asc) or Air (1 Planet). With lots of Fire and Earth, both following descriptions apply to a certain extent. The power you have in Fire signs indicates INSPIRATION and shows you to be enthusiastic, optimistic and self-reliant. The power you have in Earth signs indicates PRACTICALITY and shows you to be down to earth, sensible, industrious and practical. With very little Water or Air, try to cultivate sympathy and kindly emotions and try to cultivate an increased interest in mental activities and intellectual ideas.
Distribution of Your Planets Among the Quadruplicities or Qualities: Movable (Cardinal), Fixed and Mutable Signs
The zodiacal signs fall into three types: Movable (Cardinal), Mutable and Fixed. The three types are known as the Quadruplicities (there are four signs in each type) or the Qualities. (See appendix.) The distribution of the planets in your chart among the three types determines your level of adaptability, and is a key determinant of temperament.
Quality
Sign
Planets in Sign
Quality Power*
Movable signs:
Capricorn
Moon
183.78
Fixed signs:
Taurus
Saturn, Neptune, Pluto
275.68
Scorpio
Asc
Mutable signs:
Gemini
Jupiter
579.60
Virgo
Uranus, MC
Sagittarius
Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars
The distribution of planets in your chart among the three Qualities shows lots of power in Mutable signs (Sun, Dominant Planet, Mercury, 4 other Planets, MC) but with some activity in Fixed signs (Asc, 3 other Planets). There is little power in the Movable (Moon) signs. Many planets in Mutable signs indicates power to adapt to whatever environment is present. The Mutable signs are a happy medium between the excessive activity of the Movable (cardinal) signs and the stubborn resistance of the Fixed signs. You’re not a trail-blazer, but rather a trail-builder. Mutable people are the most adaptable of all. They are the DEVELOPERS. You also have some of the qualities of the Fixed signs such as determination. With very little power in Movable signs, look for ways to exercise initiative.
7. Personal – Companionship – Public
The Houses, or departments of life, are naturally grouped into three categories or domains: Personal, Companionship and Public. This is a good indicator of where your interests, desires and energy naturally incline. This can be especially helpful in analyzing close personal relationships like marriage, where partners interests are largely focused in different domains, e. g., public or personal vs companionship. Cultural gender differences can also ameliorate or exacerbate diverging interests and desires.
The distribution of planets in your chart among the three Societies shows that most of your energy, thought and activity involve the Personal houses (departments of life). The Personal houses (1st, 2nd, 3rd and 12th) map feelings and desires that relate to the private life including personal and health matters, personal wealth and possessions, personal interests, siblings and personal restrictions and disappointments. Little planetary power in the Public or Companionship departments of life indicates less interest in activities that are widely known or the strength of the desires to associate with others through home, children, work and partnership.
8. Astrodyne Analysis
Through Astrodyne analysis one can analyze the power and harmony of the planets, signs and houses in your chart. The objective of this analysis is to indicate which areas will bring the most benefit into the life and which areas need work. Subsequent sections will explore in more detail the various departments of life (The Houses) and associated key aspects between planets. Below you will find the Astrodyne Table for your chart followed by an analysis of the best, worst and most powerful planets, houses and signs.
The astrodyne table, immediately below, analyzes the power and harmony of each planet, house and sign in your chart. The columns show (1) object name, the absolute astrodyne (2) power and (3) harmony, the Zscores indicating (4) relative power and (5) harmony, and the corresponding qualitative assessment of the relative (6) power and (7) harmony of each element in the chart based on the Zscores. Assessing a relative qualitative score is important because absolute values can be somewhat misleading and there are no “population” statistics from which to judge absolute power and harmony. An asterisk “*” in the power or harmony Zscore columns indicates that the value is an “outlier” which skews the distribution, in which case it is removed and the Zscores recomputed to provide a more accurate picture.
The tables below are a reference summary. The planets, houses and signs, and their influence on you character and fortune, are described throughout the report.
Planets, MC and Asc
(1) Object
(2) Power
(3) Harmony
(4) Power Zscore
(5) Harmony Zscore
(6) Relative Power
(7) Relative Harmony
Sun
95.76
-7.20
1.80
-0.01
powerful
mildly discordant
Moon
24.12
8.23
-1.34
1.51
weak
very harmonious
Mercury
82.74
-8.27
1.23
-0.12
powerful
mildly discordant
Venus
34.06
9.01
-0.90
1.58
weak
very harmonious
Mars
83.60
-22.38
1.27
-1.51
powerful
discordant
Jupiter
59.95
3.00
0.23
0.99
average
harmonious
Saturn
59.86
-20.70
0.23
-1.34
average
discordant
Uranus
61.60
-11.44
0.31
-0.43
average
mildly discordant
Neptune
40.07
0.05
-0.64
0.70
weak
harmonious
Pluto
36.84
-11.23
-0.78
-0.41
weak
mildly discordant
MC
24.14
-5.28
-1.34
0.18
weak
mildly discordant
Asc
52.63
-18.46
-0.09
-1.12
average
discordant
Houses (See later section on Departments of Life for more information.)
(1) House
(2) Power
(3) Harmony
(4) Power Zscore
(5) Harmony Zscore
(6) Relative Power
(7) Relative Harmony
1st
378.91
-55.70
*
*
very powerful
discordant
2nd
54.10
9.73
-0.16
1.38
average
very harmonious
3rd
45.12
-14.37
-0.39
-0.75
average
mildly discordant
4th
25.01
0.76
-0.93
0.58
weak
harmonious
5th
41.80
-11.19
-0.48
-0.47
average
mildly discordant
6th
81.88
-11.14
0.58
-0.47
moderately powerful
mildly discordant
7th
113.74
-27.42
1.42
-1.91
powerful
discordant
8th
101.33
-1.13
1.09
0.42
powerful
neutral
9th
36.00
2.31
-0.64
0.72
weak
harmonious
10th
127.11
-20.85
1.78
-1.33
powerful
discordant
11th
17.03
4.51
-1.14
0.91
weak
harmonious
12th
17.03
4.51
-1.14
0.91
weak
harmonious
Signs
(1) Sign
(2) Power
(3) Harmony
(4) Power Zscore
(5) Harmony Zscore
(6) Relative Power
(7) Relative Harmony
Aries
83.60
-22.38
0.41
-0.94
average
mildly discordant
Taurus
153.81
-27.37
1.93
-1.32
powerful
discordant
Gemini
101.33
-1.13
0.79
0.67
moderately powerful
neutral
Cancer
12.06
4.11
-1.14
1.07
weak
very harmonious
Leo
23.94
-1.80
-0.89
0.62
weak
neutral
Virgo
127.11
-20.85
1.35
-0.82
powerful
mildly discordant
Libra
34.06
9.01
-0.67
1.44
weak
very harmonious
Scorpio
82.74
-26.86
0.39
-1.28
average
discordant
Sagittarius
326.15
-27.34
*
-1.32
very powerful
discordant
Capricorn
54.05
-2.12
-0.23
0.60
average
mildly discordant
Aquarius
15.18
-4.02
-1.08
0.45
weak
neutral
Pisces
25.01
0.76
-0.86
0.82
weak
harmonious
Your Best Planet, House and Sign
Best Planet
The most harmonious planet in your chart is Venus, which maps your Social Urges, and is in your 1st House. Venus is weak and less active relative to the other planets in your chart. Your Venus is in the sign Sagittarius, which gives it a(n) bright, enthusiastic and generous nature. Being in the 1st House, it expresses through activities related to personality, physical body, physical appearance and demeanor, quality of the personal magnetism, personal prowess, personal matters and general health.
Venus is prominent in your chart due to being in an angular house and its close aspect to the Sun, even though weak by astrodyne power relative to the rest of your chart. To take advantage of the harmony, build up the power of Venus in your chart through activities relating to social activities, decor, art of all kinds, dancing, wearing apparel, confectionary, pastry, toiletries, jewelry, people of a social turn, and music and harmonious thoughts relating to affection, friendship, beauty, art, mirth, conjugality, or cohabitation.
Best House (Department of Life)
The most harmonious House (Department of Life) in your chart is the 2nd House, which maps life activities relating to money, possessions and personal resources. The 2nd House has 9.73 harmodynes, is very harmonious and contains one planet: the Moon. See the section below on Analysis of Each Department of Life (The Houses) for an explanation of the effect of this planet on the affairs of the 2nd House.
The 2nd house has 54.10 astrodynes of power and is of average power relative to the other houses in your chart and thus has enough power to benefit your life.
Best Sign
The most harmonious zodiacal sign in your chart is Libra, which is on the cusp of your 11th and 12th Houses, due to this sign’s ruler Venus, which is in the 1st House. Venus is your best planet. The following table displays correspondences for the sign Libra from which you may benefit by association.
Category
Correspondence
Nature
congenial, artistic and refined
Association
balance, marriage, partnership
Letter
Egyptian, Gomer; Hebrew, Gimel; Latin, G
Number
III, 3
Color
lighter shades of yellow
Tone
high E
Human Function
sense of feeling
Remedy
such herbs as white rose, strawberry, violet, water-cress, primrose, heartsease, balm, pansy and lemon-thyme
Mineral
the talismanic gem, diamond; and such stones as white quartz, white spar and white marble
Your Worst Planet, House and Sign
Worst Planet
The most discordant planet in you chart is Mars, which maps your Aggressive Urges, and is in your 1st House relating to personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics. Mars is powerful relative to the other planets in your chart. With your Mars in Sagittarius, your assertiveness and creativity are bright, enthusiastic and generous, especially relating to personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics.
The natural antidote for a discordant Mars is the application of Moon (Domestic Urges) thoughts and emotions such as care and nurturing of the young, providing for the helpless, weak and needy, making the domestic life more enjoyable for those in the home, and taking care of their needs, especially in relation to 1st House activities including personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics.
Worst House (Department of Life)
The most discordant House in your chart is the 1st House, which governs the department of life relating to personality, physical body, physical appearance and demeanor, quality of the personal magnetism, personal prowess, personal matters and general health. The 1st house has 378.91 astrodynes of power and is the most powerful house in the chart. The 1st House has -55.70 discordynes and contains four planets: Venus, Mercury, Mars and the Sun. The Sun is your Dominant Planet, which is described in more detail in the Dominant Planet section above. Mars is also your Worst Planet, which is described in the “Worst Planet” section. Venus is also your Best Planet, which is described in the “Best Planet” section. See the section below on Analysis of Each Department of Life (The Houses) for an explanation of the effect of these planets on the affairs of the 1st House.
Worst Sign
The most discordant zodiacal Sign in you chart is Taurus, which is on the cusp of your 7th House. The sign Taurus has 153.81 astrodynes of power and is powerful relative to the other signs in your chart. It has -27.37 discordynes and contains Saturn, Neptune and Pluto.
Your Most Powerful Planet, House and Sign
Most Powerful Planet
The most powerful planet in your chart is the Sun, which is generally referred to as your Dominant Planet. The Sun is in your 1st House relating to personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics, and is mildly discordant relative to the other planets in your chart. See the discussion of you Dominant Planet above.
Most Powerful House (Department of Life)
The most powerful house (Department of Life) in your chart is the 1st House relating to personality, physical body, physical appearance and demeanor, quality of the personal magnetism, personal prowess, personal matters and general health. The 1st House is also the most discordant house in your chart, and contains Venus, Mercury, Mars and the Sun. See the section below on Analysis of Each Department of Life (The Houses) for a detailed discussion of this house.
Most Powerful Sign
The most powerful zodiacal sign in your chart is Sagittarius. Sagittarius is on the cusp of your 2nd House, is discordant relative to the other signs in your chart, and contains the Sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars. See discussion of Sagittarius in the Sun Sign section of “Your Key Chart Points and General Characteristics” above.
Best, Worst and Most Powerful Chart Aspects
The following sections describe the most significant aspects between the planets in the chart. (See the Glossary in the Appendix for more on Aspects and how they express.)
Most Powerful Aspect in the Chart
The most powerful aspect in the chart is Sun Conjunction Mars. At -3.65 discordynes, this aspect is mildly discordant. The Sun is in the 1st House relating to personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics. Mars is also in the 1st. This conjunction aspect shows that this area of life experiences a powerful association. The aspect shows the vitality, authority and the relations with men influence, and are influenced by assertiveness, combativeness, amativeness and expenditure of energy. This conjunction aspect indicates a powerful association between these factors showing good vitality, strife with or over authority, and, to the extent that the aspect is powerful, a tendency to rashness and accident are shown.
Best Aspect in the Chart
The most harmonious zodiacal aspect in the chart is Moon Trine Neptune. At 14.60 astrodynes, this aspect is very powerful. The Moon is in the 2nd House relating to money and possessions. Neptune is in the 6th House relating to work, coworkers and subordinates and/or illness and the infirm. This very harmonious trine aspect shows that these two areas of life experience cooperation to bring good luck. The aspect shows the mental attitude, domestic life and everyday affairs influence, and are influenced by, idealism, the imagination, sensitivity and schemes. This very harmonious trine aspect indicates these factors work harmoniously together showing benefit from schemes, psychic impressions and women.
The most harmonious parallel aspect in the chart is Sun Parallel Jupiter. Since this aspect is also the most powerful parallel aspect in the chart, it is of great benefit. See discussion of Most Powerful aspect above.
Worst Aspect in the Chart
The most discordant aspect in the chart is Saturn Opposition Ascendant. At 11.95 astrodynes, this aspect is powerful. Saturn is in the 7th House relating to marriage and partnership. The Ascendant is on the cusp of the 1st House that relates to the effect on the personality, health and personal affairs from the aspects made to it, which, in this case, is the Opposition aspect from Saturn. This discordant opposition aspect shows that these two areas of life experience a painful separation, are mutually exclusive, and force a choice between one or the other. The aspect shows work, responsibility, and economy or loss influence, and are influenced by, the personality, physical body and health. This discordant opposition aspect indicates these factors negatively affect each other showing a cool, cautious personality but overwork, increased responsibility, and the need for economy have negative impact on the personality and health. Pleasant thoughts of significance and self-esteem along with pleasant thoughts of affection and a harmonious social life need to be substituted for worry and anxiety.
9. Special Chart Configurations
The following paragraphs identify planetary configurations in your chart that are of special interest.
T-Square
Configuration 1 is a T-Square where:
There is an OPPOSITION aspect between Jupiter in the 8th House and Sun (À), Mercury and Mars in the 1st House with Uranus in the 10th House SQUARE both opposition planets forming a “T”.
The total power of this configuration is 86.85 astrodynes, consists of 10 aspects in total and maps a powerful influence in the life.
This is a discordant configuration referred to as a T-Square, where two planets oppose each other (OPPOSITION aspect) and a third planet forms a SQUARE aspect to both planets in the opposition.
This configuration in your chart involves the planets Jupiter, Uranus, Sun, Mercury and Mars, which govern:
thoughts and feelings of abundance, optimism, goodwill, benevolence, veneration, hope or devotion (Jupiter)
vitality, significance, self-esteem and authority (Sun) and your mental interests, the facility and accuracy of expression and the type and intensity of thoughts (Mercury) and your behavior relating to construction, destruction, initiative, aggression, combat and amativeness (Mars)
independence, originality, inventiveness, unorthodox ideas and sudden events (Uranus)
The departments of life involved in this discordant configuration, indicated by the house positions of the planets involved, are:
partner’s money, fiduciary responsibilities and inheritance (8th House)
personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics (1st House)
career, credit, reputation and mother (10th House)
(See the more detailed discussion of each house in the “Analysis for Each Department of Life” section below.)
The Opposition Aspect
The planets in OPPOSITION are Jupiter opposing Sun, Mercury and Mars affecting the 8th House and 1st House. Though not as violent as the Square aspect, because of its persistence and power, the Opposition aspect is usually considered the worst aspect. The energies of the planets oppose one another, forcing you to make a choice between the two areas of life (houses) involved in the opposition. This constant struggle between the opposing planets develops slowly and unrelentingly.
In your chart, this means the thoughts and feelings of abundance, optimism, goodwill, benevolence, veneration, hope or devotion (Jupiter) expressing through partner’s money, fiduciary responsibilities and inheritance (8th House) are in direct conflict with the vitality, significance, self-esteem and authority (Sun) and your mental interests, the facility and accuracy of expression and the type and intensity of thoughts (Mercury) and your behavior relating to construction, destruction, initiative, aggression, combat and amativeness (Mars) expressing through personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics (1st House), forcing you to choose one or the other. The result is that the qualities of these planets, in this case the Jupiter opposing Sun, Mercury and Mars, are brought into great prominence. Your greatest potential abilities are mapped by oppositions. Many highly successful people have oppositions in their birth charts that they must overcome.
The Two Square Aspects
The two Square aspects in this configuration are:
Uranus mapping the independence, originality, inventiveness, unorthodox ideas and sudden events in your 10th House relating to career, credit, reputation and mother SQUARES BOTH
Jupiter mapping the thoughts and feelings of abundance, optimism, goodwill, benevolence, veneration, hope or devotion in the 8th House ruling partner’s money, fiduciary responsibilities and inheritance AND
Sun, Mercury and Mars mapping the vitality, significance, self-esteem and authority and your mental interests, the facility and accuracy of expression and the type and intensity of thoughts and your behavior relating to construction, destruction, initiative, aggression, combat and amativeness in the 1st House ruling personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics
The Square aspect acts abruptly, brings acute crises, and temporary periods of struggle between the things signified by the two planets and the houses they occupy. It signifies positive lack of adaptation to environment, and consequent conflict.
Discordant aspects force you to overcome OBSTACLES (Square aspects) and SEPARATION (opposition aspects), and thereby build powerful mental and emotional muscle that provide the strength and energy required for outstanding achievement.
Opposition Drain
Configuration 2 is an Opposition Drain where:
Uranus in the 10th House act as a harmonious conciliating “drain” to the OPPOSITION between Saturn, Neptune and Pluto in the 7th and 6th Houses and Ascendant in the 1st House with Uranus TRINE Saturn, Neptune and Pluto and SEXTILE Ascendant.
The total power of this configuration is 54.68 astrodynes, consists of 9 aspects in total and maps a powerful influence in the life.
This is a planetary configuration referred to as an Opposition Drain because there is a planet which act as a harmonious conciliatory factor between two planets making a discordant Opposition aspect. This configuration indicates an especially potent and harmonious source of Rallying Forces (see Glossary in Appendix) because the conciliating planet breaks up the Opposition aspect between the other two planets by making a harmonious Sextile aspect to one and a very harmonious Trine aspect to the other. The Opposition maps an aerial which picks up planetary energy loaded with separative static. But such an Opposition also maps at each terminal, thought cells into which have been built a tremendous amount of energy. This energy, from both groups of thought cells at the ends of the opposition, is tapped harmoniously by the group of thought cells mapped by the planet making the Sextile and the Trine.
The Opposition Aspect
The planets in opposition are Saturn, Neptune and Pluto opposing Ascendant affecting the 7th and 6th Houses and 1st House.
In your chart, this means the behavior relating to system, organization, hard work, responsibility, the need for economy, or loss (Saturn) and your imagination, increased sensitivity, psychic impressions, fantasy thinking, romance, apprehension, idealistic visions or schemes (Neptune) and your spirituality, groups, coercion, cooperation, subtle forces, drastic events or thoughts of universal welfare (Pluto) expressing through marriage and partnership (7th House) and work, coworkers and subordinates and/or illness and the infirm (6th House) are in direct conflict with the health, the personality, and personal affairs (Ascendant) expressing through personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics (1st House) forcing you to choose one or the other.
The result is that the qualities of the planets involved, in this case Saturn, Neptune and Pluto opposing Ascendant, are brought into great prominence.
The Conciliating Trine and Sextile Aspects
The beneficial Trine and Sextile aspects in this configuration are:
The conciliating Uranus mapping the independence, originality, inventiveness, unorthodox ideas and sudden events in your 10th House relating to career, credit, reputation and mother is…
TRINE Saturn, Neptune and Pluto mapping the behavior relating to system, organization, hard work, responsibility, the need for economy, or loss and your imagination, increased sensitivity, psychic impressions, fantasy thinking, romance, apprehension, idealistic visions or schemes and your spirituality, groups, coercion, cooperation, subtle forces, drastic events or thoughts of universal welfare in the 7th and 6th Houses ruling marriage and partnership and work, coworkers and subordinates and/or illness and the infirm. The Trine aspect is the most harmonious aspect and the matters ruled by these two planets and the houses (departments of life) they occupy greatly benefit one another, bringing LUCK to the two areas of life.
AND
SEXTILE Ascendant mapping the health, the personality, and personal affairs in the 1st House ruling personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics. The Sextile aspect brings OPPORTUNITIES between the two planets and the houses the occupy, which must be cultivated to realize the full benefit.
To benefit from this configuration, spend as much time and effort in the 10th House as possible to maximize the LUCK (Trine aspect) and OPPORTUNITIES (Sextile aspect) to overcome SEPARATION (Opposition aspect).
10. Analysis for Each Department of Life (The Houses)
The following paragraphs describe the various departments of life mapped by the Houses in your chart. See the appendix for a more detailed description of houses in general. The most astrologically active departments of life in your chart, in order of importance, are mapped by the 1st House, the 10th House, the 7th House, the 8th House and the 6th House.
1st House – Personal Matters
The 1st House has dominion over activities of life relating to personality, physical body, physical appearance and demeanor, quality of the personal magnetism, personal prowess, personal matters and general health.
The 1st house is the Most Powerful House in your chart and is the subject of intense feeling, activity and events. This house is also the Worst House in your chart, is discordant and contains four planets: Venus, Mercury, Mars and the Sun. The Sun is your Dominant Planet. Mars is also your Worst Planet, which is described in the “Worst Planet” section under Astrodyne Analysis above. Venus is also your Best Planet.
Venus in the 1st House
Venus is prominent (being in an angular house and its close aspect to the Sun) although weak and less active relative to the power distribution in your chart, but is very harmonious.
Whatever house is occupied by Venus has a strong influence upon the affections, and through it an appeal to the affections can readily be made. Mating, companionship, affection and love are expressions of the thought cells mapped by this planet. The things denoted by this house tend to prosper not through effort and initiative, but through kindnesses and favors received because of grace of manners, and following the line of least resistance. Because the chief expression of the thought-cells in the unconscious mind mapped by Venus in the chart relate to the social life they are referred to as the Social Urges.
Venus in Sagittarius: With the Social Urges, embracing the emotions, the affections, social relationships and artistic appreciation expressing from the “I See” attitude of Sagittarius, seek a worthy subject for your loyal affections rather than allowing impulsiveness to settle for less.
Venus in the 1st House maps the Social Urges expressing through the personality, and indicates a pleasant, attractive demeanor. It also suggests one who may be fastidious and loves grace, music and artistic expression. Companionship is essential. When Venus is afflicted (discordant), there may be a tendency toward pliancy. Counteract this and avoid being too eager to please others and following the line of least resistance. Instead, be firm and assert your strength of character. In the long run, this will please others, allowing you to find satisfactory expression for your affection. The natural antidote for an afflicted Venus is to cultivate caution, system, fairness and foresight (Saturn Safety thoughts), along with thoughts and feelings of pride, dignity, firmness and self-esteem (Sun Power thoughts).
Important aspects to Venus
The most powerful aspect to Venus is Mercury Conjunction Venus. With 8.41 astrodynes of power, this aspect is moderately powerful and with 2.10 harmodynes is harmonious, relative to the other aspects in the chart. Mercury is also in the 1st. This conjunction aspect shows that this area of life experiences a powerful association. The aspect shows the mental interests, facility or accuracy of expression and cerebral activity influence, and are influenced by, the emotions, social relations and artistic appreciation. This conjunction aspect indicates a powerful association between these factors showing benefit through intellectual activity and social relations, and some artistic talent.
Mercury in the 1st House
Mercury is prominent (being in an angular house and its close aspect to the Sun) and powerful and is mildly discordant.
Whatever house is occupied by Mercury becomes the subject of mental effort. The mind expresses itself readily where the things so denoted are concerned. The department of life ruled by the house occupied by Mercury is subject to thought and the subject of conversation. Because the chief expression of the thought-cells in the unconscious mind mapped by Mercury in the chart relate to the intellectual life, they are referred to as the Intellectual Urges.
Mercury in Sagittarius: With the Intellectual thought cells, governing cerebral processes, perception, comparison and communication, expressing from the “I See” attitude of Sagittarius, strive to have your speech, and your expression in general, be generous and loyal rather than impulsive and blunt. The best quality of Sagittarius is loyalty, and its worst quality is mischievousness.
Mercury in the 1st House indicates that the Intellectual Urges express through the personality. This give a loquacious, mentally alert personality that shows ability for speaking, writing and study. Your actions and expression tend to be based on logic and reasoning. You may be an inveterate traveler or inclined to write. Mercury is always mentally alert but can be restless and this will show in your personality. Mercury people often worry about the details and may feel responsible for more than their share. The natural antidote for this is reliance on a higher power and having faith that things will turn out well.
Mercury is also involved in one special planetary configurations in your chart:
The special configuration that Mercury is involved in is a T-Square (See Special Configuration #1 in the Special Chart Configurations section above) involving Jupiter and Uranus in the 8th and 10th Houses.
Mars in the 1st House
Mars is prominent (being in an angular house and its close aspect to the Sun) and powerful and is discordant.
Mars here indicates that forcefulness and energy are expressed through this department of life. Advantage is usually gained through initiative and combat. If loss is indicated by an afflicted (discordant) Mars, there is much struggle associated with it. There will be strenuous activity regarding the things ruled by this house. To the extent the thought cells mapped by Mars are prominent, is the life influenced by thoughts of construction, destruction, initiative, aggression, combat, sex, eating or drinking. Because the chief expression of the thought-elements in the unconscious mind mapped by Mars in the chart relate to attacking obstacles, they are referred to as the Aggressive Urges.
Mars in Sagittarius: Mars maps the Aggressive Urges, embracing thoughts and actions relating to construction, destruction, initiative, aggression, combat, sex, amativeness, eating and drinking. With the Aggressive thought-cells expressing from the “I See” attitude of Sagittarius, channel your initiative into developing a sound philosophy based on knowledge and avoid questionable sporting activity.
Mars in the 1st House maps the Aggressive Urges expressing through the personality, indicating an aggressive, outgoing personality with abundant energy. It also indicates mechanical ability and a willingness to face danger. There is a tendency, however, to be compulsive and rash, so cultivate the habit of thinking things through carefully before acting. Replace destructive thoughts with constructive activities. When prominent and afflicted (discordant), there is a tendency toward quarrelsomeness and harshness. Undue severity and antagonism hinder constructive endeavors. You’ll find greater joy focusing your initiative in fighting disease, ignorance and poverty than in combating human foes. With self-discipline, you can focus your abundant energy into successful and rewarding outlets. The natural antidote for an afflicted Mars is to take aggressive measures to protect the weak and helpless.
Mars is also involved in one special planetary configurations in your chart:
The special configuration that Mars is involved in is a T-Square (See Special Configuration #1 in the Special Chart Configurations section above) involving Jupiter and Uranus in the 8th and 10th Houses.
Sun in the 1st House
Sun is prominent (being in an angular house) and powerful and is mildly discordant.
When a house (department of life) is occupied by the Sun, those matters are vitalized, pursued with vigor and become a dominant motive in the life that affects your significance, authority and self-esteem. Because the chief expression of the thought-elements in the unconscious mind mapped by the Sun in the chart are directed toward gaining and maintaining significance, and their activity strongly influences the relation of the individual to those in authority, as well as influencing his authority over others, they are called Power Urges.
Sun in the 1st House shows the Power Urges expressing through the personality indicating a personal presence and demeanor that is vital and vigorous and projects dignity and authority. It also brings strong recuperative powers. A discordant Sun in the 1st House can be overbearing and prideful.
Sun is also involved in one special planetary configurations in your chart:
The special configuration that Sun is involved in is a T-Square (See Special Configuration #1 in the Special Chart Configurations section above) involving Jupiter and Uranus in the 8th and 10th Houses.
2nd House – Money and Possessions
The 2nd House has dominion over activities of life relating to money, possessions and personal resources.
The 2nd house is of average power relative to the other houses in the chart. This house is the Best House in your chart, is very harmonious and contains one planet: the Moon.
Moon in the 2nd House
Moon is weak and less active but is very harmonious.
Whatever house is occupied by the Moon is subject to ebb and flow, has a significant impact on the mental attitude and the emotions and may be the subject of psychic impressions. The matters ruled by this department of life tend to fluctuate and are the subject of small, insignificant events and everyday affairs. Because the chief expression of the thought-cells in the unconscious mind relate to primarily family life, they are referred to as the Domestic Urges.
Moon in Capricorn: seek honors through serving society rather than through attaining self-centered ambitions.
Moon in the 2nd House indicates that the Domestic Urges express through money and possessions. There may be fluctuation with the finances. Money to provide a stable family and home situation is of primary importance. Matters relating to money and personal possession will have a strong influence over moods and the emotions. If the Moon is afflicted (discordant), aggressive effort to gain and use money to aid the unfortunate, if cultivated, can bring harmony.
Of particular note here is that Moon is in Mutual Reception with Saturn (Á Ý Æ). Saturn is in the 7th House relating to marriage and partnership. These two planets are in Mutual Reception because each occupies the sign which is the exaltation or the home of the other. The resonance thus created tends to be the most harmonious of any due to the sign positions of the two planets. They tend to benefit each other through mutual aims, and the departments of life ruled by houses occupied by the two planets tend markedly to assist each other.
3rd House – Personal Interests, Siblings and Social Media
The 3rd House has dominion over activities of life relating to mental activity, education and personal studies, siblings, neighbors, writing, hobbies, local travel and communications.
The 3rd house is of average power relative to the other houses in the chart, is mildly discordant and contains no planets, but is ruled by Saturn, which is discordant and in the 7th House relating to marriage and partnership, indicating that those matters have special influence over 3rd House matters. So, for example, events relating to marriage and partnership, resulting from your self-interest, affect your personal interests, writing, neighbors and siblings.
4th House – Home
The 4th House has dominion over activities of life relating to primarily the home and home life, but also the father, real estate, farmland and its production, restaurants and conditions at the end of life.
The 4th house is weak and less active relative to the other houses in the chart, but is harmonious and contains no planets, but is ruled by Jupiter, which is harmonious and in the 8th House relating to partner’s money, fiduciary responsibilities and inheritance, and Neptune, which is harmonious and in the 6th House relating to work, coworkers and subordinates and/or illness and the infirm, indicating that the matters of these two houses have special influence over 4th House matters. So, for example, events relating to partner’s money, fiduciary responsibilities and inheritance, resulting from your goodwill or religiosity, affect your home life.
5th House – Children and Love Affairs
The 5th House has dominion over activities of life relating to offspring and pleasures, love affairs, speculation, stocks, bonds and derivatives, children and entertainment.
The 5th house is of average power relative to the other houses in the chart, is mildly discordant and contains no planets, but is ruled by Mars, which is discordant and in the 1st House relating to personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics, indicating that those matters have special influence over 5th House matters. So, for example, events relating to personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics, resulting from your rashness, affect your pleasure, love affairs, children and speculation.
6th House – Work
The 6th House has dominion over activities of life relating to work environment, coworkers, subordinates and employees, food in general, especially those consumed or prepared, small animals and the conditions surrounding illness or places where illness is treated.
The 6th house is moderately powerful relative to the other houses in the chart, is mildly discordant and contains one planet: Neptune.
Neptune in the 6th House
Neptune is prominent (its close aspect to the Moon) although weak and less active relative to the power distribution in your chart, but is harmonious.
Whatever house is occupied by Neptune is influenced by subtle and visionary factors. There is something elusive and mystical about the section of life denoted by this house. About the things so denoted, the imagination weaves pictures, and these mental pictures influence the attitude toward reality. Neptune expresses through the imagination, romance, increased sensitivity, psychic impressions, wishful thinking, fantasy thinking, daydreaming, apprehension, idealistic visions or by schemes and thoughts of easy wealth or promotion. Because the chief expression of the thought-cells mapped by Neptune relate to images of conditions more perfect, they are generally referred to as the Utopian Urges. The department of life ruled by the house occupied by Neptune is subject to Illusion in that things are not always as they appear.
Neptune in Taurus: Neptune maps the Utopian Urges embracing wishful or fantasy thinking and daydreaming, apprehension, idealistic visions and lofty spiritual ideas, the imagination, romanticism, platonic relationships and thoughts of easy wealth or promotion of schemes. With the Utopian thought-cells expressing from the “I Have” attitude of Taurus, seek idealism through securing freedom from want for all rather than in acquiring a vast fortune.
Neptune in the 6th House shows that the Idealistic Urges express primarily through work. You may find that your employees, subordinates or co-workers may be impractical. Become aware of, and avoid being too idealistic or impractical at work. Learn to recognize when schemes at work will likely not pan out. Apply critical thinking and promote system and organization at work when possible. With this position of Neptune, you may be inclined to provide services of a spiritual nature. You may have interests in spiritual healing, homeopathic medicine and health foods. If so, practicality and critical thinking are appropriate here, too. About illness, there may be disorders due to hypersensitivity or psychosomatic ailments. Unclear diagnosis of ailments is common. Since Neptune maps those thought-cells that tend to hypersensitivity, especially when powerful and afflicted (discordant), learn to visualize yourself surrounded by and radiating vital energy. This can result in an energizing, positive attitude.
Neptune is also involved in one special planetary configurations in your chart:
The special configuration that Neptune is involved in is an Opposition Drain (See Special Configuration #2 in the Special Chart Configurations section above) involving Uranus and Ascendant in the 10th and 1st Houses.
7th House – Marriage and Partnership
The 7th House has dominion over activities of life relating to marriage, partnership, the attitude of those met in public, open enemies, competitors and lawsuits.
The 7th house is powerful relative to the other houses in the chart, is discordant and contains two planets: Saturn and Pluto.
Having two planets in this house indicates that it is an important department of life.
Saturn in the 7th House
Saturn is prominent (being in an angular house) although of average power relative to the power distribution in your chart, and is discordant.
Whatever house is occupied by Saturn experiences hard work, responsibility, and frugality or loss. Saturn maps that area of the unconscious mind referred to as the Safety Urges because these thought-cells relate to hard work, acquisition, persistence, planning, organization and all things which serve to provide stability, safety and security for the individual.
When especially prominent (powerful) in the chart and afflicted (discordant), these Saturn thought-elements can stimulate discordant thoughts of fear, greed, envy, or self-centeredness, and are responsible for loss, hardship and privation and the necessity of working diligently for every advantage. There can be restrictions of various kinds and heavy burdens leading to emotions which can be morose, melancholy or despondent, leading in some cases to clinical depression, depending also on environmental and hereditary factors. You can benefit from an afflicted Saturn by directing your Safety Urges to express in a constructive manner as when harmonious. (See next paragraph.)
When Saturn is powerful in the chart and harmonious or neutral (that is, not too discordant), then you can benefit from efficiency, economy, organization, hard work, shrewdness and your ability to buy to advantage.
Saturn in Taurus: Saturn maps the Safety Urges embracing thoughts and actions relating to safety, secrecy, acquisitiveness, buying, trading, worry, fear, system, order and persistence. With the Safety thought-cells expressing from the “I Have” attitude of Taurus, seek security through wisely putting money to use rather than hoarding it.
Saturn in the 7th House shows that the Safety Urges express primarily through marriage and partnership, indicating heavy responsibility or loss through marriage, and difficulty with the public. If Saturn is well aspected, there is a strong sense of justice and responsibility. Although partnerships may be steadfast and marriage stable and enduring, whatever benefit comes to partnership and interface with the public only comes through hard work, persistence, planning and organization.
When Saturn is afflicted (discordant), as is often the case, there can be a coldness in marriage or no marriage at all. As an antidote for an afflicted Saturn, nurture warm, friendly Venus thinking relating to marriage, partnership and interface with the public through gifts and favors, and cultivate pleasure in social activities, the arts and entertainment. To attract better fortune in this area of life, also stimulate Sun thoughts of your importance and self-esteem related to 7th house activities.
Saturn is also involved in one special planetary configurations in your chart:
The special configuration that Saturn is involved in is an Opposition Drain (See Special Configuration #2 in the Special Chart Configurations section above) involving Uranus and Ascendant in the 10th and 1st Houses.
Pluto in the 7th House
Pluto is prominent (being in an angular house) although weak and less active relative to the power distribution in your chart, and is mildly discordant.
Whatever house is occupied by Pluto is subject to inner-plane influence, either for good or ill. The activities stimulated include facilities for cooperation with others and for contacting groups of people. Because the chief expression of the thought-cells mapped by Pluto relate to cooperation for the welfare of the group, and spiritual efforts for the benefit of all, they are generally referred to as the Universal Welfare Urges. To the extent the thought cells mapped by Pluto are active, is the life influenced by thoughts of groups, statistics, division of labor, mass production, inner-plane conditions, drastic events, the inside of things, gang methods, cooperation, coercion, or universal welfare. If Pluto is powerful in the chart and afflicted (discordant), there will be undue pressure brought to bear by others to compel such action as they desire relative to the things the house rules.
Pluto in Taurus: Pluto maps the Universal Welfare Urges embracing thoughts and actions related to groups, statistics, inner-plane conditions, drastic events, the inside of things, gang methods, cooperation, coercion, and universal welfare. With the Universal Welfare Urges expressing from the “I Have” attitude of Taurus, seek cooperation through attaining freedom from want for all rather than in monopolizing wealth.
Pluto in the 7th House shows that the Universal Welfare Urges express primarily through partnership, indicating that association with groups can, if Pluto is well-aspected, benefit the marriage and partnerships; otherwise unwanted pressure from groups may have a destructive effect on marriage and partnership or the partner may be domineering. Dealings with others and interface with the public, for work or otherwise, will be strongly influenced by groups. You benefit by cultivating the ability to cooperate with others for the good of all.
Pluto is also involved in one special planetary configurations in your chart:
The special configuration that Pluto is involved in is an Opposition Drain (See Special Configuration #2 in the Special Chart Configurations section above) involving Uranus and Ascendant in the 10th and 1st Houses.
8th House – Death, Inheritance and Other People’s Money
The 8th House has dominion over activities of life relating to legacies and inheritance, gifts, partner’s money and other people’s money in general, fiduciary responsibilities, debts owed to you and the ability of those owing to pay, death, life insurance, taxes and the influence of the dead.
The 8th house is powerful relative to the other houses in the chart, is neutral regarding harmony or discord and contains one planet: Jupiter.
Jupiter in the 8th House
Jupiter is prominent (its close aspect to the Sun) although of average power relative to the power distribution in your chart, and is harmonious.
Whatever house is occupied by Jupiter experiences abundance, goodwill and optimism. Jupiter maps the Religious Urges in the unconscious mind, so called because these thought-cells tend to express through veneration, philosophical or religious thinking and faith in providence. Jupiter is also considered a business planet because it manifests abundance, goodwill and optimism and rules the professions in general.
Jupiter in Gemini: Jupiter maps the Religious Urges embracing thoughts and actions relating to benevolence, veneration, hope, devotion, generosity and goodwill toward others. With the religious thought-cells expressing from the “I Think” attitude of Gemini, put your faith in carefully ascertained facts from reliable sources rather than believing everything you read.
Jupiter in the 8th House indicates that the Religious thought cells express primarily through inheritance, events relating to death, and association with partner’s money or other people’s money. This position shows abundance through gifts and inheritance or the partner’s money. General good fortune results from handling other people’s money or providing financial advice or tax accounting. There can be significant benefit through both borrowing and lending. A business can safely be run on a credit basis. Activities related to death, such as insurance, reverse mortgages or even funeral homes can bring financial gain. In religious matters, there may be a strong interest in life after death. If Jupiter is afflicted (discordant), avoid being overly-optimistic, analyze the situation carefully and cultivate critical thinking to make good decisions.
Jupiter is also involved in one special planetary configurations in your chart:
The special configuration that Jupiter is involved in is a T-Square (See Special Configuration #1 in the Special Chart Configurations section above) involving Uranus, Sun, Mercury and Mars in the 10th and 1st Houses.
9th House – Religion, Philosophy and Long Journeys
The 9th House has dominion over activities of life relating to teaching, religion, philosophy, social media, teaching, publishing, long journeys and the courts.
The 9th house is weak and less active relative to the other houses in the chart, but is harmonious and contains no planets, but is ruled by the Moon, which is very harmonious and in the 2nd House relating to money and possessions, indicating that those matters have special influence over 9th House matters. So, for example, events relating to money and possessions, resulting from your domesticity, affect your religion, philosophy, social media, and long journeys.
10th House – Career, Business, Credit and Reputation
The 10th House has dominion over activities of life relating to honors, business, credit, reputation, career, superiors and mother.
The 10th house is powerful relative to the other houses in the chart, is discordant and contains one planet: Uranus.
Uranus in the 10th House
Uranus is prominent (being in an angular house and its close aspect to the Sun) although of average power relative to the power distribution in your chart, and is mildly discordant.
The thought cells mapped by Uranus powerfully influence originality of thought, and the ability to make marked departures from precedence and custom. Because their chief expression relates to originality, they are generally referred to as the Individualistic Urges. Whatever house is occupied by Uranus denotes things about which radical tendencies are likely to manifest. In the section of life indicated by such a house there are sudden changes and developments of an extreme nature, either constructive or destructive. Whatever good is signified in one direction is accompanied by some lesser disadvantage in another and vice versa. To the extent the thought cells mapped by Uranus are active (powerful in the chart), is the life influenced by thoughts of independence, originality, invention, the unconventional, unusual or new methods.
Uranus in Virgo: Uranus maps the Individualistic Urges embracing thoughts and actions relating to independence, originality, invention, the unconventional and unusual, new or radical methods. With the Individualistic thought-cells expressing from the “I Analyze” attitude of Virgo, seek originality in new methods and changes in the workplace rather than in fads relating to foods.
Uranus in the 10th House shows that the Individualistic Urges express primarily through honor and career, indicating original methods in business and sudden changes in fortune. Uranus brings the unconventional, innovative and inventive to business and career and the radical, or even revolutionary, to politics. You tend to be interested in applying the latest science in your career or business pursuits. Concentrate on original or unusual methods that are valuable, rather than merely different. Cultivate Jupiter thinking that relies on providence, optimism, goodwill and tolerance.
Uranus is also involved in two special planetary configurations in your chart:
The first special configuration that Uranus is involved in is a T-Square (See Special Configuration #1 in the Special Chart Configurations section above) involving Jupiter, Sun, Mercury and Mars in the 8th and 1st Houses.
The second special configuration that Uranus is involved in is an Opposition Drain (See Special Configuration #2 in the Special Chart Configurations section above) involving Saturn, Neptune, Pluto and Ascendant in the 7th, 6th and 1st Houses, for which Uranus is the conciliating planet making it a potent Rallying Force. (See Glossary in the Appendix.)
11th House – Friends, Hopes and Wishes
The 11th House has dominion over activities of life relating to friends, affiliations, hopes and wishes.
The 11th house is weak and less active relative to the other houses in the chart, but is harmonious and contains no planets, but is ruled by Venus, which is very harmonious and in the 1st House relating to personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics, indicating that those matters have special influence over 11th House matters. So, for example, events relating to personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics, resulting from your affections, affect your friends and affiliations.
12th House – Restrictions and Disappointments
The 12th House has dominion over activities of life relating to secrets, sorrows, disappointments, restrictions, hidden enemies, crime, detective work, large animals, unseen forces and astral entities.
The 12th house is weak and less active relative to the other houses in the chart, but is harmonious and contains no planets, but is ruled by Venus, which is very harmonious and in the 1st House relating to personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics, indicating that those matters have special influence over 12th House matters. So, for example, events relating to personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics, resulting from your affections, affect your secrets, disappointments and limitations.
Elbert Benjamine (born Benjamin Parker Williams) 12/12/1882 04:55:00 AM GMT UTC+0h – LMT Adel, Dallas, Iowa 094W01’02 41N36’52
1. Introduction
An astrological chart of birth (horoscope), drawn for the exact date, time and longitude and latitude (place) of birth, is essentially a map of the total character of the individual at the time of birth. Your chart, shown above, is a complex ensemble of planets, signs and houses. (See Appendix.) The chart is a two-dimensional map of a five-dimensional, thought-built body, often referred to as the astral body. The planets map complex thought structures that form the major psychological urges or drives, e.g., the Power Urges mapped by the Sun in the chart, and the Domestic Urges mapped by the Moon in the chart. These essential drives or urges express with slightly different overtones depending on the astrological sign (position on the ecliptic or zodiac) in which the planet falls at birth. For example, a Sun in Capricorn indicates the Power Urges express from the I Use attitude, while a Moon in Virgo indicates the Domestic Urges express from the I Analyze perspective. (See appendices for more information.) A good chart reading necessarily proceeds from the general to the more detailed. The general characteristics of character, personality, temperament and general fortune (see Appendix) are important when considering the details of each department of life.
The Appendix contains a definition of the symbols used and a Glossary that defines terms used in the report.
References to astrodyne power and harmony in this report can be found summarized in in the tables in the section on Astrodyne Analysis. Qualitative values for power and harmony are based on a relative assessment of the statistical distribution in this chart and not on general “population” statistics.
2. Chart-level View of Energy Distribution in Your Chart
The following diagrams show where planet, house and sign energy is most prominent in your chart along with areas that are weak in power and of less importance in your life. The size of each balloon shows the power of each chart element relative to the other elements in the chart. See also the sections on Astrodyne and Department of Life analysis further on in the report.
Power Distribution among Planets & Key Chart Points:
As you can see in the diagram below, the most prominent planets are the Sun mapping the Power Urges, Mercury mapping the Intellectual Urges and Mars mapping the Aggressive Urges.
The Houses map the various departments of life. The amount of power (strong, weak or average) indicates the amount of activity in, and importance of, each Department of Life. As you can see in the diagram below, the most important areas of activity in the life are the 1st House (Personality, Personal Matters, Physical Body), the 7th House (Marriage, Partnership, Challengers), the 8th House (Partner’s Money, Fiduciary Responsibilities, Inheritance) and the 10th House (Vocation, Reputation, Credit, Mother).
Power Distribution among the Signs:
The quality of energy expressed by each planet is modulated by the Sign in which it falls. The Signs with the most planetary energy have the greatest impact on temperament, disposition and natural proclivities. As you can see in the diagram below, the most powerful Signs in your chart are Taurus indicating a nature that is stable, patient, and practical, Virgo indicating a nature that is discerning, analytical and witty and Sagittarius indicating a nature that is bright, enthusiastic and generous. See the sections on “Your Key Significators” and “Astrodyne Analysis” for more information.
3. Your Key Chart Points and General Characteristics
Your character and temperament are a composite of the following key chart points:
Your Sun (sun sign) is in Sagittarius. The Sun is also your Dominant Planet.
You also have 3 other planets in Sagittarius: Mercury, Venus and Mars – indicating that your character and temperament strongly reflect the characteristics of this sign.
Your Sun is in Sagittarius, pictured among the constellations as a Centaur. The mythological Centaur, half animal and half human, is a hunter with the legs of a horse and the head of a human and is armed with a bow. Sagittarius people have a strong animal nature and at the same time are well supplied with higher, nobler, more generous impulses. You are migratory, love to travel, and enjoy outdoor sports. You also have a strong leaning toward philosophy and religion. When you speak, what you say generally goes straight to the mark like an arrow to the bullseye. The dominant idea of Sagittarius is I SEE.
Belonging to the element fire, at your core, you are energetic, hasty, enthusiastic and ambitious of worldly position. As a mutable sign, you are aggressive and impulsive, but not dominating. Belonging to the third degree of emanation, your actions arise from deep-seated motives that are largely shaped by what other people think proper and in good taste. Sagittarius people are a happy medium between Aries people, who are ruled by their heads, and Leo people, who are ruled by their hearts.
You tend to be loyal, patriotic, generous, free, self-reliant, conservative, ambitious, jovial and tolerant of the shortcomings of others. You tend to be frank and candid in expressing your opinion, and you are quick to fight for the rights of others. You tend to make prompt decisions and can command others. You take orders without resentment.
The Sagittarius person typically displays executive ability. In both thinking and deed you tend to go straight to the mark, caring more for effectiveness than for elegance. You benefit by following an occupation where there is plenty of opportunity for mental activity. At the same time, you prefer fresh air and exercise. Recreation is very important to you. Your best quality is LOYALTY. Your worst quality is SPORTIVENESS (being a little to playful or mischievous). You are philosophically inclined, and unless given opportunity for open-air recreation you are apt to develop morbid self-examination. Since you tend to go right to the point, be careful not to hurt the feelings of others.
The Sun is the most powerful planet in your chart, but slightly discordant, indicating that thoughts and events relating to significance and self-esteem are important and need harmonious reinforcement. Avoid being overbearing and dominating by reinforcing pleasant thoughts relating to pride, firmness, conscientiousness and self-esteem, and strive to express the best qualities of Sagittarius.
Your Moon (moon sign) is in Capricorn.
The Moon in Capricorn indicates a reserved and cautious mentality. This is particularly applicable to your domestic environment. When in a nurturing situation and you slip into being cold or austere, actively seek thoughts that encourage you to feel warm and open. Inclined to be conventional, methodical and highly ambitious, you find value in achieving worldly success, money and station. You have an aptitude for bringing together dissenting factions for synthesis and economy. This ability can be a big benefit in managing harmonious domestic affairs. Remember that when it comes to the home, family, children and domestic matters, cultivate empathy and a nurturing attitude.
At your best when given responsibility, you shoulder it successfully. Your best quality is DIPLOMACY. When expressing your best qualities, your Capricorn Moon predisposes you to be exceptionally honorable, but be alert to the worst quality of Capricorn, which is a tendency to DECEITFULNESS. In domestic affairs honesty and openness contribute to a more harmonious environment. Instead of angling to get the advantage, for which you have talent, be mindful of the needs of others. The greatest spiritual exercise any person can perform is to have integrity of character and devotion to the welfare of others. Thoughts ruled by this sign belong to the, UTILITY series. With the Domestic thought cells expressing from the I Use attitude; the mind benefits by seeking honors through serving society rather than through attaining self-centered ambitions.
Relative to the other planets, the Moon is weak and less active in your chart. This suggests you will benefit by cultivating and nurturing thoughts and events related to timing, tune, sublimity, love of one’s children and general domestic affairs.
Your Ascendant (rising sign) is in Scorpio.
Scorpio is a water sign so your personality likely expresses through an emotional experience of life. You tend to take personal affairs very seriously which sometimes leads to possessiveness or extreme jealousy in some cases. Carried to extremes, you may hold grudges and, or plan to take revenge at an opportune time. You tend not to easily forget personal affronts. Avoid trying to control others through subtle means. With a Scorpio Ascendant, you are intense in your likes and dislikes, and whatever you do, you do with your whole might. You possess a natural healing magnetism and are never at a loss for plans to overcome difficulties. Your best quality is RESOURCEFULNESS. Your worst quality is TROUBLESOMENESS. You believe in duty and feel that everyone needs to do their part. You’ve been known to take pains to see that others fulfill their obligations. Instead, try showing others by demonstration. You can be trusted to grapple with the most difficult and disagreeable tasks. Thoughts ruled by Scorpio belong to the DESIRE series. With the personal thought cells expressing from the I DESIRE attitude, your personality benefits by engaging in tasks which are helpful to others rather than trying to get even. Exercise resourcefulness through being constructive rather than in tearing down.
The Ascendant is of average power in your chart but discordant indicating that thoughts and events relating to your personality, personal prowess, physical appearance, and, to some extent health, are important factors in the life. Reinforce constructive thinking, and/or make constructive changes, relating to these areas of the life, and strive to express the best qualities of Scorpio.
The Ruler of Your Personality
The force of your personality, physical prowess, demeanor and appearance are not only a reflection of the power, harmony and zodiacal sign of your Ascendant, but will also reflect any planets in the 1st house or planets in the 12th house that are conjunct the Ascendant.
Planets in the 1st House include the Sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars. These planets have significant influence over your personality, physical appearance and general demeanor. Additionally, having 3 planets in the 1st House gives the personality, personal presence and matters relating to the physical appearance considerable energy and importance in the life. This force of personality can be used to advantage by demonstrating the best qualities of these positions as described below.
The chief ruler of your Personality is Mars in the 1st House and ruling the sign on the Ascendant.
Mars gives the personality energy and quickness with a nature both amative and combative but can be harsh.
Your Dominant Planet is the Sun.
With the Sun as your dominant planet, you rarely work for others to advantage, unless you are given full charge of your department. You are in your natural sphere of endeavor when you have received a position of importance. You are always at your best when at the head of something. Your best quality is RULERSHIP. Your worst quality is DICTATIVENESS. It is often important for you to realize that undue assumption of superiority really weakens your authority and that consideration of the opinions of others and sympathy with their views will tend toward getting better service. The thoughts ruled by this Sun are called the POWER thoughts.
Your Dominant Sun resides in the zodiacal sign Sagittarius, which is described above.
Mercury: Habitual Modes of Speech and Communication
The zodiacal sign in which Mercury resides indicates the habitual mode of speech and communication via letters, email, and social media.
Your Mercury resides in the zodiacal sign Sagittarius. With the Intellectual thought cells, governing cerebral processes, perception, comparison and communication, expressing from the “I See” attitude of Sagittarius, strive to have your speech, and your expression in general, be generous and loyal rather than impulsive and blunt. The best quality of Sagittarius is loyalty, and its worst quality is mischievousness.
Mercury is powerful in your chart but slightly discordant indicating that thoughts and events relating to conscious mental activity, manner of speech, writing, general social communication and mobility are important factors in the life. Reinforce constructive thinking and strive to express the best qualities of Sagittarius.
4. Key Decanates – Overarching Character and Destiny
Each sign of the zodiac is divided into three sections called Decanates. Each decanate is pictured in the sky by one of the original 36 ultra-zodiacal constellations. The pictograph associated by the ancients with each of these constellations illustrates a spiritual parable or allegory that has special significance to those born with their Sun, Moon or Ascendant in that decanate.
Your Sun is in the 3rd decanate of Sagittarius, the Sagittarius-Leo decanate under the sub-rulership of the Sun. The third decanate of Sagittarius, the Leo-decanate, is pictured among the constellations by SAGITTA, the Arrow. This is the arrow that Mithra shot against a rock and a stream of water immediately gushed forth. It symbolized the soul piercing the illusions of matter and through this comprehension of the meaning of incarnate existence being able to quench its thirst at the fountain of Divine Consciousness.
Those born under this decanate may either tread the path of pleasure, or climb the royal road to spiritual supremacy. Being the kingly section of the sign of the higher mind, when the sporting proclivities relating to Leo’s influence are transmuted, they have not only the ability to perceive things in their proper relation, but also to synthesize their observations and impart this knowledge to others. They, therefore, reach their greatest usefulness as teachers and leaders of philosophical and religious thought. When faithful to their ideals and persistent in adhering to their own conceptions they reach the highest states of consciousness possible to embodied humans. It is the decanate of ILLUMINATION.
Your Moon is in the 2nd decanate of Capricorn, the Capricorn-Taurus decanate under the sub-rulership of Venus. DELPHINUS, the Dolphin, pictures among the constellations the second decanate of Capricorn. This is the Taurus-decanate of Saturn’s sign, the strong emotional element conferred by the sub-influence of the Moon’s exaltation, Taurus, being indicated by the water in which the mammal lives.
While the Sun passes through this decanate we have Epiphany, and the common civil year begins, bringing a new dispensation. And about the dolphin that represents this section of the zodiac, there are so many traditions implying it to be a Savior of Men. So, we find that those born here possess extraordinary ability to make the most of whatever environment they find themselves in, even as the dolphin has adapted itself to water. They utilize every condition to their purpose, and while encountering many setbacks they have the persistence to again come to the surface and “carry on”. They are indefatigable workers and when they set their minds upon some worthy aim they scale the heights to success. If they get a higher than material viewpoint they are capable of great self-sacrifice in the interest of universal progression. It is the decanate of MARTYRDOM.
Your Ascendant is in the 3rd decanate of Scorpio, the Scorpio-Cancer decanate under the sub-rulership of the Moon. Unlike the crown of spikes that pictures the last decanate of Virgo, CORONA AUSTRALIS, the Southern Crown, is the laurel crown of victory. Picturing among the constellations the Cancer-decanate of Scorpio, it reveals the potency of sex when sublimated to carry the soul to the loftiest summit of physical and mental achievement.
Adjacent to the religious sign Sagittarius, and under the sub-influence of the sign of domestic life, Cancer, those born here have intense emotions and vivid ideas. When the spirit of chivalry is developed and they sense their value to country and home they are capable of lofty effort. But for the greatest success it seems essential that they have some person of the opposite sex to stimulate their ambitions and ideals, and with whom they strive to make a success of life. Social life, therefore, is always an important factor contributing to or detracting from their usefulness to society. It is the decanate of ATTAINMENT.
In September 1918, only two months before the Armistice on November 11 that also marked the opening to the public of the Brotherhood of Light, the group’s leader filed a draft registration listing his occupation as a rivet carrier at Moore Shipbuilding in Oakland who resided at 2514 Bancroft Way in Berkeley.
Moore Shipbuilding where Williams worked as a rivet carrier in 1918
Williams married the former Elizabeth Dorris in 1919 and they jointly filed a petition for a name change on December 22, 1920 as reported in the Los Angeles Times the following day. Shared in December 2020 in honor of the hundredth anniversary of their legal change of surname to Benjamine.
Because one of Elbert’s three sons legally adopted the Benjamine name, there are now descendants named Williams from his sons Ben (1906-1981) and Norman (1917-2006) and others named Benjamine from his son Will (1908-2001), while daughter Zilla’s (Norman’s twin, also 1917-2006) married surname was Shelley and she had one daughter of her own. Daughter Mary Grace (1913-1922) died in childhood.
This presentation was condensed from a talk to the biennial conference of The Church of Light in June 2019 in Albuquerque. It was included the following October as a presentation in absentia to the International Theosophical History Conference in Athens, Greece. In November, it was included as part of my in person talk at the Thomas Moore Johnson centenary symposium at Missouri State University in Springfield. Plans were for both of these conferences to be posted online in full with video of all presentations, and if either materializes I will report it here and share a link. Meanwhile, here is my own small portion.
Just a week after discovering that a Google account allowed automatic creation of a youtube account, I was informed by academia.edu that they now hosted videos of scholarly presentations. This academic platform is more appropriate to my scholarly research than the popular-oriented Youtube and the technical quality of the uploads is better in my experience. Registration is required but is free and there is a great wealth of reliable information on academia from scholars around the globe.
Three branches of Hermetic studies are reflected in the three books and three authors identified by the Brotherhood of Light lessons as precursors of the teachings found therein. I have assigned pairs of keywords to those authors to give a sense of the “family tree” of late 19th century sources of ideas in these early 20th century lessons. Identification of major influences on their writings in turn is seen in the third generation of “ancestors.”
Thomas Henry Burgoyne, Hermetic astrologer, clairvoyant naturalist, main author of The Light of Egypt, is clearly the most astrological of the three authors and more an inspiration for the astrological lessons than the alchemical and magical lessons. The natural science elements in the BOL lessons are also more akin to Burgoyne’s interests than to those of Britten and Grimke.
Frontispiece, following title page, of the original 1921 edition of the first volume of Brotherhood of Light lessons
Emma Hardinge Britten, Spiritualist historian, Rosicrucian novelist, author of Art Magic and Ghost Land is the most magical in focus with all of her works dealing with practical manifestations of occult knowledge and psychic powers. Attitudes toward religious history and psychical research in the lessons are foreshadowed by those in Britten’s books.
Sarah Stanley Grimke, metaphysical teacher, author of Esoteric Lessons and co-author of The Light of Egypt, is the most alchemical in that “directed thinking” and its transformative potential inspire much of her teaching. An abolitionist background and progressive political views were shared by many of Grimke’s associates and some of this can be seen reflected in the lessons’ comments on US politics.
What we now have as a single volume Laws of Occultism was in the first edition two volumes published five years apart. Lesson 1-A, entitled Occult Data, appeared in 1921 with Burgoyne’s natal chart as the frontispiece. Lesson 1-B, Astral Substance, appeared in 1926 with Grimke as the frontispiece.
Frontispiece, 1926 first edition of lesson 1-B, Astral Substance
All of these writers were Hermetic in the broad sense but none of them was associated with any Hermetic groups other than the HBofL. Britten was steeped in Rosicrucian and Masonic lore but is not known to have actively participated in any organizations other than those related to Spiritualism and Free Thought. Grimke was affiliated with a small New Thought group called Light, Love, Truth, prior to meeting Burgoyne but her later writings shared his astrological emphasis rather than continuing to address mind cure. Britten was a founder of the Theosophical Society, and many of the Brotherhood of Light lessons reflect the ideas of the early TS in New York, but what we now know as Theosophy is overwhelmingly defined by Helena Blavatsky after her arrival in India and her alienation from Britten who was openly denouncing the TS by 1884. Hence The Church of Light is completely independent of “the Hermetic tradition” or “the Theosophical lineage” or “Spiritualist groups” or “Rosicrucian orders” just as it is of the New Thought and Free Thought movements, in organizational history terms. However, ideas in the Brotherhood of Light teachings include elements from all these lineages, making the group “cousins” of many groups in terms of ideas but “siblings” of none in terms of organizational history. Elbert Benjamine was by no means limited to only these literary sources, but they are the ones most explicitly identified by him as relevant to students of his lessons.
The above chart is of course an oversimplification, but is intended to provide a quick introduction to the network of associates of the founders of the Brotherhood of Light and their literary sources. One way this diagram oversimplifies relationships is that is just an ancestral chart and not a family group chart which would allow siblings and in-laws and not just direct ancestors. That would allow us to introduce Paschal Beverly Randolph and Madame Blavatsky as literary “siblings” of Britten and fellow “children” of Bulwer-Lytton, since they were all enamored of Rosicrucian fiction. Thomas Moore Johnson and Alexander Wilder would both be “children” of Bronson Alcott along with Grimke’s mentor Cyrus Bartol if we were to use a family group chart.
There have been many twists and turns in the research path pursuing the man whose pen name was Thomas H. Burgoyne. We have, in Letters to the Sage, correspondence from Burgoyne written in Monterey, California in the late 1880s, but no evidence of his relocation to Humboldt County where he was later rumored to have died. He did, however, live in Mendocino County and advertised a forthcoming book with a Cummings, Mendocino County mailing address in 1891. The only other evidence found that after departing from Monterey, where he and Grimke had written The Light of Egypt, he lived in Mendocino County are two entries in a hotel register in San Francisco dated 1889. Here is the first:
Russ House hotel arrivals June 29, 1889; Burgoyne fifth line on right column
The Russ House, destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire, was on Montgomery Street in the financial district and built in the early 1860s.
Russ House Hotel, 1870, San Francisco Historical Society Collection
When Norman and Genevieve Astley began acquiring property in North Carolina, they were described in a February 1894 Morganton newspaper story which is the only instance I have found that mentions having lived on a California ranch, which he claims to have owned. I went to the Bureau of Land Management records for patents, which are purchases of land directly from the federal government rather than from an individual owner, and learned that in January 1891 160 acres of ranch land in Mendocino County was patented to a John H. Burgoyne.
January 14, 1891 land patent
The patent search feature allows zooming in on the parcel which is highlighted in dark orange. The land is in the northwestern portion of the county, and just twenty miles as the crow flies from Cummings where he was living in 1889 and still receiving mail in 1891; but any driving route takes nearly two hours and sixty miles so the travel time in Burgoyne’s day would have been immense and the route rugged to any post office.
If John H. Burgoyne is another pseudonym, it explains what it meant when as Norman Astley arriving in North Carolina in 1894, he was described as owning California ranch land– for which no evidence exists. He had purchased it not as Astley but as John H. Burgoyne.
February 1894, Morganton NC
Lyman Abbott was a very well-respected mainstream theologian and Congregationalist clergyman, whose friendship with the Astleys is testimony to how well they were regarded in New York intellectual circles. He succeeded Henry Ward Beecher as minister of the Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn. Abbott’s liberal social gospel views were described as almost Unitarian and were widely disseminated through his periodical and book publications.
The Melungeon Heritage Association is releasing transcripts from its podcast series Melungeon Voices. The fourth episode featuring my interview is now uploaded to academia.edu; the middle section focuses on the Grimke family who have been the subject of many previous blog posts.
Here is that portion of the transcript:
Paul: I got into studying about Sarah, not because of the mixed ethnic heritage of the family that she married into, but because I’m a librarian and even my academic scholarship has had a lot to do with figuring out mysterious literary sources and who wrote this and is it fiction or nonfiction? And that’s…With Madame Blavatsky and Edgar Casey [Cayce], I was working with that. And Sarah is another example where she was only published posthumously in book form a couple of years after her death. But her main claim to fame really was being the anonymous collaborator of a pseudonymous author. And as you get into her family history research, you realize that both of these people were hiding their identities for reasons of family scandal and controversy. And in Sarah’s case, she was a very idealistic young daughter of an abolitionist clergyman from the North who went to Boston and became one of the earliest female graduates of Boston University in 1878, met and married a man who had been an enslaved South Carolinian of a very prominent aristocratic family. His name was Archibald Grimke. Now the interesting thing about why Archie, which I’ll call him henceforth, was in Boston is because he had two aunts who were very celebrated abolitionist firebrands, Sarah and Angelina Grimke, the oldest and youngest daughters of this wealthy planter family who defied Charleston society and the authority of their parents, and the disapproval of everyone around them, to first become Quakers and then become abolitionists and then go up North and never set foot in South Carolina again. So they’re these wonderful heroines of feminism as well, because both of them had a lot to say about that subject. And they discovered in the early 1870s [late 1860s, actually], they read a newspaper story about these two young men named Grimke, who were distinguishing themselves in a scholarly way at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. And Angelina, the younger of the Grimke sisters wrote to them thinking, “There’s got to be some connection to my family.” And he wrote back and said that he and his two brothers were the sons of their brother, Henry Grimke, who had been dead for some years at that point. Well, any other Grimke sister, the ones in South Carolina, would just have been horrified and never communicated again. But these abolitionist ladies were intrigued and said, “We want to make things right to you. We want to help your education.” And they both ended up at Harvard. [Archie at Harvard, Francis at Princeton after earlier connections in Massachusetts.] So this is why Sarah, my Sarah, the second, meets and marries Archie. They have a daughter that they named Angelina, but the marriage breaks up after a few years, basically over a lot of issues, but racial antagonism and conflict had a lot to do with it. And then even after they break up, Sarah wants custody of the daughter, but three more years later, she sends her back to the father saying, “She’s too dark. Everybody’s ostracizing her. She’s really got to live in a black community because it’s scarring her the way people are looking at her and talking to them.”[her] So, Angelina Grimke… And there is a point that I’m coming to about all this… Definitely you look at her, very beautiful, very talented, looks like a black woman in every picture you see, and yet she’s one of those cases where seven of eight great-grandparents was European and only one African. So really knowing what we know about the way things usually turn out the luck of the draw was that Archie and Sarah’s daughter would be somebody who could pass and stay with Sarah, but she didn’t. And this brings up all these traumas in Melungeon history where families split up over color because some people get more discrimination than others and the white ones abandon the darker ones. So that is a very sad element of this. And yet Angelina ends up so much better off because her Uncle Francis, who is the minister, very well respected of a prominent African-American Presbyterian church in Washington, and his wife, Charlotte Fordham [Forten] Grimke had been childless because the daughter they had right around the time Angelina was born, died in early infancy. So she becomes a surrogate daughter to her uncle and aunt during a period where her father becomes a diplomatic representative to the Dominican Republic and goes away to Santo Domingo for several years of her teenage life. So just a tremendous family. He was a founder of the NAACP. The sister-in-law was a free black, fairly wealthy woman who after the Civil War, decided to go South and become a school teacher in the Sea Islands, helping the Freedmen and has written about it. So, I’ve grown to love every member of this family, even Sarah, who broke the hearts of her husband and daughter, because there’s things to love about all of these people we do research on. But I must say ultimately, it’s the daughter, Angelina Weld Grimke, there’s all this energy from both lines. She writes lots about politics in line with her father and the aunts and everything, but she also writes, is mostly a poet and a playwright. And she has this airy, mystical quality, but very much what we see in Sarah Stanley Grimke. So that’s how I got fascinated. I keep using the phrase going down a rabbit hole because every book I’ve ever written has had this quality of you never realize how far you’re going or where you’re going. You’re just chasing evidence.
Progression Report from Horoscope 2020 for Burgoyne’s peak years as a writer
The Progression Report feature of Horoscope 2020 allows filtering of results which would otherwise provide an overwhelming amount of detail. By excluding the slow-moving outer planets and fast-moving Moon, and eliminating minor aspects, we can look at five years of Burgoyne’s career at a single glance and see how much activity was concentrated in this short period. In future blog posts about individual events in authors’ lives I will delve into specific points in time with commentary. This five year overview will be referred to as a basis for further discussion of the mid-1880s in his life.
Mrs. Norman came into possession of letters from Norman Astley to Jasper Wise as a local historian and descendant of the family that acquired Astley’s land on Paddy Creek. Glimpses of Fonta Flora has among its many photographs a picture of Wise’s home, which became the post office for Longtown when his daughter Maggie was postmistress.
At the 2019 biennial conference of The Church of Light, I mentioned in my closing remarks a strange pattern discernable in the authors associated with the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor in America. They wrote about the spiritual and metaphorical transformation of lead to gold, but they actually literally pursued gold mining on the physical plane. Although Peter Davidson’s hopes of discovering gold in the Blue Ridge mountains of north Georgia were derided as fraudulent at the time, the family did indeed discover gold and profit from mining. Henry Wagner, M.D. had a career as a medical doctor but his wealth related to having practiced in Virginia City, Nevada during the Comstock Lode boom, and then moving on to Colorado where he continued to invest in precious metals, now gold more than silver. Since moving to New Mexico, the headquarters of the CofL have been on Gold Avenue, and that seems far more appropriate than the nearby Lead Avenue.
The chain of associations above was engendered not by the wealth of the Wagners or Davidsons but by that of the Astleys. When visiting Burke County, North Carolina, the Blue Ridge location where Norman and Genevieve Astley made large land purchases in the 1890s, I interviewed local historian Helen Norman who pointed towards the gold mining area where the Astleys had invested. My September blog post will feature a book she co-authored about the local community, which includes photographs of homes associated with the Astleys’ associates in the county. The above paragraph from the Morganton Herald, published October 21, 1897, documents their success in finding gold.
The only speaking engagement I had planned for 2020 was cancelled along with the event at which it was to occur, the annual Melungeon gathering. My planned topic for the talk was the Grimke family, but the interview began with a discussion of the last book I authored, Pell Mellers: Race and Memory in a Carolina Pocosin, and concluded with questions about my experience with MHA as past officer. The heart of the interview however focuses on Sarah Stanley Grimke and her husband and daughter. Other interviews in the seven part series are well worth a listen if the topic of the mysterious Melungeons inspires interest in learning more.
10. Analysis for Each Department of Life (The Houses)
The following paragraphs describe the various departments of life mapped by the Houses in your chart. See the appendix for a more detailed description of houses in general. The most astrologically active departments of life in your chart, in order of importance, are mapped by the 1st House, the 10th House, the 2nd House, the 12th House and the 3rd House.
1st House – Personal Matters
The 1st House has dominion over activities of life relating to personality, physical body, physical appearance and demeanor, quality of the personal magnetism, personal prowess, personal matters and general health.
The 1st house is the Most Powerful House in your chart and is the subject of intense feeling, activity and events, is very harmonious and contains six planets: Neptune, the Moon, Mercury, Mars, the Sun and Pluto. The Moon is your Dominant Planet.
Neptune in the 1st House
Neptune is prominent (being in an angular house and its close aspect to the Moon) although of average power relative to the power distribution in your chart, and is mildly discordant.
Whatever house is occupied by Neptune is influenced by subtle and visionary factors. There is something elusive and mystical about the section of life denoted by this house. About the things so denoted, the imagination weaves pictures, and these mental pictures influence the attitude toward reality. Neptune expresses through the imagination, romance, increased sensitivity, psychic impressions, wishful thinking, fantasy thinking, daydreaming, apprehension, idealistic visions or by schemes and thoughts of easy wealth or promotion. Because the chief expression of the thought-cells mapped by Neptune relate to images of conditions more perfect, they are generally referred to as the Utopian Urges. The department of life ruled by the house occupied by Neptune is subject to Illusion in that things are not always as they appear.
Neptune in Pisces: Neptune maps the Utopian Urges embracing wishful or fantasy thinking and daydreaming, apprehension, idealistic visions and lofty spiritual ideas, the imagination, romanticism, platonic relationships and thoughts of easy wealth or promotion of schemes. Neptune is at home in the sign Pisces where it can express more harmoniously. With the Utopian thought-cells expressing from the “I Believe” attitude of Pisces, seek idealism through humanitarian plans rather than through charitable endeavors rather than in pursuing and blindly following the advice of invisible intelligences.
Neptune in the 1st House shows that the Idealistic Urges express primarily through the personality and appearance indicating idealism and sensitivity. You are intuitive and possibly psychic. You may have illusions about your own personal nature. The Neptune person may show genius or there can be flashes of brilliance. There may be an attraction to platonic relationships. There is a tendency to hypersensitivity, fantasy thinking, daydreaming, romance, apprehension, or thoughts of easy wealth or promotion. The best way to combat discordant Neptune thinking is through substituting Saturn thinking by resorting to systematic and organized effort and considering what is practical. Think things through and avoid vagueness by using critical thinking to analyze your ideas. Valuable ideas are those which can be made practical and allow you to realize the idealism you seek. Cultivate a willingness to work hard and think clearly to realize your ideals.
Neptune is also involved in one special planetary configurations in your chart:
The special configuration that Neptune is involved in is a T-Square (See Special Configuration #1 in the Special Chart Configurations section above) involving Saturn and MC in the 3rd and 10th Houses.
Moon in the 1st House
Moon is prominent (being in an angular house) and powerful and is neutral regarding harmony or discord.
Whatever house is occupied by the Moon is subject to ebb and flow, has a significant impact on the mental attitude and the emotions and may be the subject of psychic impressions. The matters ruled by this department of life tend to fluctuate and are the subject of small, insignificant events and everyday affairs. Because the chief expression of the thought-cells in the unconscious mind relate to primarily family life, they are referred to as the Domestic Urges.
Moon in the 1st House indicates a personality that is impressionable and characterized by changing moods. The health may be subject to fluctuation. You are interested in everyday affairs, what’s happening around you and what everyone is doing. When the Moon is afflicted (discordant), there may be a tendency to gossip. This can be controlled by directing that energy into harmonious domestic affairs.
Moon is also involved in one special planetary configurations in your chart:
The special configuration that Moon is involved in is a T-Square (See Special Configuration #1 in the Special Chart Configurations section above) involving Saturn and MC in the 3rd and 10th Houses.
Mercury in the 1st House
Mercury is prominent (being in an angular house and its close aspect to the Moon) although of average power relative to the power distribution in your chart, and is neutral regarding harmony or discord.
Whatever house is occupied by Mercury becomes the subject of mental effort. The mind expresses itself readily where the things so denoted are concerned. The department of life ruled by the house occupied by Mercury is subject to thought and the subject of conversation. Because the chief expression of the thought-cells in the unconscious mind mapped by Mercury in the chart relate to the intellectual life, they are referred to as the Intellectual Urges.
Mercury in Pisces: With the Intellectual thought cells, governing cerebral processes, perception, comparison and communication, expressing from the “I Believe” attitude of Pisces, the speech, and expression in general, should be positive and good humored rather than timid or fretful. The best quality of Pisces is sympathy, and its worst quality is worry.
Mercury in the 1st House indicates that the Intellectual Urges express through the personality. This give a loquacious, mentally alert personality that shows ability for speaking, writing and study. Your actions and expression tend to be based on logic and reasoning. You may be an inveterate traveler or inclined to write. Mercury is always mentally alert but can be restless and this will show in your personality. Mercury people often worry about the details and may feel responsible for more than their share. The natural antidote for this is reliance on a higher power and having faith that things will turn out well.
Important aspects to Mercury
The most powerful aspect to Mercury is Mercury Parallel Pluto. With 10.34 astrodynes of power, this aspect is powerful but is neutral regarding harmony or discord. Pluto is also in the 1st. This parallel aspect shows that this area of life experiences an intense relationship. The aspect shows the mental interests, facility or accuracy of expression and cerebral activity influence, and are influenced by, groups, subtle force, and cooperation or coercion. This parallel aspect indicates an intense relationship between these factors showing ability to cooperate with others, to work with groups, and to tune in on inner-plane information and forces to advantage. There may also be groups that tend to coerce and to take undue advantage, and that even unseen forces may endeavor to influence. Pleasant and positive thoughts of courage in protecting the weak and helpless need to be associated with thoughts of groups and cooperation.
The 2nd most powerful aspect to Mercury is Moon Conjunction Mercury. With 7.51 astrodynes of power, this aspect is moderately powerful but is neutral regarding harmony or discord. The Moon is also in the 1st. This conjunction aspect shows that this area of life experiences a powerful association. The aspect shows the mental attitude, domestic life and everyday affairs influence, and are influenced by, mental interests, facility or accuracy of expression and cerebral activity. This conjunction aspect indicates a powerful association between these factors showing a good mind and ability to express thoughts readily.
Of particular note here is that Mercury is in Mutual Reception with Jupiter. Jupiter is in the 12th House relating to secrets, disappointments and limitations. These two planets are in Mutual Reception because each occupies the sign which is the exaltation or the home of the other. The resonance thus created tends to be the most harmonious of any due to the sign positions of the two planets. They tend to benefit each other through mutual aims, and the departments of life ruled by houses occupied by the two planets tend markedly to assist each other.
Mars in the 1st House
Mars is prominent (being in an angular house and its close aspect to the Sun) and moderately powerful and is harmonious.
Mars here indicates that forcefulness and energy are expressed through this department of life. Advantage is usually gained through initiative and combat. If loss is indicated by an afflicted (discordant) Mars, there is much struggle associated with it. There will be strenuous activity regarding the things ruled by this house. To the extent the thought cells mapped by Mars are prominent, is the life influenced by thoughts of construction, destruction, initiative, aggression, combat, sex, eating or drinking. Because the chief expression of the thought-elements in the unconscious mind mapped by Mars in the chart relate to attacking obstacles, they are referred to as the Aggressive Urges.
Mars in Aries: Mars maps the Aggressive Urges, embracing thoughts and actions relating to construction, destruction, initiative, aggression, combat, sex, amativeness, eating and drinking. With the Aggressive thought-cells expressing from the I AM attitude of Aries, channel your initiative through constructive enterprise rather than asserting superiority.
Mars in the 1st House maps the Aggressive Urges expressing through the personality, indicating an aggressive, outgoing personality with abundant energy. It also indicates mechanical ability and a willingness to face danger. There is a tendency, however, to be compulsive and rash, so cultivate the habit of thinking things through carefully before acting. Replace destructive thoughts with constructive activities. When prominent and afflicted (discordant), there is a tendency toward quarrelsomeness and harshness. Undue severity and antagonism hinder constructive endeavors. You’ll find greater joy focusing your initiative in fighting disease, ignorance and poverty than in combating human foes. With self-discipline, you can focus your abundant energy into successful and rewarding outlets. The natural antidote for an afflicted Mars is to take aggressive measures to protect the weak and helpless.
Important aspects to Mars
The most powerful aspect to Mars is Sun Conjunction Mars. This aspect is also the most powerful aspect in the chart and is mildly discordant relative to the other aspects in the chart. The Sun is also in the 1st. See the description of this aspect under “Best, Worst and Most Powerful Chart Aspects” in the section on Astrodyne Analysis.
The 2nd most powerful aspect to Mars is Mars Trine MC. With 8.68 astrodynes of power, this aspect is powerful and with 6.51 harmodynes is very harmonious, relative to the other aspects in the chart. The MC is on the cusp of the 10th House that relates to the public recognition, for good or for ill, you receive regarding matters ruled by the planets which make aspects to it, which, in this case, is the Trine aspect from Mars. This very harmonious trine aspect shows that these two areas of life experience cooperation to bring good luck. The aspect shows aggressiveness, combativeness and initiative influence public recognition and reputation. This very harmonious trine aspect indicates these factors work harmoniously together showing public recognition for constructive energy and aggressive action. Avoid being too harsh by associating the martial inclinations with aggressive actions to protect the weak, helpless and less fortunate.
Of particular note here is that Sun is in Mutual Reception with Mars. The Sun is also in the 1st. These two planets are in Mutual Reception because each occupies the sign which is the exaltation or the home of the other. The resonance thus created tends to be the most harmonious of any due to the sign positions of the two planets. The discordant nature of the aspect will still manifest, but they tend to benefit each other through mutual aims, and the departments of life ruled by houses occupied by the two planets tend markedly to assist each other.
Sun in the 1st House
Sun is prominent (being in an angular house) and powerful and is very harmonious.
When a house (department of life) is occupied by the Sun, those matters are vitalized, pursued with vigor and become a dominant motive in the life that affects your significance, authority and self-esteem. Because the chief expression of the thought-elements in the unconscious mind mapped by the Sun in the chart are directed toward gaining and maintaining significance, and their activity strongly influences the relation of the individual to those in authority, as well as influencing his authority over others, they are called Power Urges.
Sun in Aries: cultivate leadership and avoid officiousness.
Sun in the 1st House shows the Power Urges expressing through the personality indicating a personal presence and demeanor that is vital and vigorous and projects dignity and authority. It also brings strong recuperative powers. A discordant Sun in the 1st House can be overbearing and prideful.
Important aspects to the Sun
The most powerful aspect to the Sun is Sun Conjunction Mars. This aspect is also the most powerful aspect in the chart and is mildly discordant relative to the other aspects in the chart. Mars is also in the 1st. See the description of this aspect in this same house, above.
The 2nd most powerful aspect to the Sun is Sun Trine MC. This aspect is also the best (most harmonious) aspect in the chart and, relative to the other aspects in the chart, is powerful. The MC is on the cusp of the 10th House that relates to the public recognition, for good or for ill, you receive regarding matters ruled by the planets which make aspects to it, which, in this case, is the Trine aspect from the Sun. See the description of this aspect under “Best, Worst and Most Powerful Chart Aspects” in the section on Astrodyne Analysis.
The 3rd most powerful aspect to the Sun is Sun Sextile Jupiter. With 5.79 astrodynes of power, this aspect is of average power and with 8.68 harmodynes is very harmonious, relative to the other aspects in the chart. Jupiter is in the 12th House relating to secrets, disappointments and limitations. This harmonious sextile aspect shows that these two areas of life experience good opportunities. The aspect shows the vitality, authority and relations with men influence, and are influenced by, abundance, optimism and joviality. This harmonious sextile aspect indicates these factors work harmoniously together showing good vitality and favors from people of power.
The 4th most powerful aspect to the Sun is Sun Conjunction Pluto. With 5.37 astrodynes of power, this aspect is of average power but is neutral regarding harmony or discord. Pluto is also in the 1st. This conjunction aspect shows that this area of life experiences a powerful association. The aspect shows the vitality, authority and relations with the opposite sex influence, and are influenced by, groups, subtle force, and coercion or cooperation. This conjunction aspect indicates a powerful association between these factors showing benefit and authority through group activity.
Of particular note here is that Sun is in Mutual Reception with Mars. Mars is also in the 1st. See the description of this aspect in this same house, above.
Pluto in the 1st House
Pluto is prominent (being in an angular house and its close aspect to the Sun) although of average power relative to the power distribution in your chart, and is mildly discordant.
Whatever house is occupied by Pluto is subject to inner-plane influence, either for good or ill. The activities stimulated include facilities for cooperation with others and for contacting groups of people. Because the chief expression of the thought-cells mapped by Pluto relate to cooperation for the welfare of the group, and spiritual efforts for the benefit of all, they are generally referred to as the Universal Welfare Urges. To the extent the thought cells mapped by Pluto are active, is the life influenced by thoughts of groups, statistics, division of labor, mass production, inner-plane conditions, drastic events, the inside of things, gang methods, cooperation, coercion, or universal welfare. If Pluto is powerful in the chart and afflicted (discordant), there will be undue pressure brought to bear by others to compel such action as they desire relative to the things the house rules.
Pluto in Taurus: Pluto maps the Universal Welfare Urges embracing thoughts and actions related to groups, statistics, inner-plane conditions, drastic events, the inside of things, gang methods, cooperation, coercion, and universal welfare. With the Universal Welfare Urges expressing from the “I Have” attitude of Taurus, seek cooperation through attaining freedom from want for all rather than in monopolizing wealth.
Pluto in the 1st House shows that the Universal Welfare Urges express primarily through the personality, indicating one who is active, energetic and resourceful, and tends to unite with others to accomplish a common purpose. The Pluto personality can be powerfully dynamic and shows spiritual possibilities. You consciously or unconsciously, easily tune in on the thoughts and energies being broadcast from the inner planes, opening you to unusual sources of information and power. A well-aspected Pluto indicates that inner-plane forces will benefit your developing spirituality and shows the ability to cooperate for a common effort. If Pluto is afflicted, there will be undue pressure brought to bear by others to compel you to do their bidding. Effort to benefit all, rather than some group, will bring greater satisfaction. The best antidote for an afflicted (discordant) Pluto is to cultivate aggressive action (Mars) to protect the weak and to help the less fortunate.
Important aspects to Pluto
The most powerful aspect to Pluto is Mercury Parallel Pluto. With 10.34 astrodynes of power, this aspect is powerful but is neutral regarding harmony or discord. Mercury is also in the 1st. See the description of this aspect in this same house, above.
The 2nd most powerful aspect to Pluto is Pluto Sextile Ascendant. With 6.79 astrodynes of power, this aspect is moderately powerful and with 6.79 harmodynes is very harmonious, relative to the other aspects in the chart. The Ascendant is also on the cusp of the 1st House that relates to the effect on the personality, health and personal affairs from the aspects made to it, which, in this case, is the Sextile aspect from Pluto. This harmonious sextile aspect shows that this area of life experiences good opportunities. The aspect shows groups, subtle force, and coercion or cooperation influence, and are influenced by, the personality, physical body and health. This harmonious sextile aspect indicates these factors work harmoniously together showing an active, energetic and resourceful personality that tends to unite with others to accomplish a common purpose. It also shows the ability to consciously or unconsciously easily tune in on the thoughts and energies being broadcast from the inner planes that open up unusual sources of information and power.
The 3rd most powerful aspect to Pluto is Sun Conjunction Pluto. With 5.37 astrodynes of power, this aspect is of average power but is neutral regarding harmony or discord. The Sun is also in the 1st. See the description of this aspect in this same house, above.
2nd House – Money and Possessions
The 2nd House has dominion over activities of life relating to money, possessions and personal resources.
The 2nd house is powerful relative to the other houses in the chart. This house is the Best House in your chart, is very harmonious and contains two planets: Uranus and Venus. Venus is your Best Planet.
Having two planets in this house indicates that it is an important department of life.
Uranus in the 2nd House
Uranus is weak and less active and is neutral regarding harmony or discord.
The thought cells mapped by Uranus powerfully influence originality of thought, and the ability to make marked departures from precedence and custom. Because their chief expression relates to originality, they are generally referred to as the Individualistic Urges. Whatever house is occupied by Uranus denotes things about which radical tendencies are likely to manifest. In the section of life indicated by such a house there are sudden changes and developments of an extreme nature, either constructive or destructive. Whatever good is signified in one direction is accompanied by some lesser disadvantage in another and vice versa. To the extent the thought cells mapped by Uranus are active (powerful in the chart), is the life influenced by thoughts of independence, originality, invention, the unconventional, unusual or new methods.
Uranus in Taurus: Uranus maps the Individualistic Urges embracing thoughts and actions relating to independence, originality, invention, the unconventional and unusual, new or radical methods. With the Individualistic thought-cells expressing from the “I Have” attitude of Taurus, seek originality through handling money rather than in being obstinate.
Uranus in the 2nd House shows that the Individualistic Urges express primarily through money and possessions, indicating sudden gains and losses. Financial matters tend to be disruptive. What is gained in one area may be lost in another. This position also indicates unusual talents and methods of making money. If Uranus is powerful in the chart and afflicted (discordant), you may be drawn to impractical financial ventures. Cultivate original ideas that will pay financial dividends. The natural antidote for an afflicted Uranus is Jupiter thinking that relies on providence, is optimistic and more conventional, avoiding erratic behavior.
Venus in the 2nd House
Venus is prominent (its close aspect to the Moon) although weak and less active relative to the power distribution in your chart, but is very harmonious.
Whatever house is occupied by Venus has a strong influence upon the affections, and through it an appeal to the affections can readily be made. Mating, companionship, affection and love are expressions of the thought cells mapped by this planet. The things denoted by this house tend to prosper not through effort and initiative, but through kindnesses and favors received because of grace of manners, and following the line of least resistance. Because the chief expression of the thought-cells in the unconscious mind mapped by Venus in the chart relate to the social life they are referred to as the Social Urges.
Venus in Taurus: Taurus is the home sign of Venus, indicating harmonious expression of the Social Urges, embracing the emotions, the affections, social relationships and artistic appreciation. Expressing from the I HAVE attitude of Taurus, the affections are best expressed by being sociable and warm rather than too greatly influenced by worldly possessions.
Venus in the 2nd House maps the Social Urges expressing through money and possessions. Because Venus brings favors, this position shows money and possessions coming through little effort. It also indicates a love of wealth and beautiful possessions including jewelry, art objects and music or musical instruments. This is a good position for artists if Venus is prominent and well-aspected. It also indicates that wealth may be associated with the affections and social relations. To the extent that Venus is well-aspected, you benefit by cultivating social relations. If Venus is prominent (powerful) and afflicted (discordant), cultivate caution, system, fairness and foresight (Saturn Safety thoughts), along with thoughts and feelings of pride, dignity, firmness and self-esteem (Sun Power thoughts).
Important aspects to Venus
The most powerful aspect to Venus is Moon Sextile Venus. With 6.38 astrodynes of power, this aspect is moderately powerful and with 7.98 harmodynes is very harmonious, relative to the other aspects in the chart. The Moon is in the 1st House relating to personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics. This harmonious sextile aspect shows that these two areas of life experience good opportunities. The aspect shows the mental attitude, domestic life and everyday affairs influence, and are influenced by, the emotions, social relations and artistic appreciation. This harmonious sextile aspect indicates these factors work harmoniously together favoring domestic and social matters. These two planets are in Mutual Reception because each occupies the sign which is the exaltation or the home of the other. The resonance thus created tends to be the most harmonious of any due to the sign positions of the two planets. They tend to benefit each other through mutual aims, and the departments of life ruled by houses occupied by the two planets tend markedly to assist each other.
3rd House – Personal Interests, Siblings and Social Media
The 3rd House has dominion over activities of life relating to mental activity, education and personal studies, siblings, neighbors, writing, hobbies, local travel and communications.
The 3rd house is of average power relative to the other houses in the chart. This house is the Worst House in your chart, is discordant and contains one planet: Saturn. Saturn is your Worst Planet, which is described in the “Worst Planet” section under Astrodyne Analysis above.
Saturn in the 3rd House
Saturn is weak and less active and is discordant.
Whatever house is occupied by Saturn experiences hard work, responsibility, and frugality or loss. Saturn maps that area of the unconscious mind referred to as the Safety Urges because these thought-cells relate to hard work, acquisition, persistence, planning, organization and all things which serve to provide stability, safety and security for the individual.
When especially prominent (powerful) in the chart and afflicted (discordant), these Saturn thought-elements can stimulate discordant thoughts of fear, greed, envy, or self-centeredness, and are responsible for loss, hardship and privation and the necessity of working diligently for every advantage. There can be restrictions of various kinds and heavy burdens leading to emotions which can be morose, melancholy or despondent, leading in some cases to clinical depression, depending also on environmental and hereditary factors. You can benefit from an afflicted Saturn by directing your Safety Urges to express in a constructive manner as when harmonious. (See next paragraph.)
When Saturn is powerful in the chart and harmonious or neutral (that is, not too discordant), then you can benefit from efficiency, economy, organization, hard work, shrewdness and your ability to buy to advantage.
Saturn in Gemini: Saturn maps the Safety Urges embracing thoughts and actions relating to safety, secrecy, acquisitiveness, buying, trading, worry, fear, system, order and persistence. With the Safety thought-cells expressing from the “I Think” attitude of Gemini, seek security through system and order and taking action rather than just talking or constantly mulling issues and concerns.
Saturn in the 3rd House shows that the Safety Urges express primarily through education, writing, personal studies, relatives (including siblings) and neighbors. Saturn here shows deep thinking and hard work relating to education, writing or communications. Saturn also brings increased responsibility for siblings or other relatives and there can be difficulties or increased responsibilities with neighbors. You may show a strong desire to get an education and the willingness to work hard for it.
When Saturn is powerful in the chart, the alchemical antidote for discordant Saturn thinking is to employ the warm SOCIAL thoughts of Venus and the vital POWER thoughts of the Sun regarding education, writing and communications in general. Cultivating pleasure in social activities stimulates the Venus social thought-cells. Cultivating Sun thoughts of your importance and self-esteem with respect to 3rd house matters will combine the Saturn and Venus components in the unconscious mind into a harmonious complex that will attract better fortune.
Saturn is also involved in one special planetary configurations in your chart:
The special configuration that Saturn is involved in is a T-Square (See Special Configuration #1 in the Special Chart Configurations section above) involving MC, Moon and Neptune in the 10th and 1st Houses.
4th House – Home
The 4th House has dominion over activities of life relating to primarily the home and home life, but also the father, real estate, farmland and its production, restaurants and conditions at the end of life.
The 4th house is weak and less active relative to the other houses in the chart, is neutral regarding harmony or discord and contains no planets, but is ruled by Mercury, which is neutral regarding harmony or discord and in the 1st House relating to personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics, indicating that those matters have special influence over 4th House matters. So, for example, events relating to personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics, resulting from your communication, affect your home life.
5th House – Children and Love Affairs
The 5th House has dominion over activities of life relating to offspring and pleasures, love affairs, speculation, stocks, bonds and derivatives, children and entertainment.
The 5th house is of average power relative to the other houses in the chart, is neutral regarding harmony or discord and contains no planets, but is ruled by the Moon, which is neutral regarding harmony or discord and in the 1st House relating to personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics, indicating that those matters have special influence over 5th House matters. So, for example, events relating to personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics, resulting from your domesticity, affect your pleasure, love affairs, children and speculation.
6th House – Work
The 6th House has dominion over activities of life relating to work environment, coworkers, subordinates and employees, food in general, especially those consumed or prepared, small animals and the conditions surrounding illness or places where illness is treated.
The 6th house is of average power relative to the other houses in the chart, is harmonious and contains no planets, but is ruled by the Moon, which is neutral regarding harmony or discord and in the 1st House relating to personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics, indicating that those matters have special influence over 6th House matters. So, for example, events relating to personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics, resulting from your domesticity, affect your work, coworkers and subordinates and/or illness and the infirm.
7th House – Marriage and Partnership
The 7th House has dominion over activities of life relating to marriage, partnership, the attitude of those met in public, open enemies, competitors and lawsuits.
The 7th house is of average power relative to the other houses in the chart, is harmonious and contains no planets, but is ruled by Mercury, which is neutral regarding harmony or discord and in the 1st House relating to personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics, indicating that those matters have special influence over 7th House matters. So, for example, events relating to personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics, resulting from your communication, affect your marriage and partnership.
8th House – Death, Inheritance and Other People’s Money
The 8th House has dominion over activities of life relating to legacies and inheritance, gifts, partner’s money and other people’s money in general, fiduciary responsibilities, debts owed to you and the ability of those owing to pay, death, life insurance, taxes and the influence of the dead.
The 8th house is weak and less active relative to the other houses in the chart, is neutral regarding harmony or discord and contains no planets, but is ruled by Mars, which is harmonious and in the 1st House relating to personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics, and Pluto, which is mildly discordant and also in the 1st House relating to personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics, indicating that the matters of this house have special influence over 8th House matters. So, for example, events relating to personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics, resulting from your rashness, affect your partner’s money, fiduciary responsibilities and inheritance.
9th House – Religion, Philosophy and Long Journeys
The 9th House has dominion over activities of life relating to teaching, religion, philosophy, social media, teaching, publishing, long journeys and the courts.
The 9th house is weak and less active relative to the other houses in the chart, but is harmonious and contains no planets, but is ruled by Jupiter, which is very harmonious and in the 12th House relating to secrets, disappointments and limitations, indicating that those matters have special influence over 9th House matters. So, for example, events relating to secrets, disappointments and limitations, resulting from your goodwill or religiosity, affect your religion, philosophy, social media, and long journeys.
10th House – Career, Business, Credit and Reputation
The 10th House has dominion over activities of life relating to honors, business, credit, reputation, career, superiors and mother.
The 10th house is powerful relative to the other houses in the chart, is neutral regarding harmony or discord and while it contains no planets, it does include the power and the harmony or discord of the MC, which is neutral regarding harmony or discord. The house is co-ruled by Jupiter, which is very harmonious and is in the 12th House relating to secrets, disappointments and limitations, indicating that those matters have special influence over 10th House matters. So, for example, events relating to secrets, disappointments and limitations, resulting from your goodwill or religiosity, affect your career, credit, reputation and mother.
11th House – Friends, Hopes and Wishes
The 11th House has dominion over activities of life relating to friends, affiliations, hopes and wishes.
The 11th house is weak and less active relative to the other houses in the chart, is discordant and contains no planets, but is ruled by Saturn, which is discordant and in the 3rd House relating to personal interests, writing, neighbors and siblings, indicating that those matters have special influence over 11th House matters. So, for example, events relating to personal interests, writing, neighbors and siblings, resulting from your self-interest, affect your friends and affiliations.
12th House – Restrictions and Disappointments
The 12th House has dominion over activities of life relating to secrets, sorrows, disappointments, restrictions, hidden enemies, crime, detective work, large animals, unseen forces and astral entities.
The 12th house is of average power relative to the other houses in the chart, is harmonious and contains one planet: Jupiter.
Jupiter in the 12th House
Jupiter is prominent (its close aspect to the Sun) although weak and less active relative to the power distribution in your chart, but is very harmonious.
Whatever house is occupied by Jupiter experiences abundance, goodwill and optimism. Jupiter maps the Religious Urges in the unconscious mind, so called because these thought-cells tend to express through veneration, philosophical or religious thinking and faith in providence. Jupiter is also considered a business planet because it manifests abundance, goodwill and optimism and rules the professions in general.
Jupiter in Aquarius: Jupiter maps the Religious Urges embracing thoughts and actions relating to benevolence, veneration, hope, devotion, generosity and goodwill toward others. With the religious thought-cells expressing from the “I Know” attitude of Aquarius, cultivate faith in facts and altruistic activities rather than in theories and argument.
Jupiter in the 12th House indicates that the Religious Urges express primarily through sorrows, disappointments, and restrictions. This placement shows that you can benefit from, and be benefitted by, large institutions that minster to those in need including hospitals, asylums, churches and universities. As the 12th House also rules secret enemies, this position of Jupiter shows benefit rather than injury from the efforts of secret enemies. Cultivating discrimination and critical thinking will benefit any effort to alleviate the distress of others.
Important aspects to Jupiter
The most powerful aspect to Jupiter is Sun Sextile Jupiter. With 5.79 astrodynes of power, this aspect is of average power and with 8.68 harmodynes is very harmonious, relative to the other aspects in the chart. The Sun is in the 1st House relating to personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics. See the description of this aspect under the 1st House above.
Of particular note here is that Mercury is in Mutual Reception with Jupiter. Mercury is in the 1st House relating to personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics. See the description of this aspect under the 1st House above.
Through Astrodyne analysis one can analyze the power and harmony of the planets, signs and houses in your chart. The objective of this analysis is to indicate which areas will bring the most benefit into the life and which areas need work. Subsequent sections will explore in more detail the various departments of life (The Houses) and associated key aspects between planets. Below you will find the Astrodyne Table for your chart followed by an analysis of the best, worst and most powerful planets, houses and signs.
The astrodyne table, immediately below, analyzes the power and harmony of each planet, house and sign in your chart. The columns show (1) object name, the absolute astrodyne (2) power and (3) harmony, the Zscores indicating (4) relative power and (5) harmony, and the corresponding qualitative assessment of the relative (6) power and (7) harmony of each element in the chart based on the Zscores. Assessing a relative qualitative score is important because absolute values can be somewhat misleading and there are no “population” statistics from which to judge absolute power and harmony. An asterisk “*” in the power or harmony Zscore columns indicates that the value is an “outlier” which skews the distribution, in which case it is removed and the Zscores recomputed to provide a more accurate picture.
The tables below are a reference summary. The planets, houses and signs, and their influence on you character and fortune, are described throughout the report.
Planets, MC and Asc
(1) Object
(2) Power
(3) Harmony
(4) Power Zscore
(5) Harmony Zscore
(6) Relative Power
(7) Relative Harmony
Sun
59.16
23.00
1.07
1.25
powerful
very harmonious
Moon
63.59
-0.65
1.37
-0.35
powerful
neutral
Mercury
48.21
-1.35
0.32
-0.40
average
neutral
Venus
33.26
25.92
-0.71
1.44
weak
very harmonious
Mars
51.09
16.71
0.52
0.82
moderately powerful
harmonious
Jupiter
31.49
25.47
-0.83
1.41
weak
very harmonious
Saturn
23.20
-23.25
-1.40
-1.88
weak
discordant
Uranus
22.89
4.22
-1.42
-0.02
weak
neutral
Neptune
50.61
-8.37
0.48
-0.88
average
mildly discordant
Pluto
45.96
-4.45
0.16
-0.61
average
mildly discordant
MC
64.80
-7.84
1.46
-0.84
powerful
mildly discordant
Asc
28.79
5.62
-1.02
0.07
weak
harmonious
Planetary Astrodynes
Houses (See later section on Departments of Life for more information.)
(1) House
(2) Power
(3) Harmony
(4) Power Zscore
(5) Harmony Zscore
(6) Relative Power
(7) Relative Harmony
1st
380.71
38.96
*
1.77
very powerful
very harmonious
2nd
72.77
43.09
1.57
2.00
powerful
very harmonious
3rd
47.31
-23.92
0.36
-1.76
average
discordant
4th
24.10
-0.68
-0.74
-0.45
weak
neutral
5th
31.80
-0.33
-0.37
-0.43
average
neutral
6th
46.59
5.42
0.33
-0.11
average
harmonious
7th
32.42
5.80
-0.34
-0.09
average
harmonious
8th
24.26
3.07
-0.73
-0.24
weak
neutral
9th
15.75
12.73
-1.13
0.30
weak
harmonious
10th
80.55
4.90
1.94
-0.14
powerful
neutral
11th
11.60
-11.62
-1.33
-1.07
weak
discordant
12th
48.86
11.47
0.44
0.23
average
harmonious
House astrodynes
Signs
(1) Sign
(2) Power
(3) Harmony
(4) Power Zscore
(5) Harmony Zscore
(6) Relative Power
(7) Relative Harmony
Aries
123.02
43.89
1.69
1.82
powerful
very harmonious
Taurus
118.73
38.64
1.59
1.56
powerful
very harmonious
Gemini
71.41
-24.60
0.41
-1.59
average
discordant
Cancer
63.59
-0.65
0.21
-0.40
average
neutral
Leo
14.79
5.75
-1.00
-0.08
weak
harmonious
Virgo
24.10
-0.68
-0.77
-0.40
weak
neutral
Libra
8.31
6.48
-1.16
-0.05
weak
harmonious
Scorpio
24.26
3.07
-0.76
-0.22
weak
neutral
Sagittarius
96.30
17.63
1.03
0.51
powerful
harmonious
Capricorn
23.20
-23.25
-0.79
-1.53
weak
discordant
Aquarius
37.26
23.09
-0.44
0.78
average
harmonious
Pisces
211.73
-0.48
*
-0.39
very powerful
neutral
Sign astrodynes
Your Best Planet, House and Sign
Best Planet
The most harmonious planet in your chart is Venus, which maps your Social Urges, and is in your 2nd House. Venus is weak and less active relative to the other planets in your chart. Your Venus is in the sign Taurus, which gives it a(n) stable, patient, and practical nature. Being in the 2nd House, it expresses through activities related to money, possessions and personal resources.
Venus is prominent in your chart due to its close aspect to the Moon, even though weak by astrodyne power relative to the rest of your chart.
An alternative to your best planet is The Sun, which has 59.16 astrodynes of power and 23.00 harmodynes. The Sun is the 3rd most powerful planet in your chart and the 3rd most harmonious. The Sun maps your Power Urges and is in your 1st House relating to personality, physical body, physical appearance and demeanor, quality of the personal magnetism, personal prowess, personal matters and general health.
Best House (Department of Life)
The most harmonious House (Department of Life) in your chart is the 2nd House, which maps life activities relating to money, possessions and personal resources. The 2nd House has 43.09 harmodynes, is very harmonious and contains two planets: Uranus and Venus. Venus is your Best Planet, which is described in the “Best Planet” section. See the section below on Analysis of Each Department of Life (The Houses) for an explanation of the effect of these planets on the affairs of the 2nd House.
The 2nd house has 72.77 astrodynes of power and is powerful relative to the other houses in your chart and thus has enough power to benefit your life.
Best Sign
The most harmonious zodiacal sign in your chart is Aries, which is intercepted in your 1st House, and which contains the Sun and Mars. The following table displays correspondences for the sign Aries from which you may benefit by association.
Category
Correspondence
Nature
fiery, energetic, and impulsive
Association
personal prowess, leadership
Letter
Egyptian, Mataloth; Hebrew, Mem; Latin, M
Number
XIII, 13
Color
lighter shades of red
Tone
high C
Human Function
sense of taste
Remedy
such herbs as hemp, mustard, broom, holly, dock, thistle, fern, garlic, onions, nettles, radishes, poppies, peppers and rhubarb
Mineral
the talismanic gem, amethyst, and such stones as ochre, brimstone and red stones of various kinds
Best planet, house and sign
Your Worst Planet, House and Sign
Worst Planet
The most discordant planet in you chart is Saturn, which maps your Safety Urges, and is in your 3rd House relating to personal interests, writing, neighbors and siblings. (Saturn is often the most discordant planet in a chart because its nature easily expresses negatively which can affect all the aspects it makes to other planets in the chart.) Saturn is weak and less active relative to the other planets in your chart. With your Saturn in Gemini, your need for security and sense of order are volatile, restless and changeable, especially relating to personal interests, writing, neighbors and siblings.
The natural antidote for a discordant Saturn is the application of Venus (Social Urges) thoughts and emotions such as cultivating pleasant social contacts, musical entertainment and the arts in general, especially in relation to 3rd House activities including personal interests, writing, neighbors and siblings. Since both Saturn and Venus tend to be negative polarity, to this thought compound should be added Sun thoughts relating to pride, dignity, conscientiousness and self-esteem.
Worst House (Department of Life)
The most discordant House in your chart is the 3rd House, which governs the department of life relating to mental activity, education and personal studies, siblings, neighbors, writing, hobbies, local travel and communications. The 3rd house has 47.31 astrodynes of power and is of average power relative to the other houses in your chart. The 3rd House has -23.92 discordynes and contains one planet: Saturn. Saturn is your Worst Planet, which is described in the “Worst Planet” section. See the section below on Analysis of Each Department of Life (The Houses) for an explanation of the effect of this planet on the affairs of the 3rd House.
Worst Sign
The most discordant zodiacal Sign in you chart is Gemini, which is on the cusp of your 3rd and 4th Houses. The sign Gemini has 71.41 astrodynes of power and is of average power relative to the other signs in your chart. It has -24.60 discordynes and contains Saturn.
Your Most Powerful Planet, House and Sign
Most Powerful Planet
The most powerful planet in your chart is the Moon, which is generally referred to as your Dominant Planet. The Moon is in your 1st House relating to personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics, and is neutral regarding harmony or discord relative to the other planets in your chart. See the discussion of you Dominant Planet above.
Most Powerful House (Department of Life)
The most powerful house (Department of Life) in your chart is the 1st House relating to personality, physical body, physical appearance and demeanor, quality of the personal magnetism, personal prowess, personal matters and general health. The 1st House is very harmonious relative to the other houses in your chart, and contains Neptune, the Moon, Mercury, Mars, the Sun and Pluto. See the section below on Analysis of Each Department of Life (The Houses) for a detailed discussion of this house.
Most Powerful Sign
The most powerful zodiacal sign in your chart is Pisces. Pisces is on the cusp of your 1st House, is neutral regarding harmony or discord relative to the other signs in your chart, and contains the Moon, Mercury, Neptune and the Ascendant. See discussion of Pisces in the Moon and Rising Sign sections of “Your Key Chart Points and General Characteristics” above.
Best, Worst and Most Powerful Chart Aspects
The following sections describe the most significant aspects between the planets in the chart. (See the Glossary in the Appendix for more on Aspects and how they express.)
Most Powerful Aspect in the Chart
The most powerful aspect in the chart is Sun Conjunction Mars. At -3.53 discordynes, this aspect is mildly discordant. The Sun is in the 1st House relating to personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics. Mars is also in the 1st. This conjunction aspect shows that this area of life experiences a powerful association. The aspect shows the vitality, authority and the relations with men influence, and are influenced by assertiveness, combativeness, amativeness and expenditure of energy. This conjunction aspect indicates a powerful association between these factors showing good vitality, strife with or over authority, and, to the extent that the aspect is powerful, a tendency to rashness and accident are shown. These two planets are in Mutual Reception because each occupies the sign which is the exaltation or the home of the other. The resonance thus created tends to be the most harmonious of any due to the sign positions of the two planets. The discordant nature of the aspect will still manifest, but they tend to benefit each other through mutual aims, and the departments of life ruled by houses occupied by the two planets tend markedly to assist each other.
Best Aspect in the Chart
The most harmonious aspect in the chart is Sun Trine MC. At 9.78 astrodynes, this aspect is powerful. The Sun is in the 1st House relating to personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics. The MC is on the cusp of the 10th House that relates to the public recognition, for good or for ill, you receive regarding matters ruled by the planets which make aspects to it, which, in this case, is the Trine aspect from the Sun. This very harmonious trine aspect shows that these two areas of life experience cooperation to bring good luck. The aspect shows the vitality, authority and relations with men influence public recognition and reputation. This very harmonious trine aspect indicates these factors work harmoniously together showing public recognition for vitality, dignity and authority.
Worst Aspect in the Chart
The most discordant aspect in the chart is Moon Square MC. At 11.56 astrodynes, this aspect is very powerful. The Moon is in the 1st House relating to personal matters, the personality and physical characteristics. The MC is on the cusp of the 10th House that relates to the public recognition, for good or for ill, you receive regarding matters ruled by the planets which make aspects to it, which, in this case, is the Square aspect from the Moon. This discordant square aspect shows that these two areas of life experience obstacles and periods of struggle. The aspect shows the mental attitude, domestic life, everyday affairs influence public recognition and reputation. This discordant square aspect indicates these factors negatively affect each other showing that changing attitudes, fickle behavior, women and domestic life have a negative impact on public image and reputation. Cultivate pleasant thoughts of significance, exercise of authority that benefits others and self-esteem. Cultivate pleasant thoughts and aggressive actions protecting the weak and helpless.
