A recent post, Judicial: the character of the new religion, explored what the astrology of December 21, 2020’s Jupiter-Saturn conjunction has to say about the nature of the dynastic and religious powers of the next two hundred years, using a technique called The Lot of Rulership and Authority.
And a commenter immediately asked me if I’d predicted the antiChrist. I told them that no, I hadn’t, and that a further post this week would illuminate that.
The general framework is that a calculation is performed in two astrological charts — first, a position is plotted from Mars to the Moon in one chart, the so-called Aries Ingress of the Sun occurring immediately before the conjunction; and then that distance around the Zodiac is plotted in a second chart, the one for the conjunction itself. This reveals the opening experience of the dynastic and religious framework of the next era. Then, the distance from the Ascendant to the conjunction is calculated, and that distance is taken back to the first chart, the Aries Ingress chart. are compared with one another: the chart of the Ingress of the Sun into Aries, which occurs at the vernal equinox every March. Thus, one generates two positions: one in the chart of the Aries Ingress, and one in the chart of the conjunction itself. The position in the chart of the conjunction explains the shift in religion and in the dynastic concerns from one era to the next; the position in the chart of the Aries Ingress suggests the trajectory or direction of the change, or what it’s aimed at.
This is going to be a bizarre metaphor, perhaps, but bear with me. This “Lot of Rulership and Authority” appears, in any given single chart, to be a point. But it’s not a point. It’s TWO points, in two different moments in time, which are themselves placed in the sky relative to a national capital. Got that? And what does one find between any two points drawn in space-time?
A line. A line that changes direction and speed of movement, as it shifts from position 1 in chart A, to position 2 in Chart B.
It may be helpful to think of this Lot, then, not as a point in time but as the position of a spacecraft, a metaphorical spaceship, traveling near the Earth and beaming messages of “general religious trends” down on the populace below on earth. It has to start at Position 1 at the time of chart A, and it’s trying to arrive at Position 2 at the time that Chart B occurs several months from now. This requires, in Earth’s gravity, that it make certain major shifts in its course right now, so that its orbit will naturally bring itself to Position 2/Chart B… and once that’s done, the spacecraft’s arrival at Position 3/Chart C in 200-ish years is more or less guaranteed. It might make minor course corrections over time, say every 20 years (at the regular re-appearance of the Saturn-Jupiter conjunctions, say…). But it will arrive.
When we do that, it’s kind of like a model of time opens up. Astronauts in orbit usually make very small changes to the trajectory of their spacecraft in a short period of time, and then travel thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of miles before they adjust course again. And this “Lot of Rulership and Authority” is kind of like that — it indicates a short-term change in direction, followed by thousands of orbits to reach a new position. I’ve illustrated this with a diagram at left, which I admit is maybe not as helpful to viewers as it was to me, of how Lots calculated from these two charts — the Aries Ingress preceding a Saturn-Jupiter conjunction, and the Saturn-Jupiter conjunction itself, wind up playing out over time. From our perspective, the Lot ‘twists’ through space during the long cycles between Saturn-Jupiter conjunctions in new signs… but from the perspective of the Lot itself, it’s on a trajectory that will deliver it to a particular destination. The Lot sees its course as a straight line from the course-correction that occurs in a relatively short interval over less than 12 months — even though the course plotted won’t change for 150+ years.
So, the antiChrist is not a helpful concept here. That implies, metaphorically or realistically, one person who is in command and control, who conquers people’s thoughts and hearts as much as they conquer the ground and the seas. A living human has a lifespan of 70-120 years at most — but this Lot of Rulership and Authority is setting a course of a period that amounts to six to eight human generations — or roughly the distance between 33 AD and 270 AD, the period between the Crucifixion and the start of really-serious Christian persecution in the Roman empire (Nero and the business with the human torches excepted).
It’s more helpful to think of the Lot of Rulership and Authority as a forecast of a trend, rather than the arrival of a person. In the moment, the actions of a particular person can be resisted; in the cycling of generations, it’s difficult to resist the trend: it involves not just changing how you teach your children and your grandchildren, but also how the children and grandchildren of everyone else gets educated.
A more helpful model here is Isaac Asimov’s psychohistory. It would be ironic, indeed, for psychohistory’s real-world roots to be planted in astrology, but here they are, in a Muslim writer’s guide to writing history-by-the-stars: work out enough of these Lot trend-lines, and you could predict theoretically what a society would look like in 200 years time. Establish a school of astrologers to track whether the trend-lines were accurate over 200 years; the great-great-grandchildren of the first students would get excited by the results, and continue the experiment for another six or eight hundred years — and suddenly find that they’re trying to manage history onto the predicted course, instead of just letting it happen. Tada. You’ve accidentally started The Foundation! (Whups).
I have to admit, the chart for the “New Religion” doesn’t thrill me much. So I figured it was worthwhile to look at the double-chart for the “Old Religion”, the one which launched at the last Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in a new Triplicity: the one which occurred on July 17, 1802. Washington, DC was barely a city at that point, although it was the national capitol of the US by then.
In order to do this, we have to look at the two charts, and recognize the formula. In the first chart, the Aries Ingress of 1802, we look at the distance from Mars to the Moon, in Zodiacal order (counter-clockwise). Here’ we’re going from 18° Aquarius 11′ to 21° Libra 3′.
The simplest way is to subtract the two positions from one another, 2° 52′, and then add it to 240° of eight complete 30°-signs. This works out to 242° 52′ of arc, which we now translate to the chart of the conjunction itself. In the Conjunction chart, we’re going to project 242° 52′ of arc in Zodiacal order from the Ascendant at 11° Sagittarius 15′. Remember, that’s eight (8!) complete signs, plus an additional two degrees and fifty-two minutes, and that’s going to be our Position One for the Lot of Rulership and Authority — which defines how this religious sensibility emerges, and what the launching impetus of it is rooted in. Except this isn’t the new religion, but the old religious sensibility, the one that affected America from 1802 until 2020.
That transfer of degrees puts us in Leo at 14° Leo 7′, in the sign ruled by the Sun, and in a decan ruled by Jupiter which Austin Coppock called The Laurel Crown— but the Sun in aversion, at 24° just next door, in a Decan ruled by the Moon called The Overflowing Cup, and in a term/bound ruled by Jupiter.
We thus began the Age of Earth with a spiritual experience of wearing a temporary crown, which confers lasting abundance and a kind of emotional stability which brings forth gifts of fluid speech (Mercury’s co-presence with the Sun) and physical prosperity in the world (Lot of Fortune with the Sun). This religious sensibility regards the Moon and the powers of women as a dangerous and opposing force, and toxic or even linked to underworld or chthonic powers of growing deviousness and power.
Jupiter’s role in the launch of this new religious sensibility is in Virgo, also in aversion, but co-present with Saturn in the decan called The Plow, ruled by the Sun; and in a term ruled by Mercury. The new faith carries within itself this combination of broad generosity and responsibility — live up to your promises to the gods and to each others, and there will be ample reward. One of the rewards is Less sex, given the close proximity of the South Node in the Decan of the Lingam-Yoni.The new religious sensibility is performative… but not that performative. At the same time, being in Leo, the Lot of Rulership and Authority is opposite Aquarius: this is indeed a religion on stage, but not one which adapts to new knowledge easily or happily. The planets and luminaries that rule it assert dominance on land and sea and in the air; it commands the subdual of the natural and the wild.
We now turn to the other side of the equation, the ending part of the Era of Earth, what the charts of 1802 predict for our own time, at the end of this religious sensibility emergent in the nation ruled from Washington, DC. For this, we must look from the Ascendant of this conjunction chart to the degree of the conjunction, and then project that from the degree of the Ascendant in the Aries Ingress chart. The Ascendant is at 11° Sagittarius 15′, as noted earlier, and the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn is at 5° Virgo 7′.
This is a bit of a complex additive problem. There are 18° and 45′ left in Sagittarius; there are 240° in the eight signs between Capricorn and Leo inclusive, which is 240°; and 5° 7′ into Virgo. Adding those together we get 263° and 52′, which we’ll project from the Ascendant of the Aries Ingress, at 17° Capricorn 27′. This will tell us something about the nature of the end of the religious sensibility of the Era of Earth, 1802-2020 AD. First, we can recognize that 240° is eight complete signs, so it will only be 23° 52′ past 17° Virgo 27′. Adding 23° 52′ to 17° 27′ puts us 10° and 9′ into the next sign…
And this works out to be 10° Libra 09′ — just a sliver into the second decan of a Mars-ruled sign, practically on top of the Midheaven, in a Sun-ruled Decan called The apparatus of mutual distillation, opposed to dreams of comfortable sexual identity and feeling free in one’s skin, a disjointed and toxic approach to women (represented by Venus in aversion to the Midheaven and this Lot of Rulership and Authority, conjunct the Sun in Aries, and under the beams — hidden by the bright light of the Sun and unable to make herself seen or heard as an effective cohering force in the the present faith-model, but nonetheless yoked to the Sun and on a short leash). The religion remains male-dominated, strongly focused on the solar force, and outwardly presents itself as a tool for transformation of self and the world, while holding women in its strong orbit in secondary and subordinate roles.
When I discussed these charts with my friend J, who is as versed in Christianity as me but additionally well-versed in Judaism and a few other religious trends, we came to the conclusion that the Lot of Rulership and Authority says a great deal about the dominant religious trend of the dominant religion, but not a great deal about the trends of the minority religious that follow around the dominant religion. J and I both felt that the Lot did a pretty good job of describing the trend-line of American mainstream Christianity toward a more evangelical and multivalent model (with Catholicism becoming a major trend on the one hand and evangelical Christianity emerging in Protestantism on the other). At the same time, the brush with reaction against chthonic powers manifests in periodic panics about Witchcraft and Satanism, as well as the emergence of Wicca and neo-Paganism as reactions against the ‘mainline faith’ and its excesses. As a result, J and I felt this Lot of Rulership and Authority makes a good descriptor of the general trend in American Christianity from about 1800 to the present day — but it’s not a good descriptor of Judaism in America’s trend-lines, or of a number of other religious trends in other minority faiths that have a good foothold in America, like Islam and Hinduism, or even the “New Age”/Spiritualism/”spiritual not religious” movements that seem to be home-grown. The dominant religion gets described this way, not the ones that have to take a back-seat to the overall impression.
In general, this makes me both less worried about last week’s prediction, in some ways; but also a little more worried in others. First, it would be my guess that evangelical Christianity has gotten tired of its charismatic preachers to some degree, who live one way while commanding their followers to live another, and that a turn to the sacraments of the church rather than a living person is a real possibility. However, I see that pendulum-swing showing up in potentially ugly ways, and only time will tell.
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