Antiochus I had the temple site at Nemrut Dag constructed on the anniversary of his coronation as king. But what else did he have in mind besides a celebration of his greatness? Perhaps there is a deeper mystery here – one handed down through the ages, hidden in plain sight, and one to which most of mankind is not privy.

Commagene – A Confluence of Persian, Babylonian and Macedonian Traditions

The Kingdom of Commagene was a Greco-Persian state which resided along the headwaters of the Euphrates River in modern-day Turkey, both during and before the times of the early Roman Empire. By 60 BCE Commagene had been a Greek vassal state since the collapse of The Neo-Assyrian Empire about 609 BCE and the rise of the Seleucid Empire around 312 BCE.1 2 Although the Seleuicid Empire was regarded as a Hellenistic State, it ruled under its own authority and controlled much of the former lands spanning Anatolia, Persia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Indus River region.3 After the Battle of Actium in 31 BCE, Commagene transferred authority to reside under the Roman Empire.4 Nonetheless, the Kingdom maintained its autonomy as a culture descended from the Uartu (Ararat) peoples of the Old Assyrian Empire (2600 BCE – 609 BCE), which included Sumer, Persia (Parthian Empire in the lower right quadrant of the map above), the Akkadian Empire, and Babylon. Its most ancient roots formed from the city-state of Ur, circa 3800 BCE. Commagene was situated in a sub-region of modern Turkey called Anatolia, a name which is derived from the Greek term ἀνατολῇ (anatolē), meaning ‘the East’.5 6

Nemrut Dağ

Located inside the eastern extent of the ancient state of Commagene is a tall mountain called by various names, including Nemrut Dag (which I will use herein). ‘Nemrut Dağ’ (Mount Nemrut/Nemrud), at 7000 ft is one of the highest peaks in the east of the Taurus Mountains (which range east through Cilicia on the map above). It maintains one of the best views of the eastern sky in the entire region. The mountain is located in modern day Turkey (see Exhibit 1 below), about 85 km directly north of another UNESCO World Heritage Site and site of the World’s first temple, Göbekli Tepe.7 8

Exhibit 1 – The Four Rivers Region – Nemrut Dag shown in relation to other geographic features of the ancient lore of the Levant and Fertile Crescent (the cradle of civilization as well as farming/animal domestication). As well, the image shows the birthplace of the Aramaic-speaking peoples called the Arameans. Paddan Aram – Field of (Aram) the Arameans (Aramaic-speaking common people of Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel). This group included the Biblical Abraham, his wife Sarah, and his nephew Lot.

Antiochus I Theos Epiphanes of Commagene

Basileus Megas was the title of the great king and inheritor of the sole rule handed down from the Seleucid Empire. Antiochus of Commagene (full title Theos Dikaios Epiphanes Philoromaios Philhellen, with ‘Theos’ signifying his divinity), was a Seleucid ruler and Basileus Megas from 69 (or, less probably, 64) to ca. 31 BCE, the son of Mithradates Callinicos and Laodice, the daughter of the Seleucid king Antiochus VIII Grypos. He reigned from the seat of the fomer Empire in Commagene.9 Antiochus, as ‘Theos Epiphanes’ was the ruling keeper of the ancient wisdom of the Magicians (Persian, Babylonian and Macedonian tradition ‘Magi’). Accordingly, Antiochus I had the Hierothesion (temple-observatory) site at Nemrut Dag constructed on the anniversary of his coronation as king (see Exhibit 2 below – click on image to enlarge in a separate window).

Specially designated days are the birthday of “the king’s body” and his coronation. Antiochus dedicated these two days, to the revelations of demons (daimones), which led him during the successful reign over the kingdom. At this point it is worth noting that in ancient times the term “demon” was ambivalent and defined both positive and negative superhuman beings – in this sense, demons often served as guardian spirits, to which role Antiochus clearly referred.

~ Turkish Archaeological News, Mount Nemrut, 5 Feb 201810

Exhibit 2 – The Nomos – Antiochus I explains the purpose of the temple and stellar observatory (Hierothesion) set up at Nemrut Dag. This was not simply a place to honor himself and act as a burial site, rather it was to house an ancient priesthood who made observations in accordance with the ancient Magi traditions.

Antiochus I Observatory at Mount Nimrut (Nimrod)

The Hierothesion at Nemrut, also called in various languages ‘Nimrud/Nimrut/Nemrud/Nemrut Dag/Dagh’ or ‘Nemrut Dağ/Daği’ as an historical site (distinct from the Turkish dormant volcano named Mount Nemrut) comes replete with its own mountain of crushed stone (the Tumulus), backing the observatory itself. The reader should note that the observatory is built to observe the morning eastern sky in the late summer (August) time frame of each year, and is as a result, aligned at 65° to 70° azimuth from true north (as outlined in Figure B later in this article).11 This is the average azimuth of the rising celestial ecliptic (the average path of the sun moon and planets across the sky) during that time of the year. The persons who built this observatory, apparently knew a little something about what they were looking for. It is also constructed so as to observe the western sky as that same yearly time frame’s ecliptic sets below the horizon.12 (The reader should note that the ecliptic, is the pathway which the Sun takes through our sky. All the planets and our Moon loosely follow this line as they make their journey from east to west each day and night. Throughout this article, you will notice the ecliptic as a thin line placed below Leo’s paws.)

Exhibit 3 – An artificial mound of crushed rock (The Tumulus) backs the observatory’s East Terrace and set of five kings statues.

Exhibit 6 – The east horizon view from the observation platform. Nemrut Dag’s elevation is around 7000 ft. The temple site was the go-to location for stellar observations at sunrise and sunset. The three priests (Persian, Babylonian, and Macedonian) would have likely taken 8-hour watches each, in order to maintain the observatory each day, keep the time, and wake the others for their watch rotation. They might have even ‘dogged’ (shortened) a watch, to ensure that each received an even rotation in daily duties, as well as the monitoring of both a sunrise and a sunset on a regular basis. These Magi would have been rich from the ‘gifts of herbs and spices’ (see Exhibit 2) which were custom in the day – and more importantly, were mandated by Antiochus I. (Source: Google Earth)

The Horoscope of the Lion (Leo)

During my investigation into the site and the features of the Hierothesion it became clear to me that, while Nemrut Dag was a relatively new religious construction during this time of Roman ascendancy, the wisdoms upon which it was founded, were not new at all. They were ancient Uruk-Bablylonian in their heritage. Whether boast, shell game, or reality, nonetheless Antiochus I had set his mind and resources to the task of preserving, or acting upon those mystery school teachings. Thus, by means of mostly Exhibit 2 (and other resources which are not the focus of this article), we were able established four things regarding the very straightforward history of this relatively noteworthy UNESCO World Heritage Site.

1. The site was commissioned to celebrate the anniversary of the crowning of Antiochus I,
2. The site was to be used to monitor and commission festivals and celestial events,
3. The site was declared to be the burial site for Antiochus I, and finally
4. The site was observing a tradition which called for the attending (and wealthy) Magi Priests to monitor for a future event.

But what future event was that?
But is this Assumed Horoscope Indeed Correct?

Read the whole article here ...

Excerpt from the book Jason Louv. "John Dee and the Empire of Angels. Enochian Magic and Occult Roots of Modern World." Rochester; Toronto: Inner Traditions, 2018.

As of the twenty-first century, Drake’s Bay lies thirty miles northwest of the hyperreal technological mecca of San Francisco, California, a short drive across the Golden Gate Bridge through the low, mist-covered hills and forest of Marin County. The bay stretches along eight miles of coast, and centers at Drake’s Beach, a small cove that looks out onto the Pacific, surrounded by sandstone hills and ice plant.

Here, in 1579, a privateer named Francis Drake landed after circumnavigating the tip of South America in a clandestine mission, proving that it could be done for the first time. He named the coast he had alighted upon Nova Albion. The man who had masterminded Drake’s mission was John Dee.

While Dee’s previous work had been theoretical, in the 1570s he involved himself in Elizabeth’s geopolitical planning, laying the ideological framework for building a new world empire. This empire—which would spread the new ideals of the Reformation and lead to the birth of America—would soon grow to compete with the Spanish Catholic efforts at colonization. It was to be a cold war for a New World.

An omen of this war came seven years earlier, in 1572, when a new star appeared in the heavens, remaining visible night and day for seventeen months—we now designate it SN 1572, a Type Ia supernova that occurred in the constellation Cassiopeia.1 Dee, who rushed to make observational measurements of the supernova, thought that it confirmed that the final restoration of the world—the eschaton—was at hand.2 The astronomer, alchemist, and astrologer Tycho Brahe, for whom the supernova is now named, believed that it was the first new star to appear in the sky since the birth of Christ. Five years later, in 1577, a great comet arrived above England, also observed by Brahe—confirming for the populace that the end of the world was nigh, fears upon which Dee was called to consult by Elizabeth.3

Indeed, it was the end of the world. By Dee’s time, Luther’s Reformation had initiated sea changes in Europe that broke a centuries-long status quo. Inheriting a tiny and vulnerable country, Elizabeth had pursued a strategy of avoiding war with the Catholic powers. To do so, she had kept France and Spain out of conflict by offering to increase support for whatever country was threatened by the other; both religion and Elizabeth’s own marital status were drawn into this delicate political maneuvering. Yet the gambit could only last so long before war did break out, dragging England into the fray.4 Concurrently, the Netherlands had erupted into open revolt against the Roman Catholic King Philip II of Spain, which would result in the formation of the Protestant Dutch Republic by 1581.

England was also economically insecure, besieged by desperation, homelessness, and plague. As England still grew its own food, it was vulnerable to famine if a wheat crop failed. Although the country’s food supply never ran out, famines would later make the 1580s and ’90s miserable for many, with the poorest potentially resorting to eating bark and grass; French peasants from the same time period are recorded as feeding on unripe grain, roots, and the intestines and blood left over from animals slaughtered for those that could afford them.5 One of the primary reasons for England’s failing economy was the massive amount of silver that Spain was extracting from its New World colonies, massively tipping the balance of economic power toward Spain. By contrast, England relied on textile exports, the manufacture of which had kept its population employed, and Continental demand was now minimal, leaving much of the country out of work. Trade with Russia, the Mediterranean, and Guinea had brought in some funds, but the real prize would be wresting at least partial control of the New World from Spain.6

Fig. 1. Francis Drake. Portrait by Crispijn van de Passe the Elder, 1598.

It is in this context that Dee gave the world the concept of a “British Empire,” a phrase he coined. After Columbus’s discovery of the New World, Pope Alexander VI had divided the Americas between Portugal and Spain in the Treaty of Tordesillas, handing them dominion over the Atlantic. Dee, with his back pocket full of superior knowledge of geography, navigation, and optics, would soon suggest Elizabeth contest this, and expand into the New World not just to rival Catholic domination, but for economic growth. Dee’s knowledge of optics, as well as the geographic and cartographic information he had absorbed under Mercator and his other mentors, at a time when accurate cartographic information was largely confined to the Continent, made him invaluable in not only conceptualizing but actualizing this plan. Yet for Dee himself, exploration of the New World had little to do with mercantile or even political goals. His fascination with imperialism pertained more to his occult calculations. It was clear to Dee, if no one else, that America had been colonized by King Arthur—even that still-existing Arthurian colonies might be found in the Northwest Passage. If this was the case, England had just as much spiritual claim to America as Rome did.7

The Muscovy Company, however, was already engaged in making real profits from trading with the tsar in Russia, and wasn’t seeking to take further risks on exploring west. Martin Frobisher got Elizabeth to lean on the company, and they in turn granted Frobisher a license with the proviso that he accept a company man, Michael Lok, as his treasurer. Dee was brought in to minimize risk by examining the plans for the voyage and imparting his knowledge of geometry, cosmography, and navigational instruments to the expedition leaders; Dee had spent fifteen years planning logistics for just such a voyage.8 Lok quickly warmed to Dee after realizing Dee wasn’t interested in competing with him. Since Lok had outfitted the expedition with expensive new navigational technology, he also had to make sure that Dee explained to his men how to use it without breaking it. Two ships were next commissioned—the Gabriel and Michael, named after the archangels that Dee would later record extensive traffic with during the angelic conversations.

Despite mishaps along the way, the Michael being forced back to port, and the near loss of the Gabriel (it was only heroics by Frobisher himself that saved the ship, nearly killing him) the voyage found land—the cyclopean ice walls of what Frobisher called Meta Incognita, the Unknown Limit, which we now know as Baffin Island in Canada. While exploring the coastline, Frobisher’s expedition came into conflict with Inuits, capturing and marooning one individual on a rock. An exploratory mission of Frobisher’s men went missing shortly thereafter. After taking an Inuit as a hostage with a boat hook, Frobisher abandoned hope for the return of his men and reversed course to England. The Inuit captive would be recorded as an object of great wonder and fascination for the English, before vanishing into the annals of history and a probably unpleasant fate.9

Fig. 2. Later map of Meta Incognita by Sir Robert Dudley and Antonio Francesco Lucini, c. 1647.

Even more interesting to the Crown was a sample of black ore that Frobisher had found in Meta Incognita, and that English alchemists claimed to have found gold in. For Dee, this discovery validated that the 1572 supernova foretold the discovery of the philosopher’s stone. For the English government, it was a galvanizing reason to return to Meta Incognita for more, under the cover of secrecy, to avoid claim jumping. Funding was no longer an issue—even the cash-poor Dee, seeing the potential for return, invested £25 (about £6,000 or $7,700 in 2017 terms).10

A crew of 140 was raised, including several prisoners who were to again board the Michael and Gabriel, along with a third ship entitled the Aid, and then to be left in the New World to try and win the “good will” of the locals, in much the same way that America and Australia would later be colonized. After six weeks, the expedition reached what is now known as Frobisher’s Strait and moored in what they named Jackman’s Sound, which Frobisher claimed for England in the country’s first act of colonial conquest of the New World. Setting out to search for more of the gold ore, the crew found nothing but a dead narwhal, which they called a “sea unicorn.” Immediately thereafter, the sailors found more of the black ore, which they began loading into the ship, all while fighting off violent attacks from the now-incensed Inuits.11

In all, Frobisher hauled over 140 tons of the ore back to England, presenting news of his find to Elizabeth, along with the narwhal’s horn. The ore was put under lock, key, and security detail, and tests on it commenced, whereupon only minute quantities of gold and silver were extracted, to Frobisher’s dismay.12

Despite the low yield of precious metals, a third voyage was sent back to Canada to claim what profits could still be salvaged. The crew returned with 1,150 tons, but by this time Lok’s Cathay Company was severely over budget; as a result of the expeditions, Lok declared bankruptcy and was thrown into debtor’s prison. After countless salvage attempts, the final extracted yield from the black ore was one single pinhead of silver.13

To Dee, however, the political value of the English voyages to Newfoundland and Baffin Island was immense—and not only because they were gathering data in the search for the Northwest Passage.14 In November 1577, Dee presented a new imperial plan to Elizabeth, suggesting that England wrest control of the New World from Spain—General and Rare Memorials, a set of documents laying out plans and technical guidelines for a new era of English colonization.

The Memorials continued the occult inquiry Dee began in the Propaedeumata aphoristica and Monas hieroglyphica; as with those books, Dee thought the Memorials divinely inspired (also by the angel Michael, in the case of the Monas). For Dee, the Memorials were a revelation from the angels, divine guidance on the creating of a British Empire, through a Royal Navy that would hold the world in its sway.15

In the text, Dee argued that Britain had the greatest need of any country for a continually operational navy, and that it also had the world’s greatest supply of timber, shipbuilders, willing volunteers for shipyard labor and staffing ships, and even suitable harbors. Establishing such a navy would make Britain nigh-on invincible (it did), and expansion of the British Navy and colonization of the New World not only had historical precedent but would surely raise vast riches for the Crown (it did).16 Such a plan would establish Elizabeth as the world ruler before the end times arrived; the money raised for the naval effort, Dee later added, could also be used to help build a new alchemical institute to produce the philosopher’s stone—the final perfection of which would reestablish the empire in full.17 In his partially lost 1577 manuscript “Famous and Rich Discoveries,” Dee speaks of how he would ascend above the heavens, to look down upon the earth and divine the Northwest Passage.

The cover of the Memorials depicts Elizabeth helming a ship representing British imperialism, with the angel Michael flying before her with sword and shield in hand and the Tetragrammaton above her, the ship being drawn forth by “Lady Occasion” toward freshly conquered territories. Following this are several pages rebuking Dee’s reputation as a sorcerer—Murphyn and Prestall’s attacks had been so successful that Dee was forced to address their slander upfront.

The four volumes of Dee’s imperial magnum opus were as follows:

1. General and Rare Memorials, completed and still extant. This addressed raising funds for and constructing a Petty Navy Royal of sixty 120-ton to 200-ton “tall ships” and twenty small warships weighing between twenty and fifty tons each, staffed by 6,600 well-paid men, the funds to be raised through taxation, as the wealth gained by imperial expansion would trickle down to the English people. This navy, Dee thought, would be the “Master Key” that would solidify English dominance, a “war machine”10 to guard England against its enemies. Although Dee was not originally concerned with state affairs, court politics would later force Dee to rewrite the Memorials to encourage the support of Holland and Zealand. The combination of the Dutch and English militaries would solidify control over the Narrow Seas in the wake of Spain’s withdrawal from the Low Countries. Also disgusted by the state of the Thames (upon which Mortlake was situated), Dee added an ecological broadside against the improper use of nets to fish the river.18

   

   Fig. 3. Cover of Dee’s General and Rare Memorials, 1577.

2. A set of navigational tables, calculated using Dee’s paradoxical compass, which would have been larger than the English Bible. This was unpublished and is presumed lost. (Dee’s paradoxical compass could have been used along with these tables to keep navigation precise; unfortunately, the newly drafted sailors found it too complex, and resisted training in its use.)19

3. A volume so secret that Dee stated it “should be utterly suppressed or delivered to Vulcan’s custody” (i.e., burned).20 Also lost, this manuscript may well have dealt with angelic magic or other occult or astrological calculations relating to imperial expansion. It may also have had to do with Rome or the Spanish, which would have necessitated even greater secrecy than occult material.

4. Of Famous and Rich Discoveries, which survived, albeit in a partly fire-destroyed form. Here Dee set forth the case for English expansion and territorial claims, and suggested exploratory voyages.21

Following the exploration of Newfoundland, Dee became concerned with discovering if America was a separate continent from Asia. Abraham Ortelius had suggested that a “Strait of Anian” connected the Northwest Passage to the Pacific; however, North America was suspected to be so large that anybody who tried to discover this passage by entering Newfoundland where Frobisher had and continuing to sail west would run out of supplies and freeze to death long before hitting the Pacific. Yet if one were to sail south, rounding the tip of South America, conditions would be far more favorable to continued sailing, and an expedition could look for the outlet of the Northwest Passage on the other side of North America. In the pages of Of Famous and Rich Discoveries, Dee made a compelling case that England should do exactly that.22

To undertake this perilous voyage, Dee and Elizabeth looked to an unlikely candidate: the privateer and slave trader Francis Drake. Drake undertook the mission between 1577 and 1580, taking a fleet of six ships, including his own Pelican. The voyage was beset by storms, loss of personnel, mutiny, and ship rot—by the time Drake reached the Pacific, only the Pelican remained, which he rechristened the Golden Hind. Drake proceeded up the coast of South America, attacking Spanish settlements and capturing ships as he went, looting treasure, wine, and maps in the process. Had Drake been commanding an official English fleet, this would have been an act of war, but his privateer status lent England plausible deniability, making Drake’s raids a form of naval black ops. In June 1579, he landed at what is now called Drake’s Bay, north of San Francisco, before reversing course, and returning to England by way of the Cape of Good Hope and the Sierra Leone. Upon his arrival, the logs of the expedition, and therefore the route Drake had discovered, were immediately ordered classified.23 Drake returned to England a celebrity, and was knighted soon thereafter.

As soon as Drake returned, plans for another voyage began to coalesce. In September 1580, Humphrey Gilbert and Dee drew up a plan that, should Gilbert gain control of the northern New World, Dee would receive everything above the fiftieth parallel—granting him Alaska and the majority of Canada.24 Two years later, Dee still suspected that a Northwest Passage existed across the top of North America, and drew a map for Gilbert depicting it, in which he placed the West Coast of North America only 140 degrees west of England.25

Meanwhile, on February 5, 1578, Dee had married Jane Fromoundes. Supported by Elizabeth, he had proposed only a few months after the death of his first wife, Kathryn Constable, in March 1575. Jane was a member of court, a gentlewoman servant to Lady Katherine Howard, Elizabeth’s best friend. Fromoundes’s Catholic family hardly approved of the “arch-conjuror”; her father, Bartholomew Fromoundes, died of a stroke the day after John and Jane Dee’s son Arthur was born.26 Dee may have had one eye on securing a better position for himself by marrying into court. Unfortunately, to Dee’s lifelong disadvantage, there was no patronage for scientists during Elizabeth’s reign—unlike the Continent—explaining Dee’s quest for patronage abroad. The best Dee could hope for in England was an academic or Church position, and even these he was regularly frustrated in attaining.27

In the meantime, sectarian conflict was only intensifying. Over the previous decade, the Protestant Low Countries had exploded into open revolt against Spain’s Catholic rule, which would soon result in the formation of an independent Dutch Republic, and suggest strategic alliances with England. This added to the backdrop of war between the Protestant and Catholic spheres. Dee was soon called upon to defend Elizabeth from Catholic magical attack yet again, when wax images of Elizabeth and members of the Privy Council were discovered in a dunghill—as the dunghill melted the wax, by the logic of sympathetic magic, so would Elizabeth and her council come to harm.

Though the Council was as alarmed by Dee’s countermagic as they were by the original sorceric attack, Dee found himself well positioned: Dudley needed him to dig up as much evidence as possible on Catholic magical attacks, as this would assist Dudley against his Catholic rivals at court. Those captured thanks to Dee’s detections were held and tortured.28 Among those arrested on Dee’s cue was John Prestall, who was tied to a suspected Catholic conspiracy to magically attack the queen. Elizabeth was indeed ailing, but the cause was probably poor dental hygiene, not the occult. Prestall—whom Dee may have had arrested at least partially out of desire for revenge—was tortured for over a month, but no information on any conspiracy was forthcoming. The Council subsequently fetched Prestall’s cosaboteur Vincent Murphyn for interrogation.29

While Dee was sent to seek a cure for Elizabeth’s ailment from the German alchemist Leonhard Thurneysser, Dudley whipped up a propaganda war against Catholic sorcery, which could be lurking around any corner. But Dee and Dudley’s occult pogrom collapsed when it was revealed that the magician Thomas Elkes had made the wax dolls as part of a love spell for a client. Dee was revealed to have been wrong the entire time.30

After long decades of theoretical work, Dee was now turning his attention to actual operative magic—he had embarked on a series of alchemical experiments with an assistant named Roger Cook, as well as attempts at angelic contact with Humphrey Gilbert’s brother Adrian.31 The court, perhaps impressed with any magic Dee had performed to alleviate perceived attacks against the queen, also furnished Dee with a new scryer, Bartholomew Hickman.32

In the meantime, Dee’s enemies were plotting their revenge against the “arch-conjuror.” Prestall was now locked in the Tower under a death sentence, where he would stay until 1588; this left Murphyn to counteraccuse Dee of being a Catholic conspirator who was himself working magic against the queen. Dee’s occult experiments at Mortlake would furnish Murphyn with new ammunition. Dee sued in response.33

So alarmed was Elizabeth with Dee’s absence from court that on September 17, 1580, she traveled to Mortlake to roust him from his studies herself, riding by coach and appearing in his garden; as Dee recorded in his diary, “She beckoned her hand for me. I came to her coach side: she very speedily pulled off her glove and gave me her hand to kiss: and to be short, willed me to resort to her Court.”34 Two weeks later, Dee arrived at court to hand deliver a new manuscript, the Brytanici imperii limites or “Limits of the British Empire.”

Addressed solely to Elizabeth and her Privy Council, the Limits sought to establish a spiritual mandate not only for giving Elizabeth control of both the Low Countries and America, but for establishing her as the sovereign of a new global order. Dee now privately elaborated the occult and esoteric dimensions of the Memorials that he had wisely withheld from the general public.35 Just as he believed the Memorials to have been divinely inspired by angels, Dee thought he had been moved to write the Limits by the Holy Trinity itself. The same angelic idea that had inspired him, he believed, had inspired Edgar I’s naval expansion in the tenth century.36

Dee argued that during his reign King Arthur had held dominion not only of America, but of thirty countries.37 If this was indeed the case, then England had at least as much of a spiritual claim to world power as Rome, and all Elizabeth had to do was assume his mantle and become the Arthurian world empress. Even Charles V, the Holy Roman emperor, whose court circle Dee had connections with during his time at Louvain, had long seen Arthur as the model on which the future world ruler would be based. After the Dutch Revolt, it was hoped that Elizabeth would claim Dutch sovereignty—and that she, and not a Habsburg, would become the Arthurian world emperor, uniting the globe under the banner of a reformed Christendom.38

Mercator himself had written to Dee that King Arthur had sent an expedition of four thousand men into the seas near the North Pole, and that some of the members of the team had survived, with their descendants appearing at court in Norway in 1364. Also of interest was the Welsh legend of Madoc, a prince who supposedly explored the New World in 1170; Dee not only feverishly sought to discover evidence of Madoc’s existence in Spanish records of America, but believed that he was descended from the prince. Claims by Dee that Arthur had ruled over “Hollandia” only added to the case for Elizabeth becoming the world emperor of Christendom. Maps drawn up by Dee on the foundation of the Arthurian claim to the New World sprawled from Florida to Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic Ocean.39

Save the Arthurian angle, this was not a new idea—the hope for a last world emperor had long been part of Catholic eschatology, with the long-expected monarch reestablishing a new Roman Empire with dominion over the entire globe, as a bulwark against the Antichrist. This final emperor had been predicted in the widely known seventh-century Syriac text Apocalypse by Pseudo-Methodius, a product of Eastern Christianity, which prophesied that Christendom would be savaged by Muslim invaders as God’s retribution for widespread sexual licentiousness, including homosexuality and even transgenderism. This onslaught would be overcome by the final Roman emperor, who would push back the forces of the Antichrist to come, who would be born in the village of Chorazin.*11

An earlier individual who had connected this apocalyptic prophecy with European exploration of the New World was none other than Christopher Columbus. After the completion of his voyages, Columbus composed a religious text entitled El libro de las profecias, the “Book of Prophecies,” which suggested (following Joachim of Fiore) that four critical events were necessary to prompting the Second Coming. These were the Christianization of the planet, the discovery of the physical Garden of Eden, a final Crusade to recover Jerusalem from Islam, and, ultimately, the election of a last world emperor to ensure the crushing of Islam, the retaking of the Holy Land, and the return of Christ to the world.40

While Columbus had held out for Ferdinand and Isabella to assume this world emperor role, Dee’s plan marked a radical departure by suggesting that the world emperor should be Protestant, not Catholic—Elizabeth. Where the Catholic and Protestant vanguards of exploration differed was not in their goals, but in jockeying for control. As a result, Dee set to work building a case for Elizabeth-as-emperor, using the Arthurian claim to the New World.

Dee was further encouraged in his belief that Elizabeth should assume world power by Trithemius,41 whose De septem secundeis concerns itself not with terrestrial empires but rather with the course of history. For Trithemius, history was ruled by seven angels corresponding to the seven planets, each of which held regency over a period of 354 years and 4 months, beginning with Genesis and ending with Revelation. Trithemius’s scheme held a deep appeal for Dee, who nevertheless recalculated the senior initiate’s math, assigning the Elizabethan period to the angel Anael, Venus, on account of the great number of female leaders in Europe, as well as the 1572 supernova. And though Elizabeth’s regency was currently guaranteed by the angel of Venus, a shift to the age of Jupiter was imminent. Dee felt it his sacred duty to initiate British expansion before Jupiter arrived and the window passed.42

Like Dee’s later Monas, De septem secundeis had been addressed to the Holy Roman emperor—in this case Maximilian I, not II; Trithemius’s introduction to the work suggests that he was delivering it to the emperor not as his own work but as an emissary of a body of initiates who concurred that, indeed, seven spirits corresponding to the seven planets, proceeding from the first Intellect, ruled the world in successive periods. This concept was not unique to Trithemius—some early Gnostics held to a doctrine of seven Archons, or evil “rulers” of reality, who were arguably related to the seven planets.[43][43] In the nineteenth century, the dispensationalist evangelical John Nelson Darby would propose that there were seven distinct periods or dispensations of world history, beginning with the Fall and culminating with the Second Coming, a belief system now adhered to by the majority of American evangelical Christians.

Just as with the similar Hindu system of Yugas,44 Trithemius’s scheme outlines rising and falling curves in the quality of the overall consciousness in humanity, with debased periods marked by witchcraft, the worship of multiple gods, and even the worship of princes and rulers as gods. The great drama of history, for Trithemius, hinges on celestial events as well as terrestrial political shifts, with comets and other events in the skies marking the progress of history—like (as Dee did not fail to note) the supernova of 1572 and the Great Comet of 1577.

Remarkably, De septem secundeis, composed in 1508, predicts “the institution of some new Religion,” that “a strong sect of Religion shall arise, and be the overthrow of the Ancient Religion. It’s to be feared least the fourth beast lose one head.”45 The fourth beast is the fourth beast of Apocalypse from Daniel, a world kingdom that devours the earth. As Trithemius was writing the Septem, Martin Luther had only just been ordained a priest. It was not until 1517 that he would post the Ninety-Five Theses and spark the Reformation. Even if Trithemius was extrapolating future events from pre-Luther European sentiment, his prescience was outstanding. And thanks to Dee, a world kingdom was indeed about to arise to devour the world.

If Dee’s calculations were correct—and Elizabeth had both a legal mandate for imperialism, following Arthur, and an astrological one, following Trithemius—then this opened the way for the true apocalyptic goal of establishing an evangelical British Empire: converting the entire world to Christianity, and thereby assuring that the souls of the world’s inhabitants were accounted for prior to the Second Coming. While the new empire would be a Protestant one, Dee was not exclusively Protestant in his imperial scheme, suggesting that Elizabeth convert the American Indians partly to Protestantism, partly to Catholicism. The idea that Elizabeth would convert the world to Christianity and lead it into the eschaton as its reigning sovereign was not unique to Dee; it was broadly circulating in English society at this time, with the end of the world predicted for 1588 by the author and translator James Sandford.46

As payment for his intellectual contribution, Dee requested free reign in the dominions under Elizabeth’s absolute protection, to fulfill unspoken services for the empire—not for Elizabeth, but under the direction of God himself.47 This would have meant the expansion (or recovery) of the now-named British Empire, including America. Dee’s use of the term British Empire long predated the use of the word British to mean the British Isles; it referred instead to Arthur’s legendary Britain, reaching to North America.48

Though Dee’s occult expansionism captivated the Privy Council, including Dudley and Philip Sidney, Cecil was underwhelmed. Despite the grandiose patriotism of Dee’s plan, Cecil scoffed at Dee’s claims of Elizabeth’s Arthurian genealogy, and, most of all, the foreign policy disaster that overtly pushing Elizabeth as the world sovereign would create. Part of the reason Cecil may have soured on Dee was that shortly before their meeting he had entertained Vincent Murphyn, and heard the cunning man’s concocted story of Dee’s Catholic plotting. Whether he believed Murphyn or not, enough of a germ of suspicion was raised that Cecil decided he was unable to take even the slightest security risk. Patiently sitting through Dee’s arguments, Cecil grew irritated and finally stonewalled Dee altogether.49

Dee, now fifty-three, had offered up the fruit of his youth and of his Great Work; the Memorials and Limits had been the culminating achievement of his laborious studies, his burning patriotism, his far travels, and even the tortures he had endured for staying loyal to England. He had given everything to advance the cause of his country. Despite little to no recognition or recompense, Dee had continued toiling in Elizabeth’s service for decades, producing the imperial plan that would save his nation from poverty and conquest, for which Dee regarded himself a “Christian Aristotle.”50 Yet the response from Elizabeth’s court in general, and Cecil in particular, had been to say “thank you very much,” take his work, and show him the door. Dee must have been heartbroken.

Returning to Mortlake in defeat, Dee found his mother seriously ill. She died soon thereafter, compounding the sorrow of one of Dee’s darkest hours. Elizabeth visited him personally the same day to console him, telling him that all was not lost, and that she would study his plan in greater detail—even that Cecil had been impressed by his historical reasoning. Cecil later sent Dee a joint of venison—small payment for the gift of an empire. Yet no reversal of Cecil’s (apparent) decision to shut Dee and his plan out would be forthcoming, and Dee, who shrank in fear from Cecil, would find himself progressively estranged from court. Shifting European politics would make Dee’s apocalyptic imperial thinking less relevant, and further voyages to the New World would fail to turn up any evidence of Arthurian settlements, undermining Dee’s claims. In the midst of this, Murphyn attacked Dee yet again, although Dee now had an ally in Elizabeth, as Murphyn was later brought up on charges for slandering the queen.

While Dee himself was shut out of Elizabethan geopolitical strategizing, his plan itself would soon be enacted. England would develop great naval might, take the New World, triumph over the Spanish, and establish a British Empire. But Dee, the initiating magus, would enjoy no part of it, not even as a commercial partner; Dee’s place in the “Fellowship of New Navigations Atlantical and Septentional” would be taken by the younger Sir Walter Raleigh.51 History itself would forget Dee’s role in establishing the empire, passing over his legacy in favor of that of Richard Hakluyt, Francis Drake, and Raleigh—despite the fact that Dee was far more central to planning.52 Dee’s contribution was providing the justification and story behind why expansion was important, christening the nascent British Empire and giving his child a life script and ideology.53

In time, this single idea of a British Empire, dreamed up by an eccentric English academic—or given to him by the archangel Michael, as Dee believed—would come to dominate the planet. Following World War I, the “Empire on which the sun never sets” claimed over 458 million subjects, somewhere between one-fifth and one-fourth of the world’s population,54 and covered a full fourth of the land on Earth as well as most of the world’s oceans.55 What had once been a tiny nation that would today be considered developing—wracked by poverty, hunger, religious terrorism, and fearful superstition—now dwarfed the achievements of Alexander, Caesar, or the Khans. During its time, the empire controlled Canada, the eastern colonies in America, parts of the Indies and British Guiana, a large swathe of Africa, much of the Middle East including Palestine and Iraq, India, Burma, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Antarctica, and many more territories around the world.

If we are to consider the American empire to be the logical successor of the British one, to which global power was transferred when its progenitor began to collapse due to financial overextension, then we must also hold John Dee as the great-grandparent of the modern world. This Anglo-American world order is ruled not by a single world sovereign but by a bureaucratic centralization of power, united not under the banner of Protestantism but under that of its crowned and conquering child, the single world religion of global capitalism, yet with the exact same Protestant eschatology operating in the background.

And if all of this can be said to stem from revelations given to Dee by Michael, it fires the imagination to consider that the Islamic world stems from the utterance of Michael’s companion Gabriel, who gave Muhammad the Quran, and would also be present at Dee’s later angelic conversations. It is also Gabriel who told Mary of the coming birth of Christ. Angels guided Abraham and were present at the delivery of the Law to Moses, creating Judaism; Michael is said to safeguard the state of Israel. Yet if all of these things were indeed created by the same beings, why do they consistently come into conflict with each other?

If geopolitics are a “grand chessboard,”56 as former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski famously said, then the players are the angels, and they play multiple sides. God works, we are told, in mysterious ways, though God’s workers should look to store up for themselves “treasures in heaven,”57 rather than this world, if Dee’s payment with a single haunch of meat is any indicator.

Can all of this be said to serve a greater good? It depends on whether one accepts a teleological view of history. If, like Teilhard de Chardin or John Dee, you believe that time is moving toward an Omega Point or eschaton—the Second Coming of Christ—it all comes into focus.58 After all, the angels who exiled mankind east of Eden also, through the British occupation of Palestine, laid the groundwork for the modern state of Israel east of the Mediterranean, upon which both Judaic and evangelical Christian eschatology, and the final redemption of mankind, thereby hangs.

As to the empire itself—how to even begin assessing the effects of Dee’s creation on the world?

The archly conservative English historian Niall Ferguson has argued that the British Empire was the best of all possible empires; it was considered a leading light in the world, the “global policeman” before America inherited the mantle, and by comparison, its rival empires—the French, German, Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese, and others—were even more monstrous. Indeed, Ferguson argues, the British Empire was a liberal one, built on the principles of Edmund Burke, with occupied territories expected to come to self-governance.59

But the empire was not without its atrocities. Among them were the ongoing rape of India under the Raj and tens of millions of continual starvation deaths, including the 1760s Bengal famine in which one-third of the Bengali population died (with some victims resorting to cannibalism) while England grew fat on the spoils,60 and the nineteenth-century policies that resulted in the hunger deaths of twenty-nine million Indians.61 There were the massacres of the indigenous peoples of the Americas by British colonists, including the use of smallpox blankets as biological warfare during the Siege of Fort Pitt—an estimated two to eighteen million Native Americans died during European colonization of North America, in part thanks to English settlers.62 In the Oceania region, Tasmanians and Australian aborigines were genocided by the English en masse.

Then there was the role of the slave trade in building the empire—until the 1807 British abolition of slavery, the English transported over 3.5 million Africans to the Americas to be used in forced labor, one-third of the total transatlantic slave traffic.63 Once colonies were established, British efforts toward crushing rebellions were severe, as in the Sudan, Ceylon (where 1 percent of the population was killed in a single retribution), Jamaica, Burma, the detainment of almost the entire Kenyan population in camps (in which thousands were beaten to death or died from disease, including almost all of the children),64 South Africa (where one-sixth of the Boer population died in English concentration camps, primarily children), Afghanistan, and Iraq.

These are, of course, only some of the crimes we know about. Many of the archived records detailing the abuses committed during the final years of the empire were intentionally and illegally destroyed by the Foreign Office before they could be moved into the public domain, allegedly including records of the torture and murder of Mau Mau insurgents; the massacre of unarmed Malayan villagers by the Scots Guard; records of a secret torture center in Aden, Yemen; and all of the sensitive records pertaining to British Guiana.65 While the empire spread across the globe, racism, cruelty, and genocide followed in its shadow.

Perhaps the nineteenth-century British politician Lord Salisbury summarized the empire best when he quipped, “If our ancestors had cared for the rights of other people, the British Empire would not have been made.”66

[43]: #0xx0oA “On the Origin of the World, Nag Hammadi Codex 2, 5, in Barnstone and Meyer, The Gnostic Bible, 416–37."

Over the last year, and especially over the last month, I’ve fielded a flurry of questions about the astrological meaning of the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn that took place on Monday. I’ve been intrigued to note that quite a few of those questions have come from people who admit they don’t know much about astrology but have a sense, however vague, that this conjunction matters. As it happens, they’re quite correct. The conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn have a special role in astrology, and this one was of particular importance. As I’ll discuss shortly, it marks the end of one era in world history and the beginning of another.

Let’s start with some basics. Astrology is an empirical science based on more than 5000 years of recorded correlations between planetary motion and events on earth. We don’t know why it works. (Try getting funding for the necessary studies.) One of its branches—the technical name is mundane astrology—predicts political and cultural events. That’s the kind of astrology I practice. Most work with mundane astrology uses ingress charts—charts drawn up for capital cities for each solstice and equinox—but there are also larger cycles that mundane astrologers track.

One of those went through an important phase change Monday. No, it wasn’t the age of Aquarius; that began in 1879, according to the interpretation I use, and will last until 4039 AD. (In case you’re wondering why it hasn’t turned out to be an age of peace and love and brotherhood, the people who came up with that interpretation got it from smoking too much pot, not from the heavens.) The celestial odometer that rolled over on Monday is defined by the conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn—the process, as an older mythic language put it, by which Saturn gives “all the measures of the whole creation” to Jupiter.

Johannes Kepler’s drawing of the Grand Trigon.

Jupiter and Saturn conjoin every twenty years. Those conjunctions are located almost exactly 120° from each other, forming what astrologers call the Grand Trigon. (Yes, I know that sounds like something from a science fiction novel. Astrologers got there first.) Since ancient times each sign of the zodiac is linked to one of the four traditional elements of Earth, Water, Air, and Fire—scientists, who think they no longer believe in the four elements, call those “solids,” “liquids,” “gases,” and “energy” these days—and for a little less than two centuries at a stretch, every conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn happens in signs of the same element, with a little wobbling back and forth when you get close to the dividing line.

Beginning with the conjunction of 1842, all the conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn were in Earth signs until 1980-1, when a rare triple conjunction happened in Libra, an Air sign. In 2000 they conjoined in an Earth sign one last time. Monday’s conjunction in the Air sign Aquarius marked the beginning of a series of Air conjunctions, which will last until the Grand Trigon passes into the Water sign Scorpio on October 31, 2219. Astrologically, in other words, we have just passed from a 178-year-long era of Earth into a 199-year-long era of Air.

What does that mean? Since astrology is an empirical science, let’s glance back to 1226, the last time the Grand Trigon shifted from Earth to Air. That’s the chart above. In the 1226 Grand Mutation the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn was early in Aquarius, just as it was on Monday. As we’ll see, though, most of the other planetary positions were different. Most of all, notice Mars up there at the top of the chart. He’s in his rulership in Scorpio, and thus very strong; he’s in aspect with six of the other eight planets in the chart—and five of those six aspects are negative aspects, which predict serious trouble. It was an accurate prediction: among the entertaining events that took place during the astrological era that began in 1226 were the Black Death, the Mongol invasions, and the Hundred Years War.

Before any of my readers dive under the bed, let me reiterate one thing: these patterns in the 1226 chart do not appear on the 2020 chart. I’ve mentioned them here because I’ve seen people ask what is, after all, the logical first question about this year’s Grand Mutation—what happened the last time this occurred?—and I don’t want anyone to jump to the wrong conclusion. Mars in Scorpio in hostile aspect to a flurry of other planets in a Grand Mutation chart gives fair warning that mass death is on its way, but we don’t have that in the current chart.

The 2020 chart does have certain things in common with 1226. To begin with, of course, there’s the Grand Trigon passing from Earth to Air, and the conjunction early in Aquarius in both charts. The Earth era that ran from 1027 to 1226 was a period of savage ideological warfare (you’ve probably heard of the Crusades); that guttered out after 1226. In the same way, the period from 1842 to 2020 was a period of savage ideological warfare (you’ve probably heard of the Second World War and the Cold War); we can expect that to gutter out, too, as the new Air era gets under way. Wars will still happen—we’ll get to that—but the obsession with going to war against a world that refuses to convert to some ideology or other will wind down.

What replaced it the last time was a time of great cultural creativity. The period from 1226 to 1425 was the golden age of medieval philosophy, the age of the troubadors, and of a flowering of secular music and poetry and of mysticism. During those years a set of Welsh and Breton folktales about a mostly forgotten dark age king turned into the Arthurian legends. The Arabic, Persian, and Chinese spheres went through cultural flowerings of their own during the same period. In at least some parts of the world, we can expect something similar this time around, too.

The other significant parallel between 1226 and 2020 is a trine between the Sun and Uranus, which is especially important in both cases because Uranus is the dispositor of the conjunction—that is, he rules the sign in which Jupiter and Saturn are located when they conjoin. The Sun in mundane charts denotes government; Uranus is the planet of technology and change—it’s no accident that the discovery of Uranus in 1781 was followed by the most dramatic two centuries of technological innovation in human history. Sun trine Uranus predicts that government and technological change will be mutually supportive during the period ahead.

There’s a wrinkle, though. In 1226 Uranus was in Scorpio, the sign of his exaltation—in astrology, a planet in its exaltation is unusually strong and beneficent. He was also retrograde—that is, appearing to move backward from the perspective of the Earth; a retrograde planet in astrology predicts a return to older conditions. Sun trine an exalted, retrograde Uranus predicts the recovery of older, better technologies and cultural traits. (You’ve probably heard of the Renaissance.) The period from 1226 to 1425 was also an era of breathtaking technological innovation, in which printing, firearms, the magnetic compass, advances in sailing technology, and many other innovations strengthened central governments and set the stage for worldshaking changes in the eras to come.

In the 2020 chart, however, Uranus isn’t exalted. He’s in his fall in Taurus, and a planet in its fall is unusually weak and displays its most destructive influences. He is also retrograde, as he was in 1226, but because he’s in his fall we can expect not a new Renaissance, but a forced retreat to older technologies and cultural traits. Technological regress is as much a product of Uranian influence as technological progress; so, unfortunately, are disasters caused by technologies. In both cases, governments will be strengthened, because they alone have the resources to deal with disasters caused by badly managed technologies and the consequences of technological regress. Since Uranus is the dispositor of the conjunction, we’ll probably have to deal with a lot of both.

That’s about all we can learn from the 1226 chart about our future. (It has plenty more to say about conditions during the era it inaugurated, but that’s another matter.) To go on, let’s turn to the chart that launched the era that has just ended, the Grand Mutation chart for 1842, which is above. It’s a very unusual chart. Mars dominated the 1226 chart, but the Moon dominates this chart to an even greater extent. She is in her rulership in Cancer, thus very strong; what’s more, she stands alone on one side of the chart, with all the other planets clumped up together on the other side of the chart. This formation gives great strength to the planet standing by itself.

The Moon in mundane astrology represents the people. Before 1842, as in every previous age since the rise of cities, the vast majority of human beings were ruled by monarchs. In 2020 almost nobody is, and the forms of democratic governance have become so mandatory that even a straightforward hereditary monarchy like North Korea has to pretend to be a Democratic People’s Republic. This unprecedented state of affairs is shown in advance in the 1842 chart, partly by the extraordinary strength of the Moon, partly by her opposition with the Sun, the planet of kings, which is in his detriment (that is, very weak) in Aquarius.

Consider also the glorification of change for its own sake (usually labeled “progress”) that has been such a massive cultural fact over the last 178 years. Change in society is ruled by the Moon, the fastest-moving object in the heavens as seen from Earth, and an era dominated by the Moon will see just such an obsession. Interestingly, the dispositor of this chart is Saturn, lord of limits; notice the way that the struggle between Moon and Saturn, change and conservatism, has defined the politics of the last 178 years.

There’s much more to be said about this chart as it applies to the era that’s over, and much of it was said in advance by astrologer Richard Morrison, who published a set of predictions in 1842 titled Zadkiel’s Legacy; he scored quite a range of direct hits (and, let it be said, some serious flops; he thought he could predict earthquakes using astrology, and he was wrong.) Since our concern here is with the era that has just begun, let’s move to the 2020 chart below.

The first thing to notice from this chart is that no one planet has the kind of dominant position that Mars had in 1226 or the Moon had in 1842. This is normal in mundane charts, and gives us our first guideline for the era to come: it will be a period much closer to history as usual than the era of mass death that began in 1226 or the era of frantic change that began in 1842. With the Moon much less prominent, change for its own sake will likely be less unthinkingly valued, and democratic governments will be rather less widespread by the time the era ends.

In this chart, two planets—Mars and Neptune—are in their rulerships. One—Uranus—is in his fall, and he is the only retrograde planet. The two planets in rulerships show that war, ruled by Mars, and religion, ruled by Neptune, will be major influences over the next 199 years. Since Mars has only one aspect, a weak sesquisquare with Venus, the wars to come will not be the kind of all-consuming frenzy that “the calamitous fourteenth century” (to quote Barbara Tuchman) featured. Mass death from plague or nuclear war? That’s not what the heavens say.

Meanwhile Neptune has no aspects at all and is simply purring away on his own. In 1226, Neptune was afflicted by an opposition with Mars, and that unfolded over the 199 years that followed as violent persecution of dissident religious groups. (You’ve probably heard of the Inquisition.) This time we don’t have that. The Moon and Neptune are in a remarkably similar configuration in the two charts—the Moon separating from conjunction with Neptune, a little out of orb—so it seems likely that the same sort of cultural upsurge of creativity and mysticism can be expected. Since Neptune is much stronger in this chart, and not afflicted by hostile aspects, the flowering to come won’t be rendered bittersweet by persecution.

On the other hand technology, ruled by Uranus, is going to suffer. As already noted, governments will gain strength because they alone have the resources to deal with the impacts of technological regress and technologically driven disasters. With Mercury trine Uranus, the crises to come will also drive a range of clever innovations as people figure out how to cope with the consequences of decaying technological infrastructure and the like. With the Sun trine Uranus, expect governments to have a fair amount of success in patching technological systems and putting workarounds into place. Even so, it’s going to be a rough road.

Note that the Sun is square the Moon. Neither of the two luminaries is strong in this chart: the Sun is peregrine (that is, in a part of the zodiac that gives him no strength) and the Moon gets only mild strength in Pisces, the sign of her mixed triplicity. Both get help from other planets—the Sun from a conjunction with Mercury and the trine with Uranus already discussed, the Moon from a sextile with the Grand Mutation itself. Expect the next 199 years to be an era of turmoil, as centralized governments committed to crisis management in an era of technological regress have to contend with constant pushback and hostility from the population. Time is on the side of the Moon, but that only matters over the long run.

The Moon’s aspects with Jupiter and Saturn, though, have other lessons to teach. Moon sextile Jupiter is an indication of improved economic conditions. Moon sextile Saturn predicts good times for farm country and for rural populations. That may be a function of the technological problems predicted by Uranus; unemployment and underemployment driven by technology have been major economic realities for close to two centuries now, and it’s quite plausible that technological regress will lead to an improved job market as people have to be hired to do jobs in place of machines. Still, that’s a guess. Less speculative is the role of these benign conditions on politics. Prosperity will strengthen the hand of the people against the state, as it usually does.

Notice also Mercury’s position in this chart; in mundane charts, he governs communication and the media. He’s even weaker than the Sun, being peregrine in Capricorn and combust (that is, too close to the Sun). In 1842 he was better dignified, moving from a conjunction with the Sun to a conjunction with Neptune, the planet of mass phenomena. Notice how this predicts the way the press, and later mass media in general, became independent of central government but subservient to the lowest common denominator of the mass mind. That relative independence from the political sphere will not continue. Control over the media will revert to governments (Sun conjunct Mercury), and the media will become one of the main instruments used by them in their struggle with their own restive populations. Weak as Mercury is, this may do them less good than they expect.

Off by itself on one end of the line of planets, finally, is Venus, the planet of art and culture. She was in very dubious shape in 1842, weakly dignified in materialistic Capricorn and afflicted by an opposition with the dominant Moon, predicting the collapse of artistic standards and public taste in an age of schlock. In the 2020 chart she is peregrine and thus weak, but her only afflictions are two minor negative aspects with Mars and Uranus; in other words, wars and disasters will have their usual effects on the arts but the latter will be otherwise unhindered. The kneejerk hostility of artists toward the general public that afflicted the arts from 1842 to 2020 will be a thing of the past, though, and Venus in idealistic Sagittarius—where she was in 1663, the dawn of the Fire era that ended in 1842, which saw the creation of so much good art, music, and literature—bodes well for the creative arts.

One more chart is worth a glance here—the chart for the Grand Mutation in 2219, the end of the astrological era that began on Monday and the beginning of the following era of history:

Notice that the Moon is very active in this chart, though weaker and far less dominant than she was in 1842. She is again in a square with the Sun, as in 2020, and this time square the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction rather than sextile it. Mars is the dispositor of the chart, and he is exalted in Capricorn, expressing his dynamic energy in constructive labor rather than war. Neptune is exalted in Gemini, though retrograde; five of the other seven planets are peregrine, with very limited strength. Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn all challenge Uranus with hostile aspects—the Water era that begins in 2219 and ends 179 years later will be very hard on technology—while an opposition between Venus and Neptune, the arts and religion, will be resolved to some extent by popular support of both (Moon trine Venus and sextile Neptune).

Does this sound like history as usual? That’s exactly what it should sound like. The era that ended on Monday was obsessed with fantasies of universal change, but that’s another expression of that dominant Moon. Most of history consists of long periods of relatively sedate change in no particular direction, and the disasters that happen from time to time—as of course they do—are followed, not by utopia or oblivion, but by periods of recovery as people put their lives back together. We’ve just been through a very unusual period of world history, but it’s over, and once its last echoes finish dying away, we can expect something like a reversion to the mean.

What’s that you say? You want to know how all this will affect the particular corner of the world where you live? That requires a chart for the conjunction for your location. You can get that at any number of free online sites; enter the place, correct the time for your time zone, and you’re good to go. (Doublecheck your work by making sure the Moon is in the same place, 27° 52’ Pisces.) Raphael’s book Mundane Astrology or H.S. Green’s Mundane or National Astrology, both of which are readily available, will tell you what the planets mean in each house.

The point of this post, after all, is not to hand down infallible truths from on high. It’s to alert you to a useful art that might help you judge the shape of the future. Yes, I post detailed forecasts for paid subscribers on my Patreon and SubscribeStar accounts, and you’re welcome to tune in there if you like, but I’d be happier if more people cast and discussed their own mundane astrology forecasts—and happier still if more people shook off unhelpful daydreams about the future and started preparing for the kind of future we’re likely to get.

One other thing. If you’re upset by any of the predictions made above, please remember that astrology is not in the business of catering to anyone’s sense of entitlement or handing out warm fuzzy daydreams. I’m not happy about the indications that democratic governments will be much less common in the era ahead—I’m quite fond of civil liberties myself—but that’s what the heavens show. (I’m sure nobody was especially cheered by those Mars aspects in 1226, either.) One of the great lessons of astrology, a lesson many of us badly need to learn, is that the universe is not a vending machine. We don’t create our own reality; we have some influence over it, but far more often than not, the deciding vote is not cast by us. Keep that in mind, gauge the unyielding aspects of the future before it hits, and you have a much better chance of accomplishing something with the time you have on this small and lovely planet.

Most of the recent discussions of the Gauquelins' research have centred around allegations of fraud, (Dean (2000), Ertel (2000, 2001), Ertel and Irving (1996)), and neglected the phenomena. Since the collection of new data has become more difficult due to new laws protecting privacy, it seems that active research has stalled. Fraud implies the attempt to make data fit an existing theory, but if new theoretical approaches which the Gauquelins did not consider could be brought to bear on their data the question of fraud would become irrelevant. I hope to show how this might be done, using a small set of data from several sources.

I refer to one aspect of the recent discussion between Geoffrey Dean and Suitbert Ertel on the possibility that parental data tampering or self-attribution could explain the Gauquelin data.

In Note 14 of his article Dean examines the relation between eminence and family traditions of work (Dean 2000: 48, Ertel 2000: 75). I would now like to look at this in more detail because a crucial point has been missed, which in my opinion could change the direction of debate and research on the Gauquelin data.

The main source I am using is the monumental research contained in the book Born to Rebel by Frank Sulloway, not mentioned by either Dean or Ertel. Sulloway makes a simple but important point about siblings, which serves to put the discussion of possible planetary effects more accurately in context. This is that on average siblings share only half their genes with each other, and their frequently observed differences in personality are attributable less to heredity than to the need to occupy different "niches" in the family system, (Sulloway (1996): 88-89, 351 ).

Gauquelin's whole theory of planetary influence on the other hand relies heavily on genetic factors (Gauquelin 1976: 172-186). If the heredity connection fails so does the whole theory, which leaves a problem in explaining the professional data. Referring to the fact that most eminent people come from the 5% of most wealthy and intellectual families, he continues: "The planets have no role in this social aspect of success. As far as the movements of the planets are concerned everyone is socially equal." (M.Gauquelin 1976: 60). On the next page he continues to develop the point saying that only a small proportion of these children actually achieve eminence, and that this depends on the second factor : character, which of course is the cue for the Character Traits Hypothesis, (M.Gauquelin 1976: 60-70, abbreviated to CTH in what follows). My contention now is that the conclusion that social factors are irrelevant is hasty, and a proper understanding of what might be called family ecology leads to a new hypothesis of the mediation of planetary influence: by inherited parental character and by the part of character developed in response to the dynamics of the family system. A sensitivity to planetary influence is of course required for both factors.

Before describing Sulloway's work it is useful to summarize some points that that any theory needs to explain.
 

I've been rereading my collection of Ivy Goldstein-Jacobson astrology books, and it occurs to me that astrology is approaching a historical bottleneck at least as serious as the one that nearly extinguished it as a living tradition at the end of the Renaissance. 

That bottleneck? Latin. Until William Lilly published Christian Astrology in 1647, pretty much every significant work on astrology in Europe was written in Latin, which meant that they were only accessible to the educated. When astrology dropped out of fashion at the end of the reality wars of the late Renaissance, the educated stopped studying it, end of story....except that Lilly's book was in plain English, and that meant that in Britain, Ireland, and the American colonies (once those were founded), astrology remained in common use among folk practitioners. It's the same story traced out by Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy, which also got translated out of Latin into several vernaculars around the same time, and preserved Renaissance magical philosophy straight through the dark ages of rationalist materialism that followed. In both cases, it was the folk practitioners who kept things going, and it was from there that astrology and magic both revived in the nineteenth century.

The bottleneck this time? Mathematics. It's not actually that difficult to calculate an astrological chart by hand -- in fact, if you've got a table of logarithms and a few other old-fashioned helps, and aren't afraid to use them, it's a very quick process -- but next to nobody knows how to do it any more. 

I was thinking about this while rereading Goldstein-Jacobson's Foundations of the Astrological Chart, which gives detailed instructions on how to do the thing. (So do dozens of other old books on the subject.) As the computer age winds to its end, and the capacity to type in some data and get back a fully calculated chart goes away for the foreseeable future, astrology will drop dead in its tracks if nobody knows how to crunch the numbers themselves. That seems worth doing something about. 

...and more generally it's got me wondering about how today's occult traditions are going to weather the Long Descent and the deindustrial dark ages ahead.