Eddy wrote:

Focussing on your own chart can make you somewhat mad. At least that how I experience it, and sometimes urges me to put astrology aside for a long while. There's also the risk of indulgence in navel-gazing, while the mundane astrology is a more 'social' activity which I think is to be preferred above the former.

Well you have come to exactly the right place to make that comment Eddy! I know what you mean. An excessive focus on your transits, profections, progressions, solar returns, solar arcs, eclipses, primary directions, firdaria. Where does it end? Your bound to find something to depress or obsess yourself about! To be fair a lot of people do put more focus on immediate family or friends. Equally, horary or electional can be done for others. Is mundane more 'selfless' then? Another astrologer once said to me that they thought the reason most astrologers didn't do mundane astrology was that they were largely narcissistic in attitude! Remember I didn't say it However, I think you see a fair bit of ego in mundane astrology too at times. People are just people.

Mark

Mark wrote:However, I think you see a fair bit of ego in mundane astrology too at times.

That is definately why I quit the job as moderator!

Andrew Bevan wrote:The interesting thing astrologically, with a Midnight Sun Eclipse - is that the Sun is in the North on the IC, and at it's lower Midheaven, yet the Eclipse is still in the nonagesimal and above the horizon at this latitude.

Assuming that you were on your way North, riding your bike up from Scotland as it were, do you think the Solar Eclipse would have a different meaning, in either a mundane or natal sense, at the time you crossed the Arctic Circle and the eclipse became visible?

I would find it difficult to believe that the fact that in polar regions the angles do strange things like jumping around would give similar sudden differences in meanings. This is related to the polar chart houses discussions in which I would show a preference for Equal MC or Meridian system. Ascendant cq. Horizon would be less relevant in a practical way and then maybe also in an astrological way. I don?t claim the absolute truth but this approach (or evasion) sure makes things less complicated.

Here too I played a bit with Astrodienst?s chart services. Note that for the eclipse I use the moment of ecliptical conjunction of Sun-Moon, not the maximum of eclipse and therefore get a different result in calculations. Ecliptical new moon is 1 juni 2011 21:02:35 Universal Time, 16:38:55 Sidereal Time and in 11?01?52? Gemini. For Kamenka, Russia, 200km North-East of Archangelsk this is 2 june and gives the eclipse below the horizon and almost exactly on the IC which is 11?17?Gemini there. Going straight north the eclipse will be above the horizon. That must be somewhere on that peninsula north on the map. As there are few villages and not each one is in Astrodienst I looked at Teriborka, 100km East of Murmansk and there?s the situation of an almost coinciding MC and Asc (2?50? Sa, 3?34?Sa respectively). Where Google maps has no name for the peninsula, ViaMichelin maps gives it the same name as the island just east of it, Nenetsky. Interestingly ViaMichelin, has another village between the two mentioned, Gremikha, and this is also in the Astrodienst file. Here MC = 6?56?Sa and Asc. 9?49?Sa.

Looking at the small lakes on Nenetsky Peninsula, you will realize that it must be an angler?s paradise but for the mathematical astrologer it?s an angles paradise .

Mark wrote:Is mundane more 'selfless' then?

Not necessarily. Positions of the place and moment and unrelated to birth place/moment can be and were used for individual purposes. I remember reading such things in this article. It's been a while ago but here is it. It's an interesing article anyway. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/renaissanc ... apman.html

On the other side, natal charts can also be used in a way in which the individual is just a part of a larger whole. This is described in an interesting way in Steven Kemper's - Sinhalese Astrology, South Asian Caste Systems, and the Notion of Individuality, unfortunately only on Jstor. However the text mentions the concept of 'dividuality' in relation with the names of authors like Dumont and Marriot. Searching around internet will lead to something interesting probably. Like this for example: http://enfolding.org/kula-bodies-ii-dividuals/ . Dumont says that in S-E India the identity is rather a result of 'relations'. According to Marriot a 'dividual' person consists of different 'substance codes' like caste, blood, used food, gender. The positions in a chart would be simply one of these codes. So like there can be quite a bit of ego in mundane, an equal unhealthy part of non-ego can be in natal. At least, as a product of European culture I would feel uncomfortable with being 'dividualized' and having my marriage arranged by my environment simply on basis of outer issues like stars, blood and caste. On the other side, few of us Westerners realise how we are conditioned daily by mass culture, which in another way annihilates our notion of individuality, and without noticing it.

Back to the eclipse then. Another interesting thing is that in North-Canada the eclipse is a noon event. On the North-Pole there's the flip over from midnight event to noon event. Would it make a difference there? Probably not, so even the MC isn't safe in very northern polar charts, or at least exactly on the pole of Earth's momentary rotation.

Well, let's just keep an eye on Murmansk-Archangelsk area for the following period. Perhaps, extreme weather or oil-spills might occur or simply a record number of mosquitoes.