Hi, Mark,

thank you for showing me this, im not familiar with all these techniques. Others pivotal moments in Brazil history:

1 May 1865 Alliance among Argentine, Uruguay and Brazil against Paraguay

13 May 1888 - Slavery is abolished

10 November 1937 - Getulio Vargas becomes a dictator

29 October 1945 - Getulio Vargas steps down, republic is back

23/24 August 1954 - Getulio Vargas (as president) kills himself

21 April 1960 - Brasilia, the modern new capital is inaugurated (Rio de Janeiro was the capital until this date)


Yesterday, 25 June 2013, the congress rejected the law PEC37, so a new victory for protesters. The congress also approved oil royalties for Education.

jacopo, michaelb and others,

i go back to what mark said in his initial post on this thread which is essentially embracing the idea that a few charts can work in tandem, as opposed to feeling like we need to have only one of the charts represent brasil.. this is a challenging idea to accept as we are so much more comfortable working with only 1 chart as opposed to 2 or more!

as michaelb points out, the constitution chart has 9 pisces rising as well, so even if it isn't captured in an aquarius rising chart for an earlier time between 4-5pm, we see it in one of the other charts.

jacopo,

welcome to skyscript! i neglected to mention that in my first post to you! thanks for the additional data on important dates in brasil..

has anyone worked with composite charts any? robert hand and john townley i believe were the originators of the idea of a chart that had the midpoint to 2 charts. i believe it can be done for more then 2 charts, but doing one with 4 or more charts for brasil - i have never done! it would be interesting to see what it looked like!

the theme of carnival seems to be only one of many aspects to brasilian culture, but from that one could get the pisces theme i suppose.. i tend to think of the brasilian people as sunny and optimistic - jupiter or sun strong in the chart perhaps, but this is just my subjective view on the people.. also when i listen to the music of brasil i get a feeling of deep longing - which could be piscean as well i suppose...

i will consider doing a composite chart for the 4 charts and see what i come up with..

Andrew Bevan wrote:

Personally, I think this is messing up the labelling. I believe you are viewing the nation from two different perspectives. Samba and carneval has nothing to do with the Virgo rulership, but I think it's good these matters are up for discussion

Its difficult to respond properly here without entering into a much wider debate on the legitimacy of sign rulerships used by many astrologers. Historically, this issue is quite complex. Frankly, I think I was having a genuine go at attempting a more logical and rigorous methodology using the idea of the 'family of national charts' philosophy proposed by Bill Sheeran. I am aware the theory of single sign rulerships works differently to national charts.

The tradition of single sign rulerships relies on a confusing variety of attributions. Sometimes they rely directly on Ptolemy's assignations, other times using other ancient notions of astrological directionology. Then we have the more modern approaches to fixed geodetics proposed by Grimm, Sepharial, Johndro etc.

We also have more flexible contemporary techniques like Astro*Cartography developed by Jim Lewis which displays where planets are "angular" (rising, setting, on the MC or IC ) at any chosen moment in time such as a persons birth or a mundane event like an eclipse, in locations across the world.

Since Charles Carter promoted national charts in his book ''An Introduction to Political Astrology'' (1951) they have gone on to rapidly replace single sign rulerships of countries. Nowadays national charts reign supreme. Many people therefore go with the sun in a national chart over traditional attributions for countries. Hence one sees the USA described as a cancerian country because the Sun was in cancer on the 4th of July 1776. Equally, you see the United Kingdom described as a Capricorn country due to the placement of the Sun in the 1801 chart.

In contrast , if you look at astrology before WWII the focus is quite different. Hence astrologers like Alan Leo describe the USA as a Gemini country and England an Aries country (the latter attribution due to Ptolemy NOT the 1066 chart!)

However, the modern approach is perfectly respectable in my view. There is a tradition of foundational charts for cities going back millennia. Ptolemy talks about this in his Tetrabiblos where he advocates looking at the ASC, sun and moon of the foundational chart for a city:

"... in the case of metropolitan cities, those regions of the zodiac are most sympathetic through which the sun and moon, and of the centres especially the horoscope, were passing at the first founding of the city, as in a nativity. But in cases in which the exact times of the foundations are not discovered, the regions are sympathetic in which falls the mid?heaven of the nativities of those who held office or were kings at the time"
Tetrabiblos, Book II, Section 3, translated by Frank .Robbins:

The main problem is that there are sometimes several charts proposed for key moments in a nation's history. Some astrologers suggest this undermines the whole notion of national charts. It doesn't have to though.

Taking Ireland as an example Bill Sheeran has proposed a 'family chart approach' to his country utilising several charts. Hence we look for common themes between the different charts. For example its hard to escape noticing Brazil has a Leo moon in both the 1889 and 1998 charts.Personally, I think this kind of approach has considerable merit.

I think there is widespread confusion in the astrological tradition today regarding single sign rulerships for countries and it isn't just a modern problem. As far back as the medieval period we see a totally contradictory approach to directionary being used for some countries versus others. Hence sign rulership for old world countries is an incoherent mess. When we get to the the Americas we get into even more opaque issue in terms of sign association origins. As I already said I do feel this is a complex topic. I am currently still researching this subject but eventually hope to write a piece on it or give a conference talk about it.

Mark