Traditional Mundane Astrology

There are four types of traditional astrology, (1) natal astrology, which looks at birth charts (2) horary astrology, which looks at the charts of the time questions are asked, (3) electional astrology, which choses astrologically auspicious times to take action and (4) mundane astrology, which uses a variety of techniques to look at weather, countries, dynasties and other "big picture" events.

Traditional horary astrology has was revived through the efforts of people like Olivia Barclay beginning in the 1980s and we have a goodly number of practitioners with lots of experience.


Traditional electional astrology has many similarities to horary, but is not quite as widely practiced.

Traditional natal astrology was revived primarily by Robert Zoller, also beginning in the 1980s. Through his efforts and the efforts of his students, plus the fact that modern astrology is mostly natal, we also have a reasonable grasp on traditional natal.

Traditional mundane, however, we have only just scratched the surface of. Learning traditional mundane techniques like Great and Lesser Conjunctions, eclipses and solar revolutions has only just begun. In my opinion no one has yet mastered traditional mundane. But traditional mundane is what we need to answer things like "what's going on with the financial crisis?"

Since the theory behind horary, electional and natal is that the Cosmos is one great unified Being bound together by bonds of spiritual sympathy and correspondence, looking at large scale events should work too. One problem is that as you move from horary to natal, from a very tightly focused question to an entire life, the precision decreases significantly. Going from natal to mundane will likely involve a further loss of precision.

Ok, now let me say a bit about how people have been trying to do mundane without
mundane techniques. The predominant method has been to say "Well, Jupiter is the natural ruler of wealth, and is now afflicted, so wealth will be afflicted" This has been more or less true, as Jupiter passed out of his sign Sagittarius in 2007 and into his fall Capricorn in 2008. But that means that we should see an improvement in 2009 when Jupiter goes into Aquarius and I'll bet that the recession is not going to go away in January 2009.

I probably shouldn't mention another example, but fools rush in where angels
fear to tread, so I will give another nod to the Holy, the Sacred, the Invincibly MALEFIC Mercury retrograde. This has been the nuclear holocaust, arrival of the Anti-Christ, Armageddon all wrapped up in one. What started as "don't sign a contract" under Mercury retrograde has morphed into "don't do anything" under Mercury retrograde. I have people worrying about surgery under Mercury retrograde. What does Mercury have to do with surgery any way? Granted Mercury retrograde is an affliction, but so is Mercury conjunct, square, opposed, Mars or Saturn, Mercury combust, Mercury in Pisces and Sagittarius,
etc, etc.

The obvious fact is the even the things Mercury is the natural ruler of, like contracts, sales, communications, Internet, we don't have a complete shutdown for all 6 billion people on the planet when Mercury goes retrograde. In fact some people have best contracts, best sales, etc. of their lives under Mercury retrograde.

Ah, but "I always have problems under Mercury retrograde" "I can feel it!" Odd, that people don't feel Mercury combust or Mercury in detriment. The bottom line is that even those that "believe" in Mercury retrograde acknowledge that they cannot predict what will happen under it. Being unable to accurate predict means that one does not really understand what is happening. Clearly one of the problems is the extreme simplicity of Mercury afflicted = Mercury ruled things are all afflicted. Traditional technique, be it mundane or other areas is always much more complex, as befits an attempt to actually predict reality.