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The other way the chart can be generated is by using medieval techniques to create a chart that signifies the Declaration of Independence. Susan Manuel showed in 1994 that if you take the House Cusps for the preceding Cancer Ingress of 20 June, set for Philadephia, you get the House Cusps of the Sibly Chart. If you then superimpose the planetary positions for 4th July 1776, set for 12 noon GMT, you get the planetary positions of the Sibly Chart.
“Manuel showed that Sibly was working within the tradition, established by the great mundane astrologers of the Islamic world, in which it was not necessary to set a horoscope for the exact time at which an historical event took place (even the birth of an important individual), but rather to locate the horoscope which signified the event under consideration.” (Nicholas Campion, Book of World Horoscopes). Susan Manuel’s paper can be purchased here.
My solar fire produces charts using this technique which are almost there, but not quite. Like I need to set the Sun at 1 minute of Cancer for the Ingress chart. And the Noon chart has the Moon some degrees out. But no doubt there are explanations somewhere for this.
I'm not convinced that Sibly used these techniques, because the 5.10pm time also produces the chart pretty convincingly. But it still seems an eerie coincidence.
I can’t say I understand these techniques, though it’s a fascinating way of going about things. In a way, I prefer it. Astrology is essentially a divinatory system that uses symbols, so a symbolic way of generating charts would in some ways seem more logical than trying to pin down birth times. I guess the way you’d do it for your own chart would be to draw up the preceding Cardinal Ingress chart for the place you were born, and then superimpose the planetary positions for noon on the day you were born. I quite like my own chart done this way. It puts my Mercury-Uranus opposition along the MC-IC axis, which is quite a good position for a blogger!
I also think people and countries have a way of becoming their charts if used long enough, however dubious the origin of the charts. This is because astrology is divinatory, and what you are doing is making a kind of energetic link between the chart and the person/country, and that link deepens the more you use the chart.
Just for fun, here is another chart for the USA, which I wrote about 2 years ago. It’s based on the fact that, as Nicholas Campion says: “The birthday of the USA is celebrated on 4 July, but in fact the crucial vote for independence was taken on 2 July 1776, and constitutional historians…. never tire of pointing this out. Contemporary press reports were in no doubt that this was so… Even the participants in the drama regarded this vote as the vital event in both political and symbolic terms.”
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There is some evidence for 4pm. And with Moon conjunct Pluto, Scorpio Rising and Sun in the 8th, it gives a very Scorpionic chart, for which I argued in the same blog 2 years ago.
Interestingly, it has good synastry with Barrack Obama. For example, his Scorpio MC conjoins the US Scorpio Asc, and his Saturn conjoins the US Moon-Pluto.
By transit we see the US beginning a square from Neptune to its ASC: its old way of expressing itself (ASC) through the use of power (Scorpio) is dissolving. The Progressed MC (the Presidency) has just moved into steady, financially aware Taurus, and out of belligerent, headstrong Aries. Prog Saturn is approaching an opposition to the Prog MC, showing the renewed sense of responsibility and authority that has entered the Presidency. The Progressed Moon in Leo is approaching the Prog Asc: the people (Moon) have found their essential voice (Asc/Leo) in electing a new president whose Sun closely conjoins the Prog Asc.
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Progressed Mars, the planet of America’s military ambitions, is in Libra, a sign Mars finds difficult until it learns diplomacy. This year it also went retrograde and became intercepted. So it is in difficulties, as we all know, particularly over the next 18 months, after which point it will cease being intercepted.
