Karmic Memory, Karmic Astrology,

How Karmic Astrology Works

The doctrine of karmic memory implies that ethical consequences are attached to one’s behavior. It says that whatever one sends out into the universe will return, exactly. Philosophically, in a free will universe, karma tends to act as a balancing force: As the slang would have it, “Whatever goes around comes around”. Karma is a law of Nature.

The placement of the Moon in a chart is an indicator of karma. Also its nodes. Other indicators are the placements of Saturn and Pluto. The Moon retains memory of the past; Saturn often effects the changes required; Pluto will also help bring change, but it often does not work within the framework of time. I will come to Saturn and Pluto later.

The bloody American Civil War was an example of karmic balancing on a mass level. World War I, with all its “senseless” killing, was another karmic balancing: As a result of that war, a thousand years of European institutions collapsed and died, freeing Europeans from ideas, beliefs and practices that were old and worn out.

In any historical chart, whether individual or national, the weight of its historical karma must, if possible, be judged by the astro-historian.

The Moon Rules All Sorts of Memory

The Moon. Some 4.55 billion years ago a minor planet roughly the size of the planet Mars collided with the Earth, causing matter to become volatile and go into orbit around our planet. After some tens of thousands of years, this material coalesced into what today is our Moon. The earliest era of lunar geology, the Pre Nectarian, dates from about 4.55 billion to 3.9 billion years ago. This was when the Moon’s crust (now forty miles thick) began to solidify, when basins and ejecta blankets covered 40% of its surface. Some of that ejecta was brought back to Earth by the Apollo astronauts.

Between 3.9 and 3.2 billion years ago, the Moon was impacted by some more large asteroids. The Nectris basin impact occurred 3.92 billion years ago; the Imbrium basin impact, 3.85 billion years ago; and the last big basin impact was the Orientale. This impact occurred 3.80 billion years ago. It began the late Imbrium Age, which lasted 3.8 to 3.2 billion years.

The longest age on the Moon, the Eratosthenian, which lasted from 3.2 billion years to 1.2 billion years, was the least eventful, but a few things did happen then, including the appearance of the Pythagoras and Eratosthenes Craters (This last is named after the Greek scientist who calculated the circumference of the Earth and the distance from the Earth to the Sun. He also calculated that the Fall of Troy occurred in 1173 B.C).

Our present lunar period, the Copernican, is a relatively much quieter one. This period began 1.2 billion years ago, and impact craters are dated from that time, including the Copernicus Crater (810 million years) and the Tycho (109 million years), and the South Ray (2 million years). All these craters have been dated scientifically by measuring radioactive decay of lunar rocks brought back by the Apollo explorations. When Buz Aldrin, one of the first two astronauts to step on the Moon, was asked for his impressions about that walk, he replied:

I immediately looked down at my feet and became intrigued with the peculiar properties of lunar dust. On the Moon, dust travels exactly and precisely as it goes, and every grain of it lands very nearly the same distance away.

[from Harry Hurt III, “I’m at the Foot of the Ladder”  Astronomy Magazine, Vol. 17, No. 7 (July 1989) P. 30.]

This dusty layer is called the regolith. When mixed with the Earth’s atmosphere it smells like burnt gunpowder; it will preserve a footprint for a billion years. In astronomy and in lunar geology, as in astrological practice, the Moon serves as the memory bank; it preserves records dating back to the founding of the solar system. If one ever argued for the existence of a high civilization in prehistory, the first place to look for evidence of such would be on the Moon.

The Moon in astrology is the ruler of the data-retaining subconscious mind and has always had the governorship of memory. It serves as one of the archetypal rulers of history. A “strong Moon” in a chart, in addition to a retentive memory, often gives one a reverence, a feeling, for the past, and is often found in the chart of the historian.

Karmic Memory: The line of the Moon’s nodes

The nodes are points where the Moon’s orbital path around the Earth intercepts the ecliptic plane. A line drawn between these two points is called the line of nodes. The southern point is called the south node; the northern point is called the north node.

Perturbations of the Moon’s orbit cause this line to move westward (backward) along the ecliptic. This cycle is called the Metonic cycle; it takes 18.6 years. Observe what happens every 18 years or so: there is a good chance that it is a Metonic cycle, very lunar, and quite karmic.

The line of the nodes of the Moon, drawn through the center of the Earth, functions as a kind of karmic antenna. If one wishes to get a quick understanding of the destiny of a nation, let him examine the Moon’s line of the nodes of that nation’s chart. Every karmic, lifelong condition can be demonstrated in this line.

The Moon’s True Nodes and Mean Nodes

A mean node is an averaged calculation of the point in the sky where the Moon intercepts the ecliptic. While that point is somewhat close to the true point where the Moon makes the interception, it is not necessarily the precise and exact location of that point. The true node is that precise calculation.

In the astrology of history, we are using only true nodes.

South Nodes and North nodes

What is important here is the use of the complete line of the nodes, not just its south or north points. The line of the nodes records the experience. It is a chronicle the past and of how those experiences of the past are being used in the present. In the life of a historical personage or in the annals of a nation the south node will sometimes dominate; and at other times, the north node will overshadow events in that experience. Which point is used doesn’t seem to be significant.

In the chart of Ulysses S. Grant, general and eighteenth president, Mars is conjunct the south node of his Moon. Traditionally, the south node indicates “where you have come from”. This placement indicates that Grant possibly had many past life experiences in war.

It was a common practice on the rough American frontier to initiate children into the abrupt concussive sound of gun fire. When Grant was a baby, his father, Jesse Grant, fired a pistol next to his son’s head, to see if the infant would begin crying. The family first made sure the baby was awake with his eyes open and alert, and then fired the pistol. No outcry at all came from the future general. It seemed as if the sound of firearms was perfectly familiar to the little one. That Mars/south node is one of the keys to his great generalship.

During the American Civil War, Pluto was transiting within one degree of a square to the line of nodes of the 1776 Declaration chart. When war actually broke out, on April 12, 1861, 4:30 a.m., Charleston SC, Pluto was only two degrees away from a square to the line of nodes. Pluto also governs the karma of bondage and slavery.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7th, 1941, Pluto was within one degree of conjunction to the northern end of the line of nodes of the Declaration Chart. One might say that both the Civil War and World War II involved, for different reasons, a massive karmic balancing, an element of fate impossible to avoid because of past historical decisions.