Living with the Stars

  Thanks to a little book I got from a book fair, I came across a list of historical events which happened on Christmas Day. It has long been accepted that the day itself is probably not the date of Jesus Christ’s birth. The New Testament states that shepherds watched their flocks by night, something which would not have occurred on long winter nights, but rather on late spring nights, according to astrologer Christine Arens, who examined the possibility that the bright star in the East, mentioned in the New Testament and, according to Arens and others, was a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction (occupying the same ‘portion’ of sky). Point of note: Christmas was first celebrated on the 25 th December in the year 336AD. Celebrating the birth of a messianic king did leave its impact, however. Both Charlemagne and William the Conqueror were crowned kings on Christmas Day. The story of Charlemagne is one of a devout Christian and successful conqueror who was crowned by Pope Leo III in Rome,...

I mentioned in my last post that I’ve been following the movement of Venus in the sky. She’s been quite prominent in the night sky this month, being even brighter than Jupiter, because of her proximity to Earth. I’ve also become interested in this planet because in doing some research on the Maltese national chart (the astrological chart for the moment when Malta became independent – 21/09/1964 at 00:00hrs CET+1), I found that the position of Venus at 13°Leo is repeated or reflected in quite a few of Malta’s prime ministers. I’ve also mentioned before that yes, countries can have birth charts. This leads to another question – how can you tell when a country is ‘born’? To be truthful, it really depends on whether the astrologer finds a chart ‘works’. Take the chart of the United Kingdom; some astrologers find the 1066 chart (when William of Normandy was crowned king of England on Christmas Day at midday), whereas others use the Act of Union Chart (Jan 1 st , 1801) as it works well f...