The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 425, titled:
Eclipses That Shaped History: Part 2
With Chris Brennan and guest Nick Dagan Best
Episode originally released on November 8, 2023
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Note: This is a transcript of a spoken word podcast. If possible, we encourage you to listen to the audio or video version, since they include inflections that may not translate well when written out. Our transcripts are created by human transcribers, and the text may contain errors and differences from the spoken audio. If you find any errors then please send them to us by email: theastrologypodcast@gmail.com
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Transcribed by Andrea Johnson
Transcription released December 4th, 2023
Copyright © 2023 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hey, my name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. In this episode astrologer Nick Dagan Best is joining me and we’re gonna do part two of our events that coincided with the eclipses in history episode. So, hey, Nick. Thanks for joining me again.
NICK DAGAN BEST: Thanks for having me back, Chris.
CB: Yeah, so we are back again already. Last month we recorded a major episode, probably one of the most important episodes of The Astrology Podcast that I’ve ever done, where we looked at eclipses that coincided with important events in history. So that’s basically part one of this, which was Episode 423, which you can find on YouTube by searching ‘Eclipses that Aligned with Important Events in History’. So after we recorded that last month we continued to find a number of new examples of eclipses over the course of the past few weeks, and also listeners sent in a bunch of eclipse examples that they found in history around the world as well, so we decided to do part two of the eclipses episode today to share some of that additional research. Additionally, we wanted to expand our study to some countries not mentioned in the previous episode to show you how this methodology of applying eclipses to world events applies just about everywhere.
So just for the data, we are recording this today on Saturday, November 4, 2023, starting at 12:15 PM in Denver Colorado, and this is the 425th episode of The Astrology Podcast. All right, so let’s do a little brief recap at the beginning of what we found last time. So to recap, what we found in the last episode is that, one, important events in history tend to take place around the time of eclipses, and two, that people born near an eclipse tend to have some of the most important events in their life coincide with eclipses in the future. I think those are our two main conclusions, sort of briefly summarized, that we found in the last episode, right?
NDB: Right, right. And then there’s also the ranges to consider, the ranges of eclipses. Eclipses are somewhat rare, taking place every six months, and the solar and lunar eclipses, they tend to come in pairs. The operative range seems to be about a week before or a week after an eclipse takes place, so about a month, more or less.
CB: Yeah, let me show that.
NDB: And I believe you have a diagram to show there.
CB: Yeah. So here’s our diagram that I put together. So we see we have one eclipse ‘cause eclipses always come in pairs. There’s always like a solar eclipse and a lunar eclipse, or sometimes the lunar eclipse comes before, but basically the operative range is a week before the exact eclipse and a week after the exact eclipse. And then since there’s usually another eclipse right after that, there’s another week before that and another week after that eclipse. So that gives you a total essentially of a one-month timeframe in terms of ‘eclipse season’, as we refer to it.
NDB: Yeah, yeah. So that’s more or less the range that we’re settling on. Sometimes we might talk about close calls as well.
CB: But going back to the other thing, was there anything about the recap of what we found last time that’s worth expanding on?
NDB: Well, no, those are the two basic principles, that you have important events that take place during eclipses and then we’re looking at some of the personalities and history related to these events, and who amongst them are born close to eclipses. And we found quite a few of those kinds of examples, too. So, no, I think those are like the two basic considerations. Everything else is a variant on that theme, I’d say.
CB: Okay, cool. Yeah, so the range of eclipses—in our methodology that we’ve developed—approximately a week before an eclipse and a week after an eclipse is the special range. So eclipses only take place every six months, so they’re not that frequent. With our full eclipse range of a week before and a week after an eclipse, and with two eclipses being side by side, it does create a month-long space, but that’s still a relatively short span of time in terms of the broader scope of a year. And certainly the closer an event is to the exact day of an eclipse it seems, the more potent or the more intense things are.
NDB: Yeah, certainly. Like I know some people are asking if an eclipse is still relevant even if it was not visible from a particular location on Earth, and our study finds that, yes, we’ve found a number of incidents where eclipses were occurring close to a really major event in a given nation’s history, but that the eclipse itself didn’t necessarily pass over—the path didn’t necessarily cross over the area in question. So while that’s always an interesting way to employ eclipses and to study them astrologically, what we’re finding here is just sort of the proximity to any eclipse occurring anywhere on Earth and that common sort of coincident pattern with these major turning points in history.
CB: Right. So it doesn’t need to be visible from the location of the event necessarily, it’s just the fact that an eclipse is happening at that time. Although certainly that could be a factor that requires more research to see how visibility may or may not be relevant in terms of some of the different events that we found through the course of history. And that may be worth looking into for a future episode.
NDB: Yes, exactly.
CB: So I want to talk a little bit about eclipses in the past month, because in the past month, in October of 2023, we had two major eclipses. There was a solar eclipse in Libra on October 14 and there was a lunar eclipse in Taurus on October 28. So we were following important events in the news and documenting what happened, and there were three stories in particular that stood out relative to those eclipses that were major noteworthy stories in the news that are worth recording or talking about a little bit briefly here before we get into other historical events, just to collect some of our recent empirical observations about what’s going on in the world and how eclipses tie into things. So the big one of course over the past month has been the war in Israel and Palestine.
And this is actually what caused us to do the ‘eclipses’ episode originally last month as we were searching for answers to try to understand the tragedy and the devastation of what we were seeing. And I didn’t have a lot of background in the history of the conflict previously, but I’ve been trying to learn as much as I can and found some notable things that are worth mentioning here in terms of the astrology and how it ties into those eclipses that were occurring last month. So just a brief recap of where we’re at, what happened last month was on October 7, Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, and there were 1,400 Israelis killed and more than 200 hostages were taken. So this happened around the time of the Libra eclipse on October 14, just a little bit before it. After that Israel—I’m sorry?
NDB: Oh, no. Sorry, go ahead.
CB: Okay. After that Israel began bombing Gaza in retaliation and launched a ground invasion later in the month, around the October 28 eclipse in Taurus; it actually fell very close to that. At this point more than 10,000 Palestinians have been killed so far, mainly civilians, and half of the population of Gaza are children, people that are under the age of 18; so some of the pictures that are coming out of this have been horrific. And most of the Palestinians in Gaza cannot leave or can’t escape and many basic necessities are unavailable, like water, sometimes electricity or fuel or other things like that. So watching this happen in real-time and seeing it coincide with those eclipses made me want to go back and made us go back and study some of the history and some of the people involved to see how it might be tied in with eclipses astrologically. So one of the things that we discovered after the last episode was that it turns out that this state of Israel itself was founded shortly after a solar eclipse in 1948. So there was a solar eclipse on May 9 in Taurus, May 9, 1948, and then just a few days later Israel was founded on May 14, 1948. So let me put the chart up for that.
And here’s the chart. So we can see the chart has Libra rising, which is important because of course the eclipse at the beginning of October was in the sign of Libra, so it fell in the rising sign of the country. And we see that the Moon in the chart of Israel was in Leo and the Sun was in Taurus with the North Node. So just about a week before that, on May 9, there was a solar eclipse in the sign of Taurus. So one major thing is that Israel was founded on May 14, 1948, and then immediately after it was founded it started the 1948 Arab-Israeli War—which Israelis call the War of Independence and saw as the establishment of Israel and returning to their homeland—after the horrors of the Holocaust and being denied the ability to immigrate to other countries like America who turned them away after World War II, as well as a response to pogroms and persecutions across Europe and Russia even prior to the Holocaust; whereas Palestinians call this The Nakba or ‘the Catastrophe’ and see it as the displacement from their homeland, where hundreds of thousands became refugees and were unable to return home, as well as hundreds of villages were destroyed and Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli militias.
So Palestinians actually mark May 15 as Nakba Day, the day after Israeli Independence Day. And in Arabic Nakba means ‘disaster’, ‘catastrophe’, or ‘cataclysm’. So I looked up the Wikipedia page for the Nakba, and it says, “The Nakba, which literally means ‘disaster’, ‘catastrophe’, or ‘cataclysm’ also known as the Palestinian catastrophe was the loss of the Palestinian society and homeland in 1948 and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian-Arabs. The term is used to describe both the events of 1948 as well as the ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories such as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and the persecution and displacement of Palestinians throughout the region.” So that’s from Wikipedia.org/Nakba. In this way, that eclipse around the time of the founding of Israel kind of reminds me of the eclipse we talked about in the last episode that happened just before the fall of Constantinople, where the omen was taken as positive by the Ottomans who were taking over the city of Constantinople at that time, but it was a negative omen to the inhabitants of the city who lost their city at that time.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, so that’s a major background piece of history.
NDB: Absolutely. I mean, it occurs to me, just an aside, that with the May 14 Independence and the May 15 Nakba, the Sun on these days goes from 23° to 24° of Taurus, which is where Uranus is transiting over at this time. So, yeah, there’s that connection between the eclipses and their coincidental alignment and then other factors like that coming in.
CB: Yeah, that’s a really good point. So another area, there are also key figures who are involved in this at the present time that turn out to have eclipses in their birth charts and history as well. So one of the principal ones we found is that Benjamin Netanyahu, who’s the current prime minister of Israel, was actually born on a solar eclipse in Libra. He was born on October 21, 1949, and an eclipse happened just 14 hours after he was born on October 22 at 2:23 AM.
NDB: 12:23 AM. Or maybe in his zone it was 2:23 AM. Sorry, I’m looking at a different chart.
CB: No, you’re right.
NDB: Am I? Okay.
CB: No, that was right, 12:23. So this is his birth chart where we have the Sun at 27 Libra and the Moon at 19 Libra, and that eclipse occurred just like 14 hours later basically in late Libra. And that of course is relevant here since the eclipse that just happened in October also happened in Libra conjunct the South Node, just as it is in his chart. So there was a weird repetition here in terms of the eclipse he was born on and then this eclipse happening at this pivotal point in terms of his life and in terms of his leadership. And this is certainly something that he’s gonna become known for; it will probably be the primary thing he’s known for in retrospect. So that was really important, something that all astrologers started realizing over the past month.
I also tried to research Hamas, and I found that the current head of Hamas, or the man who’s thought to be the current head of Hamas, his name is Ismail Haniyeh, and he was actually born just before a solar eclipse. So he was born on January 29, 1962 and then there was a solar eclipse just days later on February 5, 1962. So that’s another really striking example. I’m trying to find his chart and where I put it. But it’s just another really striking example of how this basic principle that we found—here’s his chart. So we see that his Moon is in Scorpio and his Sun is in Aquarius, in the same sign as the South Node. And so, almost a week later after he was born we had that solar eclipse in Aquarius. So it just really underlines that point that we found in the last episode that sometimes people who were born near a solar eclipse or a lunar eclipse that some of the most important or some of the most defining events in their lives will then subsequently take place when there’s an eclipse in the sky again in the future.
NDB: Yeah. And, again, especially when you combine it with the transits you notice that Netanyahu has the Sun at 27 Libra, and that’s pretty much where Mars was as this was all erupting. And meanwhile, Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, has Mars at 27 Capricorn, which is where Pluto was. And along with the eclipses we were really seeing how the Mars-Pluto square that was coinciding with the eclipses was sort of indicative of the severity of everything. And once again we see those transits deliberately pulling in or very directly rather pulling in planets and the nativities of the two principal opponents.
CB: Yeah, for sure. That Mars-Pluto square that happened on October 7-8, that went exact then, really coincided with that and it was hitting both their charts as well as other charts. But then having it happen also in eclipse season—I mean, that’s one of the other things we pointed out in the last episode. For example, when we talked about COVID, there were lots of other mundane transits that were happening at the time that were indicative of what was taking place or what was about to take place, like the Saturn-Pluto conjunction in January 2020. But then the eclipses, they seem to amplify things and they just add an extra charge to all of the astrology that’s happening at the time, indicating that a really important turning point is about to take place, and sometimes they almost act as like triggers of the other mundane transits that are swirling at the time.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah, so those were the primary things that I wanted to point out about that. There’s other things that we could go into, but for the sake of this I think that’s the main thing that’s important. I did want to say that as of our recording on November 4, just thousands of civilians have been killed at this point and the images that are still coming out are horrifying and it’s still ongoing. So my hope is that calls for a ceasefire are successful as we move further and further away from eclipse season, and that from this tragedy and immense loss of life that the world is galvanized into finding a more tenable solution that brings peace and injustice and true equality to the region. In some ways the point of many of the civil rights examples that we highlighted in the last episode was to show that sometimes these very dark and horrific events can act as catalysts for change because they put the spotlight on different atrocities that are taking place and then galvanize us into finding ways to ensure that they will never be repeated again. So I genuinely hope that that’s the case here and that was part of the contribution we tried to make in the last episode, and we’ll see how things play out here in the future in terms of that.
NDB: Indeed.
CB: All right, so there were two other notable stories in the news that coincided with the recent eclipses, one of them was here in the US. And there was a whole period of almost a month where the Republicans had done something really historic by getting rid of the Speaker of the House for the first time in his history, and they had trouble electing a new one for two or three weeks. And then finally, very close to the second eclipse, the lunar eclipse in Taurus, a person named Mike Johnson was elected Speaker of the House. And so, of course, having just come off of doing the ‘eclipses’ episode with you, I immediately looked up his chart, and I found that he was born literally the same day as a lunar eclipse in Leo, on January 30, 1972. And then of course he was elected speaker of the House just three days before the lunar eclipse went exact in the sky. He was elected on October 25, and the eclipse happened in the sky on October 28. So that was just really startlingly on-the-nose there.
NDB: Yeah, indeed. I thought I would just point out as an aside that Mike Johnson. born January 30, 1972, there’s two other notable Republican figures born very, very close to him: Amy Coney Barrett is two days older than him and Nikki Haley is 10 days older than him. So I’m just throwing that out there as an aside, an observation. Yeah, those 1972 Aquarians seem to be quite resolvedly Republican.
CB: Yeah, that’s really interesting and could be important. Here’s his chart, where we can see his Sun is in Aquarius tightly conjunct the North Node. And we don’t have a birth time of course, but his Moon is in mid-Leo. So there was a Full Moon lunar eclipse that day, the day he was born.
NDB: A total lunar eclipse it looks like. Close enough to the nodes for it to be total, so, yeah, quite powerful. But, yeah, even Coney Barrett or Nikki Haley being that close, a week or so away from that eclipse, that sort of pulls them potentially into these sort of eclipse events as well in their own right.
CB: For sure, for sure. So this makes Mike Johnson third in line for the presidency after Biden and Harris, which is an extremely high position in terms of American politics, and obviously the fact that he was born on an eclipse makes this eclipse more personally relevant for him in terms of his chronology. But the fact that it happened on an eclipse, that he was elected and became speaker on eclipse, may actually imply that it could end up being more historically relevant in the long term than it might seem at first, so we’ll have to see how that plays out. Another major one that happened that was more celebrity-oriented, right on the day of the eclipse, on October 28, 2023, the actor Matthew Perry passed away; reportedly he drowned in a hot tub that day. And he was like an actor that was on a very popular American sitcom/comedy called Friends in the 1990s, and he was also in a number of movies in the late ’90s and early 2000s.
But I looked up his chart—he was born August 19, 1969—and it turns out that he was actually born just a week before a lunar eclipse in Pisces. So there was a lunar eclipse on August 27, 1969 in Pisces; so basically he was born on a lunar eclipse and then he died on the day of the lunar eclipse. And then I went back and looked at his chronology because I remember he did a bunch of interviews just a year ago about his life, because he had published an autobiography on November 1, 2022 and then he went on a press tour about it. And this was right in between two eclipses last year, and it was about a week before a lunar eclipse on November 8, 2022 that he published his autobiography. So it’s really striking in terms of his autobiography coming out on an eclipse and him passing away on an eclipse and having been born on an eclipse. And even though it’s sad in some ways, it’s kind of beautiful that he got to tell his story in his autobiography before he passed away and that it came out on an eclipse that was fitting with his birth.
NDB: Indeed. And yet another aside to contribute from me, as it turns out Matthew Perry was just one of four cast members from Friends born during eclipses. Lisa Kudrow, Courteney Cox, and David Schwimmer are also all born very, very close to eclipses, leaving Matt LeBlanc and Jennifer Aniston as being our ‘eclipse-less’ pair from the Friends cast. So take that as you will.
CB: Okay, that’s interesting.
NDB: Yeah, just as an aside, it’s interesting.
CB: Yeah. So I wanted to note that even though it’s a little bit of a detour going to like celebrity stuff here, but it’s still relevant in terms of events that were taking place at this time and some of the things that we’re learning as we’ve discovered this methodology over the past month and the different aspects of it that are falling into place through just our empirical studies of it.
NDB: Exactly. The point being that eclipses have this power, whether it comes to these world-shattering global events, like what’s happening in the Middle East or what was happening in Washington, or just down to very personal independent tragedies like the coming and leaving of a particular person; in this case, a beloved figure.
CB: Yeah, for sure. So speaking of that, one of the things we were trying to figure out in the last episode was what made certain people respond to eclipses more strongly in their chronology. And after the episode I was sort of pondering over the next week, wondering if me, for example, having the Moon in the 1st house had made eclipses more relevant to me, because it’s something that has stood out for me in my chronology. And then somebody, I think it was Leisa Schaim, pointed out, “Well, you were actually born a week before a lunar eclipse,” which I had never really thought of much before aside from my secondary progressions, but it’s true. So it turns out I’m actually born within a week of an eclipse that puts me in that range of having it sort of as an eclipse signature in my birth chart, and I’ve had some pretty notable events take place in my life around eclipses. Maybe the most notable is that I actually ended up publishing my book on Hellenistic astrology the day of a lunar eclipse in 2017, and I did that partially because it was a really good electional chart that day. And I strongly have the belief that eclipses are not always bad. Especially if the chart itself is good, they can still sometimes be used as powerful turning points. But I wasn’t at the time thinking of it in terms of having been born near a lunar eclipse like that and then releasing my book on one.
NDB: Yeah. It also kind of occurs to me that I met you not too long before an eclipse period in 2005, ‘cause you and I were becoming friends online I think around mid-March of 2005, and Patrick soon after. And the eclipses in 2005 occurred in April. There was a solar eclipse on April 8 and a lunar eclipse on April 24. So even the merging of the great triad of myself, you, and Patrick Watson all came together very, very close to an eclipse period.
CB: Yeah, for sure. And here’s my chart. You can see my Sun in Scorpio and Moon in Aquarius. And so, there was a lunar eclipse in Taurus on November 8, and I was born on November 1. And then what’s interesting is then there was a solar eclipse two weeks after that in Sagittarius. And when that actually happened in my secondary progressed chart, that’s when I started studying Hellenistic astrology and moved to live out near you and study ancient texts as part of a translation project. And there’s been a number of other eclipse events in my life that I won’t go into, but it was just interesting that as we’re finding this, we’re discovering stuff about world events, we’re discovering stuff about celebrities, but also finding things even in our own charts sometimes when you discover a new technique like this that surprises you or fills in additional information.
NDB: Yeah. And when you think about it, going back to that anecdote that your progressed chart was at the eclipse in 2005, the same year that you wound up moving out, you and I met by March and we were becoming friends through April. And then by the end of May was when Bill Johnston and I flew out to Seattle and we met you in person, and I think that was when you were invited to move to Cumberland. So your progressed chart was at that eclipse, and also that passage between March and May with the eclipse in April of 2005 as a transit also seemed to be connecting to your circumstance.
CB: Yeah, for sure. And I’ve had other really important eclipse events as well that I think I’ve mentioned in some of my other eclipse episodes, so I won’t go into them here. But just to wrap up this section, keep an eye out for people who were born near an eclipse because eclipses seem to be more important for them as we’ll see in some of our other examples coming up. And I know even a lot of people in the comments have seen things in their families and seen family members and other people in their personal lives where this technique has worked out very well as well. So it’s not just celebrities necessarily, but sometimes just for people that are imprinted with eclipses in their chart that tends to be a recurring theme during the course of their life. All right, so let’s move on to the next section where I wanted to return to the British royals. One of our most striking examples last time and one of the most popular ones actually on social media—especially on Instagram and TikTok, where I released like a one-minute clip about it there—were the eclipses involving the British royal family.
So just to give a brief recap, what we found in the last episode was that Prince William was born the day of an eclipse, his wife Kate Middleton was born on an eclipse, his parents were married on an eclipse, his mother Diana died on an eclipse, his father Charles, the coronation happened on an eclipse earlier this year. And then even further back three of the kings who died in the 20th century prior to Queen Elizabeth all died on eclipses in the 20th century. So we found just this crazy pattern of eclipses in the royal family, and after the episode was over it turns out that there were even more eclipses that we hadn’t found at that point, so we actually found a few more to throw in. So one of them that a few different listeners pointed out after we released the episode was that after Princess Diana and Prince Charles divorced, Charles got together with a woman named Camilla and they actually got married on an eclipse back in 2005. So they were married on April 9, 2005, and there was a solar eclipse on April 8, 2005. So I thought that was super interesting that it’s like the eclipses are still very tied in with his chronology in other ways that we hadn’t even realized in the last episode.
NDB: Indeed. And it’s funny because this is that same eclipse that I was just talking about that we met under; this is that same period. And it’s funny because the wedding was actually supposed to be the day earlier, but it was postponed a day because Pope John Paul II had died on April 2 and his funeral was held on April 8. And so, they delayed the marriage to April 9, the day after the eclipse. And I remember that. I remember as you and I were becoming friends that the Pope died. And to some degree I remember the wedding between Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles.
CB: That’s your primary memory of me, that the Pope died when you met me?
NDB: The Pope dying, yeah. I met Chris and the Pope died.
CB: You’re a little suspicious?
NDB: Yeah, that was very suspicious.
CB: Okay.
NDB: Who’s this kid coming into my life when the Pope died?
CB: Exactly. That’s a bad omen.
NDB: And look where it’s gotten us.
CB: I mean, exactly. You probably should have paid attention to that omen, I have to say.
NDB: Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear.
CB: All right, so that’s amazing though for two points ‘cause, one, you’re saying that means their wedding was originally scheduled for April 8, the day of the eclipse, but because—
NDB: Right.
CB: —Pope John Paul II died on April 2 and his funeral ended up being on April 8, which is interesting in of itself, that the marriage was moved to the following day, April 9.
NDB: Right, right.
CB: And then I think you noticed that the eclipse degree is actually opposite Charles’ Venus within a few degrees, right?
NDB: That’s right, yeah.
CB: Okay. So that’s super important; we’ll come back to that. But that also then means the Pope died on an eclipse, which is really striking and interesting. There’s other British royal ones. There’s one other major one we noticed—Prince Harry was a little bit suspiciously absent from our list since he was not born on an eclipse. However, some listeners pointed out that actually Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced that they were leaving the British royal family in early 2020, or at least they began that process very close to eclipses. So they announced on January 8, 2020 that they were stepping back from their roles in the family, and then just two days later a lunar eclipse took place on January 10 in the sign of Cancer. So this was the beginning of a much more public split with the family that’s taken place over the past few years and has been very public, but it’s interesting that that important turning point actually took place right there on an eclipse.
NDB: For sure.
CB: Yeah, so I think that was really striking ‘cause it ties Harry in. I’m sure there’s probably more eclipse stuff in terms of their chronology, I didn’t go into it further than that. But it’s interesting that they’re not immune from that, but as part of that family they’re tied into it to some extent as well, the eclipse signature.
NDB: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, sure enough, they’re close enough to the royal family, of course they would be in that same orbit it stands to reason.
CB: For sure. So some of the conclusions from the royal eclipses—because there’s been a lot of discussion about this on social media—some people see this or they saw the clips that I released and then they concluded that the royals must be planning this on purpose and that they’re using astrologers. But it’s not actually clear that this is the case and I wanted to make that clear here. So people often state it, as if it’s a given or that it can be taken for granted, but it’s not necessarily something we know for sure. While we do know that Diana consulted with at least one astrologer, we don’t know if the family still regularly employs them, and that’s not actually been an official position for centuries. So sometimes I see people stating that astrologer is still an official position with the royals, and that’s not, at least as far as the public knows, not something that’s true.
NDB: Right.
CB: While some of the dates—did you have a point about that?
NDB: Oh, just that I’m thinking of John Dee who was an astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I, I believe, in the 16th century, and he was the original ‘007’. So I’m thinking they should make a James Bond movie where he’s also an astrologer ‘cause the original 007 was an astrologer. But anyway, I digress.
CB: Yeah, I mean, we know hundreds of years ago that the royals did use astrologers, but it’s like astrology fell out of universities and they stopped having a chair for astrology at universities in the 16th and 17th and 18th centuries, and it also stopped being an official position amongst royalty for the most part as well, so it’s just not a given that that’s still a thing. And while some of the dates could have been planned deliberately in their chronology—like let’s say a wedding date or a coronation date—there’s many others in their chronology where it’s unlikely that they did things deliberately to coincide with eclipses. Like the fact that Kate Middleton, Prince William’s future wife, happened to be born the day of an eclipse six months before him, I don’t think that’s planned; that’s not something orchestrated. It starts getting into ‘conspiracy theory’ land if you start reaching too much and saying that they’re planning everything out or other things. Like certain deaths and things like that I do not think were planned based on eclipses or something like that. But instead the main takeaway from the royal eclipses is just that prominent and powerful people often naturally end up doing important things around the time of eclipses due to some strange property of nature that is at the core of what astrology is. Additionally, the other thing—
NDB: I was just gonna say the main point is that astrology works.
CB: Right.
NDB: I mean, that’s the thing, even if people are not consciously planning events around eclipses, the fact is that they would do so sort of naturally. Yeah, it’s almost like people are trying to talk around just the astrology itself and make it all sound planned, whereas, yeah, it’s just not.
CB: It gets tied in with people wanting to think that elites are like controlling things or are more in charge or manipulating things with things like astrology than are.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: But for us the point was just that powerful and prominent people naturally tend to do things around the time of eclipses just by virtue of the nature of the universe, and also that sometimes eclipses run in families. And if there’s like a strong eclipse signature in a family, like we have here, then it’s something that can repeat. So the point of this was to demonstrate that astrology works, not to claim that the elites are constantly using astrology to manage their schedules. While it’s possible that some may do that, it can’t be taken for granted in all cases and that wasn’t meant to be the takeaway.
NDB: Right, right.
CB: All right, so let’s move on and let’s talk about other countries. So after the last episode we tried expanding our research to a number of different countries and found a number of new examples; listeners from all around the world send in a bunch of different examples as well. So here’s some of what we got so far—let’s start with a section on Russia. So there were some major eclipses involving Russia that we found after the last episode. Some of these were sent in by listeners and then it caused us to go back and investigate further and find even more. So the first thing that was sent in by a listener named @carolinemarshall3245 on YouTube, in a YouTube comment, she pointed out that the fall of the Soviet Union and the establishment essentially of the current Russian state happened in December of 1991, right on an eclipse.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: So the Russian flag was raised December 25, 1991, and there was a lunar eclipse right before that on December 21, 1981 in the sign of Gemini.
NDB: Yeah, there was a ceremony where they lowered the Soviet Union flag, the hammer and sickle, and they raised the Russian tricolor flag which had been used just briefly in the first months of the Russian Revolution in 1917, and that’s the one that defines the current democratic republic.
CB: Right. And it looks like the was actually in between eclipses ‘cause there was a lunar eclipse right before it. And we see the Sun there in early Capricorn conjunct the North Node and the Moon’s in Virgo. So that means the Moon would have come up and conjoined the Sun not too long after that, a week or so later, to form a solar eclipse.
NDB. That’s right, yeah.
CB: Okay, so that’s super important. Basically the founding of the modern Russian state happened on an eclipse. Additionally in that chronology, another listener pointed out that Vladimir Putin actually became the acting prime minister of Russia in 1999 on an eclipse. So he was appointed acting prime minister on August 9, 1999, and then there was a solar eclipse just two days later on August 11, 1999 in Leo. So a shoutout to YouTube commenter @geraintmorgan8851 on YouTube for pointing that one out ‘cause that’s actually super, super big.
NDB: Yeah, I’ve talked about that one before because that’s also this Venus retrograde pattern that’s very prominent in Putin’s life. And it’s worth pointing out that 19 years after this eclipse, when he came to power, within about two-three weeks of the eclipse in August of 2018 is when Putin met up with Donald Trump in their big summit of 2018. I don’t know if you remember Trump with his soccer ball, but that’s sort of like the eclipse return of this initial coming to power of Putin in August of 1999. I remember that eclipse very well ‘cause it was a very malefic-looking eclipse. You had the Sun in Leo opposite Uranus in Aquarius, square Mars in Scorpio, and square Saturn in Taurus making this sort of Grand Fixed Cross with all these sort of ominous-looking planets in this ominous configuration. So it really was like an eclipse for the ages.
CB: Okay, so let me put that up really quickly. Here’s the eclipse chart for August 11, 1999. And let me advance it. So the conjunction was at 18° of Leo and the North Node was at 12 Leo at the time, and it was opposite Uranus at 14 Aquarius. It was square Saturn at 16 Taurus and the eclipse was square Mars at 16° of Scorpio. I like this example also ‘cause it’s obviously a major important turning point, but one of the things that’s fascinating when I watch documentaries from that time period about the rise of Putin is like how obscure he was up until that point, and then all of a sudden—
NDB: Up until that day.
CB: Right, up until that day, and he emerges suddenly as this emerging world leader, but most people, most leaders around the world, didn’t know anything about him or didn’t know what to make of him. And it goes back to that theme that we touched on a few different times in the last episode in both positive and negative examples where sometimes there can be a small event that lays the seeds for something that will become super important. But at the time, because it’s a new beginning, it’s not recognized, the significance of that event, until later that it will have a much greater magnitude of importance than some people may realize at the time.
NDB: Yeah. And to compound this, I happen to know that in Putin’s life, when he was offered the job on that day by Boris Yeltsin, he had only just gotten back to Moscow from St. Petersburg where he had been attending his father’s funeral. So not only is he suddenly elevated to international prominence literally out of nowhere—nobody outside of people in the intelligence department knew his name until August 9, 1999 at which point we all knew it. But it’s also just interesting, as an aside, that he’s coming from his father’s funeral and is suddenly, almost unexpectedly, being swept into power because Yeltsin appointed him as his successor. So it wasn’t like he had to campaign or overtly try very hard. He’s sort of picked as the best possible choice.
CB: I mean, who knows what happened behind the scenes in terms of why he ended up in that position ultimately. like I don’t know.
NDB: I have some idea. Yeltsin had gone through five—Putin was his fifth prime minister in about a year-and-a-half. Yeltsin knew he had to retire for his health, but also because he had been involved in certain corrupt dealings. He was being very careful to appoint someone that he knew would not pursue him legally for whatever transgressions he had made. And Putin had been in the KGB, chances are he always was even after leaving, but one way or the other Yeltsin had confidence that putting Putin in power would protect him from ever being pursued legally for his own financial transgressions. So all the books say about as much about that situation.
CB: Okay, got it. Yeah, and then he has played a major role in steering Russian society since that time and has become a major world figure in different ways. So obviously that eclipse was a super important turning point in Russian history, as well as in his own life. And then that caused us to go back—
CB: Oh, I was just gonna interject. We didn’t put this in, but it suddenly occurs to me he gave this famous speech in Munich in February of 2007 where he basically kind of went ‘mask-off’ as the kids say in terms of his feelings about the West, and that also occurred during an eclipse. So there are other things that we keep finding; that’s just sort of a last-minute addition. But it’s a speech that is cited a lot these days since the Ukraine War as sort of revealing his intentions, if you will, or his perspective.
CB: Okay. So that caused us to go back further in Russian history, and another one that another YouTube commenter named @nelizumrud—it runs together, so I’m not sure if it’s one word or two—but they pointed out that the Battle of Stalingrad started and ended on eclipses. And this was the bloodiest battle of the war in World War II, which started around August 23, 1942 very close to a set of eclipses, where there was a solar eclipse in Leo on August 12 and there was a lunar eclipse in Pisces on August 26. So it’s this battle that started on eclipses in August of 1942, and it lasted all the way until the beginning of February, February 2, 1943, where that was the end of the battle, and then there was a solar eclipse right after that on February 5, 1943 in Aquarius. So that’s super striking ‘cause it was one of the most important and pivotal battles in World War II and it was bookended very perfectly by eclipses.
NDB: Yeah, this tends to be my experience in studying war—the eclipses don’t necessarily coincide with the beginning and endings of wars. Once in a while they do, like, say, the Crimean War did, but more typically the eclipses coincide with these sort of big decisive battles where matters really move in one direction or the other regardless of how the war is gonna ultimately go. So, yeah, this is sort of case in point; this really was a notorious battle. I think literally a million men killed just in this one confrontation.
CB: Yeah, it’s crazy the extent of the carnage there, and some historians debate over it. I’ve read Reddit threads and things like that over what was the turning point in World War II, and this was the turning point for the Eastern Front, but some people argue that may have been one of the turning points for the war in general, or that even for some Germans, they may have realized that this was the point that they lost the war or what have you, although that’s debated.
NDB: No, I think largely that’s astute. I mean, eventually in June of ‘44, the Allies land on the beaches of France. And then earlier in ‘43, maybe about six months after Stalingrad is when the Allies first hit the soft underbelly of Italy. But, yeah, even by the time the Allies invade Italy, and Italy has switched sides, Stalingrad has already happened. And even Paulus, the German general who was leading the military there, is taken prisoner along with anyone else who managed to survive that terrible thing. So really in many ways it was decided. ‘Cause after Stalingrad, the Soviets start chasing the Germans West as opposed to the other way around, and eventually they’ll wind up in Berlin. Just as the Western allies are entering West Germany, it’s the Soviets who enter Berlin and essentially compel Hitler to ‘un-live’ himself, ‘un-alive’ himself. So, yeah, I think clearly that Stalingrad was the most decisive moment of the war. Westerners forget that the main thrust of the war was between Germany and Russia. I mean, there was a lot happening all over the globe but nothing was quite like it was between Germany and Russia in that battle.
CB: Right. Yeah, that makes sense. So these were sent in by listeners. This caused you to go back and look further into Russian history, and you found a bunch of stuff with the different Russian tsars, right?
NDB: Yeah, yeah. Well, one of these I was aware of for quite some time hadn’t occurred to me when we were doing the episode, but I’m really happy to bring this back ‘cause it’s very interesting. I mean, just to introduce, most of the tsars in the last 200 years, 150-200 years of the Russian Empire—prior to the Bolshevik Revolution and everything that followed—most of the tsars were born during eclipse periods; the vast majority of them. And, interestingly, the ones who weren’t—like Peter the Great and Catherine the Great were not—like neither of them came to the throne because they were the absolute sole heir to the throne; they sort of came about through more complicated means and that seems to be the pattern here. Most of the tsars who were born to be a tsar—that is, they were the firstborn child of a tsar—were born during eclipses, but I want to start with probably the most striking example Tsar Paul I first, who was the son of Catherine the Great and Tsar Peter III. Tsar Paul was born on October 1, 1754 at 11:49 AM in St. Petersburg, right in the center of a total lunar eclipse at 8° of Aries.
Now there’s a few things that are interesting just about this alone. His parents were married 9 years earlier on September 1, 1745 when the lunar nodes were reversed to his natal nodes; and this will be important to note in a bit. So his parents were married nine years before he was born, and during that nine-year gap between the wedding and his birth there was a controversy in the Russian court because Peter and Catherine were not producing an heir. I mean, basically the only job that a wife of the tsar, a tsarina had was to produce a male heir for the succession, for the royal succession. So with no baby being born at all Catherine the Great—well, she wasn’t Catherine the Great yet, she was just Princess Catherine. She was being blamed for being barren and Prince Peter was being blamed for being weak, but eventually nine years later she did give birth to Tsar Paul. Now later she would claim that the baby wasn’t even Peter’s, that he was the child of a soldier that she had an affair with, but the truth is Paul really seems exactly like his father. Anyway, I won’t go too far into that. But the long and short of it is, okay, this is Paul’s chart here, and you can see that he’s born at a total lunar eclipse, virtually like at the moment of a total lunar eclipse according to the birth time we have. Royal births were generally really, really well-documented even in the 18th century, so they tend to be among the more solid horoscopes that we have on hand for this period.
CB: Yeah, let me explain it for the audio listeners. The Sun is at 8°5’ of Libra, and it’s very closely conjunct the North Node at 8°34’ of Libra, and the Moon is exactly opposite that at 8°1’ of Aries. So it’s just like not only is he born at the exact lunation, essentially the exact opposition between the Moon and the Sun, but also it’s very closely-conjunct the nodes at the same time.
NDB: Yeah, yeah. It’s very, very tight. Now the thing you need to know about Paul is that his father was murdered in a military coup that was led by his mother. His mother became Catherine the Great because her husband, his father, was overthrown and murdered and in a coup. And so, Paul grew up somewhat bitter towards his mother, and when she died and he took control, he was only in power for four years because, like his father, he would be assassinated—also like his grandson and his great-great-grandson. So on March 24, 1801, soldiers broke into his bedroom and strangled him to death, and this was 10 days following a solar eclipse at 23 Pisces and just six days before a total lunar eclipse at 9 Libra, which is the exact reverse of the eclipse he was born under. Remember that his parents were married when his nodes were reversed and then he’s murdered like at a mirror image eclipse of when he was born, which is really, really startling.
CB: Wow, that’s incredible.
NDB: Right, right. And the one other thing I’ll just say about Paul on this point is that when he became tsar, because he hated his mother so much—there had been a few women who had led Russia even before Catherine the Great; Russia had three or four women tsarinas before Paul. But because he hated his mother, he declared on his coronation that no woman could rule Russia ever again, that it would only be male heirs from then on. And this becomes a really interesting point about a century later, but I’ll come to that in a bit. I’m just gonna put that there in the story.
CB: Let me mention something real quick about his chart ‘cause that’s obviously a negative example. And just looking at the chart, his Sun is at 8° of Libra, his Moon is at 8° of Aries, and both of those are pretty closely square Saturn, which is at 11° of Capricorn. And the Sun is conjunct his Mars in a day chart, which is at 16° of Libra. So it’s like the malefics are very closely-configured with that lunation, that eclipse in his chart. And then interestingly both of the benefics are actually in aversion to it. Because Jupiter is in Virgo, it’s not able to make a major aspect to the Sun or the Moon; and Venus is in Scorpio, so it’s also not able to make a major aspect to the Sun or the Moon. Maybe that’s like part of the reason in terms of understanding why it ended up being something where he came to a pretty negative end on an eclipse subsequently.
NDB: Yeah, exactly. And, I mean, literally his parents, think about it. If your mom has your dad killed in a military coup, I mean, that’s a startling chart just to sort of explain that part of your life story, if you will, so it’s all very striking. Now the interesting thing is Paul was just five weeks younger than King Louis XVI of France. And, yes, I mean that King Louis XVI, the one who will be guillotined in the French Revolution. So King Louis was born August 23, 1754 at 6:45 AM in Versailles. And like Paul’s parents—this is the weirdest thing—just like Paul’s parents, in this case it’s Louis himself, Louis and his wife Marie Antoinette; I’m sure your listeners have all heard of Marie Antoinette. So Louis and his wife, they’re married as teenagers—they’re like 14-15 when they’re married—but they also took a really long time; they took I think like eight or nine years before conceiving a child. And in their case when they did conceive a child, it was a daughter, so they had to wait yet another three years before she delivered a boy and they finally had an heir to the throne.
So this wasn’t the same kind of thing that happened here that happened in Russia. Because you had the royal couple not delivering an heir, the court gets really sort of destabilized and conspiracies start to bubble up. And while neither of these are the sole reason for their relative demise, it certainly contributed to sort of the general ill feeling, the sense that the monarch is weak or that the empress is barren. So that was also just a really striking thing. In this case Louis apparently had some kind of physical impairment that was fixed with a surgery, but, yeah, in the intervening eight years Louis and Marie Antoinette were similarly blamed for not having a child. And as I mentioned, Louis XVI is eventually guillotined during the French Revolution on the 21st of January 1793 at 10:22 AM in Paris. Now Louis wasn’t born during an eclipse; he was born five weeks before Paul. But when he’s guillotined, Louis’s secondary progressed chart is just eight months away from that same total lunar eclipse that Tsar Paul was born under on October 1 of 1754.
So his progressed chart moves very, very close to that eclipse when he’s executed, and then it’s eight months later—even though he’s dead when that progressed chart comes to a perfect lunar eclipse—when the Reign of Terror begins. I mean, sure, he had been guillotined, but this is the period when virtually everyone gets guillotined. And his wife Marie Antoinette is guillotined in October of 1793 not long after that eight-month explosion. So, yeah, it’s very interesting these different things, first of all that both Tsar Paul and King Louis are executed. They’re born five weeks apart, so that’s interesting in itself. And also, just this sort of side story in the case of Paul’s parents and then the case of Louis himself, you have this royal couple who can’t conceive a child and it really stirs the early rumblings that are gonna lead to their eventual overthrow.
CB: Yeah, that’s super fascinating.
NDB: Yeah, yeah. Now like I was saying most of the Romanov tsars were born close to eclipses. One notable exception though is the last tsar, Nicholas II. He was born with the Sun opposite Saturn squaring the nodes. Like he’s born very, very close to the bendings, what we call the bendings, and he had an exact Mercury-Saturn opposition square the nodes. So he was born May 18, 1868 at 2:30 PM in Tsarskoye Selo, which was a village, a royal village, just south of St. Petersburg. And while he wasn’t born during an eclipse, it was his wife, Tsarina Alexandra, she was born during a solar eclipse. She was born on the 6th of June 1872 at 3:45 AM in Darmstadt, Germany. Now she was the granddaughter of Queen Victoria, and like Queen Victoria, they both were Gemini Sun, Gemini Moon and Gemini rising. But Alexandra was born during this eclipse, and she winds up being, if anything, a bit more of the reason behind the eventual overthrow of the Romanov dynasty even more than her husband. So I just want to run through some of the previous tsars, and I’ll get into the story of Nicholas and Alexandra.
CB: Wait. Do you want me to pull up her chart now, or you’re gonna come back to why she’s—
NDB: Yeah, I’ll come back to her. I’ll come back to her and then we’ll put this up. So, first of all, going back to Tsar Paul, his father, Peter III, the one who was assassinated by Catherine the Great, he was born the 21st of February 1728 in Kyiv, and that was four days prior to a lunar eclipse at 5 Virgo and 17 days prior to a solar eclipse at 20 Pisces. So certainly that first one falls within the seven-day window that we’re looking for. Then of course his son Paul I I’ve already covered. Paul had two sons who became tsars; the first one is Alexander I, the one who would fight Napoleon; the one who was actually behind the coup that overthrew his father incidentally.
CB: Did you mean to mention that Peter III was murdered in a coup?
NDB: He was murdered in a coup, like I mentioned earlier involving Catherine the Great. That’s how Catherine ascended to the throne. And then when Paul is murdered, it’s done by military officers who are somewhat in cahoots with Alexander I, or the son who will become Alexander I. I think he believed that they would just arrest him and not murder him, but I think he was kidding himself. Anyway, Alexander I, the tsar who would fight Napoleon, he was born December 23, 1777 at 10:45 AM in St. Petersburg. He was born nine days after a lunar eclipse at 23 Gemini and seven days prior to a solar eclipse at 8 Capricorn. Famously, he had a Capricorn Sun, and when Saturn was conjunct his Sun in Capricorn in 1812, he burned down Moscow just to take it away from Napoleon, which is interesting. Oh, were you gonna put up the chart?
CB: I’m just putting up the notes ‘cause I feel like it may be hard for people to follow. We’ve gone through like Peter III who was born just prior to an eclipse. Paul I was born on an eclipse. Now Alexander I was born nine days after a lunar eclipse and seven days prior to a solar eclipse. So it’s just like eclipse, eclipse, eclipse on each of these births.
NDB: That’s right. And then his younger brother who succeeds him, Nicholas I, born the 6th of July 1796, he’s born 16 days after a lunar eclipse and one day following a total solar eclipse at 13 Cancer. Alexander I and Nicholas I first have the distinction of being born during eclipses but not having been murdered. But then Nicholas I’s son, Alexander II—who’s born on April 29, 1818, eight days following a lunar eclipse and seven days prior to a solar eclipse at 14 Taurus—he’s murdered by revolutionaries in a bomb attack; and he’s the grandfather of Nicholas II. Now there is Alexander II, the only tsar born in the 19th century who was not born during an eclipse. I don’t have him in that list, but he became tsar just because his brother died. And then we get to Nicholas II who, like I said, is born at the bendings, and it’s his wife who has the eclipse chart. And, interestingly enough, when we get back to this story it’s slightly different than the earlier one but it’s kind of similar and it has the same result. She and Nicholas get married just after his father dies—so already some Russians think that she got married like right on the tail of her fiance becoming tsar—and they have four daughters. And remember that Paul made it a law that women could not rule Russia anymore.
So they have four daughters who are perfectly healthy and well-educated and diplomatic and play their roles well, and any of the four would have made a fine empress of Russia. But they have to have a son, and they finally do have a son. But by this point the Russian court is getting really anxious about the fact that they haven’t had a son, and when they finally have one, they soon discover that he’s a hemophiliac and they have to keep this a secret from Russian society and even from their own family; and this opens up this whole Rasputin story who’s helping them with their son. And this is not the only reason but a big part of what leads to their eventual downfall and the Bolshevik Revolution, amidst of course the First World War happening, which has nothing to do with their hemophilic son. But when you combine all that together that’s how they eventually find themselves murdered in a basement and seeing their dynasty end. Yeah, in this case, it’s Alexandra who is the eclipse birth, and you can really see how she tends to be the more the target of the revolution than even her husband was.
CB: Why?
NDB: Because she was born German and they’re at war with Germany, and because, this is the thing, the public sees Rasputin as this sort of weird shaman guy who came from beyond the Urals. They don’t understand why the royal family has brought him into their home. It’s because he seems to have this hypnotic effect on the boy who’s a hemophiliac; he seems to be able to stop the bleeding that the heir suffers from. So no one knows this, so they just think that she’s a German spy who’s conspiring with this madman and that they’re the reason that Russia is losing the war. So, yeah, it’s all a tragic misunderstanding. And the funniest thing is, I mean, Nicholas II was tsar. Theoretically, he could have just changed the law and said women can be tsarina again, but he was too conservative to do something like that. But it’s almost like a giant plot hole in a terrible sitcom. The fact that he had access to a very simple solution to all this and being reluctant to use it led to this terrible downfall that got his whole family murdered.
CB: And let me share her chart really quickly.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: So this is Tsarina Alexandra’s chart, and she has the Sun at 15° Gemini and the Moon at 15 Gemini, so it’s an exact conjunction, and the node is at 12 Gemini. So this is very close to the solar eclipse happening when she was born.
NDB: Exactly, exactly.
CB: Okay.
NDB: And she really also just behind the scenes tends to be the dominant partner in the marriage. Even though her husband is the tsar of Russia, she tends to be the one sort of telling him what to do. And by the time of the war she’s telling them what prime ministers to hire and fire and stuff. So she really is super involved and this just, yeah, compounds the enmity held towards her.
CB: And then for those not familiar with Russian history, what happens at this point is there’s a revolution and this becomes the end of the Russian line of the monarchy and of kings and queens.
NDB: That’s correct, yeah. From here on there’s a revolution. First the tsar is forced to abdicate and there’s a provisional government. Actually the same flag that was raised on Christmas Day 1991 was first introduced in the spring of 1917. But then by the end of 1917, there’s a second revolution, and that’s where the Bolsheviks take over and that’s where Russia becomes the Soviet Union ultimately, the communist country that we’ve known through most of the 20th century.
CB: Got it, okay. So this is really interesting and cool ‘cause this establishes that it’s not just the British monarchy that has these eclipse signatures that echo throughout the different generations and the different kings, but also it’s happening in the Russian monarchy as well, which is super interesting. Which again I think underlines the point that this is us seeing astrology working in action. This is like evidence of astrology working for prominent and powerful people, not necessarily of them planning all of this out or something like that, but that these threads of eclipses and royalty run throughout history. But also, it’s interesting that even though the Russian monarchy died out at this point with Alexandra, we see the eclipse signature be revived later on in terms of important events when we see that eclipse that happened in 1991 at the end of the Soviet Union and the rise of the current Russian Federation, and then we see Vladimir Putin rising to power on an eclipse in 1999, so it’s like these signatures continue running through history.
NDB: Yeah, I mean, that’s the biggest irony about Russian history. You had these three very distinct political entities—the Romanov dynasty, the Soviet Union, and now the current republic—and they’re all supposedly so distinct from each other in ideology and presentation and how they’re organized, and yet there really is this fundamental sort of sameness to them all. It just goes to show that no matter how much revolutionary change you introduce rhetorically and practically into a governing body, the power of culture and tradition—and I guess we call it nationalism—really sort of hold sway through all that change, all that revolution where you really do ultimately have the same country all the way through.
CB: Okay. Yeah, so that’s super interesting, so that’s Russian history. There’s a whole lot more that we could go into.
NDB: I was just gonna mention when I was looking up Louis XVI—just to go to your point, just as I found a lot of Russian tsars born during eclipses—I did just offhandedly, when I did a search in my file for France, notice that a lot of the French kings also were born close to eclipses. I didn’t put in a whole other chronology to talk about, but just to your point about royals, yeah, it’s not just the British crown, it was the French crown when it existed, and it was the Russian crown when it existed.
CB: Right, that’s so interesting. So I want to move outside of Europe at this point. I want to move into other areas of the world. One of the ones that I found recently—I was looking into Chinese history and found that the founding of the current Chinese government and state happened on an eclipse back in 1949. So the People’s Republic of China was formally proclaimed by Mao Zedong, the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, on October 1, 1949 in Beijing, and this was right before a lunar eclipse took place just days later on October 7 in the sign of Aries. So I thought that was super interesting seeing that. Here’s the chart for that where we see the Sun is in Libra the at 7° of Libra, the South Node is at 16 Libra, the Moon is either in late Capricorn or early Aquarius, and so it’s heading towards that lunation, which would be a lunar eclipse in the sign of Aries just days later.
NDB: Right.
CB: So there we go.
NDB: And that’s the same month that Benjamin Netanyahu is born of course, and we already talked about that same eclipse in his context, just to sort of make the connections in time. And there were a number of things that followed in the People’s Republic of China and their history that also occurred during eclipses; the first posters that introduced the Cultural Revolution in 1966. They got into a little border conflict with the Soviet Union in March of 1969 close to an eclipse, and also the famous opening up of diplomatic relations, like Richard Nixon first meeting with Mao Zedong in China in February ‘72 happened close to an eclipse. So, yeah, overall you can follow a lot of their history since and even before close to eclipses.
CB: Yeah. And Chinese history is so old and rich that I’d love to delve into that more deeply at some point, and I’m sure people that have more of a background in Chinese history could probably tell us of some other major historical touchstones or major rulers who either were born on eclipses or important events in Chinese history that happened on eclipses. We’ll leave it there for now, but that’s definitely one I’d like to research further.
NDB: Yeah, I’m very interested in that for that exact reason. You have a culture that’s been keeping calendar documented history for thousands of years, so it’s a real gift for astrologers. Anyone who can learn all that history and disseminate all the astrology involved, thousands of years of it, I’m sure will be really valuable to future studies. I’m doing my best there, but it’ll take an expert I’m sure.
CB: Yeah, I mean, there’s different ones that we specialize in more or less. We tended to focus on the histories that we had more familiarity with in the last episode, whereas this one we’re delving into ones that are more outside of our specialty ranges so far. I’ve specialized in ancient Greco-Roman history from the Hellenistic period due to my focus on Hellenistic astrology, and some of the modern Western stuff or just things that I learned in school I focused on in the last episode ‘cause I wanted to connect with some of the major things that a normal English speaker, especially an American, learns in grade school, like Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on a bus and the fact that that coincided with an eclipse or other things like that in that last episode, but here we’re looking to other areas.
Yeah, so let’s move on to other countries ‘cause there were some other good ones that were sent in by other listeners, one of them is Mexico. One was sent in a comment by @jimenaonearth’ on Instagram where they pointed out that the current president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected to represent Mexico City a day after a lunar eclipse. So he was elected July 2, 2020—sorry, July 2, 2000, almost 20 years ago, more than 20 years ago, and then a solar eclipse had just taken place in Cancer on July 1. And then, interestingly, 18 years later he was elected president just a few days before an eclipse, being elected July 1 of 2018, and then an eclipse happened on July 12, 2018 in the sign of Cancer. So that’s a really interesting one in terms of recent Mexican history and politics.
NDB: Indeed, indeed.
CB: And I’m sure there’s a bunch more there in terms of that history as well. So if anybody specializes more in that, please send those in if you find any. Next, moving on to Brazil, a listener named Ana Fialho sent in one. I’ll actually just read out their comment. They said, “In Brazil, women were first allowed to vote 11 days before a solar eclipse in Pisces. The law was passed on February 24, 1932, and the solar eclipse was on March 7.” Then they point out there was a lunar eclipse in Libra on March 22. So that was interesting in terms of a parallel with the one we explored in US history of women given the right to vote on eclipses earlier in the 20th century, and here Ana’s pointing out that there was a parallel in Brazilian history.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Elsewhere—go ahead.
NDB: Yeah, I was just gonna say I sort of took that as a jumping off point from Ana and I looked into my Brazilian file. The president of Brazil at the time, when women were granted the vote, was a man named Getúlio Vargas; he was in power when women were given the vote. And he was born on April 19, 1883, at 11:43 PM, in São Borja, Brazil, and it was three days before a lunar eclipse in Scorpio and 17 days prior to a total solar eclipse at 15 Taurus. So he was born during an eclipse, and furthermore, he was appointed to the presidency. I think there was like an uprising and he wound up sort of getting the seat, and this was November 3, 1930 in Rio, 27 days following a lunar eclipse and 14 days following a total solar eclipse at 27 Libra. So he became president a little bit out of the range that we’re using, but he was born very close to an eclipse. And the whole uprising that led to him being appointed to the presidency certainly took place during that eclipse period in 1930. So it’s funny, in terms of sort of getting to that point where women were granted the vote, you can even see how the person in power and their path to power also coincided with eclipses.
CB: Yeah, that’s incredible.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Well, thanks to Ana for sending that in and starting us on that research track. That was a really great one for Brazil. So let’s move on to a different country. A longtime listener and patron of the podcast and often helpful researcher who contributes stuff pointed out a couple of things or a few things about India. This is from Vandana Gyan who said that India’s current prime minister, Narendra Modi was born on the 17th of September 1950, just 5 days after a total solar eclipse on the 12th of September 1950 in the sign of Virgo, so that’s really interesting in terms of the current prime minister. And then going back in time, Vandana also pointed out that India’s first female prime minister, Indira Gandhi, was assassinated on the 31st of October 1984, just a week before a lunar eclipse on the 7th of November 1984 in Taurus. So this event, they said, led to massive unrest within the Sikh community in India. So that one of course is familiar to us ‘cause that was like the day before I was born when that assassination took place. So that lunar eclipse that Vandana’s pointing to is the one that took place just after I was born and coincided with that assassination.
NDB: Yeah. And prior to that—I did have that in my database—I remembered that it was close to an eclipse. But what precipitated that assassination—Indira Gandhi was murdered by her Sikh bodyguards. And what had happened was a few months earlier, on June 4, 1984, the Indian army attacked the Sikh Golden Temple in Amritsar. They were hoping to arrest this particular Sikh separatist figure, but innocent people wound up getting killed. Then of course just the very act of having the Indian army, largely Hindu soldiers presumably, invading this very important temple in Sikh culture, in the Sikh religion, was itself just a travesty to them. So when the army went into the temple, this was just five days after a solar eclipse and nine days prior to a lunar eclipse in Gemini and Sagittarius respectively. So by the time she’s assassinated a few months later, close to the next set of eclipses, this was really all brought about by this act that blew up at the previous pair of eclipses, around the time of the previous pair of eclipses.
CB: Wow, that’s incredible.
NDB: Yeah, yeah. And then, furthermore, this was a really rough year for India. And this goes to our point that the eclipses at this point that, the ones that I looked at, the paths didn’t go anywhere really near India, but India really seemed to be singled out. Because just about a month after Indira Gandhi’s murder, there was this terrible tragedy, the Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal, India. There was a poisonous gas leak that killed so many of the citizens of this place, a very, very poor area of India, sort of in the middle of the country. And this was a huge tragedy, and this was nine days following that same total solar eclipse at 0 Sagittarius that followed Indira Gandhi’s murder and your birth.
CB: Wow, that’s amazing. I remember watching a documentary about that at one point with Leisa, and it was like covered up or something, wasn’t it?
NDB: Well, yeah. I mean, you can just imagine this huge multinational company versus just the poorest of the poorest people; you know how those things tend to play out.
CB: Yeah.
NDB: For anyone watching, there are a few good documentaries on it; it’s a well-known case. But, yeah, at the time they were definitely trying to minimize the damage; ‘damage control’, as they call it.
CB: So that’s a really interesting one that’s really heartbreaking. Like having a disaster like that and having so many people killed is really messed up. And it’s interesting that it’s almost like a parallel with the Chernobyl disaster that we talked about in the last episode, and sometimes how you have these freak accidents or things that happen on eclipses like Chernobyl. Titanic was another disaster that happened that we talked about in the last episode. So this one goes along with that pretty well.
NDB: Yeah. And the Bhopal thing was only just a little more than a year before Chernobyl, so it really was the era. Bhopal was in December of ‘84 and Chernobyl was in April of ‘86, so it’s like a-year-and-four-months between them.
CB: It wasn’t in the same signs, right? Probably it shifted by that point.
NDB: Yeah. I don’t remember Chernobyl off the top of my head, but we can pull it up. But it can’t be that far apart ‘cause it’s only just a little over a year apart.
CB: Yeah. Well, let’s skip it for now so we can get to the rest in the time that we have left. But one of the things Austin suggested to us at some point to research is also which eclipses are taking place conjunct the North Node and which ones are taking place conjunct the South Node. And that’s an area that we haven’t really focused on as an additional layer or filter that we could apply at some point to see if there’s differences in eclipses, but that’s one avenue of research that could be worth looking into in the future.
NDB: Mm-hmm.
CB: So to round out this section, if you’re good—
NDB: No, I’m good.
CB: Okay, cool. So one of the things I wanted to say, obviously, we’re getting into history and territory and different cultural things that are in some instances new to us or out of our depth of expertise, so we’re always open to corrections if somebody wants to point out something. If we made a mistake or if there’s a different interpretation or understanding of something, let us know for sure. We’re doing our best here ‘cause we’re trying to be astrologers and research these things. But something I’ve always tried to do over the years is not speak on things that I don’t have as much familiarity with, where I can’t speak authoritatively. I’ve tried to learn and cultivate when to be quiet when you are not in a place to really know what you’re talking about, and so sometimes I get nervous going into different topics or some of the topics we’ve talked about in this episode because of that. But we’re doing our best with this research, so please keep that in mind. If you have critiques or criticisms, try to put them somewhat respectfully since we’re doing our best, and I’m sure any critiques are coming from a good place as well.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: But other than that I’m sure there’s tons of histories and other things that we haven’t gotten into that we’ve overlooked in different countries and we’d love to hear more, so I’m putting out a genuine call. A lot of these came from listeners, and so we’ve been able to compile this and create a much larger body of research in this second episode as a result and start some new threads, but I’m sure there’s lots more to be found. So I’m looking forward to listeners joining us and playing an active role in helping to participate in this research by doing their own research in their own areas of specialty and letting us know what you find. All right, sound good?
NDB: Yep, yep.
CB: All right, cool. So I wanted to do a brief section on technology since that was kind of one of the things we touched on a little bit in the last episode, and we got a few new ones in that area. The first one was actually noticed again by Vandana Gyan who sent this one in and pointed out that Google was actually founded on an eclipse on September 4, 1998, and then there was a lunar eclipse just two days later in Pisces on September 6. So I thought that one was really cool because it’s a nice kind of continuation of the communications eclipses that we were seeing in the last episode in the Virgo/Pisces axis, where we saw one eclipse take place on the day that Alexander Graham Bell made the first telephone call—and that eclipse I think was in Virgo—and then we saw another eclipse take place in the early 1990s when Tim Berners-Lee made the proposal for what would become the World Wide Web. And I think that was another eclipse that was in Pisces that time, and now here we see a continuation of that in terms of communications and the internet and things like that with another eclipse here at the founding of Google, with the lunar eclipse in Pisces.
NDB: Yeah, pretty amazing.
CB: Yeah, so that’s pretty cool. Also, to round out something that happened in the past month connected with one of our examples last time, we had pointed out how eclipses over the past several years have been coinciding; for example, the creation of the first website for Bitcoin was very close to an eclipse. And then we noticed that there have been many events over the past year or two that we documented in the last episode about Bitcoin and the rise and fall of it that have coincided with eclipses, and one of them was that a year ago, the FTX scandal happened on a Taurus eclipse last November of 2022. Well, just in the past week, the founder of FTX—who was at the center of that scandal with Bitcoin and caused that huge financial crisis—was just convicted in court and will be sentenced to prison as a result of that. So that happened very close to the next Taurus eclipse that just took place over the past week, which kind of rounds out that story and that sequence of eclipses that were connected with that.
NDB: Yep.
CB: So that’s pretty cool. And then one other—this was also sent in by a listener. Shoutout to @visual_astrology on YouTube who in a comment pointed out the second part—but the first part is that Edward Snowden was actually born very close to a lunar eclipse. He was born June 21, 1983, and there was a lunar eclipse days later on June 25 in Capricorn. And he was the whistleblower who basically was working for the United States, like the NSA, who flew to Hong Kong and then eventually to Russia and disclosed to reporters that the US was basically spying on international communications around the world through the internet way back in 2013. And interestingly, what this commenter, visual_astrology on YouTube, pointed out was that he actually flew to Hong Kong and started the disclosures around the time of eclipses in 2013. So he flew to Hong Kong on May 20, 2013, then there was a lunar eclipse on May 25 in Sagittarius, and then he met reporters shortly after that. And the first story related to the Snowden disclosures was published on June 5, and then it became this huge worldwide media sensation and there was a lot of discussion about it, if anybody remembers that, about 10 years ago now.
NDB: Yeah, and he’s still there, if you can imagine being in Russia now.
CB: Yeah, so that was a big deal and it was important in terms of the technology thing, and, yeah, I thought it was good to round out that segment.
NDB: Absolutely.
CB: So one other segment that another listener pointed out was sports. So we didn’t do a lot with sports I don’t think in the last episode, did we?
NDB: No, no. I do some research in sports but not a lot, usually just boxing and ice hockey, so this was all very interesting to me.
CB: Yeah, so one listener pointed out—and I forgot about this, but I remember seeing it at the time ‘cause it was much commented on the news—back in 2004, the Boston Red Sox won the World Series in a baseball game the same night as a lunar eclipse in Taurus. And this was the first eclipse to ever take place during a World Series baseball game, and it was actually visible from the stadium. So they actually watched it as the game was happening. So this was the Red Sox’s first win of a World Series in 86 years, which ended a sort of legend that had developed at that point that was called the ‘Curse of the Bambino’ that was named after Babe Ruth, who was a famous baseball player who played for the Red Sox. And the Red Sox were one of the most successful professional baseball franchises up to that point, but then he was sold or traded to the New York Yankees in the 1920s. And from that point forward the Red Sox didn’t win any World Series games for the next 80-something years until this lunar eclipse took place in 2004 in Taurus and suddenly they won this game, and it was kind of a notable spectacle and news and media sensation at the time.
NDB: Yep. I don’t follow baseball, and even I remember it.
CB: Yeah, I remember it. That was an important eclipse ‘cause I was getting ready to move to Seattle. And I think that was the one that happened in my 4th house, and it was one of the ones that pushed me into entertaining whole sign houses more than I did because I realized that I was relocating on this very visible and important eclipse that was taking place at that time in my 4th house.
NDB: Yeah, for sure. And it was right around that same eclipse that I was moving to Cumberland—yeah, predating your move there—so that was big for me, too.
CB: Got it, okay. And I’m trying to find the name really quickly of the commenter who pointed that out, but I’m actually having trouble finding it, so I apologize. We were throwing all these in a document as they were coming in and then I went back and tried to find some names. But I wanted to give a shoutout to him. If he wants to leave a comment on this episode to let us know that he was the one that pointed that out, I’ll give you a personal thank you.
NDB: Yes. A shoutout in the meantime to say, “Sorry, we haven’t shouted you out.”
CB: For sure. All right, in the very last section in this episode, I want to do a brief section on writers. First, this is by a commenter—I think somebody said this on TikTok; there were a couple different people that pointed it out. But Stephanie Meyer, who was the writer of the Twilight and Eclipse books, actually it turns out was born the day of a solar eclipse in Capricorn, which is pretty interesting. I know that’s your favorite series, Twilight, Nick.
NDB: Yeah, absolutely. I love the sparkly vampires.
CB: Exactly. Yeah, a big Twilight fan. But speaking of great writers, or more seriously, you actually have one that you researched that turns out to be a very compelling example. And this is gonna be our final example I think of this episode, right?
NDB: Yeah, yeah. I think someone just mentioned Mark Twain. And so, I had a pretty substantial Mark Twain chart file in my database, so I decided to look up eclipses in his life, and it was quite the revelation. It doesn’t have that much to do with his writing career, it has more to do with his family, and births and deaths in his family. I can run you through the various people and events, but the TLDR of all this is not only was Mark Twain himself born and would die close to eclipses, he was famously born and died close to the passing of Halley’s Comet; but aside from that, he was also born and died very close to eclipses. But his wife was also born close to an eclipse and they were married close to an eclipse. Mark Twain’s mother died close to an eclipse and his father died close to an eclipse. And he and his wife, as I said, they were married during an eclipse, they were both born during eclipses. They had four children, and three of his kids died prior to his death. Like he saw three of his four children die, and all three of them died during eclipses. The only one of his children who did not die during an eclipse was his daughter Clara who lived until 1962 long after him, the only one who survived him.
And then there were other things—he received an honorary degree at Oxford University alongside Rudyard Kipling and Auguste Rodin, the sculptor, close to an eclipse. So there were some good things, but it’s mostly like these really sort of tragic things. Also, he went bankrupt close to an eclipse in 1894. Mark Twain—it’s really funny, he made a lot of money, but he invested it in this printing press that was supposed to be this sort of newfangled technology. He went bankrupt investing in this, but in the meantime he had a telephone in his house and didn’t think the telephone was a worthy object to invest in. And so, yeah, he lost all his money and had to go on a big speaking tour. But anyway, I’ll take you through these events just to sort of fill out what I just presented there.
CB: Let me show his chart real quick.
NDB: Yeah, yeah, please do.
CB: Actually one thing first before that. So I just looked up and found the name of the Red Sox commenter, and this is a listener and patron of the podcast. So a shoutout to Jeff DesVerney who sent in the comment about the Red Sox. All right, back to Mark Twain. I try to cite my sources as much as I can.
NDB: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
CB: All right, here’s Mark Twain.
NDB: That’s a good one. That’s definitely one we wouldn’t have found. Like I do study other countries’ histories, but I don’t study much baseball, so that was a really great one.
CB: Yeah, well, and I’m sure there’s actually tons of other sports ones. So if somebody follows sports—I’m not like a big sports guy, but I’m sure there’s a ton of different sports threads that would be interesting to study for eclipses.
NDB: Absolutely, absolutely. We need more sports astrology. I’m not much of a sports fan myself, so I’m not the one, but someone needs to do it.
CB: Sure.
NDB: All right, so Mark Twain.
CB: So here’s his chart. This time—what’s our situation with the time on Twain?
NDB: Yeah, it’s just ambiguous ‘cause we don’t know what source it comes from. It was published in a couple of astrology magazines back in the day, I mean, fairly reputable magazines. But we just don’t know what the source is so it’s just sort of up in the air.
CB: Okay, so don’t rely on this time. But what we do have is a chart where the Sun is gonna be firmly at about 7° of Sagittarius, and it’s pretty close to the South Node, which is at 29° of Scorpio, and his Moon is somewhere in the middle of Aries. So he was actually born in between two eclipses; he was born November 30 of 1835. There was a solar eclipse 10 days before he was born on November 20 in Scorpio, and then there was a lunar eclipse a few days after he was born on December 4 at 12° of Gemini.
NDB: Yeah, just four days after. And that lunar eclipse is opposite his Mars, which may or may not be sort of worth noting, but it just catches my eye right now.
CB: Okay.
NDB: Yeah, so he’s born very close to an eclipse. And then are you gonna put charts up for all the examples I’m about to present here? ‘Cause there are a lot of them, I realize.
CB: No, I think it would take too long.
NDB: Okay.
CB: But I could put up the outline, if you want.
NDB: Yeah, maybe put up the outline. ‘Cause like the Russian tsars, it’s such a long laundry list that it might be overwhelming without a visual presentation.
CB: So he was born on eclipses and he was also born during Halley’s Comet?
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Could you explain for the people not familiar with that?
NDB: Yeah, that’s just sort of a famous part of his legend. Halley’s Comet passes by Earth, I think it’s every 75 years, 74 or 75 years. He would die at about 74-and-a-half. So when he was born, Halley’s Comet was passing by Earth, and not too long before he died he made a statement like, “Well, I was born close to the passing of Halley’s Comet. No doubt I will die at its passing, too.” And that is what happened, so it’s like he predicted his own death. Now, mind you, he was an old guy, and the older you are the easier it is to pinpoint or predict when you’re gonna leave, but nonetheless, it’s part of his legend.
CB: Sure. And for people not familiar with American history, Mark Twain is basically one of the most famous American writers of all time I think at this point, right?
NDB: Yeah, absolutely. Certainly of the 19th century. And he was a big celebrity. That’s the thing, a lot of famous writers, their work lives on after they die and they might only become famous after they go or they’re relatively uncelebrated. But he was a major international figure. Towards the end of his life, he’s having dinners with emperors. He met Kaiser Wilhelm. He met all the European leaders, and, yeah, very, very celebrated and an important voice globally. And he did world tours—I’ll get to that in a moment. I wanted to come back to the idea of when we’re talking about Halley’s Comet. First of all, Mark Twain’s real name is Samuel Clemens. And if we’re not talking about him as an author, really he’s Sam Clemens, and most of this has to do more with Sam Clemens than it does Mark Twain.
So Clemens’ mother died of a liver ailment when he was I think not quite four-years-old. Margaret Clemens died of a liver ailment on August 17, 1839, seven days before a lunar eclipse at 0 Pisces and 21 days before a solar eclipse at 14 Virgo. So it was within that seven days before an eclipse began when she died. Now the thing that happened, and this is interesting, is of course he was just a little kid, but apparently he would walk in his sleep. And apparently as his mother was dying, he was walking in his sleep right past her bed and then she died. And his family superstitiously took this to suggest that he had mystical powers, and he had to deal with this sort of stigma for the rest of his life of people thinking that he was psychic or mystical or something of that nature.
CB: Like in a good way? That sounds kind of bad.
NDB: Kind of ominous.
CB: Right.
NDB: I mean, if you predict when people are gonna die, it’s creepy. I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but it’s creepy. Or people who believe that are gonna be creeped out by it.
CB: I just wasn’t sure if his family took it negatively or that he had a stigma or something associated with that, which would suck if that’s how they took it.
NDB: Yeah, I don’t think it’s quite that, but I think it is still sort of fearsome to them. How severe it might have been, I’m not entirely.
CB: Sure.
NDB: Now the next up in the timeline is, as I mentioned, Twain’s wife, Olivia Langdon Clemens, who was also born close to an eclipse. She was born on the 27th of November 1845, in Elmira, New York. And she was born 14 days after a lunar eclipse in Taurus. So she’s a little bit outside our window but very, very close, just an honorable mention. Clemens’ father died when he was not quite 12-years-old, 11-and-a-half. John Marshall Clemens died on March 24, 1847, seven days before a lunar eclipse and 21 days before a total solar eclipse, so that does fall within the window. Yeah, maybe you’ll want to follow what I’m saying with your tracer so it’s easier. Yeah, that’s the example I just talked about, his father. So far we’ve got his mother dying, his wife being born, his father dying. Now onto one of the few that actually has to do with his career.
Twain was not just an author, he was a great public speaker. He kind of invented or contributed to inventing stand-up comedy in the sense that he used to go into these theaters and just give these lectures, but they were very funny stories. Every review you hear about his public speaking appearances is that he just had the audience in stitches. And this is Victorian era, it’s not as easy to make audiences laugh, they’re a little more sort of upright. So he gave the very first lecture of his career on the 2nd of October 1866 in San Francisco, and this was eight days after a total lunar eclipse and six days before a solar eclipse, so right in the middle of that eclipse period. And then about six months later, he goes back to Missouri, his home state, and he does a little mini-tour. He gives five talks in Missouri starting on March 25, 1867 in St. Louis, and he gives the same talk he had given in San Francisco, but this really gets his public speaking career underway to sort of supplement his writing career and his writing income. So these lectures also occurred just five days following a lunar eclipse.
Right, so the next event is he gets married. Samuel Clemens marries Olivia Langdon February 2, 1870 in Elmira, New York and that’s just two days after a solar eclipse. So remember both of them were born very, very close to eclipses. Their first son died of diphtheria when he was very young. He was only 18-months-old but he died very close to an eclipse on June 2, 1872. This is their only son. They would have four kids: one boy and three girls. And so, the boy dies very young at only 18 months and that is three days prior to a solar eclipse at 15 Gemini and 11 days following a lunar eclipse.
CB: Backing up to the previous one, the fact that he and his wife were born on eclipse is really interesting ‘cause that’s like a parallel with, for example, Prince William and Kate Middleton both being born on eclipses. That might be relevant in terms of synastry and relationship astrology and other things like that.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: That could be a potential indicator for synastry things.
NDB: Yeah, exactly. I mean, for Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens, these eclipses really do seem to have to do with that, but obviously they vary in outcomes from person to person.
CB: Right.
NDB: But, yeah, on top of Langdon Clemens dying, I’ll get to them. I’m doing the list chronologically as opposed to by topic. Maybe I should have done it by topic, but I’m just doing it chronologically. The next one is in 1894. Mark Twain loses all his investment money because he didn’t invest in the telephone; he didn’t see it as a worthwhile investment. And so, on April 18, 1894, the company that he’s been investing in, they declare bankruptcy, and this leads to him losing most of his money. And it’s 13 days following a solar eclipse, but again it’s a little outside our window. But everything that’s building up to him losing all that money has been occurring during the eclipse, so it’s another one of the honorary mentions. Finally, because he loses all his money, he has to go on an international speaking tour, and he goes with his wife and two of his daughters, but the third daughter stays home because she wants to study to be an opera singer.
This is Susy Clemens. So she stays back in Hartford, Connecticut where they live, while he, his wife, and his other two daughters are in Europe and they’re doing this big world tour where he’s giving these big lectures and dining with kings and emperors. Susy Clemens gets spinal meningitis—she dies of spinal meningitis while he’s away on this tour—and this occurred just five days prior to a lunar eclipse and nine days following a total solar eclipse at 17 Leo. And I know that this was just devastating for Twain, the fact that he and his family were away when his daughter died. It was something that he could never sort of forgive himself for, and consequently, he was harder on himself for having lost all his money because it was that bankruptcy that forced him to go on the tour to be away from home and then his daughter died, so he sees it as this terrible chain of events that really sort of haunts him.
CB: Yeah, that’s terrible.
NDB: Yeah. Now we move into the last decade of his life. Twain receives an honorary degree from Oxford University alongside Rudyard Kipling and Auguste Rodin on the 26th of June 1907 in Oxford, England. This is 14 days prior to a solar eclipse and 29 days prior to a lunar eclipse in Aquarius, so this is a little outside our window. But this is a very important day for Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain, one that he’s wanted to happen all his life—he’s wanted that kind of recognition—so it is pretty close and a worthy honorary mention. Finally, he moved into his last home the following year, June 18 of 1908 in Reading, Connecticut, four days following a lunar eclipse and 10 days prior to a solar eclipse at 6 Cancer. Alas, unfortunately, the following year, his third child to precede him to the grave, Jean Clemens, who is his youngest daughter, she dies in that same house that they’ve just moved into the previous year. I think she helped prepare the Christmas decorations and then she went upstairs to take a bath, and she apparently had some kind of seizure in the bath, and they found her the next morning.
So she probably died the evening of December 23, 1909 in Reading, but she was found the next morning. And this was 12 days following a solar eclipse and 27 days following a lunar eclipse. So, again, a little bit outside our window but very, very close, especially considering that this is his third child to die this close to an eclipse. And finally, to end this long list, almost as long as one of his books, Mark Twain died on April 21, 1910 at 6:22 PM in Reading Connecticut, 18 days prior to a total solar eclipse and 33 days prior to a total lunar eclipse. So it’s a little bit outside again but very, very close. And considering he was born under one and he died under one and his wife was born under one and he got married under one, yeah, there’s a lot to tie in here.
CB: Yeah, that is a lot.
NDB: Some close calls, but some mostly hits, yeah.
CB: Yeah, for him personally, some of the most important events in his life. And they not only bookend the beginning and end of his life, like you said—in the same way that we have that parallel with, more recently, Matthew Perry that we talked about towards the beginning of the episode—but then many of these just hugely pivotal events throughout his life coincided with eclipses.
NDB: Yeah, yeah. It really seems to have followed him around. And again, like in my file, I do have the charts of when he published Tom Sawyer and when he published Huckleberry Finn, the things he’s really famous for. Those didn’t happen during eclipses, it really seems to be his family, and his family was very, very important to him. I mean, part of the reason he wrote as much as he did was to support his family. So, yeah, he felt that he really screwed it up in the end by going bankrupt and triggering the series of events that led to him losing Susy. So, yeah, there’s a lot of tragedy. We think of him as a funny man and one who generally brought sort of a certain amount of levity and wisdom with him. But obviously, like with a lot of people, there was a lot of really hard stuff to cope with, and I can’t think of anything harder than losing a child let alone three.
CB: Yeah, I’m just looking at his chart like we did with some of the others. And it’s like we don’t know the time, so we don’t know the sect for sure. But if he was born during the day, it’s like I can see that Mars is very close to his Sun. He has the Sun in Sagittarius at 7° and then Mars is at 12° of Sag, and then Venus is at 21 Sag. So it’s like you have a malefic and a benefic that are co-present with the Sun, and perhaps there’s something about that that’s bringing sometimes very challenging things and other times very positive things, like his marriage, when some of these eclipses are hitting in his life at different points.
NDB: Yeah, yeah. I was wondering about that myself, yeah.
CB: It’s just something curious that we’re still trying to figure out. And since this is a methodology that we’ve developed somewhat recently—learning some of the ins and outs of it and how to distinguish between one eclipse versus another or how the eclipse signature is really gonna line up in a person’s life—that’s a really good example that’s giving us some ideas. Another really stunning example is the one we ended with—Nelson Mandela—in the last episode, having so many positive and negative events in his life coinciding with eclipses; and showing another life here, of somebody born on an eclipse that then had that eclipse signature echo throughout his life at different points.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, it’s too bad we don’t have birth times for Nelson Mandela or a reasonably reliable one for Mark Twain because it would be really interesting to know—okay, so both of them have a lot of eclipses happening in their lives. But why is it kids and marriage for Mark Twain, and why is it like arrests and life sentences and things of that nature for Mandela? What houses are these triggering? What is the reason for these very sort of specific contexts in both their cases that are completely different from each other but really consistent within the life of the given individual?
CB: Yeah, I’m sure there’s an answer to that, or there are some answers out there, but we’ll have to leave that up to future research, perhaps future episodes. We’ll have to see what people think. And if we keep finding other eclipse stuff, we might do a follow-up at some point.
NDB: That’s right, that’s right.
CB: Why don’t we transition into wrapping up here ‘cause we’re gonna do a strikingly concise episode at just under two hours here for this one.
NDB: Wow.
CB: Yeah, exactly, that’s notable. So in terms of wrapping up we know that there’s other major eclipses out there that we haven’t found yet, and we hope that listeners will look into their own special interest categories and find some and then let us know. Because there’s a difference between somebody that’s trying to research something that’s not very familiar or where it’s a new subject to them—like some of the subjects are to to me for example—versus somebody who that’s their favorite subject, that’s something they specialize in, or they come from that place or that culture, or they specialize in that field of work or study or what have you. Knowing the ins and outs of something you know the history much better and you know what to look for and can do a much better job of that. So I’m really hoping that listeners will look into some of those different categories of things that they’re really into and dig deep and find some other great eclipse connections that are out there in world history in different areas.
So this has opened up a whole new area of research, and we’re still getting a handle on it, but the results already I think are astounding. And I’m sure there’s a lot more to find as we continue to find more and continue to refine this approach, as we learn more about it. So in the end I think astrology is even more strange and interesting and beautiful than we even imagined at this point, which is saying something. I think as astrologers we already have that sense that astrology is amazing and it’s amazing that it works and does as much as it can, but adding this new layer with eclipses has taken it to just like another level in terms of what is the nature of the universe and the magical way in which some of this works out and the intersection between fate and free will and fortune and destiny and the role of the individual versus the collective and everything else. There’s so many great questions and implications from this that we’re still uncovering, but I’m really excited about where it’s heading. And, yeah, it was really fun doing this research with you, Nick. Thanks for doing it with me, and thanks for coming back again for part two.
NDB: Yeah, thank you. I think it’s really obvious that when you look at astrology at this level, as far as the fate and free will question is concerned, things are certainly a lot more mapped out than one would expect. Whatever the ultimate answer is there’s a lot that really does seem to be predestined in some way, pre-designed.
CB: Yeah, and that’s really fascinating to me, seeing those threads of destiny and seeing some of those things in the birth chart and how it connects to events in a person’s life that are super important. All eclipses are sort of mapped out ahead of time through the astronomical certainty of things, and it’s interesting seeing the intersection between people’s circumstances and their choices, especially around the time of eclipses and how that comes together in order to create a person’s destiny or fate or what have you.
NDB: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don’t claim to know the answer, but it sure seems a lot more mapped out than you would expect at the end of the day.
CB: Yeah, I would agree with that. But maybe that could be an episode at some point, talking about that and the implications of this for discussions about fate and free will and everything else.
NDB: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think it’s pretty obvious that different people have access to different levels of free will. Like some of us just have more freedom than others. Some people are born with very, very little choice in life, and some people have a whole variety of options available to them.
CB: I don’t know if I would draw the same conclusion. I think we have the experience of making choices, and I think that’s really important because part of life is making choices and being responsible for them in different ways. But then also I do think that things are more predetermined than we realize at first and that astrology gives you hints of that and that that’s true for everyone. So that’s a whole other topic though, so we’ll shelve that for now for the sake of this two-hour episode.
NDB: I wasn’t challenging you. But sure, yes, I know we wanted to get it under two hours, and now we’ve just blown that.
CB: No, we’re good.
NDB: Close enough.
CB: So you are a consulting astrologer, you offer consultations. And people have been really excited about the reception of your Dagan Astrology Database for Solar Fire. The reception has been amazing, and people have been purchasing it and using it and getting a lot out of it over the past few weeks since we launched that in the last ‘eclipses’ episode.
NDB: Yeah, I mean, virtually all the research that we did for today’s episode, or any of the research you’ve ever seen me contribute to any episode of The Astrology Podcast was done using my chart database that I use in Solar Fire, but can also run on Astro Gold. I also run it on Astro Gold. So, yeah, this is just an introductory offer. It’s not my whole database—it’s three files from my database—but eventually I want to make the whole database available to people. But this is sort of an introductory offer to gauge the interest, and the interest has been formidable, so we’re really happy about that. So, yeah, the Dagan Astrology Database—or I like to call it the ‘DADbase’—is a large downloadable astrology chart database. There’s three files in it: one is a general natal file that has over 13,000 timed and untimed birth charts, then there’s an American history file and a British history file that has both nativities and events in those countries’ histories.
And, like I said, this is just the first part of my database that I’m offering, there’s a lot more there. For instance, all the material I used talking about Mark Twain or about Russian history, I have a Mark Twain file, I have a Russia file, I have all kinds of different files that astrology students and researchers might be interested in having. And of course I want to make them available and affordable, so this has been the first step towards doing that. If you’re interested, it’s at theastrologypodcast.com/database; you can avail yourself of this introductory offer. It’ll probably be a little more expensive when I launch the whole thing proper, so you might want to get in while the cost is low. And, yeah, besides that I am available for consultations at NickDaganBestAstrologer.com. Natal readings, relocation, electionals, rectification, you name it, I’m your one-stop-shop.
CB: So people should check out your website, which is NickDaganBestAstrologer.com. They can get the database at theastrologypodcast.com/database. And we forgot to mention in the last episode but it’s primarily for Solar Fire, and it’s searchable in Solar Fire, but it can actually also be imported into Astro Gold so those that use Astro Gold for Mac can also use the database.
NDB: That’s right. It is apparently more shareable than we could have even hoped for.
CB: Awesome, cool.
NDB: Yeah, yeah.
CB: As for myself, if you want to learn more about my approach to astrology and specifically how I read birth charts, if you’re looking for a good course to study natal astrology, the primary course I teach is my Hellenistic astrology course where I take people from basic concepts of Western astrology up through intermediate and advanced techniques, including timing techniques. And you can find out more about that, as well as my other courses on electional or horary or rectification at courses.TheAstrologySchool.com. And if you like this research that we’re doing here on the eclipses episode and the other one, or want to support the podcast and support this research that we’re doing so we can keep doing episodes like this, I’d encourage you to support me through my page on Patreon which is Patreon.com/AstrologyPodcast. And there you can get subscriber or patron benefits, like early access to new episodes, exclusive episodes that are only for patrons; or even the show notes that we showed a little bit in this episode I make available to patrons as an exclusive benefit. So if you want to support that work and support what I’m doing here in the podcast, if you get a lot out of it and you want to show your support, go to Patreon.com/AstrologyPodcast.
All right, I think that’s it for this episode. Thanks so much for doing part two with me. This has been amazing. Like I said, this is probably some of the most important work I feel like I’ve done, even though we’re up to 400 episodes and I’ve got a lot of top episodes in the past. This is definitely like up in the top five, maybe top ten for sure; possibly even top five in terms of episodes that I feel like are major contributions to the astrological community and astrological research. So thanks for collaborating with me on this. It’s been really rewarding and really fulfilling.
NDB: Yeah, likewise. Although I would give it ‘best ever’.
CB: Okay, number one episode.
NDB: This is the goat, this is the goat. No, not necessarily. You’ve done some pretty great episodes. But, yeah, thank you, Chris. I know we’ve said to each other off-camera that working on these two episodes has really been an amazing education for both of us. Already well-versed in astrology, already very studied for multiple decades, and yet it just goes to show there’s just always, always, always more to discover. And, yeah, a lot of this was really fundamental, and some of this I’d sort of learned and then forgotten, but it was really great to sort of be in touch with all of this on this level, on the scale and to have the chance to share it with everyone. So, yeah, thank you for bringing me along for this ride.
CB: Awesome. All right, buddy. Yeah, I’d love people to do research. If you do, and you find something interesting, the best place to let us know is to leave a comment below the video version of this episode on YouTube. And then if we get enough, maybe we’ll do a part three at some point. All right, that’s it for this episode of The Astrology Podcast.
NDB: The trilogy.
CB: Yeah, what is a good trilogy? Like The Return of the King would be the Lord of the Rings version.
NDB: Right, right.
CB: Okay, we’ll see. If people want us to do a third, let us know in the comments.
NDB: No Ewoks.
CB: Oh, yeah, that’s a different third. All right, thanks everyone for watching or listening to this episode of The Astrology Podcast, and we’ll see you again next time.
[credits]
Special thanks to all the patrons that helped to support the production of this episode of the podcast through our page on Patreon.com. In particular, a shoutout to the patrons on our Producers tier, including patrons Kristi Moe, Ariana Amour, Mandi Rae, Angelic Nambo, Issa Sabah, Jake Otero, Jeanne Marie Kaplan, and Melissa DeLano. If you appreciate the work I’m doing here on the podcast and you’d like to find a way to support it, then consider becoming a patron through my page on Patreon.com. In exchange, you’ll get access to some great subscriber benefits, including early access to new episodes, the ability to attend the live recording of the monthly forecast episodes, our monthly Auspicious Elections Podcast, which is only available to patrons, a whole exclusive podcast series called The Casual Astrology Podcast that’s for patrons, or you can even get your name listed in the credits. You can find out more information at Patreon.com/AstrologyPodcast.
If you’re looking for a reliable astrologer to get an astrological consultation with, then we have a new list of astrologers on the podcast website that we recommend for readings. Most of the astrologers specialize in birth chart readings, although some also offer synastry, rectification, electional astrology, horary questions and more. Find out more information at TheAstrologyPodcast.com/Consultations.
The astrology software that we use and recommend here on the podcast is called Solar Fire for Windows, which is available for the PC at Alabe.com. Use the promo code ‘AP15’ to get a 15% discount. For Mac users we recommend a software program called Astro Gold for Mac OS, which is from the creators of Solar Fire for PC, and it includes both modern and traditional techniques. You can find out more information at AstroGold.io, and you can use the promo code ‘ASTROPODCAST15’ to get a 15% discount.
If you’d like to learn more about my approach to astrology then I’d recommend checking out my book titled Hellenistic Astrology: The Study of Fate and Fortune where I go over the history, philosophy, and techniques of ancient astrology, taking people from beginner up through intermediate and advanced techniques for reading birth charts. You can get a print copy of the book through Amazon or other online retailers, or there’s an e-book version available through Google Books.
If you’re really looking to expand your studies of astrology then I would recommend my Hellenistic astrology course, which is an online course on ancient astrology where I take people through basic concepts up through intermediate and advanced techniques for reading birth charts. There’s over 100 hours of video lectures, as well as guided readings of ancient texts, and by the time you finish the course you will have a strong foundation on how to read birth charts, as well as make predictions. You can find out more information at courses.TheAstrologySchool.com.
And finally, thanks to our sponsors, including The Mountain Astrologer Magazine, which is a quarterly astrology magazine which you can read in print or online at MountainAstrologer.com, and the Northwest Astrological Conference, which is happening both in person and online, May 23-27, 2024. You can find out more information at norwac.net.