The Astrology of Politics

by John Michael Greer

About the author: John Michael Greer is a widely read author, blogger, and astrologer whose work focuses on the overlaps between ecology, spirituality, and the future of industrial society. He served twelve years as Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America, and remains active in Druid nature spirituality as well as several other initiatory traditions. He currently lives in East Providence, Rhode Island.

Bodleian Library, Ashmole MS 304, folio 2

These days, when people talk about astrology, what they nearly always mean is natal astrology—that is, the astrology of individual personality and destiny, which works with horoscopes cast for the moment when an individual was born. That's of interest to most of us, but it's not the only game in town, astrologically speaking. There are many other ways to study the planets and stars and apply the resulting knowledge to events here on earth. One of them is the astrology of political change, or as it was traditionally called, mundane astrology.

This is actually the oldest branch of astrology, the one from which all the others descend. More than five thousand years ago, scholars and priests in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in what is now Iraq, started keeping systematic records of planetary positions and aspects. Their working guess was that there might be connections between the fate of their society and the movements of the heavens, and they set out to record as much information as possible on their clay tablets to find out what those connections might be.

That was, as scientists like to say, a fruitful hypothesis. Before 2000 BC, these early astrologers had begun to generalize from their experience, and by 1600 BC astrologers were making detailed political predictions based on the patterns their forebears had observed. It wasn't until 600 BC that horoscopes in the modern sense of the word came into use, and those began as a spinoff of mundane techniques: it occurred to astrologers that the birth of an heir to the throne counted as an important event, and they began comparing the positions of the planets at the moment of birth to the events of the child's life. From there the whole rich tradition of natal astrology began.

Mundane astrology, however, remained an influential branch of astrological science. Astrology spread from Mesopotamia to the Greek world, then to the Roman and Persian empires, and from there to the Arabic world after the age of Muslim conquests. Scraps of astrological lore that survived the fall of Rome in Western Europe helped speed the adoption of more complete astrological methods once translations from Arabic into Latin opened the way to a European revival of the science of the stars.

All through the high Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and into what historians awkwardly call the "early modern period," mundane astrology remained a lively field in which innovations contended with effective techniques inherited from past millennia. It was only after this, when astrology as a whole was nearly squeezed out of existence by the propagandists of modern materialism, that mundane astrology (along with most other branches of the science of the stars) dropped out of common use, leaving natal astrology as very nearly the sole survivor. Fortunately the old texts of mundane astrology survive, and recent years have witnessed a revival of interest in traditional mundane techniques.

One thing that has hindered that revival is the habit of assuming that natal methods can be carried over unchanged into mundane work. This doesn't always work well; it's a mistake to assume that mundane predictions have to rely on some equivalent of a birth chart, or that the mere entrance of a planet into a new zodiacal sign provides enough guidance to justify sweeping predictions about the future. Traditional mundane astrology turns instead to a distinctive set of charts for accurate information about coming events.

The most important of these is the ingress chart. This is cast for the national capital of any country at the moment of a solstice or equinox, and it governs events in that nation for the next three months (and sometimes more, depending on the sign on the ascendant). Mundane astrology assigns meanings to each of the twelve houses of the sky that differ somewhat from their natal meanings, and the condition and relationships of the planet ruling each house cusp provides a clear look at how events will affect that aspect of the national life during the period ruled by the ingress chart. Carefully delineated, an ingress chart can provide an impressive amount of information about a nation's political and economic conditions in advance.

Eclipse charts also play an important role in mundane astrology. They are governed by similar logic, but with a twist—traditionally, eclipses are always negative indications. An ingress chart can bring good news, in other words, but an eclipse chart always tells you what's going to go wrong. The house in which the eclipse is placed, the aspects the sun and moon make to other planets, and similar factors give fair warning of where problems can be expected. Their duration varies as their effects do: lunar eclipses have influence for as many months as the eclipse lasts in hours, while solar eclipses take that same count of hours and convert it into years.

Great conjunction charts, finally, are crucial for understanding long-term trends. A great conjunction is a conjunction of two or more of the planets further out from the sun than our earth. These were once watched closely by astrologers, because they mark the beginning and end of epochs in world history. A complex body of lore handed down from ancient times allows these conjunctions to prefigure whole ages of world history, and to gauge when the familiar certainties of one era are about to give way to the unexpected possibilities of another.

Our own moment in history is of special interest because it is midway between two very important markers of this kind. First, due to the interplay of orbital periods, great conjunctions between Jupiter and Saturn take place in signs of the same element for 150-200 years and their shift from element to element is an important omen. On December 21, 2020, as some may recall, the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction shifted from earth signs to air signs, marking a new era of history that will continue until 2219.

Far more significant is the great conjunction between Saturn and Neptune coming up on 20 February 2026. This takes place at 0° Aries; a great conjunction that takes place there marks a shift of immense importance. The last time these two planets met at 0° Aries was back in the 6th century BC, and was promptly followed by the invention of philosophy, formal mathematics, logic, prose literature, and the first very rough sketches of democracy, just to begin with. A transformation of comparable significance awaits us in the years ahead. Mundane astrology offers tools by which these changes can be gauged in advance.

Mundane work can be a challenging field, not least because the heavens do not necessarily show astrologers what they want to see. Many of us recall the embarrassment of many professional astrologers who predicted in 2016 that Hillary Clinton was sure to become the next American president, for example! The effective practice of mundane astrology requires a willingness to set aside personal opinions and listen to what the heavens themselves have to say. When they speak of troubles ahead, this can motivate practical preparations for hard times; when they portray a brighter future, this can help us embrace and take advantage of unexpected opportunities. Both are capacities worth having.

Continue reading in Issue 84 of Watkins Mind Body Spirit to discover the three essential chart types of traditional mundane astrology—and learn why the Saturn-Neptune conjunction of February 2026 may signal civilizational transformation rivaling the birth of philosophy itself...

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