Moon Out Of Bounds

There is actually a site titled OUT OF BOUNDS ASTROLOGY that discusses the topic of the Moon being "out of bounds", defining it to be when "the declination of the moon in a chart is greater than 23 degrees and 27 minutes north or south". Declination measures the angular distance of an object north or south of the Celestial Equator, the maximum declination of the Sun being ±23°27'. North declination is regarded as positive and south as negative. This is depicted in Figure 1.

Figure 1

The site gives this explanation of Moon out of bounds on the psychology of an individual:

If you or someone you know has a moon out of bounds–found predominantly in the signs of Gemini, Cancer, Sagittarius, and Capricorn–they are likely to exist emotionally in a realm outside of traditional expectations. The emotional outlaw, one with a moon out of bounds tends to make their own rules concerning how to feel about/react to a given stimulus. If living within the bounds of societal constructs, they often tire of dominant trends and experience a pull to escape to a new or remote place. In the city or the country, these are the people who live on society’s fringes in some way or another.

Another site, FORREST ASTROLOGY, notes that:

Earth’s angle of tilt varies over very long scales of time, but it is currently at about 23°28′ according to the Solar Fire Help files. Wikipedia gives 23°26′ ... This maximum limit of 23°28′ declination, south or north, applies rigidly to the Sun. But not to the Moon or the planets. They can go beyond it. Mercury and Mars can reach 27° and Venus can, occasionally, go a degree further. The rest tend to stay within the tropics.

Figure 2 illustrates the situation where the Moon is out of bounds and where it is not.

Figure 2

So interestingly, Mercury, Venus and Mars can also be out of bounds, not just the Moon. The author of the site then goes on to say this about the effects of this lunar phenomenon on an individual:

What does it mean astrologically for the Moon to be Out of Bounds? Start with one merrily anarchic notion: when the Moon’s declination exceeds 23°28′ North or 23°28′ South, it has escaped the physical space dominated by the gravitational “boss” of the solar system, the Sun.

Let the metaphors free-associate.

The Moon is then, in other words, out of the King’s sight. No longer under Daddy’s thumb. We might say that has moved beyond the Pale. Gone out of control. Or gone wild. It has broken the rules. It has shattered the boundaries, broken the mould, crossed the Rubicon. Bravely, or drunkenly, the Moon has said, “Roll the dice.”

The Out of Bounds Moon is spontaneous, emancipated, liberated, released in its own recognisance, and utterly on its own. It has loudly proclaimed, “You can take this job (. . . marriage, church, obligation, moral principle, town, duty . . .) and shove it.” The Moon has claimed its genius, its passion, and its right to be itself. No need to obfuscate, to be diplomatic, or to lie to anyone anymore—unless you feel like it. No more coprophagous grin. No need to worry about staying in anyone’s good graces. Out of Bounds, the Moon no longer plays the game. It rejects all rules that are not of its own making. “Free at last, free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are finally free at last!,” said Martin Luther King, Jr.

The words stir the blood. But we need to let them stir the mind as well.

Structure, discipline, and a world in which our actions have consequences—these are not purely negative things. Society and its values can have a steadying effect upon us, even when we feel frustrated by them. The Out of Bounds Moon, like everything else in astrology, has an unpleasant, dangerous side as well as a divine purpose. Its dark side is sociopathic, even criminal—or merely selfish and insensitive to others. It can be cold, even inhuman.

You may detect some of the underlying spirit of the planet Uranus and the sign Aquarius in these words. That is quite accurate. In my experience, an Out of Bounds Moon has distinctly Aquarian quality. We see the familiar Uranian “holy trinity” at work—the Genius, the Revolutionary and the Criminal. All three of them stand outside the normal structure of society, applying leverage to it—and meeting resistance, condemnation, and consequences for it.

As with Aquarian or Uranian influences, the Out of Bounds Moon often thrusts alienating circumstances upon a person from outside. This is of course the classic working of synchronicity—what we meet (or fail to face) in our inner world is encountered in the “random” realities of our outer lives.

Inwardly, the Out of Bounds Moon often correlates with feelings of being an outsider, of not fitting in, of not having a place in this world. This can be painful—and it can also lead to an attitude of not giving a damn. Or to passivity. Or to resentment. And to radical forms of existential creativity.

The site's author also discusses the frequency with which Moon out of bounds occurs: 

More broadly, there are some years in which many babies are born with Out of Bounds Moons, and some years in which none at all are. This is related to the 18.6 year retrograde cycle of the Moon’s orbital plane—what creates the lunar nodes. (9) We will spare you the details, but here is the bottom line. Every 18.6 years, the Moon reaches its maximum possible declination of 28.5E, a full five degrees outside the tropics. In the years halfway between, we get a kind of “low tide” effect, with the Moon never getting more than 18.5E from the celestial equator. Under those latter conditions the Out of Bounds Moon cannot exist at all. No one born in those years has one.

Thus, over the time-scale of 18.6 years, about half the people born might have an Out of Bounds Moon and about half them could not possibly have one. Furthermore, some of the “good” years for Out of Bounds Moons are more productive than others. That is because times when the Moon goes further Out of Bounds, it stays that way for longer as well. The odds improve.

Even in the “good” years, every couple of weeks the Moon’s monthly orbit brings it back “within bounds” as it passes through the neutral ground between maximum northern and maximum southern declination. It may, in other words, be wildly Out of Bounds in one person’s natal chart—but in the chart of a person born just a week later, the Moon is in 0E declination, as normal as vanilla ice cream. But then a week after that, it is wildly Out of Bounds again.

You really have to calculate it, is the bottom line.

Remembering all our caveats, here are the absolute peak years for Out of Bounds Moon births in living memory: 1913, 1931-32, 1950, 1969, 1987-88, 2006. We will have another one in 2024-25. Remember to give it at least a couple of years on either side. During those years a lot of kids were born with Out of Bounds Moons. But they were mixed in with a large population of more steady, conventional types. Looking at those years, note how the correlations with periods of social unrest and social creativity are rather unmistakable. As ever in astrology, what is “in the air” at given moment lives on for decades longer in holographic form in the children.

The author has a lot more to say on the topic so it's best to go the site and read it all. Another site of interest that I discovered is an Out of Bounds Planet Calculator. Once a date of birth is entered, the determination is made as to what planets were out of bounds at birth but also when progressed planets ceased to be out of bounds and became out of bounds. According to the calculator, it turns out that my Moon was out of bounds at the time of my birth. Here are the details:

Date of Birth: 04/03/49

Natal Out-of-Bounds Planets

Moon     24.59 N 

Progressed Out-of-Bounds Status

Age 5

Moon ceased to be out-of-bounds.

Age 13

Moon became out-of-bounds.

Age 18

Moon ceased to be out-of-bounds.

Age 27

Moon became out-of-bounds.

Age 32

Moon ceased to be out-of-bounds.

Mercury became out-of-bounds.

Age 40

Moon became out-of-bounds.

Age 45

Moon ceased to be out-of-bounds.

Age 51

Mercury ceased to be out-of-bounds.

Age 55

Moon became out-of-bounds.

Age 56

Venus became out-of-bounds.

Age 60

Moon ceased to be out-of-bounds.

Age 68

Moon became out-of-bounds.

Age 72

Moon ceased to be out-of-bounds.

Age 80

Venus ceased to be out-of-bounds.

Age 82

Moon became out-of-bounds.

Age 87

Moon ceased to be out-of-bounds.

Age 95

Moon became out-of-bounds.

Age 98

Mars became out-of-bounds.

Age 100

Moon ceased to be out-of-bounds.

Interesting stuff. However, astro.com provides additional tables for birth charts that show the declinations of natal planets. This reveals that my natal Moon is not out of bounds at all. See Figure 3.

Figure 3

As can be seen, the Moon is listed as being at a declination of 22°54'30'' N. This is close to the limit of 23°27' but not outside it. Only Uranus at 23°37'17"N and Pluto at 24°1'0''N are out of bounds. The problem with the Out of Bounds Planet Calculator can be seen in Figure 4:

Figure 4

As can be seen, there is no input for time or place, only the date. This is not good enough in the case of the Moon because it moves so swiftly. I was born at about 6:56am and I suspect that later in the day, the Moon did move out of bounds. However, when I was born, it was clearly within bounds. Thus all the other data from the Out of Bounds Planet Calculator is to be treated with suspicion.

Astrolog is the program that I use for my astrology calculations and I was curious to see if it would display the declinations of planets. At first sight it doesn't but there is a command line switch -sr0 that instructs the program to display declinations instead of latitudes (the default). The output is shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5

As can seen, the results are the same as those shown in Figure 3, when taken to the nearest minute. Further investigation, using Astrolog, shows that the Moon had a declination of 23°28' N at 10:40am on the day of my birth and only then was it out of bounds.

Once again, Astrolog has shown its capabilities, albeit latent in this case, which is all the more remarkable given that the program was developed in 1994 or possibly earlier.

Baba and Silence Day

Figure 3: produced at
http://obamapostermaker.com/

I originally posted the information below to my Postings From Inner Space blog but it has some important astrological content so I've extracted that and included it here:

As the day wore on, I got to thinking about how Baba's silence might be reflected in his natal chart which I've shown in Figure 4 with some features highlighted. The key planet to consider of course will be Mercury, the planet of communication, and this planet is prominently aspected in his chart. It is a semi-sextile aspect to Venus, sextile to Jupiter, sesquiquadrate to the Moon and quincunx Saturn. The aspect to the retrograde Saturn is especially close and reflects the limitations and discipline involved in not speaking. Mercury is in the middle of the second house (representing the body and its capacities) and Saturn is in the ninth house (representing his "philosophy" and mode of instruction). Venus and Jupiter lend support so that the handicap of not speaking in nonetheless perceived as harmonious, expressive and even eloquent.

Figure 4: Baba's chart with annotations

Impressive as this is, the chart shown together with the transits on the day he began his silence is extraordinary and this is shown in Figure 5. I've not even added any annotations because the situation is shown so clearly. An amazing conjunction of transiting Mercury, Venus and Mars on the seventh house cusp is exactly square the natal Moon with transiting Saturn sitting atop it. The natal Sun and natal Mars are closely involved as well. The actual mid-point between natal Jupiter and natal Saturn in 9°24' of Leo. On July 11th 1925, transiting Mercury, Venus and Mars all met at this point (give or take a few minutes of arc). This was a transient but remarkable conjunction.

Figure 5: transits to the natal chart
on the day Baba's began his silence

The stars most certainly did align on that day as well they should when the Master of the Universe begins the Silence that was to define this most recent advent of the Avatar.

Minutiae

The British pronunciation of minutiae is muh·nyoo·shai whereas the American is mi·noo·shee·uh but in any case the meaning is the same, namely the small, precise, or trivial details of something e.g. "the minutiae of everyday life". In this post, I'm going to consider the minutiae of aspects cast by transiting planets to a natal chart, specifically my own natal chart.

Normally I only consider the transits of the slow moving astrological bodies like Jupiter, Saturn, Chiron, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. Sometimes I consider Mars but rarely do I look at the position of Mercury. However, today I had an accident. It wasn't serious but I did stumble at the foot of some steps and sustained some bruising to my knee and ankle.

It was only later that I thought to consider what transits might have been active at the time of my fall which occurred around 5:45pm in Jakarta. Figure 1 is what the transits looked like at the time of my fall.

Figure 1

As it turns out, there was a very appropriate aspect. Transiting Mercury in 11°22' of Cancer in my third house was square to my natal Mars - Venus in 9°16' - 9°10' of Aries and my Sun in 12°47' of Aries. In fact the mid-point of my Mars - Venus and Sun in 11°00' of Aries. 

So little more needs to said but it made me aware of the usefulness of taking note of small incidents instead of always waiting around for big developments involving the slower moving planets. Mercury yesterday at 5:45pm was in 9°46' of Cancer and tomorrow it will be in 12°55' of Cancer, so it moves fairly swiftly.

Saturn and Pluto Synodic Cycle

The length of the Saturn - Pluto synodic cycle varies depending on the position of Pluto in its orbit. When it is closer to the Sun, its orbital speed increases and Saturn takes longer to overtake it. Pluto was moving its faster at perihelion in 1990, when it dipped inside the orbit of Neptune. The current synodic cycle which will end in January of 2020 is of about 38 years duration.

FIGURE 1: double click for a closer view. Image address can be found at:
https://www.lunarplanner.com/Saturn-Opp-Uranus/Sa-Pl-History-Images/Saturn-Pluto-synods.gif

A closer look at FIGURE 1 will show how close Saturn and Pluto are during this coming conjunction because their latitudes are almost the same (+0°02' and -0°40' respectively). Compare their proximity to that of their previous conjunction and the difference is quite marked. The author of the chart is using a heliocentric, sidereal zodiac so that's why the zodiacal signs are out of alignment. The reason for my interest in the relationship between these planets is that some sort of economic reset is anticipated in the next year or so and the forthcoming conjunction may be an indicator of its timing. Saturn rules structure, organisation and systems while Pluto oversees transformation.

As near as I can determine, the conjunction will occur at 5:13pm in Basel on January 12th 2020. Why Basel? Well, that's where the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) is located and seeing that it's regarded as the Bank of Banks, then Basel is a reasonable location. It's one hour ahead of Greenwich. The chart is an interesting one and it can be seen immediately that a confluence of synodic cycles is involved because Saturn and Pluto are joined by Mercury, the Sun and Ceres to form a tight and impressive stellium in Capricorn.

The stellium falls almost exactly on the seventh house cusp. The day is a Sunday and one can imagine a special meeting of the financial elite taking place that afternoon and a decision being reached around 5pm about what news to break to the world the next morning. On the previous Thursday, transiting Uranus turned stationary direct in 2°39' of Taurus. The Moon, ruler of the chart and representative of the general public, is in the regal sign of Leo and, fittingly, on the cusp of the second house. A very close quincunx between Uranus and Neptune in the eighth house indicates predictably that the banksters will be guilty of deception and intrigue. Figure 2 shows the chart.

FIGURE 2: chart for the coming conjunction of Saturn and Pluto.

So it seems to me that January 12th 2020 might be a day when big decisions are made concerning the global economy, a new digital currency perhaps for all the nations of the world. Whatever is decided of course, it will be good for the banksters and not so good for the rest of us. The larger implications of the changes may not become apparent or may not be fully implemented until the time when Saturn reaches the square to Pluto. Saturn's subsequent opposition to Pluto should reveal the full extent and consequences of the earlier initiatives.

Silence Day

Of all the events in Meher Baba's life, it is the day that he began his lifetime of silence that is perhaps most remembered by posterity. In this post, I've looked at the transits on that day, July 10th 1925, and there are two that stand out:

• transiting Saturn's conjunction with his natal Moon
• transiting Uranus's conjunction with his natal Mercury

Let me say from the outset that all my comments about Meher Baba and his natal chart are from an exterior viewpoint, meaning the way the world perceived his actions. In no way am I trying to delve into what Meher Baba was thinking or feeling. Neither I nor humanity, then or now, can comprehend his interior life. In Astrology, the Moon represents the public and, in a natal chart, its placement and aspects reflect the way a person responds to the public and how it in turn perceives him (or her). Saturn represents limitation and so the transit of this planet across his natal Moon aptly reflects the restricted way in which Meher Baba could now react to humanity and how it turn would perceive him.

Mercury represents communication and the conjunction of transiting Uranus with Meher Baba's natal Mercury again aptly reflects the sudden and drastic change in the way he communicated. His mandali (close followers) thought that he would maintain this silence for perhaps a few days or weeks. None suspected that it would last for the rest of his life. The annotated chart that I've attached to this post highlights the heavy aspects to his natal Moon and reminds us how defining this silence was on the world's perception of his Avatarship.