In 1905, Saturn will transit the Midheaven in the horoscope of birth, and in the summer of the same year Mars will be Stationary in opposition to the place of the Moon at birth. Both these periods will be fraught with cares and anxieties, and the latter influence will act detrimentally on the health, disposing to attacks of gout and inflammatory action in the system.
But while the approaching and concurrent Primary directions are of a highly benefic nature, there will be no hint of a breakdown either in health or reputation, and it needs only the additional good influence of a transit or Secondary Lunar direction to carry Mr. Chamberlain at full swing to the summit of popular esteem and political power.
The curious who seek for coincidences will not be surprised and may be gratified to note that Merx, the root of the name of Mercury, signifies trade, and that the planet Mercury is rising in this horoscope of Mr. Chamberlain, who won great distinction for himself as President of the Board of Trade. Those who in more earnest vein seek for causes will do well to trace the transits of the major planets through this horoscope over the places of the Significators, the Sun, Moon, Midheaven, and Ascendant at all the important epochs in the life of the late Colonial Secretary. The working out of the more important directional arcs for the same period I can safely leave to the reader whose desire to thoroughly test the claims of Astrology has been sufficiently aroused by the perusal of these pages. It is at all times easier to dispute than to disprove, and this apparently is the reason for so much that is said, and so little that is shown, against Astrology.
As to the modus operandi of planetary influence I conceive that the brain cells are infilled with a nervous pabulum of such delicate nature as to be capable of responding to the finer etheric vibrations instituted by the planets; that the electrostatic condition of the earth’s atmosphere at the moment of birth determines the particular mode or modes of vibration to which the individual brain is syntonically responsive; and I could, did space permit, immediately adduce hundreds of instances to show that whenever the same positions or planetary aspects recur in the heavens as were in existence at the moment of a birth, the individual immediately responds to the excitation, and gives instant evidence of such excitation by actions in agreement with the nature of the planets involved.
CHAPTER VI
PLANETARY PERIODS, ETC.
We now come to the point where it will be necessary to explain more fully the various elements with which so far the reader has only been dealing in a more or less mechanical way. It is, of course, of first importance that the student of Astrology should have a correct method, and this has been given as fully as space will permit in the preceding pages. But it is also necessary that one should know why he is doing a thing, as well as how to do it. Henry Ward Beecher once said that if a man turned soil with a spade knowing why he did it, the work was more effectively done than if he did not know. For this reason it will be convenient for the student to have a general view of the cosmical elements that he employs in his calculations and of the factors that enter into his consideration when studying a horoscope.
For purposes of calculation, the astronomer regards the planets as moving around the Sun in circular orbits at a uniform rate, and the positions thus obtained are called the mean longitudes of the planets. But it is known that the orbit of a planet answers to the functions of an ellipse, of which the Sun is presumed to occupy one of the foci. Then it becomes necessary to correct the Mean Longitude of the planet by an equation which is called the Centre equation.