The normal period of human gestation is nine solar or ten lunar months. It will be found that the moon makes ten revolutions while the Sun passes through nine signs of the zodiac. But this normal period may be increased or decreased, and that quite normally, by the relative positions of the luminaries at the time of inception. I use this word to distinguish it from conception, which term connotes certain physiological processes and facts. The astral factor should not be identified in point of time with the physiological processes of coitus and impregnation.
Now it is found that when at birth the Moon is increasing in light, that is, going towards the full, and above the horizon, or conversely, decreasing in light and below the horizon, the period from birth to inception is less than ten lunar months by a quantity determined by the Moon’s distance from the horizon. But when the Moon at birth is found to be decreasing and above the horizon, or increasing and below the horizon, the period of time from birth to inception is found to be more than ten lunar months by a quantity determined by the Moon’s distance from the horizon.
The measure of this plus or minus quantity is thus computed. The Moon’s distance is taken from the horizon East or West, according as it is increasing or decreasing in light. If increasing, it is taken from the East, and if decreasing from the West. The number of zodiacal degrees between the Moon and the horizon thus indicated has then to be divided by the Moon’s mean diurnal motion, which is 13° 11´ roughly, and this will be the number of days more or less than ten lunar revolutions by which the birth is separated from the inception.
This calculation from the Moon’s position in the zodiac and prime vertical enables us certainly to fix the day of the inception. The next step is to find the time of day at which the Moon is in exact horoscopical relations with the moment of birth.
This is done by a single observation. In all normal cases it is found that if the Moon is increasing in light at the time of birth, that is to say, going from the new to the full, its longitude at the moment of birth will be the ascendant at the inception, and if decreasing at birth its longitude will be the descendant at the moment of the inception. Then universally it is found that the Moon is, at that moment, in the exact longitude which was rising or setting at the birth. Now having the moon’s acceleration as a variable factor, ranging from 11° 50´ to 15° 17´ per day, the chances are millions to one against the Moon being in the exact degree and minute that was on the horizon at birth at the same time that the Moon’s place at birth was rising or setting on a local horizon. Yet this is found to be the fact! What other conclusion can we come to, having regard to all the factors employed, and the wonderful harmony that is observed to result, than that “God geometrizes,” as Plato wisely said. Things do not happen by chance, but by law. Law is the expression of intelligence inhering in action. The universe is rendered intelligible by its laws. Whatever is intelligible expresses Intelligence.
But we have yet to consider the variation of the law that is conformable to the Law of Sex. This Law of Lunar Appulsion in the matter of human generation would work out exactly as stated above in every case were it not for the fact that Sex is the dominant and controlling factor, and that by reason of it a birth may be delayed or advanced by a period ranging from a fortnight to as much as two months. For, whatever may be the other factors involved in the horoscopical conditions of a birth, sex must be satisfied first and foremost. It is the controlling factor. Observe, then, that if the birth is male and the Moon occupies a female degree, as indicated above, should the Moon be increasing in light, the Law of Lunar Appulsion already detailed will require that the Moon’s place should rise at the Epoch of inception or, as it is called, the “Prenatal Epoch,” and consequently a female degree would be rising at such Epoch. This would be contrary to the sex, and consequently we know that the Moon’s place at birth must be setting at the Epoch, so that a male degree may be rising. This is the case, mutatus mutandis, when the Moon is in a male degree and the sex is female. Then, this adjustment being duly made, it is found that the horoscope resulting will find the Moon in the exact degree that was rising at birth. Exactly similar considerations hold in the case of a Moon that is decreasing at birth. This is the first establishment of the Law of Sex as controlling the time of birth.
The next is when the Moon does not occupy a sex degree but is more than three degrees removed from either male or female degrees. In such case we have to consider whether the degree on the horizon at the moment of birth pertains to either sex. For if it be so, and the degree is of the sex of the child born, then we know that the Moon was in that degree at the Epoch, whether it was increasing or decreasing in light at the birth. This will control the day of birth in the same way that the first rule controlled the moment of it. Only when neither the Moon nor the horizon are occupied by sex degrees the Law of Lunar Appulsion operates without restriction. This clearly shows that the Law of Sex is paramount, and that it can and does control the Law of Lunar Appulsion. By appulsion we mean that outbreathing from the moon-sphere towards the earth which corresponds to the diastole of respiration, by which the vital forces of the cosmos focussed by the Moon are carried towards the earth for the production and sustentation of the species.
If this Law were a matter of chance it will be seen by any one acquainted with the astronomical facts, that the chances are dead against it working out in practice. Yet the facts are in daily test by astrologers the world over, and we may hence conclude that the Law of Sex has absolutely been discovered, or at all events the rules by which we may recognize its cosmic relations.
With a closer knowledge of the initial stages of generation, it will be possible, by a reversal of the factors here employed, to argue from the inception to the birth, instead of as now from the birth backwards to the Epoch of inception. In such case we shall have obtained the secret of how to determine the sex of offspring at will. That the Prenatal Epoch here established answers to some incipient stage of the process of generation there can be no reasonable doubt whatever, for wherever the time of birth is accurately taken by a medical man it answers exactly to the astronomical considerations required by the Law as formulated. Elsewhere I have delivered a diagram showing the Moon’s position for each month from the inception to the birth, from which we see that there is a definite law of pulsation marking a spiral descent of the Monad along the line of energy instituted between the Moon’s place at the Epoch and the point of the zodiac on the horizon at the moment of birth. This I have called the Descent of the Monad, and it affords a study of the greatest psychological value. Very many attempts have been made on the part of gynecologists to ascertain the law controlling Sex, and I have introduced this section in the hope that such as may have a practical interest in this question will avail themselves of the facts so far derived from the study of occultism.