Krakatoa 1883: A World Event Examined (1)

While the greater part of the astrological community is in eager expectation of havoc in the communication and transport sectors 🙂 we will apply ourselves to looking back into the past. Appropriate for Mercury Rx, don’t you think? Th.

The instruments we use to define critical periods by mundane astrology can be refined by looking at past events. We can expect that an event of such major import as the volcanic explosion of Krakatoa in 1883 to be reflected in the charts. I am a bit wary of speaking of Signatures, as these can easily be misinterpreted as a fixed set of very particular configurations. The temptation is to make lists of aspects and then compile them, looking for the most common denominator. This however ignores the individual quality of the event, which is probably more important. There are of course general rules that must be followed, but these only provide the framework on which to build a judgement. But first let us look at the event before we describe the framework we will use to examine it.

The eruption of the Krakatoa volcano on the 26th and 27th of August 1883 is among the most catastrophic eruptions in history. It’s detonation was one of the loudest sounds in recorded history, heard thousands of kilometres away. The explosion itself was equivalent to 200 megatons of TNT, almost 13000 times stronger than the atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima. The volcanic eruption was of course accompanied by earthquake and tsunami of immense proportion. Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream” was inspired by this event. He says:

…suddenly the sky turned blood red … I stood there shaking with fear and felt an endless scream passing through nature. (see this Wikipedia article for more details)

If you have any familiarity with mundane astrology you will know that the story of the event (or in this case, series of events leading up to a dramatic climax) is not confined to the event chart(s) alone. In fact it is easier to understand the event when you look at the cascade of a whole series of charts that lead up to the event, and trace the chain of testimonies from one chart to the next. Mundane astrology is a very time consuming affair as there are so very many charts (we will be looking at the Grand Conjunction, Small Conjunction, pre-event lunar and solar eclipses, Aries and Cancer Ingress, previous lunation and the major event chart) and so very many factors that have to be considered. Where does one start? This is the IC. In this series of articles I will be focussing exclusively on the IC. You will see that it is enough to begin with. I encourage you, dear reader, to print out the charts and examine them yourself. You are very welcome to share any insights as a comment to this series of articles. You can find all the charts I used here in the Charts section of Altair Astrology for later easy reference.

Grand Conjunction, 18 Apr. 1881 1:35:59 pm GMT 105e25, 6s06

This is our beginning chart. What we can note is that Mars is within 7 degrees of the IC and he is in opposition to Uranus. As the opposition was world-wide, the important thing is the presence of Mars in the 4th house. The opposition is strengthened further by both planets also being contra-parallel to one another (Mars 8s27, Uranus 8n34).

Small Conjunction, 20 July, 1883 9:56:00 LMT 105e25, 6s06

Here the first thing we need to search for is the tie-in with the Grand Conjunction. It isn’t surprising that the Small Conjunction (Mars/Saturn) is in square to the IC of the Grand Conjunction chart. We also have Grand Conjunction Mercury conjunct the Ascendant. What I would also like to point your attention to is that the MC/IC axis is more or less exactly the midpoint between the Mars/Saturn conjunction on one side and the Mercury/Jupiter conjunction on the other side. We have the explosive violence of Mars/Saturn combined with the megadecibel [big (Jupiter) bang (Mercury)] noise and the enormous debris carried swiftly in the atmosphere around the earth (Mercury/Jupiter) focused on this axis. The stage is set.