Astrology and Hurricane Sandy

Truthfully, I had no idea that there is a sub-field of astrology called meteorological astrology that focuses on the placement of the sun, moon, and planets to forecast the weather.  But this should not be an entirely surprising activity.  Ancient astrologers, without the benefit of satellites and computer modeling, were patient sky-watchers, believing that aspects between planets were portents of weather.  In addition to weather prediction, for thousands of years people have looked to the sky to calculate directions, measure time, know when to plant and reap crops, and plan for important events like marriages.

Hurricane Sandy has made me immediately dive in to see if there has been any compelling coverage about this catastrophic event from an astrological perspective.  Is weather prediction and astrology passé now?

A lot of the coverage—which is modest—includes a chart for Hurricane Sandy, which is a picture of the sky including the sun and all the planets at its “inception.”  Some astrologers cast the chart for right after or just preceding its touchdown on the East Coast, although many used slightly different logic to understand its inception time.  I like Eric Francis’s casting of the chart at 8pm on Monday, October 29 at Atlantic City, New Jersey as the hurricane slammed into the coastline.  (His accompanying podcast is excellent.)

Most people know that there was a full moon the night that the hurricane struck.  This is represented in the chart with a moon in Taurus in opposition (180 degrees) to the sun in Scorpio.  Obviously, this sun-moon transit is the most obvious one because almost everyone affected by the hurricane knows that the problems were made more acute by the full moon on the Monday night.

The majority of the stories online focus on various interpretations based on the chart at the time of impact.  For example, as Karen Kay points out in her blog, there is a nasty square between Mercury (transportation, communication) and Neptune (water) that happens during this period.  (A square is when planets are approximately 90 degrees from each other, and signifies tension and conflict.)

Joyce Hopewell focuses on the Sun and Saturn conjunction, the Uranus and Pluto square, and the Jupiter and Mars opposition.  But in some of these transits, they happen over a long period of time (some for a week and some quite longer) and it’s not obvious to me how the chart can be related specifically to the hurricane actually hitting the coastline because the chart would have looked similar on other days of the week, if not the week prior.  There is other coverage, like Dark Astrology and  Solaris Astrology that focuses on very obscure stars, and Tara Greene focuses on water themes in the chart.

No surprise, much of the brief coverage is focused on the fact—no astrological interpretation needed here—that Hurricane Sandy completely changed the conversation about the Presidential Election.  It seems like the two campaigns were at a near stalemate just over a week ago, but how the Obama Administration has dealt with the recovery effort may have helped shape the outcome of the election.  Perhaps everything is not about politics anymore!  Rather, we have a real referent now—the world we actually live in—as opposed to the stories (and fictions) of both candidates.  As Eric Francis says, it’s nice to have a reality check now and not just unbridled politics.