Predicting the Royal Birth Rebooted

Last month, the world waited…and waited… for the birth of the third in line to the throne – the first child of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, known to you and I as Kate and Wills. By mid-month, even the usually placid Taurean Queen seem to be getting impatient, telling well-wishers on a royal excursion on the 17^th that she hoped the child would arrive soon as she was due to set off for her annual summer holiday in Balmoral[1].

Despite all the initial predictions and an ‘official’ due date of mid-July, Prince George of Cambridge was born almost two weeks’ late. Leaving hospital, Prince William promised to ‘remind him about his tardiness’ when he got older.[2] In retrospect, perhaps this should not have been that unexpected, given that Mercury was retrograde until the 21^st of July – the day before the young prince was born, but of course, hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Amidst all the high hopes for a stellar natal chart, incorporating the stunning major grand trine in water signs that was in play on the 17^th, 18^th and 19^th, the young royal arrived, not with a bang but something of a whimper, on the afternoon of July the 22^nd at 14h24 BST, weighing in at 8 lb 6oz.[3] For example, although Kensington Palace originally stated that the birth announcement would be made via a formal notice, posted theatrically on an easel in the grounds of Buckingham Palace, as had been the case with Prince William’s birth, when it came to the day, protocol seemed to fly out the window. Instead, members of the British media received an e-mail several hours after the event, confirming the birth along with a few keys facts – so much for pomp, ceremony or tradition then…

I won’t go into an analysis of his chart and all its notable features here – a separate article, complete with chart and a link to his Zodiac Child astro-report will be put up for that purpose shortly. All I will say is that I did find his horoscope a tad underwhelming, especially when compared with what it potentially could have been, and part of me wonders if that is a sign of his future prospects as a king. Anyhow, more on that in my other article.

So, back to the birth itself. What I thought I would do, given all the speculation during the build-up to the event, is concentrate on the difficulties of predicting something like a birth that precisely using astrology because for one, it really isn’t as easy or straightforward as people like to make out – astrology is an art and NOT a science. In order to do so, I thought I would relay a little story about how George’s birth time was eventually revealed to me when I chose to take a less structured and more intuitive approach to my astrological enquiry – an experience I found both spooky and rather fascinating because I think it says something about the nature of astrology itself.

In my last blog article, I approached my astrological analysis of the possible birth dates for the prince favoured by the mass media in quite an analytical and most would agree, traditional way, looking for possible transits and mundane planetary positions that might confirm or indicate a royal birth. And as many of us discovered, this might have worked in theory, if the child had been born on time, but it wasn’t.

As we astrologers know only too well but aren’t always prepared to admit, this sort of thing is pretty typical – things don’t always go to plan and life is therefore, never entirely predictable, even with astrology to guide us, despite what some astrologers out there might claim. Many of us go through phases where we believe that our predictions would be more accurate, if only we could master this new technique or improve that area of our technical knowledge or insight etc, but I don’t believe that to be the case. I know I am not the only one who has experienced phenomena such as getting great results from what turns out to be an incorrectly calculated chart or conversely, find myself gazing at a horoscope and not being able to squeeze one iota of meaning or riveting symbolism out of it, despite the fact that you know that something really important happened at this particular moment and so forth. Geoffrey Cornelius is one astrologer who thinks he knows why this is and I highly recommend his book, The Moment of Astrology, if you ever want to delve into this topic more deeply. In fact, he uses Princess Diana’s two birth chart dates as an example of how ‘the apparent rightness of the wrong chart’ can shed new light on the nature of astrology and how it really works.[4]

The relationship between fate, prediction and forecasting is a subtle and complicated one that has been studied and debated by some of the best minds over the centuries and is something that everyone who practices astrology, tarot or some other form of divination has explore and come to terms with at some time. Here I will add that even weather forecasting requires a certain degree of guesswork and opinion-based judgements based on individual experience, despite all their fancy weather-modelling computers and measuring instrumentation, so to suggest that the one is all art and the other all science, is also something of a misnomer – the truth really does lie somewhere in between.

So, on with my story. Initially, after doing much analysis, looking at synastry with both Kate and William’s chart and taking major transits such as the grand trine into account, my initial feeling was that the child would be born on the 18^th of July at around 9pm. As we know, that did not prove to be the case.

Along with everyone else, I became increasingly antsy as the days passed and nothing appeared to be happening. By the time we got to the week-end before the birth, I began to wonder whether, given that both parents have the Moon in Cancer in their natal charts, and given its traditional association with motherhood, that all that was left in terms of astrological symbolism which might signify a royal birth was the Full Moon, which also happened to be taking place in Cancer. However, with nothing more concrete to go on in terms of news from the palace, and no strong intuition about a particular time or date, one way or the other, on the Sunday night before the birth, I turned to a looser, more horary-style approach.

Enquiry Chart

Casting a ‘Here and Now’ style chart, I asked the question, ‘When will the royal birth happen?’ If I had been following traditional horary principles, the chart I cast would not be suitable for reading as it contained what is known as a stricture – Saturn was in the 6^th house but within a 3.5 degree or so orb of the Descendant and therefore close to being in the 7^th house. However, as I was taking a more intuitive, less formulaic approach, I pressed on and was rather surprised by what I found.

Venus in 5^th

Looking at the chart, the first thing that struck me was the fact that Leo, the royal sign, happened to govern the cusp of the 5^th house – a place in the chart very much associated with children. Secondly, Venus, ruler of the Taurus AS (and therefore, of the chart) happened to be positioned in this house, right at the cusp of Leo at 29 degrees and 19 minutes, which to me seemed suggestive of a baby about to be born (here, though, I must admit that with Venus being the planet in question, I was rather surprised that the child turned out to be a boy – more on that later).

The Moon on MC, but ruler of IC

What is more, the Moon, symbol par excellence of motherhood, happens to be both ruler of the Cancer IC and positioned right on the mid-heaven in Capricorn – the very sign of Kate’s sun – so symbolically, this seemed to me to echo the nature of my question. As horary astrologers would say – the chart definitely appeared to be ‘radical.’

Sun in Cancer in the 4th

The Sun, ruler of the fifth house, was also located in the 4^th house of parenthood and the home, and in the final degrees of Cancer. At the time, I thought this might be symbolic of William, the father, with his natal Sun in Cancer. Now I think that perhaps this must’ve been symbolic of Prince George himself.

Saturn in Scorpio in 6th

That Saturn I mentioned earlier, which is ruler of the mid-heaven, the most public part of the chart, but lurking in invisible Scorpio just below the horizon of the 6^th house, on the cusp of ascending, via secondary motion, into the 7^th house – the house of agency or the other person –which again, seemed to signify that this much-anticipated event of the arrival of the prince into the world (above the horizon) was veiled and hidden from view (there was no public knowledge available as to when the Duchess would go into labour). The nodal axis, flanking either side of the Ascendant-Descendant axis, also seemed to add an air of destiny and a universal or popular element to the reading –the world was indeed, waiting for news of his birth. To me, this chart seemed to hold the promise of being able to answer my question.

Given its connection with the MC and relationship with the Moon in Capricorn, I couldn’t help wondering if this indicated that the birth might not be an easy one, or that it might impact on the health of the mother, but that was just in passing and of course we may never know the details of Kate’s condition at or during the birth. I do also remember musing whether the Mars-Jupiter conjunction, due to perfect on the day in question, might mean a large baby but that was after I had heard she had gone into labour.

Anyhow, having identified what I felt were the major signifiers in the chart, namely the Moon (Kate), Venus (the child) and the Sun (the birth), my next step was to see whether these would, in the near future, make any sort of contact with each other by aspect before the Moon changed sign, because this, as with a horary or judicial style astrology reading, might suggest a potential time for the child’s arrival – when the matter might ‘perfect’ as they say in horary parlance.

As it happened, I didn’t have long to wait to find my answer. Looking at the grid of separating and applying aspects, it became clear that the Moon would quincunx Venus close to the Full Moon – at which time the Sun and the Moon would make their monthly opposition to each other = virtually simultaneous contact between all three significators! Having already intellectually identified the Full Moon in Cancer as a strong indicator of birth, this seemed to make perfect sense. The strange and uncanny thing for me, though, was how close the Moon’s quincunx with Venus would be in terms of timing to the Sun-Moon opposition – at 19h34, it would occur just 20 minutes after it. In astrological terms, this is pretty remarkable and did me a bit of a shiver.

However, if we choose to follow horary-style logic, then contact needed to happen BEFORE the Moon changed signs, which was due to occur at approximately 6:05pm BST, which made the window a bit narrower. Still, even at this point, the Moon and Venus, and the Moon and Sun, would be less than 1 degree away from peregrine which was indicative enough for me to think that the child would arrive some time on or before the Full Moon, which is what I ended up writing in my Astro-Insight for that day.[5]

And indeed, he arrived that afternoon just before 4:30pm. I did think that he might wait until the Sun ingressed into Leo at 16h56 BST, what with its connections to royalty – something that grandmother, Carole Middleton, is also alleged to have believed, if news reports are true[6], but in the end, this was not to be. I guess we will never know whether labour was induced or not, as this may have played a factor.

It is interesting that one of his closest tightest and most fortunate natal aspects is a Mars-Jupiter conjunction in Cancer, which nicely echoes the Mars-Jupiter conjunction in Aries that formed part of that stellium of planets in Aries present when William married Catherine back in April 2011. It is almost as though their relationship has now taken the next step symbolically as passion (Aries) is transformed into parental love and the promise of new life and indeed, a new family unit of their own (Cancer).

What comes next for the new family is anybody’s guess. For now, though, I hope that my foray into divinatory-style astrology has provided some food for thought.

References