The chart above might look pretty ordinary to you. In reality though it is a chart that - most probably - you have never seen before! It refers to a momentous event that took place in 1969 on the Moon: the first step of a human being on another celestial body! What you see above is a "snapshot" of the lunar sky, that shows the configuration of the planets the very moment Neil was stepping on the powderish lunar surface! So, we actually have here the first "Moon-centric" horoscope, an horoscope calculated not with terrestrial but lunar co-ordinates (the ones of the Tranquility Base - "Statio Tranquillitatis")!
As you can see, there is no Moon in this horoscope (the Moon is symbolically located at the center and the "energies" of the entire horoscope are focused on it)! There is an "Earth" instead (you can see it at the top right, in the Eighth House. Its symbol is a cross incribed in a cycle)! But how do we interpret the Earth astrologically? This question has never truly bothered the astrologers of the previous generations. As they were standing on the Earth they were not perceiving it as a celestial body floating in space. Thus, no astrologer ever was forced to figure the astrological properties of the Earth! But we are in the 21st century, things have radically changed and the events have already surpassed us! Twelve human beings have already visited the Moon (four decades ago in fact), they walked and lived on the Moon (some of them for four whole days). In a couple of decades babies will be born on the Moon. And we earthlings have not yet developed a Moon-centric astrology! Thus, we are confronted now with the chart of the first human step on the Moon but we cannot interpret it properly because we actually ignore the astrological meaning of the Earth in a Moon-centric horoscope! All of the sudden our old tools grew inadequate...
It takes a giant leap to move from the Geocentric astrology to the Mooncentric one (and a far smaller leap to move then to a Mars-centric, Plutocentric etc. astrology. Our eventual grandchildren will be accustomed to this kind of astrologies)! Still, we will need another giant leap when we will move to the "Exo-astrology" - the astrology for the planets of those strange Solar Systems we are currently discovering. How will we deal with the alien planets of these systems and their eventual alien zodiacs? But ultimately the zodiacs of these remote to us solar systems are they alien or are they identical to our zodiac? Most probably, when we will go there we will confirm our current assumption that the zodiac is an omnipresent universal principle, exactly the same in every single corner of the Universe...
For the time being, our imperative need is to determine the astrological properties of the Earth! Is the Earth a sort of "Moon" to the Mooncentric astrology, a planet associated to the "cradle", to the roots of the "Mooners", to their past, their "inner world", their soul's particular features? This "riddle" is one of the first we have to solve in order to formulate a proper mooncentric astrology...
To turn back to our horoscope, this "first human step on the Moon" event has (according to my calculations) a Leo Ascendant. A brilliant, regal Ascendant which is further strenghthened by the ultra-propitious trine aspect that the Earth and the planetoid (planet to astrology) Eris are forming with it! Ultimately, this Leo Ascendant is not irrelevant to the fact that the first moon-landing turned to be a glamorous TV show that attracted the largest number of viewers till then - 600,000,000 across the globe!
There is an oddity though regarding the Ascendants of the future Mooners. This oddity stems out of the fact that the Moon is not rotating around its axis as fast as the Earth. It takes almost 28 days for it to perform a full rotation. This fact has some strange implications. I.e. a "day" on the Moon lasts almost fourteen of our days (for 14 whole days the Sun is located constantly either below or above the horizon)! And what is astrologically more important, all the children born within a frame of two days and a half bear the very same Ascendant, ALL of them (that's an interesting "synchronicity" with the fact that - seen from Earth - the Moon spends two days and a half in each zodiacal sign)!
The "synchronous" rotation of the Moon (it rotates around its axis in about the same time it takes to orbit the Earth) produces another paradoxical effect: in any given Lunar location the Earth seems to be eternally fixed at approximately the same point of the lunar sky, as if it were "stuck" there! This implies that the Earth is changing alright zodiacal signs every two days and a half but not Houses - in the lunar horoscopes! Therefore, all children born in a particular lunar location would have their Earth in the very same House of their horoscope or - on few occasions - in an adjacent one! And as a result of this "fixity" the Earth almost never "transits" in a Mooncentric horoscope (it does transit actually but just within a few degrees frame)! All these "oddities" must have their own intrinsic astrological meaning which we should decipher!
Why is there - for example - such a "spatial fixity" of the Earth in the Mooncentric horoscopes? Why is the Earth permanently emphasizing a particular House in all the horoscopes of the people born in a particular lunar zone? Why i.e. all the people born in a certain lunar zone should have an Eight House Earth in their horoscopes - regardless of the time period they were born? Is that lunar zone particularly dangerous and life threating, invoking thus the presence there of strong, risky and sexy inhabitants - meaning with an Eighth House Earth in their horoscopes? And how the majority of these "Eighth House people" will be treating the eventual minority of the "Seventh or Ninth House people" living in their zone? These are interesting - probably vital - questions and we must find adequate answers to them.
The position of the Earth in a Mooncentric horoscope can be easily found: it is the opposite of the position that the Moon has in the corresponding Geocentric horoscope. Thus, the first thing we have to do is to cast a Geocentric horoscope for the same "Universal Time" (U.T.) our lunar event took place. Then we should note and write down the position of the Moon in it. In the corresponding Mooncentric horoscope the Earth will be located at the diametrically opposite sign, at about the same degree (i.e. if the terrestrial Moon is in the 11th degree of Libra then the corresponding lunar Earth will be in the 11th degree Aries)! I said "at about the same degree" because on Earth's surface the Moon's position may vary up to a whole degree, depending on the particular terrestrial location we are observing it from. You see the Moon is very close to us - in comparison to the other planets - so its zodiacal position changes slightly if we observe it from two distant terrestrial locations. On the other hand, the zodiacal positions of the Sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars seen from the Moon are almost the same as seen from the Earth. They vary only by a few tens of minutes. The other planets are so far away that they do not present significant differences.
For the rest, I think we should interpret a Mooncentric horoscope the same way we interpret a Geocentric one. We cannot fail to notice i.e. in this "first human step on another celestial body" chart the tight Jupiter - Uranus conjunction (both planets are in the same degree)! We couldn't get a more ideal planetary configuration for this unique event, a configuration expressing so neatly the expansion of the human species in space! And this conjunction becomes even more important if we observe that it coincides with one of the "fingers" of an impressive planetary formation called "Yod" - composed in this case by Sedna (on the base of Yod), by the Jupiter - Uranus duette at the one "finger" of the Yod and by Mars at its other. All these planets are located at about the first degree of the signs that they are in and they mutually activate each other, participating in the formation of two powerful quincunx aspects (Sedna is forming a quincunx - 150 degrees - aspect to both Jupiter-Uranus and to Mars!
Another important factor in this chart is the tight conjunction of the Earth to the planet Eris (planetoid Eris is actually considered a "planet" in astrology). Although we can make some assumptions, in reality we ignore both the astrological properties of Earth and Eris, thus we cannot say much about this pivotal conjunction. All we can say is that this is a VERY significant conjunction - especially if we take in consideration the fact that Pluto is forming a square aspect to it! Pluto and Eris are two "universal" and somehow "fatal" planets, harboring very strong and "transforming" energies in them. And indeed enormous energies have been consumed for the first man to reach the moon - not to mention that this has been a very transformative event, an event of unprecedented proportions in the evolution of the human species!
Thomas D. Gazis
Copyright: Thomas D. Gazis
P.S. Since there is no Mooncentric astrology program - as far as I know - I had to calculate the positions of the Mooncentric planets on my own. As I explained before they do not differ much from their - same Universal Time - Geocentric positions. I am using the Equal House system.