A Note on Chart Calculation

This coming November 7/8 will mark the 5th anniversary of the Harmonic Concordance.   I intend to use this blog as the web address for the discussion of this event.   There are two things which I will address here: the astrology of the Anniversary and the spiritual, cultural and social aspects of ceremonial observations of it. I hope you are interested in participating in the conversation.

So, let me start with this. The Harmonic Concordance was celebrated on November 8th or 9th of 2003. The reason that it was an either/or situation is that the actual event was timed for the exact moment of the maximum of the total lunar eclipse that took place that day (or evening as the case may have been). This meant that in each of the world’s 24 different time zones, that moment would occur during a different hour. So it was generally true that, for locations East of Greenwich, England, the eclipse maximum happened on the 9th of November, while in time zones west of Greenwich it took place on November 8th. This had the effect of having people from all around the globe celebrating in the exact same moment of prayerful intent, regardless of what the local clocks said.

For the 5th anniversary however, there will be no lunar eclipse to mark the time to hold observations. This has an effect on choosing the time to set up for the anniversary celebration since every astrological event is pinned to a DATE, TIME and LOCATION.

Now, one of the ways that astrologers will look at an anniversary date for any event, say a birthday, is to examine what is called the Solar Return for the year in question. In this case, we’re looking at the fifth anniversary. So we calculate the exact moment that the Sun (remember, it’s called the Solar Return) returns to the degree and minute that it occupied at the “birth.”

Sometimes this will happen on the exact day that marks the “birth,” but not always. That’s because every four years we add a day to the calendar for Leap Year. We’ve had two leap years since 2003 (2004 & 2008) so the date for the 5th solar return moment turns out to be one day off the actual “birth” date.   That is why the 8h and 9th becomes the 7th and 8th.  OK, so far so good.  We have a date and a time (the Solar return moment), but not a location.  What to do?  What to do?

Well, as it turns out, there is pretty much only one location which can be said to be the place where the world’s “day” begins, and that location is Greenwich, England (after all, that’s where your time zone is reckoned from; for approximately each 15 ° of Longitude West of Greenwich, we get a new time zone).  Ergo, I chose the coordinates of Greenwich as the place that will be used to give us a picture of what the Solar Return will bring to the Harmonic Concordance.

Now strict astrologers can have objections to this arbitrary determination on my part of the location, but the Concordance always was only marginally about the astrology.  It was really a time marker we could use to unite the world in a single moment of prayerful intent.  So, looking at the return can give us an idea of just how the baby Concordance has grown some five years later.