An Examination of Various Charts for the United States of
America
By Frank Piechoski
Here
are the results and methodology I used to attempt rectification of the USA
chart. To try and make the results as objective as possible, I have used
Jigsaw 2’s rectify feature and will report the numbers it gives using various
techniques.
This
remains a work in progress, but some of the results are interesting
nonetheless. Click here
to view the Jigsaw event file.
The
first phase of this exercise was to gather historical data for the formation of
the USA and its subsequent history. The events (dates only) I have used are as
follows:
Yorktown
Surrender, 17 Oct 1781
Constitution Ratified, 21 Jun 1788
U.S. Congress quorum, 6 Apr 1789
Washington Inaugurated, 30 Apr 1789
Supreme Court, 26 Sep 1789
White House and Capitol Burn (War of 1812), 24 Aug 1814
Mexican War begins, 25 Apr 1825
Fort Sumter fired on; Civil War begins, 12 Apr 1861
Lee Surrenders (end of Civil War), 8 Apr 1865
Lincoln Assassinated, 14 Apr 1865
13th Amendment (slavery prohibited), 6 Dec 1865
Andrew Johnson Impeached, 24 Feb 1868
Garfield Assassinated, 2 July 1881
Spanish-American War (Joint resolution for war), 20 Apr 1898
McKinley Assassinated, 6 September 1901
Wright Brothers' Flight, 17 December 1903
San Francisco earthquake, 18 Apr 1906
U.S. Enters WWI (Congress declaration), 6 April 1917
Treaty of Versailles, 28 Jun 1919
Stock Market Crash, 29 Oct 1929
Pearl Harbor, 7 December 1941
D-Day, 6 Jun 1944
Hiroshima A-Bomb, 6 Aug 1945
Francis Gary Powers U-2 Incident, 1 May 1960
First American in space (Shepard), 5 Apr 1961
Bay of Pigs invasion, 17 Apr 1961
Cuban Missile Crisis, 22 Oct 1962
Gulf of Tonkin resolution, 7 Aug 1964
1965 Watts Riots, 11 Aug 1965
MLK Jr. assassinated, 4 Apr 1968
Robert F. Kennedy assassinated, 5 Jun 1968
Kent State University tragedy, 4 May 1970
Watergate break-in, 17 Jun 1972
Nixon resigns, 9 Aug 1974
Saigon falls, 30 Apr 1975
Three-Mile Island Nuclear Disaster, 28 Mar 1979
Embassy seized in Iran, 4 Nov 1979
Reagan Assassin attempt, 30 March 1981
Space Shuttle Challenger explodes, 28 January 1986
Desert Storm, 16 January 1991
Los Angeles Riots, 29 Apr 1992
Clinton impeached, 19 Dec 1998
WTC and Pentagon attacked, 11 September 2001
These
are my own choices for events based on how well I feel these events are
important in American, therefore they are somewhat subjective but I feel most
Americans would agree that these were important events. I have chosen not
to use dates such as election days or inauguration of presidents (after
Washington) due to the fact that these are set dates that could skew the
results based on their regularity. Some of the dates I’ve chosen are also
too close together for Jigsaw to rectify to them accurately, so I will detail
which events I’ve left out of the process.
The
first date that I wanted to test in Jigsaw’s was July 4, 1776 in Philadelphia,
PA. I entered this date in Jigsaw with no time specified and used the
auto rectify feature to allow the program to come to its own conclusions.
For this I had to throw out some events because there were events too close
together in time for Jigsaw to deal with in this manner. The events I
disabled for this run were the Congress and Supreme Court dates which were too
close to Washington’s inauguration, which I felt was the most significant event
of the three. I’ll return to these events in a different manner
later. I also exempted Lee’s surrender at Appomattox since it was only
six days prior to Lincoln’s assassination. The Bay of Pigs invasion also
had to go due to its proximity to the first American in space. Robert F.
Kennedy’s assassination also had to be disabled due to the Martin Luther King
Jr. assassination two months earlier.
After
disabling these events, the July 4th Auto-rectification on 38 events
gave these top four results with Jigsaw’s default settings:
(Points
are in percentages)
Overall
Hits:
|
Time |
Overall
Percentage |
|
9:33
a.m. |
41 |
|
11:51
a.m. |
35 |
|
7:29
p.m. |
19 |
|
11:41
p.m. |
27 |
At
this point, I should explain that Jigsaw takes its defaults, calculates the
aspects according to those defaults, and figures out by the orbs set whether an
aspect was operative during the time of the event. The Auto-rectify
defaults for Jigsaw are: Transits from Uranus, Neptune and Pluto in the 2nd
Harmonic (conjunction and opposition) to the Ascendant, Midheaven and Moon with
an orb of 2 degrees; Secondary Progressions from the Ascendant and Midheaven to
planets the Moon through Pluto and the Moon’s Mean Node also in the 2nd
Harmonic with an orb of 1 degree; and Solar Arc Directions from the Ascendant
and Midheaven to planets the Moon through Pluto and the Moon’s Mean Node also
in the 2nd Harmonic with an orb of 1 degree.
After
this, I wanted to change some of the defaults and see what it came up with.
First,
I used 12th Harmonic transits (2 degree orb) of Uranus, Neptune and
Pluto to the Ascendant, Midheaven and Moon only to the 4th of July
date. This came up with the same times as the above auto-rectification by
using the defaults, but three times were tied at 13 percent hits and the 11:24
p.m. chart had a hit rate of 15 percent.
I
then used the Secondary progressions from the progressed angles, Moon-Pluto and
Node to the Ascendant, Midheaven and Moon in the 2nd Harmonic with a
1-degree orb. The results of this test showed very low percentages, with
the highest the 11:41 p.m. time with a 6 percent hit rate.
Next
I tried Solar Arc Directions using the Angles, Moon-Pluto and Node to the
Ascendant, Midheaven and Moon in the 2nd Harmonic with a 1degree
orb. 9:33 a.m. gave 17 percent; 11:51 a.m. gave 26 percent; 7:29 p.m.
gave 32 percent; and 11:41 p.m. gave 33 percent.
So
each of the individual techniques gave the highest percentage to the 11:41 p.m.
chart, which is highly improbable given the historical record.
I
then moved on to configuring Jigsaw’s settings closest to the combination of
methods I use most: Solar Arc Directions and Transits. For the Solar Arcs
I used the 4th Harmonic (since Jigsaw lacks the 8th
Harmonic selection I prefer) to the Ascendant, Midheaven and Moon with a
1-degree orb; and for the transits also using the 4th Harmonic and
using Mars through Pluto to the Ascendant and Moon with a 2-degree orb.
Using this combination, I got:
|
Time |
Overall
Percentage |
|
9:33
a.m. |
17 |
|
11:51
a.m. |
18 |
|
7:29
p.m. |
19 |
|
11:41
p.m. |
21 |
Realize,
however, that this method has a total of 500 transit hits, so the results are
negligible.
I
then refined it to only the conjunction for transits to lessen the number of
aspect hits to correlate to the charts. This gave slightly lower results of 15,
15, 16 and 18 percent for the respective time.
Using
only Solar Arc Directions in the second harmonic to limit the number of
available aspect hits gives a 17 percent result to the 9:33 chart, 26 Percent
to the 11:51 a.m. chart, 32 percent to the 7:29 p.m. chart, and 33 percent to
the 11:41 p.m. chart.
It
seems that the rectification of the 4th of July chart through Jigsaw
presents some problems. It seems to prefer a time, 11:41 p.m. that is
historically improbable.
The
next phase is to test some of the other proposed charts for accuracy and see
how they hold up. For this, I’ll use my preferred transits from the
Saturn to Pluto in the 4th Harmonic and Solar Arc Directions of Moon
through Pluto to the Ascendant, MC and Moon of the proposed 4th of
July charts. Totals are merely adding the transit and Solar Arc totals
and should not be considered a percentage, just a score.
|
Chart |
Transit |
Solar
Arc |
Total |
|
Sibley
5:10 p.m. |
15 |
17 |
32 |
|
2:13
a.m. |
13 |
22 |
35 |
|
Dobyns
9:36 |
21 |
17 |
38 |
|
Penfield |
13 |
32 |
45 |
|
11:51
(Historical) |
17 |
29 |
46 |
Of
the July 4th charts`, the 11:51 a.m. and Penfield charts show the
highest overall score, so I’ll include them in a future comparison.
Now
let’s turn to some of the other possibilities.
Since
we are not looking at just one day now, I’ve expanded the search to take the
Sun into account as a radix point for transits and added in the Moon through
Jupiter for the radix points to be searched for in the Solar Arc hits. In
addition, all charts were tested with only with events that occurred after the
proposed chart with the latest date, the Supreme Court chart so that I was
testing all charts with the same events. As before, the total is merely
the combined percentage numbers from Transits and Solar Arcs. Unless
noted, charts are set in Philadelphia, and all times are LMT.
|
Chart |
Transit |
Solar
Arc |
Total |
|
Boyd
(declaration of war) |
17 |
34 |
51 |
|
Armistead
July 2, 1776 |
15 |
33 |
48 |
|
Solte
(15 Nov. 1777, 12:46, York, PA |
19 |
32 |
51 |
|
Grimes
(Articles of Confederation, 1 Mar 1781, 3:19 p.m. |
14 |
34 |
48 |
|
Constitution
Signing (Sep 17, 1787, 11:29 a.m.) |
13 |
30 |
43 |
|
George
Washington inauguration (30 Apr 1789, noon, New York, NY) |
19 |
37 |
56 |
|
Congressional
quorum (Apr 6 1789, 10 a.m., New York, NY) |
16 |
34 |
50 |
|
Supreme
Court 26 Sep 1789, noon, in New York |
20 |
32 |
52 |
|
July
4, 11:51 a.m. |
21 |
31 |
52 |
|
Penfield
July 4 |
16 |
33 |
49 |
Here
are the score for the two most popular July 4th charts compared to
those above:
|
July
4 2:13 a.m. |
17 |
31 |
48 |
|
Sibley
5:10 p.m. |
18 |
29 |
47 |
The
highest combined scoring chart is that of Washington’s inauguration, which also
scores highest by Solar Arc. The highest scoring chart by transit is the
July 4th, 1776 11:51 a.m. chart.
The
results are very close, actually. The resonance to Washington’s
inauguration may simply be due to the fact that many of the events in used in
the test are presidential events.
The
fact is, we have no concrete and “real” chart of the United States. I
agree with Nick Campion that each chart is valid as part of the evolution of
the nation. However, I did hope to test the efficacy of those charts
people swear by and see if they held up to objective scrutiny.
The
next phase of my examination will be gathering even more data of different
types and testing the larger sample, along with splitting the events into
different types to test different charts with.
I’d
like to thank the following people for their data contributions and ideas:
Mark
McDonough, Madalyn Hillis Dineen, Jayj Jacobs, mary@puritysoap.com, Lorenzo Smerillo,
Susan Manuel and many others who I know I must have left out.
Copyright (c) 2001 by Frank Piechoski. All rights
Reserved
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