Areocentric Martian Astrology

Good Evening Deckers, Technomancers, and Reality Hackers!

I originally posted this on Facebook.com/TekMageOccult in honor of achieving our First 100 Followers, but I thought I'd revive it as we open ChaosMagick.com and give you a glimpse of some of the tekmagic that goes on behind the scenes in my head, and introduce Areocentric (Martian) Astrology.

It's no secret that I'm a futurist, and I like to think about how magick and ritual will change on other worlds we eventually colonise. How, for instance, will Druids perform their nature-tied holidays on Mars?

One thing that fascinates me particularly is extraterrestrial astrology. When the sky and planets are different, how will that affect charts? Someone born on Mars won't have Mars in their sky, But Earth -will- be hanging up there, and two strange moons, but not Luna.

As an experiment, I have here prepared a birth chart for the Mars Pathfinder mission, particularly the Sojourner rover, which can be said to have been "born" on Mars shortly after landing.

Are you still with me?

Now we get into the nuts and bolts.

For clarification, the following presumes an Areocentric Astrological system, not Heliocentric, and certainly not Geocentric.

There is no online calculator for Martian astrology, so I went old school. I went to Mars on 4 July 1997. I accomplished this in Virtual Space, using the freeware Celestia astronomy tool.

Once at the location of the mars landing both spatially and temporally, I slapped an Ecliptic Coordinate Grid on the sky, with constellations labelled, and made observations.

I quickly remembered upon spotting Ophiucus that sidereal astrology is out of vogue, so I paid attention to the coordinates and divided the sky into 12 equal seasons of the traditional zodiac.

That said, with no large Moon on a 28-day orbit, I think Sidereal Astrology would be more sensible to a native Martian than forcing an arbitrary set of “months” which are a lunar calendar thing.

Here are my results, with the Sidereal positions in (Parentheses)

Landing/Birth occurred on 04 July 1997 at 16:56 UTC on the Gregorian Calendar.

On the Local Martian Calendar (Darian) this was the 26th Sol of Taurus in the mYear 206.

• VIRGO is ASCENDANT
• SUN is in TAURUS (Aries in Sidereal)
• MERCURY is in GEMINI cusping TAURUS (Taurus)
• VENUS balances on CANCER / GEMINI (Taurus)
• EARTH is in PISCES
• JUPITER is in AQUARIUS
• SATURN is in ARIES (Pisces)

The Moons don't orbit in the ecliptic, and so PHOBOS was in Fornax and DEIMOS was in Orion, but based on coordinate positions, both could be said to be within TAURUS.

Let's leave this here for now, without getting into the meanings of EARTH, PHOBOS, and DEIMOS.

I will, however, give you a quote that I found while researching this:

What does the Martian astrologer make of Earth? Through his zodiac, he must delineate the positions & influences of Sun, Phobos, Deimos, Mercury, Venus, Earth, the Asteroids, Jupiter, Saturn, & perhaps the remoter planets. I read in a Martian treatise on genethliacs:

[Earth]- native name: Tlas, Tellus; color: blue; god: Poteidaan [Poseidon?]. A lesser malefic, of the nature of Venus and Saturn. The Earth is above all the planet of work, of making things. If Earth be at mid-heaven, the native will prosper in all arts and crafts.

Our traditions tell us the inhabitants of Earth are called "poietai" or makers. Metal: antimony.

Precious stone: Jade. Earth rules the sign Virgo and some attribute to it the sign Scorpio as well. It is exalted in Capricorn and dignified in Leo. Begin no process or task when Earth is rising, or it will never end. To attract its influ ences, wear a talisman made of antimony, copper, & lead in equal measure, and on it inscribe, when Earth is at mid-heaven or conjunct Saturn or Venus, the inverted pentagram with a bronze stylus, and around it these words:

ARA ORA

OPERA

FAC.

-From "An Alchemical Journal" by Robert Kelly

Astrology is actually a weak point for me, so I'm open to discussion about this. Also, if anyone knows any online calculators or better programs for this sort of thing, drop me an email. I’d love to hear from you!

Much love, Deckers, and may the Allcode bend for you!