Since this week has seen a celebration of the 45th anniversary of the landing on the moon, I thought it fitting to look at the chart for that event. It must be stressed that this is a geocentric chart for the event, which took place on the moon. Perhaps we should be looking at a selenocentric chart for the event, that is one based on the moon. Such a chart was published in a British journal in the Fall of 1969. But since most of the people involved were here on Earth, and the ramification of the event were here on Earth, I’m going to look at a standard geocentric, that is to say earth-centered rather than moon-centered, chart.
At second glance, we notice that there is still a loose conjunction of Uranus and Pluto, but Uranus is separating from Pluto and is now almost 8 degrees away. The Sixties are just about over. But what does stand out is the tight Jupiter-Uranus conjunction (black arrow), at about 6 minutes of arc. Richard Tarnas describes Jupiter-Uranus cycles as involved with “Creativity and Expansion”, see Cosmos and Psyche Section VI for a full description. Also note that the fabled Woodstock Music and Arts Festival took place some three weeks later under the same conjunction, though it was wider by that time. The tight Jupiter-Uranus conjunction was also loosely conjoined with Pluto — this was sort of an expansion (with Jupiter there) of the Uranus-Pluto principle.
But this conjunction is at the Midheaven of the United States chart, representing a culmination of the dream to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade as announced by President Kennedy at the beginning of the decade, perhaps to highlight America in the world – the country had lost a little glamour with the Soviets being the first into space back in 1957 while the Americans could not launch a successful satellite into orbit. This event certainly was a highlight to America’s image in the world. And during the Cold War image was everything, in an attempt by both sides to influence nonaligned nations to join their side.
Since this is a timed chart, we can look at the position of the moon, which is near the top of the chart and passed over the MC early in the morning. (For the selenocentric chart, the Ascendant is 8 Leo and the Earth is at 8 Aries.) This was an event listened and watched by many people around the world, one of the reason we are celebrating the anniversary this year. At the time of this event, the transiting Moon was making an aspect — a sesquiquadrate — to the natal moon (green arrow), reinforcing the idea that the people of America were paying attention and being effected.
Next notice that the transiting Sun — representing the day — is conjunct Mercury (red arrow) and both are aspecting the Ascendant. This speaks to the massive communication and attention paid to this event in, at the very least, the United States, and that again this affected the nation’s feeling about itself (Ascendant). As we’ve seen before, communication is highlighted, and many networks carried live pictures of the first steps onto the Moon by Neil Armstrong. It was probably the most universally covered event up until the 9/11 attacks 32 years later. But of course at the time there were not the multiplicity of cable networks, but only the big three television networks, not even Fox existed.
Finally notice (blue arrow) the Pluto is conjunct the natal Neptune with an orb of 36 minutes. At the same time, transiting Neptune is square the natal Moon. Both these aspects highlight the Neptunian nature of this event, and in this case I don’t mean illusion (though some still think that the Moon Landing was staged on some Hollywood set) but rather dream. In the Sixties, especially after Kennedy’s speech announcing the intention of putting a man on the Moon before the end of the decade, the dream of space flight and humans on the moon was quite real. Since so many things have happened since them, most forget the sense of dream of space flight had on people, such as when Life magazine, long forgotten, had major stories whenever a satellite was put into space.
The fourth harmonic chart reveals how close the main conjunction is. Notice how tight the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction is to the MC, and how also this conjunction is sesquiquadrate (black arrow — in fourth harmonic, this is a hard aspect which is a multiple of 11 1/4 degrees) to the Moon with orb of 31 and 52 minutes. There is also a transiting Mercury sesquiquadrate natel Neptune again emphasizing the element of imagination and the use of science fiction (Mercury-Neptune) which informed many space scientists.