The astrology of the collective: group composite charts

Astrology tends to focus on the individual.  I look at my horoscope, and my star sign.  I don’t care too much about the group.  However, astrologers will often be asked about relationships, and this means they have to use synastry.  The main technique in synastry is comparing one person’s planets with another person’s.  For example, Prince Harry’s Saturn in Scorpio is square Meghan’s Sun in Leo. There are other techniques which allow you to create charts that describe the relationship as a whole.  The chart most commonly used is the composite, where one creates a new chart on the basis of the midpoints of each planet.  So if one person has their Sun at 0 degrees Cancer, and another has their Sun at 0 degrees Virgo, the composite Sun would be the midpoint, at 0 degrees Leo.  Unfortunately composite charts are fake, in the sense that they are creating a picture of the Cosmos that is constructed by the astrologer, and which never existed in real time.

This leads to a different type of chart, which describes a real time and a real place.  It is a chart that describes the relationship as whole.  Astrologers call this chart the Davison relationship chart, named after the astrologer Ronald Davison.  You calculate this chart by finding the midpoint between two birth dates, and the midpoint between the longitude and latitude of the two locations.  Meghan was born on August 4 1981, Harry on September 15 1984.  The midpoint of these two dates was February 24 1983.  When you take into account their times and places of birth, the time becomes 1.33 pm GMT, somewhere in the Western Atlantic:

I don’t want to spend too much time on this chart.  There is a strong Moon in Cancer, conjunct the lower meridian.  Regardless of what Harry and Meghan are like as individuals, the relationship itself is private and clannish.  The couple want to escape, into a familiar and comfortable environment.  It is also worth noting that there is a close conjunction between Jupiter and Uranus.  Freedom really is important to them!  Their wedding was on May 19 2018.  At this time, Jupiter was at around 17 degrees 1 minute Scorpio – in other words right on the chart descendant, at 16 degrees 23 Scorpio.  At the same time, the Moon was in the 23rd degree of Cancer – close to the relationship chart’s Moon-IC conjunction.

What about if you have got more than two people?   No problem.  You just find the average time of all the births, and the average longitudes and latitudes.  We can do this with the Beatles – a convient group, because we know the times for all members.  When we average out all their times, we get September 22 1941, at 6.56 a.m. GMT in Liverpool.  It is in Liverpool because this is where all four of them were born.

Here’s the chart:

This is the horoscope of the Beatles as a collective.  The Sun is in Virgo, the Moon rising in Libra, Mercury making a close opposition aspect to Mars in Aries, Jupiter trining Mercury and sextiling Mars.  A lot of this makes sense.  The Moon rising is great for dealing with the public – the Beatles as a group were able to understand changing moods and changing fashions.  Mercury was trine Jupiter, which again makes sense – good for communication, particularly of an inspirational and spiritual natural.  However, the most important aspect is a close opposition between Mercury and Mars.  This gave the Beatles a verbal edge, but it was also about conflict and tension, which may not have always been apparent to the wider public.

We then have the question of when the Beatles died.  The chart of the Beatles represents the way in which four people can interact.  While those four people walked the earth, there was the possibility of interaction.  Even if they appeared to go their separate ways.  On December 8 1980 John Lennon was murdered.  This was the end of all possibilities regarding this mini collective.  On that day, Saturn was at 8 degrees 19 minutes Libra.  The ascendant of the Beatles’ chart was at 8 degrees 11 minutes Libra.  That, I would argue, is a powerful signature of a final ending, and a possible suggestion that we should take Davison relationship charts seriously.

There is no reason why we can’t create collective charts for larger groups of people.  Recently, I created a collective chart for all the passengers on the Titanic, that was set for May 21 1881.  I derived this chart from the passenger list, by taking an average of all the ages.  This is the chart, with only the planets from Jupiter onwards included:

The chart is not very accurate, and may not be particularly meaningful.  However, it illustrates a philosophical and spiritual point.  The collective has a life of its own, that in theory can be described.  Right now, at this precise millisecond, there exists a horoscope based on the mean of the date, place and time of birth of everyone on the planet.  But it’s a horoscope that it changing all the time, which only God can see.