FIRE!

The following chart shows the approximate time that a fire began on the roof of a Waitrose supermarket in Surrey. Police are investigating the cause of the fire which they are treating as suspicious. They were no injuries, but the building was destroyed.This case caught my eye because the Full Moon of that night was the largest and brightest for 15 years. Once the chart was erected, something else attracted my curiosity, but more of that in a moment.



The Moon is high and in Gemini which I believe describes the fire starting on the roof. It opposes the Sun, of course, and is separating, the Sun is the ruler of the Ascendant. Mars of destruction by fire, and ruler of the 4th, is combust as we might expect and is applying to that combustion, so is getting hotter. If we accept Mars as signficator of the building, its application to the Sun can be taken as its path to obliteration. If we take Mars and the Sun as the fire itself we can extend the signification they provide just a little further. They are diposited by Jupiter which is on the cusp of the 6th house; Jupiter is disposited by Saturn in the 2nd house which is in mutual reception with Mercury dispositor of the Moon. On page 158 of "Christian Astrology", Lilly lists the causes of damage to a ship and looking at Mars in Sagittarius we find "The Mariners themselves". Four of these six planets are in double-bodied signs. From this we might deduce that there may have been at least two arsonists, Saturn older, Mercury younger, at least one of whom is or was an employee of the supermarket. The Sun applies to the square of Saturn in the 2nd, and shows financial losses for the company and this may well have been the goal of the arsonist or arsonists.

The question that arose was regarding the Moon: why should it be so malefic? It is separating from the square of Saturn and applying to the opposition of Mercury (this configuration, by the way, is known for lies). So the connection between Mercury and Saturn is reinforced and so is the connection of the 2nd and 6th houses, or the 7th house of known enemies. Janus software reports that the Moon is conjunct the fixed stars Alnilam (within 5') and El Nath (within 58'). It occurred to me that the problem of numerous fixed stars at a significant point is often a problem – which to use? Alnilam is in the constellation of Orion and thus is given the nature of Jupiter and Saturn; El Nath is in the constellation of Taurus and has the nature of Mars. The latter is tempting for obvious reasons, but it is further away from the Moon in zodiacal longitude.

I checked the Moon's declination (a measurement north or south of the Ecliptic) and found it to be 27° North, but Alnilam's declination is 1° South, whereas El Nath's declination is 28° North; these positions are all approximate. It occurred to me to see what this actually looked like in the sky and from that image (shown below) the positions of these stars relative to the Moon is quite clear.



I don't know if it is an accepted argument to take declination into account or not and I can think of at least one reason why it wouldn't be. When using primary directions, specific natal points are directed to certain positions, for example, to house cusps, terms and fixed stars. I can see no reason for using anything other than zodical longitude in this particular reckoning, but then I haven't given it a great deal of thought. So, at least when looking at non-symbolic positions and thus excluding primary directions, I wonder if the use of declinationsn in this regard is effective. It would seem to be so in this particular case, but it requires more than this to prove a point. Interesting though.