In determining the historical astrology source data and cycles the best historical information is primary; that is, it derives from an eyewitness or from eyewitness testimony. Next, the data is secondary, which means that it derives from a primary source, but is reported second hand. Or it is speculative, which means that while it may be of philosophical and historical interest, the analyst is still guessing, and it possesses no valid authentication.
The chart for the founding of Rome is an example of a speculative chart.
The following laws are applied throughout this writing:
The Law of Sources: The authenticity of an astrological chart depends on the precision of its researched historical data. All forms of speculation, including rectification and dreams and clairvoyance, have no legitimate function in the astrology of history.
For Transits and Planets:
The Law of Intensity: The slower a planet moves in its orbit around the Sun, the more powerful its effect on the affairs of the world.
The Law of Synods: When two slow moving planets travel together through the sky in a synodic conjunction, their energy is squared. Their combined influence often triggers mass movements in history.
In astronomy, the time it takes a planet to orbit the Sun is called its period.
The following table denotes the periods of the planets:
| Mercury | .24 years | ||
| Venus | .62 years | ||
| Earth | 1 year | ||
| Mars | 1.88 years | ||
| Jupiter | 11.86 years | ||
| Saturn | 29.46 years | ||
| Uranus | 84.07 years | ||
| Neptune | 164.82 years | ||
| Pluto | 247.92 years | ||
| Eris | 570 years | ||
It takes Jupiter approximately 12 years to orbit the Sun, Saturn about 30 years, and Uranus around 84 years. The slower moving planets—from Jupiter out to Eris—travel through the sky slowly, appearing to be in one location for a relatively long time. Whether they are touching a point like the Sun in a nation’s chart, or the midheaven in a historical personage’s chart, they exert a powerful influence.
The outer planets are the “movers and the shakers”. They are the transformers, the doers, the causes of events: They provide the slow influence that compels transformation and change. The outer planets always exert power on the historical process.
When they move together, in a synodic conjunction, they exert an even more powerful influence.
The Law of the Fast Movers: The inferior planets, Mercury and Venus, the Luminaries, the Sun and the Moon, and the planet, Mars—all work as triggers for events orchestrated by the outer planets.
The inner planets move so quickly through the sky that their influence is minimal and often scarcely noticed. They function as triggers, as activators of conditions that are created by the configurations of the outer planets.
For example, let’s assume in the chart of a historical personage, that the astro-historian examines the Sun. The chart’s outer planets are configured in a yod or Finger of God. This person’s natal Sun is the focal point of this pattern. But there have been no events or transformations in this person’s life. What is going on here? Will something happen? The answer is that the happening is waiting to happen. Something will happen at the transit of either the Sun or Mars or the Moon or Mercury or Venus over the focal point of the yod. All these planets can act as triggers for the events configured and framed by the outer planets and waiting to happen.
To get an understanding of the meaning, significance and purpose of what is occurring in the events of the world, you must examine the configuration of the outer planets in their relationship to the natal chart of the nation or person you are examining. To determine when these will happen, chart the course of the faster moving bodies in the sky.
An exception exists to this rule about the inner planets and Mars.
The Law of Retrogrades: When Mercury, Venus or Mars move in a retrograde motion, the influence of this motion is as powerful as that of an outer planet.
During the crisis of a nation, or in the middle of the career of a king or prime minister or president, one of these retrograde planets may act with the same force as an outer planet. In the August Coup of 1991 in the Soviet Union, both Mercury and Venus were retrograde. The coup turned out to be a short-lived action, bungled, unsure of itself, but its effect was to destroy the influence and power of the Soviet Communist Party forever.