The real astrology chart for the US – 2017 edition

This post is updated from previous articles. 

Any person, place or event with a date of origination has an astrological chart. Humans have birthdates, companies have incorporation dates, and countries have their own dates of origination (we call this “mundane” astrology). Mundane charts are not always easy to define since we must accurately pinpoint the exact time at which the current incarnation of the place began.

The chart for the United States that is most typically used is called the Sibly chart which uses a date of July 4, 1776 when the Declaration of Independence was signed, and has Sagittarius on the ascendant (Sagittarius “rising”).

A Scorpio chart used by many astrologers uses a date of November 15, 1777 when the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union were signed.   Other charts use the date that the Constitution was signed. There are also Gemini rising charts (including this one which uses a rectified time that is unsubstantiated in fact), a Virgo rising chart that uses a time when the signers convened to discuss the details of the terms,  and a rarely used chart for July 2nd when a resolution to declare independence was adopted.  This was famously the day that John Adams declared to be the birth of the nation, “to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”  

There are also a few adherents to a Scorpio ascendant that some say is based on the fact that the clocktower on the back of a $100 bill was set to 2:22 pm.  But if you look carefully at the image you’ll see that it could also be read as 4:10 pm and in fact Wikipedia says that the Department of Bureau and Engraving says that the time is 4:10 pm (although I could find nothing to corroborate this).

Still, the relevance of the time on the clock tower is difficult to gauge in terms of establishing a proper horoscope for the United States.  Benton Bobrick’s masterwork The Fated Sky includes a scholarly discussion of the time when the signing of the Declaration of Independence was completed:

According to the Philadelphia Historical Society, ‘the Declaration was graced with its first signature (Hancock’s) at approximately five o’clock in the afternoon after which the members all went off to dine.’

This biography of John Hancock corroborates this, using an approximation of “late in the afternoon” as the time when the Declaration was approved and Hancock affixed his signature.  The date of July Fourth was adopted as Independence Day first in Philadelphia in 1777, and quickly spread throughout the colonies, firmly establishing this date as the birthdate of the United States.

The July 4th astrological chart was first drawn by Ebenezer Sibly, an English astrologer who was alive at the time and as a Freemason would have been associated with the Freemason founding fathers.  Sibly was well practiced in the field of mundane astrology, known for his accurate political predictions regarding both the American and French revolutions. It is not a huge leap to imagine that his Freemason brethren in the new nation would have sought the advice of a competent astrologer in order to determine the optimum time for signing the Declaration.

There is a synchronicity to astrology that cannot be understood with logic. The fact that the date of July 4th was adopted so easily and so universally as the birthdate of the nation makes it easy to adopt this date as the astrological birth date.  The time is not so simple to discover nearly 250 years later, but the fact that the Sibly chart has become the predominant chart suggests that it is the one which resonates most strongly with the national consciousness.