This is an article from a few weeks ago, introducing the Nuclear Axis chart — the chart for the beginning of the nuclear age. The chart is for the first time scientists created a self-sustaining nuclear reaction, the kind that would be necessary for the creation of atomic bombs or their incestuous first cousin, nuclear power. The article we posted earlier, Chernobyl: Witnesses Near and Far, includes the chart of the explosion at the reactor. It is what you might call a classical Nuclear Axis chart, with planets piled up across the critical degrees of Gemini and Sagittarius. There was also a lunar eclipse about two days before, during which key (bad) decisions were made. I am republishing the Nuclear Axis article for astrology students who would benefit from knowing this chart exists, and what its implications are. –efc

While we’re on the nuclear topic, this is a good time to get the conversation going about the Nuclear Axis. For more detailed background and some chart examples, check this old article I wrote for Star IQ. The Nuclear Axis chart is the chart for the first self-sustaining atomic pile, created in a secret lab under an athletic field at the University of Chicago toward the beginning of the United States’ involvement in World War II. This was part of the Manhattan project.
What we have is a chart for the Nuclear Age. It is exceedingly rare to have exact data for such a profound event in the history of humanity, particularly given that this one happened under the cloak of absolute secrecy.
The ‘axis’ part of the chart is the opposition from Gemini to Sagittarius. This is fairly easy to see: you know the glyphs for Gem and Sagg, and the planets are connected by a series of purple lines that form the axis. In Gemini we have Uranus and Saturn; in Saggitarius we have Sun, Mercury, Juno and Venus. Not shown in mid-Sagittarius is the Great Attractor, an inter-galactic point. The ominous thing about the Sagittarius alignment is that it has themes of international and death; as well as obsession, and lots of money.
Indeed, after WWII in many respects the entire economy would be based on the vast expenditures of the nuclear industry — all those bombs and airplanes and personnel and missiles that needed to be developed and countless spies and so on and on — and all the apparatus of defense that had to be erected around the nuclear arsenal: indeed the whole military industrial complex.
Now, what tends to happen is that when planets line up in the early- to mid-degrees of any mutable sign — Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, Pisces — there is a nuclear effect of some time. Like most things in astrology it’s not 100%. And it can have odd manifestations. The most intense activation of the nuclear axis came at the time of the 911 incident: Saturn was in Gemini and Pluto was in Sagittarius, splat on the axis. We had a huge false flag terrorist attack, and the crime scene was called Ground Zero, a term borrowed from the lexicon of nuclear warfare.
That was a close call and if you ask me it was a form of mitigated karma. Based on the astrology, that incident could just as easily have involved an atomic device, such as a dirty bomb. But the effect is dependable enough.

The Nuclear Axis is again getting transits. Here are the planets at the time of the quake. Now, what we see here ain’t the Saturn-Pluto conjunction — thankfully. But we do do have the involvement of several slow movers (Chaos, Borasisi, Pholus) and a quick mover: Mars. Chaos speaks for itself; were there ever an issue that qualified for the Borasisi effect of wishful thinking, that would be nukes. Nuclear power is not a technology — it’s a religion. It is addictive. By splitting the atom, people have come as close as they can to ‘playing god’, and it seems that once ‘scientists’ get into this, they never really come out of it.
Like the fictional religion from which the name Borasisi comes, nuclear power is a religion of lies. I wish that were an overstatement. There is simply nothing true about nuclear power, except that the atom is split, water is boiled and sometimes electricity is made. The truth stops right about there.
I would point out a few other features of this chart as discussion starters. One, look at the Moon-Neptune conjunction. That describes the emotional impulse of the deception involved. Note that the Noon and Neptune are in very early Libra, exactly opposite the Aries Point, suggesting the scale and size of the deception, and revealing how personal the situation really is when you look at it honestly. Any time we get a transit to the Aries Point — such as Uranus opposing that Moon right now as it has just entered Aries — we will stir up this chart.
Next, there are three bits involving centaur planets, none of which were discovered at the time of this event. First, the ascendant is the degree wherein Chirion was discovered in 1977 — 3+ Taurus. Next, there is a centaur there at the time of the event — Nessus, which is about the cycle of karma.
Next, Chiron is prominent: it’s on the North Node, like a kind of warhead. It is in the last degree of Leo, along with the Node in the next to last degree of Leo. Have a look! It’s easy to see; they are both orange points with high numbers (in the high 20s on a scale of 30).
Next, Pholus is on the midheaven — just like two charts we’ve seen recently: the self-immolation that started the revolution in Tunisia; and the shooting earlier this year in Tucson, AZ. Pholus is, appropriately, in Capricorn: the sign of matter itself, the structure of matter, and in the house of government. Pholus represents that which cannot be contained once it’s released. Gee whiz! Look, it’s even in green. Right spot-on in the MC.
Right where it will stand as a warning — unfortunately unacknowledged, but known at the time to minds the likes of Einstein — to be extremely careful with this technology, indeed, not to go there because once the nuclear age begins it never really ends.
I have never taken a close look at this chart with the centaur planets in (and if I did, I didn’t understand them at the time). I have to say this is just wild, to have centaurs covering the ascendant, the midheaven and the North Node; and the degree rising predicting the discovery of the first centaur some 35 years later.
The centaurs are all about raising awareness, and this chart is saying nothing if not pay attention.
The Berlin experiment was not just “when scientists got the reaction to work to get the effect that they wanted.” It was the date when the scientists performed the experiment that started the nuclear age, the moment when fission was first created and recorded. Hahn is widely credited as the “Father of the Atomic Age,” not Fermi. The Berlin experiment is considered the start of the Atomic Age by actual scientists who understand the physics, rather than amateurs using Wikipedia. This is the definitive date. If you need a specific time, Hahn’s notebooks are on display in a German museum, and I am sure his record-keeping was scrupulous.
Michele: Meitner is included in the experiment’s name, as belated recognition of her crucial contributions, despite her not being present in Berlin. This historic moment would not have happened without her.
wow carol —
i was trying to figure out why anyone would think it was a good idea to irradiate adenoids — figuring it must have something to do with kids having to get their tonsils removed, and the whole way medical institutions tend to get so carried away with their perceived ability to “fix” mother nature preemptively with science. so i did a quick google search & found this very basic kids’ health site, which seems to indicate just how probably unnecessary the irradiation was (besides likely causing a host of worse long-term problems):
http://kidshealth.org/kid/ill_injure/sick/adenoids.html
michele, one skeptic red herring argument is, “If astrology is true, then why don’t astrologers read the conception chart instead of the birth chart?”
Part of why the birth chart is used is because it’s nearly impossible to time conception. People have all kinds of theories, but nobody witnesses the actual conception, nor do parents write down when they fucked, and if they fucked every day for a week and that creates a pregnancy, nobody would know which day the conception occurred. But when someone takes their first breath, that is fairly obvious.
There are techniques for timing things such as historic events. it is a whole field of astrology. It includes how we arrive at the chart for a nation. There are about a dozen charts for the United States, for example. Most astrologers use one or two of three charts, called Sibly, Scorpionic America and Virgo Rising. All US charts are speculative. I’ve read good arguments that July 4 is honorary rather than substantive — but it is the STATED TIME on the declaration of independence, so it has veracity merely from that.
Someone asked why I distrust government pronouncements about radiation safety. My personal experience includes being on the receiving end of 60+ years of lies and cover-up of radiation effects.
Questions for our so trustworthy government and nuclear addicts: Why has the U.S. government refused to follow up or inform 571,000 U.S. citizens (full disclosure: includes myself) who in childhood were exposed to high levels of radiation inserted into their nasal passages in a government-sponsored medical experiment, complete with PR proclaiming its safety and efficacy? Why do neither the government nor nuclear proponents acknowledge the excessive risks to those 571,000 people of any increased radiation in their environment, food, or water?
Be sure to note how exposure levels in Japanese victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki compare to the levels deliberately inserted into American children’s heads:
As always! 🙂
Everything has antecedents, predecessors, things that would not be possible had some other thing not happened first. Without my grandparents, I would not be possible, so we could read their charts instead of mine — and for sure, if you’re really really curious about me, you will learn something from the charts of my grandparents. However, their story is also told in my chart.
We read inauguration charts for presidents, not the moment they gave their little speech rubbing their hands in New Hampshire as a candidate. We read birth, not conception; we read the day a car was purchased, not the day it was manufactured.
If a car was manufactured without Mercury retrograde, why should it matter if you buy it with or without Mercury retrograde? Well, if that puts you in doubt about the validity of astrology, then skip over astrology altogether; but Mercury retrograde as we think of it involves the time a commitment is made, not the time something came into being.
Astrology is a way to tap into a wider, deeper holos, rather than (as we think of things) something that represents a limited concept.
The date of most things can seem arbitrary, and the earlier charts can fill in the blanks. What we are looking for is a chart that works; a chart that is ‘radical’ to use the old word, which is to say, one that describes what it’s supposed to be about. This is subjective. Here, we have exited the concept of science as the gathering of objective, repeatable facts or experiments; there is no “cohort of you” against which we can repeat experiments in your natal chart. You don’t go through your first Saturn return enough times to prove that the reading is or is not accurate.
The concept of radicality is used most often in horary astrology, where a question is being asked, and we use the time the mailman knocked on the door with the letter containing the question, or the time the client asked the question in a phone call. With charts of this nature, there are tests of radicality, one of which is to look for certain strictures against judgment, and the others of which include seeing whether you have a chart that tells the story. This can be a real skill, though sometimes a chart just ‘says it’ – and the nuclear axis chart is one of those charts.
I am careful to call this chart the “first self-sustaining atomic reaction,” NOT the “atom split chart” as it is sometimes called. It’s the chart for when scientists got the reaction to work to get the effect that they wanted, rather than another element of the theory being proven possible. That seems to be in the event Charles references, though I haven’t seen it yet. I am sure it’s interesting — especially if we can get the time. If we cannot, we have a different issue on our hands.
One of the ways so cast a historic chart is to look at a point of no return of one kind or another; a chart where an invention manifested; or the stated time when someone says something or other is so. Hence, the time stated on a wedding invitation is as important as the moment the couple says “I do.”
There is a book about this, called The Moment of Astrology. It’s a lot of fun.
PS. Or is this an astrology argument that astrology people have all the time?
Well… Meitner was in Stockholm in 1938 and Hahn apparently described to her, in a letter, how he and Strassman caused uranium disintegration. She and her nephew Frisch then worked on provided a theoretical explanation, which she coined nuclear fission.
But all that aside… This brings me to a question I’ve always had regarding historical events, especially those of a scientific nature, in relation to astrology. Science is always fast and furious and at any given time people are racing with similar materials. I realize, Eric, that the chart posted is for the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction – the atomic pile, or nuclear reactor.
So how does one pick a definitive date, if without the prior work, it wouldn’t be possible? How do you stop going back and back a bit more? Just curious. And probably simplistic. Is it like a natal chart in that sure conception occurred to lead to a birth, but it’s the moment of the birth of the thing itself that matter?
Same goes for the writing of a book, or anything for that matter?
Bah. I should go to bed.
As always, Eric, your basic scientific facts are wrong. The nuclear age started on Dec 17, 1938, with the Hahn-Strassmann-Meitner experiment in Berlin. Hahn won the Nobel Prize, Lise Meitner was a Jewish woman so of course her contribution was not recognized, and is today considered the primary example of the Nobel Committee’s failure to recognize women scientists.
Strassmann was designated as “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem, in part for his protection of Meitner.
The start of the *American* nuclear age was January 25, 1939, at Columbia University in NYC, by a large team including Enrico Fermi. That experiment was the basis of Fermi’s reactor, Chicago Pile 1, that went live on your 1942 date.