MERCURY RULES THE AIR. He is the god of the wind. Weather-predicting astrology explicitly recognizes Mercury’s rulership of the wind. A chart cast for the exact moment when he enters each Sign by direct or retrograde motion is taken as indicative of the type of wind which may be expected at any particular place till he changes Sign once again.¹

"If Mercury rules the wind," the editor wrote to me, after I had sent him my article on Mercury², "shouldn’t you include some charts of tornadoes to show his effect?"

Of course the idea that he rules the wind did not originate with me. It is a well-known part of astrological weather-predicting lore. Mercury’s function is to circulate the air, carrying moisture and transmitting heat from hot spots to colder ones and cold from cold spots to warmer ones, tending or at least trying to help to maintain a more or less even temperature over the whole globe. It is analogous to the way he gets people to communicate by means of conversation, spreading news and preventing isolation and misunderstanding from getting completely out of hand. In general he is a benefic in these activities, though he can be mischievous too sometimes, spreading gossip and setting neighbors at loggerheads. And so it seems to be with the wind too. On the whole his circulatory function is a boon to us. Indeed it is essential. Our world would be uninhabitable if the wind did not blow, bringing rain and coolness to places which would otherwise be parched and sweltering, and even warming up the Arctic and Antarctic wastes in due season, aiding the Sun as he returns to them each year with his light and a ration of heat to be spread out evenly over them.

But as we all know, winds are sometimes dangerous. "It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good," says the proverb, but such winds do blow. The editor sent me eight charts, six of them tornado touchdowns and two straightforward destructive gale winds. "Explain these," he said.

Before I proceed to do this, let me first of all consider what we might expect to find in a chart cast for a time when a wind caused serious damage to property and/or loss of life.

As I have said, I do not consider Mercury to be essentially malefic. Nevertheless he can sometimes blow very hard, and when he does that he whips up storms at sea and topples trees on land—occasionally buildings as well. In the same way speakers sometimes shout, and when they do they may browbeat or terrorize other people. But in those cases a confrontation situation usually exists already and the shouting merely fans and worsens it. I think it is so with the wind as well. Its worst effects occur when there is already trouble in being or at least the potentiality for it. It is the unseaworthy or incompetently commanded ship which is most likely to founder in a storm at sea and similarly it is an unsafe building or an exposed tree (i.e. one which is no longer part of a mutually protecting forest) which suffers worst on land.

The editor’s two charts of destructive gusts of wind illustrate this principle clearly.

Figure 1:

The most recent of them, that for 7:15 a.m. EST on March 6th, 1997 at Queens, New York, concerned a 70-foot tall maple tree which crashed across Francis Lewis Boulevard, crushing the back of a Dodge Ram in which there were two adults and eight children. Four of the children were killed and all the other six occupants were injured.

Typically, sidewalk workers had cut the roots of the tree in 1996, making it a potential death trap. A sixty-mile-an-hour wind had set it swaying wildly and obviously the street should have been closed. Fig. 1, the chart for the time the tree fell, shows the position precisely. Saturn is exactly on the Ascendant. A more appropriate indication of crushing would be impossible to imagine.

What about Mercury?

He was unhappy for he was in Pisces where he is in both his detriment and fall, and he also has a weak square to Pluto (though this is enormously strengthened and intensified by a parallel as well). Pluto afflictions are noted for causing mishaps which involve a lot of people all at the same time—things like airplane disasters and mass automobile pile-ups are typical (here a whole street was blocked when the tree fell across it).

Thus the potential for trouble that might be caused by the wind was unquestionably there, but why did it happen precisely at that moment. What triggered it?

I suggest it was because the Midheaven then just happened to be at the exact midpoint of the opposition between Saturn and Mars, in square to both of them. When we come to examine the tornado charts we shall see just how vital the Midheaven is. A disaster like this is a public event so it concerns the Midheaven more than the Ascendant, although since people were crushed in the accident Saturn was appropriately on the Ascendant as well.

Note in addition that Uranus in Aquarius is the ultimate dispositor of everything else in this chart. "It all happened so suddenly." Of course.

The final feature to notice is the closeness of Mercury to Venus. This is very important. In some ways it is the key to everything that happened. I shall explain why in connection with the next case.

FOUR TREES BLOWN DOWN

The other non-tornado chart for 7:30 p.m. EDT on October 18th, 1990 at Goldens Bridge, New York (shown at Figure 2), is for a sudden gust of wind which brought down four mature, healthy trees on our editor’s own property.

Figure 2:

I don’t know how the trees were planted, or indeed anything else about them beyond the fact that they were blown down, but potential for trouble of some kind is indicated in the chart at Fig. 2 by a Yod formation involving Mars in the Ist House as the finger or pointer in quincunx aspect to Neptune in Capricorn in the VIIIth and Pluto in Scorpio in the VIth. All three are also all in parallel. Mars himself is in Mercury’s Sign Gemini. This by itself doesn’t indicate wind but it can certainly go along with it and Fortuna too is just below the Ascendant, right at the beginning of Gemini. Fortunately Mars is a considerable distance away from the Ascendant, even though he is in the Ist House, so harm to people is not as likely as it was in the previous case where Saturn was precisely rising.

What then of Mercury?

At first sight he doesn’t seem to be afflicted. He is embedded in a dense satellitium of four bodies in Libra close to the cusp of the VIth House, and Libra is not a Sign in which he is unhappy. He is in square to Saturn in Capricorn in the VIIIth House, but although that could go along with a fracture of some sort it hardly by itself suggests a violent storm of wind.

But note that Mercury is close to Venus again, just as he was in the last case, and they are also parallel to each other as well, just as they were in that case too. Why Venus?

I first learnt the answer to that question some thirteen years ago while I was taking a course in piano tuning and servicing at Stevenson College in Edinburgh, Scotland, after being retired from the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra at the end of 1982. Enlightenment came during a lecture on the subject of resonance.

Most people know that if you sing a note loudly enough or play it on some other musical instrument close to a piano whose sustaining pedal is pressed down, the string on the piano which corresponds to that note will resonate with it and begin to sound. This lecture went a lot further than just that, however. It illustrated the universal omnipresence of resonance. Every person and every thing in this world has his, her or its own individual note that will resonate in sympathy if this note or a note harmonizing with it is sounded anywhere in its vicinity. It is a principle that is now being used militarily since certain sound frequencies, when projected at enemy troops with sufficient intensity, can bring down buildings by resonating with them and break every bone in individual soldier’s bodies. Moreover, even unintentionally, certain frequencies can be very dangerous in confined spaces. Thus a frequency of about eight beats a second resonates with the human intestinal cavity and it has been discovered that sailors or workmen hammering or using drills operating at this frequency to remove rust in the bunkers of ships developed intestinal bleeding.

The direct relevance of all this to the subject of Mercury and Venus and the wind is that to illustrate the importance of resonance the lecturer in Edinburgh showed a film in which a steel bridge over a canyon in the United States was destroyed by wind. It was not simply blown down by one enormous gust that just tore it away. No. The wind was blowing strongly and rhythmically, and the rhythm in which it was blowing resonated with the bridge’s own individual note. Do you remember how marching soldiers are ordered to break step when crossing a bridge? The purpose is to prevent just the effect that happened here. The bridge began to sway, and we watched all the vehicles and people who were on it hurriedly get off it. Then gradually but inexorably the swaying increased. The whole bridge began to oscillate and swing amazingly — unbelievably — like a pendulum with ever increasing amplitude. And then suddenly it twisted and crumpled and the whole structure dropped into the canyon below.

If you look at the newspaper account of the fall of the 70-foot maple tree in Queens on March 6th 1997 you will see that it describes it swaying wildly before it fell. The editor doesn’t mention his four trees as swaying but with Venus just 1°26’ away from Mercury in the chart for their fall, I have no doubt whatever that they did. They came down not simply and solely because an irresistibly strong wind blew them over but because of a gust which resonated with their own particular frequency.

The principle we have to understand is that Venus herself cannot produce a wind but she can tune one that is already in being. Then the wind doesn’t just speak (i.e., blow) — it sings. And when the wind sings, then is the time to watch out. Remember that according to immemorial tradition witches always sung or whistled when they wanted to raise a tempest.

Remember too that even though Venus is a benefic that does not mean she has no acquaintance with pain or sorrow. There is no sorrow in the world more poignant than that we experience when love goes wrong or is unrequited. And as if to rub home the lesson, the central day of the whole Christian religion is Good Friday, Venus’ day, when Jesus’ disciples deserted Him and He was crucified.

Of course a conjunction of Venus with Mercury doesn’t always produce a destructive wind. In an appropriate context it may denote a good kindergarten teacher. But sometimes it can warn of potential danger from wind — even a wind that can destroy children, like the one that blew on March 6th, 1997 in Queens.

THE TORNADO CHARTS

We need to realize first of all that although a particular tornado that rips our house apart may be unusual (thank the Lord) tornadoes as a genus are neither rare nor unusual. Particular years may see more of them than other years but a large number are generated every year. Nearly all of them originate in a band circling the globe and stretching approximately 30° North and South of the equator. Most of them stay within these limits though a few destructive individuals stray beyond it.

Why do they rotate?

Basically, it all has to do with the daily rotation of the Earth. There are two types of wind on Earth, cold ones coming from the poles and hot ones coming from the equator. The cold wind coming up from the South Pole is carried round towards the East as the Earth rotates and also widens as the wind reaches lower latitudes, so it becomes a Westerly or South-Westerly. Similarly the wind from the North Pole becomes a Westerly or North-Westerly. The wind from the equator however, which is traveling Eastwards at 1,000 m.p.h., goes Southwards or Northwards to regions where the Earth is still traveling Eastwards but at a lesser velocity, so it becomes an Easterly.

Eventually the Easterly and Westerly winds meet, and they cancel out in an area of the Earth known as the doldrums, which used to be a nightmare to mariners in the days of sailing ships. They couldn’t find a wind to fill their sails. But in addition the cold wind from the poles hugs the surface of the Earth while the hot one from the equator is high up. Since they are going in opposite directions this tends to produce a whirl, and the doldrums is also the great breeding ground for tornadoes.

Actually, all wind movements on Earth tend to be circular. They are called cyclones, and they consist of alternate layers of hot and cold air. You can see them any day on the TV when the weather forecaster is giving her report. Hurricanes and tornadoes are merely particularly virulent cases of an omnipresent phenomenon.

Having said that, however, it does really seem as though something else has got into these specific two. Hurricanes in particular have been suspected of having an almost sentient life of their own. And strangely enough they always used to be given girl’s names — Hurricane Sarah, Hurricane Phyllis, and so on — till the feminists protested. Then a few boy’s names were given for a while but naming them seems to have dropped out of fashion nowadays. It seemed right that they should be women. Possibly a subconscious astrological instinct told the weathermen so.

Remember those boxers who won not just by using their linear Mercury minds but because they could also dance with their feet and their whole bodies? A tornado is the very incarnation of a whirling, dancing, pirouetting wind. It can change direction swiftly, suddenly, unpredictably, like an expert ballerina on points. It has got Venus in it!

Figure 3:

ARKANSAS TORNADO

As I did with the wind-gust charts I begin with the most recent tornado chart the editor sent, for the simple reason that, as in the Queens’ case, he also sent me the newspaper report about it along with it. It is the one for 2:46 p.m. CST at Arkadelphia, Arkansas on March 1st, 1997, see Fig. 3. The graphic account says that the tornado went through the town like a malevolent giant stepping heavily, crushing a block in one place but leaving the one next to it standing. When some residents came back to the piles of rubble that had been their downtown, they got lost. Six people died.

The chart is in what I consider to be the classical form. Mercury is only 22’ from being exactly conjunct Venus in the VIIIth House in Pisces. Venus is exalted in Pisces but Mercury is disgruntled there so he has some bad humor to work off. They are both in very close square to the Moon-Pluto conjunction in Sagittarius in the Vth, so you can expect martian effects. The chart is bowl-shaped, everything being enclosed within the opposition from Mars to Saturn, which was also present, right along the horizon, in the map for the tree fall in Queens. Dangerous falls and fractures would tend to characterize a whole period while a long opposition like this was in force between these two, with Mars retrograding. Here it is not emphasized by angularity, as in the Queens’ case, but Mars rules the Midheaven and I said in my discussion of that case that one must always look at the Midheaven in a case of public disaster. Moreover the Midheaven is in parallel to the Sun, the Ascendant ruler, and he is in the VIIIth square Pluto, so there is warning enough of trouble.

Why did the tornado strike just when it did?

Probably because Leo had just started to rise, making the Sun the ruler, while at the same time the Midheaven had just become parallel to the Sun. But in addition Uranus was 6° above the Descendant, disposing of it as well as of Jupiter, the Moon and Pluto. He thus held the trigger to Pluto’s mass effect, and Uranus always likes to jump the gun and act when no one is expecting anything.

1. See the chapter ‘Astrological Air Movement Charts’ in C. C. Zain, Weather Predicting. Los Angles: Church of Light. 1949. Pp. 103: "Winds are indicated by the aspects made by the planets, in their movement through the zodiac and by change in declination, to the degree on the Ascendant of the Air Movement Chart covering the period. Mild aspects from mild planets do not stir up heavy winds, but only mild air movements. The more violent the planet and the more violent the aspect the more violent will be the wind indicated, always, of course, subject to what the chart indicates, and to the indications of the season Temperature Chart." [This is calculated every three months upon the entry of the Sun into the four Cardinal Signs. PW]

2. This 2-part article on Mercury was published in Considerations XII:3 and XII:4.

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