by Robert Wilkinson
Though the US celebrates its birthday as July 4th, 1776, I and many others know that was not the day America was "born," since we did not become a nation then. While we celebrate the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4 (it should be July 1) our nation was not created as a functioning entity with a central government until quite a few years later.
As I've written in prior posts on this subject, though we can know when a human being is born (first breath), finding the birthday of a nation is a much different thing. This is one of the 7 branches of traditional Astrology known as Mundane, or Political Astrology.
In Mundane Astrology, to know a city or state's birthday, we usually take a city's incorporation date and the day a state is accepted into the "Federal Union" as its birthday. So in the case of the US, a state must create its own Constitution, which must be accepted by the people of the state and Congress, followed by Congress putting a joint resolution on the floor and voting on it. Then the Prez signs the resolution. So the birth charts of the states are always for when Congress granted them statehood.
In a national chart it's the day when the nation's current form of government came into being. Thus you can see that nations can have more than one "birth chart," as many nations have adopted many forms of government across the centuries. There's also the distinction of the sign that traditionally rules "a people," as opposed to when the government came into being. That’s usually seen in the Moon sign and 4th house occupants and rulers.
An aside - when people come to me for sessions related to where they should move, I always take the charts of cities, states, and nations into account rather than Astrocartography, which operates from several flawed assumptions. I have not found astrocartography to be reliable, regardless of all the pretzel logic I’ve heard to justify using it. Mine says I should go to Siberia for multiple successes, which is an absurd notion.
How our chart relates to a city's chart, or a state's chart, or a nation's chart, can be read using a combination of techniques from synastry and return charts. There are also other non-astrological means that help us know what to expect if we move to a given place.
Astrologically, when it comes to locations, it's important to remember that simply because we have favorable Venus or Jupiter influences in a place does not necessarily mean it'll be good for us. Just because we assume that certain contacts are favorable, "it ain't necessarily so."
Here real world conditions “preempt the playing field,” making it or breaking it for us in any given place more than any astrological contacts. For example, if you cannot take the heat, don’t move to a desert region. If you can’t take the humidity, don’t move to a place that’s wet most of the time, even if your Jupiter is well aspected. That might indicate a lot of water rather than opportunity!
Anyway, let’s get back to the chart of the United States of America.
Historically, the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, was a consensus document declaring that 13 separate colonies agreed that they weren't going to live with certain oppressions any longer. Even there, it seems we should be celebrating July 1, since that was the first vote which passed. A second vote was taken the next day because a few more delegates showed up and that vote also passed. Adams thought July 2 would be when we celebrated the DOI, but because there were still a few delegates who hadn’t shown up and Adams wanted unanimity, he waited until all delegates from all colonies could cast votes affirming the Declaration (which had been amended by then), which was on July 4, even though it went into force 3 days earlier.
So the DOI was not a document of a Federal Government in-the-becoming. It also seems the first vote on the Declaration happened at 6:26 pm LMT on June 28, 1776, and there were several draft changes between then and July 4. The vote on July 2 had almost everyone voting for it except for some delegates who either weren’t there, or didn’t receive permission until July 3 or 4. It then had to be authenticated by Hancock's signature, and the first copy wasn't released until later.
Many years ago I published an article written by a very good astrologer full of scholarly reasoning and facts around the birth of the US government. It offered arguments why we must use either the chart for the Articles of Confederation or the ratification of the Constitution as the true birth chart for the US.
After years of studying various charts to see correlations between those charts and national events, I came to believe America's "birth chart" should be the one for when the Constitution was finally agreed upon before it was sent out to the individual states for their ratification OR when it became law in March 1789. That makes our birthday 11:29 am September 17, 1787, the Constitutional convention’s final day and the signing by 39 founders, or 12:01 am, March 4, 1789, when it became for of law. The Articles were a prototype for the Constitution, but didn't include certain key clauses the Constitution contained that moved us from an inter-colonial agreement into a relatively unified Federal Republic.
At this point I’ll add that the highly respected mundane astrologer and expert historian Gary Lorentzen believes that even here, we must question whether we use the creation of the Constitution (17 September 1787), its ratification (21 June 1788), when it was formally announced/presented and accepted by Congress (July 2, 1788), or the date it was effective as law (4 March 1789). It’s obvious there needs to be a lot of research on all these charts before we know the correlations we need to know.
Anyway, here's a bit from my original article on the subject, back when I still entertained the possibility that the date for the Articles of Confederation might still be in the running as a national birthday:
There is a tremendous debate among astrologers as to when on July 4 the document was signed, but to me that doesn't matter. For years I used the Declaration of War chart done for July 6, 1775, as the "birth chart" for America, since that was the first point of organized union against the form of government imposed upon the separate and whole group of colonies. But after a while, I got to contemplating that though I found the July 6 chart valid in some ways, it still doesn't describe all this nation is.So I did some research, and found that statistically, in terms of "hits" correlating to significant historical events, there are two outstanding charts for the founding of our nation. One is the chart for The Articles of Confederation and the other is the chart for the ratification of our Constitution, which is the supreme Law of the US.
Astrodatabank used to have a great summation of the pros and cons of the many charts considered to be the "birth chart" of the US, but the original page no longer exists and now they have charts for every proposed time on July 4, even if they are woefully incorrect historically. We do know that regarding the signing of the Declaration, “There is near certainty that the declaration was not actually signed until it came back from the printer, sometime in August. As for the hour, the official journal indicated Congress convened at 9:00 AM, debated and quickly adopted the declaration and then went on to their other work.”
For the signing of the Constitution, we know that it happened 9/17/1787, 11:29:00 AM, Philadelphia, PA, which was the final signature to adopt the present U.S. Constitution subject to ratification by the individual States. The Constitution was declared effective as of March 4, 1789.
From Lois Rodden’s original article:
"On July 24, the convention named a five-man Committee of Detail to sort everything out and draft a coherent summary of all the votes. After nine days, they adjourned and Washington went fishing. The dwindling collection of delegates picked a five-man Committee of Style and Arrangement to undertake the actual writing of the Constitution. Although they were not supposed to change the substance of what the convention had so far decided ... all five were strong-government advocates. The actual writer was Gouverneur Morris, who re-wrote the original to read, "We, the People of the United States ...."
"When the committee presented its constitution on Sept.12, the delegates eagerly began trying to change things all over again... The changing continued right up to the scheduled closing day, September 17, but three delegates ... refused to sign. Franklin still had doubts and reservations, saying "I consent, sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better." Still ahead was nine months of bitter debate before the necessary nine states ratified what had been written that summer in Philadelphia. Ahead lay the creation of the Bill of Rights... but it was on the 17th of September 1787 when Washington wrote in his journal, "The business being closed, the members adjourned to the City Tavern to dine, after which... retire to meditate on the momentous work which had been executed."
From Wikipedia, “On June 21, 1788, the Constitution had been ratified by the minimum of nine states required under Article VII. Toward the end of July, and with eleven states then having ratified, the process of organizing the new government began.” We also read “The federal government began operations under the new form of government on March 4, 1789. However, the initial meeting of each chamber of Congress had to be adjourned due to lack of a quorum.” Procrastination is a quality of Pisces!)
For more information about how the "Committee of Five" (Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Wilson, and Livingston) came to create the Declaration of Independence, you can find more from wikipedia at Committee of Five.
Happy July 4 anyway!
(click on the chart to get a larger image)
© Copyright 2025 Robert Wilkinson
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