Fire and the Phoenix City
by Kirk Little
In this two-part series, the astrology of two urban fires – separated by 90 years – that destroyed Falmouth (now Portland, Maine, USA) is examined. In Part 1, the element of fire and Michael Harding’s ideas of Primal Zodiac and Embedded Moments are linked to Captain Mowat’s 1775 naval bombardment of Falmouth and its later regeneration. The horoscopes for different events and people reveal eerie links between them and personal and collective trauma across time.
The American writer and humourist Mark Twain allegedly wisecracked that “History doesn’t repeat itself, but often it rhymes”. His words came to mind as I studied two urban fires, separated by 90 years, which destroyed large parts of a city I used to call home. The first fire was caused by an act of war during the opening year of the American Revolution. The second was set by a firecracker tossed on the 4th of July celebrating America’s independence. The first fire appears to be the result of the injured pride of a British sea captain; the second was due to the rash impulses of an adolescent boy. Pride and rashness are classic fire sign traits and I wondered if that element also played rhyming-roles in the key horoscopes of these two traumatic urban fires.
Before I discuss the two conflagrations (1) which burned Falmouth (later Portland) Maine, I review the astrological element of fire and discuss Michael Harding’s notion of a Primal Zodiac which provides a model for understanding the phenomenon of historical recurrence.
Elemental my dear Watson
Of the four elements used by astrologers, fire is unique in that it describes a conditional process, rather than the relatively stable entities of air, earth and water. Each of the elements represents not a substance, but a principle used by astrologers to classify commonly observed qualities, behaviours, or traits. Fire is associated with the qualities of expansion and radiation, also the trait of trust in self and the notion of luck. Situations marked strongly by the fire principle may be unsettling, rapidly changing and demanding. (2)
The individual fire signs each symbolise a unique expression of the fire principle, from Aries’ self-willed urge for action, to Leo’s pride and urge for recognition, to Sagittarius’ beliefs, generalisations and ideals. (3) Collectively, as Stephen Arroyo reminds us, “Fire signs exemplify high spirits…enthusiasm, unending strength and a direct honesty”; they also “may come across as rather wilful, even overpowering at times, rushing into things with such haste that they unintentionally cause destruction…” (4) Psychologically, the presence of strong fire sign energy in a horoscope may manifest as undue confidence, single-mindedness and rashness. Such individuals may feel blessed or cursed by intuitions, hunches and lucky guesses. Fire’s qualities have made their way into everyday speech patterns. Everyone understands what people mean when they hear that someone is all fired up. At one time or another, most of us have felt burned by a situation.
Embedded Moments and the Primal Zodiac
In his thought-provoking Hymns to the Ancient Gods (5), Michael Harding proposes an alternative to the Jungian concept of the Collective Unconscious with its archetypal images and figures. He proposes a Primal Zodiac as a repository of individual and collective memories. As opposed to the static Jungian model with its eternal archetypes, Harding proposes a dynamic, self-renewing system. In his model, “it is as if the individual birth map is a reflection of a Primal Zodiac, which is alive with the residue of all that has ever happened and is continuously modified by the processes of life.” (6) Historical actors and events…
…are seemingly locked into a feedback loop with the universe: what we do may affect it; as we modify our own destiny so we cannot help but affect all that is around us. These changes may emerge slowly through the slow tread of time, though occasionally they may come with dizzying suddenness that overturns a stable balance or reverses an established trend. (7)
He proposes we stop thinking of…
…time as it is conventionally portrayed by astrology – as a series of discrete moments to be analysed in isolation as separate charts – but instead seeing it as a flowing sequence of events that merge into each other: time as a continuum. The meaning of each instance remains within the zodiac, to be picked up again and again as it is touched by future transits, to be in turn modified or reinforced by the nature of the later occurrences. (8)
To complete his model, he further hypothesises a notion of “embedded moments” where the memories we have of past events can be thought of as being “held or embedded within us at a personal and collective level.” (9) Like all memories, they may become dim or distorted over time, while others may have a vividness for apparently trivial recollections that make no apparent logical sense. Borrowing from Freud, Harding explains these may be “screen memories” which focus on a traumatic issue “but discretely cover it at the same time.” (10) While Harding is describing a process which occurs at the individual level, his model makes room for collective historical events. He notes: “From an astrological perspective, we would see the traumatic moment as an event chart which has become embedded within the psyche, accessible only through its symbolic content.” (11) Unpacking that symbolic content is what we astrologers do.
Like any model, Harding’s Primal Zodiac, with its embedded moments is more suggestive than definitive. Still, it enables us to see astrological patterns in historical recurrences and to make symbolic connections between events widely separated in time. Because the two fires I discuss fall into the realm of mundane astrology, it is interesting to see a practitioner of that branch of our art describe the ecliptic as a “‘reservoir of history’ – a reservoir of the innumerable formative moments and causal sequences that have preceded any given moment and, in particular, any given ‘new beginning’” (12). It is time to take a look at the initial trauma.
Captain Mowat’s revenge
In 1775, Portland, Maine, then known as Falmouth, was experiencing a crisis of sorts. The decade-long dispute between England and its 13 American colonies was worsening by the day. Regulation of trade lay at the heart of their rift; this was a significant concern to the merchants of Falmouth, Maine’s largest port city. Between 1763 and 1775, the English Parliament passed a series of revenue taxes on trade to pay off England’s massive debt incurred during the Seven Years’ War. During that decade, opposition to English control manifested in a series of colonial boycotts which caught the attention of London trading houses. In turn, London merchants were successful in petitioning Parliament who rolled back most of the taxes but maintained their right to levy such duties. (13) Boycotting English goods fell especially hard on the colonial merchant class, who began to resent the radical American faction.
By spring of 1775, Falmouth’s merchants, wearied from past sacrifices, were reluctant to embrace one more demand by the radical faction to shun British goods. Their stance put them at odds with much of the local populace. Following the news of the fighting at Lexington and Concord on 19 April, customs officials employed by the Crown – and frightened by the recent violent actions in Boston – took refuge aboard the British ship Canceaux, commanded by Captain Henry Mowat.
On 9 May, one enterprising rebel, Samuel Thompson, along with a small group of men, succeeded in capturing the Canceaux’s commander and another officer while they were ashore visiting an Anglican preacher. With British war ships anchored in their harbour, “Thompson’s rash behaviour horrified the town. Panic stricken inhabitants fled carrying their possessions in every conceivable form of conveyance. Leading citizens beseeched Thompson to release his prisoner before Mowat’s second-in-command made good his threat to bombard the town.” (14) In the wake of Thompson’s actions, over 600 truculent militiamen from surrounding Maine towns poured into the Falmouth peninsula. Grudgingly, Thompson released Mowat who returned to his ship with wounded pride. Falmouth’s town merchants nearly fell over each other in their haste to make rushed apologies to the offended officer. While the town sighed relief as the Canceaux and the rest of his fleet sailed away, they had not seen the last of Captain Mowat.
Months passed. By autumn of 1775, worsening conditions in America compelled England to take a tougher stance with its wayward colonies. Armed rebellion had by now been going on for six months; in June, the Continental Congress had placed George Washington in charge of a large body of men in and around Boston, 100 miles to the south. Soon this ragged body of farmers and artisans would be dubbed the Continental Army. A pitched battle at Bunker Hill in Boston resulted in over 1,000 British casualties and sent the message to London there would be no easy victory. Unknown to most Americans, by autumn, King George III’s ministers were in negotiations with German principalities to hire their mercenaries to crush the growing rebellion.
Engraving of Falmouth burning, 1775
Source: John Norman, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Thus, when Captain Mowat and his flotilla of four ships appeared again in Falmouth harbour on 16 October, he was in no mood to be placated. He was under broad orders to make life miserable for those who opposed the wishes of the Crown. Ironically, “when the town learned that Captain Mowat commanded the flotilla, the inhabitants relaxed, confident that their town stood high in the lieutenant’s favour for helping him escape the clutches of Samuel Thompson.” (15) Mowat quickly disabused them of that idea.
He accused Falmouth of “unpremeditated attacks on the ‘best of sovereigns’ and ‘unpardonable rebellion’.” (16) On the evening of 17 October, he gave them a deadline of 9 a.m. the next day, after which he would level the town with his ship’s cannons. Panic ensued in a replay of May’s scramble for safety. Falmouth residents spent the night loading their possessions into whatever vehicles they could procure. Unfortunately, “there were not enough carts, wagons, wheelbarrows horses, oxen, or hours in the night. By morning, refugees and their belongings still jammed the streets.” (17) After a town committee failed to meet to consider Mowat’s demands to give up their arms, shelling commenced at 9:40 a.m. and lasted until 6 p.m. By the time the firing ceased, the town lay in ruins: over 400 structures were destroyed, including the Anglican church, the new courthouse, the fire station and the public library. Mowat also sank 11 vessels at anchor in the harbour. To ensure complete destruction, he sent torching parties ashore to set fire to buildings not destroyed by cannon fire. In his report, Mowat dryly noted “the town was in one flame.” (18)
Chart of Mowat's opening fire, 1775
Source: chart provided by the author
The horoscope (‘Mowat opens fire on Portland’) is for the inception of the attack, and it is revealing. Mars rises at 4° Sagittarius 42' opposing a setting Uranus at 6° Gemini 08'. Since he initiated the attack, Mowat is symbolised by the Ascendant, its ruling planet, and any planets in the 1st house. His rebel opponents are symbolised by the Descendant, its ruling planet, and any planets in the 7th house. Mars opposition Uranus suggests hasty action. Ebertin notes: “Obstinacy, a person imbued with the fighting spirit, violence.” (19) Carter states, “the native may be blunt and abrupt, or irritable and querulous.” (20) Mowat’s attack, seemingly induced by a fit of pique from his ill-treatment five months earlier, is perfectly captured by the planet of war in self-righteous Sagittarius. Mars is disposed by the 7th-house Jupiter in Gemini ruling the Ascendant. As the horoscope ruler, Jupiter is in its detriment and makes an applying square to culminating Neptune in Virgo. Behind the impulsive attack we detect strongly distorting emotions symbolised by the Jupiter/Neptune square: Carter notes their influence “lead(s) the native away, so that he is no cool judge of matters coming under the planets.” (21) We should note that Mars is in a mundane square to Neptune indicating an attack from the sea.
The American rebels are symbolised by Mercury in Scorpio tucked away in the 12th house and more dramatically by setting Uranus, the planet of revolution. Mercury disposits Uranus: the rebel’s motives are not clear; nerves are frayed. The duality of Mercury symbolises both the placating attitudes of the Falmouth merchants and the hostile, implacable stance of the radical faction. The entwined messiness of the entire situation is best captured by the cascading and circular dispositorships of Mars to Mercury to Uranus to Jupiter back to Mars. The planets of war, aggression, speech, trade, rebellion and law suggest self-reinforcing patterns of behaviour on both sides. Mercury, governed by Mars, also symbolises the malevolent resentments hidden away in the 12th house looking for an outlet. Mercury’s close square to the Moon in Leo, representing the people, suggests stubborn rebel pride unwilling or unable to meet Mowat’s demand to disarm. The Moon’s conjunction to the North Node indicates the close-knit nature of the Falmouth community.
The result of Mowat’s decision was the almost complete destruction of an American town, a fact noted by Thomas Jefferson nine months later. In the Declaration of Independence, he listed among that “best of sovereign’s” litany of abuses, that “he has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, & destroyed the lives of our people.” (22) In the month following Captain Mowat’s actions, the New England Chronicle, reflecting on the destruction of a northern seaport just prior to the onset of winter, made their case for independence a full nine months before Thomas Jefferson set quill to paper:
The savage and brutal barbarity of our enemies…is a full demonstration that there is not the least remains of virtue, wisdom, or humanity in the British court…therefore we expect soon to break off all kinds of connections with Britain, and form into a Grand Republic of the American Colonies. (23)
The Phoenix City
Portland City Seal
Source: Portland, Maine, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Following its almost complete destruction by Mowat’s cannons, Falmouth lay in ruins for years and was not rebuilt until the war ended in 1783. “At the end of the war, the centre of Falmouth was still a ruin marked by blackened, naked chimneys.” (24) In a sign of things to come, “the real beneficiaries of the bombardment were a younger group of go-getters who began with nothing but boundless ambition and energy.” (25) Phoenix-like, Falmouth rose from the ashes within a few years. After eight years of war, the 13 colonies won their independence from the British empire and “in 1786, ‘Falmouth Neck’ shed its colonial name in favour of ‘Portland’ and took the phoenix as its emblem of revival.” (26) This emblem was an apt symbol for a town which had been destroyed by fires twice before during the 17th century. The city’s new motto Resurgam, comes from the Latin resurgo, to rise once more.
At the time of its incorporation on 4 July 1786, Portland was the largest town in the District of Maine, part of Massachusetts, now a state in the fledgling, not so grand American Republic. It had existed in one form or another since 1632 and had been settled as a fishing and trading village by the same English settlers who had populated much of what came to be called New England. Given its fiery history, it is hardly surprising that Portland’s town fathers ordered a state-of-the-art fire ‘engin’ from the London firm of Richard Newsham in 1785; it arrived two years later and was promptly dubbed ‘Neptune’ by its proud crew. (27)
Chart of Portland incorporation, 1786
Source: chart provided by the author
The horoscope for Portland (‘Portland incorporation’) is set for noon, customary for the incorporation of a town. (28) As befitting a seaside city, Neptune rises in Libra closely square the Sun and Mercury in the Midheaven. Libra suggests harmony and balance and over time, the town’s beauty was apparent to its many visitors. Neptune’s square to the elevated Sun/Mercury also indicates an inability to face the facts or see its situation clearly. As we shall see, this institutional blind spot was to have devastating consequences in the future. The town’s phoenix-like attributes are powerfully symbolised by Venus, the horoscope’s ruling planet. It makes an applying opposition to the Pluto/Saturn conjunction in Aquarius. Pluto is known for its capacity to transform or regenerate, while Saturn ensures such transformation manifests in terms of concrete reality.
The town had literally risen from the ashes of Mowat’s destructive attack whose effects had been seared into the collective memory of the men and women who rebuilt their town. If the horoscope for Mowat’s destruction is viewed as an embedded moment, the horoscope for the Portland’s incorporation may be expected to reflect or resonate with that traumatic time. A comparison of the two horoscopes convincingly demonstrates that.
The Portland Sun falls squarely in the Mowat 8th house of regeneration; it closely squares that map’s Chiron/Saturn opposition which Melanie Reinhart associates with “extreme vulnerability and brittle defensiveness”. (29) In the incorporation map, its beguiling rising Neptune is a half-degree from the Mowat Saturn and opposes Chiron, suggesting perhaps a social amnesia had displaced the emotional shocks of war. Anyway, the war was over, and Portlanders were geared to the future, like so many of their American compatriots. Unfortunately, baked into the town’s charter was that Sun/Neptune square. Carter warns that inharmonious Sun/Neptune contacts should “avoid all Neptunian interests…such as those connected with shipping…water supply…breweries…(and) fishing.” (30) As we shall see, these are the very pursuits which contributed to Portland’s next conflagration.
Portland’s Moon, representing the common people (31) is closely conjunct the Mowat Sun and square its Pluto, again reinforcing the theme of transformation, regeneration and yes, trauma. One of Pluto’s symbols is the phoenix bird, “the legendary heron-like bird widely associated with notions of immortality and resurrection.” (32) The North Node for Portland is exactly conjunct the Mowat Pluto. For Pluto/Node contacts, Ebertin notes the principle is “the common destiny of a large mass of people.” (33) As if to redouble the message, Scorpio’s co-ruler Mars, ruling the Portland 2nd house of resources, is conjunct the Mowat North Node/Moon in Leo which we noted symbolised the stiff-necked pride of the rebels during the 1775 attack. Now it has reincarnated in the town’s energy and capacity for self-renewal as manifested by its youthful go-getters.
In Part 2 (July-August 2023), Kirk Little examines the astrology of the great fire of Portland, 1866.
Endnotes:
(1) From the Latin conflagro to blaze, consume by fire. A conflagration is “a fire that involves one or more buildings and then, through convection, radiation and/or conduction, jumps streets and blocks, involving many more buildings. A conflagration breeds its own heat and wind. These are so strong that they will oppose natural wind.” Michael Daicy & Don Whitney, Portland’s Greatest Conflagration: The 1866 Fire, (The History Press, Charleston, SC, 2010), pp. 17-18.
(2) Ronald Harvey, The Spindle of Meaning, (The Urania Trust, London, 1996) Harvey grounds his philosophical discussion of the astrological elements in Plato’s cosmology; the elements express their principle at various levels depending on other horoscopic factors. See pp. 51-62.
(3) Stephen Arroyo, Astrology, Psychology and the Four Elements, (CRCS Publications, Davis, CA, 1975) p. 84.
(4) Ibid., p. 95.
(5) Michael Harding, Hymns to the Ancient Gods, (Arkana/Penguin, London, 1992).
(6) Hymns, op. Cit., p. 107.
(7) Ibid., p. 109.
(8) Ibid., p. 109.
(9) Ibid., p. 110.
(10) Ibid., p. 110.
(11) Ibid., p. 111.
(12) Jimm Erickson, ‘A Philosophy of Mundane Astrology’, The Astrology of the Macrocosm: New Directions in Mundane Astrology, Edited by Joan McEvers, (Llewellyn Publications, St. Paul, MN, 1990) p. 62.
(13) The literature on the prelude to the American Revolution is immense; for a useful overview by a modern scholar, see Gordon S. Wood, The American Revolution: A History, (The Modern Library, New York, 2002), pp. 29-44.
(14) James Leamon, The Revolution Downeast: The War for American Independence in Maine, (The University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 1993), p. 65.
(15) Ibid., p. 70.
(16) Ibid., p. 70.
(17) Ibid., p. 71.
(18) Daicy & Whitney, op. Cit., p. 30.
(19) Rheinhold Ebertin, Combination of Stellar Influences, (Ebertin-Verlag, Aalen, Germany, 1940) p. 148.
(20) Charles Carter, The Astrological Aspects, (L.N. Fowler, London, 1930), p. 132.
(21) Carter, Ibid., p. 148.
(22) See Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence, (Alfred Knopf, New York, 1997), pp. 27, 70; Holger Hoock, Scars of Independence: America’s Violent Birth, (Broadway Books, New York, 2017), pp. 86-99.
(23) Kevin Phillips, 1775: A Good Year for Revolution, (Viking, New York, 2012), p. 343.
(24) Joyce Butler, ‘Rising Like a Phoenix: Commerce in Southern Maine, 1775-1830’, Agreeable Situations: Society, Commerce and Art in Southern Maine, 1780-1830, edited by Laura Fecych Sprague, (The Brick Store Museum, Kennebunk, Maine, 1987), p. 19.
(25) William David Barry, A Vignetted History of Portland Business: 1632-1982, (Maine Historical Society, Princeton University Press, 1982), p. 9.
(26) Ibid, p. 10.
(27) This London firm had provided Falmouth with fire ‘enjins’ since the 1760s. Daicy & Whitney, op. cit., p. 34 and 29.
(28) Carolyn R. Dodson, Horoscopes of the U.S. States and Cities, (AFA, Tempe, AZ, 1975) p. 69.
(29) Melanie Reinhart, Chiron and the Healing Journey: An Astrological and Psychological Perspective, (Penguin/Arkana, London, 1989), p. 232.
(30) Carter, op. Cit., p. 52.
(31) Michael Baigent, Nicholas Campion and Charles Harvey, Mundane Astrology: An Introduction to the Astrology of Nations and Groups, (Thorsons, London, 1984), p. 220.
(32) “Its name goes back to the Greek word for red – the colour of fire – because the bird was said to arise again perpetually from its ashes after a purifying fire had consumed it.” See Hans Biedermann, Dictionary of Symbolism: Cultural Icons & the Meanings Behind Them, (Meridian/Penguin, New York, 1989), p. 264.
(33) Ebertin, op. Cit., p. 214.
Published by: The Astrological Journal, May/Jun 2023
Author:
Kirk Little has been an astrologer for nearly 40 years and has a long-standing interest in historical and philosophical aspects of astrology. He is the author of Defining the Moment: Geoffrey Cornelius and the Development of the Divinatory Perspective and Spellbound: The Astrological Imagination of Washington Irving (Culture and Cosmos, Vol. 17 No. 1) as well as a number of book reviews on skyscript.co.uk. Kirk has a degree in American history and a Master’s degree in social work. For the past 30-odd years, he has worked as a psychiatric social worker in a variety of clinical settings.
© Kirk Little, Astrological Journal, 2023
