By Axel Harvey

On 6-7 November, Wikipedia devoted one of its homepage headlines to the the public coronation yesterday of King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck of Bhutan.

I don’t have His Majesty’s birth hour or the exact times of the two coronations, so we have to ignore the angles in his birth map (“SH” stands for sine hora, no hour) and take them with a grain of myrrh in the others. Also, there isn’t much wiggle room for anything except planet-to-planet transits to see how it will go with this new reign.

The most striking thing to me is the midpoint tree NE=ME/SA (orb 5’) =ME/CH (orb 1’), where CH is Charybdis, the mean lunar apocentre or Black Moon aka Lilith, not Chiron. The pattern is reinforced by Neptune’s square aspect to Mercury on one side and to the tight Saturn-Charybdis conjunction on the other, even if the ME opposition to SA-0-CH is very wide (progressed Mercury turned retrograde during the prince’s infancy in the 22nd degree of Pisces; it is just now – surprise! surprise! – moving direct and will not reach the worrisome 26th degree until the king’s early 50s). According to Ebertin’s KdG, NE=MA/SA has to do with “…depression, emotional inhibitions”. This may have something to do with the king’s continuing bachelorhood, but being pushed onto a throne since early youth would be enough to depress anyone. This month’s events are purely ceremonial; the old king has been preparing his abdication and his son’s succession for years.

Speaking of which, I would love to know what caused the royal astrologers – I presume they exist! – to select these days for the coronation ceremonies. They had ample time windows in which to choose auspicious dates. Maybe some jyotish people can see something significant; but Bhutan is at the meeting point of several astrologies and I don’t know which one prevails there.

Although Wikipedia emphasizes the public coronation, a more significant event was the sacred coronation on 1 November in a temple in Punakha near the capital. According to the Bhutan Observer, “The actual moment of coronation will be when the King, takes from the altar of the inner chapel of the machhen the five-coloured scarf of the King of Bhutan and dons it.” We learn from an official press release that the ritual began at 10:03 civil time. The next map is set for 11:00, my guess of the time when the sacred cloth would be taken by the king.

It is worth noting, however, that Pluto was exactly rising at the start of the ceremony.

The public coronation took place in the capital, Thimphu, on 6 November. This is an arbitrary Noon map.

Note the Venus-Charybdis conjunction around 23° Sagittarius, tightly wrapped around the king’s natal Neptune and, of course, the Saturn-Uranus opposition we have all been talking about on the king’s natal Mercury. So the theme of this coronation revolves around His Majesty’s critical Mercury-Saturn-Neptune-Charybdis pattern.

It is never wise for an astrologer to promise bad times for a monarch, but I suspect it will be difficult for Jigme Khesar Namgyel to sail unconcerned through the storms of the next quarter-century, no matter how carefully Bhutan has been democratized and his accession prepared.

To end on the euphoric note that seems obligatory when a new head is crowned, here are the words of prime minister Lyonchhen Jigmi Y Thinley:

“We, the Bhutanese, are indeed a truly blessed people. We look forward to the celebrations of the Coronation, an event that will ensure the continued unity, harmony, and peace in our kingdom, usher in a new era that will further enhance our socio-economic prosperity, reinsure our political stability and reinforce our constitutional democracy. It will be an event that will radiate the creation of more opportunities for our people to pursue happiness through the goal of Gross National Happiness.”

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