Hidalgo: Little Brother to Saturn?
Zip Dobyns
Hidalgo is the first of the new group of ten asteroids calculated and published by Al H. Morrison and J. Lee Lehman of New York that was not named for a character in mythology. The Spanish priest named Hidalgo is one of the patron saints of Mexico’s struggle for independence. Hidalgo led the first major revolution of peasants and Indians against the Spanish overlords. His cause prospered briefly, but eventually he was defeated and executed. The day, September 16, he rang the Church bells and announced the revolution, is the major Independence Day in Mexico. If the asteroid Hidalgo is properly named for the Priest and revolutionary, it could indicate spiritual aspirations, a struggle against the bureaucratic structure or against injustice, or just involvement with power in some form.
The other association to the word “hidalgo” is that it is a contraction of “hijo de algo”, or “son of something.” The name was associated with the minor nobility in Spain, especially with younger sons in titled families. These men were born into a family where money and power were present, but as younger sons, they would not inherit anything. They would have to make it to the top on their own if they wanted to be there, and many came to the New World as gentleman adventurers, hoping to attain money, land, power, etc. In Spain, they were exempt from most taxes, but could not practice a craft or trade without losing their status as nobility. If the asteroid Hidalgo symbolizes some of these associations, we would expect to find it prominent in people who strive to climb to the top; and maybe in people born into power.
Astrology is a pragmatic subject. To learn about any new tool, we have to use it for a long time. We have to put the asteroids in charts and watch for people who have them in prominent positions, and for times when they are prominent in current patterns. By “prominent,” I mean strongly aspected; with many, close aspects, including aspects to angles.
I started my work with Hidalgo by putting it into the charts in Lois Rodden’s book of famous women; the individuals for whom a circle chart was given and who were born in this century since the new asteroid ephemerides cover 1900 to 2000. My first impression was that there were more aspects to Saturn that I would have expected, especially conjunctions and oppositions. Mark checked the orbit for me, and noted that Hidalgo’s period was around half that of Saturn, so that it seemed to have some sort of resonance with Saturn and might have more aspects than would be present with other planets. This would be especially likely when Hidalgo was in the signs Scorpio, Sagittarius and Capricorn when it is farthest from the Sun, moving very slowly, and very close to the speed of Saturn since Hidalgo’s orbit reaches out as far as Saturn at its aphelion. Hidalgo is quite irregular in its orbit, moving very quickly in its perihelion area through Taurus, Gemini, and Cancer.
One way to find whether the Saturn aspects were statistically significant in the charts of famous women was to match them against other charts. I put Hidalgo in the 160 charts in the Geof Dean research project (of which more later) but so many of his charts were of relatively young people, the sample was not comparable. I then put Hidalgo in the first 105 charts of famous men from Lois Rodden’s American Book of Charts. Since the book is arranged alphabetically, I trust there is no special bias for Hidalgo aspects in people with names beginning with early letters in the alphabet. I left out the defective kids’ charts, but included all others born in the 20th century, the dates for which we have Hidalgo’s positions. Some of the individuals might be considered more infamous than famous, since some murderers were included, but the famous women had the same type of mixture. I stopped at 105 since that was the number available in the famous women.
The figures were interesting, as can be seen in the table below. There were too few aspects to permit significance in judging the females against the males in the Geof Dean sample, but the trend was clearly for more females to have close Hidalgo conjunctions. The excess of Hidalgo-Saturn aspects for the famous women over the famous men was significant at the .025 level. That means such a difference could occur about twice out of a hundred cases if there were a chance distribution.
Hidalgo-Saturn Aspects
We obviously need to do much more work checking out Hidalgo, but my tentative hypothesis is that Hidalgo is connected with power in some form, so that an aspect to Saturn intensifies the concern with power or achievement. Since most cultures do not encourage females to seek power, the motivation generally has to be stronger in women if they are going to make it to the top. I want to continue checking younger people being born in the last 60 years of this century, to see whether the trend suggested in the Dean sample continues. The universe may be telling us that it is time for women’s liberation, and that to facilitate it, more women are being born who have the capacity or the drive to seek and handle power. Only a great deal more work will confirm or demolish my hypothesis. If any of our readers are watching the new asteroids, we would love to get your impressions.
In contrast to the number of Hidalgo aspects to Saturn, there were few Hidalgo-Sun conjunctions in the Rodden book of famous women. I was amused to note that my companions who share Hidalgo-Sun within one degree included Farrah Fawcett, Margaret Mead, Brenda Vacarro, Carole Lombard, and Katherine Hepburn. Rodden’s book is weighted with actresses, as you can gather, but that is an interesting collection of individualists. Hidalgo, by the way, is an individualist. It has one of the longest orbits of any minor planet, reaching from the orbit of Mars to the orbit of Saturn, and its orbit is also one of the most tilted with an inclination of about 43 degrees. Could the linking of Mars and Saturn be a clue to meaning? “I will reach the top and replace the will and power of others by my will.”?
P.S. There is also a state in Mexico named for the revolutionary priest, and it includes one of the most mountainous areas of Mexico with extensive mineral deposits. Again, there are correspondences with Saturn. I wonder how many astronomers have managed to give appropriate names to the asteroids they have discovered, and how they have managed to do that? Do any of our readers still believe in chance?