A major figure in the area of personal growth / spirituality in the first half of the 21st Century, George Gurdjieff had an interesting introduction to his magnum opus, All And Everything – Beelzebub’s Tales To His Grandson.

He required the book to be sold with all pages bar the introduction to be bound.

He started the book with a warning. This warning stated very strongly that to proceed to read the book would challenge all of the assumptions and beliefs of the reader to such an extent that could be dangerous to their own mental comfort and ease.

So if anyone had got that far and chose not to continue reading, they could take the still bound book back to the shop and get a full refund.

Gurdjieff was a Sun, Moon Capricorn.

I often find myself in a similar position when writing an article. And with this one in particular.

So if you have got this far with this piece, please feel free to halt at this point in order to hold onto your carefully preserved astrological beliefs.

You won’t get any money back, but that’s because I don’t charge in the first place. I don’t put my articles behind paywalls or patreons.

The biggest problem facing humanity is that most people don’t want to think things out for themselves.

Astrologers might like to cast themselves as independent thinkers but this problem is as rife in our field as it is in any other.

Most of those who claim to do their own research are merely recycling the opinions of someone else on the internet.

There are so many astrological notions that are passed on over the centuries without really being challenged or tested to see if they actually work in practice.

Many of these theories belong to a time when the practice of astrology was very different to today but people seem happy to apply them to 21st century psychological astrology without any serious challenge.

Take Combustion for example.

A planet is said by traditional and particularly Vedic astrologers to be combust if it is conjunct the Sun.

The general interpretation of this is that the planet is weakened because proximity to the Sun’s rays will overpower it.

But why should this be so ?

A conjunction of planets means a uniting of the energies of both. If anything it would strengthen the energy of both of them.

We would never say that a conjunction of Mercury, Venus or Mars with Jupiter would weaken any of the planets involved. Jupiter would add its beneficial rays to the mentality, attractiveness or physicality of the person having one of those aspects.

Equally Jupiter would not be weakened, the principle of expansion would be enhanced because it has a particular direction to go in and an outlet for its beneficial rays.

Far better to have Jupiter conjunct a personal planet than to have it unaspected and playing a much reduced role in the native’s life.

So if Jupiter is conjunct the Sun, is its power diminished by combustion or enhanced by its centre stage role in the individual’s life ?

This question is rhetorical because if anyone is seriously going to argue the former, then this is probably the point that you take up my offer to stop reading any further.

As evidence of the latter being the case, I put forward my own Jupiter / Saturn index, that shows the social grouping with by far the largest proliferation of Sun / Jupiter conjunctions to be members of Royal Families. For the full info on this see – https://astrologyresearch.co.uk/royal-families-top-of-the-jupiter-saturn-index/

But why did this notion of combustion come up in the first place and why is it still put forward as a weakening of the planet that is conjunct the Sun ?

Vedic astrology holds the idea that the Sun is far from a beneficial influence, and many astrologers from this tradition claim it has malefic qualities.

This might be a reflection and observation of life in a hot country like India where too much Sun can be harmful, but surely that would apply to any planet.

Too much Jupiter can create overindulgence that could be harmful to health, but that doesn’t make the planet a malefic.

The truth is that the notion of Combustion like many other traditional concepts comes from horary astrology.

And Horary is a very DIFFERENT type of astrology to Natal.

Because in horary all the planets are not important parts of one individual as in natal.

In horary the person asking the question is signified principally by one planet, the chart ruler.

Other planets will signify other things altogether and in many cases will signify other people who are involved in the question.

So if Scorpio is rising in a horary, Mars ( as traditional ruler of the sign ) signifies the questioner.

If the client is asking about the prospects of getting a raise at work and Mars is conjunct the Sun ( the ruler of the 10th house ), this would likely produce an interpretation where the client’s boss ( signified by the Sun ) holds all the power in this question and the client’s case is entirely in his or her hands. This could easily contribute to a negative answer about the raise.

In this case Mars is combust because it is weakened by the Sun being in control of the situation.

This could work in the same way if Jupiter was conjunct the Sun because the client’s finances ( 2nd house ruler Jupiter ) would be in the control of the boss.

But we have to be very careful about automatically applying these notions to natal astrology.

The most common use of combustion comes with Mercury.

As Mercury can only be 28 degrees from the Sun at most, a combust Mercury is much more common than any other planet.

The classic delineation is that its ” better ” to have Mercury in an adjacent sign to the Sun rather than in the same one, because it offers some level of objectivity of thought.

The closer Mercury comes to the Sun the more its capacity for independent thought is supposedly overpowered by the ego and its own selfish concerns.

So a combust Mercury is considered weak.

This is questionable when we apply the considerations already raised in this article.

But if we take that assumption at face value, then presumably the closer Mercury gets to the Sun, the weaker it will be.

However this idea is thrown out of the window completely because you can be fairly sure that any astrologer that uses Combustion will also use Cazimi.

If there is a Sun / Mercury Cazimi then the native is suddenly transformed from the egotistical village idiot to some kind of genius.

The orb for a Cazimi can vary depending on who you talk to but the convention is that it is 17 minutes of arc which corresponds to the actual space that the Sun takes up in the sky.

So if Mercury falls this close it is not fried to a crisp by the Sun. Far from it.

A Mercury Cazimi would indicate some kind of Mozart like genius, born with intellectual qualities that the rest of us could only dream of.

Or it would if it wasn’t for the fact that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart actually has a Sun / Mercury orb of 0 degrees 45 minutes which by traditional method actually makes him Salzburg’s greatest idiot’s even more stupid brother.

But of course one example ( even one as extreme as this ) cannot be offered as proof one way or the other.

There are many different definitions of intelligence, that might include an emotional quotient or a capacity to understand larger concepts that might involve the Moon or Jupiter, but when we are simply talking about the kind of intelligence that could be measured by an IQ test, this lies fairly squarely in the Mercury remit.

That’s why I decided to look at every timed chart on the Astrodatabank that included ” high IQ / Mensa level ” in the description.

If there is any truth in the notion that a Combust Mercury in some way impairs this kind of thinking, we would expect that placement to score very low for this group.

There are 372 charts that fall into this category.

To simplify things I have counted an orb of up to 10 degrees as combustion.

In a sample of 372, the expected number of cases where Mercury falls within 10 degrees of the Sun would be 108.6.

The actual score in the sample is 110.

So there seems to be no significant connection between combustion and high IQ.

Of course there are other qualities of Mercury.

We would also expect a smaller than average number of this group to have the planet retrograde.

Mercury is moving backwards apoproximately 18 % of the time, so an expected score for a sample of 372 charts would be 67.

The actual result for Mercury retrograde is 60.

In terms of sign placements Mercury would be expected to fall in one of Gemini or Virgo ( the signs of the planet’s dignity ) on average 62 times.

The actual score is 67.

In the detriment signs of Sagittarius and Pisces the score is 64.

In the sign of its exaltation Aquarius, the expected score would be 31 and is 30.

In the fall sign of Leo however, we have only 23.

If there was anything in the idea of Cazimi, we would expect a high score for this group.

For an orb of 17 minutes, the expected score in a group of 372 would be 3.08.

This group registered 3 people with a Sun / Mercury Cazimi.

These are not the kind of results that would persuade Richard Dawkins to change his mind.

But then again Dawkins has his Sun as far away from Mercury as its possible to be, an orb of 28 degrees.

So if we wish to use Mercury as a gauge of intelligence, I would much rather go with Mozart’s ultra combust planet.

It’s true that some astrologer’s orb for a Cazimi is stretched a bit further than 17 minutes. Maybe that’s because they too have a Sun / Mercury orb of half a degree or so and would rather be considered as a clever clogs than a dumbo.

I can understand this flexibility particularly as I have a Sun / Mercury conjunction with an orb of 31 minutes.

But anyone who wished to extend a Cazimi in this way in order to include themselves could be rightly accused of having an old fashioned ego driven combust Mercury.

This research has clearly shown that while other aspects of Mercury do have some, albeit small impact on people with extremely high IQs, there is nothing in the notion of combustion or cazimi that is supported by the evidence.

As always I wish that my investigations would prompt other astrologers to look more deeply into this question, using larger sample sizes, but seeing that most of them avoid doing statistical research like the plague itself, I won’t hold my breath.

In the meantime when I question the whole idea of a combust Mercury negatively impacting on the intelligence of a birth chart, don’t set fire to the messenger.

Posted on October 27th 2022

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