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So, if a child is stillborn, this expected event never happens. Then the first chart relates to nothing; only the known Macknen's is a legitimate one and the puzzle is no more. Just food for thoughts.
I thought about that, too. If the child was stillborn it is not a birth. However it is, as you say, an event, but an event in the life of the mother, and I have no precise data on the mother of H.L. Mencken other than she was born in 1858. Given the fact that people didn't move around much in the mid 19th century, Baltimore, Maryland, is a good guess for the birth place, but I have nothing concrete.

I presented it as a birth because some sources said simply that the baby died. Did he take a breath? I don't know. So in fact I wasn't sure that the baby died shortly after birth or was born dead. If the records still exist, this might be discoverable, but fires in those days destroyed a lot of records. I decided to present it as a birth wondering about the differences anyway. She did lose one twin and not the other, but unlike the vast majority of these cases, the surviving twin went on to become famous.

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C?dric wrote:What about looking at things from a different point of view?
What we consider when a child is born is an event: the time when we cut the cord and the baby breathes for the first time (from which point we analyze vitality).
Is there any traditional (Greek, Arabic, etc) source for the idea that the first breath is the crucial moment for which a nativity is cast? I can't recall seeing one. I know Indian sources mention at least three relevant moments, none of which is the first breath. (For the record, they are the times of impregnation, of the sighting of the baby's head in the birth canal [I've no idea how they'd handle a breech birth], and of the baby's body making contact with the ground [the idea being that the mother gives birth in a squatting position].)
https://astrology.martingansten.com/

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@ Tom:
I've seen twice (on some forum which I've forgotten--sorry for the vagueness) that an astrologer didn't delineate from two distinct birth charts but took the birth of the first born and turned the chart for the twin from the IIIrd house and then all the way round to read his life.
I wanted to try on your example (chart 1) but the configuration isn't distinctively better. Is this because the infant was born dead (and then there's no chart, actually) or because the technique doesn't work or else, I don't know.
That being said, and put aside any theoretical objection I have, given the fact that there are twin births which are as close in time as one minute, there are people who will find the technique appealing.

@ Martin:
Does Lilly fit in your "etc"? CA, III, p. 501 (Roel ed.)?: "The first way then of rectifying a Nativity, and reducing it to the moment of time when first the Infant was separated from his Mother, and received the breath of air of this world (...)."

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C?dric wrote:Does Lilly fit in your "etc"? CA, III, p. 501 (Roel ed.)?: "The first way then of rectifying a Nativity, and reducing it to the moment of time when first the Infant was separated from his Mother, and received the breath of air of this world (...)."
Thank you for the reference. It would be very interesting if a 17th-century author turned out to be the earliest source for this idea.
https://astrology.martingansten.com/

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I was certain I would find a reference to "first breath" in the Tetrabiblos, but I didn't. Ptolemy refers in several places to "the moment of birth," but that term is not defined. Perhaps someone with knowledge of ancient Greek might find the Greek expression "for moment of birth" is somehow linked to initial breath, but that is beyond my abilities.

I did find this in Ibn Ezra's The Book of Nativities and Revolutions (ARHAT)

Starting with this on page 11:

Ptolemy said that the rising degree at the moment of the dripping [conception?] ought to the principal [horoscope], the rising degree at the moment of birth participates with it.
I read Ptolemy and I believe Ibn Ezra refers to Ptolemy's opinion that the moment of conception is the most important, but since we rarely know that, the moment of birth is just as good. He continues:

Enoch said that from the rising degree at the moment of the dripping we could know all the things that would happen to the fetus until it comes out of the mother's belly, and from the rising degree at the moment of birth we could know all things that will happen to him in the world in [accordance with] the place where it came out because as it comes out it receives the influence of the air (ambient) and from that influence it receives the influence of the higher spirit according to the co-mixture of his boy and the nature of the ambient, and [Enoch] spoke correctly. - page 11-12 italics added
Ambient, I think, is in parenthesis to distinguish it from the idea air as an element.

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I was certain I would find a reference to "first breath" in the Tetrabiblos
My thought, exactly. But neither the Persian Nativities, the Introductions to Traditional Astrology (Abu Mashar and Al Qabisi), Porphyry the Philosopher, Maternus and Dariot gave any hint about it. At least in the relevant chapters. It seems it is something we take for granted and inconsciously read as such when we come upon setences like "at birth".

Hasn't Morin a word about this??he has an opinion about just everything. I would be surprised he wouldn't give us a dissertation including a volley of refutations. I don't have the relevant book to check.

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Thank you Konrad and Cedric for your contributions. "Being turned inside out" aren't the words I would use to describe a birth, but there is a logic to it.

As for Morinus, it would be consistent for him to have something to say on this, but I don't know where. Also the first 12 books of Astrologia Gallica (and book 20) have not been translated into English. He may have said something there.

I have seen references to the birth moment, but the expression that he uses, has been translated into English is "influx" as in "The influx is imprinted on the native."

In book 23 on Revolutions he is justifying his decision to cast a return chart for the location of the native at the time of the return rather than the place of the nativity whether the native was at his birthplace or not.

He brings up a question I've never seen anywhere else: why does the "influx" only affect the newborn? Why not everything and everyone else at that location? He gives an answer that is too lengthy to quote. But there is this sentence:

The fact therefore remains that the celestial influx on the genethliacal constitution is imprinted on the native alone, who carries it with him wherever he will have taken himself. - Book 23 page 9
Morin sees the chart as somehow physically imprinted on the native at birth due to the 'influx" of celestial influences on the infant alone and that imprint remains. But if the celestial influence is somehow physical, it seems logical that that same influence would be "absorbed" by everyone in the vicinity. I suppose it is by transit, hence his insistence on the imprint being permanent and unchanging.

Regardless, he doesn't say, here anyway, anything about "first breath," but that is a logical conclusion, or I think it is, from the word "influx."

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, "influx" first appeared in French in the 16th century and is directly from the Latin "influxus" or "flowing in." I doubt first breath is an exhale. So he might have been using the Latin word, AG was written in Latin, to express the idea of first breath. But obviously that is just a guess.

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"Influx" is the word we still use in French, alongside "influence", to talk about the influence or whatever you want to call it of the celestials. (Though the first should, strictly speaking, signify its flowing/radiation and the second its effects, they're synonyms in astrological jargon.) So you get a sense of it in English too through your word "influence".
The point I want to drive home is that "The influx is imprinted on the native" makes me think Morin alludes about ether rather than air. I'm no reference in aristotelician physics, so I hope ??ether?? is the correct word; I mean an informed substance that impresses virtue upon something.

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That being said, there are close connections between the air we breathe and the higher mind (identified with the being), so that might be the reason why, in the end (if this wasn't taken for granted since a long time ago), someone saw "the first breath" the Infant takes as the birth astrologicaly speaking.
Conjecture.