Borealis babies and the almuten of pregnancy

Brief announcement: I will be posting blogs less frequently as I take on some major (for me anyway) astrological media and research projects and reboot the Substack later in 2025!

While 260 children are being born every minute of the day (at least in 2025), conception is miraculous with or without 3 wise men, mystical stars, virgin births, or even technological intervention. In preparation for the arrival of the human experience, opposing elements resolve into blood and bone somewhere in the darkness of a female body. Timing this occurrence seems almost impossible and may feel like a pure fantasy even to the well-studied astrologer. The theory of astrological conception is complex and difficult to understand.

Vedic and Asian cultures have been known to use different forms of astrological timing for many events, including the conception of children. I will never forget perusing Baltic jewelry in an Alaskan thrift store with a friend, drifting into a distracted conversation with the store clerk that took a strange turn. When I remarked on the only other people at my hotel being Japanese tourists, he was quick to explain that they came every year in hopes of conceiving children under the Aurora Borealis. Why? Because those children would be gifted. Although I still don't believe the theory to be the absolute truth, it did seem somewhat plausible for hippies somewhere in the world. After all, celestial spirits entering into humans is only a half step away from the Christian nativity story and approaches what I would call Steinerian mythology. While the aurora borealis is a solar storm, fixed stars, the realm outside the planets, represent a more spiritual sphere than that of the planets, which is associated with karma.

Some years later I would encounter another case for conception astrology. I believed I had acquired a grimoire that assigned astrological significance to the date of birth for identifying tutelary angels. I was surprised to learn that the time of conception as a part of the horoscope rather than the actual day of birth was required. What a different world it would be to see through the lens of your conception date, I thought, giving up on the hopes I had for reliably identifying astrological angels. I am still mystified as to how such an approach is possible with premature births and other longer gestation babies. I was born after a 10-month gestation period. I think that as the world evolves, this ancient practice will somehow grow in popularity, extending beyond those seeking alternative methods to conceive, but for now, I’m content to be curious and admit this is a new can of challenging worms for me.

In Conception Astrology, Nicola Smuts-Allsop uses the native’s chart (Sun, Venus, Moon, and Mercury being important), the almuten of pregnancy, and even fixed stars to determine the potential for pregnancy. She gives the subject so much depth that I would struggle to provide anything but a small sample here. What stood out for me was her heavy use of triplicity and fixed stars. Western astrology doesn’t place as much of an emphasis on fixed stars as eastern astrology, specifically Chinese astrology. An almuten is basically the planet that has the most influence over a specific matter. It features often in traditional astrology but is not used in modern astrology explicitly. She also uses the ascendant to determine a health ruler via triplicity. At the end of the day, the planning of children strikes me as a noble endeavor despite it’s hyper-mystical connotations.

Calculating the Almuten of Pregnancy 

Using the astrological factors below, calculate the values obtained from the Ptolemaic tables of essential dignities and debilities in a table for the: 

• Ascendant

• Ruler of the Ascendant 

• Moon

• Ruler of the 5th

• Jupiter

• Any Planets in the 5th 

Scoring Matrix: 

• Rulership: 5 pts. 

• Exaltation: 4 pts.

• Triplicity: 3 pts.

• Term: 2pts

• Face 1pts.

Whatever planet scores the highest is the almuten of pregnancy and should be examined in terms of transits. However, I would suggest working with a skilled astrologer specializing in conception astrology who can combine several intuitive data sets together for the best picture possible. In Smuts-Allsop’s book, she does a case study in which the almuten, Saturn, transits the 5th house, building a positive case for possible conception, which did happen despite other challenging factors in the chart. However, she considered numerous other astrological consideration in arriving at a positive confirmation from the 5th house transit.