Why you should be careful in your research

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If you want to test your astrological assumptions...

 

Koen Van de moortel 19 sep. 2001

 

I guess most of you, astrologers, want to learn from your experiences. During

consultations, you might see that a client with a constellation similar to a

previous one also has similar problems or characteristics. Then you might want

to find some more examples in your database to have this confirmed or not.

 

That's fine. But, be warned, this is a tricky job!

What happens? You find enough examples for your " theory " and you think, " this

cannot be a coincidence, it's not by accident that people with the same planet

configurations have the same kind of features " . You conclude that your theory is

valid and you are happy that you discovered and learned something. So did one

astrologer a few years ago, studying the horoscopes of 212 politicians. He found

that many of them had Mars in the same sign as the Sun, namely 30. By

" coincidence " you would expect 212/12, or approximately 17.7 politicians to have

this constellation. So, there seems to be an impressive effect of having Mars

near the Sun!

Unfortunately, the poor man did not use the right " coincidence " ! He forgot to

check how often " normal " people have this constellation. If he had, he would see

that " by accident " we have a chance of about 29/212 to have it! Why? Most

astrologers know (they all should!) that Venus and Mercury are always near the

Sun (as seen in the geocentric zodiac), but only a few realize that also the

other planets are more often near the Sun than on the opposite side. This has

nothing to do with the orbits being excentric. It would also happen with perfect

circle orbits. It's just an effect of our position of observation, in an orbit

around the Sun, between Venus and Mars. The closer the planet's orbit to the

Sun, the more often we on earth will see it near the Sun. If you would count in

your ephemeris the days on which Mars and the Sun are in the same sign, you

would find approximately 137 out of 1000. On not more than 28 out of 1000 they

are in opposite signs! Jupiter is 99 out of 1000 days in the same sign as the

Sun, and for Saturn, Uranus, etc. you will find less and less days, but never

less than 1000/12 (approx. 83).

This kind of " disturbance of a uniform distribution " can be seen with many

astronomical configurations. Better known are for example the fact that in the

northern hemisphere many more people have ascendant Leo and Virgo than Aquarius

and Pisces, or that in a group of people born in the same decade many will have

the same Pluto sign and even the same Pluto-Neptune aspects. Other examples are

given - with graphs - in the part of the ISAR Research Book written by Mark

Pottenger.

Only the Sun and the Moon have more or less regular movements, so it's quite

safe to assume that the Sun and the Moon are in the same sign in 1 out of 12

horoscopes.

 

So, what to do when you want to investigate an astrological hypothesis?

You will have to compare the specific group of horoscopes with a more " general "

one, i.e. one which reflects the " average " planetary situation that you can

expect. Ideally, this " reference group " should be a set of horoscopes from

people born in the same period as your test group. If you want to study house

positions, they should also be born in the same area, for the reason mentioned

before. There is another reason why it is best to always have them born in the

same area: demography, i.e. the fact that in some seasons and in some hours of

the day more people are born, and these peak periods are different from country

to country, and even from decade to decade. The reference group should also be

as large as possible, if possible many times larger than the test group. The

more reference horoscopes you have, the more you can be sure about the

frequencies to be expected.

 

" I don't have a reference file with thousands of horoscopes from random

people. " , you might say; " Can I use the file with all my friends or clients as a

reference file? " Probably not, because these horoscopes are somehow " selected " ;

they might all have something in common with your horoscope.

There is an emergency solution though, which is not ideal, but better than

nothing: a file of artificially generated horoscopes. Two ways of creating such

a file are (1) selecting completely random moments in the same period as your

test horoscopes, and (2) selecting regular moments (e.g. at noon every day of

your test period).

What's missing here is the demographic disturbance, but in general, the

astronomical disturbances are much bigger, so in a first fase of your research,

it's quite useful to use an artificial set of horoscopes. Still, you have to do

this with care: for example, if you have only noon charts in your reference

file, it's not suited to study the house position of the Sun in your test file.

You can use it if your test horoscopes are also " noon charts " , and it will also

have accurate frequencies for the slow planets. In general it's probably best to

create random horoscopes.

 

Now your next question is probably " How? " . Fortunately, in the 21th century,

it's not necessary anymore to calculate thousands of random horoscopes manually.

There is a software program called " Radix 4.0 " which can produce as many

horoscopes as you need. It will also automatically compare the frequencies in

your test group with the reference frequencies. Information about this program

can be found on this website.

 

A similar problem, even more complicated, rises when studying the effect of

transits. If you want to check, for example, if Uranus-Mars transits are somehow

related to accidents, you can count how often this kind of transit happens with

accidents, and compare this with the transits on random moments. The additional

complication here is that the random moments should fall within the life time of

each person. This means you cannot use one and the same set of " random events "

for all the natal charts in your file. If you are studying transits on birth

moments of children, weddings, important professional dates, etc., you even have

to make sure that the random moments fall in the relevant parts of their lives.

Again, this is possible with the " Radix " software (from version 4.1).

 

In some cases it's not needed to have a reference file: if you want to study the

relationship between an astronomical variable and a numerical variable that can

have many values. For example: the IQ versus the sign of Mercury, or the number

of goals made by a football player versus his Mars sign. If you have enough

variability in your IQ set (not only highs or lows), you can compare the average

values of the IQ's for each sign. And yes, this is also possible with " Radix " .

 

I wish you good luck in your research!

 

 

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