Why astrology works

[Guest guest]

Why Astrology Works

by Jackie Slevin, C.A.

and NCGR Co-Director of Education

Jackie Slevin

 

 

Since prehistoric times, humankind has attempted to fathom its

earthly experience. Their first gesture toward this understanding

may well have been a cave dweller lifting his or her eyes toward the

heavens in wonder and speculation of forthcoming events. The sky

could tell stories, it held omens. It foretold weather conditions

which in turn affected travel, hunting and agriculture. Daylight and

darkness were measured by the rise and fall of those two majestic

objects, the Sun and the Moon. The ancients used the sky as their

blueprint for action. The so-called " Wise People " were those who

made a thorough study of the patterns of planets and stars, and

observed how to use them as signposts. Observations were made

regarding how Mother Nature mirrored events in the heavens.

Shellfish activity and the rhythms of the tides coincided with

phases of the moon. Seafaring peoples, lacking compasses, used the

North Star and other constellations for navigation. The Egyptians

repeatedly observed that the Nile flooded every time the star Sirius

rose with the Sun. The clockwork that the ancients observed in the

sky shaped and defined their annual calendars. Moreover, this time-

honored system of celestial phenomenon worked.

 

But how did it work? What was the direct correlation between earth

and sky? If astronomy was the study of planets and stars, then

astrology fell under the definition given to it by transcendentalist

Ralph Waldo Emerson. It was, simply, " astronomy applied to the

affairs of men. "

 

British astronomer Percy Seymour wrote a startling book entitled

Astrology, the Evidence of Science, which states that certain

predictions made from horoscopes can be explained logically and

tested scientifically. He has wagered his professional standing by

espousing such a theory and, as a result, endured much criticism.

The science of astrology is no stranger to intolerant criticism and

has been often considered a laughing matter. Rob Hand, astrologer,

author and co-founder of Astrolabe, Inc. claims that " The way the

media deal with astrology is to put on the laugh track. " 1

 

Seymour has earned master's and doctoral degrees in astrophysics and

has served as senior lecturer at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich,

England. He is currently principal lecturer in astronomy at the

Plymouth Polytechnic Institute in southwest England and director of

the planetarium there. " Of course I expected people to take

objection to my theory, " Seymour concedes, " but I didn't expect the

reaction to be so vehement and irrational. Some of my colleagues

here at the Polytechnic and at the Royal Astronomical Society simply

dismiss the idea without reading the book or even looking at the

evidence. Meanwhile, many other scientists, even respected

scientists, have evoked the cosmos-the theories that are a little

short of bizarre-to explain the extinction of the dinosaurs, or what

have you. That's all right. But proppose a theory about astrology

and people assume you're mad. " 2

 

Seymour himself looked askance at astrology until 1984 when a BBC

crew interviewed him briefly on his opinion of astrology. His reply,

which was standard on the question, whas that he " knew of evidence

to support certain aspects of it, but that I personally could not

think of any mechanism to explain how the planets, the sun, and the

moon might affect human life. " 3 He then began to seriously rethink

his pat answer to this perpetual question and discovered the

mechanism that could serve as the missing link between the cosmos

and humans. His theory of astrology now is plain and

simple: " ...astrology is not mystical or magical but magnetic. It

can be explained by the tumultuous activity of the sun, churned to a

lather by the motions of the planets, borne earthward on the solar

wind, and perceived by us via the earth's magnetic field while we

grow inside our mother's wombs. " 4

 

The initial evidence of validity of astrology that Seymour embraced

was the work of Michel Gauquelin, a French

psychologist/statistician, whose rigorous method of testing

astrology was the show that the placement of the planets in the

horoscope is more conclusive overall than the actual Sun sign. In

other words, the components are more important than the sum of their

parts. In 1951, armed with the birth data of 576 French doctors

where selected to the Academie de Medecine, Gauquelin made

significant progress in his research. " Having (painfully) worked out

by hand the position of the planets at the hour of birth of each

doctor, I made a statistical compilation of my findings. Suddenly, I

was presented with an extraordinary fact. My doctors were not born

under the same skies as the common run of humanity. They had chosen

to come into the world much more often during roughly the two hours

following the rise and culmination of two planets, Mars and Saturn.

Moreover, they tended to `avoid' being born following the rise and

culmination fo the planet Jupiter. After such a long and fruitless

search, here I was, confronted with not one but three astonishing

results - all from observing the daily movement of the planets. " 5

 

Gauquelin tested this new method further by subjecting to the same

scrutiny the charts of 508 doctors who had not yet been elected to

the Academie de Medecine. " I calculated the positions of Mars and

Saturn. Once again, my doctors `chose' the rise and culmination of

these planets for coming into the world. Once again, they `avoided'

being born when Jupiter was moving through this sector of the sky. " 6

The Gauquelin sector is specifically referring to is the quadrant of

the horoscope which extends from the 10th house though the 12th.

 

Gauquelin's discovery led to more research on yet another theory

of " planetary heredity, " a point which bears resemblance to

Seymour's theory that astrology is " ...perceived by us via the

earth's magnetic field while we grow inside our mother's wombs. "

Sixteen years and over 30,000 charts later, Gauquelin published his

results in the book L'Heredite Planetaire: " Children have tendency

to be born when a planet has just risen or culminated, if that same

planet was in the same regions of the sky at the birth of their

parents. Certainly, it is not a very pronounced tendency; yet

bearing in mind the great number of births examined, the probability

that chance should have produced so many planetary similarities from

one generation to the next falls less than a million to one. " 7

 

Thus, Gauquelin refuted Kepler who, in 1598, tried to convince

others of his own theory of astral heredity: " Behold the kinships of

births. You have a conjunction Sun-Mercury; so has your son; you

both have Mercury behind the Sun. You have a trine from Saturn to

the Moon, he has almost a Moon-Saturn sextile. Your Venus and his

are in opposition... " 8 Kepler could only put forth simplistic

propositions because he lacked access to the thousands of birth

times that Gauquelin was able to procure.

 

In discovering his mechanism to explain how the planets, the Sun,

and the Moon might affect human life, Seymour claims that

Gauquelin's results on planetary heredity " are the most important of

all of his findings, as far as my theory is concerned. This is

because they are based on objectively measurable quantities, like

planetary positions and birth times, as opposed to personality

traits. They also indicate quite clearly that a physical agency is

involved. . .I knew that Gauquelin found the effects he saw to be

exaggerated on days with lots of magnetic disturbance, and that

seemed very important to me, so I got cracking on it. " 9

 

Magnetic disturbances are the key to providing the ancient axiom " as

above, so below " for disturbance creates perceptible action, which,

in turn, can be observed and analyzed. After all, Seymour's theory

of how astrology works is based on magnetism. They way a womb might

perceive magnetic stimulus is through the nervous system. In the

same way that a baby resembles his parents in terms of physical

characteristics, so its magnetic antennae is similarly wired, and

resonates to the mother and/or father's same magnetic frequencies.

Seymour reminds us that the very earth itself is a magnet,

surrounded by a magnetic field that is 20 to 30 times larger than

the actual planet. Therefore, magnetic attractions,

or " disturbances, " are keenly absorbed. When a baby is ready to be

born, it is a magnetic signal from a planet, received by the nervous

antennae in the mother's womb, that triggers the actual moment of

birth. " Astrology. . .has put the cart before the horse by crediting

the planets with the power to predict personality. For Seymour feels

certain it is the genes that set the personality on course and the

genes that determine which planetary signal will herald the

individual's birth. Astrology merely labels what nature has already

ordained, but the effects that astrology describes are not trivial

by any means, nor are they limited to the first moments of life. " 10

 

What is curious about Seymour's theory of magnetism is that,

although he fully acknowledges sunspots, solar prominences, solar

flares and solar winds, he never mentions the work of the patriarch

of sunspot research, John H. Nelson. An amateur astronomer since

boyhood and radio operator for RCA Communications, Nelson pioneered

solar research and forecasting through over 25 years of rigorous

experimentation. In 1946 he was given the title " Short- wave Radio

Propagation Analyst, " and began a course of scientific observation,

the results of which ended in unexpected controversy. " We have come

to realize that the Sun is doing something to the planets, or the

planets are doing something to the Sun that the presently recognized

laws of science cannot explain. Though sunspots have never been

completely understood, I found, through careful observation, that

they are predictable. Why the predictions come true is not readily

apparent. When future amateurs or scientists find a scientific

explanation for what is taking place in the solar system, on the Sun

and in the ionosphere of the Earth, we can take the subject out of

the occult and assign it a scientific basis. I am confident this

will be done someday. " 11

 

The Chinese have been recording sunspots since ancient times, but it

was the Renaissance scientist Galileo Galilei who, after viewing

them with this homemade telescope, reported them to scholars in

sixteenth century Italy. Scholars at this time were connected to the

Catholic Church, whose strict dogmas did not allow for much free

thinking. The Church doctrine on the Sun and planets was based on

Aristotle, who stated that the Sun was perfect and free of any

blemishes whatsoever. After repeatedly insisting that the Sun did

show black spots on its surface periodically, Galileo incurred such

fundamentalist wrath he was informed that, unless he rescinded his

statement, he would be punished by torture. Following exasperation

and anguish, Galileo finally retracted his statement, but is said to

have muttered under his breath immediately afterwards, " but I did

see them. " 12

 

Nelson then doggedly pursued his method of experimentation. RCA

constructed a solar map on which Nelson could record sunspots, after

observing then with a telescope, just as Galileo did. With this map

he was able to make drawings of the sunspots and place then in their

proper position on the Sun. At first, research with these maps

confirmed that radio frequency requirements would vary according to

the number of spots from week to week, and even in some cases day to

day. It was also discovered that some types of spots had more

influence than others. This information enabled Nelson to develop a

system of forecasting frequency changing times on a daily

basis. " This added to our efficiency in the handling of messages,

because less time would be lost during what are known as `frequency

transition periods.' During normal conditions, it would be about two

hours earlier and, during above normal conditions it could be about

two hours later. Knowing ahead of time when to change was of value

in both the saving of time and the saving of power.

 

" Getting to understand sunspots in relation to good and bad signals

was much more difficult. I mapped and analyzed sunspots for about a

year before I dared to try my hand at forecasting what they were

going to do to the signals. Progress was made, however, during the

winter of 1947-48 when I fastened a solar map on a drawing board and

recorded the position of all sunspots each day that the signals were

in trouble. After a few months, this map became covered with

sunspots but distinctly showed a concentration of spots in one

particular area of the sun's surface. This indicated to me that

spots in this area were the ones causing our troubles.13

 

What yet proved to be intriguing was that each spot had its

own " personality. " Some spots made trouble with radio signal

qualities whereas other spots " behaved well. " Nelson could find no

logical reason for this. what Nelson could pinpoint after years of

research was that sunspots operate in a cycle of 11 years and

correlated with such events as the Sun conjunct or opposite Jupiter,

Venus, Mercury and the earth.

 

Years after this monumental research had been well established,

Nelson decided to find out more about the mysterious subject of

astrology. He attended astrological meetings in New York and,

afterward, decided to keep away from it, stating that " What I have

seen in their books is that astrology is a very difficult subject

and frankly, I have enough to do in my own specialty. " 14 After one

meeting, two astrologers approached him and asked for his birth

data, saying they wanted to make predictions for him. " In my

business, predicting magnetic storms, I know I can make predictions

either forward or backward in time. If for instance, someone asked

me to tell them what magnetic conditions were on September 4, 1918,

I could analyze the planetary positions on that day and tell them

what it was like with considerable confidence. I reasoned that

astrologers should be able to do the same thing with their data. " 15

Nelson decided on a retroactive reading, asking each astrologer to

tell him what he was doing on a particular date two years prior at

12:30 PM EST. Three months later, he received a report from each

astrologer with a detailed analysis of the date. " They were both

right, in fact, embarrassingly accurate. It is beyond my

comprehension how they could have done this by simply comparing the

position of the planets on the day that I was born with the position

of the planets on the day that they analyzed. They astrologers

themselves have no logical explanation either. This puts them in the

same boat with the astronomers who cannot tell why sunspots change

polarity each cycle and change latitude as the cycle changes. And, I

find myself in a similar situation because I have no reason for the

correlation that I have seen for many years between the position of

the planets and the behavior of short-wave radio signals. " 16

 

It is now time for the media to take off the laugh track on the

subject of astrology. " A 1988 survey from the National Science

Foundation found that 38 percent believed astrology to be `very

scientific' or `sort of scientific.' Six percent confessed to

changing their plans to fit their horoscope... " 17 The pioneering

work of John H. Nelson and the recent theory of Percy Seymour have

modern scientists poised to alter their entire perspective on the

celestial mechanics of the universe. If the so-called arcane

axiom " as above, so below " can be formulated into a rational, proven

scientific theory, then the age-old profession of astrology will

have its principles vindicated, and the global population will join

in comprehending the words of thirteenth century philosopher St.

Thomas Aquinas, " The celestial bodies are the cause of all that

takes place in the sublunar world. "

 

 

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CITATIONS

 

1 - Patricia King, Newsweek, January 15, 1990.

2 - Sobel, Dava, " Dr. Zodiac, " Omni, December, 1989, pp.63-64.

3 - Ibid., p. 64.

4 - Ibid.

5 - Michel Gauquelin, Birthtimes, Hill and Wang, New York, 1983, p.

21.

6 - Ibid., p. 26.

7 - Ibid., p. 43.

8 - Ibid., p. 39.

9 - Sobel, Dava, " Dr. Zodiac, " Omni,December 1989, p. 66.

10 - Ibid., p. 68.

11 - John H. Nelson, The Propagation Wizard's Handbook, 73 Inc.,

Peterborough, NH 1978, p. viii,

12 - Ibid., p. 7.

13 - Ibid., pp. 20-21.

14 - Ibid., p. 84.

15 - Ibid., p. 85.

16 - Ibid., pp.86-87.

17 - Patricia King, Newsweek, Jan 15, 1990.

 

 

 

 

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