traditional / modern / contemporary

sandstone

Banned
hi spock,

thanks for your response here and i am sorry to hear of the family dynamics and hope it clears up soon - favourably.

i was unaware of this latest challenge from geoffery dean and find it disheartening... it seems to me these folks are most determined to not see any merit in astrology and spend a lot of time trying to enusre that astrology remains buried in the past, as opposed to legitimized in some scientific manner in the present.. you may be right about astrologers not helping the matter much as there is much division and resistance to examining the basis for many of the theories and beliefs that permeate astrology.

that is also an interesting parallel you draw up to the mars effect controversy that i was unaware of too.. i don't follow science or these types of inquires and explorations but i appreciate the fact you do and are making these parallels here..

what are you hoping to do in the field of astrology? are you working on something at present that is aimed at legitimizing astrology in some scientific type way? thanks for your comments here.
 

Zaphod

Well-known member
I go for the middle way. I'm more concerned with what works that what is pigeon-holed as a certain type of astrology.

Many people call me a traditional astrologer only because I use the Classical Essential Dignities scheme. Why do I use that scheme? Because I find it works.

I use Uranus, Neptune and Pluto in my charts - but not in the dignity scheme.

I use Hellenistic techniques that I (and my clients) find to be useful.

I use Arabic techniques that I (and my clients) find to be useful.

I use Medieval techniques that I (and my clients) find to be useful.

I use Elizabethan techniques that I (and my clients) find to be useful.

I use Lilly's (and his contemporaries) techniques that I (and my clients) find to be useful.

I use Leo's techniques that I (and my clients) find to be useful.

I use Rudhyar's techniques that I (and my clients) find to be useful.

I use Ebertin's techniques that I (and my clients) find to be useful.

Etc.


After spending a couple of hours reading through this whole fascinating thread, I wasn't going to comment since I don't have a lot to add. But Frank's observations are so uncannily similar to my own that I wanted to note it (although as an avid hobbyist, not a professional, I don't so much have "clients" as "willing victims" :)). He seems to be saying the same thing Dr. Farr did much earlier in the thread, perhaps not as concisely but just as compellingly. This sometimes pitched debate makes me wonder where astrology would be today if not for the Enlightenment and the ravages of Christianity, capped by Alan Leo's and Evangeline Adams' legal woes and the subsequent turning away from prediction. I came to astrology near the beginning of what might be called the "third wave" of 20th century Western modernism: first came the turn-of-the-century "Victorian revival," then the rise of Jungian psychological astrology with Jones, Rudhyar, etc. (not, of course, discounting people like Grant Lewi) and finally the New Age "grab-bag" approach that mixed several strands together in the interest of holistic completeness. I was AWOL during the neo-traditionalist insurgency in the '90s but coming to it now I'm finding much to like; it seems more like recalibration than devolution to me. A much-needed one, I might add, since the New Age (in my decidedly biased opinion) has been something of a soft-headed disappointment. (I find myself thinking of it as "the False Spring" or "the Piscean pipe-dream.")

By the way, why did Bob Z leave? He always seemed to be in a state of "high dudgeon" about something (or everything, really) but his remarks were as enlightening as his tone and attitude were often confrontational. I can imagine him receiving moderator warnings on more than one occasion, and I'm not thin-skinned. Maybe that was part of it.
 
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JUPITERASC

Well-known member
By the way, why did Bob Z leave?
Currently that remains an unsolved mystery

He always seemed to be in a state of "high dudgeon" about something (or everything, really)
Apparently ex-Military - "strong Mars"?

but his remarks were as enlightening...
Enlightening is a great description for BobZemco posts

....as his tone and attitude were often confrontational. I can imagine him receiving moderator warnings on more than one occasion, and I'm not thin-skinned. Maybe that was part of it.
Most of his posts have much deleted - however the remainder of his comments remain searchable on this forum and are - as you have said Zaphod... enlightening

link to thread "Where is BobZemco?" http://www.astrologyweekly.com/forum/showthread.php?t=42191 :smile:
 

spock

Well-known member
hi spock,

thanks for your response here and i am sorry to hear of the family dynamics and hope it clears up soon - favourably.
I intervened and helped resolve a difficult situation but a side effect has been a temporary heavy commitment of time while trying to find time for sleep and other acitivities. It's working out and I expect in the near future to get back to a regular sleep schedule and a less chaotic existence.

i was unaware of this latest challenge from geoffery dean and find it disheartening... it seems to me these folks are most determined to not see any merit in astrology and spend a lot of time trying to enusre that astrology remains buried in the past, as opposed to legitimized in some scientific manner in the present.. you may be right about astrologers not helping the matter much as there is much division and resistance to examining the basis for many of the theories and beliefs that permeate astrology.
I think Dean is sincere and isn't out to "get" astrology. He and a few others have alternately been doubters and believers, and perhaps are all the more persistent as critics for having been "fooled" in the first place. At least they care about astrology, even if their caring has become negative rather than positive. I think it has something to do with waking up and deciding you've wasted years following a false belief. For myself, I decided years ago that it doesn't make sense to defend a fixed set of beliefs called "astrology" but rather to discover what is true that can be called astrology, and that satisfies whatever it is that drew me to astrology in the first place. From that perspective the point is not to defend or justify but to discover what it is, which isn't necessarily (in fact almost certainly isn't) what most astrologers believe it to be. Any field of study, in order to evolve, has to exist in the meantime. Hence its adherents have to be able to experience it as true. Yet if Newton was right Aristotle was wrong. If Einstein was right Newton was wrong. And someday Einstein in turn will turn out to have been wrong. Yet at each stage we have to experience ourselves as being right in order to keep going. We have to, in a sense, be able to fool ourselves at our current level of understanding in order to ascend to a higher (deeper?) level of understanding, where we will in turn fool ourselves in even more subtle ways. The history of knowing can therefore be conceptualized as the history of becoming unfooled at successively higher and more subtle levels of understanding.

There are discontinuities between adjacent levels, like the discontinuity between a closer in or further out electron shell, a lower versus higher energy state. I think the discontinuity between that point when a field is first considered a science and the period immediately preceding it, from pre-science to science, is one of the biggest of all. It is experienced as the difference between superstition and empirically driven science. Right now astrology makes no sense, is not the sort of thing that could be true in a post-Newtonian world, or more specifically the atomistic, matter in motion conceptual world that came into being about the time of the mid-17th century Uranus/Neptune conjunction. Before that astrology not only made sense but was the unifying factor tying everything else together. After that it no longer made sense to educated intellectuals and declined precipitously. Astrological researchers, including some of the brightest and best, have tended to think there will be a revolution in science after which scientists will realize, and understand how, astrologers have been right all along. I think that's nonsense and will happen only if the sciences regress, under the impact of environmental calamity and population decline, into a new dark age. More likely, if astrology is to survive and grow, there will be a revolution in astrology, so that astrology will not stand outside the conceptual framework that has prevailed since the mid-17th century. And it will be a different astrology, just as our knowledge of how things move and interact in the world was different after Newton from the way it was between Aristotle and Newton.

that is also an interesting parallel you draw up to the mars effect controversy that i was unaware of too.. i don't follow science or these types of inquires and explorations but i appreciate the fact you do and are making these parallels here..
History is a great teacher. After every scientific revolution, to the extent that the protagonists recognize a discontinuity between what they're doing and their predecessors were doing, they'll say something like, "We're finally on the right track now." But that's what was said after the previous revolution, and after the one before that. There is no final resting place, no final truth toward which our knowledge is evolving, just as there is no final form toward which we are evolving. Evolution is from, not towards, and this was the gap between Darwin and his contemporaries, and to an extent between Darwin and Wallace. It's difficult to get your head around, like infinity and the very fact of existence.

Seeing how other fields have evolved and made the leap from pre-science to science gives us clues to how astrology can make the same leap. That, in addition to their intrinsic interest, is why I'm interested in philosophy of science, history of science, sociology of science, anthropology of science, sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK), rhetoric of science, laboratory studies, etc., etc. I want to know how disciplines come into being, how we can help them come into being, how a discipline of astrology can come into being if there's something to it. And there is something to it, by definition, if we approach it the right way. Are there correspondences between earth and the heavens? Of course there are, but they aren't necessarily coextensive with our current beliefs about them or our (primitive) ways of actualizing those beliefs, our practices, our ways of "doing" astrology. Research means finding out what those correspondences are, whatever they are, and being tough-minded enough not to insist that they have to be what we've believed them to be and need them to be.

what are you hoping to do in the field of astrology? are you working on something at present that is aimed at legitimizing astrology in some scientific type way? thanks for your comments here.
In immediate terms I'm working on a book, to be titled A Post-Magical Astrology, with a New Zealand colleague. It will include, but not be limited to, a Gauquelin-style statistical experiment that we hope will have large enough effect sizes (by homing in on what those effects actually are) to remove them perceptually from the realm of the "merely statistical". In the larger sense I'm trying to understand what astrology is really like and what it has to be like in order to be made sense of as something that can conceivably exist. Hence I'm not so much trying to legitimize astrology, as a fixed target, as to discover a legitimate kind of knowledge that can be termed "astrological", even if to a large extent it's not what astrologers have been doing. To that end, in addition to other research strategies, I draw on fields that impinge upon or overlap with astrology, for instance cognitive developmental psychology, adult life cycles research, biography and history, and chronobiology.
 
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sandstone

Banned
hi spock,

fascinating post that you have shared here for everyone interested in seeing astrology reach a place of recognition on many levels.. i am not sure what has to happen for this to take place, but i had a lot of hope and optimism instilled in me via the gauguelin research only to see it erode via the numerous attacks on it..

i can dimly imagine what astrology might be like in the future if the astro community and a greater community beyond astrology is able to bring astrology into the present where it is recognized in some legitimate manner.. in the meantime i note a strong return to the past documents that have become available in the past 20 odd years and a real resurgence in 'traditional' astrology which doesn't seem concerned in the least about the concerns you address in your post here.. do you have any thoughts on this that you'd like to share?

the book you are in the process of working on sounds as though it will capture the spirit of your posts here in this thread and will be a very interesting exposé that i'd enjoy reading.. i wish you all the best in staying on track to complete that project which is probably quite a commitment of time and energy. for that you will need to remove the distractions that you mentioned earlier in order to get the sleep for the energy required.. i find getting the concentration to do my best work sometimes difficult to find and even more of a problem with added distractions, this forum sometimes being a blessing and a curse in that i enjoy interacting with others like you here, but find i haven't set strong enough boundaries to keep my focus on what i need to be doing as much since coming here in the fall.. thanks for your comments here as they are quite fascinating to read and watch unfold..
 

waybread

Well-known member
.... It was more than good. It was a brilliant and heroic effort that has stood up remarkably well to the attempts of skeptics to discredit it. Three successive skeptics groups tried and failed. Each behaved irrationally and even hysterically in the face of findings they knew couldn't be valid because they knew astrological effects couldn't exist. They violated protocols agreed to by themselves and the Gauquelins, protocols to which the Gauquelins scrupulously adhered. In several instances they made additional demands necessitating years of additional work by the Gauquelins, which they undertook without complaint. When results didn't turn out as they expected they stalled, kept the Gauquelins in the dark, and eventually released statements that were less than fully honest. Philosopher Paul Kurtz, the driving force behind one of the groups, resorted to what would be called outright cheating if it was done deliberately. (I don't know if it was.) That same group shut out one of its most respected members, Dennis Rawlins, when he protested what was going on. He subsequently wrote an expose, sTarbaby, which was published in Fate magazine. Throughout the Gauquelins' behavior was exemplary, that of the skeptics groups an embarrassment to other skeptics dismayed by their treatment of the Gauquelins and their failure to abide by the principles of free inquiry. It's not just astrologers who hem and haw, back and fill when results don't appear to support their deepest beliefs.

The Mars effect controversy bears a striking resemblance to the earlier one involving Wegner's continental drift hypothesis, in which circumstantial evidence was discounted or ignored because how could massive continents plow through solid oceanic crust? Once convincing evidence was provided showing not only that continental drift had occurred but how it could occur resistance collapsed virtually overnight. The entire earth sciences community converted during 1965-66, and a couple of years later the theory of plate tectonics was born, leading to the more rigorous and effective level of research that has characterized the earth sciences ever since. There is a lesson here for astrological researchers. Until we can explain how astrological effects could possibly exist any evidence we offer that they exist is going to be discounted, and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I've written about astrological causation, but making sense of astrology is possible only if we're willing to reconsider what sorts of effects actually exist and how astrology actually works, something astrologers are strikingly resistant to doing. As you note above it might require a paradigm shift, and such shifts are always vehemently resisted.

More recently Geoffrey Dean thinks he has a non-astrological explanation for the Gauquelin findings, which he calls social attribution. He thinks parents, especially during the 19th century and especially in the rural areas from which much of the Gauquelin data was drawn, have tended to avoid reporting births on dates or for times considered unlucky or evil, such as Halloween, Friday the 13th, midnight, etc., and have tended to prefer fortunate dates. Also, he claims that following almanacs in which rising, culminating and setting times are given was much more common then than now. I have read his arguments carefully since I last wrote here and there is something about them that bothers me, but I'll need to reread (and ponder) several more times before I can get clear on it. It's a serious challenge, not to be taken lightly. I'm not entirely convinced, but neither am I willing to dismiss his statistics and the interpretation he puts on them until I understand both more fully. In any case even if the Gauquelin findings evaporate it doesn't necessarily prove astrology doesn't exist. There are other lines of research I've been following in recent years which suggest the existence of astrological effects, albeit not the kinds of effects the overwhelming majority of astrologers believe in. Whatever is or might be true about astrology is obscured by an awful lot of nonsense.

spock, I have some problems with the Gauquelins' premises and built-in biases, which I have tried to outline above, that have nothing to do with the "straw man" debate you've outlined. If you think the Gauquelin research was just super-duper notwithstanding, that's fine. But I wonder.... do you yourself apply it to actual chart-readings for people? If so, how?
 

spock

Well-known member
hi spock,

fascinating post that you have shared here for everyone interested in seeing astrology reach a place of recognition on many levels.. i am not sure what has to happen for this to take place, but i had a lot of hope and optimism instilled in me via the gauguelin research only to see it erode via the numerous attacks on it..
The attackers have had surprisingly little success in discrediting the Gauquelin results. The most serious challenge, posed by Geoffrey Dean, focuses on the smallness of the effect size. That, however, is at least partly a red herring. The Mars effect is not athletic prominence. It's a trait that gives you an edge if you happen to be an athlete. But since the Mars effect is only one of a number of factors that affect athletic success, it can't by itself make you a superstar. If you're marginal it'll make you not too bad. If you're not too bad it'll make you average. If you're average it'll make you pretty good. If you're pretty good it'll make you very good. And if you're very good it'll make you one of the best and possibly one of the prominent athletes in a Gauquelin-style experiment. The statistical effect size is small because athletic prominence measures the Mars effect only indirectly. But a small effect size is easier to explain away than a large one. Dean claims to have found (but gives no raw data in the piece I read) that the effect size increases as birthtime faking increases, and notes that it would take only a small percentage of faked data to produce the very small Gauquelin effect sizes. He argues that parental faking could be the source of the Gauquelin results. However, this assumes not only that some parents provided false information and not only that they knew what false information to provide, but also that doing so made their children more likely to succeed. An experiment more closely based on what the Mars effect actually is would, if the effect is real, likely settle the matter. It would not, however, lacking a mechanism that explains the effect, satisfy skeptics who assume the statistical result must be an artifact because such an effect can't possibly exist. (After Symbolism does, by the way, offer an explanation for astrological effects, albeit only for the kind that I think actually exist.)

At the same time the Gauquelin material isn't the only or even the best evidence for astrology, or the best source of astrological knowledge. Developmental psychology, including adult lifespan development, is a rich source of astrological insights. After all, developmental psychology is about what happens at what age. Age transits, each planet conjoining, squaring, or opposing its natal place, also happen at about the same time for everyone, hence are also about what happens at what age. The twin giants of cognitive developmental psychology are Jean Piaget and L.S. Vygotsky. The major periods in Piaget's scheme are the sensorimotor stage, the preoperational stage, the concrete operational stage, and the formal operational stage. But Johnnie doesn't go to sleep Tuesday in the preoperational stage and wake up Wednesday in the concrete operational stage. There must be a way of getting from one to the other, a transition period. Piaget didn't have much to say about transitions and didn't include them in his scheme, but we would expect them to coincide with the boundaries between stages. Those boundaries coincide with age transits. Hence the sensorimotor stage begins at birth and ends with Mars conjoining its natal place, the first Mars return; the preoperational stage begins with the Mars Return and ends with Saturn squaring its natal place; the stage of concrete operations begins with Saturn squaring its natal place and ends with Jupiter conjoining its natal place, the first Jupiter Return; and the period of formal operations begins with the Jupiter Return and continues into adulthood.

For the most part Piaget's scheme includes only stages, not the transitions between them. Vygotsky's scheme includes not only stable periods, the relatively long periods between transits, but also critical periods, the relatively brief periods of the transits. Hence he refers to the crisis at age one, which can be attributed to either Sun conjunct Sun, the first Solar Return, or Mars opposite Mars, or both; the crisis at (the turn to) age three, which coincides with Jupiter squaring its natal place; and the crisis at age seven, which coincides with Saturn squaring its natal place. With Piaget we can get some idea of the nature of a given transit/transition by noting how a given stage differs from its immediate predecessor and thinking about what it would take to effect that kind of change. With Vygotsky, however, we have descriptions not only of the stable periods but also of the transition periods that connect them. For instance, during the first three years a child is very concrete and literal-minded in her thinking. She finds it difficult to say, even if instructed to do so, "Sally is walking across the room," if she can plainly see her sitting in a chair. Also, during the first three years motivation is not clearly separable from perception. If a child sees a bright light she moves toward it. She listens intently to an interesting sound. A door gets opened and closed, a ball dropped or rolled. Each stimulus directly evokes a response until she becomes bored with it and responds to the next interesting stimulus. She is, in a sense, a slave to her immediate environment. She does not, in the sense that an adult or older child does, decide what do do.

At the turn to age three a new characteristic, imagination, begins to emerge. This isn't imagination in its full flowering at the Jupiter Return but its precursor. The child is now able to have one thing stand for another. The stick in his hands is the steering wheel of the car he's "driving" around the living room or yard; or the horse he's "riding" as he chases the bad guys. (True play begins at three.) At the same time more complex wants emerge that are not single actions but activities that are made up of a number of specific actions: going to the store with Mommy; playing cowboys and indians with Bobby. The child can now decide what he or she wants to do, and can be frustrated when those desires are stymied. Stubbornness and willfulness is characteristic of the crisis at age three. The child refuses to change her mind even when it would be reasonable to do so, even when what her parents want her to do is something she'd ordinarily want to do. She refuses to change her mind because she's trying to have a mind of her own, to be able to follow her own wishes without being deflected from moment to moment. Vygotsky asserts that "if the crisis for some reason passes sluggishly and is not clearly expressed , this leads to a serious delay in the development of affective and volitional aspects of the child's personality at a later age."

Another development at three ties together and helps explain these changes. Life takes on a narrative structure. The child mutters while he's doing something: It go there now. No good. Push it. His remarks are cryptic and not easily decipherable. Piaget called this egocentric speech and attributed it to childhood egocentrism, in which the child's speech isn't social. He hasn't yet learned to communicate by putting himself in the shoes of others and providing the verbal clues that would enable someone else to know what he's talking about. Vygotsky, however, argued that the child's speech is social from the beginning. What changes at three is speech splits into two parts, the original speech for others and a new function, speech for oneself. He noted that the incidence of egocentric speech increases when the child is engaged in a difficult task, and that over the next few years it becomes even more cryptic. What's happening is the child is talking himself through what he's trying to accomplish. He's telling himself what to do. Egocentric speech doesn't die out as Piaget thought but goes underground at age seven (!) and becomes inner speech, the thinking in words that we often associate with thinking per se. Not only does egocentric speech not need to provide the details that would make it comprehensible to others, since the child knows who and what he's talking (thinking) about, it doesn't have to be out loud, either. Now he realizes who he's talking to, himself, and at that point egocentric speech becomes thinking in words. The three-year old in essence always thinks out loud. The seven-year old has learned to think to himself.

This enables us to understand and differentiate the Jupiter and Saturn effects from each other. The child at seven often comes across as artificial and pretentious. That's because he's learning to present a facade, a public self that he tries to live up to, but he's new at it. This is the beginning of impression management, and also deliberate dissembling and lying. As I said earlier what emerges at the Jupiter square is complex wants, things we like to do, and throughout life new hobbies and enthusiasms, as well as relationships involving shared activities, tend to change at Jupiter intervals. (I think close examination would reveal that many (most?) of us first got turned on to astrology during a Jupiter transit, and that further developments in that interest occurred at Jupiter intervals.) What emerges at the Saturn square is a conscious self-image, an image according to which we organize our activities and are able, for the first time, to hold to a task and to regularly perform duties and live up to responsibilities. It's no accident that the Spartans sent boys to live in barracks and train as soldiers at age seven, that Medieval children became apprentices at seven, that cultures the world over begin training their children at this age and have rites of passage to mark this important psychological milestone. They do so because at seven the child develops capabilities she didn't have previously. We don't train or use children at an earlier age because we can't. The Saturn self corresponds to Freud's ego and Maslow's esteem needs. (Just as different wavelengths of light are perceived as different colors, so, too, the structure of the psyche is composed of different temporal wavelengths. You could say that the ego is simply that facet of the self that comes to the forefront at seven-year intervals. It's a seven-year pulse.) When we engage in a hobby or other pleasurable activity we have fun. When we live up to our desired self-image we feel good about ourselves and enhance our self-esteem. Just as our hobbies and enthusiasms tend to follow a Jupiter schedule, we make career changes (in the broader sense, as outgrowths of shifts in self-image) according to a Saturn schedule.

Age transits don't, of course, account for individual differences. For that we need transits to other planets, whose timing varies from person to person. In my chart, for instance, Mars is conjunct Saturn. (The sign doesn't matter because I don't think astrological signs are real.) This means that everytime Mars transits conjunct, square or opposite its natal place it simultaneously does the same to Saturn. Saturn similarly makes simultaneous transits to its own place and Mars. And this has developmental consequences. It accounts both for individual differences and development, because we aren't born with fully developed adult personalities. We have to become who we are. (See the subsection "Transit Patterns and the Evolution of Personality" in section 2 of After Symbolism for further details.) But age transits are not only, with the input of developmental psychology, potentially the most rigorous, well-attested part of astrology. They're also a foundation on which to build. Understanding the effects of Saturn per se, as it transits in relation to its own natal place, seems to me a prerequisite for understanding the effects of Saturn in relation to the other factors in the chart, and thus ultimately not only individual personality but also the structure of the human psyche.

i can dimly imagine what astrology might be like in the future if the astro community and a greater community beyond astrology is able to bring astrology into the present where it is recognized in some legitimate manner.. in the meantime i note a strong return to the past documents that have become available in the past 20 odd years and a real resurgence in 'traditional' astrology which doesn't seem concerned in the least about the concerns you address in your post here.. do you have any thoughts on this that you'd like to share?
I think it's partly due to a need to believe and a consequent shying away from any approach that might undermine it, and partly a turning away from science and statistics in response to disappointed expectations. Underlying both is the kind of reasoning we absorb when we learn how to do astrology. I have no problem with astrologers being committed to believing in some form of astrology. If I did I'd have a problem with myself. I think it's a myth that students of physics, chemistry and biology accept the validity of what they're studying because the evidence convinces them, whereas astrologers believe in astrology because they're gullible and superstitious. But my commitment is to the idea that there are correspondences between the earth and heavens. It doesn't commit me to specific beliefs about the nature and extent of such correspondences, about their causes, or about how we deploy our knowledge of them when we delineate. That's what research is for, to tell me what I can believe even if it's not what I learned from textbooks. But I think many astrologers are committed not just to the idea of correspondences but to the fleshed out belief system handed down to us. In the face of our inability to demonstrate the validity of our existing beliefs and practices, and given a prior belief in a working astrology discovered by or revealed to our ancient predecessors, it's no surprise that some of our more thoughtful astrologers would look to the past for lost or forgotten knowledge. Ultimately I think their disinterest in a more rigorous, scientific approach to astrology is due to a lack of faith that there is anything to find by such means. That lack of faith is in turn due to unrealistic expectations that positive statistical results would be easy to come by and would validate astrology in exactly its present form.

As for the mode of reasoning I refer to above, which underlies and emphasizes the tendencies and reactions I think I see, consider the abstract to After Symbolism: "Symbolism has been both the saviour and achilles heel of astrology. By enabling it to seem valid to its adherents it has insured its continued existence and development. It's nature, however, limits the extent of that development. Since astrology can be "right" even when the chart or event is wrong there is no confrontation with reality to correct and improve it. Astrology can move to a higher level only if symbolism is supplanted by empiricism. An empirical astrology would not merely be illustrated by real-world observations. It would be based on them. The purpose of this article is to show how." The first two sections of the article analyze symbolism and contrast it to empiricism, but the article as a whole is about what comes "after symbolism". But it's hard to get there from within the conceptual box provided by the existing paradigm, which I think accounts both for the anti-empirical tendencies that are at the heart of the unconcern you refer to as well as for the often overly hostile and even hysterical responses I encounter when I critique symbolism.

the book you are in the process of working on sounds as though it will capture the spirit of your posts here in this thread and will be a very interesting exposé that i'd enjoy reading.. i wish you all the best in staying on track to complete that project which is probably quite a commitment of time and energy. for that you will need to remove the distractions that you mentioned earlier in order to get the sleep for the energy required.. i find getting the concentration to do my best work sometimes difficult to find and even more of a problem with added distractions, this forum sometimes being a blessing and a curse in that i enjoy interacting with others like you here, but find i haven't set strong enough boundaries to keep my focus on what i need to be doing as much since coming here in the fall.. thanks for your comments here as they are quite fascinating to read and watch unfold..
In a sense I'm working on the book everytime I post, because I'm always working out ideas in my head as well as trying out ways of putting things so as to more effectively get across what I'm trying to say. So in addition to the fact that I enjoy these discussions, they serve a purpose.
 
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waybread

Well-known member
Well, some of the "attackers" have actually looked at the Gauquelins' study design....

Thr real question is why astrologers don't master the study of statistics, so that we can refer to some solid recent studies.
 

spock

Well-known member
spock, I have some problems with the Gauquelins' premises and built-in biases, which I have tried to outline above, that have nothing to do with the "straw man" debate you've outlined. If you think the Gauquelin research was just super-duper notwithstanding, that's fine. But I wonder.... do you yourself apply it to actual chart-readings for people? If so, how?
I rarely do chart readings because I think the state of the art is such that there's very little that we definitively know. If someone asks me to comment on their chart, and I see Mars conjunct, square or opposite the Nonagesimal, I tell them that they're go-getters, that they don't put things off, that they're able to push themselves harder than most people can, and that this confers an advantage in some endeavors (sports, the military, business), is neutral in others, and is even disadvantageous in a few (writing). I point out that it has nothing to do with whether or not they want to be in sports, the military, etc., just gives them an edge if, for whatever reason, they are. I also emphasize that this is what I currently believe, that most astrological knowledge is tentative, that I could be wrong even though I don't think I am. The basis of this description is the Gauquelin work and the assumption of an average lateness factor, and my studies of transit rhythms in biographies. I do solicit and pay attention to comments, even though I don't always regard them as definitive. I've known people whose houses are spic and span, whose yards are well kept up, who are never behind in their tasks, yet who describe themselves as lazy because they think they ought to be able to do more. I take into account what they say and leaven it with the evidence of my own eyes. I'll include some additional comments in a private message.
 

JUPITERASC

Well-known member
I rarely do chart readings because I think the state of the art is such that there's very little that we definitively know
By 'the state of the art' you seem to refer to the state of the art of astrology in general :smile:

Spock are you saying that therefore whether traditional/modern/contemporary, 'there's very little that we definitively know' regarding astrology in general?

Next question therefore is: "What then in fact IS 'definitively known' in astrology?
 

spock

Well-known member
I rarely do chart readings because I think the state of the art is such that there's very little that we definitively know. If someone asks me to comment on their chart, and I see Mars conjunct, square or opposite the Nonagesimal, I tell them that they're go-getters, that they don't put things off, that they're able to push themselves harder than most people can, and that this confers an advantage in some endeavors (sports, the military, business), is neutral in others, and is even disadvantageous in a few (writing). I point out that it has nothing to do with whether or not they want to be in sports, the military, etc., just gives them an edge if, for whatever reason, they are. I also emphasize that this is what I currently believe, that most astrological knowledge is tentative, that I could be wrong even though I don't think I am. The basis of this description is the Gauquelin work and the assumption of an average lateness factor, and my studies of transit rhythms in biographies. I do solicit and pay attention to comments, even though I don't always regard them as definitive. I've known people whose houses are spic and span, whose yards are well kept up, who are never behind in their tasks, yet who describe themselves as lazy because they think they ought to be able to do more. I take into account what they say and leaven it with the evidence of my own eyes....
By 'the state of the art' you seem to refer to the state of the art of astrology in general :smile:

Spock are you saying that therefore whether traditional/modern/contemporary, 'there's very little that we definitively know' regarding astrology in general?

Next question therefore is: What then in fact IS 'definitively known' in astrology?
Yes, I mean the state of the art of astrology in general. Regardless of label or school of thought there's very little that we definitively know. Most of what we think we know — houses, signs, return charts, progressions, horary, elections, astrological symbolism as a way of knowing and external events as the object of knowing — is the equivalent of empty calories. There's little or no observational evidence for it and no plausible mechanism to explain it. As for what is definitive I'm tempted to say nothing at all, but instead will describe what I think is valid and somewhat definitive, and capable of becoming more definitive (being about actually existing effects) with further research. At the top of the list is age transits, because there's abundant evidence that they exist and a plausible explanation for how it is that they can exist. The Saturn Return is the most familiar example, and we have descriptions of it from Grant Lewi and other astrologers which are detailed enough and similar enough to make me think they're seeing and describing "the same thing." There are late-twenties transition periods in the developmental schemes of adult lifespan researchers such as Daniel Levinson (Seasons of a Man's Life) and Gail Sheehy (Passages). There are late-twenties turning points in many biographies, including at least one autobiographical account (Erica Jong's Fear of Flying) that's entirely about her Saturn Return (that is, what we recognize as her Saturn Return). There are even literary references, such as this from Gertrude Stein's Fernhurst: "It happens often in the twenty-ninth year of a life that all the forces that have been engaged through the years of childhood, adolescence and youth in confused and ferocious combat range themselves in ordered ranks — one is uncertain of one's aims, meaning and power during these years of tumultuous growth when aspiration has no relation to fulfillment and one plunges here and there with energy and misdirection during the storm and stress of the making of a personality until at last we reach the twenty-ninth year the straight and narrow gate-way of maturity and life which was all uproar and confusion narrows down to form and purpose and we exchange a great dim possibility for a small hard reality."

Cognitive developmental psychology, as embodied in the theories of Jean Piaget and especially L.S. Vygotsky, is a source of what I consider to be definitive astrological knowledge. Because developmental turning points are age specific they're equivalent to age transits in astrology, but are more rigorous and detailed. Piaget is better known but Vygotsky has eclipsed him in recent decades amongst the cognoscenti. The major periods in Piaget's developmental scheme are 0-2, 2-7, 7-12, and 12 onward: astrologically from birth to the Mars Return in the months leading up to the second birthday, from the Mars Return to Saturn opening square Saturn at age 7, from the Saturn opening square to the Jupiter Return in the months leading up to the twelfth birthday, and from the Jupiter Return onward. Each period is unitary in that reasoning is similar from beginning to end and different from adjacent periods. Piaget's major periods are intervals between transits. He was interested in periods during which things remain more or less the same, not transitions between periods; the latter are largely absent from his scheme. Yet the boundaries between periods must be transitions — we have to get from one form of reasoning to its successor somehow — and these transitions coincide with age transits. Vygotsky did treat transitions as distinct periods, and included them in his developmental scheme. The major periods in his scheme are: Crisis of the Newborn; Infancy (2 months to 1 year); Crisis at Age 1; Early Childhood (1 to 3); Crisis at Age 3; Preschool Age (3 to 7); Crisis at Age 7; and School Age (8 to 12). His scheme has stable periods, intervals between transits, alternating with crisis periods, periods of transits. The former are lengthy and characterized by gradual, evolutionary change, the latter are brief and coincide with upheavals in which existing interests and ways of thought die out and are replaced by new ones. His conception of the temporal structure of the critical periods is strikingly similar to the astrological notion of aspect intensity. They begin and end imperceptibly but reach a peak of intensity, "an abrupt aggravation of the crisis," in the middle of the period — that is, when the transit is close to being exact.

The temporal structure of development according to Piaget and Vygotsky strikingly reflects astrological age transit timing, but their contribution to astrology hinges on what they have to say about what happens at these ages. For that we begin with a phenomenon Piaget called egocentric speech, in which the child says things like, "It go there now. Push it. Better. She help." Piaget argued that the young child's speech is egocentric rather than social because she hasn't learned to take the viewpoint of the other and provide the verbal clues — what "it" is, what "go there now" or "push it" refers to, who "she" is — that enable a listener to make sense of what she's saying. As she grows older, the argument continues, egocentric speech gradually dies out as she learns to see things from the other person's viewpoint and provides verbal clues that enable others to more easily understand her. Vygotsky, in contrast, argued that children's speech is social from the very beginning, that at (the turn to) age 3 speech splits into two streams, the original speech-for-others and a new function, speech-for-oneself. He noted that the frequency of "egocentric speech," rather than decreasing with age, increases until it disappears at age 7. He noted also that it becomes more ubiquitous as the task being performed becomes more difficult. He concluded from this and other evidence that the child uses speech-for-oneself to regulate her actions. She talks herself through her tasks, telling herself what to do. Speech-for-oneself also becomes more telescoped as she grows older, because she knows what she means and doesn't need the verbal clues listeners need. When it's ourselves we're talking to speech not only doesn't need such clues, it doesn't need to be out loud, either. Speech-for-oneself doesn't disappear at age 7 but goes undergound, becoming Silent Speech, the words in our heads that we previously spoke out loud but which are now our private thoughts. They're private because, thanks to the Saturn square Saturn transition, the child now knows when she's speaking (thinking) only to herself. This is the age at which she develops a conscious sense of self, a persona or identity. Vygotsky refers to a loss of naivete and directness, in which the child's behavior seems artificial and affected, even phoney. This is because she's doing clumsily and transparently what adults do skillfully and seamlessly, presenting an identity to others. During subsequent Saturn age transits we make changes in our career and other facets of our identity. The words we associate with Saturn, like discipline and conscientiousness, refer to the attempts we make to live up to our assumed identity, the self we want others to see. Only after the transition at 7 are we able to experience a conflict between what we want to do and what we think we ought to do. Another word for sense of identity is ego, and ego strength refers to how disciplined and conscientious we are in living up to our image of ourselves (thus enhancing our self-esteem). At Saturn intervals we mature in this ability and change the self-image we're trying to project and live up to. Hence Saturn transiting hard-angle its natal place often corresponds to career changes.

Changes in identity involve changes in roles, but role-playing per se is a Jupiter rather than Saturn-related ability. A new development at the turn to age 3 is the ability to have one thing stand for another — a stick becomes a horse for the little boy playing cowboys and Indians — a birth of imagination that advances at three-year intervals and reaches its full flowering as we approach our twelfth birthday, the first Jupiter Return. The ability to pretend to be a cowboy, astronaut, nurse, doctor, and to play the roles necessitated by actually being a teacher, student, parent, child, engineer, writer, astrologer, also advances at Jupiter intervals and climaxes at the Jupiter Return. This function, combined with a narratization of experience (i.e. the emergence of speech-for-oneself), is the locus of will. The very young child is both literal-minded and will-less. She finds it difficult if not impossible to say, "Ingrid is walking across the room," if she sees her sitting down. Nor can it be said that what she's doing at any given time is the result of a decision per se. She moves toward a light or interesting sound. She encounters a ball and squeezes, rolls or drops it. A door gets opened and closed. In each case the stimulus evokes the response. (Perception and motivation are not yet differentiated.) When she becomes bored with a given stimulus another attracts her and evokes characteristic responses. At 3 the child moves from actions, her responses to individual stimuli, to activities, sets of actions linked together in a narrative structure. Now she wants to go next door to play with Sally, to go to the store and get groceries, to watch a movie (she's now capable of following a story). She might imagine taking her doll, her baby, to see a doctor. She will engage in monologues. "I go store now. Don't cry. I be back soon. You be good." Each of these is an activity, an imagined or experienced sequence of linked actions that together add up to a whole, a narrative of what was done or imagined. This is where will enters the picture. We can't want to do something until we can imagine doing it. Vygotsky writes that if the age 3 crisis emerges in a limp or inexpressive manner it bodes ill for subsequent development. More usually the child is stubborn and willful. She won't deviate from a course of action even when it's counterproductive, even if she's offered an alternative she'd normally prefer. She refuses to change her mind because it's what she decided to do. She's learning to have a will, to not be deflected from moment to moment by other people's wishes. Just as the age transits of Saturn regularly result in shifts in self-image, Jupiter age transits result in new interests, new hobbies, new enthusiasms: changes in what we enjoy doing. They also coincide with new friendships (people we enjoy doing things with) and with the end of old friendships.

Jupiter and Saturn rhythms are especially visible in developmental schemes (and biographies) presumably because 3 years and 7⅓ years are of intermediate length. Periods shorter or longer than these are more difficult to see, although Mars periods (5½ months) and Uranus periods (21 years) are visible in developmental schemes and adult lifespan schemes, respectively. In Piaget's scheme (what we call) the first Mars Return coincides with the climax of the sensorimotor period, in which the child masters time and space and is able to efficiently move around in her environment and differentiate past from future. This includes preferences in how we move about in space. For adults Mars conjoining, squaring, or opposing its natal place coincides with such things as rearranging the furniture, changing the route we take to work, moving to a different apartment or house, changing the bank we use or the stores we shop at, beginning an exercise routine or diet plan, in general changing our daily routine regarding what we do, where we go, how we get there and who we interact with. Love affairs begin and end, and other relationship decisions occur (moving in together, separating, deciding to get married, etc.) while Mars is conjoining, squaring, or opposing its natal place. Uranus hard-angle its natal place is visible in Seasons of a Man's Life and Passages as "cross-era transitions" at 18 to 22, 38 to 43 and 60 to 65. During these periods we experience far-reaching upheavals in values, norms, ideas about right and wrong, general orientation towards humanity and life itself, and ideas about the nature of reality.

As I suggested it's possible to explain how age transits can exist, but only if they predict not external but internal events — states of mind, more specifically motivations. Psychological events are what cognitive developmental psychologists study, and also what I've been interested for most of my astrological career. Vygotsky asserts that the character of each stable developmental period is determined by the emergence (i.e., during the preceding age transit) of a new motivation that drives development during that period. Recurrent psychological effects, like other biological rhythms, are arguably the products of biological clocks, like the circadian, annual and lunar rhythms that the science of chronobiology studies, only extended to include the periods of the other planets in our solar system. Life has apparently used planetary periods as temporal templates for the evolution of biological processes which fit those periods and which, because they're organized in time, are able to be coordinated with one another. We don't know the mechanisms by which organisms "know" where the planets are at a given time, but we do know the molecular details of the feedback mechanism by which the 24-hour biological clock keeps time, as well as the means by which it resets itself daily by the reception of light by photosensitive receptor cells in the retina that are not part of the visual system per se. It's not unreasonable to suppose that biological clocks corresponding to the planets are reset in analogous ways. In fact my colleague Andre Donnell has some interesting thoughts about how such interactions might be mediated by the earth's interactions with the other planets.

The evolution of biological clocks corresponding not only to the day, the month, and the year but also to planetary periods is plausible, but what about rhythms in which birth isn't the starting point? It's harder to imagine how starting points other than birth, such as the age at which Saturn conjoins Mercury for a given person, are somehow stored in the brain, or how such clocks might be reset, but we shouldn't underestimate the power of evolution by natural selection to create amazingly complex structures if they're beneficial. The benefit in this instance is the existence of individual differences, which enables more complex forms of social coordination than would be possible if we all had the same preferences, abilities, attitudes and tendencies. What makes this kind of differentiation possible is differences in developmental timing due to differences in natal charts if age transits aren't the only ones that exist. As I write in Part 2 of my article After Symbolism, in the subsection Transit Patterns and the Evolution of Personality, with reference to (my own) natal Mars conjunct Saturn, "imagine the developmental consequences of always having the turning points in these two rhythms coincide. Everytime I feel the urge during a Mars/Mars transit to resolve issues that have been bothering me, that I now can't ignore, a simultaneous Mars/Saturn transit is causing me to feel inhibited, which presumably not only keeps me from doing some things but even more likely gives a characteristic shape or psychological spin to what I actually end up doing. Year after year, transit after transit, a set of propensities, a personality pattern, builds up. Dealing with the same issues won't necessarily cause people with the same [pattern of simultaneous transits] to develop the same specific behaviors, but their characteristic responses to situations, even though different, stem from the same recurrent psychological challenges. Behind different coping behaviors we may find the same thing being coped with, for instance an exaggerated fear of humiliation. One person might cope with such a fear by being evasive and hard to pin down, so that he can never be shown to have been wrong, whereas another might go to exaggerated lengths to eliminate errors, to avoid being wrong."

Hence for me age transits, especially Saturn age transits, are pretty definitive, and to a lesser degree so are other (hard-angle) transits and natal aspects. The latter are given additional cogency by the Gauquelin work, especially their findings regarding the so-called "Mars effect." For 2088 champion athletes the distribution of Mars in 12 sectors, if there were no Mars effect, would be 1) 186.0, 2) 181.7, 3) 178.5, 4) 172.5, 5) 169.8, 6) 166.8, 7) 163.9, 8) 164.1, 9) 170.0, 10) 174.3, 11) 180.0, and 12) 180.4. What the Gauquelins observed, however, was Mars bunching up in sectors 1 and 4, roughly equivalent to the Asc and MC, leaving sectors 12 and 2, and 3 and 5 underrepresented. For the sake of clarity I'll note only the contrast between sectors 1 and 2. Expected was, as noted above, 186.0 versus 181.7. Observed was 240 versus 173! The contrast was even more dramatic when they considered not just champions but the traits characteristic of champions. For 6184 trait references in sports biographies for a subset of the 2088 champions a random Mars distribution for sectors 1 and 2 would have been 550.9 and 538.1, but the actual distribution was 1086 versus 227! These findings seem pretty definitive. Three skeptics groups replicating the original experiment were able to "refute" them only by fudging data and engaging in other questionable practices that caused them to be heavily criticized by fellow skeptics. Psychologist Suitbert Ertel, on the other hand, extended them by showing that the more citations athletes received in sports biographies the stronger the Mars effect. However, although the Gauquelin findings are relatively definitive they're hardly more specific regarding the effects associated with "angularity" than with the effects associated with the Saturn Return. Gauquelin summarized the Mars effect as "iron will." I prefer "unlaziness," because what's characteristic of people with this position is the ability to get going and keep going, to not put things off, to work harder than equally talented peers. Also, what is meant by "this position" needs to be further clarified. I think, for instance, that if corrected for an average lateness in reported birth times the peaks would fall not past but on the angles, and that the relevant angles are the Ascendant and Nonagesimal, not Ascendant and Midheaven.

In identifying as "definitive" the known effects of hard-angle transits and, by extension, natal aspects I don't mean to imply that all beliefs about those factors, even those of well-regarded astrologers, are equally valid. I think Grant Lewi's descriptions (not interpretations) of transit effects in Astrology for the Millions and natal aspect effects in Heaven Knows What are especially good. Lewi was a full-blown empiricist. To a remarkable degree he dispensed with symbolism and simply observed what people sharing a given natal aspect had in common, and what people going through a given transit experienced in common. Although in some respects affected by a kind of back-door symbolism, Robert Hand's Planets in Transit and Robert Pelletier's Planets in Aspect have a strong observational bias and are also well worth consulting. Many astrological writers, however, symbolistically construct an interpretation rather than describe observed effects. The writer begins with the given meanings of Mercury, of Mars, and of the conjunction, and concludes that therefore Mercury conjunct Mars means such and such. I critique the underlying function of this kind of reasoning in Part 1 of After Symbolism, The Symbolistic Paradigm. I contrast symbolism and empricism in a subsection of Part 4, Historical Patterns, in which I analyze the Uranus/Neptune historical rhythm, which also seems pretty definitive as it involves citable historical accounts and in addition is explicable as an effect that's actually possible by extending the reasoning in Part 4, A Mechanism for Astrology.

A different sort of response, perhaps more what you had in mind, might have had more to say about the effects of the Saturn Return and of the other factors mentioned here — that is, would have been a more detailed account of the knowledge that I consider (more or less) definitive. I've focussed on reasons for belief as much as contents of belief because that's the way my mind works and because this is, after all, the Research and Development subsection of this forum. To summarize those reasons, evidence and plausibility are equally important. If we think we have evidence for something but it seems impossible that it could exist we have to wonder if we're misreading the evidence or even seeing what we want to see in order to preserve belief. That's why continental drift wasn't taken seriously and was in fact ridiculed for half a century after it was proposed by Alfred Wegener. Despite the evidence he offered it just didn't seem possible. That's why critics feel the Gauquelins must have made mistakes because what their findings suggest doesn't make sense and couldn't possibly be true. It's why debunkers are so exasperated and feel astrologers must be idiots rather than merely mistaken, because what we believe is so obviously nonsense. Yet, just as the apparent evidence causes a minority — drifters in one instance, astrologers in another
to pursue an explanation of how the effects proposed could be real, the acquisition of such an explanation in turn affects our understanding of what those effects actually are. Plate tectonics doesn't have continents plowing through solid oceanic crust, which Wegener thought must somehow happen, and I think a more valid body of astrological knowledge, too, will be quite different from the specific beliefs and apparent evidence that impells us to look for "an explanation of astrology" in the first place. With deeper knowledge comes an awareness of limits. Lacking such knowledge the imagined scope of an enterprise is limitless, in our instance an omnipotent astrology capable of telling us anything and everything we want to know. In its place I propose a kind of knowledge consisting of effects actually existing in nature, specifically which changes on earth correspond to which changes in the heavens, and by what means.
 
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Zarathu

Account Closed
It seems simplistic after such an extensive and involved post to find myself asking such a simple question....but...

Have you perhaps read, Nancy Hastings volume, Secondary Progressions: A Time to Remember where in she shows a focussed cognitive developmental approach using secondary progressions? I've used it with great consistency since I bought the book many years ago.

In fact, I don't use 2ndary progressions for anything but the developmentally changed gestalt of life as we proceed through it. This is essential after I look at my seven Quotients of Natal and Progressed(progressed as Ivy Goldstein Jacobson meant) Astrology.

Z
 

Zarathu

Account Closed
How would you determine whether a piece of information is "definitively known"?

The likelihood of research projects at the level of the Gauquelin at this time is small. And besides, astrologers tend to run away fast from real research. The 30,000 charts analyzed using a sophisticated very large questionnaire during the period of 1920 to 1950, by the thousands of acolytes in the Church of Light in LA, which produced the Cosmodyes/Astrodynes is not used by many astrologers. And this is despite the fact that the research is not only impeccable, and easy to manage using todays computers, but in my experience brings statistical science to breaking down the complexity of astrology to a manageable level at the start-up gate.

I'm not sure that astrological practitioners as a whole are particularly interested in having anything definitively known. They "feel" that it denigrates their "art". Of course if medical science used that technique we'd still be debating the appropriate way to use blood-letting.
 

spock

Well-known member
It seems simplistic after such an extensive and involved post to find myself asking such a simple question....but...

Have you perhaps read, Nancy Hastings volume, Secondary Progressions: A Time to Remember where in she shows a focussed cognitive developmental approach using secondary progressions? I've used it with great consistency since I bought the book many years ago.

In fact, I don't use 2ndary progressions for anything but the developmentally changed gestalt of life as we proceed through it. This is essential after I look at my seven Quotients of Natal and Progressed(progressed as Ivy Goldstein Jacobson meant) Astrology.

Z
I've probably browsed it in a bookstore one or more times in the past. In fact that's almost a certainty. But I have no specific memory of it. I ordered it immediately after reading your comments and will respond after my copy arrives, which shouldn't take too long given how fast book deliveries are these days. I have encountered a developmental approach using progressions before and didn't find it convincing. (I don't know offhand if it was Hastings.) As I recall the writer was using progressed Moon, which does approximate the Saturn cycle. But progressions as a set don't, in my opinion, match up at all well with age-related turning points, whereas transits as a set do. I'll comment further when I've seen Hasting's book.

spock
 

Zarathu

Account Closed
I've probably browsed it in a bookstore one or more times in the past. In fact that's almost a certainty. But I have no specific memory of it. I ordered it immediately after reading your comments and will respond after my copy arrives, which shouldn't take too long given how fast book deliveries are these days. I have encountered a developmental approach using progressions before and didn't find it convincing. (I don't know offhand if it was Hastings.) As I recall the writer was using progressed Moon, which does approximate the Saturn cycle. But progressions as a set don't, in my opinion, match up at all well with age-related turning points, whereas transits as a set do. I'll comment further when I've seen Hasting's book.

spock

While the progressed Moon(AS WELL AS progressed Sun, ASC, is used, her arguments were convincing for me. I await your thoughts. They've work well with almost every client I've had where I used the information, including myself.
 
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spock

Well-known member
To know what someone has in mind implies remarkable knowledge :smile:
Not necessarily. In writing, speaking, or even just being physically present and communicating unconsciously via body language, we share what's on and therefore in our minds. The writer might deliberately mislead, of course, or the recipient might err in reading "between the lines," but in that case the writer can correct the erroneous speculation (e.g., my use of "perhaps") at his or her leisure.
 
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