WHY ASTROLOGY WORKSLife is full of turning points, and, more often than not, they come as a surprise, with no warning, like a fastball, high and inside, from a knuckleball pitcher.
The turning point under regard today was not a pitch, high and inside.
In 1998, I was sitting in a coffee shop in Kitsilano, in Vancouver, when I noticed a New York Times newspaper that someone had left behind; inside it was an article by someone named Malcolm Browne, about an experiment a scientist named Nicholas Gisin had done, in Geneva. He had sent pairs of entangled photons - a photon is a particle of energy, of radiant heat, that moves at the speed of light and possesses a neutral charge - in opposite directions to villages north and south of Geneva, dispatched along fiber-optic lines; it was, ostensibly, a scientific investigation of the mysterious long-range connections that exist between quantum events, i.e. connections that are created from nothing at all. And when each photon pair reached the end of their separate lines, they were forced to make random choices among equally possible pathways. Since there was no way for the photon pairs to communicate with each other, 'classical physics' -not 'quantum physics' - would predict that their independent choices would bear no relationship to each other.
But when their paths were compared, the independent decisions made by the paired photons always matched. Emphasis on the ‘always’.
The idea behind Dr. Gisin’s experiment is not new. Since the seventies physicists have been testing a quantum theory that suggests 'entangled particles' (identical particles that share common origins and properties) remain in instantaneous contact with each other no matter how large the gap between them. This is old hat to fans of Michio Kaku, and his 'superstring theory' about the nature of the universe, and to fans of Michael Talbot, author of THE HOLOGRAPHIC UNIVERSE, and anyone who has ever googled the concepts of “entangled particles’ and ‘non- locality’. (Go ahead and google those concepts, just to see how many web pages are lurking out there in the electronic ether….)
Dr. Gisin set a dramatic distance record by showing that the link between two entangled particles survives even when they are ten kilometres apart. Past experiments on entangled particles were carried out over distances of a hundred paltry metres or less. In principle, he says, it should make no difference whether the correlation between twin tangled particles occurs when they are separated by a few metres....or by the entire universe.
Malcolm Browne went on to explain that an underlying enigma remains. One of the weird aspects of quantum mechanics, he writes, is that something can simultaneously exist and not exist; if a particle is capable of moving along several different paths, the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics allows it to travel along all paths and exist in all possible states simultaneously. However, if the particle happens to be measured by some means, its path or state is no longer uncertain. The simple act of measurement instantly forces it into just one path or state. Physicists call this a 'collapse of the wave function'. The amazing thing is that if just one particle in an entangled pair is measured, the wave function of the particles collapses into a definite state that is the same for both partners, no matter the distance between them. Among several proposed explanations for all this is the 'many worlds' hypothesis: the notion that for every possible pathway or state open to a particle, there is a separate universe. But that’s a different ball of wax.
Then I came across the millenium issue of NEXUS Magazine. In an article titled, “NEO-ASTROLOGY: Statistical Evidence for the Influence of the Planets?”, Anthony Craig writes, "If it be supposed that each body cell - a watery sac, ideal for the reception and conduction of electromagnetic frequencies - is receiving the vibrations in the atmosphere, and that the glands are sensitive to frequencies of a definite pitch, then we have an ideal theoretical framework for the mechanics of celestial influence."
Which, conceivably, are then perceived - and encoded? - by the neural network of the fetus inside the mother's womb.
I was first intrigued by astrology at the age of seven. I would arrive home on the ranch, after an hour journey on rough and rocky road, via schoolbus, from elementary school and turn on the black and white TV and watch a show called BEYOND REASON, on the CBC - the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - the one and only channel most TV sets received, in the towns and ranches dotting the badlands of south-west Saskatchewan, back in the year JFK was blown away, by forces that remain mysterious still.
On BEYOND REASON, three psychics would try to guess the identity of a mystery guest. Irene Hughes, a psychic, was in the left glass cubicle; the middle cubicle was reserved for a guest psychic, a palmist (usually Irene Hughes), a clairvoyant, clairaudient, whoever; and in the third cubicle was the astrologer, Geoff Grey-Cobb. Using just birth time and place, and a few probing questions, he seemed to come up with the correct identity of the mystery guest first, more often than not, or so it seemed to me, and I wondered why that was.
Twelve years later, while attending the College of Education at the University of Saskatchewan, in Saskatoon, in the autumn of 1974, I met a woman named Mary who could do astrology charts. Something between us clicked.
She said, you're a Gemini, aren't you? Impressed, I said yes I am. Then she offered to do my astrological chart. She was beautiful, in a weird, quixotic sort of way, very sexy, and about seven years older than me. I said okay.
We met the next afternoon for coffee. Having known me for less than an hour, she was incredibly accurate. My moon in Pisces, she said, meant that I was dreamy and intrigued by fantasy, by alternate realities. (Check. I’d read lots of science fiction as a teen-ager.) And that Piscean moon, and your ruling planet, Mercury, trine Neptune, the planet of mystery, can be very sensitive, she said. Prone to strange allergic reactions. (Check. I was allergic to penicillin, orange peels, dog hair, furnace filters. And on and on, and Mary was spot-on each time. Such encounters can change a life direction.
I did ask Mary why astrology worked.
She looked at me blankly for a moment. She had no idea, she said, finally. It just does.
Since then, I’ve kept my eyes peeled to the far horizon, my ear close to the ground, for the answer to that question I asked Mary. I’ve been known to go up to astrologers, world famous astrologers, in conference bookstores, or after lectures, and ask them, point blank, why astrology works. Mostly what I got in return was blank stares.
Every once in a while, somebody would point me in a certain direction. Check out Talbot, they’d say. Or: Percy Seymour's your man
And what I’ve come up with, after all that, is most definitely just a glimmering in the pit of a black hole that's buried in the wisp of a peanut shell blowing down some dark back alley of the Milky Way, of some metaphysical truth that will, perhaps, be common knowledge in a hundred years time, when the truth is finally out and astrologers rule the world. (If they don't already; it is whispered, in certain corners, that millionaires don't use astrologers, billionaires do, and a lot of them walk the streets of Wall Street; don't forget that Nancy Reagan’s astrologer, Joan Quigley, made sure Ronnie’s decisions and actions were timed just so.....)
It’s no secret, among radio operators, that radio waves are affected by the state of the earth's upper atmosphere, and how things are apt to get garbled when there’s a lot of sunspot activity. In 1843, someone named Woolf noticed that sunspot cycles appeared to follow a rhythm of 11.11 years. At the beginning of the cycle, they're near the poles and get nearer to the sun's equator as the cycle progresses, and then it's back to the poles by the time the cycle peters out. But each cycle varies considerably. For example, in 1645 and 1715, there were hardly any sunspots at all.
Now the sun rotates like the earth does, on its own north/south axis. But since it's not a solid entity and is composed of plasma gases, a solar day is much different: thirty-seven earth days at the poles as opposed to twenty-six at the equator. It also has an unusual magnetic field: a north-south dipole and an equatorial quadripole. The quadrupole field looks like four bubbles of magnetism spaced at equal intervals around the equator. These bubbles are of alternating polarity. And because the sun's poles are turning faster than its equator, its magnetic flux lines get wound up into loops, like spaghetti, twisted on a fork. Which apparently causes areas of intense magnetism to build up under the sun's surface. When they burst to the surface, we see them and call them sunspots. But those sunspots don't just stop at the surface. They get carried out into space on the solar wind as it courses through a very mysterious substance called, right now, “black matter”. (Google: “black matter”.) Which is what the main composition of most of the universe is. Scientists still only know precious little about it.
Just like they only know precious little about why astrology works.
In a sense, the stars and planets, etc. are merely bodies of highly condensed matter floating in a sea of thin, attenuated gases. The idea of 'space' as 'vacuum' doesn't really apply. And so, just as human beings have an energy field, an 'aura', the sun also has an aura. An aura composed of solar wind. And if you were wearing the right spectacles, you could see that solar wind reach out way past Pluto. That aura radiates throughout the entire electromagnetic spectrum: visible, radio, ultra-violet, x-rays....and there are probably some rays in some unseen, unfelt, undreamed of, dimensional realities, that we're not even aware of yet. Those of us who aren't high degree shamans, at least.
Why do comets have tails that always point away from the sun, no matter how far out from the sun they seem to be, or in what direction they’re going, inbound or outbound? Because of the solar wind. Which is composed of photons.
Today I went into my old steel filing cabinet, where I keep my 1973 Canadian mountie quarters, my Vladimir Guerroro Expo rookie cards and other collectibles – collectibles are ruled by the second house, by the way – as well as the Aug/Sept 1998 issue of the Mountain Astrologer with its interview with one Dr. Percy Seymour. Dr. Seymour believes that the sun, moon and planets telegraph their effects to us via magnetic signals. His “multi-link theory” proposes that the planets raise tides in the gases of the sun, creating sunspots. Their particle emissions then travel across interplanetary space to strike the earth's magneto-sphere. 'Ringing it like a bell', he said. On days when the geomagnetic index was high, the planetary heredity effects of Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and, to some extent, the moon, are, he suggested, enhanced. "The level and intensity of solar activity waxes and wanes within the eleven year solar sunspot cycle", he wrote. "My theory proposes that certain planetary alignments affect solar activity......." Dr. Seymour then cites Jane Blizard's work for NASA, which showed evidence that heliocentric planetary conjunctions, oppositions and ninety degree alignments give rise to 'violent solar disturbances'. Added to that, we have the lunar daily magnetic variation that is caused by the moon tugging at the layers of plasma, or charged particles, trapped in the earth's magnetosphere. *
[*https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19880005529]
We all know the impact the moon has on the planet’s tides. And, if you will, on female menstrual cycles. as well as on emergency wards in hospitals, and the nerves of cops everywhere, come the full moon.
Is it merely a coincidence that the percentage of water in a human body matches that of the percentage of water making up the planet earth?
And then, out on the street, I picked up the latest issue of The Epoch Times (may 25th ’12), where I read that the Chinese have picked up where the Swiss have left off. Earlier this year in Shanghai, scientists used quantum entanglement – what Albert Einstein once referred to as “spooky action at a distance” - to transfer information, via 1,171 photons, using a 13 watt laser and “powerful optics”. The distance covered was 97 kilometres. The previous record was 16 kilometres, set in 2010, with a smaller payload.
It strikes me that something on the level of quantum physics just might be trying to bonk us on our collective heads. If the End of the Mayan Calendar does herald a major paradigm shift, as this metaphysician has opined, more than once, as opposed to, say, something apocalyptic – that can wait until that asteroid comes along in 2029 (google: asteroid 2029) all I can say is that I hope, in the long run, it's related to quantum physics and the proof underlying astrology's dynamic mechanism. It seems to me that we're already sitting on that proof. It just needs to be acknowledged.
