People who know that I have a scientific and mathematical background have often asked me how I can possibly believe in astrology. I usually reply that astrology isn’t something you believe in, it’s something you know about. Then we have a little discussion about what they think astrology is, which often focuses on astrology columns in magazines for women. I usually agree that nobody could possibly believe in what they think astrology is, but that isn’t what it is.

In honor of those sincere people who try to save me from this strange belief I offer these ideas, concepts, and facts about astrology. Let’s be clear from the start that there is no evidence whatever that will convince a person whose mind is made up in advance. This pre-judged attitude is quite common among a group of people who demand that scientific proof is required before we can assert anything. The same people usually consider that a completely negative attitude towards the unknown is being scientific. You probably know some yourself.

Well, not all proof is scientific proof. Science depends on repeatable experiments with consistent results. The Civil War cannot be fought over and over for those who don’t believe such a thing could happen. Some studies must use the kind of evidence acceptable to historians and to common experience. The completely negative approach can ALWAYS be made plausible by a literate, ingenious person who doesn’t care too much about facts that contradict his hypothesis.

For instance there are folks who don’t believe, or say they don’t believe, that there was a Holocaust of Jews and Gypsies. They don’t consider the question, “Where are they then if they weren’t killed?” There were many families after the war without many of the relatives who were there before. I know several such families. There are folks who think that NASA faked the Moon landing because the USA just HAD to beat those dirty Reds to the Moon, more plausible given the record of other government departments like the Pentagon. But very unlikely. There are still flat Earth people around. Some people still believe that the world was created in October 2004 B.C. What all such people have in common is the ability to not hear any evidence that contradicts their dogmatic position.

The very first question to ask the fanatical skeptic is, “What evidence would you be willing to accept as proof.” From my own experience in the British Society for Psychical Research I have found that very often it becomes clear that there isn’t ANY evidence that would be accepted as proof. The superficially high-toned scientific attitude often turns out to be straightforward bigotry and prejudice on closer examination.

The modern interest in astrology began with the legal case of Evangeline Adams of Boston, who made horoscope charts and told fortunes. When her own horary chart indicated that it would be a good time to go to New York she did so. She found it very difficult to get a room in any hotel as soon as she said she was an astrologer. Finally she found a hotel manager who was not ashamed to have her as his guest, and in gratitude she did a chart for him. That was on March 16th 1899, and the manager was Warren T. Leland of the Windsor Hotel. Evangeline found a VERY unsatisfactory set of aspects were in his chart for the period, and warned him strongly to take care against personal and familial disaster. The hotel burned down to the ground after the St. Patrick’s Day parade.

News of Evangeline’s warning hit all the major newspapers. She was immediately in business. From her studio in Carnegie Hall she gave advice to people like King Edward VII, J.P.Morgan and Caruso. Inevitably in view of the religious climate at the time she was arrested and charged with fortune telling, which was illegal in New York.

In court she offered to demonstrate the validity of astrology by taking any birth data the judge cared to give her, and abiding by his decision as to her accuracy. The judge came up with some data, she made a chart, and outlined the major characteristics of the subject and the major events in the life. The judge immediately dismissed the case. The subject was his own son, and the reading was, in his opinion an indication that in the hands of Evangeline, astrology was an exact science. Last time I checked it was still completely legal in New York to advertise and charge fees for making horoscopes. Evangeline made a fortune with her skill, and died in 1932 after accurately predicting her own death.

In 1953 a committee of scientists was set up in Belgium to study research into the paranormal. Most of them, as was and is usual, were actually setting up a forum to debunk everything brought before them. They publicly challenged astrologers to prove their claims. They did not expect a reply.

The French astrologer M. Legrand offered to prove his claims under conditions that would satisfy any reasonable person. He asked to be given the birth dates and hours of birth of any ten persons over forty whose personal history had been recorded in some way. He also wanted to know the approximate dates of two or three major events in their lives, so that he could correct the hour of birth if necessary. He didn’t need to know the nature of the events. Then he needed only the sex of the person.

He then wrote this reply to the challenge:

“In the following eight to ten days, in your presence and in front of witnesses, at the microphone of Radio Nationale, I will give these persons (without seeing them…they can even be behind a screen or over the telephone) an account of the most characteristic trait of their personality, and the principal dates in their past, giving the precise nature of the event concerned. They can then deny or confirm what I say.”

On the committee was Paul Colderc, a man who was violently anti-astrology. He said in public that the committee had been given nothing to do. This comment bears an eerie resemblance to what the President of Sloan Kettering said when he was asked to have his company investigate Laetrile as an anti-cancer therapy. The results were similar too.

It took three weeks for the committee that had nothing to do to reply to M. Legrand, and they then said that such a test would prove nothing. It was blatantly clear to other people at least, that they had no intention of studying the claims of astrology, only of disproving it. They did not want to know the truth, if the truth was in favor of astrology.

Legrand had made sure by the nature of his offer that the scientists could not hide any results unfavorable to their pre-judged ideas, as has been done in other cases where the results favored the astrology claims, both in Europe and in this country.

The man who has done most to put astrology, or part of it, on a scientific basis is Michael Gauquelin, an eminent statistician from the Sorbonne. He set out with the avowed intent of disproving all that astrology nonsense. And statistics and probability theory seemed the ideal tool to investigate the matter.

He did very well at first by totally demolishing the statistical base of a previous study that seemed to show that certain planetary positions on the birth chart affected the subsequent life.

Then he set out on his own research and compiled birth data of 576 medical professors, assuming that he would find a totally random set of planetary aspects and patterns. He drew up the charts himself, for which he has my respect. Most avid opponents of astrology couldn’t do the simplest things that astrologers do. And to his great surprise he found that the planetary aspects of Mars and Saturn in the 576 charts did not correlate with a chance placement.

He then did the same thing with 508 prominent physicians, and the same thing happened. The odds of it happening by chance were in the range of a million to one. Not what he expected. Fired up by this unfavorable result he collected data from all over France on eminent members of several professions: soldiers, artists, musicians, writers, priests and so on. To his dismay, he found that for every profession, with no exceptions, there was an impressive correlation between the angular positions of specific planets at the moment of birth, and the professions of the subjects.

Gauquelin did the professional thing and published his results in 1955, asserting of course, in his introduction, that these results in no way validated astrology, but were due to some other, unknown cause. This attitude reminded me of Mark Twain’s comment that Shakespeare’s plays were either written by Shakespeare or by someone else with the same name. You don’t have to be an astrologer to figure out what happened.

The astrologers, some of whom were fine statisticians in their own right, thanked him for his work, and pointed out that the correlations he had found about the professions were exactly the ones they had been using for years. The scientific establishment said absolutely nothing. His book didn’t even get reviewed in the professional journals of statistics. After a long time the National Institute of Statistics did make a desperate comment. It said that he had discovered a national fluke, and that his results only applied to France; a typical example of denial.

Gauquelin was miffed and called their bluff. He spent years doing for Germany, Italy, Belgium and Holland what he did for France. The results were the same. By this time he had done over 25,000 charts. He put his conclusions into a second book, again asserting that his results were in no way a validation of astrology.

By now a group of scientists, including an astronomer and a psychologist had examined his first book. This group and Professor Tornier from the department of mathematical probability at the University of Berlin, could find no errors in the book. They optimistically sent it, with their comments to the American bastion of learning, Harvard. There was no reply or comment.

The National Institute “national fluke” people examined the second book. In spite of desperate efforts they found no fault in either the method of collecting the data or the mathematics of the procedures. Counter experiments also confirmed Gauquelin’s work. This is the conclusion that they came to, more than reluctantly:

The position of the planets at birth has a definite influence on the profession a man will follow later in life. The influence on nine distinct professions could be taken as given.

The famous Belgian group that issued the challenge and then wimped out when Legrand took it up, now looked at the two books. They too were unable to find any errors, and decided not to make this conclusion public.

Gauquelin’s work does prove that there is something to astrology. That’s all it proves. But that’s a better starting place than astrologers have had before as far as science, which has refused to even look at it, is concerned. The trouble was that astrologers used the religious language of their times and said that Mars influenced this and Venus influenced that. If they had just said that certain positions of the planets coincide with certain effects, things might have been better.

One of the greatest scientists of all time was Isaac Newton. He studied astronomy, invented the reflecting telescope, and discovered the laws of planetary motion, using his own invention of calculus, while he was investigating the truth or otherwise of astrology.

When Halley…the discoverer of the comet, rebuked Newton for wasting his time on astrology, Newton said, “The difference between you and I, Mr. Halley, is that I have studied it, and you have not.” And when a consummate genius like Newton says “I have studied it,” that is significant.

It is also significant that when I left Britain there were still three trunkloads of Newton’s original work on astrology, still uninvestigated in Cambridge because nobody had the guts to look at it for fear of peer rejection. His physics, calculus and work on telescopes and color is the work of a genius. His work on astrology is treated like the work of an idiot, without even looking at it. A very old story in the history of science.

But now at least it is not professional suicide to say that certain extraterrestrial phenomena have an effect on life on Earth.

The bibliography of Gauquelin’s last book had the titles of 42 books and papers written by scientific researchers about these matters. Observations that have been known for years could be brought out again and could get a hearing without being thrown out hysterically by the scientific community without examination. Here are one or two to show what was being ignored by the previous presumption of astrological taint.

In 1938 Dr. Yamahachi found that a much higher frequency of births occurred at the full and new moons than in the first and last quarters. He studied 33,000 cases to come to this conclusion. The American gynecologist Meneker came to the same conclusion after his study of half-a-million birth data. But these facts, for facts they are, could not penetrate the shield of defense of the scientist frightened of being thought unbalanced by his peers. The fact that the Moon was concerned was enough to avoid looking at the data.

Dr. E. Andrews, an American physician, checked out an observation by one of his surgical nurses, and found that hemorrhaging following operations was most serious between the first and third quarters of the Moon. Out of a thousand tonsillectomies he found that his nurse was right, as 82% of crises occurred at those times.

Investigations at St. Bartholomew’s hospital in London, where I had my own tonsils removed, also pointed out a definite surgical risk involved, depending on the phase of the Moon at the time of the operation. Such data is now used by surgeon and patient to achieve optimum results.

The important point is that Nobody has to be able to explain such things to know that they work. You undoubtedly know many things that work in your life without being able to explain how or why they work. But this stumbling block has been the great unseen obstacle for scientists who have encountered such phenomena.

They have been psychologically incapable of even reporting them without also having a theory of how the phenomena could be explained. And they knew that their peers would just jeer at them anyway, and accuse them of believing in astrology, a death sentence to a researcher.

The validity of the data is lost in the arguments about the theories of its cause. Exactly the same thing occurs in psychical research when reincarnation rears its head. Furious and bitter debates arise about the conflicting theories of how to explain away the data. The unavoidable facts get lost in the debate about something else.

J. H. Nelson was an electrical engineer who was hired by RCA to investigate the connection, if any, between radio disturbances and celestial phenomena. He checked records back to 1932 and found that most magnetic storms occurred when two planets were in conjunction or at relative angles of 180º or 90º to the Sun. Conjunction means that the planets look like they are in the same place. They could of course be millions of miles apart like the hood ornament of your car and a distant star that it covers.

Using these data, which can be found in any astrology ephemeris, he could predict the radio disturbance with over 80% accuracy. When he included all the planets up to Pluto his accuracy went up to over 90%. This was interesting to astrologers because the 180º and 90º angles are the ones denoting disharmony and stress. It didn’t end there, though that would be enough evidence in any other field. Nelson also found that the most disturbance free days were those in which the planetary angles were 60º and 120º, which for centuries have been the “good aspects” in astrology.

The Italian chemist Giorgio Picardi of Florence University found a really amazing phenomenon during the seven years of experimenting he finished as a contribution to the International Geophysical Year. He organized a team of scientists all over the world to prepare a precipitate of a bismuth salt under controlled conditions, and to measure the rate of precipitation. Everything in every experiment was identical. The only variable was the rate at which the bismuth salt precipitated out of solution.

It was found that the rate of precipitation varied all over the world from day to day, though every experiment was identical. When Picardi examined his over 200,000 results he could see how the rate of precipitation varied according to the latitude of the laboratory, and the condition of the earth’s magnetic field at the place. Electromagnetic flares from the sun also affected the results, and every variation but one could be connected with events on earth or in the solar system.

The unique event was that everywhere on earth, in every single location without exception, the rate of precipitation was least in March. When every other possible reason had been looked at, the only one that made sense was that the reason for the low rate must be found in the galaxy, and not in the solar system.

Astronomy buffs know that as the earth moves round the sun, the whole solar system is moving at a high rate of knots towards a point in the constellation of Hercules. The path of the earth is not the simple flat oval seen in children’s books, but a very complex spiral. And in March the position of the earth in the force fields of the galaxy is unique.

Astrologers use the First Point of Aries in March, as a place that sets the Zodiac positions on their charts. Aries “The Ram", is an ancient constellation which was of considerable importance in days gone by, since the sun passed through it at the vernal equinox.

This point has now moved into Pisces, but the vernal equinox is still known as the First Point of Aries. Every astrologer knows this, but astronomers jeer at the ignorance of astrologers who they say don’t realize that the vernal equinox point has moved. In another six hundred years the point will have moved into Aquarius. Astrologers will probably still be calling it the First Point of Aries, as a traditional name of a starting point in the astrological year. It still happens in March, which is why Picardi’s discovery was astrologically and astronomically significant.

Picardi proved the influence of extraterrestrial forces by covering some of the flasks with a copper sheet. Whenever and wherever that was done the rate of precipitation became constant. His other experiments threw a lot of light on the effect of electromagnetic radiation on humans. He found that water between 30ºC and 40ºC is very sensitive to magnetic fields of low intensity.

Let’s connect a few dots that Picardi discovered, all of them verifiable experimentally. A great proportion of the human body is made of liquids based on water. The blood, lymph, and spinal fluid, not to mention the colloidal suspensions that make up the transport systems of the body are all the same kinds of material that have been proven to be susceptible to electromagnetic variations.

And these variations depend in some way on the positions of the planets in the magnetic solar system. Take solar flares and magnetic storms as well researched examples. Dr. A.K. Podshibyakin found that after a solar flare eruption, road accidents increased, sometimes fourfold. This research was done at the Tomsk Medical College.

Research in Hamburg and Munich shows that humans respond more slowly than usual to external stimuli during solar flare periods. The delicate electrical mechanisms of the human body are definitely affected by the electrical conditions of the sea of radiation through which our spaceship Earth continually drives. And it is known for certain that the electrical conditions mentioned are correlated with the positions of the planets as the components of the gigantic electrical system called the solar system.

Certain effects on Earth coincide with certain positions of the planets.

This is a true statement, and if only the astrologers had said that, instead of “ Events on Earth are influenced by the planets.” Then scientists could have listened. Using the planetary motions as hands on a cosmic clock might have worked. But the same deaf scientists have thoroughly investigated some of the cycles of nature, which didn’t have the same medieval, religious language attached to them.

The astronomer Herschel discovered Uranus. It was called Herschel in Europe for a time. He also noticed that the price of wheat on the Stock Exchange went up and down in exact synchronization with the 11.1 year sun spot cycles. As soon as the possibility of predicting market prices was there cycle research became respectable, and was immediately funded by interested persons. And still is.

Cycle research has found thousands of natural cycles from growth rings in trees, amounts of eggs laid by salmon, prices on the Stock Exchange, bio-rhythms in the human body and thousands more. Hundreds of them have no explanation from the point of view of orthodox science. But they are facts. And a strange thing about them is that they are associated in groups of two or three, never in any other numbers.

Since Gauquelin’s work in the 50’s and subsequent research on cycles, the positive evidence that astrology is in some way valid, has been available to interested seekers. Cycle research has proven that the March born person is quite different from the July born person for instance.

It looks as if some of the best minds ever produced by the human race were not wrong to consider astrology important, and that IF the scientists had asked the right questions we would have known that years ago. Here is a final quote by John Anthony West that puts the matter into a clear perspective:

”Because the sages of Egypt asked their questions, they built temples for four thousand years. Because our modern sages asked their questions, we have nerve gas.”

I would add...and hydrogen bombs.