Astrological fun and games

[jj]

Okay, obviously someone that young this chart wouldn't show proof anyhow, not with concrete things. For example her sun is in the ninth house (amazing amount of ninth house stuff in this forum) house of higher education and travel. She should definitely go to college.

One thing I will say--her chart is very clear about this--VERY moody. And sensitive, must get awful PMS. Um, Pluto in Scorpio on the cusp of the 8th house--don't want to comment further considering her age, but make sure she knows about the birds and the bees.

Balanced chart, nothing really stands out. Aries rising--that gives an impulsive and aggressive way of dealing with the world, she likes to be first, the leader.

Interesting in the house of career, she's got Uranus conjuncting Neptune in Capricorn. Everyone in her generation will have that, but not in their career house. Last time that happened was during the Victorian Age, I believe, produced lots of visionary and revolutionary architecture (Capricorn is the sign of building). Hard to predict how that will manifest--but must be a stable and conservative way of manifesting fantastical imagination and novel and modern ways of doing things. That's so vague as to be meaningless, never mind, oh hell, this is for fun now.

Henh. Well, as you say, so vague as to be impossible to miss, but you've missed a couple of things that stand out with this one. Moody, yes, but so is every preteen, or at least everyone in my my sample of 2 for 2.

Thanks, though.

 

[Marrena]

jambo, well, now that I've said it's all made up, I'm going to say that especially for your chart. But I'll go ahead and tell you what a professional astrologer would say.

You have a grand cross. It's loose, very loose, which is good. Better two loose T-squares making a grand cross than one very tight T-square like Donks. Still, nothing will come easy to you. A grand cross is a rare configuration, but it isn't necessarily bad. Albert Schweitzer and Bruce Willis have one. It will give you a certain internal toughness and compassion for the sufferings of others. This configuration gives a strength equal to the challenge.

You have a Libra moon in your first house and an Aries singleton Mars in your eighth, in opposition. They are two opposite corners of the grand cross, adding more power to it. I am not going to do guesswork predictions for you because I'm not trying to prove anything anymore, and also because you are so young even if I were it wouldn't be clear in your life choices yet.

First house--house of self, Libra sign of beauty, ideals, justice and proportion-harmony. Moon--planet of emotions. This placement will make you appear moody to others, and emphasize your Cancer sun sign (ruled by the moon).

Mars--planet of sex drive, ambition, and aggressiveness in its own sign of Aries, emphasizing all these qualities. Emphasized further by the fact it's a singleton, your only fire sign, so all of your spark and energy will be focused into this, outweighing almost everything else on your chart. It's in the 8th house, house of sex, life, death, regeneration and other people's money.

Other corner, much lesser importance. Neptune--planet of illusion and spiritual things in Capricorn, sign of the practical skeptic. Good for keeping your feet planted on the ground. In the house of home and emotional security

Final corner, very interesting. Jupiter and Chiron together in your career house in Cancer. Chiron is the asteroid of sickness and healing. Jupiter is the lucky planet and planet of expansiveness and abundance. Lucky to have that on a grand cross, helps outweigh the bad influence. You've also got Mercury and your Sun there in your tenth house, house of career. Cancer is a rather strange fit for the house of career, since it's the sign of home and emotions and heart. That could range from anything like interior decorating to literally being a heart surgeon, beats me and hard to predict. Whatever you turn your hand at will be a success with this chart.

Actually something in the medical field might be a good fit because you are Virgo rising--detail oriented in the way you approach life and a natural for healing.

 

[Dr Adequate]

If people are so good at forthrightly telling their own personality traits, why is it that every psychological system I'm aware of relies on questionnaires to reach the same result?

But WE didn't. Maybe we should have done. But in fact you were happy to accept that where the reading disagreed with what we were saying about ourselves, our own statements were more reliable. If this assumption is good when you're testing astrology on a bunch of sceptics, it's good the rest of the time too.

They use questionaires because they're standardised and easy to apply and score. I think if I really wanted to know what someone was like, I wouldn't give him a questionaire. The best method I can think of would be to spend a week with him in a small sailing boat, but sometimes you just don't have the week or the yacht.

Also, just from a gender point of view--"Oh, yeah baby, I love you, I love you so much, I'll always love you. And I'm totally monogamous, that's just the kind of guy I am, now can we have sex?"

My occult powers of secret wisdom tell me that he was lying. Am I psychic?

A woman hears that often enough

Actually, a lot of men hear something similar. Apart from the bit at the end about the sex.

the longing for a foolproof tricky way to truly determine a man's character, by something he won't suspect, something innocuous like birthtime--it's a fascinating and gripping topic for most women, no matter how otherwise hardboiled.

You have so much self-insight that you hardly need a sceptic.

[A thought: Might not some aspiring lover get hold of the astrological system you're using, and, working it backwards, find out what time he should claim to have been born? Do you see what you've done? I've just thought up a new way to deceive women. Oops. Sorry.]

I would rather trust your insight and empathy --- or even my own --- than trusting birth-sign astrology. Here's an experiment.

Equipment: a standard personality test and a total stranger.

Method:

(1) Without seeing or talking to the stranger, take their astrological data.Figure out what they're like AND EXPRESS THIS AS THE SCORES YOU THINK THEY WOULD GET ON THE PERSONALITY TEST.

(2) Then spend an hour chatting to them. Then reord, again, the scores you think they'd get based on this.

(3) Finally, give them the test.

Repeat until the sample size is large enough.

Expected result: you have more human wisdom and insight than a bunch of celestial bodies.

Of course, in order for your judgements in steps (1) and (2) to be good, you should first give the test to a bunch of people you know, so as to get your eye in: you need to find out, for example, just how extroverted someone has to be to score "5" for extroversion, that sort of thing.

This would be quite a good experiment, but based on the investigations we've done so far, I'm betting on you against the stars.

 

[Tricky]

In response to that link, here's a link from an astrologer out to answer the most common skeptics' questions:

http://www.bobmarksastrologer.com/skeptics.htm]

I am sorry you have chosen not to answer my questions and instead posted a link. The answers in that link are not exactly to the questions I have asked, but I'll try to find the closest match.

Tricky asked
What is it about the date/time of birth that is so special. After all, the time of birth and period of gestation can vary widely. In fact, in many cases labor is induced, meaning that the person is born at a time that is different from when they "should have been born". Could your personality traits be that strongly influenced by when the doctor's golf game finished?

Bob Marks said:
The reason astrologers use the time of birth is because birth gives us a completely formed human being.

But this completely contradicts what you (Marrena) said about time of day being important. You cannot argue that the difference in how "completely formed" a baby is can be that much changed in 12 hours. In fact, what Marks says tends to indicate that the actual date is not that important, since it can vary quite widely, depending on whether or not the doctor decides to induce labor and any other number of factors.

Tricky asked
What is it about birth itself that fixes the traits? It cannot be passage through the birth canal, or else ceasarian section babies would have no horoscope. Is it the time when they take their first breath? That wouldn't make much sense, because they are getting oxygen all along from their mother.

Marks does not address this question. Do you have any opinions?

Tricky asked
What is it about the stars and planets that influences people? Is it gravity? Radiation? I've heard it said that the celestial objects do not influence the traits at all, but rather the planets are influenced by the same things that influence the traits. However, this still suggests some sort of force or energy.

Marks said:
So who says that gravitation or tidal effects are the forces that are operational here? Yes, some astrologers have wrongly postulated that they are what makes astrology work. But the fact that they were wrong in identifying the source does not show that there is no effect.
...
I agree that such a force would be “a revolutionary discovery for science, changing many of our fundamental notions”. What is the point here Dr. Franknoi? Are scientists supposed to be afraid of this? Quantum mechanics overthrew fundamental notions too. Would you have advised Max Planck to back off publishing his results for that reason? Is the purpose of science to advance knowledge, or to defend “fundamental notions”?

Here Marks admits that he does not know the mechanism.

He correctly points out that other systems have been fundamentally changed, but what he fails to mention is that those systems were changed because of overwhelming evidence. He does not address any evidence produced by astrology which is so strong that it justifies throwing out much of what we know about physics. He's simply pulling the "They laughed at Galileo" card.

In essence, he says "it violates the known laws of physics, so the known laws of physics must be wrong." It is like a person driving on the wrong side of the road and saying "all these people are going the wrong way."

Tricky asked
Since we are finding out that more and more of our human traits are determined, or at least influenced by genetics, wouldn't it make sense that your astrological sign was determined at the point of conception, rather than birth? That, after all, is when your genetic makeup is set. Are all astrological calculations nine months off?

Apparently the same answer as the first one, but truly fails to address the question I asked. Does not explain why these forces work on a completely formed person, but not on what would seem to be a much more susceptible embryo going through the stages of development.

So you see, Marrena, your link hasn't really answered any of my questions, and even if it did, I would much rather hear your opinion rather than the quotes of another. If you haven't actually pondered these paradoxes and have just relied on people like Marks to answer them for you, then I would highly encourage you to think about them, and not just dismiss them as Marks has done.

 

[Marrena]

Not knowing how something works isn't a paradox, it's simple ignorance. The easiest way to discover how something works is to observe it in action. Einstein excepted, who had the idea first and then the testing was done, usually it's the other way around. So I don't know the mechanism, but if the thing works and you work backwards, someone clever will figure it out eventually.

Dr. Adequate, something like that actually happened to me. Travelled with a guy for five months backpacking through the Middle East. You learn a lot about a person doing something like. Thought he would be the last person on earth to hit a lady, but turned out I was wrong. But it's right there in his natal chart, the most obvious thing--Aries Saturn singleton. Part of the reason I believed. That sort of thing has happened with other people too.

 

[jambo372]

Thank you Marrena - I understood what you were talking about - I am actually planning on having a career in medicine .

 

[BPScooter]

More thoughts

Thanks, everyone, for being so nice. Myself, I guess I belong to the scientific/rationalist/"show me" team, with a dose of Richard Feynman's "I don't know, let's find out" as a strategy. As I said above, I think astrology and tarot *are* fascinating, in the "for amusement only" category, and I think I pick up that attitude here. The thing that begins to alarm me is when people seem to go beyond the evidence and begin to believe, and act on those beliefs, in ways that might hurt them or others. Of course, the people without scruples who encourage these beliefs and profit from them deserve scrutiny and opposition, if necessary. That's probably old hat among skeptics, but I felt like I had to say it for myself.

Has anyone written about other possible influences of a broad nature that could be related to birth time/day that might affect personality? How about season of the year? Are summer babies reared differently in certain cultures than winter babies? If they are, could we expect that patterns might reverse themselves between the Northern and Southern hemispheres?

Here's another long shot, something we do know about that is affected by the moon, is, of course, the ocean tides. Have sea-faring cultures developed any astrology-like beliefs about whether you were born at high or low tide? If so, does that relate in any way to the "moon" part of the sort of astrology we're talking about?

I guess the cosmology class I had in college is still stuck in my mind, it intrigues me that such an influence is attributed to just the planets (hunks of matter) that we happened to know about pre-telescope, but all the ones that came along since have not been accounted for, to my knowledge. Wasn't the presence of Neptune and Pluto hypothesized due to anomalies in the predicted orbits of the other planets, post-Kepler? It would be reassuring if an astrologer said, "well, there are some things that weren't accounted for before this discovery, but now that we have these other planets, the system works much better." But maybe that did happen, I don't know. Or those outer planets may not be part of the system. To be honest, I don't really know much about how astrology is done or why.

I don't think I'll go much farther with posting on this topic, but thanks again for a nice nuanced discussion that hasn't gone off track or gotten nasty.

 

[Tricky]

Not knowing how something works isn't a paradox, it's simple ignorance. The easiest way to discover how something works is to observe it in action. Einstein excepted, who had the idea first and then the testing was done, usually it's the other way around. So I don't know the mechanism, but if the thing works and you work backwards, someone clever will figure it out eventually.

But internal contradictions are paradoxes, such as the statement that it operates on completely formed people, then ignoring that to say that time of day is important, implying that a person is not completely formed twelve hours before birth.

But the way science works is to observe a phenomenon, then postulate a theory of how it works that fits with the observed phenomenon. Then that theory, or parts of it, are tested to see if they fit the observed phenomenon.

Astrology has never gotten past step one, and the observed phenomenon is evanescent. Plus, you can't get most professional astronomers to perform simple tests. You have come a lot closer to actually trying to test your skills than any of the professional astronomers, and I am very impressed with your honesty. You have also admitted that it is not working for you, nor have you attempted to make money off of this. This puts you in a class high above most professional astronomers.

 

[Marrena]

I'll debunk that right away from an astrological point of view. Astrology has something in it that is similar to homeopathy, that one can be stronger than two. (Personally I think homeopathy is total hooey). Two water planets are considered low level of water, three is balanced, four or five the person will float away in a sea of emotional excess, but one is the strongest because it somehow acts as focal point. One of an element can overwhelm a whole chart, and is called a singleton. Can also have a singleton by placement, so if all the planets are huddled together on one side of the chart and say Pluto, the tiniest of planets is by itself on the other side, Pluto has by far the most weight and will be the most obvious thing about a person's life.

There's no connection with tides, seasons or anything else I can think of related to natural law that would cause this. And the rising sign is determined by exact moment of drawing the first breath. Twenty minutes can cause a fundamental shift in personality, according to astrology. Rising sign is the third most important influence in a chart lacking singletons or planets in the first house. It comes right after sun and moon.

 

[Marrena]

Astrology has never gotten past step one, and the observed phenomenon is evanescent. Plus, you can't get most professional astronomers to perform simple tests. You have come a lot closer to actually trying to test your skills than any of the professional astronomers, and I am very impressed with your honesty. You have also admitted that it is not working for you, nor have you attempted to make money off of this. This puts you in a class high above most professional astronomers.

Why thank you. I think you mean astrologers, not astronomers.

Maybe I'm optimistic, but I think that will change. Up until the last couple decades, astrology has been too damn hard for the layperson to take up as a real hobby. Too many calculations, etc. But now with computers and the Internet and sites like astro.com it can be looked at more scientifically. If there's actual truth in it, now we have the tools to find out for sure.

 

[Tricky]

Why thank you. I think you mean astrologers, not astronomers.

Maybe I'm optimistic, but I think that will change. Up until the last couple decades, astrology has been too damn hard for the layperson to take up as a real hobby. Too many calculations, etc. But now with computers and the Internet and sites like astro.com it can be looked at more scientifically. If there's actual truth in it, now we have the tools to find out for sure.

Certainly the advent of computers will make the calculations easier. Look what they have done for the field of astronomy. But more precise celestial calculations does absolutely nothing to answer the question of how astrology works. The thing is, I don't even see any astrologers working on this important question. I don't see any theories or hypotheses. Why are so many astrologers so incurious about this?

When we discovered electricity, we figured out how it worked, an now you have these wonderful computers. When we discovered the germ theory of disease, people got to work and started finding cures for many ailments and treatments for others. Yet astrology has been around for thousands of years, but cannot boast a single significant breakthrough in knowledge. If I am wrong about this, please correct me. (Like you did the "astronomers" gaffe. Oops. )

 

[jj]

Gravitational effects

Using the usual approximation, figure out the relative gravitational influence between Jupiter when it's opposite Earth's position (farthest away) and whoever you like to snuggle up to, 1" away.

Which, did you say, has more influence?

 

[Marrena]

Obviously astrology has nothing to do with gravity.

Let's see, examples from history. I don't have the foggiest idea what the answer is to this one, but how long between the upper middle class craze with fooling around with electricity a la Ben Franklin and Voltaire and the actual explanation of how electricity works? I think an understanding of atomic structure is necessary, am I right?

Likewise, a pet theory about the four elements or four temperaments--air, fire, water, earth or phlegmatic, choleric, sanguine and I forget the other one, bilious? It seems apparent to me that doctors in describing these were actually describing neurotransmitter characteristics: air associated with serotonin, water associated with dopamine, fire with norepinephrine and earth with low levels of all of those. Medieval treatments for various problems with these elements involved folk remedies that do affect these neurotransmitters. It just took science a helluva long time to catch up with the observations.

 

[Ashles]

Likewise, a pet theory about the four elements or four temperaments--air, fire, water, earth or phlegmatic, choleric, sanguine and I forget the other one, bilious? It seems apparent to me that doctors in describing these were actually describing neurotransmitter characteristics: air associated with serotonin, water associated with dopamine, fire with norepinephrine and earth with low levels of all of those. Medieval treatments for various problems with these elements involved folk remedies that do affect these neurotransmitters. It just took science a helluva long time to catch up with the observations.

Now I think this is overstretching. You could interpret these as equivalent, but you could also interpret them in many different ways. What would make these four elements equivalent to modern theories.
We can see patterns in anything if we look hard enough. Depression, mania, erotomania, schizophrenia, split personality etc. would all have existed hundreds of years ago. Identifying the symptoms would not be hard. But the treatments in the past were mostly useless. Those that did work were more by luck and repeated trying than by any particular method.
Science was always aware of the observations, but coming up with explanations is the tricky part. Earth, Air, Fire and Water mean nothing as descriptions of illnesses. It's like saying Norsemen recognised lightning as a powerful strike from Thor and it took science a long time to catch up. Science explained the phenomenom and had a useful theory about it.
Observing and naming an effect doesn't mean you have any useful understanding of it.

 

[Eleatic Stranger]

Eleatic Stranger, well I can see how that fits. You're here more from your own worldview than from a commonsense reaction to psychic ridiculousness.

Not to push on this too much, but I'm not sure I see how those two are opposed to each other. I mean, like almost all skeptics I'd really really like a lot of the psychic stuff to be true (I mean, it would rock to be able to do that stuff), but that's not much more than pointing out that cynics are disappointed disappointed romantics. I am very skeptical of most paranormal claims, though, so I'm not sure I see precisely how accurate the reading was.

(Admittedly, if the readings turns out dramatically false that also proves me wrong too -- I'd always held that the reason astrology seems convincing is because it generally just provides profiles that almost anyone would find an accurate description of themselves.)

 

[BPScooter]

Bell curve

Isn't that the tricky part, though? The statisticians among us will concur that being always wrong is just as unlikely as being always right-- and that means equally useful. Just reverse the sign, take the inverse, do a reflection on an axis, whatever. When it's up to the individual to determine what is a hit and what is a miss, then we get into the fuzzy world of interpretation (isn't that hermeneutics?) and, well, better minds than mine have gotten lost in that. Augustine had some interesting takes on biblical allegory, for example. Sometimes sheep are just sheep, maybe (an Augustine reference, not a snide comment). And even Freud had to take a stand by deciding that in some cases a cigar was just a cigar, not a symbol. Or was that Groucho? PS. Somebody should make a Groucho smiley

 

[Tricky]

Obviously astrology has nothing to do with gravity.

That is not obvious at all. In fact, it is almost intuitive that if astrology worked, it would have something to do with gravity. After all, the pull of the sun and moon drive the tides. The planets are held in orbit by gravity. Gravity, in fact, would seem like the obvious culprit. It is only when we gain a greater understanding of gravity that it falls apart. Because of the inverse square law, nearby objects effect a much greater pull on us than distant objects, regardless of how large. However, this wouldn't be obvious to a non-scientist.

Back when I studied and believed in astrology, I had a theory as to how it worked, but it required that the signs be offset by 9 months. I theorized that since your genetic makeup is determined at the moment of conception, then it is a that point that the gravitational pulls subtly influence the makup of the child being conceived. It was only later when I learned that ova are generated years before the moment of conception and sperm, hours or days before, that I realized that my theory was full of holes. The best I could manage is that the pull of the planets influenced which sperm fertilized the egg. But of course, that's only half the story.

Let's see, examples from history. I don't have the foggiest idea what the answer is to this one, but how long between the upper middle class craze with fooling around with electricity a la Ben Franklin and Voltaire and the actual explanation of how electricity works? I think an understanding of atomic structure is necessary, am I right?

Less than a hundred years between the discovery of the nature of electricity and it's practical usage. Ben Franklin did his kite experiment in 1752. Samuel Morse sent his famous "What hath God wraught" telegraph message in 1844.

Astrology has been around longer than that, right?

Likewise, a pet theory about the four elements or four temperaments--air, fire, water, earth or phlegmatic, choleric, sanguine and I forget the other one, bilious? It seems apparent to me that doctors in describing these were actually describing neurotransmitter characteristics: air associated with serotonin, water associated with dopamine, fire with norepinephrine and earth with low levels of all of those. Medieval treatments for various problems with these elements involved folk remedies that do affect these neurotransmitters. It just took science a helluva long time to catch up with the observations.

Until the germ theory of disease, medicine was very much a trial-and-error sort of thing. It could be said that this is somewhat scientific (Try one herb. If patient dies, try a different herb). In the 1860, Pasteur began advancing the germ theory of disease. Only when a good theory of how disease worked was in place did life expectancies begin rocketing dramatically. Less than 150 years later, we have cures and treatments for many thousands of diseases.

As others have stated, trying to use hindsight to evaluate old medical beliefs is fraught with error. You cannot say with certainty how the four elementals or the four humours were being invoked. Probably many ways. Neither would you be able to say with certainty which humour or elemental was associated with which neurotransmitters characteristics. And really, why would you bother? There are much more productive avenues of research rather than trying to figure out which parts of the old mumbo jumbo were based on evidence.

So as you can see, the development of a theory of how things work is the absolute most important step in advancing knowledge in that field. That is why serious astrologers everywhere should lay aside refining their calculations, which can only lead to tiny changes in the horoscopes, and concentrate on finding those forces (or whatever) that are driving the astrological effect. Only then will astrology enter the realm of science.

 

[Mercutio]

That is not obvious at all. In fact, it is almost intuitive that if astrology worked, it would have something to do with gravity. After all, the pull of the sun and moon drive the tides. The planets are held in orbit by gravity. Gravity, in fact, would seem like the obvious culprit. It is only when we gain a greater understanding of gravity that it falls apart. Because of the inverse square law, nearby objects effect a much greater pull on us than distant objects, regardless of how large. However, this wouldn't be obvious to a non-scientist.

My biggest problem with Astrology is not what causes the effects, but how it is that we can even reliably say that we can see them. There are astrology charts that use the 10 "planets" (not earth, of course, but both sun and moon are considered "planets" but can also factor in known asteroids! But let us keep it simple...10 planets. 12 houses. How many Aspects? Conjunct, opposition, Trine, Squared, Sextiles...there are more, of course. Each planet may be in any of these aspects with respect to any other planet (ok, not really--Mercury will always be relatively close to the sun, so there is a limitation built in there...). We also have ascendent and descendent angles, the elemental natures (earth, air, fire, water) of each sign...Anyway...the simple combination of all these numbers gives us the number of possible different astrological "personalities" we may expect. Ah, but there's the rub...we have more combinations (by a factor of many thousands, if I recall correctly) than people to label!

So what?, you might say--of course, each of us is different. Well, yes, but my problem is with the statistical validity of astrology. A factor analysis simply cannot be run if we don't have a minimum number of data points. It is quite impossible to determine the effect of the number of variables astrology proposes with the number of people on the planet (let alone the number of people actually examined by astrologers)! And yet, when the simple solution is suggested (cut the number of factors!), this is decried by believers as inaccurate; astrologers advertise that they look at "the whole horoscope", implying that sun signs alone are not enough, and that the more variables you look at, the better.

Well, we cannot have it both ways. We simply cannot know any real effects of such a large combination of factors without many many many more data points...and yet, astrologers say that there are detectable effects. If they are, in fact, detectable, they must be detectable with fewer variables than are currently claimed (and thus, they are absolutely testable--their failure to show up in tests is not the fault of too simple a test; astrologists cannot, must not retreat into the excuse of "well, it works if you just look at more planets").

 

[Pixel42]

The people who invented astrology thousands of years ago knew exactly how it worked.

They believed that the earth was flat, the sun went round the earth, the fixed stars were points of light on a crystal sphere (placed there by the gods) and the ones that moved were the gods themselves. They didn't believe any of these things because they were stupid - they were not stupid, they were in fact the most intelligent and imaginative minds of their generation - they believed them because they were ignorant. After all, if all you know about the world is what you can detect with your own senses, it's obvious that the earth is flat, right?

If you assume that the stars are points of light on a crystal sphere and the planets are gods then astrology makes perfect sense. If the god of war (that red light we now call Mars) is overhead when a baby is being born, and is also amongst the pattern of fixed lights that are believed to represent an heroic figure, then clearly that baby is destined to be a great warrior. That's actually reasonable and logical.

I have no trouble understanding how astrology works if I make the same assumptions about the nature of the lights in the sky that the people who invented it made. It's only because the human race has since found out what the stars and the planets really are that the question of how astrology works now needs to be asked.

Likewise if you assume Santa Claus exists, you're going to be spending a lot of your time scratching your head trying to work out how reindeer can fly.

 

[prustage]

Try this

Male
Born 22nd August 1955 18:05 GMT
Manchester UK