Recent developments in science – particularly quantum theory – have been taken by some astrologers to herald a paradigm shift that would make it possible to validate and explain astrology as a science. The suggestion is made that this case is currently unconvincing. The realist (or foundationalist) model is considered as a philosophical tradition, with particular reference to Descartes. It is proposed that this tradition underpins much of the sceptical case against astrology (illustrated by reference to the work of Dean, Ertel, Kelly, Mather and Smit); but that its claims to provide a comprehensively explanatory model have been undermined by modern science. Two models of astrology – as an empirical science, and as divination – are considered. It is submitted for the reader’s consideration that, by undermining the realist/foundationalist model, modern science (as defined in this paper) does make a contribution to the understanding of astrology; but that this is more supportive of astrology as a divinatory art than as a hard science.

In two previous articles I have searched for ways of understanding the Gauquelin Effect in evolutionary terms with the aid of the new variable of birth order in families, (Douglas 2001a, 2004a,b). I now want to report on some hitherto unknown Solar patterns which have emerged from a study of the Gauquelin data. These patterns also vary systematically between professional groups in a way that suggests for the first time a place for some early Greek and Roman measures of planetary strength in horoscopes. It is suggested that the Gauquelins’ research was weakened by their neglect of early astrological texts and traditions concerning the sun and moon, and that the effect cannot be described accurately without referring to these real effects. A 3-stage mechanism is proposed to describe the Gauquelin Effect in terms of the conjunction cycles of the sun with the planets. The results presented are discussed in the light of Seymour’s theory of astrology. The current revival of interest in traditional techniques among astrologers may provide an opportunity for a new collaboration with researchers, and more awareness of the incompleteness of the astrology that came out of the 19th century revival.

The planets, from an astrological point of view, are related to their visible characteristics and not to any scientific description. This is confirmed by Gauquelin’s failure to detect any correlations with the non-visible (outer) planets. The author extends this observation to argue that science is not any special preserve, but a mere facet of existence, and its ability to demonstrate astrological truth just incidental

. This paper addresses the question of the kind of knowledge which informed the astrological practice of Marsilio Ficino, and in so doing distinguishes between two modes of understanding the human relationship to the cosmos, the natural scientific and the magical. I will seek to show that Ficino’s critique of his contemporary astrologers derived from their lack of symbolic understanding, and I shall attempt to explore the nature of this understanding which for Ficino was fully revealed in the Platonic and Hermetic traditions. Finally I shall suggest that in his system of natural magic Ficino re-defined astrology as a unitive tool for healing, founded on both ‘scientific’ investigation into cosmic law and divinatory experience.

The reasons for astrology’s long exile from the academy have been as much psychological as intellectual and political, for it represents the shadow of the scientific, professional and technical value-system of the contemporary academic culture. The reintroduction of astrology as a serious topic of university studies produces an inevitable collision between the norms of intellectual objectivity (the stance of the modern scholar who stands apart from the material being studied) and the reality of what C.G. Jung called the objective psyche, or collective unconscious, from which we can never fully separate our conscious standpoint. For astrology systematically reveals the unconscious, archetypal factors underlying conscious experience and collapses the subject-object dichotomy fundamental to the modern psyche and the modern intellect, thus undermining the assumptions and identity of the modern scholar. To reintegrate astrology into academic life requires bringing more objectivity into astrology but also bringing the implications of the objective psyche fully into the academy. This requires a historical perspective on astrology’s psychological position since the Enlightenment and a capacity to do personal and intellectual ‘shadow work’ in academe – a slow and costly alchemical process, but a necessary one if astrology’s full contribution is to be realized.

When was it that someone first gazed up at the Summer Milky Way and recognized the Cross among the stars of Cygnus? After the Big Dipper and the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades, the Northern Cross is among the most familiar of asterisms, for Westerners at least. Turn to almost any modern handbook on the constellations and we find under Cygnus that the Swan often goes by this well known alias. Little explanation is required; the Cross being simply a matter of common knowledge. But when did it become so? One such popular guide, by the late veteran interpreter of the stars, Julius Staal, ventures only that it was ‘early Christians’ who recognized the cruciform shape of Cygnus.1 It is certainly a reasonable guess; but, which early Christians recognized the Cross where others in their day would have imagined a great swan flying along the river of milk flowing from Hera’s breast? Although it seems little more than an odd bit of trivia, attempting to answer the question of the asterism’s antiquity touches on some interesting aspects of our cultural history. I hope to show how light from this admittedly peculiar angle may illuminate ways that astral imagery played upon the early Christian imagination, particularly as related to aspects of the history of Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor of Rome.

The paper addresses the boundaries between astrology and science and concentrates on a demarcation problem. It will explore the criteria science poses for new sciences. In order to be a science one has to take into account for example the idea of a theory, methods and paradigms. An independent branch of science is known for its own methodology but in astrology’s case usually statistics are introduced. However, qualitative methods will give new and fresh viewpoints to this issue. “Astrology and Science – A New Millennium” discusses the position of astrology in the academic world and the possible advantages and disadvantages that might arise along with that position.

From the 2nd century AD the coincidence of Passover and Easter was recognized as a problem for the Christian church by the church authorities, and in the 4th century, after Christianity became the Roman state religion, Roman authorities took steps to prevent Passover and Easter coinciding. This effort was complicated by the growing separation between the churches in Rome and Constantinople. Though from the 2nd century the majority of Jews lived in the diaspora, at least up to the 10th century the calendar was governed by a rabbinical court in Eretz Israel (the Land of Israel). Here we discuss the changes in the Jewish calendar in the 5-8th centuries AD, the middle (c. 636 AD) of which period witnessed an abrupt transition from Byzantine rule over Eretz Israel to Arab rule. In this period no serious changes were made in the basic mathematics of the Jewish calendar; the only changes had a political context. Here we discuss a single but singular feature of the Jewish calendar, the ‘Deĥiyot’ [postponements] of Rosh Hashana. Our major claim is that Deĥiyah D [postponement from Wednesday to Thursday] and Deĥiyah U [postponement from Friday to Saturday] entered the calendar c. 532 AD as an ingenious Jewish response to Emperor Justinian’s ban against the Passover feast (Nisan 14) falling on a Saturday, instituted to mend a famous calendar rift between the Roman and Alexandrian churches. Next we claim that Deĥiyah A [postponement from Sunday to Monday] became part of the calendar no earlier than when the 2nd day of the festivals Rosh Hashana [New Year] and Sukkot [Tabernacles] acquired the status of sacred day and we raise the lower historical boundary of Deĥiyah A’s introduction in the calendar up to the time of the first Gaonim [heads of talmudic academies in the Arab caliphate] (c. 658 AD). We also suggest the reasons for the timing of three other deĥiyot.

The astrological worldview takes for granted an interrelated wholeness to which humanity belongs, a systemic totality having harmony, resonance and tuning as primal characteristics. On the contrary, modern science assumes a paradigm in which separateness, reductionism and empirical positivism implies the strangeness between human (the observer-knower) and universe (the observed reality). This thesis-antithesis antagonism is searching for a synthesis capable of solving its contradiction into complimentarity, giving rise to a new paradigm rooted in a human-cosmos integrated vision without losing the explicative success of modern science. Twentieth century research, both in science and astrology, has begun to pave the way towards such an emergent worldview. This paper offers a glimpse at all of this.

Michael Glykas is generally known as a learned conservative theologian who wrote a refutation of Byzantine Emperor Manuel Komnenos’ defence of astrology in the latter half of the twelfth century. However there exists substantial evidence that Michael Glykas had a dual identity as the shadowy Michael Sikidites who in his youth was known for his occult interests, suspected of political sedition against Manuel, and imprisoned and blinded as punishment for sorcery. With skill and critical astuteness, Glykas directs his refutation not so much against Manuel’s philosophical arguments as against the claims of his evidence, and thus seeks to cast doubt upon the moral and literary integrity of his Emperor in an attempt to redeem his own reputation. Within half a century of the reintroduction of astrology to the West, Glykas was the first person in many centuries to stir up all the old Christian objections against the fatalism of the stars.