This paper concludes a 5-part review of horoscopy in the Polar Regions. The first four papers dealt almost exclusively with those regions, venturing to temperate and tropical zones only when it was necessary to compare and contrast sub-Polar features with phenomena peculiar to latitudes over 66½ North or South. This paper will now examine Equal houses at these latitudes and then, as its name suggests, take a broader view as we consider a number of issues that, due their non-Polar nature, were not previously discussed. This will help fulfil the overall purposes of the series, which have been to clear away some of the many misconceptions of circumpolar horoscopy, to examine the nature and viability of number of house systems and to establish which methods of house division can be successfully applied in the Polar Regions and therefore across the entire planet.

I have recently added to the small collection of data I reported in my earlier publication (Douglas 2001), with 159 firstborns of Rodden Rating A or better, from the Astrodatabank collection, and although the numbers are still small they are sufficient to demonstrate a replication of the Gauquelin Effect for Saturn. The salient features of this finding are that:
1. whereas there are significant excesses of SA in key sectors for firstborns, there is none at all for the laterborns in the same sample, and
2. these samples are made up of a heterogeneous group of minor and major celebrities, royalty, politicians and a very small number of eminent scientists. Thus as a whole, they are not expected to display a SA effect based on known eminence correlations. They show a small excess of JU in key sectors, (see below) and no excess of SA. This is consistent with the presence of a large number of celebrities in the sample.

Book review:

Collections of papers presented at conferences are not always the most interesting of books. They have their uses, of course, enabling those who were unable to attend the conference to read what was said, and as archive material for later researchers to refer to, but the editors of collections of papers rarely set their sights any higher than aiming to provide a record.
This book, however, is different. The editors and conference organisers realised that with the inaugural conference of a totally new academic centre, specialising in a discipline which is itself new, the book would not only have to provide a record of what was presented, but would also become the benchmark for the centre itself, and to some extent for the whole area of study, defining the field for those who would follow. The book amply demonstrates that their vision has been fully realised. The speakers and contributors, too, appear to have been aware of the significance of the occasion, and have each given of their very best, papers which are not only excellent in themselves but which also open the way to further research and debate.
There are fifteen papers here, plus introductory pieces by Patrick Curry, and Nicholas Campion, who is head of the Sophia Centre The papers are wide-ranging in both content and approach: some are straightforward historical studies, spanning eras from the classical world through the Renaissance to early Modern England, while others approach the subject from a more scientific view, and one is a statistical study. Several debate how cultural astronomy and astrology could or should be studied in an academic environment, and a couple comment on how doing so would inevitably create intellectual tensions and divisions, to the detriment of the subject itself.
There are, of course, tensions and divisions within the astrological community, and several of these papers carry with them the political message of their authors. This is unavoidable. Yet these undercurrents are very much a part of the state of astrology in the present day, and a fit subject for study. The astrologer and his prejudices and preoccupations are part of what gives astrology its vitality, and should therefore be viewed as part of the whole phenomenon. Some readers may find it strange that two of the papers in this collection care concerned with the interpretation of horoscopes corresponding to the dates of the conference – yet it would be stranger still to exclude them, for the horoscope and its symbols are the specific language of astrology, and it is this language and its contribution to our wider culture that the Sophia Centre aims to study.
It is interesting, too, to note the subtle differences between papers written by those who are ‘inside’ the practice of astrology, and those who stand outside. Prudence Jones’ ‘Aspects of Deity’ is carefully researched and clearly presented, without a hint of that over-enthusiasm or tendency to leap to unsupportable conclusions to which other ‘insiders’ are sometimes prone, yet it is equally clear that her standpoint is firmly within the practice, speaking from experience rather than standing outside looking in. Her closing sentences are almost a mission statement for the whole Sophia enterprise when she says that ‘…astrological knowledge can help historical research. …It allows us to find our way easily around the structure of ancient cosmology and to unpick ambiguous definitions. …Without insider knowledge we are lost when dealing with the astrological worldview of Hellenistic (and much earlier) philosophy. With it we can begin to make sense of otherwise baffling imagery.’
It is particularly pleasing to note that as well as offering a wide historical and philosophical range, this collection also offers a wide geographical range in that it contains contributions from scholars in France, Spain, Finland, Poland, Brazil and the US. Such genuinely worldwide participation can only be applauded and, it is hoped, continued in the future.
The fact that fifteen papers of such widely different topics and viewpoints can sit side-by-side with each other and be taken together as valid approaches to a multifaceted subject is due in no small measure to the wonderfully broad and accommodating envelope laid out by Campion’s introduction. His overview of the history of the study and the strands within it gives everything its due place and makes sense of a difficult subject. For once, the introduction really does introduce what follows, helping the reader place the papers in context.
The book makes no secret of the fact that it is intended to be an advertisement for the Sophia Centre and its work, but it does it in the best possible way, by showing what excellent work has already been done and inviting the reader to join in and continue what has been started. For anyone interested in history, cosmology, philosophy, anthropology, or symbology; or for anyone who recognises that an interdisciplinary approach works wonders in refreshing tired or worn-out modes of thought, this book is worth reading. It manages to be more than just a record of a conference, and more, too, than a manifesto: in terms of the relationship between astrological and academic thinking, it is a window on the past, a snapshot of the present, and a blueprint for the future, all in one.
Bernard Eccles

I would like to suggest a re-reading of the work of Pierre Bayle, concerning his assertions of the scientific status of History, and emphasizing in particular his critique of astrology in the writings dealing with comets which were translated into English in 1708. Those who have written about Bayle’s thinking have not understood that when Bayle deals with comets he is actually looking at the way they had been previously viewed by historian, and by religion. I therefore take the opposite standpoint to those who consider that Bayle’s proposals on comets are no more than a pretext through which to approach other subjects. Indeed it is better, I feel, to re-position Reflections on Comets in the line which we would call astro-history, and to place it closer to the critical work of Claude Duret, published in 1595, a century earlier. Speaking of pretexts, it must be understood that the debate on astrology and its effects on events is an integral part of a larger debate on History which is, at its heart, similar. Moreover, it is no accident that Bayle, from the opening pages of his Reflections, fiercely criticizes historians before even beginning to develop his critique of astrology. This critique is not as superficial as we might be led to believe; it involves a methodology which Bayle shows to us in great detail, and which aims less at traditional astrological knowledge, in which comets have a somewhat secondary role, than at those works which will not accept such a traditional view about astrology at all, except with certain reservations. In many cases, the word ‘comet’ can be replaced with any astral configuration without Bayle’s argument losing its pertinence.

Astrology is often referred to as a symbolic language. Does this make it different from an ‘ordinary’ language, and what are the implications of describing it as such? In short, what makes one form of language more ‘real’ than another? The talk will introduce Wittgenstein’s concept of ‘language games’ to explore how language can be used in various ways to describe our experience of the world. This will address many confusions regarding concepts of ‘causes’, ‘principles’, and ‘underlying laws’ which are often used to bolster the scientific, as well as the astrological paradigm, which is itself an increasing victim of psychologism. Also drawing on other ideas from the philosophy of language we shall place the language of astrology within a wider frame. This will raise the question as to the extent that astrology itself can usefully contribute to the debate that dominates much current philosophical thinking on the nature and experience of language.

This paper will look at a topic hitherto equally neglected by classicists and medieval historians: the manner in which medieval scholars (including many churchmen) found a way of fitting the classical pagan deities back into Christianity through the medium of planetary magic. This enterprise lasted from the twelfth to the eighteenth century, and is one of the lost themes of the history of European religion

The Triple Moon Goddess of contemporary New Age thought has much deeper roots than is commonly believed. This paper demonstrates how Akkadian astrological tradition appears to have been incorporated in the development of a triple Moon goddess during the Hellenistic era. It offers an example of the way that astrological knowledge can be important in the practice of historical research.

The paper will briefly outline the manner in which the authority of the ancient Egyptians is invoked in several surviving astrological works of antiquity, with the focus on the second century works of Vettius Valens and Claudius Ptolemy, representatives of two vastly differing approaches toward the astrological lore. Consequently, the argument shall involve the question of Valens’ alleged Egyptian travels and the stance he assumes with respect to Nechepso and Petosiris, to end with the discussion of Ptolemy’s way of dealing with the inherited tradition. It will be shown that while sharing in some general tendencies and, moreover, facing the same tension between the contrasting urges of tradition vs. innovativeness, the two astrologers choose separate ways to extricate themselves from the dilemma.

. 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.