Astrology texts provide details of astrological practice and interpretation, but astrology theory has not been well described. One approach to theory is to consider astrology as a study of natural symmetries rather than a study of causal interactions. Simplified versions of astrological frames of reference bear a suggestive resemblance to various patterns of personality and behaviour that are identified within the social sciences, particularly those that deal with shared values, skills, and beliefs. Astrological operations within these frames of reference suggest similarly identifiable patterns of love, development, and a mechanism of psychological projection. A research program of further study should confirm and account for these similarities through a cross-disciplinary analysis and correlation of empirical findings.

Correlations between birth counts and planetary positions (Gauquelin planetary effects) have been acknowledged by Geoffrey Dean for a long time. In 2000, the correlations were given “a powerful explanation” by his construct of “attribution” (Dean, 2000). In Dean’s view, Gauquelin correlations are “man-made”, thus “artifacts”. Dean’s conjecture is imaginative, yet it provokes demurs. Of his three ways of “attribution”, “perinatal control” is dismissed by expert medical judgment, and “self-attribution”, in Dean’s own view, as untestable and therefore unscientific. The “parental tampering” claim, Dean’s main argument, deserves scrutiny, as follows:
The idea that parents, reporting their just-born children’s births at registration offices, tampered with birth time in order to improve their children’s astrological fortune, appears implausible a priori. Dean presupposes that in AD 1800-1950 families of eminent offspring believed in Gauquelin-type planetary correlations (“neo-astrology”). Such belief, if existent, would have differed considerably from traditional Ptolemaic belief. The rise among professional elites of a pervasive reform of Ptolemaic tradition, spreading out evenly all over Europe overcoming linguistic and cultural barriers should have left written traces. Dean does not provide even a single document as proof that such belief existed.
Neither does Dean consider, by model calculation, that the number of believers in neo-astrology who were informed enough about planetary movements in the sky, who were skilled enough to calculate auspicious planetary positions, and who were prepared enough to tell a lie at registration offices, was far too small to produce up to 6% birth count deviations from chance as observed by the Gauquelins.
Dean’s seemingly strongest empirical evidence for his parental tampering claim, the correlation across professions between G-effects and “midnight avoidance” (interpreted as “fear of spooky effects”), turns out to be spurious as soon as his one-variable measure of profession-specific G-effects is replaced with the more comprehensive and thus more reliable measures that should have been used. Moreover, an illegitimate boosting of the crucial correlation between midnight avoidance and G-effects contributes to the wrong impression that birth times might have been tampered with by superstitious parents. The simplest factual counter-evidence undermining Dean’s midnight avoidance argument are data showing that parents avoided birth times at midnight sharp only (at 12:00 h) thus evading date ambiguity, no avoidance of reporting birth times for the rest of the “spooky hour” (0:01 h through 0:59 h) is noticeable.Dean’s seven subsidiary variables of “day avoidance”, allegedly indicating tampering with birth dates, are also unrelated to “midnight avoidance”, allegedly indicating tampering with birth hour. His correlational network of tampering with birth date and birth time collapses.
Abstracts are provided of five studies, published in Correlation, whose goal was to test hypotheses derived from Dean’s attribution claims. Their results are negative throughout.
It is concluded that Dean’s scrutiny of Gauquelin data corroborates the reality of planetary effects. His “attribution” claim, however, his attempt to explain them by artifacts, went astray. Gauquelin planetary effects remain as unexplained as before. There are reasons to be concerned that Dean may continue to spread this blunder regardless. In that case, the challenging results of Gauquelin’s life work might be disparaged in public, and the motivation of potential researchers to pursue the riddle of his remarkable discovery might run dry.

An attempt is made to explain the Gauquelin Effect as an artefact of real solar and lunar effects. At the time the author based his argument on the absence of variations in the strength of the Gauquelin Effect during conjunctions of antagonistic planets such as JU and SA. This seemed to imply that the planets had no direct influence on the birth process, however since then such effects have been found when planetary sector frequencies were plotted across the JU-SA conjunction cycle, (Douglas (2006)).
Although the author has moved away from the radical position that the planets have no influence except via their effects on the sun, this paper is still useful for its discussion of implications of planetary conjunction cycles, and for the preliminary presentation of data on the variation of birth freuqncies in the Gauquelin Professional datasets across the hours of the solar day, and across the lunation cycle. Table 1 reveals that while Painters and Musicians are born more frequently between midnight and 2.00 AM, with a subsidiary peak at 8-10 AM, there is a progressive shift to later birth times for Scientists and Actors/Politicians, still with 2 peaks. Sportsmen and soldiers have a single peak clustering around 6-10 AM.
These patterns were later used to support the belief that solar effects have been neglected in studies of the Gauquelin data, and that the variable of birth order may be another dimension of these phenomena. The solar influences were later seen as consistent with some rules of measuring planetary strength used in Greek and Roman times, but neglected by modern astrologers.

This study looks at whether the moon can influence daily levels of
stress. Four years of telephone-call frequency data were obtained from a single crisis-call centre. The method of lunar-day numbers 1 to 29 was used for analysis. We tested the concept of ‘strong moons’ as occurring when the Syzygy was near to the lunar-node axis. This is the only study published of crisis calls versus the lunar cycle that scored calls from men and women separately. An increase in calls was recorded from females during the New Moon period, suggesting a sex difference in response, and there was a smaller peak in calls by men two weeks later. A swing of comparable magnitude in the male/female call-ratio on a weekly basis, over Fridays and Saturdays, was also present in the data. Limitations of staffing at the call-centre prohibited any comment on seasonal correlations. Without separating these calls by sex, the lunar effect would have been more or
less invisible. Distress-calls by women were more strongly linked to the lunar month than were those by men.

Astrology and Astronomy have been present in the history of Brazil since its ‘discovery’ – the Brazilian flag was designed according to astronomical (and astrological) standards. This paper will look at the astrology of our native people. There has been significant progress in studies on Brazilian ethno-astronomy, especially on the astronomical lore of the Guarani nation. Lastly, the paper will provide an overview of Astrology in Brazil today as an accepted academic subject, as a profession and as a professional help for businesses.

The type of thinking employed in astrology is at root non-positivistic and metaphorical, a combination which, as a study in-itself, is academically acceptable only as a literary, poetic or imaginative exercise. Treated as a mode of knowledge this thinking is usually denigrated as a leftover remnant of naive idealism or worse still, occultism. There therefore exists an abyss between the prevailing epistemology and astrologers who understand that their practice concerns real knowledge of the world. Can – and should – the academy bridge the gap, or will the astrologers tumble into it?

An academy is defined as a higher or specialised school, or a society for the promotion of science or art. Rooted in Plato¹s Athens and continuing through the Renaissance to the present day, the academy has always conjured images of a select group of scholars devoted to the exploration of what Plato called “the eternal realities”. But any such group constellates innate and archetypal tensions, not with the “outside world” but also with similar groups each of which may feel it has the “only” claim to knowledge, thus generating inevitable psychological repercussions, both problematic and creative.

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