Aviation makes a good subject for astrological enquiry, precisely recorded and accurately timed events allow the casting of reliable horoscopes. The author has used this foundation to great effect in ways that will in all likelihood, surprise, intrigue and stimulate the reader.

The breadth of this work is impressive; it not only examines the hypothesis that the fifth degree of Sagittarius has special significance in aviation but also links astrologically different facets of human flight, such as the growth of commercial flights, in a convincing and enlightening way. He postulates, and I think convincingly, a special importance for the black Moon in aviation; following a thread that runs throughout the book the reader is left with a tangible sense of this significance.

This is not just a book solely for what must admittedly be a small number of astrological practioners interested in the history and development of aviation; rather it is also a fine and useful example of contemporary astrological practice. The author’s approach and methods could as easily be applied to natal, mundane or other groups of event charts. England lucidly demonstrates the thinking and processes used by a modern astrologer at work. He weaves astrological connections using a wide variety of techniques including eclipses, solar return, new moons and astro-carto-graphical maps.

Tracing the astrologically significant events connected with the ill fated Comet jet airliner. England explores the nativities of pilots, designer, company, test flights, and connects progressed charts, maps and more besides to produce a commendably rich and vivid picture of a series of events that had both sometimes tragic individual consequences well as national import. I found this chapter particularly riveting.

Clear charts, interesting colour and black and white photographs coupled with a clean and intelligible layout invite the reader to explore the enormous amount of astrology going on within. However, it is the writing style that really aids the reader in absorbing so much astrology and makes this book refreshingly unusual. The narrative is presented in a “fictional style” that draws the reader in and brings the subject matter alive. He suggests feelings and emotions for the major characters involved which serves to give a sense of meaning and consequence to the unfolding events he describes. He places himself, and therefore us, as astrologers, at the heart of the action; this approach, both fascinating and stimulating, serves to impart a sense of drama and relevance that otherwise might be missing. By imagining himself as a consultant astrologer actively working with key characters as events unfold he conveys a vivid significance and contemporary relevance that in places has the sort of pace and excitation more commonly associated with thrillers.

Degrees of Flight is a multifaceted work, it is an interesting commentary of the development of aviation, a well balanced exposition of astrological practices, a reliable and well sourced collection of astrological data and perhaps surprisingly, if one were to consider the title alone, a thoroughly good and commendably rewarding read.

Reviewed by Sean Lovatt

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 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.

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.