An endeavour was made by the two Gauquelins to show that excellence in certain professions could be related to planetary-day distributions within the birthdata. The suicide of Michel coincided with some particularly devastating criticisms from European and American sceptics groups, following the perception of certain flaws in his methodology. The suggestion that there might, after all, be some truth in the Gauquelin thesis arises from further data-collections made in the 1990s by the German emeritus professors Muller and Ertel. Birthdata collections of physicians, artists (painters) and athletes are here discussed.

The purpose of this study is to look at the perceptions that police staff have of the influence of the full moon upon the work that they do. This will be a qualitative investigation into the underlying belief that the full moon does have an effect on human behaviour.
The objectives were to discover the extent of any existing perception of a full moon effect, assess staff understanding of the phenomenon, outlining what they thought was happening and to place the phenomenon in a contemporary context.
The use of questionnaires and semi-structured interviews provided a qualitative approach to the investigation, and must be viewed as a ‘snap-shot’ of views in one police control room where the culture may be seen as specific to that working environment.

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.

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

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.