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.

This report provides primary credence to evolution of the human organism beneath the heavens. Natural selection has favored vertebrates attuned to heavenly rhythms. The lower vertebrates including salamanders undergoing selection, feed, reproduce and migrate in accord with solar and lunar rhythms. As descendants of these successfully adapted creatures, humans possess brain circuits reflecting hundreds of millions of years of inherited genetic programs linked to sun and moon cycles overhead. Humans appear to be sensitive to subtle energy shifts associated ultimately to trajectories of the ancient sun and moon through the heavens. These chronomic genes accompany emergence of mental function in humans enabling them to survive and succeed in diverse environments. Rising interest in chronomics as a mental science requires careful enumeration of the multiple cycles driving human mental function. The recent advances in measuring human unconscious mental processes promise growth this decade of a new quantitative science raised to a level of sophistication comparable to molecular measurement in genomics. In empirical studies the author has devised novel approaches to detecting multiple intermeshed cycles in salamanders and in humans. Emergence of this new understanding can be illustrated by application of an analytic genomics method to detect an otherwise inaccessible human 260-day cycle. Future advances in this new biological discipline promise powerful new perspectives on the evolution of cosmic influence.

This paper is an historiographical inquiry into some problems that arise when confronted with so-called supernatural, irrational or superstitious phenomena in human history. Other descriptions are possible, of course, but none of them without at least some question-begging – something that itself points to the principal problem. As an initial formulation, let us define that as follows: how can the historian describe and explain these phenomena without participating in the very processes – characteristically, to coin a phrase, ones of power/knowledge – that produced them in the first place?1 And this problem becomes especially acute when the discourse in question, like astrology (but unlike, say, phrenology) is still the subject of contemporary controversy. This is not something I hope to resolve here, but perhaps I can improve the quality of the questions it raises.

Evidence is presented that warfare and economic growth are correlated with outer-planetary fundamental waves and harmonic waves during the 500-year period from 1500 to 1999. This period represents 1 cycle of the combined fundamental waves of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Three war indexes (civil, international, and global) and real economic growth of 7 industrialized nations (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, and United States) are tested for significance with planetary fundamental waves and harmonic waves. Graphs of outer-planetary fundamental waves from 1450 to 2050 are presented, and general comparisons are drawn between the Renaissance and New Age periods.

There are no solid data on the magnitude, determinants and processes of trafficking in Nepal, and the needs of those trafficked who return. The contributing causes and structure of sex trafficking in Nepal are largely unknown, and most figures are at best educated guesses. Very limited information is available about the family environment, economic and social situations of the sex workers. Many astrologers in Nepal believed that significant numbers of parents will have surrendered their daughter into prostitution on the basis of astrological indicators, but there is no empirical evidence to support this. Thus, by using both quantitative and qualitative methods, the present study explored the socio-cultural and astrological aspects of sex trafficking and examined whether the trafficked girls have any unique clusters of astrological profiles. No link with astrological profiles was found and the patterns observed being completely random.

A brief comment on “Is Astrology Revelant to Consciousness and Psi?” by Geoffrery Dean and Ivan Kelly, Journal of Consciousness Studies (2003) 10: 6-7, pp 175-198

The Reformation coincided with a boom in the publication of astrological almanacs and astrology became a potent means of propagandising for differing political positions. One of the most notable Reformation astrologers was Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560), professor of Greek at Wittenberg from 1518, where he became one of Martin Luther’s closest friends and collaborators. In 1521 he briefly found himself leader of the Reformation when Luther was confined in the Wartburg. His interest in astrology and his position at the centre of the Reformation raises important questions concerning the possible use of astrological forecasts of the Reformation’s future course. Martin Luther’s birth chart was to become a focus of debate amongst astrologers who wished to establish whether he was a new messiah or the Anti-Christ.

Social scientists have suggested several different hypotheses to account for the prevalence of belief in astrology among certain sections of the public in modern times. It has been proposed: (1) that as an elaborate and systematic belief system, astrology is attractive to people with intermediate levels of scientific knowledge
Social scientists have suggested several different hypotheses to account for the prevalence of belief in astrology among certain sections of the public in modern times. It has been proposed: (1) that as an elaborate and systematic belief system, astrology is attractive to people with intermediate levels of scientific knowledge
[the superficial knowledge hypothesis]; (2) that belief in astrology reflects a kind of ‘metaphysical unrest’ that is to be found amongst those with a religious orientation but little or no integration into the structures of organized religion, perhaps as a result of ‘social disintegration’ consequent upon the collapse of community or upon social mobility [the metaphysical unrest hypothesis]; and (3) that belief in astrology is prevalent amongst those with an ‘authoritarian character’ [authoritarian personality hypothesis]. The paper tests these hypotheses against the results of British survey data from 1988. The evidence appears to support variants of hypotheses (1) and (2), but not hypothesis (3). It is proposed that serious interest or involvement in astrology is not primarily the result of a lack of scientific knowledge or understanding; rather, it is a compensatory activity with considerable attractions to segments of the population whose social world is labile or transitional; belief in astrology may be an indicator of the disintegration of community and its concomitant uncertainties and anxieties. Paradoxical as it may appear, astrology may be part and parcel of late modernity.