Astro Sleuthing Contests are aimed at reaching consensus on what works and doesn’t work in astrology, ranging from individual factors to entire techniques. Each contest is based on a case similar to those commonly encountered by working astrologers but with two important differences: each case has a clear-cut outcome, and the data are of the highest quality. The required chart judgments are therefore both realistic and assessable. Astrologers are invited to send in their judgments together with details of their methods. A pilot study using six contests during 1992-94 produced much interest and some encouraging results but had to be discontinued due to lack of participants. The general indications were alarming. They confirmed what has long been known, namely that astrological methods are afflicted by total confusion, and that astrologers are generally unwilling to reduce this confusion by putting their methods to the test. Furthermore, astrologers whose methods clearly failed continued to use them as though nothing had happened, while methods showing superiority were ignored. This is no way to run a “profession”. The problem will need to be addressed by astrologers as a whole when co-operation for the common good becomes a priority. Until then the professional astrologer will remain a contradiction in terms.

Dr.Landscheidt rejects Professor Ertel’s dismissal of the golden section link with the Gauquelin “professionals” effect and discusses his reason for so doing.

Dr. Theodor Lanscheidt claims to have discovered effects by Mercury, Neptune, Uranus, Pluto and the Sun on birth distributions of Gauquelin professionals. His result, however, a smoothed cyclic curve, was replicable by random numbers. Landscheidt also holds that Gauquelin planetary effects obtain their pattern by the “golden Section”, i.e. peaks and troughs of birth distributions are allegedly governed by the proportions .382 and .618. It was shown that many other proportions, e.g., .202 fit better than the “golden” proportion but even the best-fitting “non-golden” proportions lack explanatory import.

The claim based on a study by James David on Alice Bailey’s theory of “Seven Rays” that, using this theory, photographs of people could be accurately matched to their sun sign is tested in this paper.200 photographs were sent to James David of which he chose 58. After subjecting the choices made by James David to analysis the author concluded that they were no better than chance. James David’s response arguing that the author’s method of analysis could be disputed is included in the paper with a discussion of the grounds for that dispute.

The relevance of character traits to extreme pathological subjects is discussed. Evidence is presented for a Gauquelin Effect in a sample of habitually violent criminals. The distribution of Mars positions is significantly different from the typical professional data for Mars, previously reported by the Gauquelins.

The author scrutinises the results of the Mars – Redhead project coordinated by Hill and Thompson in the United States where birth data from nearly one and a half thousand redheads were gathered and tested to see if the position of Mars in the zodiac correlated with the colour of their hair. In this critique of that paper, suggestions are offered on alternative ways of testing future replications for clearer significance levels.

Leo Knegt (1882-1957) was one of the Netherlands’s most eminent astrologers. When tested in a 1933 blind trail by the lawyer Cornelis van Rossem, his interpretations were found to be both accurate and at times amazingly specific, certainly more specific than most astrologers today would consider possible. In effect, Knegt seems to have been an astrological white crow, living proof of the impossible. So the big question is how did Knegt do it? What was the secret of his success? The author suggests that this is simply not known and goes to state that if it were, it could revolutionise astrological practice and research. In this article, the author looks at the blind trial in detail, giving examples of Knwegt’s specific interpretations and the charts they were based on, and asking the readers of Correlation for help in trying to find out how Knegt did it.

The author challenges the supposition that the belief systems proposed by Dean (2000) should be more pronounced in rural than urban areas and uses empirical data to demonstrate the validity of that challenge. Rural-urban disparities in the percentage of people who agree to the item “Good luck charms sometimes do bring good luck” (results based on answers from n = 14395 respondents from 12 different countries) suggest that rural people are not more superstitious than those from urban areas. The implications of this are discussed.

According to Geoffrey Dean’s tampering hypothesis, superstitious parents of just-born babies who later would become eminent professionals tended to report wrong birth dates at registration offices so as to make the births fall on auspicious days, including Christian feast days. I scrutinized the validity of this claim by counting births on Christian feast days for a sample of French priests (Gauquelin data, N=884) and Belgian Benedictine monks (Verhulst data, N=1506). Dean’s sample of non-clerical Gauquelin professionals (N=15,942) served as a mundane reference sample. Since Christian families bringing up future priests and monks are generally more religious than families bringing up children of mundane professions, their motivation to shift their children’s births on Christian feast days should be stronger than among families with mundane offspring – provided that such motivation exists at all. Consequently, birth counts on Christian feasts of future priests and monks should be more numerous compared to birth counts on Christian feast days of future actors, journalists, military leaders etc. However, the results show that births of future clergy on Christian feast days are not significantly more numerous than birth counts of mundane offspring. Birth counts differ between fixed and movable feasts, with births on fixed feasts alone perhaps slightly supporting Dean’s stance, but births on movable feasts entirely disconfirm his hypothesis. The fixed versus movable feast difference is unexpected and escapes any interpretation in terms of tampering. It is concluded that birth counts on Christian feasts cannot responsibly be used as indicators of superstition.

In this paper evidence is presented that political and economic cycles of activity are correlated with celestial cycles. Political patterns of war and peace, and economic patterns of recession, depression, recovery and prosperity are closely associated with the fundamental and harmonic waves of the five outer planets of the solar system throughout the 20th century. Correlations of political and economic dependent variables with several planetary waves are statistically significant. Graphs of outer-planetary fundamental and harmonic waves for the 20th and 21st centuries are presented and interpreted from a political and economic perspective. Global warfare is predicted beginning in 2032. Recommendations are made for further research.