From: kylep@teal.csn.org (Douglas Kyle Pierce)
Newsgroups: alt.astrology
Subject: *** NEWCOMERS READ THIS: FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ***
Date: 6 Sep 92 05:53:31 GMT
Expires: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 06:00:00 GMT
Organization: Colorado SuperNet, Inc.



         ****** FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ******

         (Date of last modification: July 6, 1992.)

Here are some questions commonly asked by new readers of
alt.astrology; the answers to each are given after the list of
questions.

               *** Requests for Services ***

 1)  Could someone please do a chart interpretation for me?

 2)  I have no idea what to do with my life. Here are my birth
     data. Can someone please tell me what I should do?

 3)  I was born on a day when the Sun changes sign. Which sign is
     my Sun in?

 4)  Which Sun-signs are compatible with mine?

    *** Questions About How Astrology is Practiced ***

 5)  Is the Sun-sign all that is important for assessing
     personality and for prediction, or is there more to
     astrology?

 6)  How can one predict the nature of a relationship using
     astrology?

        *** Questions About Learning Astrology ***

 7)  Can anyone recommend a good book on astrology for beginners?

 8)  What is the best approach to learning astrology?

 9)  Where can I find scientific research on astrology? 

                *** General Questions ***

10)  I have seen people born within days/hours of one another
     whose lives are really different. How come?

11)  What is the meaning of the term "the Age of Aquarius"?

12)  How is it possible for astrology to work?

13)  Does astrology control my future? Is it "wrong" to use
     astrology to learn what the future holds for me? I'm scared.

            *** Questions About Birth Data ***

14)  I notice that I need to know the time zone used in the place
     I was born and the latitude and longitude of my place of
     birth in order to erect a chart. How can I find such
     information?

15)  I do not know what time of day I was born. Is there some way
     to find out?

       *** Questions About Astrological Software ***

16)  Does anyone know if there is any software available for
     astrology?

17)  Where can I get a copy of the astrological software
     Astrolog?

      *** Questions About Alt.astrology Resources ***

18)  How can I obtain a copy of the alt.astrology "resource
     list"?

19)  How do I use ftp to get files from the alt.astrology ftp
     site?

*** Questions Asked With Surprising Frequency by Disbelievers ***

20)  Every sensible person knows that astrology couldn't possibly
     work, so why are you people wasting your time?

21)  How could planetary forces, of whatever nature, act upon an
     infant when it is outside the mother, but not when it is a
     fetus in the womb? Why should the forces only have effect at
     the moment of birth?

22)  Don't you guys know that astrology depends on a geocentric
     astronomy? Copernicus blew it away.

23)  Don't you guys know that no cause for astrological effects
     is known? Therefore such effects cannot exist.

24)  Don't you guys know that tests of groups of astrologers show
     they do no better than chance? Therefore astrology does not
     work.

25)  Don't you guys know that astrology makes an infinity of
     claims? You could never test them all. Therefore we can
     dismiss it out of hand.

26)  Don't you guys know that you can't really prove a negative,
     such as astrology never working, anyway? Therefore we can
     dismiss it out of hand.

27)  Legitimate scientists (or educated people, etc., etc.)
     universally despise astrology. Can such a weight of opinion
     be wrong?

28)  Why don't astrologers consider the fact that when the Sun is
     in the sign of Aries, it is not really in the constellation
     Aries?

              *** Questions About the FAQ ***

29)  I have a suggestion for this FAQ list. What do I do?




                   ****** ANSWERS ******


               *** Requests for Services ***

 1)  Could someone please do a chart interpretation for me?

Answer: A complete interpretation of a person's chart takes a
great deal of time and energy to prepare. Someone just learning
astrology might be willing to do a chart for you as practice, but
if you want a high quality interpretation, you must either find
an experienced astrologer on the net who is generous enough to
interpret your chart without compensation, or, if that is not
possible, you could consult a local professional astrologer (look
in the yellow pages or look at ads posted in your local occult
bookstore; you might also write to people in the group in your
area and ask if they know of any good local astrologers).

Of the experienced astrologers in the group, only Tito Domine has
offered to delineate charts for people when he has the time. (He
cannot do readings for everyone who makes a request.) His e-mail
address is tito@ocf.berkeley.edu.

(If you are an experienced astrologer who wishes to delineate
charts as a public service to those who cannot afford to pay for
a reading, and if you would like your address mentioned here,
please contact the keeper of the FAQ at mmcphers@nyx.cs.du.edu.)

 2)  I have no idea what to do with my life. Here are my birth
     data. Can someone please tell me what I should do?

Answer: Nobody can tell someone what to do with his or her life.
However by studying one's astrological chart, one can gain
insights into one's personality, and one can see areas of life
where there is harmony or discord. A reading of one's chart by an
experienced astrologer would be very valuable (see #1). After you
have such a reading done, you could probably benefit greatly from
learning astrology yourself and studying your chart at leisure.
You can also look at "transits," the interactions of planets in
the sky with your chart across time. This tells you when
opportunities and difficulties arise in various areas of life,
and helps you plan your future. An astrologer can tell you about
current transits, or you could learn to read your own transits.
With a few good books from your local occult bookstore, it's
really quite easy. (See # 7 about books.) Interpreting transits
is much easier than reading a natal chart (which involves a
synthesis of many factors).

 3)  I was born on a day when the Sun changes sign. Which sign is
     my Sun in?

Answer: Which sign your Sun falls in will depend on your exact
time of birth. There are two ways you can find out where your Sun
is in the zodiac. Since the Sun is only one of (at least) ten
bodies to consider, and since the whole chart is needed for an
understanding of the personality and the life, it might be useful
to cast a complete chart, which would tell you the exact position
of the Sun as well as the exact positions of all the planets and
houses. This is easy to do these days because there exists
astrological software for computing charts. The most accessible
software is a programme called "Astrolog" which was written by
Walter Pullen, a reader of the group. (See # 17 for details of
how to get a copy of Astrolog. See # 16 for details of how to get
information about other astrological software.)

If you do not want to calculate the chart yourself (e.g., with
Astrolog), or if you have trouble doing so, another option is to
order your chart from a chart calculation service. Some addresses
for companies providing this service are listed in the
alt.astrology resource list (see # 18 for details).

Alternatively, look in an "ephemeris," a book that lists the
positions of all the planets (usually at midnight, sometimes at
noon) each day. Ephemerides are available in the astrology
section at occult ("new age") bookstores, or in some libraries in
the astronomy section. They usually list positions for Greenwich,
so you must calculate your time of birth in Greenwich Mean Time
(e.g., if you were born under Pacific Standard Time, you add 8
hours to your time of birth to get GMT; Mountain Standard Time,
add 7 hours; Central Standard Time, add 6 hours; Eastern Standard
Time, add 5 hours; if you were born during daylight savings time,
subtract one hour before adding [or subtracting if you were born
east of Greenwich] the number of hours for the time zone in which
you were born). Next, determine if the ephemeris lists positions
at midnight or noon. Then work out the number of hours that
passed between the time for which positions are given (midnight
or noon) and your time of birth in GMT. (e.g., for an ephemeris
that lists positions for midnight, if you were born at 4:30 pm
GMT, the difference is 16.5 hours). Divide this difference by 24
to get the proportion of the day that passed before you were
born. Next, calculate the number of degrees and minutes of arc
that the Sun travelled through during that whole day. Multiply
that amount by the proportion of the day that passed before the
birth, and add the result to the position given for the start of
the day (or noon if the ephemeris gives noon positions). The
result is the position of the Sun at your birth.

 4)  Which Sun-signs are compatible with mine?

Answer: Some people feel that, in a very rough way, people with
Suns in the same element (fire, earth, air, water) or, to a
lesser extent, in the same polarity (positive -- fire and air, or
negative -- earth and water) tend to get along more easily. (The
fire signs are Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius; earth: Taurus, Virgo,
Capricorn; air: Gemini, Libra, Aquarius; water: Cancer, Scorpio,
Pisces.) But interactions among specific planets and houses in
two charts are far more important in determining how well people
will get along. Your best match may well be someone whose Sun is
in a sign of a different polarity, and your worst enemy may well
have his/her Sun in a sign of the same element!

Real compatibility can only be determined when the complete
charts of two people are compared, or a special chart is
constructed based on the two people's birth data. See answer # 6
for details.

      *** Questions About How Astrology is Practiced ***

 5)  Is the Sun-sign all that is important for assessing
     personality and for prediction, or is there more to
     astrology?

Answer: The most common misconception about astrology is that it
divides people into 12 categories, "Sun-signs" (and may subdivide
them further by Moon-sign). This misconception comes from the
popular practice of publishing "horoscopes" in newspapers and
magazines for different Sun-signs, and the sale of popular books
containing predictions for people of a particular Sun-sign.
Unfortunately, all such horoscopes provide nothing more than
entertainment. Valid predictions cannot be made on the basis of
the Sun-sign alone.

In actual practice, astrology involves determining the exact
position in the zodiac (not just by sign, but by degree and
minute, that is, the specific part of the sky) of the Sun, the
Moon, and 8 planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn,
Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto) at the time of a person's birth. The
zodiacal degree of other points and bodies, such as the Moon's
North and South Nodes, asteroids, Uranian points, and Arabic
parts, are included by some astrologers. One also calculates the
positions of 12 "houses" which are specific to the exact place
and time of birth. The location of planets in these houses and
the sign on the cusp of each house are important sources of
information in chart interpretation. One also looks at the
angular distances in the zodiac between each pair of planets;
certain specific angular distances, called "aspects," are
considered meaningful. All of this information is necessary to
determine the astrological influences present at a person's birth
and to formulate predictions for the future. The sign in which
the Sun and Moon fall is only one very small part of the picture.

This does not mean that people who write horoscope columns
necessarily just make things up out of thin air. They usually use
certain astrological concepts, but the application of these
concepts to sign positions of the Sun rarely produces valuable
information. To see why, let us look at what typical "Sun-sign
astrologers" might do. First, they assume that your Sun is
roughly in the middle of the sign. They then look to see if any
planets are making aspects to the Sun on the day/week/month in
question, and they interpret these aspects. If your Sun is at the
beginning or end of a sign, these aspects will be irrelevant in
your case. In addition, there may be aspects to other planets in
your chart that will affect you strongly, and some of them may
even have an effect opposite to the effect of the aspects to your
Sun. Sun-sign astrologers might also set up "houses" by assuming
that the sign your Sun is in is the first house, the next sign is
the second house, and so on. They then look to see if any planets
are currently in each "house". A serious astrologer would
calculate the positions of houses using data about the exact time
and place of birth, and these houses rarely coincide with the
Sun-sign astrologer's zodiac-sign "houses." So the Sun-sign
technique will only work at all for people who happen to have the
Sun and several other planets in the middle of one sign, and
whose first house also happens to begin at 0 degrees of the same
sign. Such people are extremely rare, so for most people
"horoscopes" will be useless.

 6)  How can one predict the nature of a relationship using
     astrology?

Answer: The most common technique for determining the nature of a
relationship is called "synastry." This involves comparing the
positions of all the planets in two people's charts. One looks to
see where one person's planets fall in the other person's houses,
and one compares the positions of planets in the two charts to
see whether any pair of planets is separated by a number of
degrees in the zodiac that is considered meaningful. (These
meaningful distances between planets, e.g., 0 degrees, 180
degrees, 120 degrees, 90 degrees, and so on, are called
"aspects".) 

A couple of newer (and still experimental) techniques exist for
studying the nature of a relationship. One is called the
"relationship chart" (created by Ronald Davison); the chart is
cast for the place in space and time that is exactly half-way
between the two people's birth places and times. The second
technique is called the "composite chart" (developed by Robert
Hand). The Sun in this chart is at the mid-point of the two
people's Suns, the Moon is at the mid-point of the two people's
Moons, and so on for all the planets. For recommendations of
books about all these techniques, see the resource list. (See #
18 for complete details about the list.)

The nature of the synastry technique to be applied depends on the
nature of the relationship contemplated and also on whether the
relationship is between male and female or people of the same
gender.

If two people are contemplating marriage, the technique used is
different than it would be if they were contemplating a business
relationship. The technique is also different when evaluating a
parent-sibling relationship or a superior-subordinate
relationship.

As a simplistic example, for marriage, a Sun in Aquarius (female)
is an excellent match for Sun in Leo (male) (Sun's position taken
alone -- neglecting other planets for purposes of discussion), as
long as the two people operate on a spiritual level. This has the
potential for the highest type of marriage.

However, if it is a father-son relationship where the father has
Sun in Aquarius and the son (especially the first born) has his
Sun in Leo, they will cause each other frustration to no end.

          *** Questions About Learning Astrology ***

 7)  Can anyone recommend a good book on astrology for beginners?

Answer: Recommendations appear in the alt.astrology resource
list. (See # 18.) Maggie McPherson posted some beginners'
lessons; if you would like copies of these, they are available by
anonymous ftp at hilbert.maths.utas.edu.au in the directory
pub/astrology; the file names are "lesson.intro" and
"lesson.aspects." If you cannot use ftp on your machine, write
for copies to Maggie at mmcphers@nyx.cs.du.edu.

A huge bibliography of astrology books (all levels) is available
at the ftp site in the file win.rowe.

 8)  What is the best approach to learning astrology?

If you can find a class offered in your area, that might be the
best approach. It is difficult for the beginner to assess what is
important in chart interpretation. 

Two lessons are available at the ftp site (see # 19) in the files
"lesson.intro" and "lesson.aspects". These cover some basic
concepts, but they do not explain how to cast or interpret a
chart.

See # 7 about beginners' books.

The most difficult area of astrology is natal (i.e., birth) chart
interpretation. It takes years to learn the art of synthesis that
allows for accurate readings of a natal chart. Beginners might
benefit from concentrating on transits (the movements of the
planets in the sky across time in relation to a natal chart),
which are relatively easy to interpret, astrocartography (changes
in the zodiacal positions of the 12 houses as one moves from city
to city), for which clear interpretations are available (e.g.,
from Jim Lewis' work), or synastry (evaluating contacts between
two charts to determine the nature of a relationship). When the
basic natures of the planets, signs, houses, and aspects become
familiar, then one can begin to study natal charts in earnest,
combining ("synthesising") the various factors wholistically to
achieve a meaningful reading.

 9)  Where can I find scientific research on astrology?

Answer: Brief summaries of a few scientific studies (written by
Thomas David Kehoe) are available at the ftp site (see # 19) in
the files "gauquelin" and "jung.synastry," which can be found in
the directory pub/astrology/articles.

The most famous research is that of Michel and Francoise
Gauquelin. Some of their findings have been the focus of decades
of scrutiny by skeptics, and their results have held up under
this scrutiny. Some of their studies have been successfully
replicated with different samples and by independent researchers.
The highly publicised CSICOP "failure to replicate" on an
American sample for the "Mars effect" (the appearance of Mars in
certain sectors with greater-than-expected frequency for eminent
athletes) has been shown to replicate the effect when the
athletes are ordered by eminence (see the Winter, 1992 issue of
the Skeptical Inquirer). (The CSICOP researchers included far
fewer eminent athletes in their sample than did the Gauquelins,
and this washed out the Mars effect when the sample as a whole
was considered. When the athletes are divided into groups
according to an objective criterion of "eminence," the Mars
effect emerges among the most eminent.) 

Some of the Gauquelins' research is summarised in the following
books: Michel Gauquelin, "Cosmic Influences on Human Behavior"
(3rd edition, published in 1985 by Aurora Press, P.O. Box 573,
Santa Fe, NM 87504); Michel Gauquelin, "Planetary Heredity"
(published in 1988 by ACS Publications, Inc., P.O. Box 16430, San
Diego, CA 92116-0430); Francoise Gauquelin, "Psychology of the
Planets" (published in 1982 by ACS Publications, Inc.).

A preliminary report of a study showing the relationship between
inspiration in scientific discovery and certain angular
separations of planets appears in a booklet entitled "The Eureka
Effect," by Nicholas Kollerstrom and Michael O'Neill. It was
published in 1989 by Urania Trust, 396 Caledonian Road, London N1
1DN. A complete report on this study and some additional data on
inventions will appear sometime in the next few years.

The Astrological Association of London publishes a scholarly
journal devoted entirely to astrological research. It is called
Correlation. (See the resource list for the address and phone
number of the Astrological Association; see # 18 for information
about the resource list.) Prior to its first publication in 1981,
research articles appeared in The Astrological Journal, also
published by the Astrological Association. If you are in Britain,
all issues of this journal are available at The Astrology Study
Centre (396 Caledonian Road, London N1 1DN), the Oxford and
Cambridge University libraries, the Scottish National Library in
Edinburgh, the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth, Trinity
College in Dublin, the Warburg Institute, London University, the
British Library in London, and the York University library. In
the USA, these journals are available at the Heart Center
library, 315 Marion Avenue, Big Rapids, MI 49307. Astrologers in
your local area may have copies of these journals as well.

Astrological research appears occasionally in academic journals
of psychology. A literature search (e.g., of the database
"Psychological Abstracts") for articles containing the keyword
"astrology" or "astrological" (or "astrolog?" where "?" is a wild
card) would turn these up.

Because of the difficulty in publishing astrological research (or
any unorthodox research), much remains unpublished. Among such
studies are those described in postgraduate dissertations on
astrology. A list of these (up to 1981) appears in the December,
1982 issue of Correlation. For more recent dissertations, check
Dissertations Abstracts at a university library. (Our very own
Mark Urban-Lurain did a multivariate analysis of the birth data of
members of Alcoholics Anonymous for his Master's thesis at Michigan 
State University.)

                   *** General Questions ***

10)  I have seen people born within days/hours of one another
     whose lives are really different. How come?

Answer: Even a few minutes difference in the time of birth or
having a different birth place can change the chart
substantially. Obviously people who have just the same birthday
will have different charts. Since Earth is the only planet that
makes a trip around the Sun exactly once a year, all the other
planets will be at completely different positions in a different
year. But even if people are born on the very same day, their
charts can differ quite radically. The Moon moves about 13
degrees in a day, and the astrological houses, which are an
extremely important element of the chart, move through the entire
zodiac in a 24-hour period! And their positions are affected by
latitude as well. In addition, even if two people's charts are
identical (which is rare), other factors may influence the way
the chart is expressed. Some people operate on a material level,
some on a mental level, and a few operate on a spiritual level.
The same chart can be expressed on any of these levels. An
astrological chart does not show the "fate" or "destiny" as such.
The person always has a choice, and the free exercise of the will
determines how the influences indicated in a chart manifest
themselves.

11)  What is the meaning of the term "the Age of Aquarius"?

Answer: Due to the precession of the equinoxes as explained in
question # 28, the Vernal Equinox enters a new sign in the
sidereal zodiac about every 2160 years. According to output from
Astrolog, at the Vernal Equinox in 1992, the Sun will be at 5^
Pisces 22' in the sidereal zodiac. Because of this, the current
age is called the "Piscean" age. The Vernal Equinox will not
actually occur in the sign of Aquarius in the sidereal zodiac
until the year 2377. Some astrologers, however, believe that the
equinox is close enough to the cusp of Pisces that we will begin
to see some of the effects of the Age of Aquarius, hence the
"Dawning of the Age of Aquarius." Opinions also differ regarding
the exact boundaries of the constellations and the length of an
astrological age.

12)  How is it possible for astrology to work?

Answer: There are at least two schools of thought. One common
explanation is synchronicity, an acausal connecting principle
proposed by Carl Jung. The general idea is that events on earth
of a certain nature coincide in time with astronomical events of
a similar nature (according to the symbolic significance of the
planets and their relations in the heavens). Although
synchronicity operates throughout the universe, the planets might
have special significance because they are part of collective
experience (that is, we can all see them or know about them) and
so they can take on a collective meaning -- they can speak to the
"collective unconscious." But Jung's synchronicity principle is
still hypothetical and still not well understood.

Jung's idea is similar to the ancient hermetic idea of resonant
bonds of sympathy between "similars" (which share a common
essential design) in the microcosm and macrocosm. This was the
ancient explanation for the correspondence between cosmic and
mundane events.

A less popular explanation is that there are unknown and
currently undetected forces or energies emanating from the
planets that affect life on earth, perhaps something akin to
Rupert Sheldrake's "morphic fields." (This type of explanation is
unpopular among those physicists who believe that all the forces
in the universe are already known.) Biological evidence showing a
harmony between celestial rhythms and biological rhythms suggests
that known or unknown planetary forces operate on organisms at a
material level, sometimes through changes in the pattern of solar
radiation. Such biological effects might alter psychological
processing and thus human action and the events that arise from
it.

Whatever explanation is offered, it is evidence from experience
and research that convinces people that astrology does indeed
work. The rich descriptive theory that has evolved over thousands
of years provides for a deep understanding of human nature and
the capacity for prediction of the type of circumstances that
will prevail during specific time periods. As with most areas of
inquiry, the correct explanatory theory to account for the
structure of the descriptive theory awaits its discoverer.

13)  Does astrology control my future? Is it "wrong" to use
     astrology to learn what the future holds for me? I'm scared.

Answer: In Western astrology, it is not believed that the cycles
associated with the planets control your future; it is believed,
rather, that YOU have ultimate control over your future through
the exercise of your will. The planets only indicate some of the
tendencies inherent in your personality and the conditions that
surround various areas of life. One cannot determine in precise
detail exactly what will happen in one's life from day to day and
moment to moment, but only what kinds of influences will be
present. There is a famous saying: "The stars incline, they do
not compel." Within the situational and psychological context
described in a chart, you are free to act and react according to
your will, which is in turn guided by the wisdom you possess and
your stage in your spiritual evolution. As for good and evil,
there is nothing "wrong" with learning what sort of conditions
will exist in your life. It may be to your advantage to foresee
these influences so that you can be prepared and control your
actions to better work in harmony with the celestial cycles.

             *** Questions About Birth Data ***

14)  I notice that I need to know the time zone used in the place
     I was born and the latitude and longitude of my place of
     birth in order to erect a chart. How can I find such
     information?

Answer: To find the latitude and longitude of your place of
birth, you can estimate from a map (which is not really very
accurate) or look them up in a reference book such as Thomas G.
Shanks "International Atlas" or "American Atlas" (which also
provide information about the time zone and the use of daylight
savings and war time for each city/town); these are usually
available in the astrology section of occult bookstores. Time
zone information is usually available in a reference book at your
local library, but if you think you might have been born when
daylight-savings time or war time was in effect, you must either
check a reference book such as Shanks' or phone the
state/provincial archives for your birth place and check with
them. Note that some cities changed the time zone they used at
some point in their history, so it is *always* best to check with
a reference such as Shanks or phone the state/provincial
archives. A difference of one hour changes a birth chart
radically!

If you were born in the United States of America, there is
another method for finding latitude and longitude: through the
database server located at port 3000 at martini.eecs.umich.edu;
this is accessed by the command "telnet 141.212.99.9 3000". Once
you are logged in, type in the name of any U.S. city, followed by
the abbreviation for the state (e.g., Seattle, WA) and the
programme will display the longitude and latitude. To end the
session, just enter "bye."

15)  I do not know what time of day I was born. Is there some way
     to find out?

Answer: To find your exact time of birth, talk to a parent (who
may have the time written down somewhere) or contact the hospital
where you were born; sometimes the time appears on a birth
certificate. If the time cannot be found, some astrologers claim
to be able to determine the time through a technique called
"rectification" which involves looking at astrological influences
present when major events happened in the life, such as meeting a
future spouse, marriage, birth of children, death of
parent/sibling/spouse/friend, and so on.

If no time is known, and if rectification of the time is not
possible, some information about the person can still be derived
from a chart. The position of the Moon, which moves about 13
degrees per day, will be inaccurate, and the positions of the
planets in the astrological "houses" will be unknown. But the
relations among the planets will be roughly accurate, and the
sign positions of the planets (except perhaps the Moon) will be
correct.

          *** Questions About Astrological Software ***

16)  Does anyone know if there is any software available for
     astrology?

Answer: See # 17 about Walter Pullen's "Astrolog" software.
Information about other software (e.g., commercial software) is
available in Michael Bulmer's "resource list." If it does not
currently appear at your site, see # 18 for details on getting a
copy.

17)  Where can I get a copy of the astrological software
     Astrolog?

Answer: Walter Pullen posts new versions on alt.astrology as they
are ready. If you missed the most recent posting, you can get the
latest version by anonymous ftp at the following ftp site:
hilbert.maths.utas.edu.au; the code for Astrolog is in the
directory pub/astrology (along with other useful stuff). Astrolog
was also posted to comp.sources.misc and is therefore available
at any of the numerous ftp sites which archive this newsgroup,
such as ftp.uu.net. It can be found in the directory
/usenet/comp.sources.misc/volume28/astrolog/*, in six convenient
compressed shell archives. If you cannot use ftp on your machine,
write to Walter at astrolog@byron.u.washington.edu and ask him
for a copy of the programme. Astrolog can easily be loaded on
UNIX (and less easily on a PC), and it is very easy to run. 

         *** Questions About Alt.astrology Resources ***

18)  How can I obtain a copy of the alt.astrology "resource
     list"?

Answer: Michael Bulmer posts the resource list occasionally. If
it is no longer at your site, you can get a copy via anonymous
ftp at hilbert.maths.utas.edu.au; the list is in the directory
pub/astrology. If you do not have access to ftp from your
machine, write to Michael at bulmer@hilbert.maths.utas.edu.au and
he will send you a copy. The resource list provides
recommendations for books on astrology, addresses of astrological
associations and organisations, information about astrological
software, addresses of chart calculation services, and other
useful stuff.

19)  How do I use ftp to get files from the alt.astrology ftp
     site?

Answer: For many sites (but check with the systems people at
yours), you type "ftp hilbert.maths.utas.edu.au"; when connected
to the ftp site, type "anonymous" and then enter, as a password,
your e-mail address. Once into the account, type "cd
pub/astrology" to get into the right directory. If you wish to
see which files are present in that directory, type "ls". If you
want to transfer a file (e.g., the file README) to your account,
type "get README"; repeat for however many files you wish to
transfer. (Note that commands are case-sensitive, so type the
file name just as you see it in the directory listing, i.e., in
caps or lower case.) When you are done, type "bye" and you will
be disconnected.


*** Questions Asked With Surprising Frequency by Disbelievers ***

20)  Every sensible person knows that astrology couldn't possibly
     work, so why are you people wasting your time?

Answer: It is impossible to rule out astrological phenomena on _a
priori_ grounds. Current understanding in scientific circles does
not shape the actual structure of the universe. Science involves
research. No mere mortal is omniscient, and so none can predict
infallibly which effects would show up in research and which
would not. What is currently known is not all that will ever be
known. It is a mistake to buy into the current way of thinking as
if it was an accurate and complete picture of the universe. Dogma
is antithetical to true science.

_A priori_ arguments are not the final word in science, which was
designed, after all, as a means of discerning nature's secrets by
actually examining nature, as opposed to just thinking about it
the way Aristotle and Descartes did.

21)  How could planetary forces, of whatever nature, act upon an
     infant when it is outside the mother, but not when it is a
     fetus in the womb? Why should the forces only have effect at
     the moment of birth?

Answer: Given that we do not yet have an explanation for
astrological phenomena, we cannot assume that astrological
correspondences are due to some "force" (e.g., gravity) that can
travel through a mother's body as easily as it can through the
walls of the hospital. 

One research finding might be relevant to this question. The
Gauquelins found that one of their results, the "inheritance" of
angularity for specific planets (i.e., the child of a parent with
an angular planet tends to have the same planet angular), was
only present when the birth was natural. This finding suggests
that it is not exposure to air per se that produces the
astrological effect. Rather, the baby is "destined" (for unknown
reasons) to be born at a certain time, and to retain the
astrological character of that time. Unnatural births (e.g.,
C-section, or drug-induced labour) prevent birth at the "correct"
time, and so the child fails to "inherit" its parent's planetary
angularity in its own chart. (No studies have been done looking
at the effect of the type of birth on any factors in actual chart
interpretation, so the Gauquelins' finding does not speak to the
issue of astrological charts in general; if future research fails
to find an effect of the circumstances of birth on the validity
of the birth chart, then the reason for the child's absorption of
the character of the time of birth will not be able to be
accounted for by destiny.)

22)  Don't you guys know that astrology depends on a geocentric
     astronomy? Copernicus blew it away.

Answer: This is an argument that never occurred to Copernicus,
who practiced astrology. Heliocentric versus geocentric is a
method of calculation, and it is easy to postulate astral forces
indifferent to the current interpretation of orbital mechanics.
In any case, as the answer to the next question will show,
demonstration of the possible causation of astrological effects
is not clearly relevant to showing the existence of these
effects.

A force exerts the same influence whether the position of the
body exerting it was calculated using Ptolemaic, Copernican,
Keplerian, Newtonian or Einsteinian orbital mechanics. And, of
course, astrology was originally practiced using observation,
before astronomy was sufficiently advanced to allow highly
accurate prediction of the positions of the planets.

23)  Don't you guys know that no cause for astrological effects
     is known? Therefore such effects cannot exist.

Answer: There are quite a few variations of this very popular
fallacy. A common variation is to point out that the hands of the
doctor delivering a baby exert a far stronger gravitational pull
than any planet could. Again, the reasoning here goes, "no cause,
therefore no effect." If there ever is a cause advanced for
astrological effects, it may well not involve gravity.

All sorts of sciences are based on empirical evidence alone, with
no explanatory theories available. Genetics was accepted as part
of science before the discovery of DNA, and, even now, the
complete mapping from genetic factors to amino acids is far from
complete. In psychology, the principles that govern the
organisation of vision and audition (i.e., that determine the
boundaries and content of separate "figures," "objects," or
"streams" of sound) are well established, but researchers have no
idea why perceptual processes follow these particular principles.

Vast areas of sciences that *do* provide causal explanations make
specific predictions that cannot be derived directly from the
believed cause but are based on empirical evidence and
descriptive theories that capture the structures inherent in the
data. Tide tables, for example, are calculated empirically.
Although physicists know enough about the relevant physical
processes to make it plausible that there should be two tides a
day, even though the earth revolves only once a day, mathematical
formulae directly relating this cause to the observed tides do
not exist.

To tread but briefly on philosophical ground, the notion of
causality itself is not well grounded, and is considered by many
to be a function of human perception rather than a property of
the universe (see, for example, David Hume in "A Treatise of
Human Nature" and Immanuel Kant in "Prolegomena to Any Future
Metaphysics"). As the empiricist Hume discovered, humans make an
attribution of "causality" when they have certain types of
perceptual experience (e.g., when A is perceived to precede B in
time, B is always perceived to be preceded by A, and so on, then
A is perceived to "cause" B). The famous psychologist Albert
Michotte did many studies in which he examined the factors that
give rise to the impression of causality (see "La Perception de
la Causalite," 1946, or the English translation, "The Perception
of Causality," 1963). He showed, for example, that animated dots
on a screen are perceived to be involved in a causal interaction,
with one dot "causing" movement in another, when the timing
relations of their movements and the relative direction of their
movements fall within a certain range. (Of course no "causal
relation" was ever actually present, since the movement was due
to animation.) 

Even so pragmatic a scientist as Sir Isaac Newton argued that an
appeal to cause is unnecessary because the type of laws he
discovered, which are purely descriptive in nature (e.g., the
relation f=m*a among the theoretical constructs force, mass, and
acceleration), are sufficiently powerful to predict events and
account for all the available data. He believed that physical
theories are what the physicist Pierre Duhem called "the economic
condensation of phenomena" (see "The Aim and Structure of
Physical Theory"):

     "To tell us that every species of things is endowed with an
     occult specific quality by which it acts and produces
     manifest effects, is to tell us nothing; but to derive two
     or three general principles of motion from phenomena, and
     afterwards to tell us how the properties and actions of all
     corporeal things follow from those manifest principles,
     would be a very great step in philosophy, though the causes
     of those principles were not yet discovered; and therefore I
     scruple not to propose the principles of motion above
     mentioned, they being of very large extent, and leave their
     causes to be found out." (Optics, Query XXXI at the end of
     the second edition.)

So the descriptive theories of astrology, the relations that have
been discovered and exploited over a period of thousands of
years, may not lend themselves to an explanation in terms of
causes any more than Newton's laws of motion do. The human mind
seeks "causes" (at least in the West), but Nature herself may be
indifferent to them. The Eastern vision of an harmonious universe
with all its interconnected parts dancing in unison may be more
in line with reality.

24)  Don't you guys know that tests of groups of astrologers show
     they do no better than chance? Therefore astrology does not
     work. 

Answer: The same is said of investment managers. From the
Economist for March 7, 1992, p. 81: "Numerous studies suggest
that `exceptional' investment managers do not exist. In any given
period, each has no more than an even chance of doing better than
the market index; moreover, a manager who does well one year is
no likelier than others to do well in the next. A few funds may
beat the index for, say, three years running, but these are no
more common than chance would predict. Give a sample of
coin-tossers three coins each. If they obey the laws of
probability, one in either will toss three heads."

Does this mean there is no such thing as good investment advice?

The question of the standard of practice in the profession and of
the validity of the discipline are not the same, and should not
be confused. Do the best astrologers participate in such tests?
Given that astrology is not a closed profession, can testing
groups of people where the only criterion for selection is that
they say they are astrologers really say anything about
astrology? Given these sort of ground rules for the test, would a
good astrologer decide to participate? 

Even if highly qualified astrologers agreed to participate in a
study, did the specific test administered give the astrologers a
fair shot at accuracy (e.g., if they are asked to match charts
with people, are they allowed to get to know the people well and
learn about their lives and personal history in detail, or are
they allowed just a brief chat with the people)?

It would be very hard to answer any of these questions with an
unqualified "Yes." The talent of practitioners and the validity
of the discipline they practice must not be confused. And
scientific tests conducted by those attempting to "debunk"
astrology must be evaluated with as much critical attention as
any other scientific study. The tests must be fair. The
conditions of the tests must be conducive to finding an effect if
any is possible. They must not be arranged so that finding an
effect is impossible simply by virtue of the experimental design.

One must be very careful in drawing conclusions from a *lack* of
evidence (either because of negative findings or because no
studies have been conducted). The failure to find an effect does
not mean that the hypothesis is false. It just means that one
hasn't found evidence in favour of it. Nothing more, nothing
less. But if one *does* find an effect, then one has evidence in
support of the hypothesis (and any other hypothesis that would
make the same prediction, whether or not that hypothesis is
currently available). So there is an asymmetry that is rarely
recognised: evidence (data) can support an experimental
hypothesis, but a lack of evidence cannot refute it (even if the
lack of evidence is in the form of failure to find a predicted
effect, e.g., a difference between samples). The possibility
always remains that our experimental design is flawed and/or our
measurement techniques are inappropriate and so they fail to
capture the effect. In psychology, where measurement is often
very difficult and indirect (as it is in much astrological
research), one can fail to find evidence to support a particular
hypothesis even after years of experimentation. Then some clever
researcher invents a new measurement technique, or creates a new
experimental design more favourable for the emergence of the
phenomenon of interest, and the predicted effect emerges!

Note that many scientific astrological studies that do not focus
on the ability of individual astrologers (e.g., to match charts
to people) have found positive results that are replicable. (See
# 9.) The elements of subjectivity and interpretive ability are
missing from these studies because they concentrate on objective
measures (e.g., the presence/absence of a planet in a certain
area of the chart for a certain group of people) and so effects
are easier to observe. As any experimental psychologist will
confirm, subjective judgments are fraught with error, and the
unreliability in such measures vastly reduces the success rate of
experimental studies.

25)  Don't you guys know that astrology makes an infinity of
     claims? You could never test them all. Therefore we can
     dismiss it out of hand.

Answer: Any non-trivial field makes an infinity of claims. If you
wished to refute physics you could not track down every
prediction it makes. This does not mean physics is not a science.
In verifying physics, you look at the basics. If they hold up,
you consider it basically valid, and then attempt to replicate
more abstruse claims. You will never be able to replicate every
claim implied by physics.

26)  Don't you guys know that you can't really prove a negative,
     such as astrology never working, anyway? Therefore we can
     dismiss it out of hand.

Answer: That a negative cannot be proven hardly constitutes a
refutation of astrology. The argument above reduces to "a
negative cannot be proven, therefore all negatives are false". If
you want to be strict, you must accept that all negatives must be
taken as possibly true, forever. It is not legitimate to say, "a
negative cannot be proved, therefore all negatives that seem
weird to me are false." That is simply clothing a prejudice in
pseudo-scientific language.

27)  Legitimate scientists (or educated people, etc., etc.)
     universally despise astrology. Can such a weight of opinion
     be wrong?

Answer: Yes. Easily. Examples in the social sciences of educated
opinion doing a total about-face are common. Racialist theories,
now despised by almost all those in academe, were orthodox before
World War II, as just one example.

In the health sciences as well, practices such as phrenology,
acupuncture, hypnotism and chiropractic have all crossed in one
direction or another the line that separates respected science
from despised pseudo-science. If astrology does so too, it will
definitely not be the first time, and probably not the last.

This question is based on an appeal to authority and, as such, is
an example of a common fallacy in reasoning. Plausibility based
on current world views is a poor guide to the nature of reality,
but scientists, being human, are as fallible as the rest of us in
embracing modern views with undue passion. (Humans have a deep
need to feel they understand things. The unknown is a source of
fear, so many choose to deny it. But the unknown is only unreal
for those who are omniscient. For those of us who are less than
omniscient, humility is in order in any discussion of the nature
of reality.)

28)  Why don't astrologers consider the fact that when the Sun is
     in the sign of Aries, it is not really in the constellation
     Aries?

Answer: This is due to the phenomenon known as "the precession of
the equinoxes." The equinoxes are the points in time and space at
which the earth, with its tilted axis, is positioned with respect
to the sun in such a way that the length of day and night are
equal. Most astrologers, with a few exceptions, base their work
on a zodiac with sign positions determined by the equinoxes
rather than the constellations. At the Vernal Equinox, which
occurs on about March 20th of each year, the Sun enters into the
sign of Aries. The signs are not defined by the constellations.
The zodiac positioned with respect to the equinoxes is called the
"tropical zodiac"; the zodiac based on the constellations is
called the "sidereal zodiac." Because of the precession of the
equinoxes, the equinoxes are moving backwards with respect to the
fixed constellations by about one degree every 72 years.
Approximately two thousand years ago, the beginning of the
tropical sign of Aries was aligned with the beginning of the
constellation Aries (perhaps around 217 A.D.).

Why do the tropical signs have the same names and symbols as the
constellations with which they were aligned 2000 years ago? Isn't
the sidereal zodiac the source of the meanings of the tropical
signs? And so shouldn't astrologers take the meaning of a
tropical sign from the constellation most closely aligned with it
now? This argument is based on the presupposition that the
meanings of the signs come from the natures of the symbols in the
heavens that we call constellations. But clearly this is not the
case. Some of the most dominant traits of Virgo are obsession
with detail and an analytical and critical nature. How could
these traits be derived from a picture of a virgin? How could the
Piscean qualities "spiritual," "selfless," "imaginative,"
"inspirational," "feminine," and "idealistic" be derived from a
picture of two fish? Few traits of each sign can easily be
related to the symbol assigned to the constellation of the same
name.

There is no necessity, given current knowledge, for the tropical
signs to have received their meaning from the constellations of
the sidereal zodiac; it is possible that the nature of the
tropical signs suggested a symbol to associate with a
constellation (since the symbols look very little like the
pattern of stars we associate with them). Perhaps the
constellations with which we are familiar came into being during
the period in which the tropical sign Aries was aligned with the
constellation Aries. When did the tropical zodiac and
constellations appear? The tropical zodiac may have been around a
long time. The Egyptians had a tropical (solar) calendar by the
early part of the third millennium B.C.; given the direct and
transparent relationship between the signs of the tropical zodiac
and the months of the solar year, they may well have had a
tropical zodiac as well. Tropical calendars in the form of
standing stones (e.g., Stonehenge) date from 1000-5000 B.C. in
Northwest Europe, so the tropical zodiac might have existed there
as well. Unfortunately, the preliterate people of these cultures
left no records behind. Some sort of zodiac, possibly sidereal,
with 12 equal signs, existed in India in 3000 B.C. A manuscript
(in Sanskrit) from that period shows that astrologers then used a
zodiac, an equal house system, and aspects counted sign to sign
(as in much modern-day Hindu astrology).

The origin of the modern constellations is somewhat obscure, so
it is very difficult to decide whether the constellations were
around to lend meaning to the tropical signs at the time that the
tropical zodiac was created. Noonan (1976; Journal of Geocosmic
Research, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 6-7) claims that the first zodiac of
the constellations appeared around 500 B.C. The constellations
are believed to have been assigned symbols by the Babylonians,
but there were originally 36 constellations, and only some of
them coincide with the modern sidereal signs. We know that some
of the symbols used for the modern signs are recent, because the
original symbols were all animals (the word "zodiac," derived
from the Greek zo^idiako's, means "circle of animals"). We can be
certain that the modern constellations of the zodiac existed by
about 30 B.C. because they appear very clearly on the ceiling of
the Temple of Hathor at Dendera in Upper Egypt. So was the
tropical zodiac in use by then?

It might have been. The precession of the equinoxes was certainly
common knowledge by then. Precession was discovered at the very
latest in 200 B.C., when Hipparchus wrote about it. But Sir
Norman Lockyer found that many very early temples in Egypt had
been moved at different periods in history so that they lined up
with a particular star as it precessed across the sky. 

(See, for example, E.C. Krupp, "In Search of Ancient
Astronomies," New York: Doubleday, 1977.)

                *** Questions About the FAQ ***

29)  I have a suggestion for this FAQ list. What do I do? 

Answer: Make your suggestion known by sending mail to the keeper
of this FAQ file, Maggie McPherson at mmcphers@nyx.cs.du.edu. The 
preferred format is to submit a copy of the actual changes being 
suggested.