I didn't actually get dragged into this against my will. I let it happen. I know is responsible for this: me.

One reason I was reluctant is that these discussions do what this discussion is doing - wandering all over the lot. A couple of quick points:

I can appreciate your quest for scientific verification of transits, Tom...but IMO this feels a bit like the head of my department telling us that our work is meaningless unless we can quantify it...our work being almost purely of a qualitative nature.

Although I appreciate the overall gesture of support in your post, I'm not looking for scientific verification of transits. My original point is that transits, by themselves, are not enough. They sometimes work because they sometimes are connected to other things. I think the astrologer who uses little else but transits and particularly who uses transits without reference to the nativity (and I'm only talking about natal astrology) is trying to catch the wind.

I also think they have a social function: "Ewwwwww Saturn is transiting my natal Pluto I'm really in for it." No you're not; you're drawing attention to yourself and for little reason. Everyone on earth born within a year of so of you is undergoing the same transit. We rarely hear, "Oh Jupiter is trining my natal Venus maybe Joe and I will get engaged." This is just as valid and far less likely to be voiced. It's still not enough. Joe has a chart, too.

I concede I probably made a mistake by citing my own experience in this matter and not mentioning anything else, but I really didn't want to go there, mostly because I didn't feel like looking things up. These discussions are rarely worth that much effort It's not my only experience, and I won't bring up my own chart again.

Again for the record: I am not saying that transits have little or no value. I am saying that by themselves, without reference to other things such as directions, progressions, returns, etc, they often don't produce anything so why limit ourselves to using transits alone? So far the only response I've received to that is "You're wrong and predictive astrology sucks; read Dane Rudhyar."

Isn't this just faulty reasoning?

For the life of me I cannot see how you come to that conclusion based on what I wrote. And the Popper remark begs the question entirely. One more time:

1) Astrologer predicts "X"
2) "X" doesn't happen "Y" does
3) Astrologer says, "The question wasn't sincere"
4) Tom: no the astrologer got it wrong. Maybe he missed something. Maybe he didn't. Maybe he isn't very good at it. Maybe the astrology is just fine and the answer is there, and the astrologer is blaming his tools. Maybe it just didn't work this time.
5)Tom's reasoning is faulty. ??????????????????????????

Maybe it isn't Tom's reasoning. Maybe it's the astrologer's. Maybe someone is setting up a straw man.

The sports board here is a good example. If someone gets 20 results right in a row does this suggest astrology is responsible? No, there could be a range of reasons. If they get most right, most of the time and consistently do better than a football pundit then it might be worth looking into. But do they?

Sports astrology is a reasonably valid test of both the astrologer and the astrology given enough time and effort. You either get it right or you don't. But all is not as it seems. Things are rarely so simple. The key with all betting systems is to beat the odds. In sports betting the odds are rarely 50-50 and so flipping a coin is a losing proposition. I've read that favorites win about 70% of the time. So if you always go with the favorite, over enough time you'll be correct about 70% of the time, but you'll never make any money. The real money is correctly picking the underdog enough times to win much at little risk and that means you have to be right about the underdog a lot. If you want to make real money (sometimes underdogs are only underdogs by a little - in other words the teams are fairly evenly matched as they often are in championship games - you have to be right about 80% of the time. So in order to make money with sports astrology 80% is our goal. In order to validate the astrology maybe 70% is enough. That's background.

But then you need the system and the ability to read it and all its nuances correctly. You probably need more than one system. Astrology does not seem to lend it self to baseball very well even in the World Series or maybe especially so. The fact that no one is making huge amounts of money this way (that we know of) doesn't mean it can't be done. That's why they call it research. Perhaps someone has enough interest, time, and money to do it. I don't. I've achieved my goal of finally beating a woman who does Sports Astrology and is right far more often than I am. I'm now satisfied.

Now if this is all considered an excuse, fine, but what is there that is any more verifiable and therefore more valid (Popper notwithstanding) - not just for sports but for anything? Or does the Popper quote mean we don't have to validate - just assert? The unconscious? Please.

The problem with the position of the psychological astrologers (and calling one "depth" and the other "shallow" or whatever is just engaging in name calling) is that they are trying to prove their position by finding fault with the others. Prediction can't be done - so there - so now let's get serious and talk about Jung or Rudhyar or Greene. That's "depth" astrology and you got the Super Bowl wrong.

Why don't we all just concentrate on what we wish to concentrate on, and forget about everyone else. Who knows someone may actually accomplish something more than ego gratification.

I love repeating this story. It comes from one of John Frawley's books or magazine articles. A client had a "reading" done by a self described psychological astrologer. Nothing clicked. Whatever the astrologer said, the client didn't agree with it at all. Out of frustration the astrologer said, "Well this is what you would have been like if you're parents hadn't messed you up."

Maybe the astrologer should have predicted that the client would be torn apart by wild animals in a public square.

Tom

For the life of me I cannot see how you come to that conclusion based on what I wrote. And the Popper remark begs the question entirely. One more time:

1) Astrologer predicts "X"
2) "X" doesn't happen "Y" does
3) Astrologer says, "The question wasn't sincere"
4) Tom: no the astrologer got it wrong. Maybe he missed something. Maybe he didn't. Maybe he isn't very good at it. Maybe the astrology is just fine and the answer is there, and the astrologer is blaming his tools. Maybe it just didn't work this time.
5)Tom's reasoning is faulty. ??????????????????????????

Maybe it isn't Tom's reasoning. Maybe it's the astrologer's. Maybe someone is setting up a straw man.

If astrologer predicts X and it happens is this ?proof?. No, it simply means Astrologer X was able somehow, (probability, luck, confirmation bias, astrology? etc) to do this on this occasion.

I?ll quote Popper again as it?s so important:
?It is easy to obtain confirmations or verifications, for nearly every theory?if we look for confirmations. . . . Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result of a genuine test of the theory??.

So there is no ?genuine test? going on with subjective validations of astrological veracity. This applies to the way astrology is largely practiced today whether it?s of the predictive or psychological variety.

Now if this is all considered an excuse, fine, but what is there that is any more verifiable and therefore more valid (Popper notwithstanding) - not just for sports but for anything? Or does the Popper quote mean we don't have to validate - just assert? The unconscious? Please.

I don?t think you and Popper would disagree as to how to operationalise a sports astrology experiment. Popper, and all scientists, would simply be able to say what the experiment (s) suggest. As regards sports it would require 1,000?s of predictions over a period of time to give enough data to speculate about. So no ?straw man?. However a postive result for astrology here is stage one. Stage is to find out how it works, until then it remains dubious.

I can?t follow your validate, assert, unconscious?

.

The problem with the position of the psychological astrologers (and calling one "depth" and the other "shallow" or whatever is just engaging in name calling) is that they are trying to prove their position by finding fault with the others. Prediction can't be done - so there - so now let's get serious and talk about Jung or Rudhyar or Greene.

It?s called ?depth? because the various models postulate the ?existence? of layers of the mind which academic psychologists regard as largely non-verifiable at the moment.. Plenty of psychologists are very open to psychodynamic ideas and use them, as are psychiatrists who are often formally trained in this area. ?Depth? isn?t about the other models being shallow just different.

My sense is Rudhyar and Greene take the view that ?prediction? can be done, but it?s unlikely it can be done in a ?concrete or small? way. Not least because Greene?s perspective at least towards the ?signs/symbols? regards them as more paradoxical, multivalent and unconscious. You ought to stop comparing Greene to Rudhyar it?s a profoundly different approach to Astrology. You won?t find Greene confusing Valens with Lilly, as the link I gave you demonstrates.

For example 9/11. Pluto is near the USA ascendant. We have on the face of it a ?profound? validation of Astrology here. However all that could be ?expected? from this transit is a ?transformation? in the way America sees itself and the way the world sees America. The dogma is Pluto is cathartic and raises issues of ?survival? but a range of ?events? could have happened to support this notion. At the time a relatively unknown mid-western astrologer, I recall? predicted something like this on this day, however didn?t she also predict hundreds of other things that didn?t happen? Zoller had been raising concerns about this period, but so what? Most of the world half-expected America to be attacked at some point around this time.

Popper would say, ok here?s something to work with that looks promising lets look at a few hundred other countries and see what Pluto did when it went over their ascendants. Then it gets ?subjective? and relies on the persuasive quality of the astrological narrative(s) to demonstrate a ?transformation? in the country?s persona without any tangible events to support it. Popper may then start ?believing? in astrology but acknowledge that this belief isn?t ?confirmed?.

I love repeating this story. It comes from one of John Frawley's books or magazine articles. A client had a "reading" done by a self described psychological astrologer. Nothing clicked. Whatever the astrologer said, the client didn't agree with it at all. Out of frustration the astrologer said, "Well this is what you would have been like if you're parents hadn't messed you up."

Hopefully you?ll stop repeating it now because it's full of faulty thinking. There's very few 'psychological astrologers' in the world, perhaps 20?, and plenty of Tyl, Modern Western, types who use this label incorrectly, probably for want of another. Perhaps Frawley was referring to one of these, as a reputable 'psychological astrologer' would say no such thing!! Frawley's uninformed or misinformed prejudice is notorious but make no comment on this without any evidence, or a chart, although you may have provided some of the 2nd hand variety here.

Anyway back to the Emerald Tablet what do you think of Hand?s speech and do you think this raises real concerns that those who favour a form of ?predictive astrology?, and use the label ?Hermetic, have misunderstood the Esoteric roots?

Why does anybody care whether astrology is verifiable within the current scientific paradigm? Serious question.

Olivia wrote:Why does anybody care whether astrology is verifiable within the current scientific paradigm? Serious question.

If I am not mistaken, the very first post was proposing that an outer planet transit provides an opportunity for a scientific test. The discussion went much further than that, of course, and I do not think it is a bad thing at all. Popper was mentioned. There is a saying (attributed to Richard Feynman, I think) which goes something like this: philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds. So, with all due respect to Popper, the popularity of science nowadays is not due to some fancy philosophical theory (as far as I can tell most scientists don't even know or care about it). Science is so popular because of its predictive ability. Things are observed, conclusions and theories are made, tested, some fail and are forgotten, some become popular until something better comes along, etc. It?s mostly common sense, really. There is, of course, a lot of "paradigmosis", but even scientific paradigms change. The current scientific paradigm is extremely narrow, materialistic, etc., but the scientific ?method ? is extremely effective in the area it applies to, most of the time it lives up to its claims. So, I guess, this is why people care about it.
I do not think the technical methods of contemporary science are appropriate to what astrology tries to do, but the strive to be consistent in grasping and explaining empirical facts is definitely something to learn from.
Unlike most people here, I do not have an impressive astrological CV. Actually, I am a dunce, I started looking into it more-or-less seriously only a couple of years ago, because I found too many ?coincidences?. I am still trying to figure out what really works. I guess there is some value in ?psychological? approach, maybe just the process of thinking about how and what works in a chart is good in itself. Who knows? But anything mainstream in that branch is so vague, as Tom and others pointed out, you don?t need to be a rocket scientist to see the triviality of their definitions and predictions. I am also cautious of anything that only a few people can do (yes, that?s my contemporary scientific approach talking).
Psychological explanations/predictions are great, of course, because they are so flexible, but who can tell better than yourself how you feel? Just as an experiment, who could tell me what happened to me / how I felt during a recent Uranus transit over my Moon, which is in opposition to Jupiter, to a couple of minutes, the closest aspect in the chart? If the transits are so important and are causative on their own, it should show up, right? Don?t bother: nothing special. The 1988 Saturn/Uranus? It?s been awhile ago, but it?s basically the same blank. I don?t know, maybe I am one of the few people who are deprived. I do not deny that other people feel transits, but the simple fact that there are exceptions means that either there are other factors involved or the whole thing is not what we think it is. That?s the common sense, call it ?scientific?, if you like, method of reasoning, Popper or not.
Just my two cents from ?the other side?.

Nah, I'm one of the dreaded predictive classical Persian types myself. But astrology and current day science are coming from very different places.

Then again, I can show you peer-reviewed studies in medical journals stating that if you're a British man who doesn't shave every day, you have a 30% higher chance of heart attack than one who does.

And worse.

Sadly, I'm serious about that. Even science ain't often what it's cracked up to be.

As for only a few people being able to do astrology, not so sure. It does take an awful lot of study, and I'll be studying my whole life. And I still won't have cracked the half of it.

Oddly, Pluto transits do hit me in most dramatic ways - possibly that natal square and antiscial conjunction between Sun + Pluto in 8. But it doesn't do that to most people, and if I didn't have a bunch of other chart factors pointing to it, it'd probably be a dumb note. Neptune usually is, even though by modern standards it's 'very prominent' in my chart.

Oddly, Pluto transits do hit me in most dramatic ways - possibly that natal square and antiscial conjunction between Sun + Pluto in 8. But it doesn't do that to most people, and if I didn't have a bunch of other chart factors pointing to it, it'd probably be a dumb note. Neptune usually is, even though by modern standards it's 'very prominent' in my chart.

Mmm, mine too. While I don't doubt that other things have to happen to a chart to activate it (progressions, etc.), I think that certain types of charts feel the transits more than others. I just haven't figured out which types yet!

I also think that, unless you are one of those types who checks your chart every day (and some do; not me), a lot of transits are noticed in hindsight. I felt my Saturn Return VERY keenly, and was aware, of course, that it was happening; but it wasn't until after it had passed that I realised just how hard the previous 2-3 years had been. It was a doozy. Which is why I don't think that transits, especially of outer planets, perform an 'acute' function, more like a general zeitgeist which reflects more or less in an individual's life...depending, too, of course, on those progressions and whatnot.

GH

Olivia wrote:Why does anybody care whether astrology is verifiable within the current scientific paradigm? Serious question.

Isn't the clue in the chart itself? Gemini is disposed to collect information, Virgo seperates the wheat from the chaff, Sagittarius ask what it it 'means' and Aquarius assess it's intellectual validity. The water signs meanwhile are reflecting on it's 'value'.

If you want to approach it another way I'd say it's prima facie human nature. If your doctor prescribes a drug and then says we have no objective 'evidence', glossing over Philosophy of Science and/ or Mind deviations, it works then you would be less confident taking it. Young children are motivated to find out how things work, this is seemingly ?hard-wired?.

Jung felt a horoscope gave him a head start in identifying what was happening in the mind of the client. If 'true' then this tool or language should improve the ''human condition''. Gary Phillipson addresses some of this 'what would happen if Astrology became seen as something other than a complex blend of superstition and cognitive errors? in his Year Zero book.

I shave once a week, but i'm pretty sure the fags not the stubble will hasten the decomposing and this ?knowledge? comes from science. Although I do have the chart of a smoker, or do I?

And most of the drugs you take, when you look them up, will have: 'pharmacological action unknown' written in their profiles. A lot of them will be withdrawn from the market within a few years because they simply don't work, or because they do too much harm.

Sometimes observational evidence is useful. Sometimes it's not. And some of the least helpful scientific studies we rely on came about because people in general perceived certain behaviours as politically correct. Which is one of the reasons we had so many highly skewed studies about why saturated fat is bad and carbohydrates are good.

Only it doesn't seem to be true the more we look and from the biggest follow up studies that have been done (much as it's been drummed into public consciousness, it actually seems to be harmful, only gee, the years-long studies designed to prove it, when they contradict it, even when they're bigger, longer-term and have a better methodology don't have press releases sent out beforehand), but it was predicated on the same prejudiced ideas that the shaving study was predicated on. If you're health conscious and of the right social class, you'll do more of the 'do' things and less of the 'don't' things.

Not necessarily. Especially when we don't really know what the right things to do are. If you think this is no biggie, then do realise that when it comes to nutrition, governments follow guidelines, so everyone from schoolchildren to diabetics have been being given bad advice and bad food since around 1970. And it's killed people. A LOT of people.

I can only tell you observationally that during the current 'obesity and diabetes epidemic' that the consumption of fructose has gone up on average from half a pound per person per year to about 60 pounds per person per year since 1970. And that dietary carbohydrate intake has quadrupled, while sat-fat intake has dropped off to very little. In other words, during the time that heart disease, diabetes, and serious overweight has been rising to near-endemic proportions, our diets have changed to more 'healthy' ones by the preponderance of current scientific evidence. If you believe it's really healthy. Only the more we really look, the more it seems that saturated fats don't hurt most people. But sugars and starches sure do.

One big clue, maybe not so strangely, how we've been finding out whether this stuff is true, is by studying the past, and the far past. And there's still some pretty compelling evidence that in that particular regard we've taken a very wrong turn.

I was a research assistant to a neuropsychiatrist once. Brilliant man. Who told me for all we know, clincal depression, another one of the big diseases of our time, could be contagious. Again - this is for all we actually scientifically know about it. I'm guessing this doesn't get mentioned a lot in psychiatric training.

Not that observational evidence is worthless. I want to say it was in 1583 (could be a little off) when Richard Saunders was writing about a non-contagious plague - but everyone who caught it and died had eaten herrings. Other people in the same house as those people who didn't get sick - hadn't eaten the herrings. It was a pretty big deal, about 1800 people per week were dying.

I'd have stayed away from the herrings, myself. But if you've worked in science, you know what a minefield many, many studies can be, whether they're observational or causative. Not all of them - but even scientists have agendas. And the people who pay scientists to study things CERTAINLY have agendas.

Yet, astrology has been around since well before the current scientific paradigm and it continues to work.

Critical thinking skills will serve you far better than relying solely on the scientific evidence in many fields. Science isn't worthless, but you have to go over the study methods and results, and even your own prejudices, with a fine-tooth comb, even in fields like disease research. And that's a pretty central one to most people's lives.

As to science with astrology? Remember the Starbaby debacle? You really think people are going to start carrying out well-designed (and Starbaby wasn't) fairly non-biased astro-scientific studies anytime soon? Who'd pay for that? What would the astrological criteria even be? I don't think we even know enough yet to do it. So, no, I don't think it's going to happen. And that's even without the paradigm problem.

I really don't believe science is worthless. If I did, I wouldn't have studied it myself, spent some years working in it. But, like all human endeavours, it's got limitations.

Sorry - I'll get off the soapbox and leave quietly now.

Great post Olivia!

Olivia wrote:Sadly, I'm serious about that. Even science ain't often what it's cracked up to be.

I know Science is a huge corporate operation with all the ego-related issues on top of it. But I was not writing about the paradigm, but about the method, basically of being as unbiased as possible, taking things critically (again, I am more than aware of how much fluff there is in professional science, but it does not say much about the method). When I first found this forum I was (and still am) impressed that most people here question things and don?t take them for granted. I confess, just a couple of years ago I thought people doing all this esoteric stuff are, well, with their heads somewhere in clouds. Well, I was wrong And that's great, because that's how something can be developed, understood, etc.
Coming back to the original discussion: Tom made a point that the transits by themselves are not necessarily sufficient. And for me, empirically, this is a fact. For you, apparently, they are sufficient, at least in some cases. The question is then, what are the other factors in a chart that, say, I do or do not have to make me insensitive? I mean, if you don?t know it, how sure could you be when you tell somebody they will have this and that based on some transit?

I started with Jung, he does make at least some sense, he has a theory, whatever it is worth. But when I started looking deeper into all this psychological astrology, it is just too vague for me, not enough even to convince myself that it is not just some coincidence. You read about Plutonian types, Neptunian types. Gee, I am all of them! And so are millions and millions of people. If the author did not realize it, I have serious doubts he has anything useful to say, if he had an agenda to sell books, then I don?t trust him either.
Then I read a few articles by Robert Hand and here I am and I like the classical techniques a lot. At least they are testable . Still, I am not sure that all is so determined. Take John Frawley?s take on Hitler. OK, the pure evil, sure. But there should be about 10 people with about the same chart (an estimate from birth rate data for that year), where are these other ?Hitlers?? Also, he?s not the only one who did evil things, millions of Germans then made all the atrocities possible and took part in them, was that in their charts? I doubt it. That?s something I am still struggling with.

Critical thinking is extremely important, both for science and astrology. You ask who would pay for it? One of the things that got me impressed in classical astrology was when I tried to do temperament analysis for a few people I know very well. I know, statistics are poor, but still, if this is not impressive what else is. Science with all its neuroscience is nowhere close to be able to do it. So suppose some people in corporate HR get convinced it works, I am sure the money will start flowing. But do you want that? It?s just plain scary. Especially if you take into account all the mistakes people can make and that the terms we are operating with are not so well defined at all. I am reading Valens now and what struck me is that in the examples he talks about ?notable? people. Who were they? What is notable? Is it better to be lucky, smart, or whatever, to get rich and be ?notable? for a few years, or live a quiet life? So I do hope that those who practice astrology take it really seriously and critically, especially those who work with clients. Because this is, I think, subtler, but deeper than medicine.
Cheers

If I gave the impression that transits alone were enough - I didn't mean to! I simply pointed out that because of beholding signs, reception, partile aspect, and partile antiscial conjunction - I personally experience the dramatic Pluto transits full-on. And there's usually something else going on - if you see a theme repeatedly that's when it's most likely to show up, not a one-off of something like 'you'll have a violent death'.

Now, if you don't have a partile - in my case within a minute of arc - Sun-Pluto square with reception, and if they're not conjunct within a minute of arc by antiscia and not sensitively placed in your chart - you're unlikely to experience them the way I do! At least I hope you won't.

As I said, Neptune by modern standards is much more prominent in my chart, but I'm sitting here as it's conjunct my Mars, squaring my Moon/Algol conjunction, and opposing Pluto - has been for a couple months.

Nada. Of course Saturn is currently sitting on my IC/Venus conjunction squaring my Ascendant, and Uranus is opposite. Are people dropping out of my life like flies? Ooh yeah. But if you look at my SR for this year, it makes sense that that would be a sensitive transit.

It really, really depends on the chart.

And I agree, critical thinking is vital, especially if you're involved in an esoteric discipline.

And no, I don't want to see personnel departments (human resources - gotta love the way that reduces us all to nothing but cash assets, though yes, it's what they call it these days) start replacing wonky semi-enneagrams with astrology either.

I just don't understand why it seems so important to so many folks to scientifically 'prove' astrology. And yes, I know you can't prove it scientifically, but validate it.

Not something I believe to be possible, and in the world we live in now - not desirable, either. If astrology is truly a divine art, if it's there to help guide our lives and make us better people, I can think of few worse tragedies than putting it to use the way genetic testing and the like have been co-opted by some workplaces.

Thirding the post by Olivia. Being more on the corporate side of this issue, and seeing to the extant statistics can be malleable, it is a wonder anyone would trust them at all. Then having people on the astrological side, some who should know better and others who have a rather thin understanding of the subject (not that I?m bragging, I know full well that I have many a gap in statistical knowledge) spend a lot of time and effort on what they believe, or sell as they believe, are serious and concrete proofs of whatever particular technique or planet or whatever, but that would fold like a house of cards under any serious testing.