After precisely 3 months of dedicated study I finished the essay on the suicide that I said to some of you that I was writing .
I will really appreciate to hear your comments about it in private and publically in the forum since I believe in the exchange of ideas and that Traditional astrology is able to go ahead if people who love the Art have the mind open enough to look through the charts without preconception. Much of our colleagues believe that suicide is a question of free will.
As a psychologyst I had firsthand contact with suicidal issues for many years, and learned that it's something to be always feared and proactively regarded, because the suicide is precisely as it appeared in this astrological essay: loaded with deception, impulsive, malicious, and hard to control.
I believe I found out a pattern. Let?s see your opinion:-)
Sincerely
Cl?lia Romano
http://www.astrologiahumana.com/OnSuicide.pdf

Thanks for sharing your study!
I will print it and take a close look because I'm also interested on this subject.

Dan

Hello Dan:

Nice to know you are also interested in the topic. Let me know after reading the article what you found out about my conclusions!

best

Cl?lia

Clelia,

Congratulations; that is really exciting! I look forward to reading your findings.

Kind regards,
Nina

Nina:

I look forward to reading your findings.

And I look forward to your thoughts about them.

Even studying many cases I feel like I needed to be tested again and again to confirm my hypothesys.

regards
Clelia

Clelia, I can't see anything but a grey page when I download the pdf file, using both Firefox and Safari on my Mac. Do you think this could be a Windows/Mac issue? I'd love to read your essay.

Clelia, I can't see anything but a grey page when I download the pdf file, using both Firefox and Safari on my Mac. Do you think this could be a Windows/Mac issue? I'd love to read your essay.

hummm I don?t know, anyone complaint about this kind of issue. Try to read other pdf files on my website. If it works maybe it is happening because I protected too much the file.

I?m waiting your feedback! In any case I can send the archive in pvt,

Clelia

Thank you, Clelia. It must have something to do with my browser settings, because I can open some of the articles, but not others. I wonder if other forum members have similar issues.

Hi Cl?lia,

first of all, i would like to congratulate you for this research that you have presented here! I have read your pdf two/three times, and i would like to make some comments to it.

I have also done some works like that in astrology (animodar and a statistical study of religiosity), and i also know some of the pitfalls we encounter. Also, statistics is a tool that i use a lot in my work (computer science). However, please note that the comprehension of someone outside the study is very limited, so some of my comments may be out of sync with your work..

Here it goes:

1) In your first page, you talk about the size of the test set. Basically, as you can't study the all population of suicides, you must select a representative set (randomly selected), which you can somehow say it represents the (bigger) one. The idea behind is "Confidence interval", ie, you want to measure how confident you are about the smaller set being representative of the entire population. The article in wikipedia explains very well the subject (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_interval), and it has a practical example also. Basically, for an interval of confidence of about 95%, you should have a random set of about 800 cases (it is an equation).. Polls for government elections have sets of this size, so it is pretty standard..

2) On page 3 you say "Many astrologers question whether astrology is adequate for statistical studies, and I am beginning to agree with them: statistics is the best way to set apart individual factors, however it misses complex configurations.". However, i believe you're wrong: astrology is not only adequate for statistical studies, but it is build over statistics. Let me clarify: when someone says that "a person that has a dignified Venus is fond about artistic subjects", it is in fact saying that "there is a probability of X% that a person that has a dignified Venus is fond about artistic subjects". It is of great importance to know that value of X.
Also, in my opinion, complex configurations aren't missed by statistics, but by people, ie, complex configurations leads to excess of information, and so, begins to be hard to work on.

In my work of the animodar, and even more on my (unpublished but live presented) work about Religion, i've processed about 200 test cases, and many configurations (like if the ruler of house 9, house9, Jupiter, and Saturn had any configuration (aspect, disposition, same ruler, etc.) with the same thing for house 1, and other conditions). Of course, i used skyPlux to compute all this data in 2 seconds (yes, 2 seconds but many hours to do the programming), generated a table with hundreds of columns, and then used a software to "extract" automatically patterns from the data (Rapid Miner at http://rapid-i.com/). The hard work was then for interpreting the rules and graphics that it generated. Just to say that after some things, you have to automatize things, or you will get lost. However, it is not statistics that it is of no use, but it is data overrun..

You give an example of complexity by Ptolomy, but also that example can be read that "there is a probability of X% that if each of the lights should be pivotal and each of the malefics [respectively] should be present or else in opposition...". It is just a (complex) rule that can be evaluated as true or false..

3) On page 2 you talk about Venus having malefic aspects with the ruler of House 8, twice as often than in the control group. Why did you reject this only because it is too simple? You then say that your data set is too small, but 320 cases is big enough for a semi-conclusion. Or you tested this with less cases? You also talk about differences of 102% and 109%. What those numbers really mean, i didn't understand.. My max is 100%!

4) On page 8 you say that you've discovered examples about the use of the part of spirit in your data set but also in the control set. It would be good to present some numbers for comparing your data set with the control set..

5) On page 9, did you test any of those aphorisms? Number for comparing the probability of occurrence in your data set against your control set?

6) On page 26 you present your conclusions, like "the Moon frequently gets into configuration with malefics or the ruler of the 8th House. The expected configuration is not by aspect, but by rulership instead". Again, you should have numbers to compare both sets. Maybe something that you seemed to notice more is not really occurring more, but stayed in your mind, and it is a kind of a bias. The same thing for the other aspects of your conclusion.

7) Having the previous things more concrete, you could present your findings more clearly. For instance, you say that the moon aspects malefics or the 8th ruler, or that mars appears angular in difficult houses, and sometimes in conjunction with mercury. However, we don't get to understand how much importance each of those statements have. Maybe the moon aspecting malefics accounts for 70% of the suicides. But as you don't show any numbers, the statements tend to get generic, and we can't extract the most importants from there..

8 ) In page 30 you show a guide that lists the importance of each statement in the previous point. Again, it would be important to know the numbers that back you up..


Bottom line, i say again that you have an excellent work here, and the only thing keeping it from being perfect, in my opinion, is the lack of numbers like i've mentioned. They are important to show us the weight that each sentence of the conclusion has. For instance, if a sentence has a probability of 90% it is pretty strong, but 10% is almost nothing. For instance, if i say:
- The moon aspecting malefics accounts for 90% of the suicides is different than saying
- The moon aspecting malefics accounts for 10% of the suicides.
The second is almost of no importance..

I hope you keep up the good work, and don't mind the fact of me saying things like "you should this", "you should that", etc. Accept my apologies for that, but it is that you have done a great and important work here..

Thanks,
Jo?o Ventura

This is a really interesting study, Clelia! You have a really deft and thoughtful analysis of an important problem. I especially liked how you gave the charts individual readings, rather than simply running through lists of chart placements.

Just a few questions:

1. It appears that you used a control group of non-suicidal people. Can you say something about how they were selected?

2. Did you look at transits? In the absence of a foolproof specific astrological signature in the natal chart; I wonder whether fragile people might commit suicide at a particular time, when they percieved external factors as overwhelming. Possibly progressions could also push someone to a crisis point. Maybe emotionally fragile people who don't undergo really harsh transits/progressions will get through their suicidal period.

3. Are you familiar with the New York suicide study? [Nona Press, "The New York Suicide Study," Journal of Geocosmic Research (NCGR) vol. 2 #2; also discussed in Geoffrey Dean, Recent Advances in Natal Astrology and Geoffrey Cornelius, The Moment of Astrology. I haven't read the original and it is probably a modern astrological study.

4. Celebrity charts (like Kurt Cobain, John Berryman, Ernest Hemingway) are much of what we have to go on, but they are often troublesome to work with from a research perspective, because they are of people who are unique--and often very public figures--in some way.

5. An astrological chart does not show many, many things that might affect a suicide's final decision. For example, someone might have had a strong religious faith that forbids suicide; someone else might have had better mental health care than another. Also, the question of "What is a suicide?" is not always straightforward. If someone dies of complications of alcoholism, the death certific would probably say sometime like accute cirrhosis of the liver or a brain injury from the person falling down in a drunken haze, not suicide; even though the person essentially "drank himself to death."

I loved your statement, "Under the belief of having discovered something consistent, I slept one night in glory."

Yes, most researchers have "been there, done that!"

I feel really sorry for having missed your posts.
I frequently forget to check the forum out for new posts, taking for granted that I will be emailed when an answer come out from a topic I?m following...and sometimes this simply does not happen.
The right moment is gone but what I can answer to Jo?o Ventura is that I really do not believe statistics can be of much help in astrology. I?m not an expert in statistics myself but I admire a lot Guaguelin work, and I doubt that other astrologer will be able to do better than him in number of cases and method. But in this field statistics is like to go to the ocean for months, bringing back an only fish. It?s admirable if this one is a true and valid answer, but I don?t have enough endurance and expertise to do that.
The use of statistics is controversial in astrology but I have to encourage you to publish your results if you have them. I expect that you will have more than a fish to show us;-)
I agree that some of my conclusions could be a bias. Until now I am always looking at new suicidal charts trying to to reassure myself about my conclusions or not. And every time I feel my heart beating faster, anxious to know if I saw the right thing or not, and If the new chart corroborates or refutes my theories.

We are human and we can fail, so I published the charts and my rationale to arrive to the conclusions I got.
Of course opinions coming from people who view the charts in different ways are welcome, because we always learn with our pairs.

Sorry for the delay!

Cl?lia

Hello waybread!

I?ll answer your important question, as soon as possible...and sorry for the delay...

best wishes

Clelia

waybread wrote:This is a really interesting study, Clelia! You have a really deft and thoughtful analysis of an important problem. I especially liked how you gave the charts individual readings, rather than simply running through lists of chart placements.

Just a few questions:

1. It appears that you used a control group of non-suicidal people. Can you say something about how they were selected?

2. Did you look at transits? In the absence of a foolproof specific astrological signature in the natal chart; I wonder whether fragile people might commit suicide at a particular time, when they percieved external factors as overwhelming. Possibly progressions could also push someone to a crisis point. Maybe emotionally fragile people who don't undergo really harsh transits/progressions will get through their suicidal period.

3. Are you familiar with the New York suicide study? [Nona Press, "The New York Suicide Study," Journal of Geocosmic Research (NCGR) vol. 2 #2; also discussed in Geoffrey Dean, Recent Advances in Natal Astrology and Geoffrey Cornelius, The Moment of Astrology. I haven't read the original and it is probably a modern astrological study.

4. Celebrity charts (like Kurt Cobain, John Berryman, Ernest Hemingway) are much of what we have to go on, but they are often troublesome to work with from a research perspective, because they are of people who are unique--and often very public figures--in some way.

5. An astrological chart does not show many, many things that might affect a suicide's final decision. For example, someone might have had a strong religious faith that forbids suicide; someone else might have had better mental health care than another. Also, the question of "What is a suicide?" is not always straightforward. If someone dies of complications of alcoholism, the death certific would probably say sometime like accute cirrhosis of the liver or a brain injury from the person falling down in a drunken haze, not suicide; even though the person essentially "drank himself to death."

I loved your statement, "Under the belief of having discovered something consistent, I slept one night in glory."

Yes, most researchers have "been there, done that!"