As an aside,

Tom wrote:A long time ago when I first started this, a couple of posts were so ridiculously accurate that they practically named the individual. It spoiled it for everyone else. I tried to ignore it, but it became too obvious what was being done. So I switched formats and with a suggestion from Deb, started doing it this way.

Actually, Jupiter, Saturn and the nodes are enough to find a date very quickly (and even excluding the nodes, it can be done without much trouble). For this reason I've always felt it would be better to use charts of less public figures, as Deb did a while back ( the 'time of greatest danger' exercise).

Wow I got them all right! What a relief. Its a little nerve racking sticking your neck out like this. But fun too.

Its a positive affirmation that traditional astrological techniques really do work. .

Thanks to Tom for a very interesting natal challenge. I think removing the data was a wise choice. I have had the suspicion on more than one occasion in the past that some people were not just using astrology to get the answer.... Having 3 charts made it more difficult and a little bewildering at first but ultimately it was a rewarding process.

Getting by without the outers felt quite effortless. I think I will try dropping the outers from my delineation of natal charts for a while. Still, it will be interesting to see the outers on the challenge charts. Did we really miss out or avoid a distracting influence?

I accept Martin's point that one can still effectively cheat by using the slow moving Nodes and Jupiter and Saturn positions. Still its practically more difficult without a precise location. I certainly couldn't be bothered trawling through chart after chart to get a Mystery Challenge right! How utterly sad and pathetic is that?

Still, I do have access to a lot of fairly obscure, accurate Scottish natal data and I will be happy to pass it Tom's way if its of use in further challenges like this.

Inspired by this challenge I think I will get my Association to try and run a similar evening looking at different natal charts.

Mark

I think an interesting follow-on exercise now would be to look at transits and progressions as to the timing of the career turning points as to why the not-outstanding chart would result in the success that was experienced in the musicians life.

pankajdubey wrote:

I think that Venus out of sect and not aspecting MC as Mark and others point out was the clinching aspect of chart 3 not being a musician.

That was certainly an important factor. However, the strongly Saturnian factors of Chart 3 and the fact Lord 9 was in the 10th (whole sign houses) is what settled it for me.

Mark

Hello Mark,

Re: "Still its practically more difficult without a precise location."

Using just Tom's given positions, I had the following chart within about 10 mins time. (the positions in the derived chart are correct to within a couple minutes of arc, despite not knowing the exact location)
I did not participate in this challenge publicly, since I don't come at this from a Traditional perspective. (Maybe in the future, the same challenge could be cross-posted so that other approaches can also be compared/considered. If they're posted separately, then there is no overloading of "modern" ideas in the Traditional section or vice versa. Just an idea...)

Perhaps we can do a challenge where a (non-celebrity, but known correctly timed) chart can be given and some date when a major event happened and we have to try and derive the event. I think that would be a fun (and varied) exercise...

Thanks, Tom, again for the challenge. I did work on the challenge, even though I didn't post about it.

Peace

James

Using just Tom's given positions, I had the following chart within about 10 mins time.

OK, so you took the decision to challenge yourself to identify the chart data and then had a way to identify that as the musician, and then did the honourable thing and not comment - or maybe you decided not to participate and then did the chart - either way let me make a response to the comments about how someone might have obtained the chart details if they'd wanted to.

Investigating the data is one sort of challenge but I can guarantee that the better, more enjoyable, and more productive challenge is to see what we can get by just looking at the charts, and what techniques play out in practice. Once the identify is known, the brain flips - we start thinking about what is known of that person rather than reading the symbolism - we can't challenge ouselves in the same way, or get the benefits of honest realisation about where we went right or wrong - and more importantly, why.

Since astrology refelects time I guess the the only way to force everyone into just looking at the charts and not getting any kind of outside input is to offer a blank chart with no details. But the point about omitting the outers is not to prevent investigation work, because if people prefer to do that it's their choice - the idea is to keep the focus on traditional techniques and not make something that is supposed to be a mystery too obviously not a mystery. People have to choose to spend time tracking down information for charts like this and putting clues together to identify the characters before they are revealed - they have to consciously step outside the borders of this challenge (and know that they are doing that). If that happens and then someone contributes it's a shame because there is no personal satisfaction for anyone in getting the choices right if anything but astrological reasoning was used. But again, their choice. All we are doing here is providing the means for members to do this if they want to. There are several layers of challenge in these exercises, and one is to recognise with how comfortable we feel left alone with just the astrology. So James, next time, why don't you just have a go instead? We will all be watching you, and it will add to the excitement and mystery for all of us to wonder whether you will make a choice just using the chart as posted. And it doesn't matter a jot if you are right or wrong because no astrologer works this way in real life. And you don't have to exclude yourself if you don't generally use traditional techniques - just be prepared to lose the outers for the purpose of this exercise.

As for your suggestion, I have something in mind that will fit your suggestion - maybe next month in the general nativities forum, where anyone can feel free to use whatever technique they like.

In the meantime, I liked this challenge just as it was and hope we can keep the focus now on follow-up discussion for those who did puzzle over the charts and went through the angst of wavering over this and that and finally picking one, and then wondering whether to change it. None of these characters are known to me so I hope we can go through all three charts in more detail after Tom has contributed his feedback. I'm still looking and thinking about all three charts, because I've come to assume something about their characters based on their nativities. I think it was a great selection of alternate themes - one an artist, one a sportsman and one a theologian: the key midheaven factors were Venus, Mars and Mercury - perfect.

Atlantean wrote: Using just Tom's given positions, I had the following chart within about 10 mins time. (the positions in the derived chart are correct to within a couple minutes of arc, despite not knowing the exact location)

I think that's why it's better if we use charts of unknown persons if we can. Obviously the challenge wasn't to find the date of a given chart, any of us can do that. You should have played along

I know some people here are obviously professional astrologers and therefore one assumes have access to a wide number of charts.

I wonder if someone could anonymise the date and do the same thing for a client of theirs who is relatively successful or enjoys their career. Would this be possible?

From Deb's and Paul's response, there is perhaps a misconception, or maybe I wasn't clear enough in my message.

I didn't take the positions to go find the date and then find the person that we are talking about. (Up until Tom said it was Dave Brubek, I had no idea whatsoever who it might be) ALL I did was recreate the chart, astrologically, mainly so that I could see exactly where Neptune was, since we were talking about a musician, and so that I could look at the chart's midpoints, which required being able to have it in my software of choice.

This is not what lead to me not participating in the challenge, as I see absolutely nothing wrong with recreating the given chart. Recreating it could not really give me any edge in the challenge. I didn't participate here because it is the Traditional section and Tom asked us to explain how we got to our results. As the second sentence in my reasoning would have started, "Because of Neptune being in the 2nd House (talents) and trining the Sun,....", there was no place for it in this thread.

Paul, it is an assumption that only through publicly participating that this could be informative or instructive. I did exactly as you did, ie. looked at all three charts and then revisited them a couple of times. The only thing that I didn't do was post about it. If you'll read my posts, I still haven't said anything about whether I got any of them right. ie. I'm not "claiming" anything. My post was a demonstration that when the positions are given to the minute, a full working chart can very, very quickly be had. Were it someone famous that could be found somehow through searching, or were it some obscure musician that was actually one of Tom's clients would not change my experience of this challenge one whit. [In fact, because of past challenges, I actually thought Tom was speaking of a musician with local reknown, not someone so obviously known in the world of (jazz) music. In other words, I thought from the beginning that it was someone "non-Googleable" in order to ensure a level playing ground and prevent any other ways of finding the answer.]

I do agree that to go find the celebrity cancels the instructive element of the challenge.

Had this challenge been in the general area of the Forum, I would have still recreated the chart, the only difference is that I would have posted my complete reasoning about it.

I completely support these challenges (or would not be asking for more)... though I do think that (in the mystery challenges) the idea that it is a mystery personage should be enforced by using personal clients or otherwise non-famous people.

Peace

James

Atlantean wrote: Paul, it is an assumption that only through publicly participating that this could be informative or instructive. I did exactly as you did, ie. looked at all three charts and then revisited them a couple of times. The only thing that I didn't do was post about it.

No my assumption was that you discovered the person by finding the time of the chart.


What were your thoughts on the charts out of interest? Did you get any of them right? I don't know who any of these people are I have to say, but hopefully I can wiki them later and see how their charts reflect them.

Deb,

Re: "...just be prepared to lose the outers for the purpose of this exercise..."

That was the only part I didn't fully understand. Including the outers lets people that use them have them, and those that don't can ignore them.

[I do understand the justification perceived by this being the traditional section, but it doesn't negate my previous sentence... ]

Take care... and yes, please more challenges (with non-famous people) and I'll be more than happy to participate!

I especially look forward to the "guess the event" challenge as you mentioned might be coming.

Peace

James