13 by Tom Like so many traditional astrologers you are "stuck" in the 19th century. Like so many modern astrologers, e.g Noel Tyl, you think traditional astrology began in the 19th century and ended in the 20th. Please make your remarks a little less personal. For the record, 19th century astrology up until Alan Leo in Britain and Marc Edmund Jones in the US was a pale imitation of the real thing with very few exceptions (e.g Pearce). A little historical perspective is required here. 1) I don't believe the idea that primary directions pinpoint an exact event, as some 19th century sources would tell us, but are instead yet another chronocrater for periods of time an event would occur. This is in fact an accurate statement and it could well hold true for some 21st century astrologers who are only now beginning to understand the use and value of primary directions. The author isn't stuck anywhere. It is a fact that people like Lilly, and Morin, used primary directions more as broad indicators of events and narrowed down the prediction with increasingly precise techniques like returns and last and least: transits. If we can do better, fine. I have no problem with topocentric priamry directions, either. In fact I love all primary directions and the fact that people are using them again. However, the Prince Charles examples are pure hindsight astrology.The most important question astrologers have to answer is can we do even some of this before the events? Is Charles' broken ankle predictable? Is anything in Charles' life predictable? If not astrology is little more than a cute parlor game. As for Randi the fact that he is a competent stage magician has nothing to do with his inherent dishonesty when he comes to astrology, and I would guess, other subjects. He may think he is mankind's savior from all those impostors, but that is an psychological problem. With the exception of Geller, I've never heard of any of the others you list. And including Geller, my life is no better off with or without knowing they were frauds as is true for hundreds of millions of others. Randi is just not that important, and given some of the statement's he's made (Ptolemy invented astrology) so poorly informed that he cannot be taken seriously. I mean would you go to an auto mechanic if he thought the world was flat or he was really good at landscaping? Ignorance doesn't stop Randi from pontificating about astrology and other subjects he probably hasn't studied. That makes him a worm. Tom
14 by epurdue Isaac Starkman wrote:GR wrote: Like so many traditional astrologers you are "stuck" in the 19th century. Thankfully we have things like Project Hindsight's rebuilding of 19th century astrology, Robert Zoller's Victorian Astrology course (DVA), and Chris Warnock's "victorianastrology.com" to carry the torch. As time goes on, I'm questioning how much good digging into celebrities' charts actually does. Sure they can show examples, but as Tom said it's not really proving anything. As much as Dr. H's book on the presidents' rectifications is informative, I question how much actual prediction I can do with it. Hindsight is 20/20. Now if we get to the point where we publish concrete predictions, then that's a different story. By this I mean with actual clients we don't know. We already do it with horary. I think we need to build up a greater body of work to get to where we are with horary now. Heck I'm trying to get there. Then again, with natal predictions you sometimes have to wait decades to see if they come true.
15 by Tom I should point out in my previous post, I did not mean to denigrate 19th century astrology. Although I do think there was more "meat" in Renaissance and 17th century astrology, there was some fine astrology in the 19th century. I mentioned Pearce but there were others including Varley and John Worsdale. I've read most of Luke Broughton's book The Elements of Astrology and although he was an outstanding astrologer and highly influential one, his work seems to lack things that I can find in Lilly or Morin. Maybe it's just me. As time goes on, I'm questioning how much good digging into celebrities' charts actually does This is a a separate topic, but using celebrity charts does have value as a learning tool. A teacher cannot pick up the chart of a infant and have his class work with it because there will be no feedback for years, probably decades. We can see the astrology quite clearly with a variety of methods after the fact. Then it is our charge to take what we've learned and apply it to the unknown and we hope we're correct. The problem is that the symbolism can be crystal clear afterward, when we look forward we see there are a number of possibilities great and small. Which one do we choose? I've been working once again with the chart of Lee Harvey Oswald. I started by applying some principles Morin mentions in his text, to see how well they worked out. Oswald has this horrific Moon in Capricorn in the 7th. It is not being in Capricorn that makes it horrific, but other things in addition to being in its detriment. One of those things is the fact that it is disposited by Saturn Rx in Aries (fall). This is not a good beginning especially since the Moon is Oswald's ASC ruler. So I'm looking at this and finding all the things I know are true about LHO from the biographical information I've read, and quite by accident I discover another famous person with a Capricorn Moon disposited by Saturn in Aries - George Washington. There are very few things these two men had in common. So what in the chart can we find that will show us how one went wrong and the other didn't. It's not as though we cannot find flaws in Washington and good things about Oswald, but clearly something is different. It is true that, if we use the 10:00am time taken from a family bible for GW, Taurus rises and that is the exaltation of the Moon. But Venus is in Pisces in his chart, the sign of her exaltation. And this may be the difference. I'd like to find other charts with Cancer rising to work with. The other thing about Oswald is that regardless of what we think of his role or non-role in the Kennedy assassination, he is inextricably linked to the events in Dallas on Nov 22, 1963. He did come to national prominence, and that should be in the chart in some way. So did Washington. Anyway, I'm working on it. Tom
16 by Isaac Starkman Eddy wrote: My problem with primary directions as a (rectification/prediction) tool is: 1. I find it hard to 'notice' them like transits; 2. Depending on what method and points(aspects, bodies, lots, midpoints) you use there usually are more than 1 directions every year in life; 3. There are quite a few events every year that could be related to the direction (especially in the lives of politicians/famous persons); 4. So it is may be almost always possible to find something with primary directions. Rectification and prediction are two separate subjects as I will explain. For rectification, we have, let us say, 25 major events in the history of a person and we have his approximate birth time. In Prince Charles case, because his birth time was precisely recoded, we can limit the search for +/- 15 minutes. In other cases search could spans 2 hours and even more. The rectification process is simple: the original birth time is pushed forward or backward every minute until we get the maximum appropriate aspects (true symbolism!) for maximum events. In other words: trying to find out the time that will produce the best in quantity and quality. To perform rectification by hand is of course very tedious work. My program Polaris drastically reduce the time and the energy. I'm using 9 aspects, 10 planets, houses, NN, Parts of Fortune (only with conj. and opposition), no midpoints or any other factors. Once you have a well rectified chart, the number of the aspects in topocentric primary directions are, in average, 25-30 aspects for each year. In the rectification process, this should not bother us, because we are dealing only with known events that occurred on certain dates. Thus, on 12 Feb 1958 Charles has the aspect III 0 Sat. It should not bother us because we don?t know what happened around that date and it has no influence on our rectification. Most of your remarks and Tom's remarks are about prediction. As Alexander Marr's pointed out, it is almost impossible to perform prediction with only the radix, even if it was precisely rectified and verified with all the techniques as I mentioned in my article. Only with rectified Epoch (conception chart) we can perform predictions. About the way to find the epoch you can read in my other posts in this forum and in my article. I know very well that many astrologers will deride of the possibility of finding this chart and some will just skip to the next post. For Prince Charles, the epoch is casting for 22 Feb 1948 18.44.08 UT. Once we have a rectified chart for the Epoch we can perform Dual Test. The Dual-Test quadruples the number of aspects, compared with the usual Radix analysis and thus improves the directional system considerably by providing a large number of appropriate aspects for any event. This fact enables us for the first time to make much more accurate predictions. Example: 19 Feb 1960 birth of brother Prince Andrew: Asc 120 Ven R/E 5' Mer 0 PAF E/E 0' MC 180 Jup E/E 8' Jup 180 MC E/E 7' Mars 30 III R/E3' The first aspect is directed Asc of the radix 120 Venus of the epoch with orb of 5 minutes of arc. In that case there is no primary direction in the radix, but 5 appropriate aspects for birth in the family. An important event will never occur with only one single aspect. Only accumulation of several aspects with appropriate symbolism and with very small orbs will indicate major event. Here is example of prediction for Benjamin Netanyahu: Radix: 21 Oct 1949 11.14.48 EEDT Tel Aviv Asc 22Sag55' Epoch:12 Jan 1949 16.54.34 UT Asc 18Leo07' Around 1st Oct 2009 he will have the following primary directions in Topocentric System: Sat 60 MC E/E 0' PAF 0 VIII E/E 1' VIII 0 PAF E/E 1' Asc 180 Mars R/R 1' Nep 45 Sun E/R 1' Nep 120 NN E/R 2' Nep 0 Plu E/E 2' Mars 90 VIII E/E 4' Sun 150 Nep e/e 4' Asc 60 Mars E/R 6' Nep 0 Ven E/R 9' Sun 180 Sat E/R 9' MC 180 Mars R/E 11' NN 0 Ura E/E 10' What will happen to him? The first possibility is the death of his father (age 100!), because there are aspects with Saturn/MC, Sun/Saturn, 5 aspects with Neptune (mourning), 3 aspects with 8th house, 2 aspects with NN (separation). The other possibility is trouble as PM, defeat, etc
17 by Isaac Starkman Tom wrote: 1) I don't believe the idea that primary directions pinpoint an exact event, as some 19th century sources would tell us, but are instead yet another chronocrater for periods of time an event would occur. This is in fact an accurate statement and it could well hold true for some 21st century astrologers who are only now beginning to understand the use and value of primary directions. The author isn't stuck anywhere. It is a fact that people like Lilly, and Morin, used primary directions more as broad indicators of events and narrowed down the prediction with increasingly precise techniques like returns and last and least: transits. If we can do better, fine. I have no problem with topocentric priamry directions, either. In fact I love all primary directions and the fact that people are using them again. However, the Prince Charles examples are pure hindsight astrology.The most important question astrologers have to answer is can we do even some of this before the events? Is Charles' broken ankle predictable? Is anything in Charles' life predictable? If not astrology is little more than a cute parlor game. Tom I think that I demonstrated that primary directions do pinpoint an exact event (exact means very small orb, 2 weeks in average). It is impossible to rectify a chart if we see only the "periods"; only the concrete events with exact dates are valid: birth and death in the family, accidents etc. "pure hindsight astrology"??? The very first thing every astrologer should do is to rectify the chart with a minimum of known major events and this is the most difficult process. It is a waste of time to delineate a chart, and definitely to perform predictions without identifying the exact angles. Prediction is possible only after the chart is rectified, and as I explained in the other post prediction is much easier and more secure only with the epoch. Much more explanations are in Alexander Marr's books.
18 by Tom Prediction is possible only after the chart is rectified, My remarks were not aimed at rectification. No one said that prediction can be made with the radix alone. No one. In fact I said precisely the opposite. And I would venture that everyone on Skyscript understands the difference between rectification and prediction. My point is that a chart claimed to be accurate based on a rectification is only hindsight (and it is). In order to be sure the chart works, a prediction or several predictions should be made from it and they should pan out at least as well as a documented birth time. There is a rectification of JFK's chart that is instructive. The astrologer rectified the chart (altering the accepted birth time by a minute or so) and then claims a primary direction involving Saturn on the MC occurred on Nov 22, 1963. Of course it did. The chart was rectified to do that. That's not impressive even if there are other events that occur close to the "hits" of the primary directions because JFK is dead and no future prediction is possible. All through astrology's history great claims of phenomenal accuracy are made for this or that technique. Worsdale loved to predict death and claim later that the native died right on schedule. But he at least used a combination of methods. He used ordinary citizens making verification of his claims at this late date impossible. But it's not his fault a lot of time has passed since the publication of his work. Yet astrology's predictive skills, despite all these "infallible" methods, hasn't improved much. There might be valid reasons for this or maybe it just isn't that easy. Tom
19 by Isaac Starkman Tom wrote:Like so many traditional astrologers you are "stuck" in the 19th century. Like so many modern astrologers, e.g Noel Tyl, you think traditional astrology began in the 19th century and ended in the 20th. Please make your remarks a little less personal. For the record, 19th century astrology up until Alan Leo in Britain and Marc Edmund Jones in the US was a pale imitation of the real thing with very few exceptions (e.g Pearce). A little historical perspective is required here. Tom[/color] First, my apology for Gabe for using improper expression. This wasn't my intention. My intention was that many astrologers just have no idea about topocentric primary directions and the work of the late Alexander Marr. I know very well the history of astrology and I do appriciate the contribution of the old masters. To my opinion, the primary directions by Lilly, Placidus, Regiomontanus, Campanus and the other old masters are all only a pale shadow comparing to the work of Kuhr, Page, Polish & Marr.
20 by Eddy Isaac Starkman wrote:Rectification and prediction are two separate subjectsI'd believe that, according to the method of this theory, once the birth time is exactly known predicting events should be easy now. Perhaps not the character and content of the event but at least the moment. Once you have a well rectified chart, the number of the aspects in topocentric primary directions are, in average, 25-30 aspects for each year. Once we have a rectified chart for the Epoch we can perform Dual Test. The Dual-Test quadruples the number of aspects, compared with the usual Radix analysis and thus improves the directional system considerably by providing a large number of appropriate aspects for any event. First I had to google for Dual-test to find what it means. http://noeltyl.com/techniques/080630.html In my opinion this number of aspects is too great. With 25-30 * 4 you get 100-120 aspects per year. That's averagely about 1 for every 3 a 4days. With an orb of 2 weeks on each side of the exact point this gives on average 8 aspects. The chance of even getting the required accumulation is 100%. I have serious problems with this. I don't mean to discredit your work, I apply this 'chance approach' also in studying my own chart and my personal prognostications. Applied to Prince Charles a prediction/timing of an event for the following months always will lead to results. Prince Charles as a famous person, busy in public life will have enough issues going on to find anything. This is in general my objection to delineation charts/events of the famous. One always will find something, even with the wrong chart . By the way I wonder if any astrologer predicted Obama's defeat of 20 may now the Senate voted overwhelmingly against closure of Guantanamo Bay.
21 by Eddy Tom wrote:No one said that prediction can be made with the radix alone. I'm not sure but as far as I understand I think Isaac referred to the use of the conception chart as a required part of the prediction. I believe the problem with determining the moment of conception astrologically is that it cannot be proved since doctors cannot (yet?) determine the exact moment of conception. As obviously also the mother is involved, the moment of conception might be visible in transits, directions etc. related to her natal chart. All through astrology's history great claims of phenomenal accuracy are made for this or that technique. Worsdale loved to predict death and claim later that the native died right on schedule. But he at least used a combination of methods. He used ordinary citizens making verification of his claims at this late date impossible. But it's not his fault a lot of time has passed since the publication of his work. Yet astrology's predictive skills, despite all these "infallible" methods, hasn't improved much. There might be valid reasons for this or maybe it just isn't that easy. TomI would prefer the use of charts of ordinary citizens. Nowadays with close to exact recording of birth times the data are reliable and research on exact predictions could be done. The 17th century astronomer John Flamsteed already in 1674 questioned the methods of rectifications because there were so many rules methods etc. Although he seems to have known quite a lot of the subject of astrology he finally rejected it. It's a bit weird though that in 1675 he had cast a chart for the foundation of Greenwich Observatory . Back to Randi. With the broken back event and perhaps the event of his videos being kicked out of youtube a couple of months ago, it theoretically might be possible to rectify his chart and to predict another event.
22 by Isaac Starkman Eddy wrote:Isaac Starkman wrote:Rectification and prediction are two separate subjectsI'd believe that, according to the method of this theory, once the birth time is exactly known predicting events should be easy now. Perhaps not the character and content of the event but at least the moment. Once you have a well rectified chart, the number of the aspects in topocentric primary directions are, in average, 25-30 aspects for each year. Once we have a rectified chart for the Epoch we can perform Dual Test. The Dual-Test quadruples the number of aspects, compared with the usual Radix analysis and thus improves the directional system considerably by providing a large number of appropriate aspects for any event. First I had to google for Dual-test to find what it means. http://noeltyl.com/techniques/080630.html In my opinion this number of aspects is too great. With 25-30 * 4 you get 100-120 aspects per year. That's averagely about 1 for every 3 a 4days. With an orb of 2 weeks on each side of the exact point this gives on average 8 aspects. The chance of even getting the required accumulation is 100%. I have serious problems with this. I don't mean to discredit your work, I apply this 'chance approach' also in studying my own chart and my personal prognostications. Applied to Prince Charles a prediction/timing of an event for the following months always will lead to results. Prince Charles as a famous person, busy in public life will have enough issues going on to find anything. This is in general my objection to delineation charts/events of the famous. One always will find something, even with the wrong chart . By the way I wonder if any astrologer predicted Obama's defeat of 20 may now the Senate voted overwhelmingly against closure of Guantanamo Bay. Prediction is never an easy task. With the radix alone, well rectified, prediction is almost impossible, but with the epoch, the dual test opens the possibility to perform prediction quite accurately. It is correct that in dual test we get about 120 aspects each year. Mathematically you are right: there are at least 8 aspects within orb, but you forgot to take into consideration the symbolism of the aspects. Just counting of the aspects without taking into consideration the true symbolism is useless. Usually the aspects are mixed of positive/negative aspects without any accumulation of clear tendency. Most of the aspects indicate only the very minor events that everyone has in his daily life: thus: Mars 45 Asc could indicate a 2 days headache, a minor injuring etc. Some aspects could be just noise- well known phenomena in science. As I emphasized in my article, primary directions alone are not enough, one should also check the secondary directions, PSSR, Lunar cycles, transits. In the 10 events for Charles I only wrote the primary directions, which are the most important but the other a/m techniques should be adding. Only a perfect overlapping will ensure us that the rectification or prediction is correct. A major event will occur only if: 1. There is an accumulation of several aspects with appropriate symbolism 2. At least one aspect should be angular, preferably several angular aspects especially conj and opp 3. There is overlapping with other techniques. Only once in several years one can found such accumulation!!! I know this sound complicated and I'm afraid that no theoretical explanation will help you or the readers to be convinced in my method (actually it is Marr's overlapping method). Naturally the info in my posts is condensing and by no means comprehensive. One can't make any judgment without the practical work with many rectified charts. You remind me of Geoffrey Dean. 12 Years ago I send him info on my program Polaris. This program performs systematic search and taking into consideration the symbolism so it is ideal for statistical research. Instead, he sent me his statistical analysis he made on the dual test of one or two charts performed by Alexander Marr. In my replay I pointed out to some serious flaws in his analysis, the main one: "You counted the aspects that Alexander was chosen to include in his book, of course he used the correct symbolism. But you compare the results to the number of contacts randomly without taking into consideration the symbolism. Every comparative analysis that doesn?t take into consideration the true symbolism in both sides is doomed to fail". He never answered me, and recently I read in www.rudolfsmit.nl/o-attk2.htm "Astrologer attacks researchers" "Elwell-2 does say that "the fit is generally so knife-edge tight that chance becomes the least likely explanation." But a tight fit does not necessarily mean anything. The astrologer Alexander Marr routinely achieved a very tight fit (average orb only 2.5 minutes), nevertheless it was close to that expected by chance, see Recent Advances pages 174-176. The moral is clear: Unless we make calculations we are in no position to draw conclusions about probabilities". Again, no word on symbolism which is the core and should be the main factor for any research. This is the same problem with rectification programs like JigSaw, Sirius, AIR, Astro-Balance- the module in all of them is the same: just counting the number of the aspects and not taking into consideration the symbolism. Needless to say that no correct rectification can be expected from such programs. Last edited by Isaac Starkman on Fri May 22, 2009 8:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
23 by Isaac Starkman Tom wrote:Prediction is possible only after the chart is rectified, My point is that a chart claimed to be accurate based on a rectification is only hindsight (and it is). In order to be sure the chart works, a prediction or several predictions should be made from it and they should pan out at least as well as a documented birth time. Tom That means that each client who comes to me, and in most cases with only approximate birth time, before starting the delineation I should send him home back with some predictions, wait some years and then see if my rectification was correct? Very impractical way.
24 by Gunhilde I am way out of my element in this particular branch of astrology so cannot possibly argue about whether methodology is correct or not, but I remain deeply sceptical of the validity of this line of thinking. Applied to Prince Charles a prediction/timing of an event for the following months always will lead to results. Prince Charles as a famous person, busy in public life will have enough issues going on to find anything. This is in general my objection to delineation charts/events of the famous. One always will find something, even with the wrong chart Exactly. ..I was reading some similar material on other famous people (many still living), and the 'evidence' for particular transits/progressions/etc. in lining up with happenstances in their lives was tenuous at best. It is very easy to look back on events that have occurred and say, "Oh yes, well, this happened because of X", but is this really worth very much in the long run, when we are unable to look that far ahead into the future and give an accurate likelihood of X occurring at such and such a time? I tend to think that the future is largely unwritten, and despite our best efforts to predict what might happen (and horary seems to get the closest to this, IMO), looking at rectified charts or secondary progressions or whatever, and actually *predicting* what will happen (especially out a set of N possibilities), is on a hiding to nothing. Too many things have to occur at just exactly the right moment: you must step out from behind a parked car, into a busy road, just exactly when the blue car swerves from behind a slower-moving car and into the lane into which you've just stepped, in order for the collision 'predicted' by a bad Mars aspect/transit/placement, to manifest in that way. Can that actually be predicted? I don't think so. The closest one might get is to say 'You will have an increased likelihood of accidents or violence', which could be anything from scalding yourself when you drop a cup of tea, to getting mugged. In other words, isn't it a bit pointless spending energy trying to unravel the infinite possibilities in any one person's life? Apologies for voicing heresy, but is this not similar to a needle in a haystack? GH