Skyscript Astrology Forum

I agree, jventura-- the issue is to get some independent verification that a given rectification method produces accurate results.

Astrologers have given rectification methods since the 2nd century AD (and maybe sooner.) But how many had an independent means of checking them against a known birth time?

Your study looked very impressive-- it would be even more interesting to learn whether there is more than one suite of methods that could produce highly accurate results!

1. Importance of a "blind" study. The reason why any researcher, be it Atlantean or anybody else, should verify that he didn't have the birth time in advance of crunching the data is to avoid nasty charges that he "fixed" the research in order to come up with a foregone conclusion.

This is also why I think getting 20 or so ordinary people for whom he would be highly unlikely to know their birth times-- vs. celebrities-- would be the better method. Perhaps the researcher could swear an oath that he had never looked at the celebrities' charts, but it might be suspect, nevertheless, by scoffers.

Re: Paul's post. Frankly, anyone who's looked at rectification knows that you could take a person with a known birth time and apply some common rectification techniques-- just based on the other birth data plus life-events-- that wouldn't work, even so. And that bogus claims would quickly be discovered by other astrologers trying to apply the same method.

I would like to see such a study be as squeaky-clean as possible, however, because I think its implications are huge. If you can predict and minimize any methodological "hooks" or "snags" that might catch a scoffer, it is worth putting in the extra effort. If this stuff works, then astrology as a whole has a much stronger case than most of us ever realized.

2. Rounded birth times. We do not need to use horoscopes in the sample where the time appeared to be rounded to more than 5 minutes. A quick peak at the Astro-DataBank (available via www.astro.com ) convinced me there are plenty of Rodden AA charts there with birth time minutes not divisible by 10 or 15, and even where the minute ends in 1,2,3, or 4. The data bank is huge, and not all of the AAs are rounded more than 5 minutes, by any means.

3. Statistics I take the point that the probability of even 5 horoscopes in a row coming up with verifiable answers is tiny. Five won't seem like enough horoscopes to the scoffers. Probably there are some simple statistical tests around that could be applied, but to me, the odds of getting 19 out of 20 connect could never occur by random chance.

The study jventura linked had over 200 people in their sample.

jventura wrote:

Careful analysis showed us that the syzygy method was crafted in such way that was biased to give a majority of very good results, independently of the data veracity.

So, as far as some rectification methods are concerned, there is strong evidence that they do not work...

So they give the right birth-times, but the result was not dependent upon the life events used...so they do not work?

In any case, if a method gives a sufficiently accurate result, I would have no complaints.

jventura wrote:
So, as far as some rectification methods are concerned, there is strong evidence that they do not work..

Hello jventura

I did indeed miss your post! Sorry about that.

Your very nice piece of work tested one particular method of rectification and concluded that for good statistical reasons, the animodar method was not viable as detailed by Lilly et at.

What I was proposing, however, was to test if competent astrologers could rectify a birth chart, using whatever methods they chose. This would then be a direct test of the ability of astrologers to do rectification rather than a test of any particular method.

I had assumed that rectification was widespread and commonly done by professional astrologers, which would have indicated that there were methods which were commonly in use (of which the animodar method and it cousins would not appear to be strongly represented) and presumed to be valid. A test of astrologers' ability to do rectification, as described above, would have been interesting in those circumstances.

But I suspect that james_m is correct and that I have overstated the extent to which rectification is done by professional astrologers - or even non-professional astrologers. This kicks rectification into the basket of esoteric and specialised techniques and the fact that a bunch of "competent" astrologers were not able to perform would not be earth shattering news. If there was a statistically meaningful positive result however....

Hello Geoffrey,

Re: "So what?"

So what? The point is, each one takes some time and concentration. ie. it is work... Since the average rectification takes a couple of hours, any sizable statistical group would take quite some time. My point relates to how much "free" time I have to work on such a project.

Re: "The test would be to show if astrologers can get a birth time within a specific time band (+/- 15 minutes) using whatever astrological method they like."

There are likely a few methods (PSSR among them) in order to narrow down the search range, but I don't know of any other methods that can reliably find the birth minute and in many cases to just a couple of seconds or so. [This is based on the accuracy and tight maturation of aspects in Topocentric Primary Directions...]

Re: "Given (say) twenty case histories along with a date and place of birth, how well can the astrologers do? That is fairly basic statistics."

Generally, I would expect the answer to be "dismally".

Re: "...then a panel of say five astrologers of recognised competence should be able to agree on the methodology for each case history and come up with an agreed rectified time of birth."

That sounds like a dream. From the (astrological) forums that I have been on, there has been NO general agreement on the correctness of rectifications, regardless of proof or chosen perspective. You can't get 5 astrologers to generally agree on House Systems, let alone a particular, specific rectification.

Re: "Let us face it, rectification is a pretty routine astrological procedure."

This is patently false. Most use Transits to TRY and do it and since, Transits mature as far out as 1? 20' (or more), it doesn't allow THAT tight of fixing of the birthtime. (since 1? 20' on the MC equals over 5 minutes of time, good luck!)

Re: "Most astrologers do it."

Millions of people play guitar. Less than 0.1% do it well.

Re: "Rectification is not some arcane, esoteric procedure..."

CORRECT. It is a very new process, based on a combination of discoveries from several dedicated astrologers working independently. The K?hr refinements to Primary Directions were necessary, as was the discovery (not invention!!!) of Topocentric Houses. The work of Alexander Marr and Isaac Starkman help bring it all together into a usable system.

As I said, if I hadn't seen the software repetitively FIND an unknown birthtime, which was later confirmed by documentation, I wouldn't be so sure that this algorithm works.

For astrologer Ken Haining, it was only necessary to plug in 3 events in order for it to find the correct sequencing of Primary Directions, verifying his birthtime. Now, his is a rare exception, however that doesn't color the results...as the software still was able to find the right minute (1 out of 1440 in which his birth occurred). Think, please, of the odds AGAINST this happening. Think of it analogously. Someone put 1439 black balls and *1* white one in a non-see-through bag. Polaris reached in, in one swoop, and grabbed the single white one. To you, it might not in any way seem special, but to anyone that understands probability, it does.

Anecdotal findings don't prove that it works in the universal case, HOWEVER, the probability does show that Polaris' finding the right birth minute in this case can not be coincidence.

Peace

James

Hello james_m,

Re: " i don't know that you are going to get 5 astrologers to agree..."

If history has shown us anything, 5 astrologers aren't going to agree on anything, except in the most general sense. [As I said, I used a Saturn-MC aspect as corroboration for the event "Death of Father" and one prominent astrologer refused to see how Saturn and the MC/IC axis COULD relate to death of Father. At this point, not much of anything would surprise me.]

Re: "I don't think it is a routine procedure."

Correct. I have yet to see another procedure which can lead me (using strictly the event list) to a particular birth-time in various well-timed births. If it can't work in the specific case, it can't be a universal model working in the general case.

Re: "...James A's example with the women who found the birth data was a good one,..."

It was responsible for another level of added confidence in these methods. [And it was Isaac, who instructed me to always go a bit beyond the given search range, in case of time zone issues or times at the very border of the search range...]

Re: "...but not enough to convince anyone skeptical like myself..."

Some believe we've never landed on the Moon. What's a guy to do?

Re: "...a real study ought to be done..."

We (mostly) all agree with that idea. The devil is in the details...

Re: "...rectification has always been viewed as one of the most difficult areas for an astrologer to engage in for good reason..."

Correct. It requires all the normal astrological "understandings" as well as exposure to several non-mainstream techniques and good math skills.

Re: "...a person can go wrong very easily."

True. Not only a person, software can suck at it too! Look at Jigsaw...it doesn't take into account the different TYPES of events. To Jigsaw, your Father dying in a fiery auto-crash is equated to your winning the lottery. Your marriage and your divorce are INDISTINGUISHABLE (to Jigsaw). With Polaris, there are 50 categories of events and EACH has its own astrological expectations (in Primary Directions). To Polaris, the birth of a male child and the birth of a female child don't even look the same. To Jigsaw, your child's birth and their death are astrologically synonymous.

Re: "I think it is an ideal area for the use of a computer program..."

I agree, but perhaps for different reasons. (?) The computer is NOT subject to astrologer bias. An astrologer (generally) will take an event, form some idea about what astrology SHOULD be there and then fold, spindle, and mutilate the birthtime to make that condtion happen on schedule. Polaris "simply" looks at all moments in the search range and tells you which times perform best (Topocentric Primary Directions) taking every single event into consideration. From all of the rectification methods that I have surveyed (approaching two dozen), it appears to be the most objective...

Re: "...maybe if i owned the program i would view it differently."

Yes, the first time you plugged someone's events in (for whom you have a well-timed birth) and saw the birthtime in the first or second slot from Polaris, I could only expect that you'd be impressed and relatively confident of the methods. As I said before, I am firmly of the opinion that this is the best way to prove astrology scientifically to those who are skeptical. If a computer software can take the events of a life and derive a birthtime, it could ONLY happen if astrology works (and in predictable, reliable ways)...

Re: "...as i recall a few years ago it was selling for about 400 US."

To the best of my knowledge, it has always been $350 U.S. I had honed my birthtime (over years) down to 6:17 am (Birth Certificate: 6:18 am) in terms of minutes, but very close to 6:16:45 am in terms of seconds. Polaris indicates that the correct time is 6:16:44 am. When using this time, all of my events are shown to have correct astrology in many systems (Topocentric Primary Directions, Secondary Progressions, Progressed Sidereal Solar Returns, Age Harmonics, and Transits) and the correct House Cusps activated to just minutes of arc in TPD's, Secondary Progressions, and PSSR aspects), for the events in my event list.

To state that more clearly, once I found the birthtime to just seconds, suddenly all these other systems lined up like a lock tumbler, so that all agreed on the events across the entire list of aspects. Since these are mutually exclusive systems, the probabilites of them all agreeing is arrived at by MULTIPLYING the individual probabilities together. The chances of one system agreeing across all events is a relatively unprobable scenario, however other (incorrect) times CAN also somehow appear to "work". As we are forcing it to work for these other systems as well, we are dispelling coincidence by the probabilites involved.

In other words, ONE SYSTEM working can still be a fluke, since there are also wrong times that are likely to also give halfway decent results in that one system. If we are forcing it to work across 5 systems, then THAT SAME BIRTH TIME has to "magically" function effectively in EACH system for EACH event. That is quite some condition!!! This is why I say that these methods are the closest that we have to a scientifically "proven" rectification.

Take care,

James

Hello jventura,

Re: "So, as far as some rectification methods are concerned, there is strong evidence that they do not work..."

I agree. If they can't work in the specific case with a well-timed birth and hearty list of dated events, then it is impossible to have confidence in that method in the general case.

James

Hello Geoffrey,

Re: "This would then be a direct test of the ability of astrologers to do rectification rather than a test of any particular method."

Expect DISMAL results.

I have proofed MANY rectifications done by other astrologers and the results are not what I would call "surprising", I think "sad" is a better adjective. Out of respect, I won't mention any names, but one prominent astrologer wrote an epic tome and in the rectification section uses Transits and Solar Arcs to arrive at a very obviously wrong birthtime. It seems that for an astrology manual, that particular EXAMPLE rectification SHOULD surely be correct, it's the bloody example of HOW to do it, but alas, obviously wrong it is...and by quite some number of minutes. (approx. 8 minutes!)

I would expect that if you gave ONE person's search range and list of events to TEN different astrologers, you would get most likely TEN different answer birthtimes.

In this case, we can already see 10% success rate or less, since if there are ten different answers and only one can be right, the other NINE must be wrong.

Finding ONE method that works in various SPECIFIC cases, is the best way to find a method that will work in the GENERAL case. As Polaris can already be shown to work with many well-timed births to lead directly to the correct birthtime, we already have a front-runner.

James

Hello Geoffrey,

Re: "This kicks rectification into the basket of esoteric and specialised techniques and the fact that a bunch of "competent" astrologers were not able to perform would not be earth shattering news."

This statement demonstrates conclusively that we have a very, very different idea on what constitutes competency.

If a client with a good event list tells an astrologer that they were born in the morning and the astrologer CAN NOT find out when the person was actually born, then they certainly aren't in any position to talk about the future, they don't even understand the past. (which was already given, in the form of dated events!) ie. if you can't line up the correct time going from KNOWN events occurring at KNOWN dates to get to the birthtime, then Heaven help you in trying to take an incorrect time and finding an unknown event occurring at an unknown time!!!!!!!

James

Guys, can we just cut to the chase?

I've suggested two pretty straightfoward ways in which a researcher could test a rectification procedure, be it via Polaris, or some other system.

jventura has offered another one.

It's no use bickering ahead of time whether these would work or not on new samples, and we all know that most rectification procedures aren't tested because if someone had an accurate birth time, rectification would be unnecessary.

The big issue is whether anyone has the time to follow through on an objective study.

But Atlantean, I will make you an offer that you can refuse.

(#2 method) If you have time over, say, the next couple of months to do 10 celebrity charts, I will identify some from the Astro-DataBank. These will be either middle-aged or older people, so that they have a sufficient history of life events that can be tracked publically. You have to Solemnly Swear, Scouts Honour, that you will not search the subjects by birth date-- which just occured to me you could do. These will be people with Rodden AA ratings whose birth time minutes are not divisible by 10 or 15.

I'm sorry that I can't do this out of my own files but I wouldn't have sufficient information on people's life histories.

I will give you the birth date and location. You ask me for whatever dates of life-events you wish, and I will look them up.

Anyone else would be invited to submit their methods for verification, as well, such as jventura.

(#1 method) Alternatively, we could get an on-line sample from 10 Skyscript members of people who know their birth times to the minute (not divisible by 10 or 15) who haven't posted their charts somewhere handy, would agree to participate.

At the end of the experiment (if it's #2 method), I will reveal the birth times posted on the Astro-DataBank, and we will compare the results on this thread. Then you-all be the judge of whether they are accurate or not, and you can easily fact-check the celebrity data for yourselves.

Chart rectification by hand is a very time-consuming process, but I assume that even if the Polaris rectification software is unavailable now, the methods it uses could be done by hand; so if it works, it would be well-worth knowing.

Do you accept my offer? Anyone?

james a - i appreciate your passion.. i just don't confuse it with whether polaris astro rectification software """"works"""" or not.. if someone told me i have to accept jesus in order that i be saved - that is fine too, but i am going to come to a conclusion on something on my own without the confidence pitch of a salesperson, or well intentioned person - which is how you strike me!

it is a black box with a number of different astrological techniques that have been programed to help identify more likely times of birth based on higher frequency of 'hits'.. to say it works is fine.. this is not the same as saying someone landed on the moon whether you believe me or not!

if isaac or you really wanted to follow thru on waybreads statistical study or one that met the description of passing the test, it would go a lot further then all the positive talk about how great it is and how it '''works'''.. i hope you and isaac do this at some point to dismiss people like me who can see a lot of potential pitfalls in what you are trying to do. i always have this attitude towards rectifications i have seen. unfortunately noel tyl and others who try to teach this to students are duping them into thinking it is a relatively straight forward process. it isn't. you know that and i know that. that is why you are using a software program!!! even using this program you still have work to do to help the program along. it is much like doing primary directions before the advent of software to do it which is why i maintain computers will be able to help immensely in the process of rectification. good luck convincing others on faith without getting it backed up thru a more rigourous methodology. '''it works''' doesn't cut it for me.

Larxene wrote: So they give the right birth-times, but the result was not dependent upon the life events used...so they do not work?

In any case, if a method gives a sufficiently accurate result, I would have no complaints.

Hi Larxene,

the conclusion for which we arrived (and you must read the study to really understand why) is that the method that we tested (the Animodar, which does not use life events) did, in fact, provide "accurate" results. However, when we tested for random data (hundred of random data - using a computer algorithm), we also got great results.

So, the problem was that, despite the veracity of the data, the method seemed to give always good results. But we should not trust a method that always gives good results independently of the veracity of the data. That was our findings for that specific method, the Animodar.

i can't figure out if tyl is more of a book seller then an astrologer, although i know he is considered a well known astrologer! both books seem to be coloured by his approach and neither one of them use primary directions, perhaps due the fact they haven't had astrology software for doing pds available up until more recently.

To stick for Tyl a bit, he is trying to make a living from astrology and that includes selling books as well as consultations, and teaching. He wrote a book on rectification a while back, Astrology of the Famed 1996. By his own admission it didn't sell very well, which is too bad because regardless of what we think of the astrology, the biographical information was fun to read. We can't test his rectifications because they are mostly of people long dead with no birth records and in some cases conflicting birth dates, e.g. Beethoven. He is convinced he's right, though.

He is no fan of primary directions either, but if we shy from rectification because there are so many ways of doing them, in order to be consistent we need to shy away from primaries for the same reason. Tyl uses transits and solar arcs for rectification. This is consistent with his methods of prediction. Whether it works any better than anything else or if it works at all, is another question.

The main problem with most rectification techniques is that they depend on exact dates and ideally times of major events, yet we would never predict (accurately anyway) to the precise date or even within a few days. So if someone used, among other things, the dates of births of children for rectification purposes, can we say that with an accurate birth time an astrologer could predict those births accurately years before they occurred? I kind of doubt it. [/i]