Skyscript Astrology Forum

Hi all,

here you can find the latest study where dignities of the house cusps are compared using different systems and zodiacs. The study about Egyptian bounds gave support for the Fagan/Bradley zodiac; the study about house systems promoted Regiomontanus; now we will see how those two systems combined will succeed among other combinations. The new study is the upmost one.

http://koti.welho.com/jmetsovu/

Best, Sari

There are some interesting graphs that illustrate the statistics here! Useful to know where to find!

Thanks!

Hi Sari,

What a beautifully presented site! You have done a really lovely job here.

I cannot claim to have studied the whole site in great depth but its clearly one I shall be returning to to take a deeper look.

Just one question...you come out in favour of the Fagan-Bradley zodiac ( Or Lahiri?) system based on your research. However, were you using or sympathetic to a sidereal approach before you did the number crunching with your research?

I am not suggesting if you were that undermines your results. I am just curious how much the results match what you were previously doing and how much they have challenged that. Have you changed your approach to astrology due to your findings?

Mark

MarkC wrote:Hi Sari,

What a beautifully presented site! You have done a really lovely job here.

Thank you Mark. The credit goes to my husband who?s kindly done the outer representation.

Just one question...you come out in favour of the Fagan-Bradley zodiac ( Or Lahiri?) system based your research. However, were you using or sympathetic to a sidereal approach before you did the number crunching with your research?

Yes, I was. I?ve been using a sidereal zodiac for the last about three years expect an eight months? period in 2006-7 when I was using the tropical zodiac. But had the studies given stronger evidence for the tropical zodiac I would have switched to it. I have seriously considered that possibility a couple of times but the evidence for the sidereal zodiac has always been stronger in the end.

Have you changed your approach to astrology due to your findings?

Yes I have. For the last three or four years the house systems I?ve used most have been whole signs, Alcabitius and Regiomontanus. The studies have made me to settle down with Regiomontanus. I would have expected (even hoped) for the whole sign houses to give better results than they did.

Robert Schmidt has proposed that maybe the whole sign houses were meant for topical delineation but the quadrants were meant for evaluating strength (angular ? succedent ? cadent). On the basis of my studies that concept doesn?t seem to work very well because otherwise the whole sign houses (both the houses and their equal cusps) would have shown bigger deviations from the random data. Ben Dykes in fact proposes in the introduction for the Sahl / Masha?allah translation an opposite approach, which is quite fascinating. He writes:

Third, the degrees of the axes and other quadrant houses can be used for topics, using the normal spans of houses and the 5 degree rule for being cadent from these cusps. Planets in these houses can be delineated according to their natures and conditions, but their effects will be more or less notable and more or less direct (on the native) depending on whether they are in angular, cadent, or succedent signs [emphasis by Ben Dykes].

So, practically Dykes is proposing just the opposite to what Robert Schmidt suggests! I?m open to this possibility.

What comes to the ayanamsa I?ve used mostly Lahiri, but after the bounds study I changed to Fagan/Bradley. The biggest motivation for the studies comes from finding what works best and how the symbolism really works. That gives endless fascination.

PS. There is a possibility that we will meet in October in Nottingham in Ben Dykes? seminar. My friend Erna gets special flying tickets but we can use them only if there is space left in the plane. But if we manage to get into the plane in Friday, we will be there! I just bought the ticket to the seminar .

Graphs, statistics, numbers .....

It's about the expanded mind, not the right technique. Someone who has mastered her/his art and craft; someone who has absorbed the symbolism of the planets and a preferred zodiac and who can speak through and for them; someone who has progressed beyond all technique and has become a voice ? an oracle ? now that's impressive. More than impressive, it's what most of us are truly looking and longing for ? either in ourselves or in someone we can claim as a guide and mentor.

There will be additional studies to contradict these. Yet more time spent missing the point.

Sorry.

Kirk wrote:

It's about the expanded mind, not the right technique ...
... missing the point.

I wouldn't want to deter you, Kirk, because every community needs a resident curmudgeon, but I think you're the one missing the point here.

One of the greatest benefits I've had from astrology was being freed from the belief that we are all fundamentally the same. However stultifying you personally find technique, you could recognise that for others it can be a rich source of pleasure.

I hope you make it to Nottingham, Sari - it would be good to meet you.

OK. That was the short version.

I wouldn't want to deter you, Kirk, because every community needs a resident curmudgeon ...

Have I at long last finally found my own little place in the world?

However stultifying you personally find technique, you could recognise that for others it can be a rich source of pleasure.

I was probably unclear. After stating ?It's about the expanded mind, not the right technique? I wrote ?Someone who has mastered her/his art and craft; someone who has absorbed the symbolism of the planets and a preferred zodiac and who can speak through and for them; someone who has progressed beyond all technique and has become a voice ? an oracle ...? . I'm all for technique ? technique is necessary and is a method of focus. What I was getting at is that progressing beyond technique still involves using technique, but includes the intense focus of mind that technique helps to produce.

Instead of looking to numbers for legitimizing one's choice of techniques, such as zodiac and house system, it's more productive and truer to the nature of astrology to find your techniques through resonance. For example, if you strongly admire Lilly and are inspired by him, then you may want to use Regiomontanus houses and the systems of triplicity and term lords that he used. Great ? you've found your beginning. It expands from there. Remember that astrology is a 9th house matter, the house of religion, philosophy, beliefs, dreams, mind-expansion, etc. I say don't hold yourself back by searching for permission in numbers; chances are you will limit yourself by returning again to numbers in the future and all along the way. Find what excites you and jump in. For me the Sidereal zodiac holds no interest and no life. I can only go Tropical ? it's linked with my world. If the TV weatherman tells me that autumn begins tomorrow afternoon I know we will experience the Libra ingress and the beginning of the melancholic season. With the beginning of autumn comes a new ingress chart for weather and mundane astrology. That excites me. I've found my doorway. I personally refuse to weaken my astrological 'space' by inquiring if numbers indicate whether I've made a good choice (though I've often been tempted in the past, and probably will be again in the future).

Astrology is traditionally ruled by Mercury, and astrologers tend to stay with Mercury. The Mercury signs of Gemini and Virgo are opposed by Jupiter's Sagittarius and Pisces. Astrology works through a Mercury-Jupiter polarity: The mathematician and the prophet. Graphs and numbers block the Jupiter pole, giving many astrologers only half the experience.

One of the greatest benefits I've had from astrology was being freed from the belief that we are all fundamentally the same.

But isn't the search with statistics a search for a type of 'the same'? Couldn't the belief of accuracy in numbers [statistics] simply lead to a uniform 'follow-the-herd' astrology, and ultimately a weakly effective astrology?

Kirk claims that we are all looking for guides and mentors but from my experience of the mysteries scene most people want to explore themselves and distrust guru figures.
He then claims that astrology works through a mercury-jupiter polarity and straight away contradicts this by saying that numbers get in the way
I have been reading on C.G. Jung lately and he was able to study occult subjects in a scientific way. He would doubtless point out that you have to reconcile polarities.
In other fields people have compared the new physics to mysticism - perhaps it is a symptom of the age of aquarius.
Sorry to be argumentative but mercury is square my natal sun today

I'm certainly happier with the longer version, Kirk, but I still think you're off-target.
(Sorry if we're is hijacking your thread, Sari - this stuff should probably be in the Philosophy forum.)

Find what excites you and jump in. ... That excites me. I've found my doorway.

But can't you see that for some types of mind the exploration of detail is part of what excites, is necessary to reveal the doorway?

Astrology works through a Mercury-Jupiter polarity: The mathematician and the prophet.

Absolutely, but they are equally important - it's when you emphasise one over the other that you only get half the experience. Certainly you can make too much of the technical side of it, and that will, as you say, block the Jupiter pole. But the other side of it is relying too much on inspiration, which risks plunging you into delusion.

Couldn't the belief of accuracy in numbers [statistics] simply lead to a uniform 'follow-the-herd' astrology, and ultimately a weakly effective astrology?

As long as there are people who only engage with the subject superficially then, yes, for those people, statistics will only lead to astrology-by-numbers. But isn't there already quite a lot of 'follow-the-herd', weakly effective astrology - what Robert Hand calls 'fluffy astrology'? And surely it takes more strength from your argument than it ever could from statistics - people can justify all sorts of self-indulgence when the numbers aren't there to call them to account.

Fundamentally, methodical analysis is only going to find what's there - I expect it to reveal both more structure and more mystery than we see at the moment.

Papretis wrote:Hi all,

here you can find the latest study where dignities of the house cusps are compared using different systems and zodiacs. The study about Egyptian bounds gave support for the Fagan/Bradley zodiac; the study about house systems promoted Regiomontanus; now we will see how those two systems combined will succeed among other combinations. The new study is the upmost one.

Hi Sari!

Sorry the later answer, but only now I had the opportunity to see your study. I know how hard it is to observe and compare all the numbers and I send you my congratulations!
I understood that you?re trying to validate Fagan/Bradley through the study of Egyptian Terms, isn?t it?
May be I really miss the point but bounds aren?t a so bigger dignity to validate a system instead of another one, in my opinion.
Why you haven?t use rulership, for example?

That is one of the points.

Another aspect is that I was reading Guaguelin?s and his wife?s studies with millions of persons and...they realized a so demanding study to reach very modest conclusions.

And now I see ( and I include myself in that) that we are trying to get very specific conclusions using comparatively very small samples, when they used a hundred times bigger size samples in their studies!

Astrodatabank can?t provide us a really huge amount of cases to do a serious statistical prove in Guaguelin?s way. I?m asking myself if after our study we can conclude something more than a hypothetical suggestion to work with!

I have an statistical study about prodigy children, but for the reasons above, I?m planning to share my conclusions as partial ones , something like some characteristics found in prodigy children, to be investigated by another astrologers when dealing with ?candidates? to became prodigy children.

Sorry if my post looks like a negative one. It?s is not, and I admire your job, but I felt I had to tell my concern about the statistical issue.

best
Clelia

From Matt:

Kirk claims that we are all looking for guides and mentors but from my experience of the mysteries scene most people want to explore themselves and distrust guru figures.

On 23 August I wrote: ?More than impressive, it's what most of us are truly looking and longing for ? either in ourselves or in someone we can claim as a guide and mentor.? I was saying that most of us, as students and practicing astrologers, are looking, consciously or not, for prophetic and divinatory qualities beyond technique, either in ourselves or in another person we can respect and hope to learn from. That's a far cry from your block-of-stone statement ?Kirk claims that we are all looking for guides and mentors?

He then claims that astrology works through a mercury-jupiter polarity and straight away contradicts this by saying that numbers get in the way

Yes. I wrote that astrologers tend to stay with Mercury. Western astrology is mathematically based (visual and observational astrology is a distant memory) and is rationally approached in sorting out and connecting factors. That's Mercury. But the time comes to take the proverbial leap of faith and receive the 'message'. My point was that we can too easily go back to the numbers to see how we're doing, to see if the numbers are telling us whether there is an acceptable success rate using our methods. That becomes a crutch and a substitute for faith. With faith and belief a particular person at a particular time can become a clear voice using techniques that may statistically show a weak success rate. As astrologers do we want to speak in a statistically determined manner or in a manner that can shrug off such concerns, and that can focus on the time, place and person(s) involved?



From Malcolm:

But can't you see that for some types of mind the exploration of detail is part of what excites, is necessary to reveal the doorway?

Yes, I can see that. But I can only see statistical analysis of methods as an indication of lack of confidence, of a fear of going in the 'wrong' direction with the 'wrong' techniques, and, ultimately, a way of proving to oneself whether astrology even works. It's a hindering process which blocks the more productive details of a deeply practiced astrology.

Certainly you can make too much of the technical side of it, and that will, as you say, block the Jupiter pole.

Once again, I'm not criticizing technique. I'm speaking against using a number-driven approach to find which techniques might produce some sort of statistically acceptable success rate, and then choosing to use those techniques. I think it's a misapplied faith and is potentially harmful to opening the vision gate because of a lingering doubt and lack of faith that was never resolved.* It leaves the astrologer back in the astrology lab comparing notes with others.



*Edited to add: The astrologer continues to be interested in statistical studies and reads the future studies of others, leading to doubting his/her choice of methods and questioning their usefulness. The astrologer acquires the harmful habit of looking over his/her shoulder in a self-conscious backward glance.

Hi Kirk/Malcolm

I think this is a very interesting and important discussion but I really don't feel Sari's thread about her website is the place to have it. Your discussion is applicable to astrology as a whole and not just this specific website.

In contrast Clelia's comments are quite specific.

Maybe one of you guys should open a new thread in the philosophy forum and take this fight outside?

Mark