Skyscript Astrology Forum

Boxers, Mars, Stars and Constellations
As this topic (Accidental Dignities) on the Traditional forum wandered off course into the wrong zodiac according to moderator Tom, the topic was locked before the discussion could conclude. So I?ve moved some posts here from that topic in order to finish the discussion. I?m adding a few additional notes related to the positions of Mars in the charts of boxers and tennis players in relation to stars and constellations.

Posts from 3rd and 4th January, 2017:

http://skyscript.co.uk/forums/viewtopic ... sc&start=0

Jens wrote:
But note that the 200 boxers at ADB don?t all have Mars in Aries sidereally many have it in late tropical Taurus...

Pankajdubey wrote:
Late tropical taurus = Caput Algol- losing the head would be appropriate but they get paid for it, so it must be money thing.

My replies (3 and 4 January, 2017), edited and shortened:

Actually, after checking I noted that the on-line ADB has 307 boxers. But there?s no convenient way to calculate all those charts in the sidereal zodiac, so I pulled up the 59 charts of boxers that are in the ADB 4 file on my computer. As it turns out, Pankaj may have a clue to Mars in the charts of athletes, or at least boxers.

Mars positions in the 59 sidereal charts for boxers presents patterns that don?t seem to be random. For example, there is only one Mars placement in Libra, and not a single Mars placement in Leo. (These anomalies could simply be chance as 59 is a small number for research.) The sign that has the most Mars placements is...sidereal Taurus with 11 placements!

So I looked into this further. Six of these 11 Mars positions fall within a short span from 8.9 to 11.8 of Taurus. This area happens to be in the Egyptian (sidereal) terms of Mercury, but more significantly, that area of the zodiac contains a cluster of six stars in Perseus (the hero who beheaded Medusa, Algol). This cluster is headed by alpha Perseus (Mirfak) at 8 degrees of Taurus.

I didn?t find any consistent pattern for the terms in other placements of Mars for boxers. Neither did I find a consistent pattern for the 27 Jyotish mansions, though an anomaly in 76 charts of tennis players had six out of the nine placements of Mars in Gemini in the lunar mansion of Jupiter. (Mars positions ranged between 20 and 28.7 degrees of Gemini.) This is the mansion of Punarvasu which contains the bright stars, Castor and Pollux, the athletically endowed Greek Dioscuri.

Then for Mars in Sagittarius for tennis players, five of the nine Mars positions fell in the terms of Jupiter. These terms from zero to 12 Sagittarius align with the first lunar mansion of Sagittarius (zero to 13 degrees 20 minutes). This part of the sky contains a great number of stars including the tail of the Scorpion and the bow and arrow of the constellation of Sagittarius. Again (as in the charts of boxers) for the 76 tennis players, only one Mars fell in sidereal Libra.

These anomalies suggest that stars may play a key role for the manifestation of planetary placements, and perhaps terms matter sometimes as well as the lunar mansions of Jyotish. The mansions (related to the ancient nakshatras) are identified by stars and asterisms within their borders. It might be an interesting exercise to look at the stars and asterisms within the various planetary terms (bounds) of the zodiac.

(continued from previous post)

Posted Wednesday 4 January, 2017 on the Traditional forum:
A few more notes on what appears to be the non-random placement of Mars in the charts of boxers and tennis players:

The great boxer, Mohammad Ali, has Mars in the degree of Sheratan in the constellation of Aries.

Of Mars in the charts of the 11 boxers in sidereal Taurus, 10 of those are in the first 12 degrees conjunct stars in Perseus. The single remaining position of Mars at 29 degrees conjoins 5 stars of Orion in the same degree, including Alnilam and Meissa.

Seven of the eight positions of Mars in sidereal Scorpio for tennis players were in the first 12 degrees of the sign close to stars of Lupus, the Wolf or Hercules, the Strongman.

The closest zodiacal correlation I could find with Mars using the limited data of 59 boxers and 76 tennis players is the proximity to bright fixed stars. There was no consistent correlation with terms, lunar mansions, navamsas, dwads or even single degrees. Where positions of Mars happened to fall close together, often the range was from the middle of a degree to the middle of a degree several degrees further in the zodiac.

Likewise conjunctions to fixed stars related to proximity rather than sharing a single degree. A star might be at 45 minutes of a degree and conjoin a planet (Mars in this case) at 10 minutes of the following degree.

It seems that stars may have specific energies which may manifest as various talents in birth charts. We know that Ptolemy gave planetary correlations to the various stars in the sky. For example, Sheratan, the degree of Muhammad Ali?s Mars, was said to act like Mars and Saturn.

Replication of Mars Data for Boxers

Two procedures are always necessary before research results approach validity. Aside from the valid collection of data, research needs to be replicated as well as compared to control groups, data that does not share the factors being researched. Data from AstrodataBank can?t be considered to be collected in any organized way, so is of interest mainly for study purposes. However, the Gauquelin data was collected in a scientific way, so can be used for research studies.

A fellow forum member kindly supplied me with the data of 100 boxers from the Gauquelin collection. So I used that data to tabulate the position of Mars for boxers. This is a very small sample, since I divided the data into two sections of 50 each. Nevertheless, a few factors were replicated from the initial 59 boxers from ADB.

Surprisingly, the most obvious replication was in the sidereal sign totals (Krishnamurti ayanamsa) of Mars. Totals ranged from the highest in Aries, Taurus, Gemini and Cancer to the lowest in Leo, Libra and Aquarus. These results carried through the three small groups (A-50, B-50, C-59). Figures in parenthesis below relate to these three groups, A, B and C.

Highs
19 total (6 7 6) Aries
20 total (5 4 11)Taurus
19 total (9 5 5) Gemini
21 total (9 5 7) Cancer

Lows
07 total (3 4 0) Leo
08 total (2 3 1) Libra
09 total (1 4 4) Aquarius

The other 5 signs stayed close to the average range, 11-14 each. (A simple division of 159 by 12 signs is 13.25.) Although this distribution of Mars is much too small to be considered as anything but somewhat interesting for astrologers, it contradicts the expected frequency of Mars in signs as posted by astralwanderer on 31 December 2016 in relation to Lee Lehman?s work. http://skyscript.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=9368

Adjusted to the sidereal, the signs expected to hold the greatest number of positions of Mars don?t align with the actual distribution of Mars for boxers. The highest number is expected to be in tropical Virgo (sidereal Leo), but sidereal Leo has the lowest of the 12 sign distributions (7).

Tropical Taurus and Gemini (sidereal Aries and Taurus) have low to average expected distributions, but have two of the highest distributions of Mars for boxers (19 and 20). So it appears there may be additional reasons for the pile-up or absence of Mars in signs of the zodiac.

Interesting Therese. But the planet Mars is Mars, wherever it is placed. So sign placement for Mars is probably not a strong factor in this.
But the single most important thing that most astrologers can agree on is that planets on angles are the strongest expressed in people's lives. I suspect that you would find much stronger correlation to Mars if you simply look at planets on angles for boxers. In fact, Gauqelin did find the Mars effect, which simply means that Mars was found angular, mostly on ASC or MC, for athletics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_effect

Another thing to look for in boxers would be if their luminaries are in aspect to Mars.

Thank you for your reply, Lifestudent. This topic was a conclusion to a topic on the Traditional forum dealing with the question of Mars in tropical and sidereal zodiac signs. However, since you mentioned the Gauquelin research, it?s true that Mars in certain sectors was statistically significant for eminent sports people.

The key word is eminent. The same pattern didn?t replicate for ordinary sports people. Later the Gauquelin research suggested that the position of planets related more to psychological traits rather than career choices themselves. The importance of angular planets seems to be a ?best fit? mainly or solar return charts. Angular planets (or aspects to angles) are the big focal point of those who use the Fagan-type sidereal solar return charts.

For interest I?m attaching a diagram of the position of Mars in the charts of 108 football players from AstroDatabank 4. We can see that neither angular positions nor key Gauquelin sectors stand out. This graph is from Jigsaw software. As a matter of fact, significant sectors for eminent sports people are very low compared to other sectors in this diagram.