Advancing an AstroSignature for Alcohol Abuse

by Terri McCartney

Abstract

Astrological factors that contribute to alcohol abuse were investigated in this study. Two goals guided this project: to retest the astrological factors that Mitchell Gibson found to be associated with addictive disorders and to create an AstroSignature for alcohol abuse using the AstroDatabank 4.0 factor analysis module. The new signature (based on the tropical zodiac) proposes thirty astrological rules or markers to identify alcohol abuse.

Introduction

Why investigate alcohol abuse? Studies have demonstrated that eleven million people in the United States have a problem with alcohol abuse.¹ Certainly that makes it a salient issue. It is an insidious habit that damages health and relationships. Healing those behaviors that prevent us from living at our fullest potential or that interfere with a healthy relationship with ourselves or our environment begins with identifying the dynamics that motivate the behavior. As astrology teaches, the key to discovering motivations is to look in the horoscope for a repetition of those factors known to contribute to the particular behavior in question.

We all agree that one astrological factor alone does not account for a dominant behavior. However, we probably don’t all agree on what factors do contribute. It's difficult to answer questions of who, what and how with the abundance of interacting variables, the plethora of possibilities for their expression, and the lack in agreement among astrologers about what’s important and what’s not. The astrological community has not developed guidelines to help its practitioners answer these important questions. Questions such as, who is most likely to develop a particular behavior? What are the combinations of independent factors which account for the appearance of that behavior? How many of the factors that contribute to the behavior are necessary to elicit the behavior?

AstroSignatures are designed to help us answer these questions. The AstroSignature advises us of those astrological factors that appear more frequently than by chance in the charts of the people most likely to develop a particular behavior trait (as defined by the signature). It’s imperative that we know what works and what doesn't. Our clients grant much credence to what we have to say. Therefore, we can’t afford to base our judgments on potentially erroneous generalizations that have simply been passed along from one generation of astrologers to another. Now that we have the technology to do the computing for us, we need to test the validity of our assumptions.

Toward that end, this research project was guided by two goals:

1. To retest the astrological markers Mitchell Gibson set forth for addictive disorders.
2. To suggest an AstroSignature for alcohol abuse.

Methodology

AstroDatabank release 4.0 was used to create an experimental group of 100 alcohol abusers and a control group of 1000. AstroDatabank 4.0 includes a database of 31,000 records and contains 242 records categorized as alcohol abusers with a Rodden rating of AA (BC/BR in hand). Of these 242 records, I randomly selected 100 for this research project. The experimental group is composed equally of famous people and ordinary (private) folks because I felt it possible that the two groups might vary in the astrological markers that set them apart from the control group. A control group ten times the size of the experimental group was created using AstroDatabank's inherent capacity to build a control group² . The data was calculated using the Koch house system and modern rulers were used.

Following is a list of the factors analyzed for this research project (using AstroDatabank 4.0)

• Planets, asteroids, house rulers and dispositors in signs.
• Planets, asteroids, house rulers and dispositors in houses.
• Aspects among planets, Chiron, asteroids, house rulers, dispositors & relevant points (such as the vertex, part of fortune and fixed stars). Sixteen aspects were evaluated: the major Ptolemaic aspects, semisextile, quincunx, semi-square, sesquisquare, quintile, biquintile, septile, biseptile, triseptile, parallel and contraparallel.
• Essential and accidental dignities including motion, unaspected planets and mutual receptions.
• Gauquelin sectors.
• Declination.

Results & Discussion

An attempt was made to replicate the results of a study conducted by Mitchell E. Gibson, M.D. and published in his book, Signs of Mental Illness.³ While it is beyond the scope of this particular project to review the composite of his techniques and methodology for measuring and postulating astrological markers for psychological disorders, he has designed a model to evaluate the horoscope for significators of such. It is the astrological markers he suggests contribute to addictive disorders that were retested in this project. While he offers 26 markers, only 25 of his markers were retested. One proposed marker, Uranus trine Neptune, was not included in the retesting because it is a generational marker.

Gibson's study consisted of an experimental group of thirteen patients who had been in treatment for addictive disorders (alcohol and drug addiction). His control group consisted of 24 people with no history of mental illness or psychiatric treatment. One weakness of Gibson’s study is the small size of his experimental and control group. I retested his markers using an experimental group of 100 substance abusers and a control group of 1000 (many of the alcohol abusers in this study are also categorized as drug abusers). The results of the retest are shown in Table 1. An asterisk is placed next to the totals for those rules demonstrating greater frequency for the alcohol abusers.

Table 1 demonstrates that of the 25 markers, only six of them occurred more frequently in the charts of the experimental group. The control group scored higher on several of the markers and the experimental and control group scored similarly on 14 of the markers. While it’s disappointing that I wasn’t able to replicate Gibson’s results with 19 of the markers, knowing what doesn’t contribute to the behavior under investigation is equally beneficial to knowing what does.

Let’s consider the six markers on which the alcohol abusers did score higher than the control group. Are these six markers significant? That is, can we generalize from this group of alcohol abusers and assume that if these six markers are found in the horoscope that the person is at risk for alcohol abuse? One way to determine the statistical significance of results is to use the chi square test to measure the difference between the frequencies observed with our groups and the frequencies we’d expect to find. The chi square value is then used to determine the probability that the tested frequencies occurred by chance. The likelihood that something did not occur randomly increases as the chi square value increases.

The chi square values are noted in the column next to the six markers demonstrating greater frequency in the alcohol abusers charts. A chi square value of 3.84 or higher⁴ would establish statistical significance because it indicates that we can be confident that the factor occurred 95% above chance. Only one of Gibson’s markers scored near this value: Moon in opposition to Neptune (3.20).

Advancing an Astrosignature for Alcohol Abuse

It became apparent to me while retesting Gibson’s markers that similar single factors could be combined into one signature rule. The effectiveness of a rule is increased by combining similar factors into one rule because a larger number of the charts will score on the rule. In creating the signature, I included only those single factors demonstrating 75% or higher positive difference between the experimental and control group. Additionally, I included only those combined factors found in at least 15% of the experimental group. A caveat emptor: factors should not be grouped together before the various combinations are first analyzed independently to determine if they actually contribute as a marker for the trait under examination and this is especially true when combining aspects.

As it concerns the aspects, there are so many possible combinations! Identifying them would have been a formidable task if it had not been for the factor analysis feature in AstroDatabank 4.0. It was tricky to choose from all the possible contributing factors to compose the resulting AstroSignature of 30 rules. Often, I was surprised at what the factor analysis indicated to be a potential contributor to alcohol abuse. For example, when I evaluated the sign analysis report, I found a surprising number of indicators in Capricorn, yet none of the significant ones were planets! Instead, it was the ruler of house 5 or 12 or the dispositor of Jupiter, Neptune or the north node. Interestingly, having the Sun’s dispositor in Capricorn was found three times more often in the control group suggesting that its placement in that sign might be viewed as a sobriety enhancer. However, a perusal of the alcohol abusers charts made it apparent that sometimes the Sun’s dispositor was also the ruler of house 5 or 12 or dispositor of Jupiter, the north node or Neptune. Astrology is not black and white!

Reviewing the data pushed at the boundaries of how I typically view the astrological symbols. It was as if the symbols were asking me to see the details as well as the wholeness of their multifaceted selves simultaneously. The subtle interplay that exists among the symbols in the chart is gloriously mind boggling in its beauty as it weaves a tapestry of interdependence that doesn’t necessarily conform to popular astrological assumptions.

The AstroSignature

The 30-rule signature was tested on both the alcohol abusers and the control group and is outlined in Table 2. The average signature score achieved for the alcohol group was eight and the average score earned by the control group was four. Five percent of the experimental group scored less then four points (the average score for the control group) and only 3% of the control group scored greater then eight (the average score of the experimental group). Three percent of the control group scored zero points. The lowest score earned among the experimental group was three.

There are special considerations in attempting to calculate the statistical significance of an AstroSignature. On most of the rules, there is the potential to score more than one point on the rule. For example, rule one includes three dispositors in Capricorn and both groups had records that scored more than one point on this rule. However, the rule totals provided in Table 2 do not reflect the fact that some records scored more than one point (i.e. the totals in the table show the % non-zero scores for both the experimental and control group). Table 3 ⁵ shows the chi square values for each of the three single factors referenced in rule one.

Table 2. AstroSignature for Alcoholism (Koch house system & modern rulers were used) Legend: PR = Primary Ruler (Modern ruler); D=Dispositor; H=House; S=Stationary

* Rule 29 reads MC in declination between 21-23.5 north or south

Summary

A workable AstroSignature was developed with practical application. However, until rigorous retesting with replication of these findings, be hesitant in using this signature to identify a tendency toward alcohol abuse in the horoscope. When retested with replication of these results, we can more confidently assert that a person scoring eight or above on this signature has a tendency toward substance abuse not that he/she has a substance abuse problem.

While it’s excellent to establish statistical significance, doing so does not help us to explain the nature of the relationship. All that has been established in this research endeavor is that these factors occur more often in the charts of alcohol abusers than they would occur by chance or random error. In other words, some non-chance factor is at work. Well gee, we’re astrologers, we already know that! But the real value of this signature won’t be established until it is tested on another and another and yet another population of alcohol abusers with a replication of results.

This AstroSignature has set forth guidelines for identifying the potential for alcohol abuse but it fails to answer some other very important questions. For example, if the tendency for alcohol abuse does surface, what factors in the chart represent strengths to draw upon to offset the behavior? That is, what chart dynamics support getting sober? What transits or progressions might set off the tendency or assist in overcoming the tendency? These questions are equally important to ask, for it further enables astrologers to empower their clients with options and choices. The great blessing of astrology is that it not only provides us with a means for understanding the dynamics underlying dysfunctional behaviors, it also offers guidance about the means for healing such behaviors.

Notes & References

¹Time magazine, May 1997, pp. 69-76.

²The criteria used to create the control group of 1000 records in AstroDatabank involves replicating the place, year, and time of the experimental group records and then shuffling the data independently.

³Gibson, Mitchell E. MD, Signs of Mental Illness, St. Paul, MN, Llewellyn Publications, 1998.

⁴A chi square value of 3.84 using 1 degree of freedom results in a probability of 0.05 or p=0.05

⁵Chi Square values for each individual factor included in rule one of the AstroSignature.