Every Astrologer a Researcher

by Mark McDonough, president of AstroDatabank Company

Click here to review commentaries on this study.

Here is the question for today: Is this a grand trine or a Pac Man convention? The scientists say we look at dots on paper and make up meanings. We know there is meaning in these dots, but how much of the meaning in our astrological tradition can we depend on?

Let me start by acknowledging that going to a lecture entitled "Every Astrologer – a Researcher" would not be my first choice for how to spend a Friday night. I am much more likely to gravitate to talks on the spiritual wisdom found in astrological symbolism. Most astrologers' feelings about astrology research resemble their feelings about the Human Genome Project. We're glad there are people out there who can decode the human gene, but would feel completely lost if someone were to ask us to do it.

My challenge tonight is to show you how astrology research is easier and more fun than you ever imagined. You do not need to be a statistics maven to make a significant contribution to the advancement of astrology. We are in a time comparable to the invention of the telescope. Normal people can make easy discoveries because we have new equipment to allow us to see further than we ever could before. Computers have taken the drudgery out of astrology research. Computers allow us to dig through haystacks of numbers and find the common thread attached to the proverbial needle. In the next ten years we will see dramatic advances in astrology research, and you can be a contributor.

The dramatic results that I speak of are not confined to a statistical proof of the validity of astrology, but something much closer to our hearts. We won't just prove astrology, but improve astrology. We will soon have a much firmer understanding of the nature of the archetypes and how they interact. We will have a better sense of what is possible with each planetary configuration and what is most likely. We will know which of our myriad of astrological techniques are rock solid reliable, and which are the 30 percenters that work some of the time but can't be relied on for anything but confirmation of major trends.

Is there anyone in this room that isn't confused and overwhelmed by the plethora of techniques in the astrologer's bag of tricks? Let me catalog the chaos. We have tropical and sidereal zodiacs, geocentric and heliocentric charts, three or four rulership systems, 8 ways to progress a chart, 16 house systems, 20+ Arabic parts, 45 midpoints, 180 levels of harmonics, 5000 asteroids, and now I hear we should start adding deep space objects to our charts. My image of contemporary astrology resembles that of Santa Claus staggering under a heavy bag full of toys. And Santa's bag keeps getting heavier as we invent or rediscover more ways to analyze the chart.

Why do we have such a massive, confusing mess of factors to deal with? Because there has been no way to toss anything out. Every technique works some of the time. You can always find five stunning examples of how the asteroid Winchester was involved in a shooting or how the tertiary progression predicted a bankruptcy to the day. But which are the techniques that work 80% of the time and which ones work only 30% of the time? Which ones are the fine-tuners that confirm major trends and which ones are the basics that make up the fundamental structure of a reading. The only way we will find this out for sure is through research.

When I speak about "research" I do not mean just "statistical research." There was a time when I used to look down my nose at any research that did not have control groups and end up with a p statistic to indicate the validity of the conclusion. I now have a much broader view of astrology research.

At the bottom layer is unsystematic observation. This is the learning that comes from looking at lots of charts. Though it is at the bottom of the pyramid it still deserves an enormous amount of respect. Our astrological tradition is the received wisdom of hundreds of generations of astrologers looking at charts a few at a time. We all have pet delineations of specific astrological patterns that come from some amazingly accurate readings on a few individuals. These get written down and hopefully the best ones stick.

But there's the rub. As I said, we have a BIG problem in contemporary astrology – too many have stuck. Every astrological technique works some of the time. Astrology is overburdened with a huge sack of techniques because there has been no easy way to cull out which ones work more consistently than others.

The next level of proof is qualitative research through systematic observation. In qualitative research we are systematically studying a group of charts from people who all share the same trait. It may be a common biographical trait or a common astrological trait. We scan these related charts to see if the received wisdom about which astrological factors correlate with which biographical traits bears up under systematic observation.

We always learn new things from qualitative research. Anyone who has done this work soon realizes that astrological tradition does not give us enough clues to cover most of the cases. Sometimes it takes days of staring at a dozen charts to see what pops out. We call this qualitative research because we are not counting factors. We are looking for symbolic correspondences in every way we can think of.

Every astrologer does unsystematic observational research. That is how we learn what we know. Many more could be doing systematic qualitative research and helping us extend the corpus of astrological knowledge. It takes the same skill set – looking for symbolic correspondence – to do qualitative research as it does to read charts. The only thing you need is a batch of charts with a shared astrological or biographical trait.

Donna Cunningham has been doing a brilliant series of articles for The Mountain Astrologer recently where she has studied all the public figures in Lois Rodden's AstroDatabank that share a similar aspect between Venus and an outer planet. We have reprinted her article on Venus-Neptune contacts on our web site. What I love about her work is that it is based upon a thorough examination of the data. I read far too many articles that show 2-5 stunning examples of a theory the author already had before looking for data to back up it up.

Her article comes from a confrontation with the facts – from hundreds of charts. Her delineations are original, not just a rearrangement of textbook descriptions. The result is a deep and broad exposition of what happens when the Venus and Neptune archetypes interact. She gives 30 examples and ties them together with wonderful themes like "Addicted to love", "You've Gotta Kiss A Lot of Frogs", and "Gurus with Zipper Problems." Each aspect type is also given a theme with several examples like "Too much of a good thing is wonderful" for the Square and "What would they do without me" for the opposition.

Venus-Neptune Squares

• Tina Turner
• Nicolas Cage
• Pamela Anderson
• John Belushi
• Loni Anderson

These are some of the Venus-Neptune poster children whose lifestyle she describes as:

"...quite hedonistic, with the love of pleasure and luxury becoming an addictive pursuit. The glamour girls push the windows of taste – too much silicone in the implants, too much collagen in the lips. Here, too, we see a stronger propensity toward addiction (Cage, Belushi, Butler, Andy Gibb) and involvement in abusive or destructive relationships (Butler, Tina Turner, Whitney Houston, Loni Anderson). If you have this aspect, learning to avoid excesses and to relate in healthy ways has probably been a life-long curriculum, but it can be done."

I have also published four qualitative studies of element imbalance here on our website. I asked the AstroDatabank to show me public figures whose charts were sopping wet and those that were absolutely parched. I did not simply count planets in water. I used a formula that is much closer to that way an astrologer actually evaluates charts.

1. Sun, Moon, Ascendant in Water signs (2 points)
2. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn in Water signs (1 point)
3. Ruler of the Ascendant (not using Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto) in Water (2 points)
4. Neptune angular (1 point)
5. Neptune conjunct Sun, Moon Orb<2 (1 point)
6. Saturn angular (-1 point)
7. Planets or South Node in Water houses (.5 point)

Notice that I give two points for the Sun, Moon, or Ascendant in water, and one point for the rest of the planets. Neptune angular or conjunct personal points adds a point. Saturn angularity dries out the personality so I gave it a negative weight. You may disagree with my formula, but I hope you get the concept. We are looking for "pure" types – exaggerated examples with lots of Water and little Water – to get a better sense of how the archetype manifests. This is similar to the study of abnormal psychology to get insights into the psychological processes that operate on a subtler level in normal people.

Here are some of the people who popped to the top of our list of Watery charts.

• Steven Foster 
• John Wayne Gacy 
• Johnny Cash 
• Kurt Cobain 
• Hermann Hesse 
• Princess Grace 
• Camilla Parker Bowles 
• Arthur Schopenhauer 
• Martin Scorsese

Stephen Foster – who wrote all those wonderfully homespun sentimental songs like "Beautiful Dreamer", "Oh Susanna", and the state song of Florida "Old Folks at Home" – You remember that one, it starts "Way down upon the Swanee River." According to his biography it also started the Florida tourist industry as millions flocked to Florida looking for the idyllic home life described in the song.

John Wayne Gacy – convicted of more murders than any other man in America. By the way, both of these guys had a Sun-Moon opposition to Neptune – which brings out another fascinating feature of qualitative research. I am very interested in qualitative research that helps us understand the highest and lowest expressions of astrological configurations. Using AstroDatabank to look up challenging aspects in clients' charts is a powerful tool for communicating the potentials in the chart. (However, I think I'd leave out John Wayne Gacy.) As you might suspect, Foster's Sun-Moon conjunction was in Cancer; Gacy's was in Pisces. If you come to the booth this weekend we can look up who in history had your most difficult aspect and how they dealt with it.

We also have Kurt Cobain – the drug-infused grunge king who committed suicide for the sin of "faking it",

Hermann Hesse – mystic and alcoholic who lived to 82 despite many bouts of depression, hypochondria and thoughts of suicide,

and Arthur Schopenhauer – the first Western philosopher to have access to translations of philosophical material from India, known as the Philosopher of Pessimism who also wrote in defense of the noble art of suicide.

Having lots of water in one's chart does not seem to bode well for a placid life. As you all know a lack of water does not mean an absence of emotions either. In fact, when looking through the low element lists we found it is much harder to find a common thread among the people in the low element list than in the high element list. 

No Water

• Mohammed Ali
• Ludwig van Beethoven
• Jack Benny
• Lewis Carroll
• Johnny Depp
• Al Pacino
• Huey Long

At first I thought that there was something wrong with me and then I realized that there was an interesting lesson about life contained in this observation. We are more known in the world from our strengths than our weaknesses. It is probably a better success formula to put more of one's focus on one's strengths than on one's weaknesses.

When doing this work it is vital to include examples of people you know really well – family, friends, clients and business associates. Lois used this approach to tackle the "No Air" group. She looked at the group of professional astrologers (which are like family to her) and came up with a new understanding for the meaning of No Air in the chart. So many of these people were innovators that she got to thinking. Perhaps they were innovators because their lack of air let them go their own way without concern for what others thought of what they were doing. Some of these people include:

• Richard Houck – who wrote the highly politically incorrect book, The Astrology of Death.
• Michele Gauquelin – the astrologer researcher whose work upset both the scientists for statistically proving an astrological effect and astrologers for finding cadent houses to be more powerful than angular ones, plus
• Bruno and Lillian Huber – who started their own school of astrology and have their own special way of drawing charts.

When we printed the report for who had the most Air in their chart we came up with the king of wind on top. His name was Le Petomane. He was a French night club performer who became all the rage in Europe for his novelty act of imitating musical tones, machine gun fire and comic situations by passing wind.

And in the gallows humor department, we found Henri Landru topping the list of people with excess Fire. He was a French serial killer who killed ten women in four years after proposing marriage and stealing their money. He dismembered and burned his victims. With all of his planets in fire, he must have swept them off their feet with his ardent demonstrations of affection. But with his Taurus Ascendant, he hid his burning rage underneath a more placid appearance.

Everyone in this room can do this kind of research. Everyone here can extend our astrological knowledge by systematic qualitative study of a group of charts sharing a similar astrological or biographical trait. And as you can see from all the examples, it can be lots of fun pouring over the biographies and charts.

The next rung on our hierarchy of truth involves counting.

I've been reading some pessimistic articles in astrology magazines recently, which claim that qualitative research is the end of the line for astrology. They claim that astrology by its very nature cannot be proven. They claim that standard scientific research methods cannot handle the symbolic, meaning based, synchronistic reality that is at the core of astrology. To which I say, "poppy-cock." "As above, so below" is a statement about correlation and correlation is a core statistical concept. If we can't show a correlation between astrological and behavior factors, then there is no "below" that is "as above."

I have reviewed the major qualitative methodologies – General Systems Theory, phenomenology, hermeneutics and the case study method – and all of them suffer from the inability to settle disputes between researchers. Until you start counting, the strongest truth claim one can make is "It seems to me such and such is important…", but it is basically one philosopher's opinion against another's. We had better be able to go beyond qualitative research if we ever want to adjudicate differences of opinion in astrology and start dealing with our rat's nest of house systems, zodiacs, ayanamshas, orb sizes, progression systems, etc.

Here's why. If Mars ends up in the Gauquelin sector 22% of the time for sports champions that means that 78% of the time it is outside of the Gauquelin sectors. Thus for all intents and purposes if you see a client's chart with planets in a Gauquelin sector, you might as well forget about giving it any extra weight.

This is the best we have been able to do in quantitative astrology research. Every other statistically significant study in astrology has fallen apart upon replication. Someone might find more Virgos to be librarians in one study, but when another person replicates the study the effect disappears.

I did not know this until after we shipped the AstroDatabank. I figured we had built the ultimate research machine and now I could take some time off to read up on astrology research. I was ready to do some of the research that I had intended to do when I first went to Lois looking for some good data to work with. The more I read the more depressed I got. I just kept reading of one failed or inconclusive experiment after another. I thought, "Oh my God, I've just invested three years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to build an astrology testing machine when the whole enterprise is failed from the get go." Then I realized there was a common factor in all the research failures – they were all testing only one factor at a time. They were all looking for a single astrological factor to correlate with a single biographical trait – Sun signs with vocations, Sun-Moon aspects with successful marriages, Jupiter aspects with luck, and so forth.

We should know better than this. Reading a chart is not as simple as listing the planetary positions and their meanings. We know that astrological factors can contradict or reinforce each other. Whether it's gathering groups of people with planets on an angle, Mars Square Pluto, or Sun in a particular sign, it is way too simplistic to expect a single astrological factor to correlate with a specific behavioral trait. If we are going to test correlations between astrological factors and personality tests or vocations, we are going to have to consider the combined effect of multiple factors to get good results.

Why has the history of astrological research been almost exclusively composed of single factor tests? I believe the answer lies in an adage often quoted by Abraham Maslow, "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." The tools one has at one's disposal limit the kind of research one can do. Until recently the main tools of astrological research have been hand counting.

Who can blame the Gauquelins for choosing a simple single factor hypothesis like "planets on an angle correlate with vocations" when they had to hand count each of the thousands of charts. They tested many astrological factors. In retrospect it is obvious why angularity is the only single factor research that has paid off – it's because angularity is probably the most powerful factor in a chart.

Everyone expected that computers would be a gigantic boost to astrological research. The astrology research programs made the counting faster, but they all counted only one factor at a time as well. It now takes only seconds to find out how many alcoholics have Sun in Pisces or Moon in Pisces or Neptune on an angle. We can even do some fancy searches like looking for how many eighth harmonic aspects are in charts, but basically it's still single factor research.

In order for us to have a breakthrough in quantitative astrological research we need to be able to teach computers to analyze charts in a way that mirrors the process a human astrologer goes through. The computer needs to be able to look at multiple factors at once, weighing them together and balancing them off each other.

If you think I am talking about some time way in the future, think again. I know three astrology software companies who are selling software today that can do this trick of multi-factor analysis of charts – Cosmic Patterns, Air Software, and AstroDatabank Company. Their products actually look for patterns in charts and score charts according to how closely they fit an established pattern.

Most report writers look at one factor at a time – planet in sign, planet in house, or planet aspecting planet – and spit out a paragraph. Cosmic Pattern's Kepler program has a major life themes report that looks at hundreds of factors before deciding which 5-10 major life themes apply. David Cochrane who programmed the report told me he wanted to go beyond trait analysis (planet in sign, planet in house, planet aspecting planets) and find sub-personalities. Underneath the covers, the program looks for combinations of three planets that are both related through a harmonic relationship and a midpoint relationship. He then looks at the type of relationship among the three planets before issuing text that describes this sub-personality. I count this as a major step forward in taking report writing out of simple unintegrated single factor astrology.

Alphee Levoee of AIR Software tells me he is using neural network technology to examine the charts of days when the market did really well. Neural network technology is designed to emulate the way humans learn through pattern recognition. The software builds in an internal model of what are the relevant weighted factors in up days and down days and then tells you how likely today is going to be an up or down day in the stock market or for a particular stock.

To give you a better sense of how these systems work, let me give you a quick example of pattern recognition using the AstroDatabank interface. Suppose you were looking for an AstroSignature for alcoholism. You might look for the following:

• Sun or Moon in Pisces
• Number of aspects from Neptune to the luminaries
• Neptune on an angle
• Saturn on as angle

The real study has 50 rules and is on our web site; this is just a simple one for instructional purposes. Here is what it would look like in software:

Notice that we have given a weight of 2 to Neptune on an angle and a weight of -2 to Saturn on an angle. That means that if the chart has Neptune on an angle it has twice the importance of an inner planet in Pisces and if Saturn is on an angle we expect it to have a strong sobering influence so we give it a weight of negative 2.

We then score all the alcoholics using this formula to get a group score that is higher for alcoholics than the control group of non-alcoholics. The greater the disparity between the score for the alcoholic group vs. the control group, the higher the likelihood that we have found a signature for Alcoholism. We found eleven factors that show a differential of over 6% between the Alcoholic and control group.

I need some help in interpreting these results. We need the human-meaning-based meaning analysis to make sense of these results. The results are also on our website and I invite you two add your comments to those of the other astrologers around the world who are examining this problem. Twenty years ago when they were first building the wide area networks that have become today's Internet, their intention was to build a network to facilitate collaboration between researchers. We astrologers can do this too.

Before I close I would like to share with you one quick study I did on hemisphere emphasis, which actually proved to be ten times more statistically significant than the Gauquelin research. One afternoon it occurred to me that I could very easily test the hypothesis that public figures have more planets above the horizon because everyone in the AstroDatabank is designated as either a "public figure" or "private person." So I counted how many of the public figures had ten planets above the horizon and how many had ten planets below the horizon.

I did indeed see a 28% differential in the expected direction but the numbers were so small 55 vs 43 there weren't enough observations for statistical significance. So I tried 9 and 1, nine planets above and one below. Then 8 and 2, 7 and 3, and so forth. As you can see the effect is very strong through 8 planets and starts to fall apart at 7 planets above the horizon and 3 below. The practical significance of this study is that unless the client has at least eight planets above or below the horizon the hemisphere effect should not be mentioned.

If you look at this table closely, you may notice an anomaly that gave me trouble for a week, but is now my favorite part of the study. One would think that these numbers should be a straight graph.

The more planets above the horizon the greater that chance of being a public figure. But 9 above and 1 below is actually less likely to produce a public figure than 8 and 2. After wrestling with this anomaly in the back of my head for a week it dawned on me that this result is absolutely predicted by astrological theory. It is the power of the singleton to draw the energy to the other side of the chart. So what started out an anomaly has ended up as the finishing touch that nails the case closed.

There are three points I want to make about quantitative astrological research:

1. It's much easier than you think. I did the hemisphere study in one afternoon.
2. Quantitative research can be use improve astrological theory by calibrating when it works and when it falls apart. As we just saw the hemisphere hypothesis falls apart after 8 planets above.
3. We are on the cusp of a new age of discovery with easy to use multiple factor techniques for chart pattern analysis.

I do not expect everyone in this room to feel comfortable doing quantitative astrological research. Next year I'll be singing a different tune after I have built some of the automation tools I have designed for later versions of the AstroDatabank. But I can say that everyone in this room can make a contribution to astrological research through qualitative research.

Here's that pyramid of research again.

Each level feeds the one above it. The qualitative research generates the hypotheses tested by quantitative research which is then examined and replicated by the six people in the world who understand both astrology and statistics.

When I say that each one of you can have a hand in the advancement of astrological knowledge, let me be very specific. There are 660 categories in Lois Rodden's AstroDatabank – and each one is a potential research study. What is the astrological recipe for cancer, arthritis, peak performance, career choices, etc.? Inquiring minds want to know. What are the highest and lowest expressions of the least favorite aspect in your chart? Wouldn't you like to know?

Take a moment to recall what it was like for you the first time you started to study your own chart and the charts of your loved ones. Do you remember the excitement of finding underlying patterns that made you tick? That same sense of adventure and exhilaration of discovery is still available by probing the basic mysteries of astrology. The only difference between the standard chart interpretation you already do and qualitative research is that you will be looking at a group of charts that share a common trait and looking for other themes in common. The same curiosity that drove you to learn astrology can be harnessed to further the reaches of astrological knowledge.

From magazines, to local club newsletters to web sites, publishers are hungry for your research articles. There are new astrology web sites popping up every day, looking for new content to put on their site. We publish a new astrology research article every other week on our site and StarIQ.com's editorial calendar calls for at least seven new articles per week.

So I invite everyone here to join in the discovery process. We have a window of about ten years when all the easy discoveries will be made. We might compare it to being an astronomer soon after the discovery of the telescope. The software tools that are coming out today make it easy to see distinctions that were formerly lost in the complex clusters of data. There is so much uncharted territory to map. The seminal work will be done now. Twenty years from now it will just be fine tuning; the process will become as complex as contemporary astrophysics. Now is the time for you to participate in the bold new discoveries that are just ready to fall into your lap, as they did for Galileo. After he invented the telescope he pointed it at Jupiter and saw four moons that had never been seen before. Now they are called the Galilean moons.

I'd like to thank you for having the courage to come to a lecture on such a formerly boring topic as astrology research. I hope I have made my point that you do not have to be a triple Virgo statistician to have fun and make a significant contribution to unlocking the mysteries of how planetary patterns and behavior patterns are linked.

Thank you for coming and I look forward to seeing your contributions on the web.

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5/13/2000