To the Editor, The
Mountain Astrologer
Dear TMA,
I would like to respond to Brad Kochunas' article "Why Astrology
Works", by asking why we must choose between a scientifically
provable astrology and a mythically engaging one. I do not agree that
"Astrology must drop its pretensions to be an empirical discipline
[and move] to where it belongs in the realm of the imaginal." I don't
dispute that statistical research is not suited to identifying the amazing
idiosyncratic correspondences we regularly find between charts and lived
experience. But it definitely has a significant role to play in the future
of astrology.
In my humble opinion, astrology has been flooded with wave after wave
of plausible, astro-logically sensible - but untested - ideas. It is time
for us to enter into a culling period to discover which techniques are
more reliable than others. All techniques work some of the time. We want
to know which are the 30 percenters and which are the 80 percenters.
It seems to me that the field of astrological research has fallen into
a period of general malaise. I see more and more articles coming out
claiming that astrological principals are just not conducive to
statistical tests. It is true that since the Gauquelin research we have
had no new statistical study that has survived replication. The reason for
this is poor experimental design, not a fundamental incompatibility
between astrology and statistics. The fundamental astrological premise
that there is a correlation between astrological patterns and behavior
patterns is a statistical statement. We just need more sophisticated test
designs.
Most of what passes for astrological research is looking for
correlations between a single astrological factor (i.e. Sun signs or a
particular aspect) and a single behavior trait (i.e. vocations or
temperament). Gauquelin was just lucky to have studied the most powerful
single aspect in the chart - the angles. Nothing else he tried worked.
In retrospect this single factor research was doomed to failure. No
reputable astrologer would make such broad claims for a single
astrological factor. The people who did these studies were not stupid,
just hamstrung by a lack of easy to use tools. As Abraham Maslow was fond
of saying, "If all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look
like a nail."
AstroSignatures will change all that. We now have an easy to use tool
that can look for themes in a chart the way a real astrologer would.
Conceptually it is just like counting planets by element, but extended to
include all astrological factors. For example, we could look for
alcoholism by counting Sun or Moon in Pisces, Neptune angular, number of
Neptune aspects etc. The person with the highest score is the one most
likely to be an alcoholic or a saint.
In my opinion, astrological research is in a period comparable to that
just after the invention of the telescope. Ordinary men and women can make
a significant contribution to astrology by just looking and mapping what
they see. One does not need training in statistics or research design to
make a contribution. We have an easy to use tool and pre-categorized data
waiting for inspection. We know the paradigm; we just need lots and lots
of people to help in the effort of testing existing lore to find out which
techniques work better than others.
There is lots of astrological lore that needs testing and I want to
recruit an army of amateur researchers to help dig through the pile and
find the gold. If you are interested in joining, check out our web site: www.AstroDatabank.com.
Sincerely,
Mark McDonough
President, AstroDatabank Company
P.S. Please do not be let the fact that AstroSignature is an
AstroDatabank innovation deter you from printing this letter. (Actually
the two most sophisticated report writers, Liz Greene and Kepler, use this
concept. We are unique, though, in putting it to use in research.) After
talking to Bob Mulligan at that last ProSig conference, I realized that I
was doing astrology a disservice if I did not get out the word that we
have a new tool that produces breakthrough research results. Only about 5%
of our customers buy AstroDatabank to do research. I need to be quite
passionate about recruiting people to use this breakthrough tool - not to
prove astrology, but to improve it.
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