Stock Market Astrology

Stock market astrology involves finding the best time to pick stocks or bonds, speculate in commodities or trade futures and options. As with electional astrology, the positioning of the Planets is key in determining the most auspicious time for making investments and executing trades. Certain Planets, as well as planetary cycles and alignments, are sought in stock market astrology. The Eighth House, which is the House of mutual funds, insurance and annuities, speaks favorably to long-term plays in the marketplace. Scorpio here is also good to market mavens, as is Taurus, a Planet associated with patience. Easy aspects (trines, sextiles) in a chart smile kindly on those invested in the markets, as do the Earth signs (Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn). These signs are the money signs, exhibiting as they do a grounded and realistic behavior -- quite the asset when playing the markets. If Jupiter, the Planet of luck and good fortune, is making his mark in your chart then it's the right time to make some moves. If this Planet is transitting the Second or Eighth Houses, even better. When there is a Jupiter/Pluto alignment in the heavens, one is likely to reap huge dividends, so it's definitely time to act! Other Planets to watch in the heavens (and on Wall Street) are Saturn, which speaks to long-term strategies and the ability to execute your chosen plan; Uranus, which is a bellwether for those interested in more speculative plays; and Neptune, the Planet of illusion. Avoid big moves if Neptune is hanging around, because you're likely to be imbued with a false confidence which could cause you to lose your shirt. Where the high-stakes financial markets are concerned, one can't have too much help. Stock market astrology can be viewed as a silent partner, and a darned good one at that!

Volume XI : Into the Twentieth Century

Whilst Alan Leo took the lead in maintaining the popular interest in astrology in England, it was the great psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) who probably more than any other single person encouraged at least a few scientists to begin to think about the subject. Jung’s interest in astrology seems to have been a natural offshoot of his preoccupation with the ‘collective unconscious’, his belief that ‘although our inheritance consists in physiological paths, still it was mental processes in our ancestors that created the paths’; that, in fact, 20th-century man’s attitude to life is shaped by his remote history. Jung saw the signs of the zodiac as archetypal — that is, as having for us a significance deeper than we know; and we are conscious of archetypes when stirred by highly emotional circumstances, such as those that provoke people to consult astrologers. Jung himself seems to have used the horoscope as a starting point from which to build a bridge of understanding between himself and a patient by finding within it and his own chart some common ground. During the preparation of his essay on synchronicity (the term he coined to explain the wild coincidences that occur in almost everyone’s life, and can be not only puzzling but frightening) he and his assistants examined the birth charts of 180 apparently happily married couples, and sought in them the traditional astrological indications of satisfactory partnership. Later, he added more data, and eventually investigated the 966 charts of 483 couples, not only in their original pairings but in chance couplings — so altogether 32,220 pairings were postulated and examined. The results of the test were considered by Jung to be, in the end, somewhat unsatisfactory; but he did point out that in the twinned charts of the happily married couples there was a statistically significant presence of the aspects traditionally considered indicative of a satisfactory relationship. He expressed this very dramatically: You take three matchboxes, put 1000 black ants in the first, 10,000 in the second and 50 in the third, together with one white ant in each of them, shut the boxes, and bore a hole in each of them, small enough to allow only one ant to crawl through at a time. The first ant to come out of each of the three boxes is always the white one. The chances of this actually happening are extremely improbable. Even in the first two cases, the probability works out at 1:100 x 10,000, which means that such a coincidence is to be expected only in one case out of ten million. It is improbable that it would ever happen in anyone’s experience. Yet in my statistical experiment it happened that precisely the three conjunctions stressed by astrological tradition came together in the most improbable way. Jung was conscious of the statistical blemishes of his experiment, and never claimed that it proved anything other than that, in the words of J. S. Haldane, ‘the universe may be not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.’ But his astrological essay (Synchronicity, an acausal connecting principle, 1955) had the effect of directing some serious minds towards the disreputable science, and it is during the past thirty years that interest, in particular, has steadily grown. Before Jung’s rather specialized interest took shape, isolated examples are to be found of a revival of serious attention to the subject. In 1891, in France, while popular interest was scant (and it was possible for a scientist to assert that astrology was an ancient science whose rules had been completely lost), a kind of cabalist astrology was revived, which led to the publication of a translation of part of Morin de Villefranche’s Astrologia Gallica of 1661, which in turn interested an artillery officer called Paul Choisnard (1867-1930), who became the first modern astrologer to attempt to get together a reliable body of statistical evidence about the planet’s influences on the human personality. It was Madame Blavatsky who triggered off the renewal of interest in Germany, which spread largely as a result of the work of Karl BrandlerPracht (born 1864), who seems to have learned astrology in the United States, where he worked as an actor. He founded the German Astrological Society, and started the Astrologische Rundscbau, the most prominent astrological journal in Germany until the Nazis shut it down in 1938. It was after the First World War, among the uncertainties of the peace, that astrology really began to gain ground in Germany, and the publication of ephemerides (tables of the positions of celestial bodies) and almanacs boomed. The best-known astrologer of the years between the wars was without doubt Elspeth Ebertin (born 1880), a serious astrologer with a genius for popular journalism, which she combined with consultancy. It was Frau Ebertin who, sent the birth data of Adolf Hitler in 1923, wrote in her yearbook that he ‘could expose himself to danger by lack of caution’ — which he duly did during the Munich putsch, when he fell and broke his shoulder before being arrested and imprisoned. Frau Ebertin received concommitant publicity. Although the German police from time to time prosecuted individual astrologers for fortune-telling, interest grew, and annual conferences of astrologers were held between 1923 and 1936, only internecine rows hindering ambitious plans for scientific study. The Germans have the distinction of recognizing the putative importance of astrology in the developing art of psychoanalysis, and one of Jung’s admirers, 0. A. H. Schmitz (1873-1931) led the way in proposing how this could best be done, though Herbert Freiherr von Kloeckler (1896-1950) was the pioneer in dragging astroanalysis into the psychology-conscious 20th century, with his Grundlagen fur die astrologische Deutung (Foundations of astrological interpretation), 1926. Interest in astrology being as intense, in Germany, as it was — Ellic Howe, in Urania’s children, 1967, estimates that during the twenty years after 1921 at least four hundred specialist books and pamphlets were published in that country — it was inevitable that it should be suspected that Hitler and the Nazi party made use of astrology for their own purposes. As with other homogenous groups, some astrologers supported the Nazis, some did not; on both sides, there were unhappy consequences. Dr Karl-Gunther Heimoth, for instance, a doctor and psychologist who published an astrological study of homosexuality and through it became a friend of Ernst Rohm, the chief of the Sturm-Abteilung (Hitler’s private army), was murdered by the Fuhrer with Rohm and others in June 1934. The Astrological Society in Germany, on the other hand, managed to stay out of trouble, integrating with the establishment and providing a certain amount of protection for astrologers even after 1934, when the Nazis banned all ‘fortune-telling’, making the publication of almanacs and astrological journals illegal. There is no evidence that Hitler himself was interested in astrology, and some evidence that he positively mistrusted it. He is often accused of having a personal astrologer, and the name most often connected with the accusation is that of Karl Ernst Krafft (1900-45). Krafft was born in Switzerland, of German descent, and became a very competent astrologer. He also became a fervent admirer of Hitler, and on 2 November 1939, wrote to a Dr Fosel (then working for the RSHA, Himmler’s secret intelligence service) warning that between 7 and 10 November Hitler’s life would be in danger because of ‘the possibility of an attempt at assassination by the use of explosive material’. The Nazis were as disapproving of astrological predictions about the life of the head of state as the Caesars had been, and disregarded the warning. When on 9 November a bomb exploded at the Burgerbrau beer hall in Munich minutes after Hitler had left it, Krafft could not resist sending a telegram to Rudolf Hess pointing out that he had told them so. His original letter to Fosel was dug out of the files and shown to Hitler, who passed it to Dr Goebbels. The same day, Krafft was arrested by the Gestapo and taken in for questioning. He managed to convince them that under certain circumstances such accurate predictions were possible, and was released. In 1940, Krafft was summoned to Berlin by Goebbels to look through the prophesies of Nostradamus and translate any of them that could be used as propaganda against the Allies. It was felt that these, if dropped into unoccupied areas, might well do something to persuade the people that government by the Nazis was in the natural order of things. And indeed, after some weeks’ work, Krafft claimed to have discovered verses predicting the invasion of Holland and Belgium, and foreseeing the Third Reich and the Second World War. He produced a pamphlet based on forty quatrains of Nostradamus, designed for circulation in Belgium and France, and predicting the imminent downfall of Britain. But in May of 1941, about three months later, Hess, second in command to Hitler (after Goering) flew to Scotland in an independent attempt to arrange a peace — an attempt rewarded by the Allies with over forty years’ imprisonment. Martin Bormann decided that the best way of presenting the story to the German people would be to announce that Hess was actually insane, and shortly afterwards it was announced that he had been crazed by ‘hypnotists, astrologers and so on’. In Britain, The Times actually reported that Hess had been Hitler’s private astrologer! This gave the Gestapo the excuse to clamp down on astrology in general, and those who had formerly enjoyed the protection of a sympathetic Himmler (who had arranged the release of one of their number, Wilhelm Wulif, from a concentration camp to work for him and his wife) now found themselves arrested and at worst sent to concentration camps. This delighted a number of members of the Nazi High Command, few of whom admired Himmler, and many of whom regarded him as deranged: Reinhard Heydrich, for instance, used to compare Himmler to another officer, saying ‘One is worried about the stars on his epaulette, and the other about the stars in his horoscope!’ Along with faith healers, clairvoyants, graphologists, Christian Scientists and spiritualists, astrologers were definitely out of favour. Krafft was among those arrested. In prison, he continued to work for a while on astrological propaganda, but at the end of 1944 caught typhus, and in January of the following year died en route for Buchenwald. It is doubtful whether astrology had any effect on the German conduct of the war, despite Himmler’s sympathy to it. Even Goebbels was infected, to some extent, for he sent from the besieged Berlin bunker in the last days of the war for copies of Hitler’s birth chart and that of the Reich, pointing out to the Fuhrer that both charts agreed in showing the outbreak of war and the present disastrous reverses, but also promised an overwhelming victory for Germany in April, and peace by August. Hitler preferred not to wait for the planetary change, and killed himself. In Britain, newspaper horoscopes played a part in keeping up national morale; but the most curious British astrological story of the war is that of Louis de Wohl, a German, part-Jewish, who spent much of its duration in London, having persuaded the government, or at least some members of it, that he could tell them what advice Hitler’s astrologers were giving him, and thus predict some of his plans. The venture seems to have been successful only for de Wohl, who made a lot of money from syndicated journalism, worked for the Psychological Warfare Executive’s ‘black propaganda’ unit, and flourished a British army captain’s uniform to which he was not entitled. In America, there was the same uneasy blend of serious and popular interest in astrology as in most parts of Europe. In 1898 Luke Broughton (1828-99), an astrologer and doctor of medicine, had published his Elements of astrology, the first original American textbook (though it is fair to remember that Broughton had been born in Leeds, in England). And in the 1920s came the first independent American popular astrologer, Evangeline Adams (1865-1932), who leapt to popular attention after a spectacularly successful prediction of a hotel fire in New York, and for the next thirty years collected an enormous public for her syndicated columns and radio programmes (at one stage she broadcast three times a week). Her success was consolidated after a prosecution, in 1914, for fortune-telling. During the trial she was given an anonymous horoscope to interpret; on reading the result, the judge announced that the chart had been that of his son, that she was totally accurate on all points, and in his view had ‘raised astrology to the dignity of an exact science’. He dismissed the case. A more serious practitioner was Dane Rudhyar (1895— ), a distinguished composer who came to astrology through an interest in oriental music and philosophy, and believed that through astrology ‘man can discover the pattern or order which reveals both his individuality and his destiny underneath or within the often seemingly chaotic and bewildering events of his personal daily existence’. His The Planetarization of consciousness, 1970, remains probably the most impressive astrological work to have come out of America. Between Miss Adams and Dr Rudhyar came a multitude of other astrologers, professional and amateur. In 1960, Marcia Moore had no difficulty in finding nine hundred professional astrologers to question for a thesis she was writing; in 1969 one journalist estimated that over ten thousand Arnericans were making a living from astrology (probably the majority of them by making predictions that would be mistrusted by more serious astrologers). The incursion of astrology into the popular press was pioneered in London as recently as 1930 by R. H. Naylor (1889-1952). He was invited by the editor of The Sunday Express to cast the horoscope of the newly born Princess Margaret Rose, daughter of the future King George VI. He did so, not only outlining in his article a character now recognizably that of the Princess, but predicting that ‘events of tremendous importance to the Royal Family and the nation will come about near her seventh year’. Unforeseen events indeed resulted in her father’s accession to the throne a few months before her seventh birthday. But.more important for astrology, the newspaper’s editor invited Mr Naylor to contribute another article to the following week’s issue; and in it he suggested that British aircraft might be in danger. On the very day of publication, the airship R-101 crashed in northern France. The newspaper gave Mr Naylor massive publicity, and he became famous overnight. Since then no popular newspaper or magazine has been able to escape the necessity to publish regular astrological forecasts for its readers. Recently, astrologers have managed to persuade editors to allow them to make use of and mention various planets and their possible effects on readers’ lives; but it was Naylor who invented the Sun sign column. He had to find a way of writing so that each reader could feel involved, and chose to divide his essays into twelve paragraphs, one for each person born when the Sun was passing through a particular zodiac sign. This is by no means a predominantly important part of astrological forecasting, but it is one recognizable by every reader, because it depends on the day, rather than the precise time, of birth. Unrelenting concentration on the Sun sign has done untold damage to astrology, for even those who claim to be intelligent critics are often under the impression that astrologers base serious character analyses on this single aspect of a birth chart. Journalists often write of a booming interest in astrology — by which they mean, on the whole, the growth of an almost entirely superstitious interest in the subject. There was a time, in the 1960s and 1970s, when you only had to sit next to a stranger on a plane, or stand next to someone at a party, to be asked ‘What’s your sign?’ In those days, the Sun sign was almost the only element of a birth chart to be known. This left the field open for ‘astrologers’ who were really clairvoyants. Maurice Woodruff, the Englishman who numbered so many international film stars among his clients (Peter Sellers, for one, hardly made a move without consulting him) was much more clairvoyant than astrologer. In America, Carroll Righter was more conventional, but probably no less uncritically consulted — by among others a film star called Ronald Reagan, whose publicly expressed interest in astrology has recently diminished. Those who consulted Woodruff or Righter would have been unlikely to have heard of Dane Rudhyar or of John Addey (1920-82), the Englishman whose advanced work on what he termed ‘the harmonics of cosmic periods’ is believed by many astrologers to be crucial. In some areas of the world there was a more informed wide interest: in the east, especially, where Mrs Indira Gandhi has never disguised her trust. Nor have many prominent Indian politicians and public servants, despite a far more fatalistic astrology than is acceptable in the west. In Sri Lanka, astrology plays a prominent part in public affairs. In general, prejudice seems to be the only factor to stand in the way of a serious scientific consideration of the astrological theory. In private, even the most sceptical of critics may admit to a suspicion that not enough examination has been made of the available facts, despite the availability of statistical evidence on a large scale. Until fairly recently, such evidence has been prepared by astrologers themselves, and has thus been open to criticism. But equally, critics have been unprepared even to look at that evidence, or indeed to make any real attempt to understand what it is that they criticize. Some years ago, two hundred scientists at a European convention issued a statement warning the public that belief in astrology was futile and could be dangerous. When questioned, it was found that the great majority of them believed that astrologers worked only on the basis of the position of the Sun at the time of birth. (It is ironical that their warning, better expressed, would have been supported by most astrologers, as concerned at uncritical belief in Sun-sign astrology as anyone!) Neither has it been publicised that a greater number declined to sign the statement than put their names to it. Some scientists are able even to ignore ‘astrological’ facts that turn up, unprompted, in their own fields. Surgeons provide statistics which relate a difficulty in stopping bleeding during surgical operations at certain phases of the Moon, and doctors at blood transfusion centres note with surprise that donors bleed more freely when the Moon is full. Tell them that ancient astrologers pointed this out, and they are dumbfounded. Meteorologists announce that there seems to be a correlation between the position of certain planets and events on the surface of the Sun which affects the weather, but assert that this has nothing to do with astrology. Occasionally, however, those with absolutely no interest in the subject are sufficiently intrigued to involve themselves. The most notable of these is perhaps the French statistician Michel Gauquelin, assisted by his wife Francoise. Gauquelin’s interest was prompted by his decision to check the statistics on which Krafft based his Treatise on astrobiology, published in the 1930s. With the help of a computer, Gauquelin showed that these were improperly correlated. But certain interesting facts emerged from them, nevertheless, and Gauquelin decided to test two of them — the propositions that people born during ‘odd’ months of the year were introverts, while those born during ‘even’ months were extraverts. This seemed obviously one of those lunatic traditional astrological propositions that could not, in a sensible world, be believed. To his amazement and irritation, Gauquelin found that his computers confirmed it (as far as introversion and extraversion are measureable). To summarize, Gauquelin went on to examine the birth charts of thousands of sportsmen, actors and scientists chosen on the basis of their success in their professions. Statistically, sportsmen tended to be born when the planet Mars was, astrologically, dominant; actors under Jupiter; scientists and doctors under Saturn. Gauquelin’s propositions have been re-examined by Hans Eysenck, who agrees with them. There have been other incidental illustrations of the astrological proposition. Maki Takata has examined the effect of sunspot activity on the flocculation index (the rate at which blood albumin curdles) and found a close relationship; Giorgio Piccardi has shown that both sunspots and the Moon’s cycle affect various chemical reactions; Y. Rocard has recently shown that men and women have a very delicate sensitivity to the earth’s magnetic field — the sense homing pigeons use to find their way back to their lofts over many miles of countryside. All this has a very obvious relationship to astrology, as have more obvious correlations of planetary movements and events on earth (such as the example of John H. Nelson’s work in meteorology). In recent years some astrologers have made great efforts to look critically and coolly at their work; a lengthy book, Recent Advances in Natal Astrology (first published 1977) related both successes and failures, sought out false propositions, astrological legends, badly devised and conducted ‘experiments’ and unsupported claims with such rigour and objectivity that many astrologers condemned it as an attack on their craft. Far from that, it is an almost unique attempt to look seriously at the subject and to examine it critically but not dismissively. There are relatively few areas of astrology which it suggests are worth thoughtful and constructive examination (though these are widely spread, and include the Sun-sign elements as well as more arcane theories). As the authors, Geoffrey Dean and Arthur Mather, put it: In recent years properly controlled experiments have failed to sustain many of astrology’s claims, and have shown beyond doubt that much of its apparent validity can be explained by the demonstrable gullibility of practitioners and clients alike ... On the other hand the same experiments have revealed that not all is fallacious. Enough remains that cannot be explained by gullibility or coincidence to justify further study. No one who has seriously looked at the evidence (and a great deal of evidence now exists) could argue with that. Progress is being made. The Astrological Association in Britain and the American Federation of Astrologers hold annual conferences as well as weekly meetings; certainly theories are aired that seem decidedly ‘chintzy’, but a great deal of serious work is also done. Correlation, a regular journal published by the Astrological Association, is probably the most serious periodical in the history of the subject. In London recently as many as four hundred astrologers and students met for an evening’s study, on a serious level; and there are regular meetings and conferences in most western countries, many of them international. The British Faculty of Astrological Studies holds classes in London and has a correspondence course which has been taken by students in most countries of the world. Its final examination involves several papers, and there is a high and rigorous standard of marking, with relatively few passes each year. Yes, Sun-sign books continue to be published, and account for the majority of sales of astrological books. But many of them now have tables of planetary positions which enable the reader to work out a virtually complete horoscope. Historians too are beginning to explore the documents left by the astrologers of the past. Even science begins to show a reluctant interest through the study of various natural rhythms, of cosmobiology, and of correlations of terrestrial events and planetary movements. It seems likely that the next fifty years or so will make it clear to what extent the longest-living scientific tradition is based on superstition, and to what extent it can help to illuminate the nature of our existence. 60,912 Abenezra (1092-1167) Adams, Evangeline (1865-1932) Addey, John (1920 - 82) Adelard of Bath (Late 11th century) Albumasar (12th cent.) Allen, W. F. (1860-1917) Aquinas, Thomas (13th century) Aristotle Assurbanipal (Late 7th cent.) Bacon, Roger (1214-94) Balbillus, Tiberius Claudius (1st cent.) Bede, the Venerable 74, 88 Berosus 26, 37 Blavatsky, FIelena 172, 177 Boccaccio 109, 115 Boethius 8i, 109 Bonatti, Guido 102-3 Booker, John '54, i~6 Brahe, Tycho 132, 144 Broughton, Luke 163, i8i Butler, Samuel i~8 Caesar, Julius 12, 52, 53ff, 86 Cardan, Jerome (Girolamo) 130, 131 Carneades 34 Cecco d'Ascoli los, io6 Chaucer, Geoffrey 84, io8, io9ff, 110, 120-I Choisnard, Paul '77 Clement III, Pope 100 Clement VI, Pope 117, ii8 Clement VII, Pope 125 Clement of Alexandria 30 Clement of Rome 76 Commodus, Emperor 68, 70 Conches, William of see William of Conches Copernicus, Nicolaus 36, 132 Dante, Alighieri 94, 102 Dean, Dr Geoffrey i86, 187 Dee, Dr John 84, 134ff, 135 Diodorus 22, 26 Domitian, Emperor 63 Dorotheus Ebertin, Elspeth 178, 179 Esarhaddon 20, 22 Eudoxus 34, 36, 46 Eysenck, Dr Hans i86 Figulus, Publius Nigidius 52, 53,79 Firmicus 8o Forman, Simon 143, 145ff Gadbury, John i~6, i6i Galileo 132, 133 Gauquelin, Michel 185-6, 188 Gaurico, Luca 124, 125-6 Goebbels, Joseph '79, i8o Gregory XIII, Pope 147 Guy de Chauliac 117, ii8 Hadrian, Emperor 65ff, 66, 7' Hermes 30-I, 91 Hippocrates 36-7,J '9 Honorius IV, Pope 104 Innocent IV, Pope 117 Jinner, Sarah '53, 154 John XXII, Pope lol Jonas, Dr Eugen 37 Julius II, Pope 125, 146 Jung, C. G., 26, '75, 177 Kelley, Edward '34, 135, '39 Kepler 133-4, 136 Krafft, Karl Ernst i78ff, 179 Lanier, Emilia 144, '45 Leo X, Pope 125, 128 Leo, Alan see Allen, W. F. Lilly, William 84, 114, Mather, Arthur i86, 187 Mather, Cotton i68 Morin, Jean Baptiste 129 Morrison, Richard James i7off Nabod, Valentin '45 Naylor, R. H. 183 Nelson, John '57, i86 Nero, Emperor 58, 59, 6iff Newton, Isaac 146, 159 Nostradamus 126-7, 127-8, Old, W. R. 172 Oresme, Nicole 109, 120-I Partridge, John i58, '59, i6i Paul III, Pope 124, 125-6 Paul V, Pope 149 Petronius 6j, 64 Pius IV, Pope '47 Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaeus) 33, 35, 41ff, 7', 9', 94 Raleigh, Sir Walter 140, 141 'Raphael' see Smith, Robert Cross Regiomontanus 104, 126 Rudhyar, Dr Dane 182 Sacro Bosco, Johannes Scot, Michael 98-100, 99, Seleucus I, 24-5, 30, 36 'Sepharial' see Old, W. R. Severus, Emperor 30, 68ff Sidney, Sir Philip '37, '39 Silvester, Bernard 95-6 Sixtus IV, Pope 146 Sixtus V, Pope '47 Sylvester II, Pope 84 Thrasylla, Ennia 56ff Thrasyllus 3', 56ff Urban IV, Pope 100 Urban V, Pope 117 Urban VIII, Pope 148 Vespasian, Emperor 62 Vettius Valens 47, 69-70 Wharton, George i56 Woodruff, Maurice 183-4 Wycliffe, John "9 'Zadkiel' see Morrison, Richard James Zeno 35, 36

All living things pass on traits from one generation to the next according toa systematic set of "blueprints." These blueprints are contained in the long, thread-like chromosomes that lie inside the cell nucleus of all living things. On these chromosomes are genes that determine the hereditary traits of the offspring. Egg and sperm cells, or sex cells, are specially formed to carry only one setof the 23 different chromosomes that are normally found in the human body. (Regular body cells have two sets of the 23 chromosomes.) When a mother's egg is fertilized by the father's sperm, the egg inherits one set of chromosomes from each parent, for a total of 46 chromosomes. Some characteristics can only be inherited through genes and chromosomes: blood type, eye color, maleness or femaleness, etc. These are called hereditarytraits. Most characteristics, however, are a result of both heredity and environment. For instance, a person can inherit a general body type, but environmental factors such as diet and exercise may change that body type. The study of heredity the science called genetics--started in the 1800s, whenscientists first began trying to explain the existence of different speciesand variations within the same species. At that time, French biologist Jean Baptiste de Lamarck strongly believed that acquired characteristics would improve when routinely used over time. Those characteristics that were not used simply faded away. Lamarck also maintained that acquired characteristics wereinherited from one generation to the next. In other words, Lamarck believed that if a giraffe continuously stretched its neck to reach for food, it woulddevelop a longer neck. And the longer neck would be passed on to the next giraffe generation. Although his belief that acquired characteristics were inherited was incorrect, Lamarck was on the right track. He implied that traits can be inherited from generation to generation--that species undergo long-termevolutionary changes. In 1859, Charles Darwin published his landmark book The Origin of Species, in which he outlined his theory of evolution through natural selection.Darwin believed that members of a particular species have slightly differentcharacteristics. In the competition for space, food, and shelter, some of these characteristics would make a particular plant or animal better able to survive and produce offspring than others of its species. Therefore, these advantageous characteristics would persist in future generations, while those lessadvantageous ones would disappear as their carriers died out. After centuries or millennia of competition or natural selection, recent members of a species might be quite different from their ancestors. This theory gained advocates like the revered English physician Thomas Huxley (1825-1895), who, as "Darwin's Bulldog," did more than anyone else to overcome opposition to Darwiniantheory. But even with all the support, Darwin's theory still lacked an explanation for how the differences in species occurred. Darwin, realizing that he needed to explain the mechanics of variation, asserted that tiny particles floating in an individual's bloodstream entered the eggs and sperm to determine hereditary characteristics. But Francis Galton proved him wrong with a simple blood transfusion experiment between two different types of rabbits. The transfusion didn't change the offspring of the rabbits as it should have if Darwin were correct. In 1884, August Weissmann proposed that a special hereditary substance existed in the egg nucleus, which he termed "germ plasm." His theories concerning the behavior of this substance--later identified as chromosomes--were eventually proved correct. However, he mistakenly believed that the germ plasm passedintact from generation to generation, unchanged by any environmental factors. Weissmann's theory, therefore, could not adequately account for the changesthat occurred between generations and drove Darwin's theory of evolution. It wasn't until 1900 that the second important theory concerning heredity wasdiscovered, although it had been formulated some forty-five years earlier. Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk, had begun experimenting with pea plants at about the same time that Darwin set forth his ideas on natural selection. Through his efforts, Mendel demonstrated that actual physical "hereditary factors"could be transmitted independently. Mendel ultimately established the basiclaws of heredity--the missing key to Darwin's natural selection theory--and set the standard for the field of genetics. His revolutionary theories, however, were met with disinterest during his lifetime and remained largely unknownuntil 1900, when they were independently rediscovered by Hugo de Vries, KarlCorrens (1864-1933), and Erich Tschermak (1871-1962). De Vries took Mendel's theories further. Unlike the Austrian monk, he believed that variations, rather than arising from gradual or transitional steps, occurred in jumps he called mutations. This formed the cornerstone of de Vries's mutation theory, which he proposed in 1901. Despite these theories, no biological mechanism for heredity had yet been found. Walther Flemming had discovered chromosomes during the 1870s but, unawareof Mendel's work, did not understand their genetic significance. In 1903, ayoung graduate student, Walter S. Sutton, at last made the connection. He hadobserved that during cell division in regular cells, chromosomes were present in pairs. But in the cell division of reproductive cells, only one member of each pair entered a sperm or egg. The chromosomes became pairs again when the egg joined the sperm in the fertilization process. Sutton saw that this pairing, unpairing, and pairing again paralleled the movement of Mendel's "hereditary units." independently came to the same conclusion, and together theirhypothesis came to be known as the chromosomal theory of inheritance. By 1909, when Wilhelm Johannsen coined the term gene to describe the "hereditary units" on the chromosome, Mendelian theory and chromosomal theoryhad been widely accepted by scientists. American geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan, however, remained unconvinced and set out to empirically prove or disproveMendel's theory of inheritance. Following his many experiments with the fruit fly, Morgan was won over, convinced that genes were the trait-determiners and that they are arranged in a certain order on each chromosome. He also noticed that all the genes on the same chromosome were usually inherited together. Morgan referred to these as linked genes. Further experiments showed that traits did not always follow Mendel's basic laws of heredity. Morgan showed that offspring don't always inherit all of thegenes on a chromosome. He called this occurrence crossing over. By 1915, Morgan, along with Hermann Muller, Calvin Bridges (1889-1938), and AlfredSturtevant (1891-1970), had fully developed the concepts of linkage and crossing over. Yet some still refused to acknowledge the great strides made by biologists. The Ukrainian biologist Trofirm Denisovich Lysenko (1898-1976) gained controlof Soviet biological research between 1928 and 1965, and, with the backing ofJoseph Stalin (1879-1953), imposed his erroneous view that acquired characteristics could be inherited. Although his influence waned with the rise of Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971), Lysenko severely damaged the Soviet Union's reputation in the international scientific community. His legacy would not be erased until the launching of Sputnik I in 1957. By 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick had developed a model of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the building blocks of genes, thus deciphering the genetic code and providing a key to the chemical basis of heredity. In recent decades,most research on heredity has focused on the function of DNA, its regulatoryprocesses, and its evolution. Read more: http://www.faqs.org/health/topics/26/Genetics.html#ixzz0f35ndXvT

Abstract T. H. Morgan, A. H. Sturtevant, H. J. Muller and C. B. Bridges published their comprehensive treatise The Mechanism of Mendelian Heredity in 1915. By 1920 Morgan's ``Chromosome Theory of Heredity'' was generally accepted by geneticists in the United States, and by British geneticists by 1925. By 1930 it had been incorporated into most general biology, botany, and zoology textbooks as established knowledge. In this paper, I examine the reasons why it was accepted as part of a series of comparative studies of theory-acceptance in the sciences. In this context it is of interest to look at the persuasiveness of confirmed novel predictions, a factor often regarded by philosophers of science as the most important way to justify a theory. Here it turns out to play a role in the decision of some geneticists to accept the theory, but is generally less important than the CTH's ability to explain Mendelian inheritance, sex-linked inheritance, non-disjunction, and the connection between linkage groups and the number of chromosome pairs; in other words, to establish a firm connection between genetics and cytology. It is remarkable that geneticists were willing to accept the CTH as applicable to all organisms at a time when it had been confirmed only for Drosophila. The construction of maps showing the location on the chromosomes of genes for specific characters was especially convincing for non-geneticists. chromosomes - cytology - genetics - linkage groups - nondisjunction - predictions - reception of theories - T. H. Morgan - William Bateson

Volume XI : Into the Twentieth Century

Whilst Alan Leo took the lead in maintaining the popular interest in astrology in England, it was the great psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) who probably more than any other single person encouraged at least a few scientists to begin to think about the subject. Jung’s interest in astrology seems to have been a natural offshoot of his preoccupation with the ‘collective unconscious’, his belief that ‘although our inheritance consists in physiological paths, still it was mental processes in our ancestors that created the paths’; that, in fact, 20th-century man’s attitude to life is shaped by his remote history. Jung saw the signs of the zodiac as archetypal — that is, as having for us a significance deeper than we know; and we are conscious of archetypes when stirred by highly emotional circumstances, such as those that provoke people to consult astrologers. Jung himself seems to have used the horoscope as a starting point from which to build a bridge of understanding between himself and a patient by finding within it and his own chart some common ground. During the preparation of his essay on synchronicity (the term he coined to explain the wild coincidences that occur in almost everyone’s life, and can be not only puzzling but frightening) he and his assistants examined the birth charts of 180 apparently happily married couples, and sought in them the traditional astrological indications of satisfactory partnership. Later, he added more data, and eventually investigated the 966 charts of 483 couples, not only in their original pairings but in chance couplings — so altogether 32,220 pairings were postulated and examined. The results of the test were considered by Jung to be, in the end, somewhat unsatisfactory; but he did point out that in the twinned charts of the happily married couples there was a statistically significant presence of the aspects traditionally considered indicative of a satisfactory relationship. He expressed this very dramatically: You take three matchboxes, put 1000 black ants in the first, 10,000 in the second and 50 in the third, together with one white ant in each of them, shut the boxes, and bore a hole in each of them, small enough to allow only one ant to crawl through at a time. The first ant to come out of each of the three boxes is always the white one. The chances of this actually happening are extremely improbable. Even in the first two cases, the probability works out at 1:100 x 10,000, which means that such a coincidence is to be expected only in one case out of ten million. It is improbable that it would ever happen in anyone’s experience. Yet in my statistical experiment it happened that precisely the three conjunctions stressed by astrological tradition came together in the most improbable way. Jung was conscious of the statistical blemishes of his experiment, and never claimed that it proved anything other than that, in the words of J. S. Haldane, ‘the universe may be not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.’ But his astrological essay (Synchronicity, an acausal connecting principle, 1955) had the effect of directing some serious minds towards the disreputable science, and it is during the past thirty years that interest, in particular, has steadily grown. Before Jung’s rather specialized interest took shape, isolated examples are to be found of a revival of serious attention to the subject. In 1891, in France, while popular interest was scant (and it was possible for a scientist to assert that astrology was an ancient science whose rules had been completely lost), a kind of cabalist astrology was revived, which led to the publication of a translation of part of Morin de Villefranche’s Astrologia Gallica of 1661, which in turn interested an artillery officer called Paul Choisnard (1867-1930), who became the first modern astrologer to attempt to get together a reliable body of statistical evidence about the planet’s influences on the human personality. It was Madame Blavatsky who triggered off the renewal of interest in Germany, which spread largely as a result of the work of Karl BrandlerPracht (born 1864), who seems to have learned astrology in the United States, where he worked as an actor. He founded the German Astrological Society, and started the Astrologische Rundscbau, the most prominent astrological journal in Germany until the Nazis shut it down in 1938. It was after the First World War, among the uncertainties of the peace, that astrology really began to gain ground in Germany, and the publication of ephemerides (tables of the positions of celestial bodies) and almanacs boomed. The best-known astrologer of the years between the wars was without doubt Elspeth Ebertin (born 1880), a serious astrologer with a genius for popular journalism, which she combined with consultancy. It was Frau Ebertin who, sent the birth data of Adolf Hitler in 1923, wrote in her yearbook that he ‘could expose himself to danger by lack of caution’ — which he duly did during the Munich putsch, when he fell and broke his shoulder before being arrested and imprisoned. Frau Ebertin received concommitant publicity. Although the German police from time to time prosecuted individual astrologers for fortune-telling, interest grew, and annual conferences of astrologers were held between 1923 and 1936, only internecine rows hindering ambitious plans for scientific study. The Germans have the distinction of recognizing the putative importance of astrology in the developing art of psychoanalysis, and one of Jung’s admirers, 0. A. H. Schmitz (1873-1931) led the way in proposing how this could best be done, though Herbert Freiherr von Kloeckler (1896-1950) was the pioneer in dragging astroanalysis into the psychology-conscious 20th century, with his Grundlagen fur die astrologische Deutung (Foundations of astrological interpretation), 1926. Interest in astrology being as intense, in Germany, as it was — Ellic Howe, in Urania’s children, 1967, estimates that during the twenty years after 1921 at least four hundred specialist books and pamphlets were published in that country — it was inevitable that it should be suspected that Hitler and the Nazi party made use of astrology for their own purposes. As with other homogenous groups, some astrologers supported the Nazis, some did not; on both sides, there were unhappy consequences. Dr Karl-Gunther Heimoth, for instance, a doctor and psychologist who published an astrological study of homosexuality and through it became a friend of Ernst Rohm, the chief of the Sturm-Abteilung (Hitler’s private army), was murdered by the Fuhrer with Rohm and others in June 1934. The Astrological Society in Germany, on the other hand, managed to stay out of trouble, integrating with the establishment and providing a certain amount of protection for astrologers even after 1934, when the Nazis banned all ‘fortune-telling’, making the publication of almanacs and astrological journals illegal. There is no evidence that Hitler himself was interested in astrology, and some evidence that he positively mistrusted it. He is often accused of having a personal astrologer, and the name most often connected with the accusation is that of Karl Ernst Krafft (1900-45). Krafft was born in Switzerland, of German descent, and became a very competent astrologer. He also became a fervent admirer of Hitler, and on 2 November 1939, wrote to a Dr Fosel (then working for the RSHA, Himmler’s secret intelligence service) warning that between 7 and 10 November Hitler’s life would be in danger because of ‘the possibility of an attempt at assassination by the use of explosive material’. The Nazis were as disapproving of astrological predictions about the life of the head of state as the Caesars had been, and disregarded the warning. When on 9 November a bomb exploded at the Burgerbrau beer hall in Munich minutes after Hitler had left it, Krafft could not resist sending a telegram to Rudolf Hess pointing out that he had told them so. His original letter to Fosel was dug out of the files and shown to Hitler, who passed it to Dr Goebbels. The same day, Krafft was arrested by the Gestapo and taken in for questioning. He managed to convince them that under certain circumstances such accurate predictions were possible, and was released. In 1940, Krafft was summoned to Berlin by Goebbels to look through the prophesies of Nostradamus and translate any of them that could be used as propaganda against the Allies. It was felt that these, if dropped into unoccupied areas, might well do something to persuade the people that government by the Nazis was in the natural order of things. And indeed, after some weeks’ work, Krafft claimed to have discovered verses predicting the invasion of Holland and Belgium, and foreseeing the Third Reich and the Second World War. He produced a pamphlet based on forty quatrains of Nostradamus, designed for circulation in Belgium and France, and predicting the imminent downfall of Britain. But in May of 1941, about three months later, Hess, second in command to Hitler (after Goering) flew to Scotland in an independent attempt to arrange a peace — an attempt rewarded by the Allies with over forty years’ imprisonment. Martin Bormann decided that the best way of presenting the story to the German people would be to announce that Hess was actually insane, and shortly afterwards it was announced that he had been crazed by ‘hypnotists, astrologers and so on’. In Britain, The Times actually reported that Hess had been Hitler’s private astrologer! This gave the Gestapo the excuse to clamp down on astrology in general, and those who had formerly enjoyed the protection of a sympathetic Himmler (who had arranged the release of one of their number, Wilhelm Wulif, from a concentration camp to work for him and his wife) now found themselves arrested and at worst sent to concentration camps. This delighted a number of members of the Nazi High Command, few of whom admired Himmler, and many of whom regarded him as deranged: Reinhard Heydrich, for instance, used to compare Himmler to another officer, saying ‘One is worried about the stars on his epaulette, and the other about the stars in his horoscope!’ Along with faith healers, clairvoyants, graphologists, Christian Scientists and spiritualists, astrologers were definitely out of favour. Krafft was among those arrested. In prison, he continued to work for a while on astrological propaganda, but at the end of 1944 caught typhus, and in January of the following year died en route for Buchenwald. It is doubtful whether astrology had any effect on the German conduct of the war, despite Himmler’s sympathy to it. Even Goebbels was infected, to some extent, for he sent from the besieged Berlin bunker in the last days of the war for copies of Hitler’s birth chart and that of the Reich, pointing out to the Fuhrer that both charts agreed in showing the outbreak of war and the present disastrous reverses, but also promised an overwhelming victory for Germany in April, and peace by August. Hitler preferred not to wait for the planetary change, and killed himself. In Britain, newspaper horoscopes played a part in keeping up national morale; but the most curious British astrological story of the war is that of Louis de Wohl, a German, part-Jewish, who spent much of its duration in London, having persuaded the government, or at least some members of it, that he could tell them what advice Hitler’s astrologers were giving him, and thus predict some of his plans. The venture seems to have been successful only for de Wohl, who made a lot of money from syndicated journalism, worked for the Psychological Warfare Executive’s ‘black propaganda’ unit, and flourished a British army captain’s uniform to which he was not entitled. In America, there was the same uneasy blend of serious and popular interest in astrology as in most parts of Europe. In 1898 Luke Broughton (1828-99), an astrologer and doctor of medicine, had published his Elements of astrology, the first original American textbook (though it is fair to remember that Broughton had been born in Leeds, in England). And in the 1920s came the first independent American popular astrologer, Evangeline Adams (1865-1932), who leapt to popular attention after a spectacularly successful prediction of a hotel fire in New York, and for the next thirty years collected an enormous public for her syndicated columns and radio programmes (at one stage she broadcast three times a week). Her success was consolidated after a prosecution, in 1914, for fortune-telling. During the trial she was given an anonymous horoscope to interpret; on reading the result, the judge announced that the chart had been that of his son, that she was totally accurate on all points, and in his view had ‘raised astrology to the dignity of an exact science’. He dismissed the case. A more serious practitioner was Dane Rudhyar (1895— ), a distinguished composer who came to astrology through an interest in oriental music and philosophy, and believed that through astrology ‘man can discover the pattern or order which reveals both his individuality and his destiny underneath or within the often seemingly chaotic and bewildering events of his personal daily existence’. His The Planetarization of consciousness, 1970, remains probably the most impressive astrological work to have come out of America. Between Miss Adams and Dr Rudhyar came a multitude of other astrologers, professional and amateur. In 1960, Marcia Moore had no difficulty in finding nine hundred professional astrologers to question for a thesis she was writing; in 1969 one journalist estimated that over ten thousand Arnericans were making a living from astrology (probably the majority of them by making predictions that would be mistrusted by more serious astrologers). The incursion of astrology into the popular press was pioneered in London as recently as 1930 by R. H. Naylor (1889-1952). He was invited by the editor of The Sunday Express to cast the horoscope of the newly born Princess Margaret Rose, daughter of the future King George VI. He did so, not only outlining in his article a character now recognizably that of the Princess, but predicting that ‘events of tremendous importance to the Royal Family and the nation will come about near her seventh year’. Unforeseen events indeed resulted in her father’s accession to the throne a few months before her seventh birthday. But.more important for astrology, the newspaper’s editor invited Mr Naylor to contribute another article to the following week’s issue; and in it he suggested that British aircraft might be in danger. On the very day of publication, the airship R-101 crashed in northern France. The newspaper gave Mr Naylor massive publicity, and he became famous overnight. Since then no popular newspaper or magazine has been able to escape the necessity to publish regular astrological forecasts for its readers. Recently, astrologers have managed to persuade editors to allow them to make use of and mention various planets and their possible effects on readers’ lives; but it was Naylor who invented the Sun sign column. He had to find a way of writing so that each reader could feel involved, and chose to divide his essays into twelve paragraphs, one for each person born when the Sun was passing through a particular zodiac sign. This is by no means a predominantly important part of astrological forecasting, but it is one recognizable by every reader, because it depends on the day, rather than the precise time, of birth. Unrelenting concentration on the Sun sign has done untold damage to astrology, for even those who claim to be intelligent critics are often under the impression that astrologers base serious character analyses on this single aspect of a birth chart. Journalists often write of a booming interest in astrology — by which they mean, on the whole, the growth of an almost entirely superstitious interest in the subject. There was a time, in the 1960s and 1970s, when you only had to sit next to a stranger on a plane, or stand next to someone at a party, to be asked ‘What’s your sign?’ In those days, the Sun sign was almost the only element of a birth chart to be known. This left the field open for ‘astrologers’ who were really clairvoyants. Maurice Woodruff, the Englishman who numbered so many international film stars among his clients (Peter Sellers, for one, hardly made a move without consulting him) was much more clairvoyant than astrologer. In America, Carroll Righter was more conventional, but probably no less uncritically consulted — by among others a film star called Ronald Reagan, whose publicly expressed interest in astrology has recently diminished. Those who consulted Woodruff or Righter would have been unlikely to have heard of Dane Rudhyar or of John Addey (1920-82), the Englishman whose advanced work on what he termed ‘the harmonics of cosmic periods’ is believed by many astrologers to be crucial. In some areas of the world there was a more informed wide interest: in the east, especially, where Mrs Indira Gandhi has never disguised her trust. Nor have many prominent Indian politicians and public servants, despite a far more fatalistic astrology than is acceptable in the west. In Sri Lanka, astrology plays a prominent part in public affairs. In general, prejudice seems to be the only factor to stand in the way of a serious scientific consideration of the astrological theory. In private, even the most sceptical of critics may admit to a suspicion that not enough examination has been made of the available facts, despite the availability of statistical evidence on a large scale. Until fairly recently, such evidence has been prepared by astrologers themselves, and has thus been open to criticism. But equally, critics have been unprepared even to look at that evidence, or indeed to make any real attempt to understand what it is that they criticize. Some years ago, two hundred scientists at a European convention issued a statement warning the public that belief in astrology was futile and could be dangerous. When questioned, it was found that the great majority of them believed that astrologers worked only on the basis of the position of the Sun at the time of birth. (It is ironical that their warning, better expressed, would have been supported by most astrologers, as concerned at uncritical belief in Sun-sign astrology as anyone!) Neither has it been publicised that a greater number declined to sign the statement than put their names to it. Some scientists are able even to ignore ‘astrological’ facts that turn up, unprompted, in their own fields. Surgeons provide statistics which relate a difficulty in stopping bleeding during surgical operations at certain phases of the Moon, and doctors at blood transfusion centres note with surprise that donors bleed more freely when the Moon is full. Tell them that ancient astrologers pointed this out, and they are dumbfounded. Meteorologists announce that there seems to be a correlation between the position of certain planets and events on the surface of the Sun which affects the weather, but assert that this has nothing to do with astrology. Occasionally, however, those with absolutely no interest in the subject are sufficiently intrigued to involve themselves. The most notable of these is perhaps the French statistician Michel Gauquelin, assisted by his wife Francoise. Gauquelin’s interest was prompted by his decision to check the statistics on which Krafft based his Treatise on astrobiology, published in the 1930s. With the help of a computer, Gauquelin showed that these were improperly correlated. But certain interesting facts emerged from them, nevertheless, and Gauquelin decided to test two of them — the propositions that people born during ‘odd’ months of the year were introverts, while those born during ‘even’ months were extraverts. This seemed obviously one of those lunatic traditional astrological propositions that could not, in a sensible world, be believed. To his amazement and irritation, Gauquelin found that his computers confirmed it (as far as introversion and extraversion are measureable). To summarize, Gauquelin went on to examine the birth charts of thousands of sportsmen, actors and scientists chosen on the basis of their success in their professions. Statistically, sportsmen tended to be born when the planet Mars was, astrologically, dominant; actors under Jupiter; scientists and doctors under Saturn. Gauquelin’s propositions have been re-examined by Hans Eysenck, who agrees with them. There have been other incidental illustrations of the astrological proposition. Maki Takata has examined the effect of sunspot activity on the flocculation index (the rate at which blood albumin curdles) and found a close relationship; Giorgio Piccardi has shown that both sunspots and the Moon’s cycle affect various chemical reactions; Y. Rocard has recently shown that men and women have a very delicate sensitivity to the earth’s magnetic field — the sense homing pigeons use to find their way back to their lofts over many miles of countryside. All this has a very obvious relationship to astrology, as have more obvious correlations of planetary movements and events on earth (such as the example of John H. Nelson’s work in meteorology). In recent years some astrologers have made great efforts to look critically and coolly at their work; a lengthy book, Recent Advances in Natal Astrology (first published 1977) related both successes and failures, sought out false propositions, astrological legends, badly devised and conducted ‘experiments’ and unsupported claims with such rigour and objectivity that many astrologers condemned it as an attack on their craft. Far from that, it is an almost unique attempt to look seriously at the subject and to examine it critically but not dismissively. There are relatively few areas of astrology which it suggests are worth thoughtful and constructive examination (though these are widely spread, and include the Sun-sign elements as well as more arcane theories). As the authors, Geoffrey Dean and Arthur Mather, put it: In recent years properly controlled experiments have failed to sustain many of astrology’s claims, and have shown beyond doubt that much of its apparent validity can be explained by the demonstrable gullibility of practitioners and clients alike ... On the other hand the same experiments have revealed that not all is fallacious. Enough remains that cannot be explained by gullibility or coincidence to justify further study. No one who has seriously looked at the evidence (and a great deal of evidence now exists) could argue with that. Progress is being made. The Astrological Association in Britain and the American Federation of Astrologers hold annual conferences as well as weekly meetings; certainly theories are aired that seem decidedly ‘chintzy’, but a great deal of serious work is also done. Correlation, a regular journal published by the Astrological Association, is probably the most serious periodical in the history of the subject. In London recently as many as four hundred astrologers and students met for an evening’s study, on a serious level; and there are regular meetings and conferences in most western countries, many of them international. The British Faculty of Astrological Studies holds classes in London and has a correspondence course which has been taken by students in most countries of the world. Its final examination involves several papers, and there is a high and rigorous standard of marking, with relatively few passes each year. Yes, Sun-sign books continue to be published, and account for the majority of sales of astrological books. But many of them now have tables of planetary positions which enable the reader to work out a virtually complete horoscope. Historians too are beginning to explore the documents left by the astrologers of the past. Even science begins to show a reluctant interest through the study of various natural rhythms, of cosmobiology, and of correlations of terrestrial events and planetary movements. It seems likely that the next fifty years or so will make it clear to what extent the longest-living scientific tradition is based on superstition, and to what extent it can help to illuminate the nature of our existence. 60,912 Abenezra (1092-1167) Adams, Evangeline (1865-1932) Addey, John (1920 - 82) Adelard of Bath (Late 11th century) Albumasar (12th cent.) Allen, W. F. (1860-1917) Aquinas, Thomas (13th century) Aristotle Assurbanipal (Late 7th cent.) Bacon, Roger (1214-94) Balbillus, Tiberius Claudius (1st cent.) Bede, the Venerable 74, 88 Berosus 26, 37 Blavatsky, FIelena 172, 177 Boccaccio 109, 115 Boethius 8i, 109 Bonatti, Guido 102-3 Booker, John '54, i~6 Brahe, Tycho 132, 144 Broughton, Luke 163, i8i Butler, Samuel i~8 Caesar, Julius 12, 52, 53ff, 86 Cardan, Jerome (Girolamo) 130, 131 Carneades 34 Cecco d'Ascoli los, io6 Chaucer, Geoffrey 84, io8, io9ff, 110, 120-I Choisnard, Paul '77 Clement III, Pope 100 Clement VI, Pope 117, ii8 Clement VII, Pope 125 Clement of Alexandria 30 Clement of Rome 76 Commodus, Emperor 68, 70 Conches, William of see William of Conches Copernicus, Nicolaus 36, 132 Dante, Alighieri 94, 102 Dean, Dr Geoffrey i86, 187 Dee, Dr John 84, 134ff, 135 Diodorus 22, 26 Domitian, Emperor 63 Dorotheus Ebertin, Elspeth 178, 179 Esarhaddon 20, 22 Eudoxus 34, 36, 46 Eysenck, Dr Hans i86 Figulus, Publius Nigidius 52, 53,79 Firmicus 8o Forman, Simon 143, 145ff Gadbury, John i~6, i6i Galileo 132, 133 Gauquelin, Michel 185-6, 188 Gaurico, Luca 124, 125-6 Goebbels, Joseph '79, i8o Gregory XIII, Pope 147 Guy de Chauliac 117, ii8 Hadrian, Emperor 65ff, 66, 7' Hermes 30-I, 91 Hippocrates 36-7,J '9 Honorius IV, Pope 104 Innocent IV, Pope 117 Jinner, Sarah '53, 154 John XXII, Pope lol Jonas, Dr Eugen 37 Julius II, Pope 125, 146 Jung, C. G., 26, '75, 177 Kelley, Edward '34, 135, '39 Kepler 133-4, 136 Krafft, Karl Ernst i78ff, 179 Lanier, Emilia 144, '45 Leo X, Pope 125, 128 Leo, Alan see Allen, W. F. Lilly, William 84, 114, Mather, Arthur i86, 187 Mather, Cotton i68 Morin, Jean Baptiste 129 Morrison, Richard James i7off Nabod, Valentin '45 Naylor, R. H. 183 Nelson, John '57, i86 Nero, Emperor 58, 59, 6iff Newton, Isaac 146, 159 Nostradamus 126-7, 127-8, Old, W. R. 172 Oresme, Nicole 109, 120-I Partridge, John i58, '59, i6i Paul III, Pope 124, 125-6 Paul V, Pope 149 Petronius 6j, 64 Pius IV, Pope '47 Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaeus) 33, 35, 41ff, 7', 9', 94 Raleigh, Sir Walter 140, 141 'Raphael' see Smith, Robert Cross Regiomontanus 104, 126 Rudhyar, Dr Dane 182 Sacro Bosco, Johannes Scot, Michael 98-100, 99, Seleucus I, 24-5, 30, 36 'Sepharial' see Old, W. R. Severus, Emperor 30, 68ff Sidney, Sir Philip '37, '39 Silvester, Bernard 95-6 Sixtus IV, Pope 146 Sixtus V, Pope '47 Sylvester II, Pope 84 Thrasylla, Ennia 56ff Thrasyllus 3', 56ff Urban IV, Pope 100 Urban V, Pope 117 Urban VIII, Pope 148 Vespasian, Emperor 62 Vettius Valens 47, 69-70 Wharton, George i56 Woodruff, Maurice 183-4 Wycliffe, John "9 'Zadkiel' see Morrison, Richard James Zeno 35, 36

Volume X : Towards the Dark

For centuries, the man in the street, bourgeois as well as relatively poor, had consulted astrologers when he could afford their fees; but more often he relied on the annual astrological almanacs which, for a relatively negligible sum of money, offered all sorts of help and advice. Almanacs began as simple records of astronomical events during the coming year: notes of market days, holidays and holy days as well as of days when eclipses would occur, on which the Moon was full or new; on which notable celestial events such as conjunctions of the planets took place. In the Middle Ages these circulated in manuscript, or as ‘clog almanacs’ made of wood, metal or horn, with notches and symbols recording the lunar months and the church feast days. These were sometimes small enough to fit into a pocket, but occasionally more elaborate and even decorative, hanging on a nail at the fireside. After the invention of printing, almanacs were among the earliest books to be published: a printed almanac was issued by Gutenberg in 1448 — eight years before his famous Bible — and within thirty years a large number of them was being published, not only containing astronomical facts but predictions based on them. The earliest printed ‘prognostication’ to have survived is dated 1470, but within a few years others appeared printed in Germany, France, Italy, Hungary, the Netherlands and Poland. The first English almanac we have is dated 1500, printed by William Parron, an Italian who for a while attended the court of Henry VII, but vanished shortly after the death of the Queen at the age of 37. Manuscript almanacs continued to circulate for a long time after the invention of printing, and some ‘clog almanacs’ were still in use at the end of the 16th century. But printed copies were more common considerably earlier, many of them imported from the Continent, and containing weather forecasts, predictions of a good or bad harvest, notes of ‘good’ or ‘evil’ days, and even suggestions of the future prices of cereals, fruit and other crops. Political predictions crept in, too — an interest in the doings of royalty seemed as common among early almanac readers as with readers of 20th-century gossip columns. The Laet family, which produced generations of Flemish astrologers whose almanacs were published at Antwerp, seems to have made a speciality of these, on one occasion predicting (for 1517) that Henry VIII of England would be inclined ‘to pass the time in honour among fair ladies’, and later promising that he would experience matrimonial difficulties. The almanacs sold like hot cakes at every social level. Though the nobility and gentry could well afford their own astrologers if they wished (and many of them did wish), they also bought the annuals, just as people today buy do-it-yourself health books to read in their doctors’ waiting rooms. There is an almanac of 1624 with the autograph of Charles I inside the cover; Lord Burghley, Elizabeth’s Treasurer, had a series in his library, some annotated in his own hand; Essex, the Parliamentary general, the Earl of Clarendon, Bishop Wren of Norwich were other subscribers — the last two making careful notes in their almanacs while imprisoned in the Tower of London. Many university dons ‘took in’ the almanacs, and seamen were devoted to them: Lieutenant John Weale, serving under Admiral Blake, took on his voyages ‘a bottle of ink, a pocket almanac, and a sheet almanac’. As late as 1709 the Quakers of Derbyshire acquired (for a penny ha’penny) an almanac for their lending library. Their popularity was enormous, partly because they were useful (as diaries, for instance), partly as popular entertainment. Some of them offered educational supplements on religion, medicine, magic, even sex: when the planets were in certain positions, love-making was positively dangerous — the ‘dog days’ of July and August were especially so. One satirist suggested that this was a time of year when adultery was common, for most husbands obeyed the astrologers’ injunction to refrain from sex, and their wives turned to other quarters for satisfaction, on the grounds that ‘if husband won’t another must’. But there was positive advice, too: Walter Gray, in his notes for May 1581, simply enjoined ‘Let Venus be embraced’, while a contemporary suggested that his readers should ‘embrace Venus honestly’ in May, and ‘daintily’ in November. There is some evidence from population studies that people took this advice. Dorothy Partridge, a midwife who with Sarah Jinner was one of a very few women astrologers, was more outright a century later: in January, she found ‘a lusty squab bedfellow very good physic at this season’; but December and February were lusty months too, and an especially good time to be ‘a husband to thy wife’ was when the Moon was in Sagittarius. The first Englishman to flood the market with his almanacs was William Lilly (1602-81), a yeoman’s son from a tiny village in Leicestershire, who went to London as servant to an illiterate alderman and, marrying his rich widow, learned astrology from a disreputable master. By 1635 he was both teaching and practising astrology. It was in 1644 that as ‘Merlinus Anglicus Junior’ he published his first almanac, and the publication continued annually until 1682, the year after his death. Lilly’s notebooks are, like Forman’s, a picture of an age, revealing the amount of work he did for men and women of all classes (he was consulted by Charles I as well as by servants, by army generals, sea captains and rich merchants, and nonentities). If Lilly was perhaps the best-known astrologer of the 17th century, there were others almost as notorious. (There were none whose forecasts were so well publicized: Lilly was actually arrested on a charge of starting the Great Fire of London, on the grounds that his alleged prediction of it was so accurate that he must have started it to justify himself!) John Booker (1603-67) was a haberdasher’s apprentice before he became an astrologer; he published his own almanacs from 1631 to 1667, and recorded in his casebooks a thousand clients a year before 1648 and 1665. Lilly, better-known especially after the publication of his textbook Christian Astrology (1647), dealt with almost two thousand enquiries a year at the height of his activity. And they had two hundred or so colleagues between the reigns of Elizabeth and Anne. Some of them were, to say the least, less respectable than Lilly or Booker, or even the rascally Forman. There was, for instance, one Captain Bubb, ‘a proper handsome man, well spoken, but withal covetous, who stood in the pillory for fraud; Jeffery Neve, former alderman of Great Yarmouth and in 1626 deputy water-bailiff for Dover, who made a small fortune by rigging the accounts of the archery butts, and fled to Frankfurt; William Poole, ‘a nibbler at astrology’, who boasted that he had had seventeen professions, among them plasterer and bricklayer, and famous for the squib he published on Sir Thomas Jay, JP, who had falsely accused him of theft: on hearing of his death and burial, Poole made his way to the churchyard and defecated on the grave, leaving the following short note: Here lieth buried Sir Thomas Jay, Knight, Who being dead, I upon his grave did shite. But there were many more respectable astrologers, of course, some from the ranks of the clergy. John Aubrey tells us that the knees of Richard Napier (1590-1674), rector of Great Linford in Buckinghamshire, were ‘horny with praying’, for he would go down on them before beginning to draw up each horoscope. He also plied his brethren with ‘whole cloak-bags of books’, converting many of them to astrology — including his neighbour the Rev. William Bredon, vicar of Thornton (so addicted to smoking, Lilly says, that when he had no tobacco he would cut the bellropes and smoke them). Then there were Anthony Asham, Richard Harvey, Thomas Buckminster, John Maplet, Stephen Batman and George Hartgill — all 16th-century clergymen astrologers — and, in the 17th century, Joshua Childrey, Nathaniel Sparke, John Butler, Edmund Chilmead, Charles Atkinson and Richard Carpenter (author of Astrology proved harmless, useful and pious, 1657). Their advice, in and out of almanacs, remained as broad as that of their predecessors. During the Civil War, of course, the anxiety of parents for their fighting children, brother for brother, wife for husband, all increased their work load — and their incomes, when they were professionals; in 1662 it was said that Lilly was making £500 a year (at least £20,000 in today’s currency). But it is difficult to estimate the average income of a professional astrologer: in 1647 Lilly received twenty pieces of gold for advising Charles I, but he and Booker would give individual astrological advice for two shillings and sixpence (12½p); Richard Delahay left between two and three thousand pounds at his death, but John Vaux, the clerk to St Helen’s church, Auckland (who used to sell his almanacs from the altar) charged only one shilling for finding a stolen mare, or four shillings for a horse and a mare — with an additional eightpence to be spent on drink. There has not yet been sufficient study of the part played by astrologers during the English Civil War. Not only did rival astrologers publish rival almanacs, and pay personal visits to the opposing Royalist or Parliamentary troops, but the newspapers published rival predictions of success and failure. Lilly had a great stroke of luck when early in the war, in 1645, he successfully predicted the Roundhead victory at Naseby; this success made his reputation. But he was roundly attacked by his rivals — on the Parliamentary side as well as the Royalist; for although he gave his support to Cromwell (and even worked for a while for the Commonwealth Council of State) he also advised Charles I, even procuring the file with which the king hoped to escape from Carisbrooke Castle! The war of the almanacs was long and bitter, with Lilly and Booker on one side, John Humphrey and George Wharton on the other. At one moment, indeed, Lilly and Booker were outside the walls of Colchester with the Parliamentary troops ‘assuring them the town would very shortly be surrendered, as indeed it was’, while Humphrey was inside the city advising the then governor, Sir Charles Lucas, that relief would soon reach him. During the Interregnum before the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the publication of almanacs continued, but there was some censorship, and some astrologers were executed for their support for the king, although Lilly managed to save Wharton, whose work he respected. Even Lilly himself was censored, while some colleagues had their publications stopped completely, and others were imprisoned. Unable to publish, they turned their attention to translating astrological classics hitherto unavailable in England, and this resulted in a great number of such works being available for the first time in English — added to which Lilly’s rivals worked busily on textbooks to rival Christian Astrology, and Nicholas Culpepper, William Ramesey, John Gadbury, Richard Saunders, John Partridge, William Salmon, and John Case all in time published popular guides to the subject. The serious interest of intelligent men was slower to wane in England than abroad. It is true that as early as the 1560s a few men began to criticize the astrological theory as being scientifically unsound, at least where prediction was concerned. But the astrologers had their answer: they, or the majority of them, never claimed that anything in the future would happen — the most they would say was that some event, or some turn of health, or some change of fortune, seemed likely. In fact their almanacs were so crowded with ‘maybe’ and ‘might’ and ‘perhaps’ that they were criticized, as astrologers are today, of being too cagey. Yet all they were saying was that the stars compelled no man’s action; all they did was to incline him one way or the other. One section in the almanacs always read with interest concerned the weather: every almanac contained a section of weather forecasts, and readers seemed to find these useful. There were occasions on which the forecasts were extremely accurate. One famous example is that of Patrick Murphy’s Weather Almanac for 1838. Against 20 January, Murphy noted: ‘Fair. Prob. lowest degree of winter temperature.’ That day proved in fact to be the coldest day not only of the year but of the century, the temperature falling to -20°F at Greenwich. Astrologers mostly based their predictions on the movements of the Moon, which was believed to control the Earth’s atmosphere. In France, Jean Baptiste Lamarck published his Annuaire Météorologique between 1800 and 1811, based on lunar data, and in Germany Rudolf Falb (1838-1903) coined the expression ‘critical days’ for dates when the Earth, Moon and Sun were in certain relative positions associated with various types of weather. In Russia, Demchinskii did similar work, publishing forecasts not only for his fatherland but for the United States and Japan. And for a moment to stretch even further into the future, the 20th-century descendants of Partridge and Gadbury and Lilly published their weather forecasts in The Daily Mail in England, and Demchinskii’s long-term forecasts were also printed in that newspaper, and considered unusually accurate. Astro-meteorology has continued to flourish, and while professional meteorologists maintain a determinedly sceptical attitude, many of them will concede that insufficient study has been made of the planetary positions and their relationship to terrestrial weather. They might well do so, in the face of such evidence of success as that presented by the career of John Nelson, an American astrologer who between 1946 and 1971 investigated radio disturbances for the RCA network, and of 1500 forecasts made in 1967 (often months in advance) achieved a success rate of 93.2% — a rate maintained for nine years! Meteorologists are, at the time of publication, at last beginning to look seriously at the possibility that climatic cycles are linked to the movements of the so-called solar planets Mercury, Venus and Jupiter; there is, it is said, clear-cut evidence of associations between the period of peak solar tides and sunspot activity, and a link between sunspot activity, cosmic ray bombardment of Earth, and climatic change resulting from that bombardment. But to return to the 17th century, it was not until the 1650s that general opinion in England began to swing against astrology. During Lilly’s lifetime he and Wharton had been ridiculed by Samuel Butler in Hudibras, as Sidrophel and Whackham: Some calculate the hidden fates Of monkeys, puppy-dogs and cats, Some running-nags and fighting-cocks; Some love, trade, law-suits, and the pox; Some take a measure of the lives Of Fathers, Mothers, Husbands, Wives, Make opposition, trine and quartile, Tell who is barren, and who fertile, As if the planet’s first aspect The tender infant did infect In soul and body, and instill All future good, all future ill ... There were less literary attacks, too, such as the squib put about which told of a country bumpkin who went to see Lilly about a stolen purse, and found the doorstep fouled with human excreta: Down came that profound Astrologer... who opening the door and seeing it in that shitten case, began to execrate and curse those beastly knaves that did it; vowing that if he did but know who did him that nasty trick, he would make them examples to all such rogues so long as they lived. ‘Nay,’ quoth the countryman, ‘if he cannot tell who beshit his door, he can as well be hanged as tell me who had my purse!’ and so went his way. Congreve sent up astrology, in the person of Foresign, in Love for Love (1695) — unlike Dryden, who thoroughly approved of it — and finally in came Swift with his demolition of the astrologer John Partridge in his Predictions of lsaac Bickerstaff for 1708. In this fake almanac, Swift produced a straight-faced lampoon protesting that his real aim was to protect the public from the false claims of bad astrologers, and among other things predicted that Partridge himself would die at 11 p.m. on 29 March 1708, closely followed by King Louis XIV and the Pope. Shortly after 29 March, Swift published a detailed account of Partridge’s sad death, and the latter had a hard struggle to prove himself still alive. It is perhaps worth noting that neither Butler nor Swift (nor indeed any other writer who published anti-astrological work) actually set about destroying astrology by argument; all they did was ridicule it — and goodness knows it presented a broad enough target. Sometimes they did so for political reasons; as a matter of fact this was probably the case with Swift, for Partridge was a vociferous Whig and republican. New argument about the basis of astrology was, as always, lacking. It was certainly not provided by the astronomers. It has been suggested that Newton was almost personally responsible for the desuetude of astrology in England. Nothing could be further from the truth. His work may have made its contribution to the changing climate of opinion, but he clung to a belief in astrology until his death, and was very short with Edmund Halley when, as we have seen, the latter rebuked him for heeding such nonsense: ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘I have studied the matter — you have not.’ Nevertheless, the temper of the time was against him. Doubts were openly expressed at the universities, and for the first time the use of astrology in medicine was questioned. The Royal College of Physicians turned against it, despite the fact that its President between 1601 and 1604 was an almanac writer and there was some use of astrology in the College’s Pharmacopoeia. Those attacked were (yet again) the extremists. No one rebuked Richard Mead, a vice-president of the Royal Society, for publishing in 1717 A treatise concerning the influence of the Sun and Moon upon human bodies, and arguing that attacks of epilepsy, vertigo, hysteria and asthma could be collated with phases of the Moon; and in 1680 it was claimed that astrological physicians were the most popular and sought-after of all doctors. John Locke, who has been called the inspirer of the Age of Enlightenment, and whose philosophy had the most profound influence on the thought of Europe, accepted that the curative value of herbs was enhanced by their being picked and used at particular times of the year. Still, by the turn of the century scientific interest in astrology was at its lowest ebb for many hundreds of years indeed, perhaps since the 3rd or 4th centuries BC. Although there had still been no concerted attack on the theory from astronomers or universities, it was now the case that the former were no longer automatically interested in the effects the heavenly bodies had on earth; it was simply assumed that, apart from the obvious effects of the Sun and Moon, they had none. The intellectual aspects of the subject, the philosophical and theological implications, were on the whole no longer discussed except by a decreasing minority. By 1720 the last of the notable astrologers of the 17th century was dead — Francis Moore died in 1714, John Partridge in the following year — and with them a generation which, whatever its faults, had taken astrology seriously and practised it with some pretension to scholarship. Lilly’s Christian Astrology, for instance, is an immensely long work (something like 350,000 words in three volumes) enshrining much traditional astrology culled from a long check list of earlier volumes, some at that time untranslated. Whatever may be one’s opinion of some of Lilly’s wilder assertions about what astrology can and cannot do, it is an intelligently written work. No 18th-century astrologer would have been capable of it; they were far less interested in the intellectual or empirical truth of the claims they made, and most often were simply not intelligent enough for the subject. They were, on the whole, cheapjacks. There had been a few attempts to bring the study of astrology into line with the new scientific age: J. B. Morin’s posthumous Astrologia Gallica (1661) argued that any serious study of astrology must depend on a systemic examination of meteorological, political and religious developments in relation to the movements of the planets, and that any other method of examining the subject did more harm than good. Joshua Childrey, an archdeacon of Salisbury, had argued for a reformation of astrology on the lines suggested by Francis Bacon, and Jeremy Shakerley, an astrologer much under Lilly’s influence, wrote that ‘astrology consists of too much uncertainty to inform us of anything’, and was ambitious to seek ‘from philosophical principles a foundation for a more refined astrology’. Even John Gadbury claimed that ‘one real experiment is of greater worth and more to be valued than one hundred pompous predictions.’ But the 18th century set off on its course of scientific empiricism, and determined to ignore the efforts of astrologers to claim that their subject should be included among those to be examined in a similar fashion. The attitude continues to this day: one scientist at a conference in the 1970s, dissatisfied with statistical evidence offered as proof that some aspects of astrology were worth examination, was asked what kind of proof he would accept, and replied with splendid certainty: ‘I can conceive of no evidence which would convince me that there is anything in the subject.’ If there were few serious astrologers in the 18th century, and even fewer in the 19th, there was plenty of money-making activity from quacks; the evidence of this lies in the continuing sale of almanacs. Partridge’s annual almanacs continued to sell for over a century after his death, and Old Moore’s Almanac is still issued today. In 1764, Old Moore sold over 80,000 copies in a year, although its prophesies were even more general, even more garbled, than those of earlier issues. One development during the 18th century was the appearance of almanacs directed specifically at women readers: The Ladies’ Diary, for instance, which appeared in 1704, and had articles on famous women, recipes and riddles as well as astrological items. Its editor, a Coventry schoolmaster called John Tipper, had the ambition of ‘introducing the fair sex to the study of mathematics’. By the 1750s, it was selling 30,000 copies a year, and was widely read by gentlemen. Such astrologers as there were, were as fiercely partisan in politics as the earlier astrologers had been during the Civil War. George Parker was a high Tory whose views were so incendiary that the Stationers’ Company refused to publish his work; Partridge on the other hand was violently Whig, and greeted the accession of George of Hanover as a day of deliverance from ‘popery, slavery and English traitors’. Towards the middle of the century, there was a swing towards religion, as though the astrologers wished to strengthen their position by getting the Creator on their side. They emphasized the fact that only God could have worked out so finely the intricate movements of the planets; and even the composition of the matter of which the earth and stars were made proved the existence of God. As Job Gadbury, John Gadbury’s cousin, put it, there could be nothing in the recently advanced theories that atoms came together by chance to form the universe, for ‘though the air we breathe be full of them, yet they tend to nothing but to make us wink.’ The everyday work of the consultant astrologers went on much as it had always done: advice was offered about illness, love, lost property, and so on. There seems to have been a sufficient popular interest for a large number of astrologers to make a reasonable professional living, although the fact that many of them are found rebuking members of the public who came to see them merely for amusement, and advising colleagues to get their hands on the fee before beginning to cast the horoscope, seems to indicate that a certain amount of doubt was now to be found at all levels of society and education. The major British astrologer of the century seems to have been Henry Season (1693-1775), a doctor and surgeon from Wiltshire, who like most of the former astrologers was virtually self-educated, for he never attended school for more than six weeks at a time. He taught himself medicine and astrology, like Lilly and Forman, and after an apprenticeship during which he seems to have invented his own medicinal cures, managed to get a licence to practise as physician and surgeon. The almanacs he published show him to be a very traditional sort of astrologer, giving the usual sort of advice; but he also used them for political argument, and as means of general advertisement of his personal views on everything under the sun — from the fact that stage plays were a disgraceful evil, to the view that it was a good thing man would never be able to visit the Moon, for he would without any doubt corrupt its inhabitants. By the 1790s astrologers were numerous enough to have their own magazine, devoted entirely to ‘a science which was studied by the patriarchs of the first ages, but which, by the craft of ignorance of pretenders, has been exposed to much calumny and error.’ However, the magazine was ill supported (because much of it was devoted to non-astrological chatter about the occult) and ceased publication after its seventh issue. Newspaper advertisements, scattered through the provincial press, indicate that astrologers still flourished, ready not only to give, on receipt of the date, time and place of birth, a ‘true description of the complexion, colour of the hair, private marks and moles, temper &c’, but (to quote John Worsdale of Lincolnshire) to help ‘those persons afflicted with disorders of various denominations’. On receipt of the necessary details, ‘the nature and origin of the disease may be truly ascertained, and a remedy prescribed for all curable disorders, by the ancient rules of elementary philosophy.’ In America, the situation was rather similar. Some attention was paid to the subject at the universities at the turn of the century. Charles Morton, who had been educated at Oxford during the English Civil War, and left the country in 1686 to become a Presbyterian minister at Charlestown, Massachusetts, had his Compendium physicae accepted at Harvard, where it formed the basis of the study of modern science. While forcefully denying the fortune-telling aspects of astrology, Morton examined the connection between the planets and meteorology, and the influence of their movements on the human body and mind. On the whole matter [he concluded], I judge that as to weather and temperatures of our bodies with relations to health or sickness by good observations of prudent and philosophical minds, a useful knowledge might be framed; but for all the rest that is pretended the books written about them might make a curious bonfire according to the primitive pattern ... Other Harvard men showed some interest: for instance Samuel Willard, its vice-president between 1701 and 1707, and John Leverett, his successor. Willard pointed out that ‘astrologers have had their predictions, that do sometimes fall out right’ (a cautious approbation, if approbation it was). Isaac Greenwood, Harvard’s first Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, replaced Morton’s Compendium in 1728 with his own Philosophical discourse concerning the mutability and change of the natural world, in which, disapproving ofjudicial astrology, he nevertheless asserted that tides are produced in the ocean, winds in the atmosphere, many changes in inanimate and animate bodies, and in the human economy itself. Astrology seems to have a philosophical foundation, and we know not how many wonders and mysteries may be the genuine effects of this great alternative in nature. Through the 18th century Harvard took this cautiously positive attitude, accepting in 1762 a master’s thesis which argued that ‘the heavenly bodies produce certain changes in the bodies of animals’, and publicly asserting that the time was speedily coming when Virginia would ‘surpass the Greeks in philosophy, the Egyptians in geometry, the Phoenicians in arithmetic, and Chaldeans in astrology.’ Yale was not behind Harvard in its toleration of astrological studies. Samuel Johnson, who graduated from that university in 1714 to become a Congregationalist minister, included an essay in his Revised Encyclopaedia of 1716 on ‘The starry heavens and their power and influences for the subject of astrology’, and though in 1718 a Yale thesis was arguing that ‘all the predictions of the astrologers with regard to future contingent events are fallacious and vain’, this was an attack on judicial rather than on ‘natural’ astrology. As to educated opinion among non-academics, this may perhaps be deduced from an article in Chambers’s Cyclopaedia, so commonly read, which also attacked judicial astrology as ‘superstition’, but left natural astrology unrebuked, although pointing out that it was ‘only to be deduced, a posteriori, from phaenomena and observations.’ Those who did not have Chambers on their bookshelves certainly for the most part had an almanac or two; these were almost as common, and in much the same vein, as the English almanacs of the same period. But there was an additional emphasis on agriculture and meteorology. Culpepper was extremely pbpular, and as late as the middle of the 18th century the most common medical ‘textbook’ in the American home was his London Dispensatory. As time went on, this was attacked — in particular by Cotton Mather, the Congregational minister and author, who while splendidly gullible about such matters as angels and mermaids, had some kind of natural antipathy to astrology (mainly on religious grounds) and argued that to suppose that the efficacy of certain herbs was in any way enhanced by their being picked at certain times was ‘a folly akin to the idolatry and superstition of the Roman-Catholics, in looking to saints, for their influences on our several diseases.’ American farmers in the 17th and 18th centuries seem to have paid special attention to astrological and veterinary advice: an almanac argued that ‘for the better success in letting blood, taking physick, cutting of cattle, sheep and hogs, it’s necessary to know where, or in what part of the body the sign is’, and in The Husbandman’s Magazine of 1718, John Smith set it down that horses should be gelded ‘in the wain of the Moon, the signs being either in Virgo or Aries’ and that ‘Candlemas (observing it to be in the increase of the Moon) is the best time to let your sows be covered.’ The efficient American farmer must have lived his life entirely according to the zodiac and the planets, if we are to believe the magazines of the period; in 1712 The Husbandman’s Guide advised its readers to ‘geld sheep and other cattle the Moon being in Aries, Sagittarius or Capricorn. Sheer sheep the Moon increasing in Taurus, Virgo or Libra, and their fleeces will grow the thicker and faster, the like observed in cutting hair; and if the Moon be in a friendly aspect to Venus ‘tis much better.’ Fifty years later The Citizen’s and Countryman’s Experienced Farrier advised farmers who wanted ‘to get horse colts’ to ‘take your mare to the horse before the full of the Moon, and when the sign is a female. To get mare colts, cover after the full, and in the male signs.’ There was horticultural advice too — (trees should be set and dug up in winter, ‘especially at new Moon’, fruit trees planted and grafted when the Moon was waxing, transplanted trees set when it was waning — for the waning Moon helped a plant send its root downwards, while the waxing Moon helped a plant to grow upward), and some personal (‘it is good to bathe the Moon being in Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn; it is best bathing two or three days after, or at the full of the Moon’). There was opposition, of course, from those who found it ludicrous that ‘in many parts of the country ... a citizen will not castrate a lamb or a pig, nor suffer himself nor any of his family to be bled from the arm, without inspecting the almanac in the first place, to find what the philomath who compiled it has certified for the astral and lunar influence on the body for that day.’ But there was some serious study, too; in 1764 a Dr James Greenhill was correlating the fits experienced by an epileptic slave with the changes of the Moon, and a number of other doctors had received astrological training and used it in treating their patients. Samuel Deane, a respected agriculturist, published his theory on the effects of the planets on fruit-tree growth in The New England Farmer, or Georgic Dictionary (1797): Some may think it whimsical to gather apples on the day of the full Moon. But, as we know both animals and vegetables are influenced by the Moon in some cases, why may we not suppose a greater quantity of spirit is sent up into the fruit, when the attraction of the heavenly bodies is greatest? If so, I gather my apples at the time of their greatest perfection, when they have most in them that tends to their preservation ... There were a few consultant astrologers practising in America at this time: Joseph Stafford of Rhode Island, Nathaniel Low of Boston, John Jarman, Nathaniel Ames and Daniel Leeds of Philadelphia, John Tobler of North Carolina. Low and Ames were rivals in the first half of the 18th century, Ames claiming to have foretold the death of George II and the victories of George III’s forces in the French and Indian war, while Low warned, on the eve of the French and American revolutions, that certain planetary aspects ‘may stir up great politicians in contriving new ways and methods of regulating the affairs of governments.’ Eventually, the polymath Benjamin Franklin disposed of Leeds by emulating the prank played by Swift on Isaac Bickerstaff: he predicted Leeds’s death, ‘proved’ it, and ran the poor man out of business despite all his protestations that he was still alive and well. There is not much information about the practices of these American astrologers, but a contemporary diary reveals at least that on Rhode Island privateers were consulting astrologers about the time at which they should set sail (though two of them, advised to sail on Friday, 24 December, did so in the middle of a snowstorm and went down with all hands); merchants seem to have employed astrologers similarly — and even Franklin himself did so, on one occasion. In general, although there were several different emphases, astrology in America (like much else) was broadly imitative of astrology in Britain; there, as in the mother country, astrologers relied on the popularity of their almanacs to keep them afloat. Since the earliest days of the printed almanac, it had been the case that the livelier an astrologer’s pen was, the more success he had; Lilly’s popular success was in a very large measure due to his pawky, roistering style. At the end of the 18th century, when natural scepticism made the simple provision of predictions unacceptable, it was even more important for astrologers to entertain their readers, and the tradition of the astrological journalist became much stronger — to reach its apogee a century and a half later, in the newspaper astrologer. In the early part of the 19th century, the most popular almanac in Britain was the Vox Stellarum, which by 1839 was selling over half a million copies — rather surprising, perhaps, when one considers that it was editorially very much on the side of the Americans in the War of Independence, believing that the result ‘paved the way for freedom’, and positively welcomed the French Revolution with its ‘glorious and happy spirit of liberty’. It did, however, take England’s part in the war against France. Enormous sales of almanacs, especially the cheaper ones, continued through the 19th century; in 1897 over a million copies of Old Moore’s Penny Almanac were printed, and every one sold within two months of the end of the year (the predictions were, of course, for 1898). It was complained, halfway through the reign of Queen Victoria, that practically no one among the ‘lower classes’ did not possess an almanac, and most lived their lives by it, refusing to cut their grass if rain was predicted, declining to dose their cattle if the day was inauspicious. Some of the credit, if that is the word, for the growing popularity of purely astrological magazines (combining the kind of predictions offered in the old-style almanacs with feature articles and gossip) must lie with two men, Robert Cross Smith and Richard James Morrison, both born in 1795. Smith was in 1824 appointed editor of a new periodical, The Straggling Astrologer of the Nineteenth Century, in the twelfth issue of which appeared for the first time his pseudonym ‘Raphael’, which was to become famous in the next few years. He also introduced a weekly feature predicting the planetary effects on love and marriage, finance, business, travel — the first weekly predictions to be made in a journal. The Straggling Astrologer did not last long; Smith had better luck with The Prophetic Messenger, the first issue of which came out in 1826, and which on his death in 1832 was taken over and continued until 1858. There were at least five ‘Raphaels’ after Smith. It was Morrison, however, who was the more important of the two men, working under the pseudonym ‘Zadkiel’. An ex-naval officer he became a professional astrologer in 1830 and founded Zadkiel’s Almanac, sales of which rivalled those of The Prophetic Messenger. Apart from his journalism, Morrison did much to make astrology mildly respectable again; He complained, for instance, about the cheapjack astrologers who would work for as little as five shillings, when ‘no man of education would stoop to receive such beggarly remuneration’, and recommended that anyone wishing to consult an astrologer should go to one possessing the Diploma of the British Association for Astral Science (founded in 1844 with 107 members, but short-lived). In his 1861 almanac, Morrison published a suggestion that Saturn’s position during that year would be ‘very evil for all persons born on or near the 26th August; among the sufferers I regret to see the worthy Prince Consort of these realms. Let such persons pay scrupulous attention to health.’ On 14 December 1861, the Prince Consort died of typhoid. Far from being congratulated on his accuracy, Zadkiel was consequently attacked by a leader writer in The Daily Telegraph, and forced to sue a rear-admiral who blackguarded him in the same newspaper. He won the case, evidence having been given for him by a large queue of titled clients; but the Lord Chief Justice was deeply unsympathetic, allowed continual laughter in court, and recommended low damages. Zadkiel received only twenty shillings and had to pay his own costs. The sales of his next almanac profited by the publicity, but as a consultant astrologer he almost vanishes from sight from that moment. Morrison/Zadkiel could certainly not be disqualified from the accusation of having an interest in the occult — especially in crystal-gazing, an occupation which was really at the root of his libel case. But he was a serious astrologer too, preparing and publishing in 1852 a popular abridgement of Lilly’s Christian Astrology; and there were others — such as William Joseph Simmonite, elected to the Council of the London Meteorological Society (of which Morrison was also a member), and Richard Garnett (1835-1906), on the staff of the British Museum, an amateur who impressed Samuel Butler with some predictive successes. It was Garnett who, in an essay entitled The Soul and the Stars, published in The University Magazine in 1880, put forward a view of astrology which was at odds with that of many professional astrologers, still much caught up with almanacs and predictions. Garnett took the view that far from being an occult science, as most people thought, it was ‘necessary to insist on the strictly empirical character of astrology’, that ‘astrology with the single exception of astronomy, is, as regards the certainty of its data, the most exact of all exact sciences’, and that the astrologer’s calculations ‘are performed by no more cabalistic process than arithmetic. The influence he attributes to the heavenly bodies may be imaginary, but in no sense occult ...’ Garnett was looking towards our own time, when astrologers would for the most part share his view. Others, however, were to pave the way for the 20th-century resurgence of interest in the subject. Alan Leo (W. F. Allen, 1860-1917) was one. Leo is an important figure in Western astrology, his textbooks still on sale. Through his friend ‘Sepharial’ (W. R. Old, 1864-1929) he found his way into Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society in London. He became a professional astrologer, and set up a sort of factory in Hampstead, where other astrologers were set to calculate charts, and several clerks to write out Leo’s opinions on them; it was the Victorian equivalent of today’s computerized horoscope firms, and Leo’s Modern Astrology Publishing Company soon had branches in Paris and New York. It was Leo’s chief clerk who devised the system by which cheapjack astrologers still work: answer their advertisements in the best-selling astrological magazines, and you will receive a number of cyclostyled sheets stapled together, one for the Sun sign, one for the rising sign, one each for the positions of the Moon, Venus, Mercury and so on. E. H. Bailey, who cordially disliked him, later described an average morning in Lyncroft Gardens — one that has often been reproduced since: The morning mail had just been delivered and Albanus Leon [Leo] was busily engaged in sorting out a large pile of letters of all shapes and sizes ... Most of them contained money orders, for Leon had an immense clientele, and the income from his business had now reached four figures a year, and bid fair to greatly increase as time went on. The mail this morning was an exceptionally heavy one and the pile of postal and money orders was rapidly mounting. It was true that the great majority were only for a shilling, but these, with the five and ten shillings orders, and three or four for a pound, as well as various cheques for various amounts, made up a very goodly sum. ‘Raphael’ and ‘Zadkiel’ were of that generation of astrologers faced with the problem of assimilating into the tradition the ‘modern’ planets Uranus (discovered in 1781) and Neptune (1846); Pluto was to be added in 1930. The discovery of these planets was another handy weapon for the anti-astrological camp — but astrologers replied that rather than creating new problems, they solved old ones. Looking at a horoscope of, say, Queen Elizabeth I or one of the Caesars, it was clear that there were some elements of the character which were not to be accounted for by the positions of the planets known to ancient astrologers. These were obviously the result of the influence of those planets recently discovered, and if they were filled into the old birth charts, the picture was much more complete. Similarly, the effects of the ‘new’ planets in a progressed chart were slowly discovered by a process of trial and elimination. Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of the blood had not devalued what was previously known about the bodily processes; it had simply enlarged that process. The same was true of the ‘modern’ planets.