Astronomy for the Astrologer

Astronomy and Astrology

Astronomy for the Astrologer

Are the zodiacal signs real heavenly bodies? Are there other bodies in our solar system that we should know about?

One of the most common and constant complains from the astrological fraternity is that astronomers simply will not even try to understand them. The astrologers assert that the astronomers refuse to examine their evidence. For the most part, astronomers refuse to reply, though in the past some of them have shucked their cloak of dignified silence and made boobs of themselves by trying to disprove statistically “astrological tenets” that no reasonable astrologer ever held in the first place. Thus Dr. J. Allen Hynek, associated with UFO research in the press, upon hearing that astrologers linked Mercury with intellectual activity, set to work with scientific thoroughness and showed there was no significant correlation between a high I.Q. and a strong Mercury position in the horoscope. But then, on the other hand, what astrological theorist ever claimed that there was?

The contention by astrologers that astronomers refuse to review their claims is, to a great extent, true. But there is something to be said for the astronomers, too. To them, the universe contemplated by the astrologer is as much out of date as the physiology known to Hippocrates and Galen. There can be no real objection to looking at the Earth as the center of the solar system, considering the fact that Albert Einstein postulated that what is seen by an observer is, in a relative sense, true for him. But astrologers must ever remember that their view-point is no more than relative and that astronomers are quite justified in asserting that practically no astrologer knows even the rudiments of astronomy.

In these times, advanced astrologers and cosmobiologists are accumulating more and more evidence to support most of the claims made for their ancient science. One particularly important discovery is the one suggesting that forces originating outside of the solar system can have an effect upon chemical substances found in human cellular issue. Evidence such as this is lost upon the astrologer who has no understanding of the cosmos as viewed by an astronomer. This article intended for the astrologer who wants to get up-to-date of what science knows about the physical universe he uses as the basis for his interpretations.

Although the Earth creates an elliptical path around the Sun as far as our solar system is concerned, in relation to the galaxy its actual path is something like that of a corkscrew. This means that at certain seasons of the year, the Sun tends to be between the Earth and the sources of Energy which arise in the galaxy.  Since the blocking effect of the Sun is constant from one year to another, it means that the rate of chemical reactions of the type referred to will vary according to different seasons of the year. It is thought that this may be the fundamental basis for astrology.

If the Sun has such an effect, it is quite likely that the planets do also, perhaps by creating a turbulence in whatever field of energy is being emitted in the Milky Way. That such turbulence exists is evidenced by the fact that RCA Communications has for years been using planetary positions to compute the effect upon their international network.

Most serious astrologers long ago gave up the idea that the planets exert any direct influence on mundane events, but the exact rationale of astrology has remained somewhat of a mystery. For some time, consideration was given to Jung’s theory of synchronism, that is that two events may be related by time instead of causality. With the discoveries now being made, however, it seems that the nature of astrological forces resembles a field effect. By this is meant a situation where two bodies have an effect upon one another, not by virtue of their inherent qualities, but because of the nature of the field in which they exist. In the gravitational theory proposed by Einstein, for instance, two bodies are attracted to one another, not because of their own natures, but because their time-space field makes attraction the path of least resistance for them.

Astrologers used to play big role throughout the history of mankind. Photo by Elena.

To see how this works, take a sheet of cloth and suspend it by its four corners so it is approximately flat. Now put two steel marbles on it. No matter where you place them they will be attracted towards one another. This attraction is due to the depression which they make in the sheet, not because of any direct effect of the marbles upon one another.

Field effect astrology – if we may coin a term – would depend upon an analogous phenomenon. Assume a field of energy originating in our galaxy that has a profound effect upon certain chemicals in the human system. From time to time during the year, the Earth is exposed to varying strengths of that energy due to the shielding effect of the Sun. At the same time, the field is further modified by the presence of planetary bodies orbiting the Sun. In total, the astrological effect is caused not by the action of the planets upon the Earth but by field turbulences of which they serve as signals.

Aside from the astrological effect, there are also astronomical effects, and these can be attributed to the influence of other bodies in the solar system. A well-known instance of this is the sunspot cycle with its period of eleven years. Sunspots are fields of turbulence on the surface of the Sun. Their appearance is accompanied by the emission of large quantities of radiation. It has been shown time and time again the as the level of that energy increases, the Earth’s population as a whole begins to get more and more anxious.

During periods of radiation increase, there is a correlative increase in the number of riots, homicides, and wars. Communications are disturbed. The rate of plant and animal growth is altered. The sunspots increase to their maximum in 11 years. At the end of that time they suddenly subside and begin once more to increase again. There is some evidence that the sunspot cycle may be associated with Jupiter’s period of revolution around the Sun. If this is true, there is another direct effect to be considered.

There is a direct influence of the Moon upon the Earth. It is common knowledge that it causes tides in the oceans. What is not so well known is that it also causes tides on land surfaces as well. The point on Earth directly under the Moon is pulled upwards to a distance of two feet.

Though research at Northwestern University has shown that there is a correlation between the Moon’s phases and certain events in the life cycles of lower animals, there is still considerable debate about its direct effect upon humans. There is a body of empiric knowledge based upon reports of police and fire departments as well as mental hospitals and saloon managers that the Full Moon coincides with a period of aberrant sociological phenomena. So far there is disagreement among researchers who have conducted scientific inquiries into this. There has been at least one report that female admissions to mental hospitals reach their peak on the Full Moon; male admissions peak on the New Moon.

It would appear that phenomena correlating with human behaviour fall into two distinct groups. In the one, there is a direct astronomical influence as in the case of the Sun and Moon. In the other, there is the field effect in an energy stream which is occasioned by planetary positions and the position of the Earth with reference to the source of that energy in the galaxy.

The vernal equinox point, that is where the Sun crosses the equator on its way north is the point at which the zodiac begins. For this reason it is known as the first point of Aries. From this point the zodiac is divided into 12 signs of 30 degrees each.

As you probably know, the constellation that identified the original signs of the zodiac have shifted out of the positions that the held back during the days when astrology was becoming formalized, a period around the second century B.C. This is sometimes advanced as an argument against traditional astrology. Actually it is not. It is quite apparent that it is the division of the ecliptic into 12 equal signs that is important. The fact that certain constellations served to identify those signs a couple of thousand years ago was merely a matter of labelling. As a matter of fact, , we are not even certain at what time the constellation of Aries actually coincided with the segment  of ecliptic now known by that name. Estimates of the exact time made by both astronomers and astrologers range from 317 B.C to 321 A.D. Probably the figure determined by Cyril Fagan – 220 A.D. – is most nearly correct for the time at which the first point of the constellation coincided with the first point of Aries on the fixed or ecliptic zodiac. Since the first point moves backwards, this would mark the time that it was on the verge of moving into Pisces. It will, according to this calculation, move into Aquarius in about 300 years.

Can Astrologers predict the future? Illustration by Elena.

Measuring Positions in the Sky

The Earth turns on its axis at a regular rate, on revolution per day. For convenience geographers divided the Earth into 360 divisions along the equator. Those are called degrees of longitude pass by given point in 24 hours. This is at the rate of 15 degrees per hour or one degree every four minutes.

The particular degree on which you are situated is called your meridian. It is also the highest point that the Sun will reach any day. This is the location of the medium coeli (M.C) or Midheaven. The meridian passes through the zenith or the point in the sky directly over your head. The zenith is always the same number of degrees above the equator which gives them their ship’s latitude.

Sometimes astrologers become confused over the difference between celestial latitude – the distance the body is above or below the ecliptic – and declination. Declination is the number of degrees a body is above or below the celestial equator. The celestial equator is an imaginary line that runs across the heavens directly above the Earth’s equator. If you stand on the Earth’s equator, your zenith is located on the celestial equator.

Another method of measuring positions in the sky is by their hour angle. We saw that the Earth moved at the rate of one degree every four minutes. For us, that means that the heavenly bodies seem to move over our heads at the same rate. We can locate a body by saying how long it will take to reach our meridian or by how long it has been since it passed our meridian.

For instance, let us say that a body is located 15 degrees to the east of our meridian. We know that at the rate of four minutes for each degree, it will take 4 times 15 minutes or one hour to come to our meridian. Thus we say that the body has an hour angle of one hour east. If it had passed the meridian and was 15 degrees away, we would say it was one hour west.

Still one more way of locating celestial bodies is by their right ascension. This term, obscure to most astrologers, means no more than the number of degrees measured east from the first point of Aries to the meridian on which a body lies. This measurement is taken along the celestial equator, however, and not the zodiac or ecliptic. Thus is does not always agree with zodiacal measurement. For instance, a body at 15 degrees of Taurus would be 45 degrees away from the first point of Aries if measured on the ecliptic, but its right ascension, along the celestial equator, would vary with the time of year. Some astrologers use tables of the Sun’s apparent right ascension in progressing horoscopes; they feel that the Sun’s movement in right ascension for one day gives a better correlation with a year of life than does the standard “one-degree” method.

Has astrology anything to do with the real world? Illustration: Megan Jorgensen.

Credit Bureau Phone Numbers

Credit Bureau Phone Numbers and Aliens

If there are intelligent beings on the planets of fairly nearby stars, could they know about us?

On another planet, the chances of finding another form of intelligence is rather high. However , the chances of finding beings who are physically very similar to us is near zero, because a different sequence of random processes applies making hereditary diversity and a different environment to select particular combinations of genes, very different from ours’.

They may have switching elements analogous to our neurons. But the neurons which operate their process of thinking may be very different. There may be planets where the intelligent beings have about the same neural connections, as we do. Perhaps they act as superconductors that work at very low temperatures rather than organic devices that work at room temperature, in which case their speed of thought will be thousands of times faster than ours and they will develop therefore faster.

Or let’s imagine a situation that may seem incredible, but can be very real:  perhaps the equivalent of neurons in their brains would not be in direct physical contact but in radio communication so that a single intelligent being could be distributed among many different organisms, or even many different planets, each with a part of the intelligence of the whole, each contributing by radio to an intelligence much greater than itself.

In this case they will need neither phones, nor credit bureau phone numbers, as we need here on Earth.

In some sense such a radio integration of separate individuals is already beginning to happen on the planet Earth, with our system of communication

Places where the neural connections are immensely high… I wonder what they would know.

One conclusion is however evident: Because we inhabit the same universe, we and they must share some substantial information in common. If we could make contact, there is much in their brains that would be of great interest to ours. But the opposite is also true. Extraterrestrial intelligence – even beings substantially further evolved than we – will be interested in us, in what we know, how we think, what our brains are like, the course of our evolution, the prospects for our future.

Might they somehow have an inkling of the long evolutionary progression from genes to brains to libraries that has occurred on the obscure planet Earth?

They might not use our system of communications, their phones may be quite a mystery for us and their system of credit of phone numbers might seem bizarre, but if there are intelligent beings on the planets of fairly nearby stars, they are interested in us. But what they already know about the Earth?

Anyway, if the extraterrestrials stay at home, there are at least one way in which they might find out about us.

This way would be to listen with large radio telescopes. For billions of years they would have heard only weak and intermittent radio static caused by lighting and the trapped electrons and protons whistling within the Earth’s magnetic field. Then, less than a century ago, the radio waves leaving the Earth would become stronger, louder, less like noise and more like signals. The inhabitants of Earth had finally stumbled upon radio communication. Today there is a vast international telephone, radio, television, radar communications traffic. At some radio frequencies the Earth has become the brightest objet, the most powerful radio source, in the solar system – brighter than Jupiter, brighter than the Sun.

An extraterrestrial civilization monitoring the radio emission from Earth and receiving such signals could not fail to conclude that something interesting had been happening here lately.

Our inkling to acquire more and more phone numbers leads us to an eventually contact with alien civilisation! And we can’t change this psychology inherent to the human beings.

“The smartphone revolution is under-hyped, more people have access to phones than access to running water. We've never had anything like this before since the beginning of the planet.” (Marc Lowell Andreessen, an American entrepreneur, founder of Netscape). Illustration by Megan Jorgensen.

Telepathy

Telepathy

Tell me, guys, do you believe in telepathy? To tell the truth, I’ve never given it much thought, but the evidence seems rather convincing. But is someone else capable of reading our mind?

I don’t know if you’ve read any of the evidence suggesting that telepathy is somehow independent of time.

Can you imagine a room without walls, where there’s no entrance or exit?

Well, it’s not as simple as that, but it seems that we can really read other people’s mind while we are dreaming or even slightly drink. Yes, you may say that invalidates the evidence, but I don’t think so. It seems it’s the only way we could break through the barrier that separates us from the others minds.

Try and imagine the effect of that discovery: the effect of learning that every act, every thought or desire that flitted through your mind is being watched and shared by another being. It’ll mean, of course, the end of all normal life for everyone.

The real life would become a nightmare as every man and every woman would be a kind of telepathic Peeping Tom – no longer content with mere watching.

The will be a constant but sudden invasion of your mind. People will be always there, sharing your emotions, gloating over the passions they can’t experience in their bodies.

To make matters worse, some people will came chasing after me, and they wouldn’t leave you alone, and bombard you with e-mail letters and phone calls. It’ll be hell, you’ll be unable to fight them, so you’ll have to run away (and you’ll think on a small calm village in Costa Rica, of all places, where no one would bother you.

Have you ever wondered what the human race will do when science has discovered everything, when there are no more worlds to be explored, when all the stars have given up their secrets? Telepathy is one of the answers.

Indeed, I don’t know if you’ve read any of the evidence suggesting that telepathy is somehow independent of time. If it is people will send back their minds to an earlier, more virile age, and become parasites on the emotions of their predecessors.

Perhaps this explains all cases of what we call possession. How the future Telepath must have ransacked the past to assuage their hunger! Can’t you picture them, flocking like carrion crows around the decaying  Afro-Canadian  Empire, jostling one another for the minds of the Emperor Tremblay? (But perhaps they haven’t much choice and must take whatever mind they can contact in any age, transforming from that to the next whenever he has the chance).

However, perhaps telepathy is a symbol of conscience, a personification of guilt, remarkably detailed hallucination, that is yet another example of the tricks the human mind can play in its efforts to deceive itself. And when we realized this, we would cease to be haunted by our past in times of emotional crises. Just trying to fight an increasing sense of futility and uselessness during these moments might be enough.

Telepathy - a room without walls, where there is no exit. Illustration : Megan Jorgensen.

Brain Decodes Skin Sensations

How the Brain Decodes the Skin Sensations

Bach-y-Rita determined that skin and its touch receptors could substitute for a retina, because both the skin and the retina are two-dimensional sheets, covered with sensory receptors, that allow a “picture” to form on them.

It's one thing to find a new data port, or way of getting sensations to the brain.  But it's another for the brain to decode these skin sensations and turn them into pictures. To do that, the brain has to learn something new, and the part of the brain devoted to processing touch has to adapt to the new signals. This adaptability implies that the brain is plastic in the sense that it can reorganize its sensory perceptual system.

If the brain can reorganize itself, simple localizationism cannot be a correct image of the brain. At first even Bach-y-Rita was a localizationist, moved by its brilliant accomplishments. Serious localizationism was first proposed in 1861, when Paul Broca, a surgeon, had a stroke patient who lost the ability to speak and could utter only one word. No matter what he was asked, the poor man responded, “Tan, tan,” When he died, Broca  dissected his brain and found damaged tissue in the left frontal lobe. Skeptics doubted that speech could be localized to a single part of the brain until Broca showed the the injured tissue, then reported on other patients who had lost the ability to speak and had damage in the same location. That place came to be called “Broca's area” and was presumed to coordinate the movements of the muscles of the lips and tongue. Soon afterward another physician, Carl Wernicke, connected damage in another brain area farther back to a different problem: the inability to understand language. Wernicke proposed that the damaged area was responsible for the mental representations of words and comprehension. It came to be known as “Wernicke's area.” Over the next hundred years localizationism became more specific as new research refined the brain map.

"We see with our brains, not with our eyes" (Bach-y-Rita, surgeon brain neuroplastician.) Illustration by Elena.

Unfortunately, though, the case for localizationism was soon exaggerated. It went from being a series of intriguing correlations (observations that damage to specific brain areas led to the loss of specific mental functions) to a general theory that declared that every brain function had only one hardwired location – an idea summarized by the phrase “one function, one location,” meaning that if a part was damaged, the brain could not reorganize itself or recover that lost function.

A dark age for plasticity began, and any exceptions to the idea of “one function, one location” were ignored. In 1868 Jules Cotard studied children who had early massive brain disease, in which the left hemisphere (including Broca's area) wasted away. Yet these children could still speak normally. This meant that even if speech tended to be processed in the hemisphere, as Broca claimed, the brain might be plastic enough to reorganize itself, if necessary. In 1876 Otto Soltmann removed the motor cortex from infant dogs and rabbits – the part of the brain thought to be responsible for movement – yet found they were still able to move. These findings were submerged in the wave of localizationist enthusiasm.

Bach-y-Rita came to doubt localizationism while in Germany in the early 1960s. He had joined a team that was studying how vision worked by measuring with electrodes electrical discharge from the visual processing area of a cat's brain. The team fully expected that when they showed the cat an image, the electrode in its visual processing area would send off an electric spike, showing it was processing that image. And it did. But when the cat's paw was accidentally stroked, the visual area also fired, indicating that it was processing touch as well. And they found that the visual area was also active when the cat heard sounds.

The Brain that Changes Itself by Norman Doidge, M.D. Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science.

Nobody will torture cats. Photo by Elena.

Brain Development

Brain Development

Anatomy and physiology are not glamorous subjects – a complete knowledge of them requires careful and intensive study. But the provide the very bedrock of the subject matter. It is easy to overlook the fact that the brain is, after all, just an organ. It is an organ like the liver or the spleen or the stomach. Like these other organs of the body, it is made of cells. These cells are connected together to form a piece of tissue with a certain characteristic texture and shape, and so the brains of all of look roughly the same. And yet, there is something almost miraculously special about this organ: it is the organ of the mind – indeed, of our very selves.

Despite this unique property of the brain, its cells are not fundamentally different from the cells of other bodily organs. What is the prototypical nerve cell? It consists of three basic parts. The first, the cell body, contains essentially the same things found in cells in other organs – namely, the things that govern its basic metabolism. There are two types of appendages to this cell body, one of which is known as the dendrites, the other as the axon; in our prototypical nerve cell, there are many dendrites but only a single axon. Together, these three components form the typical structure of a brain cell – a neuron. Neurons (in conjunction with some supporting cells called glia) are all that the nervous system is made of – billions and billions of cells, connected up with one another.

This interconnection takes place as follows: The axon of one neuron links up with a dendrite of another neuron, whose axon in turn links with a dendrite of another neuron, and so on; multiple interconnections can occur, as each dendrite on a neuron can accept many axon terminals. At the place where two cells link up – between the axon of one cell and a dendrite of the other – there is a minute gap, called a synapse. Over the synaptic gap, small chemical molecules pass from one neuron to the next; these molecules are called neurotransmitters. This transmission of chemical is the principal means of communication between the cells of the brain. Different cells located in different brain regions use different types of neurotransmitters.

A living creature, and especially a human being, is first and last a subject, not an object. Photo by Elena.

These five concepts – cell body, dendrite, axon, synapse, neurotransmitter – are all that one really need to know about neurons as basic concepts.

What is it, then, that makes this organ so unique – how is it that these interconnected cells produce something as miraculous as our awareness of being in the world? How can it be that the physiological activity of these cells, comprising this lump of tissue, produces something so utterly unlike anything that any other organ produces – indeed, so utterly unlike anything else in the physical universe?

Although the elementary properties of neural tissue obviously do not explain how or why the brain produces subjective awareness, there are two features about it that are quite unusual. These features are not fundamental, but they do distinguish the cells of the brain from those of most other bodily organs. The first distinguishing feature of neurons is the nature of the links between them: the synopsis mediated by neurotransmitters. This linkage permits the passing of “information” from one cell to another. The principle of information transfer is not unique to nerve cells (other cells also interact with each other in various ways), but the dedicated function of communication between nerve cells is an important distinguishing feature.

The second outstanding feature of brain tissue is that, while the basic plan of the brain's organization is, as it were, predetermined by our genes, the overall plan is dramatically modified by environmental influences during life. The brain comes into the world with innumerable potential patterns of detailed organization, as reflected in the infinite combinations through which its cells could connect up with each other. The precise way that they do connect up, in each and every one of us, is largely determined by the idiosyncratic environment in which each brain find itself. In other words, the way our neurons connect up with each other depends on what happens to us. Modern neurons connect up with each other depends on what happens to us.

Modern neuroscience is becoming increasingly aware of the role played in brain development by experience, learning, and the quality of the facilitating environment – and not only during childhood. In short, the fine organization of the brain is literally sculpted by the environment in which it finds itself – far more so than any other organ in the body, and over much longer periods of time.

At the level of neural tissue, then, these two features – the capacity for information transfer and that for learning – are what most distinguishes the brain from other organs. These capacities are present far more potently in brain tissue than in any other tissue of the body.

Neuropsychology, like classical neurology, aims to be entirely objective, and its great power, its advances, come from just this. Illustration by Elena.

The Brain and the Inner World, Introduction to Basic Concepts. Mark Solms, Oliver Turnbull.