Return to Index
From time to time, in the field of astrology, there has been criticism of the statistical approach, claiming that astrology is something beyond statistics and that it cannot be approached statistically. Most such criticism has been leveled by people who knew little or nothing about the subject of mathematical statistics. They were unqualified to deal with the subject. However, we are going to refer to a very interesting editorial which appears in the May-June, l957, issue of ASTROLOGY GUIDE Magazine and is written by Dal Lee, its editor.
Editor Lee brings up some points about statistics which should not be ignored, but first, let's discuss mathematical statistics in a general way. The history of mathematical statistics is most interesting and intriguing. We might say that it began with Pythagoras when he taught the Triangular Numbers. That was 2500 years ago.
There are infinite series of triangular numbers, and the whole theory of mathematical probability is all wrapped up with them. Yet, in his day, Pythagoras was laughed at for teaching them, because they appeared to have no utility. Why learn numbers that wouldn't make money? The great curse accompanying the history of mathematics is the fact that it has been studied by so many people not for its beauty, but for ways of making money. Therefore, that is the way that it is taught in schools, colleges and universities, to make money, and the result has been that most people have run away from what could be their greatest comfort and pleasure in life, enjoying the beauty and symmetry of the universe and life itself. They seek money to buy happiness which they never find, while they could find directly what they are really seeking if mathematics was differently taught. Let us give you the beginning of a table of triangular numbers. First the table, and then we will explain it.
NUMBER ...1............. 2.............. 3................ 4............... 5................ 6
1 ................1............. 1.............. 1................ 1............... 1................ 1
2 ................3............. 4.............. 5................. 6.............. 7................ 8
3 ................6........... 10............ 15................ 21............. 28.............. 36
4 ..............10........... 20............ 35................ 56 .............84 ............120
5 ..............15.......... 35............. 70.............. 126........... 210 .............330
6 ..............21.......... 56 ...........126.............. 252........... 462 .............792
7............. 28 ...........84 ...........210............... 462.......... 924............ 1716
8 .............36 .........120 ...........330 ...............792 .........1716............ 3432
9 .............45 .........165 ...........495 .............1287 ..........3003 ............6435
10 ...........55 .........220 ...........715 .............2002 ..........5005 ...........11440
We have given the first ten numbers in the first six series of triangular numbers. Both numbers and series go on to infinity. The first column to the left under the word "number" gives the integers themselves and numbers or identifies each figure in each series. The second column, under the figure "1," is known as the first series of triangular numbers. This first series is the sum of the integers. In other words, 55, the last number given, is the 10th number, and it is the sum of the integers from 10 down to 1. If you add all the integers from 10 down to 1, you will get 55. The third column, the second series of triangular numbers, is the sum of the first series, or the numbers in the second column. The 9th number is 165, which is the sum of the first nine figures in the second column. Each series is the sum of the previous series. You will also note that any number is the sum of the number above it when added to the number to the left of it. For this reason, you can make up such a table very easily and very quickly.
If you write 5T4, you mean the 4th triangular number in the 5th series. You use a T to indicate triangular, the number above and to the left to indicate the series, and the number below and to the right to indicate the number in that series. If you take any problem of the nature where you can ask, "How many ways can you take r things from n things?" the answer always has to be a triangular number. Consequently, a table of triangular numbers will give you a quick answer to any such problem if you have a formula. (You don't have to learn this.) Such a formula can be written thus:
nCr = r-1 T (n+1)-r
The above is the writer's own formula. You can also write:
nCr = n! _____ r!(n-r)!
The last is the conventional formula, but the first is much more simple if you have a table of triangular numbers. The "C" stands for combinations, and when you write nr you mean, "How many ways are there that you can take r things from n things.
Thus, if anybody had the first of the above formulas, he could have the answer to any problem involving combinations by consulting one of the tables of triangular numbers made up by Pythagoras about 500 BC, but folks didn't know that for a long time. Later, Omar Khayyam, using these numbers, developed the binomial theorem, which is taught in high school today. The binomial coefficients are the same triangular numbers. We are not trying to teach you mathematics or the binomial theorem here, and you don't have to know any of the above to handle this course. We just want to illustrate how far back the foundation of the theory of mathematical probability goes.
Later, in the gambling houses of Europe, more complicated problems in probability arose, and the gambling-house keepers were interested in beating the public. So, they began hiring mathematicians. When the mathematicians were paid salaries, they were able to devote more time to the matter. Unconsciously, the losing public was contributing to the development of mathematics.
Later. came life insurance companies, and they hired mathematicians, today called actuaries, who developed the theory of mathematical probability further. A new science of mathematical statistics grew up in Europe. It crossed the ocean to America late. It did not reach the United States until the 1890's when Dr. Irving Fisher, an economist of Yale University, began teaching the first class in statistics in his department of economics. It was taught at Columbia University under the Department of Psychology. It was very strange that originally statistical mathematics was taught in universities of our country in almost any department except in a department of mathematics. The result was that mathe- matical statistics was taught by many people who were not mathematicians at all and many books on the subject are questionable. Next came the decision of Franklin D.Roosevelt to build an atomic bomb. This decision was one of the most momentous things that ever happened from a mathematical viewpoint, because playing around with the atom was strictly a matter of mathematical probability. This time, just about every available mathematician in the country was put to work by the government in order to beat Hitler to the atom bomb. A terrific advance in mathematics resulted. Still, progress has always come when people wanted to make money or when they wanted to kill other people. They were not seeking the beautiful.
There are thousands of people calling themselves statisticians who are not mathematicians. We must distinguish between the popular and the mathematical meaning of the word statistics. In Wall Street and many other places, statistics merely means fact collecting, while in the mathematical sense, the word involves the whole calculus of probability, which is a most involved branch of mathematics. One deals with all sorts of mathematical points having such names as "standard deviation," "probable error," etc. If one would really know more about the theory of mathematical probability he might study some of the formulas in "An Introduction to Mathematical Probability," by Julian Lowell Coolidge, published by Oxford University Press. However, a fair knowledge of mathematics is necessary before even approaching this volume, but it was written by a mathematician and not by a mere fact collector.
In the early 30's, Dr. Rhine of Duke University, set out to prove or disprove whether there is such a thing as extrasensory perception. He consulted the very best mathematical talent in order to keep his experiments within the limitations of good mathematical procedure. His results were positive, and when he announced them, he was attacked by the materialists the behaviorists and a swarm of old-school psychologists. Each came forward with criticism of Rhine's statistical procedure. Then a bomb fell in their midst, because the mathematicians of the country stepped in themselves. In open convention, they proclaimed Rhine's mathematical procedure in good form. However, they did not say they believed in extrasensory perception. They did not say that Rhine's results proved extrasensory perception. They merely said that his mathematics were correct. Nevertheless, this was enough to end the pseudo statistician back home. They were not going to argue with any real mathematician. That was like biting the tail of a tiger.
One of the principal points we want to drive home is that most persons calling themselves statisticians are actually pseudo-statisticians if we speak in terms of statistical mathematics. A characteristic of the mathematical statistician is that he will never say that something is proved. He will only say that the odds are x to y that it is so. You'll never be able to pin him down more than that. This has been a part of his training. He never claims to know anything except to a mathematical degree, and he states that in figures, not in opinions. He never seems to have an opinion on anything, and he may irritate you for this reason, if you really want opinions. To him, all proof is but relative proof. The public likes opinions. The public wants to know, "Who do you think will win the next race?"
Statistics and the laws of mathematical probability are constantly employed to "reach" what is not apparent to the eye nor understandable to the mind. Great discoveries have been made by the statistical method, just as great discoveries have been made without the statistical method. If you have a gambling wheel that is off balance and improperly centered, "in all likelihood," the numbers on one side of the wheel will turn up more than the numbers on the other side of the wheel. The gambler wants to know whether his wheel is properly balanced. He has a record of 10,000 spins, and he takes the results to an expert in mathematical probability. The expert merely says that the odds are thus and so that the wheel is not properly balanced. It is up to the gambler to form his own opinion.
You toss a coin 25 times and a head turns up 25 times. Does the coin have a head on each side? The layman will probably say YES, but the mathematician will say, "There is one chance in 33,554,432 that this result was due to chance."
The strange thing about the mathematical theory of probability is that although it is employed to try and prove things, no one has ever proved the mathematical theory of probability insofar as its usefulness in discovering causes is concerned. There is no final way of deciding whether the result was due to chance. As Mr. Lee says in his editorial, there is nothing definite. You can spend years studying the accumulated data on this subject, and in the end, you will find no final answer. There are many yardsticks, but they are all relative. In the end, we must consider all proof as relative. You can point out vast numbers of insurance companies that have made millions of dollars relying on the mathematical theory of probability, but we can point out other, forgotten, insurance companies that failed while relying on the theory of mathematical probability. In the early 30's the two biggest surety companies in America went into bankruptcy, because statistics of the past completely failed to predict the future.
A scientist in the field of cycles recently consulted the top mathematical authority in the U.S. on a problem of this kind. He tried to tie him down. The mathematical authority could furnish a mathematical evaluation which did not say YES and did not say NO. "How then, can we know whether the results are due to cause or chance?" The answer was, "From there on, you just have to use common sense."
It is generally stated that statistical laws work only for large samples. In our early dealings with this subject, we wanted to know, how large is a large sample. We could find no answer. There was no dividing line. Nobody could tell us. It was just a matter of "common sense." Small samples were statistically unreliable but we soon found that large samples could also be statistically unre1iable. We also found that there seemed to be no rule that samples should not and did not violate.
Mr. Lee has his own views and they are very interesting. However, one example cited in his editorial was of great interest to us. He points out that out of 29 of his writers, 11 have last names that begin with the letter H. This is extraordinary. In fact, it is fantastic. Just to have a comparable or control group, we selected the names of the first 29 persons who registered for this Course. We found that just one had a last name beginning with H.
Thus, what do such results mean? It would ordinarily be passed off as coincidence, but as Charles Fort once asked, "What if it isn't coincidence?" We will consider another possible answer shortly, but first, let us consider another such case. One of our own students gives a good example. In 1938 he bought a new car. His license tag was C-15306. Each year, he was given a new number, but in 1957, when he obtained a new tag, the number was C-15306. Since the numbers preceded by C run up to about 65,000, there was one chance in 65,000 each year that he would obtain that number again. Since his number changed 9 times, this would make the odds against this being due to chance about 7,000 to 1. Pretty good odds. Anyway, people usually say that this is coincidence.
In trying to build up a doctrine of materialism, the 19th Century dogmatists cast all these things aside as coincidence, but the average individual has experienced so much coincidence in life that he knows there is something operating that neither he nor the world of science knows about, and as a result, he turns to God. We have always been interested in finding an answer to coincidence. We don't think it is coincidence.
Twenty years ago, we encountered something similar to Mr. Lee's example of his 11 out of 29 writers whose last names began with H. We tabulated the birth dates of all the persons listed in WHO'S WHO IN AMERICA, but we tabulated 5,000 cases at a time, so we could see how well the result from one group of 5,000 compared with the next group of 5,000. This meant that each group involved a different section of the alphabet. Frankly, the comparison was pretty bad. If one group of 5,000 indicated one thing, the next group of 5,000 indicated something else. In the end, we just had to lump five such groups together and accept the over-all results. One group showed statistical significance of one quality while another group showed statistical significance of another quality. We were spending a good deal of time with Dr. Clyde Fisher, an astronomer, who was then Curator of Astronomy at the Hayden Planetarium and the American Museum of Natural History. Dr. Fisher had a novel suggestion. He said that the first letter of a person's last name might have some connection with his hereditary background. Names that began Mc would include a lot of Irish; names that began Mac would include a lot of Scottish. Perhaps different nationalities and different races respond to different cycles. Anyway, we never found out. However, you can see why we were fascinated by Mr. Lee's example of 11 of his 29 writers having last names that begin with H.
A die has six sides. Thus, we say there is one chance in six of tossing a three. Dr. Rhine tells us that if people really want to throw threes, three will turn up more than any other number. This means that a man's feelings can affect the tossing of the die in a manner of which he is completely unconscious. Nevertheless, mathematically speaking, when the die is case, the odds are 5 to 1 that you will not throw a three. That does not prevent you from throwing a 3.
How many people do you know who ever won a daily-double at a race track? One of our students won three daily-doubles in one week. Her ascending sign is Aries. It has been our experience that Aries people have better luck at gambling than the other signs.
What is coincidence?
There might be an answer to this question, and the answer might be furnished by one word, DESIGN. The other day, we received two letters that said almost the same thing. They came from two different parts of the country. Each contained a check for $24.00, which is a very odd amount for us, and we could go forward or backward several months and find no other checks in the amount of exactly $24.00. On that morning, there were about 60 letters in the mail box. These two letters were in the middle of the stack somewhere, but they were together. There were NO other letters between them.
We often find a person in whose life the same type of event occurs again and again, and a type of event that just never occurs in the lives of other people. Here is a man into whose life there came many romances, but just before a new romance was introduced into his life, a pet always died. This seems to have been a part of the pattern of his life. It wouldn't work for any other person, but it worked that way for him. Then, there was the much written-up man who was struck by lightning seven times and survived all seven occurrences.
Now, if we turn to the greatest of all sciences, mathematics, we find that the greatest discoveries like those of Kepler in the three laws of planetary motion were not made by statistical methods. They were made by some religious person who was seeking a design in the universe and found it.
I could arrange 1024 coins into a mathematical design in such a way that there are exactly 312 heads and 5l2 tails. You could start at one end and tabulate heads and tails, come out even, and nothing in your tabulations would reveal the design Yet, a mathematical formula is a design. The two given earlier are designs. It matter not what figures are employed to represent the n and r, the design is always there. The only reason science works is because nature is filled with designs.
It is not coincidence that editor Lee's editorial and our Lesson on statistics come out at the same time, because we have been arguing and discussing these matters with the editor for years. We worked side by side on a publication 25 years ago. These problems are not new to either of us. We have discussed them before.
In Lesson VIII, we disclosed a design in the solar system. We showed that statistically, the odds are 653,183,999 to 1 against this design being an accident. Our common sense tells us that these are pretty big odds. However, we do not merely have those odds to back up the design. This design made analytical interpretation possible. Analytical interpretation had been attempted before, but the results were not satisfactory to us, because the wrong "house value" had been applied to both the planets and the zodiacal signs.
When we asked students to analytically interpret Venus-in--Capricorn, we selected a number of persons we knew well who were born with Venus-in-Capricorn. We wanted to see whether new students could correctly describe these people. The results were beyond our expectations. They were far better than we expected.
The key to the whole matter involved the fact that when Venus is in Capricorn, the Family Reform Guide is under the domination of the Individual Survival Reactor. Students were able to work this out for themselves, and they found the right answer without recourse to statistics of thousands of cases.
Just as a mathematical formula is a design, a horoscope is a design. It is a mathematical figure. It cannot be interpreted other than as a mathematical figure. It can be construed as a formula where a particular individual or entity is concerned. More important than finding out that people with Mars-Uranus aspects have difficulty going through an entire life with one partner, is to determine why. These people do not appear to be scheduled to go through life with one partner. The design of their lives is along different lines. Religious training may cause some of them to conform more to the overall; pattern of society at large, but should it be this way? As Mr. Lee points out, things may be different for one individual than for the mass as a whole. The number of people who are to be killed in automobile accidents next Sunday may not include you, but your own recklessness might have something to do with that.
In other cases we have opposed efforts to knock down the statistical approach where astrology is concerned, but that was when people who were opposing the statistical method knew nothing about the statistical method. We do not oppose the statistical method of gathering material now, but we do point out that it may not be the only, or the best method. Analytical interpretation offers a much shorter, more efficient and more satisfactory method.
Let's have a comparison of the two methods. Euclid proved that there is no limit to the number of prime integers. One person might try to prove this by going higher and higher to see whether he could find any place where prime numbers end. Euclid ployed a very simple proof. He pointed out that if you multiply all known prime numbers together and add 1, you have a number that cannot be divisible by any known prime. Therefore, it is either prime itself or divisible by some larger unknown prime, and in either case, there must be some prime integer larger than any known prime. We can call this an intellectual approach to the matter and our own system of analytical interpretation falls in the same category. It is possible to reach a correct conclusion without recourse to statistics, but statistics can then be introduced for greater verification as well as for further personal and self-satisfaction. You can see your own conclusions constantly verified.
A further advantage of analytical interpretation lies in the fact that it can explain the exception to the rule. Elsewhere, we used the horoscope of Elvis Presley as an apparent exception to the rule of Venus-in-Capricorn. Actually, it is only an apparent exception to the rule, because Elvis has to express not only Venus-in-Capricorn, but Venus square Uranus, Saturn in Aquarius, Jupiter in Scorpio, etc. Yet, Elvis cannot get away from the fact that he was born with Venus in Capricorn, and he does have the characteristics of this configuration peculiarly and necessarily combined with those of Venus square Uranus, etc.
At this point, we seem to agree with editor Lee in his contention that the statistical approach is filled with possible pit-falls, and no matter how large a sample of cases you may have, your conclusions can still be wrong.
We feel that a better astrology of the future must be based on analytical interpretation, that the statistical approach will never furnish as great a degree of perfection, that you can accomplish many. times as much in a fraction of the time. It makes a difference when we consider astrology as a matter of mathematical design rather than as a causal phenomenon. If it is a causal phenomenon then the statistical approach would be more appropriate If like mathematics, it is a science of abstract cosmic design, than the statistical approach is not always the right one. Mathematicians do not use the statistical approach to prove mathematical theorems. As yet, no one has been able to prove very famous theorem in mathematics known as Fermat's Last Theorem. You can offer an infinite amount of statistical proof to show that this theorem is true, but this kind of proof is unacceptable to the mathematicians. They are still trying to find absolute proof. Fermat is supposed to have had this proof, but it appears to have died with him. No other mathematician has yet been able to rediscover this proof. Yet, none of them question that Fermat had found it.
No astrologer ever put as much effort and labor into statistical investigation of astrology as the writer has, and we have certainly learned a great deal through this kind of investigation, but after these years we are forced to admit that the statistical approach does not always appear to be the best approach. However, we did not draw this conclusion until after we had formed a better approach. This analytical approach would never have been possible without the information disclosed in Lesson VIII, which is probably the most important lesson in this entire course. It is the key to everything else.
Design may be the ultimate explanation for cycles. If we consider the day and night cycle, it conforms to earth motion as related to the Sun, but the best authorities inform us that you can take random numbers, and they disclose cycles. Because no cause for such cycles is known, they have been called pseudocycles, but this may be an improper term. Even such cycles may be a matter of abstract cosmic design. We did a lot of research in connection with random numbers many years ago. Our interest was only in whether these numbers were odd or even, and what kinds of runs of consecutive odd or even numbers we ran across, whether they conformed to the expectancy indicated by the mathematical laws of probability, etc. Our experience was quite extraordinary. We couldn't help but note that we came across the longest run of consecutive odd numbers during a total eclipse of the Sun.
In view of the fact that TIME is merely a matter of how things relate to each other and otherwise non-existent, you may begin to see how time and design fit themselves together. Both past and future are largely a matter of our present conception of them, and our philosophical outlook alters both. 1000 tosses of a coin might contain an approximately equal number of heads and tails, but there might also be a design. If cycles can be found in random numbers, the indication is that they are not exactly random but contain a design. Is there such a thing as random or such a thing as chance? The further we go, the more indication we find that we must ultimately give a negative answer to this question and say that nothing happens by chance, and that nothing is random; because all action is controlled by the design of the unconscious, perhaps by Jung's collective unconscious.
We cannot ignore the fact that the greatest progress over the centuries was made by mathematicians who believed in design and tried to find it. This applied to such men as Pythagoras, Khayyam, Copernicus, Kepler and Newton. Newton made it clear that he did not consider gravitation a causal phenomenon but a mathematical design. The planets do not plunge into the Sun, nor are they thrown off into space. They remain as part of a design. The speed with which one planet travels has a definite relationship to the speed with which another planet travels. Everything fits into a design but followers of such men as those mentioned above have always misrepresented the original views in order to make them conform to their own inferior views. Always remember that the men who write about and interpret the views of other men like Newton are not the people who made the discoveries. Always note that textbooks avoid mentioning that each of the above mentioned men was an astrologer. This will help you to see how the plot of materialism has been hatched and how we have been led away from design. Yet, we may surmise from reading ancient religious documents that number was to be found everywhere in their work. We have done little to detect what these numbers mean. Nevertheless, we find that mathematicians and religious persons have had something in common in that they have been seeking a cosmic design. Religious leaders were called prophets. Prophets are supposed to predict the future, and this no longer seems strange when we realize that time is non-existent except as a medium to describe the relationship between or among objects or things So long as there is change, there is time, and when change ceases to exist, time must cease to exist also. A man would not grow old unless his body changed. Note that the words we associate with time, such as change, are also associated with Uranus, Aquarius, the 7th House and the opposition aspect. Then note that the 7th House involves our relationship with other people, change in our relationship with other people, such as marriage or divorce.
The horoscope is the design of a particular life. That life has to involve change, and in that way it involves time, which we will call a mere by-product of change, an invented medium for expressing change. Although the individual is born with the heavens forming one design, that design is constantly changing, and of necessity he lives through many designs which always have a relationship to the original design.
If you photograph 1000 people born with Sagittarius on the ascendent, we have no doubts but that you would find a similarity of design in their faces as related to people born with other zodiacal signs rising. Nevertheless, each of these people would have a different hereditary background which would also have to show up in his face, and no two of these people would look exactly alike. If you happened to include one giraffe among the 1000 individuals, his hereditary background would be so different from the rest that you would have great difficulty finding Sagittarius in his features. On the other hand, if all the 1000 individuals were Irish, it might be easier to detect Sagittarius rising. A high ratio of the Irish have the appearance of people with Taurus or Scorpio rising, and by some method, astrologers of the past have associated the Irish race with Taurus, just as they have associated the Germans with Taurus, the English with Aries, the French with Leo, etc. Some of those associations may be right and others may be wrong, but certainly the Germans do portray the characteristics that we find in Taurus and the personal appearance we find in Taurus rising. However, Taurus and Scorpio can often be similar in appearance, and the Irish are noted for impulsiveness, emotionalism, and liking to fight, which would fit Scorpio better than Taurus. Such conclusions are highly speculative, however. Nevertheless, racial influences are just as important as astrological designs. A race is a design.
One of the great difficulties in employing statistical principles in testing astrological samples lies in the fact that you cannot get 1000 or 5000 cases that are exactly alike. You can't even get two cases that are exactly alike, and as soon as you begin to increase the size of your sample, you decrease the similarity of your cases. As a result you are bound to reduce the statistical significance.
Another important factor is found in the fact that you tend to live the horoscopes and designs of people with whom you are closely associated. When you are married, the partner's chart will have a great deal to do with your life. There will be things that happen which never show up in your own chart. This is particularly true of the opposition aspect. One partner reacts to the opposition aspects in the other partner's chart. It can be seen that here is something that could never show up statistically, because it is not in the native's own chart. When you are under strong Uranus aspects, you can have a great deal to do with influencing the lives of other people. This is something that could not show up statistically unless you had the charts of all the people to whom individuals were married. You probably realize that you can be one personality while with one person and another personality when with another person or persons.
It would be a mistake for us to suggest that anybody abandonthe statistical approach. It definitely has utility. It was statistical approach that enabled us to discover the Lunar Cycle as it relates to the individual. It was the statistical approach that led us to discover that humankind are more unstable when the Sun or Uranus is conjunct or square to the Lunar Nodes. We have discovered many things astrological through the use of the statistical approach. We have also been able to disprove some of the older claims of astrologers to our satisfaction through the use of the statistical approach. Therefore, it would seem that there are some things you can reach very easily through the analytical method which you would not be likely to reach through the statistical method, while there are other things you might reach through the statistical method and not through the analytical method.
Another drawback to statistic procedure lies in the fact that when you are dealing with an individual horoscope, you must really know that person very well in order to see in just what manner he fits the pattern of the horoscope. We might say that we know a great deal about Dwight D. Eisenhower, but we know almost nothing about him in comparison with those people who live with him and see him every day. All of our information about him happens to be second or third hand. Even when a client sits across from us at our own desk, there is not time to become intimately acquainted. We have to take his word for a lot of things, and he may not be supplying us with an accurate report. A woman often lives with a man for many years and still has a lot to learn about his personality. There may be hidden departments that she has never encountered. In fact, there may be many hidden chambers of her own personality that she has never encountered.
If statistics are employed in the manner habitual to advertising agencies, Wall Street, politicians, etc., as Mr. Lee points out, they can be used to prove or disprove almost anything, but we must point out that these people are statisticians in the popular and not in the mathematical sense of the word. A mathematical statistician is a highly trained individual, master of the mathematical theory of probability, the calculus of probability, which is one of the most complicated and involved branches of mathematics. In higher mathematics, numbers are no longer employed. Everything becomes a matter of design, and designs are portrayed by symbols. One single symbol can imply a very long and complicated set of calculations. The same applies to astrology. The procedure of erecting a horoscope and portraying everything by symbols that only the trained astrologer can read is the exact same procedure followed by the higher mathematician When the astrologer writes ÙºÝò , the symbols for Venus conjunct Uranus in Aries, he implies what it might take pages to write out for the laymen. With one symbol like a calculus symbol having a few numbers or more symbols above and below it, the mathematician moans to add all the numbers in a particular series of numbers from one point to another point. If he writes 100!, he means multiply 100 by all lesser numbers down to 1.
That is why, when he gets into complicated problems, the mathematician requires an electronic calculator to handle the detail that he merely writes out in symbol form. The same applies to the astrologer. He can erect your horoscope in symbol form, but after that is done, you might spend the rest of your life writing out all the things that those symbols can actually moan. It is very important to realize that astrology is not a causal phenomenon, that it is actually a branch of mathematics, and it can be approached exactly as mathematics is approached. The methods that have been successful in the field of mathematics are also successful in the field of astrology. Thus, it is not difficult to see why, down through the centuries, the men who rated first in the field of mathematics were also the astrologers themselves. All the pieces fit together. When we deal with astrology, and when we deal with mathematics, we are dealing with one and the same thing. We are dealing with the abstract cosmic design of the universe and everything in it, including life itself.
Return to Top
Go to Next Lesson
Return to Index
Bonnie's Links
bonniehill@verizon.net
last modified on January 19, 2006
URL: http://mysite.verizon.net/bonniehill/pages.aux/astrology/tobey/tobey.19.html