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Gepubliceerd 08/09/2003

No economist, who values his well-being, thinks about breaking the ancient taboo and investigate astrology; it could cost his career, marriage, house. The taboo against astrology, established by the early Roman Catholic Church, is still firmly in place.
"To suppose that the planets up in the sky have anything to do with economic affairs on earth is utter lunacy," an academic friend told me with the confidence of a pope discussing the Immaculate Conception.

But detractors of astrology decline to examine the evidence. The evidence has been taboo in western culture since the rise of the Roman Catholic Church coinciding with the fall of the Roman Empire during a Neptune-Pluto conjunction around 411.
Among today's proficient astrologers is Robert Hand, graduated from Brandeis University with honors in History and did postgraduate work at Princeton in the History of Science. "It is not politically safe in the sciences," said Hand, "to mention any kind of correlation between terrestrial and celestial phenomena unless it can be quickly explained in terms of known gravitational or other force-field effects. Anyone who does has to move quickly to avoid being branded as a charlatan, while making all kinds of disclaimers that what he is doing is not astrology. Often even that is not enough to save an investigator’s reputation”.

Astrology is a vast field, at once pre-scientific, scientific, unscientific and trans-scientific, depending on which aspect of astrology one is dealing with. It is definitely not superstition. Superstition is based on ignorance; it is ignorance of astrology that gets it branded as superstition. But can any aspect of astrology ever be truly scientific?

Hand continues: "We can do scientific-type investigations of astrology. The Gauquelins did. We can find things that are truly astounding. But I do not think we can incorporate astrology into the philosophical and theoretical structure of the sciences without abandoning most of what constitutes astrology. I believe science will discover more and more that there are correlations between planetary movements and terrestrial phenomena, but ... they will declare that this is not astrology, or that theirs is the 'real' astrology, and that what we do is bogus".

The old astrology, the astrology of the founders of modern science, was squeezed out of the materialistic world view that developed during 16th and 17th centuries. A newer, more psychologically sophisticated, astrology is emerging as this materialistic view becomes bankrupt. A broader view shows us that astrology persists, it adapts to the times, and it weathers the ups and downs of intellectual fashion".

Moreover, astrology is not a quick study. Traditionalists used to say it takes a student one transit of Saturn, about 30 years, to become proficient. The study of astrology is not for everyone; it requires that you simultaneously think symbolically and literally. You must be deeply familiar with the areas of consciousness "ruled" by the various planets, named for the ancient pantheistic gods. (The Roman Mercury is the native American Coyote is the Polynesian Maui, and so forth around the world.) The signs or constellations designating "neighborhoods" in the universe beyond are also rooted in "pagan" mythology. But you must simultaneously assess the various planetary angles and cycles in a chart. Not every concrete thinker can simultaneously think symbolically in order to both find pertinent angles and describe combinations of influences. Astrological interpretations are at once mathematically precise, symbolic, synchronistic and attuned to an individual.

Most Ph. D. economists are experts in econometrics, the mathematics involved in measuring "inside the box"—inside the existing economic model. Few look back in time more than a decade or two. Most economists are linear thinkers, who believe the present bears little or no relationship to the past.
Astrologers, by contrast, deal with cyclical time, looking for similarities between then and now.