An academy is defined as a higher or specialised school, or a society for the promotion of science or art. Rooted in Plato¹s Athens and continuing through the Renaissance to the present day, the academy has always conjured images of a select group of scholars devoted to the exploration of what Plato called “the eternal realities”. But any such group constellates innate and archetypal tensions, not with the “outside world” but also with similar groups each of which may feel it has the “only” claim to knowledge, thus generating inevitable psychological repercussions, both problematic and creative.

I would like to suggest a re-reading of the work of Pierre Bayle, concerning his assertions of the scientific status of History, and emphasizing in particular his critique of astrology in the writings dealing with comets which were translated into English in 1708. Those who have written about Bayle’s thinking have not understood that when Bayle deals with comets he is actually looking at the way they had been previously viewed by historian, and by religion. I therefore take the opposite standpoint to those who consider that Bayle’s proposals on comets are no more than a pretext through which to approach other subjects. Indeed it is better, I feel, to re-position Reflections on Comets in the line which we would call astro-history, and to place it closer to the critical work of Claude Duret, published in 1595, a century earlier. Speaking of pretexts, it must be understood that the debate on astrology and its effects on events is an integral part of a larger debate on History which is, at its heart, similar. Moreover, it is no accident that Bayle, from the opening pages of his Reflections, fiercely criticizes historians before even beginning to develop his critique of astrology. This critique is not as superficial as we might be led to believe; it involves a methodology which Bayle shows to us in great detail, and which aims less at traditional astrological knowledge, in which comets have a somewhat secondary role, than at those works which will not accept such a traditional view about astrology at all, except with certain reservations. In many cases, the word ‘comet’ can be replaced with any astral configuration without Bayle’s argument losing its pertinence.

Astrology is often referred to as a symbolic language. Does this make it different from an ‘ordinary’ language, and what are the implications of describing it as such? In short, what makes one form of language more ‘real’ than another? The talk will introduce Wittgenstein’s concept of ‘language games’ to explore how language can be used in various ways to describe our experience of the world. This will address many confusions regarding concepts of ‘causes’, ‘principles’, and ‘underlying laws’ which are often used to bolster the scientific, as well as the astrological paradigm, which is itself an increasing victim of psychologism. Also drawing on other ideas from the philosophy of language we shall place the language of astrology within a wider frame. This will raise the question as to the extent that astrology itself can usefully contribute to the debate that dominates much current philosophical thinking on the nature and experience of language.

An attempt was made to find evidence for relations between traditional aspects and human birth. Gauquelin data on 20,528 eminent individuals representing 11 proofessions were subjected to time series analysis, segmenting a critical A-period of hypothetical influence (A = aspect condition) together with three preceding (P) and three succeeding (S) time periods of equal duration. The requencies of births within sequencs of 3P + 1A = 3S time segments were superimposed for each profession and for each of 15 aspects (conjunction, squares and oppositions between Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn). Mean time series obtained for empirical aspect occurences were compared with mean time series for equivalent random segments as controls. No indication of an aspect influence was found.

This article first examines astrologers’ protestations at growing religious hostility in the 1490s and the involvement of Ficino, Pico and Savonarola in Florence. It then charts the reactions to Pico’s Disputationes both in the anti-astrological camp’s enthusiastic endorsement, and especially in the riposte of professional astrologers across Europe, whose piece-meal replies, intensified by the approaching conjunction of 1524, include a call for internal reform through a rejection of Arabic methods. Pico’s technical and empirical secondary arguments emerge as more effective than the physical and moral primary ones and reveal his singular understanding of practitioners’ mentality.

A literature review is presented which gives a brief overview of the use of astrology in medicine and psychology. Report of a study carried out at an NHS UK Hospital involving the use of astrological counselling with chronic pain patients (n = 6 patients) is also given and includes the presentation of two case studies. Astrological profiles of the patients and the history of their chronic pain were presented to the clinical psychologist in charge of the programme, who then compared them with the psychological profiles. The psychologist concluded that astrological information was provided which enhanced understanding obtained by traditional psychological methods and that the analyses, themselves, were comparable with the results of psychological analyses.

The Raëlian Church is an atheistic religion with a cosmology that is compatible with modern science. Its founder-leader Claude Vorilhon (Raël), whose birth in 1946 is said to herald the new Age of Aquarius, offers a detailed interpretation of Judaeo-Christian scripture that claims a history of encounters a new highly evolved technological society, with the possibility of immortality for those who are worthy. Jung’s theory that flying saucers are a modern myth is used to demonstrate how Raëlianism finds it possible to synthesize UFOlogy and religion.

This report provides primary credence to evolution of the human organism beneath the heavens. Natural selection has favored vertebrates attuned to heavenly rhythms. The lower vertebrates including salamanders undergoing selection, feed, reproduce and migrate in accord with solar and lunar rhythms. As descendants of these successfully adapted creatures, humans possess brain circuits reflecting hundreds of millions of years of inherited genetic programs linked to sun and moon cycles overhead. Humans appear to be sensitive to subtle energy shifts associated ultimately to trajectories of the ancient sun and moon through the heavens. These chronomic genes accompany emergence of mental function in humans enabling them to survive and succeed in diverse environments. Rising interest in chronomics as a mental science requires careful enumeration of the multiple cycles driving human mental function. The recent advances in measuring human unconscious mental processes promise growth this decade of a new quantitative science raised to a level of sophistication comparable to molecular measurement in genomics. In empirical studies the author has devised novel approaches to detecting multiple intermeshed cycles in salamanders and in humans. Emergence of this new understanding can be illustrated by application of an analytic genomics method to detect an otherwise inaccessible human 260-day cycle. Future advances in this new biological discipline promise powerful new perspectives on the evolution of cosmic influence.

This paper is an historiographical inquiry into some problems that arise when confronted with so-called supernatural, irrational or superstitious phenomena in human history. Other descriptions are possible, of course, but none of them without at least some question-begging – something that itself points to the principal problem. As an initial formulation, let us define that as follows: how can the historian describe and explain these phenomena without participating in the very processes – characteristically, to coin a phrase, ones of power/knowledge – that produced them in the first place?1 And this problem becomes especially acute when the discourse in question, like astrology (but unlike, say, phrenology) is still the subject of contemporary controversy. This is not something I hope to resolve here, but perhaps I can improve the quality of the questions it raises.

Evidence is presented that warfare and economic growth are correlated with outer-planetary fundamental waves and harmonic waves during the 500-year period from 1500 to 1999. This period represents 1 cycle of the combined fundamental waves of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Three war indexes (civil, international, and global) and real economic growth of 7 industrialized nations (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, and United States) are tested for significance with planetary fundamental waves and harmonic waves. Graphs of outer-planetary fundamental waves from 1450 to 2050 are presented, and general comparisons are drawn between the Renaissance and New Age periods.