Suggestive evidence for a diurnal effect of the Moon was recently published by Francoise Gauquelin using a non-verbal test filled out by 500 ordinary people. The present study is an attempt to replicate the results using a fresh sample of 600 answers rated by three judges who had rated the answers of the previous experiment. The judges’ ratings showed good agreement but no lunar effect was found. For the five Gauquelin planets (MO, VE, MA, JU and SA) the frequency in sectors 1 + 4 + 7 = 10 was not significantly different from chance for answers judge to beeither “extraverted” or “imaginative”. The results were no different for the Moon in sectors 1 + 4 only, for those answers for which all judges were in agreement, or for sub-sets of the answers. The failure to replicate may be due to a lack of validity in the test. Recommendations are made for a better methodology.

The Italian High Renaissance saw the high point of the use of astrology in the timing of both military and political events. It is known that Cosimo I de’ Medici, Duke of Florence, delayed the decisive battle in his war against Siena in 1554, against the advice of his commanders in the field. A previously unpublished astrological prognostic may have influenced his military strategy which, in fact, led to his eventual victory at Marciano on 2 August 1554. This paper presents a discussion of the circumstances surrounding the campaign, and a translation and analysis of the prognostic sent to Duke Cosimo in March 1554 by the astrologer Francesco Formiconi.

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.

There are no solid data on the magnitude, determinants and processes of trafficking in Nepal, and the needs of those trafficked who return. The contributing causes and structure of sex trafficking in Nepal are largely unknown, and most figures are at best educated guesses. Very limited information is available about the family environment, economic and social situations of the sex workers. Many astrologers in Nepal believed that significant numbers of parents will have surrendered their daughter into prostitution on the basis of astrological indicators, but there is no empirical evidence to support this. Thus, by using both quantitative and qualitative methods, the present study explored the socio-cultural and astrological aspects of sex trafficking and examined whether the trafficked girls have any unique clusters of astrological profiles. No link with astrological profiles was found and the patterns observed being completely random.