From the 2nd century AD the coincidence of Passover and Easter was recognized as a problem for the Christian church by the church authorities, and in the 4th century, after Christianity became the Roman state religion, Roman authorities took steps to prevent Passover and Easter coinciding. This effort was complicated by the growing separation between the churches in Rome and Constantinople. Though from the 2nd century the majority of Jews lived in the diaspora, at least up to the 10th century the calendar was governed by a rabbinical court in Eretz Israel (the Land of Israel). Here we discuss the changes in the Jewish calendar in the 5-8th centuries AD, the middle (c. 636 AD) of which period witnessed an abrupt transition from Byzantine rule over Eretz Israel to Arab rule. In this period no serious changes were made in the basic mathematics of the Jewish calendar; the only changes had a political context. Here we discuss a single but singular feature of the Jewish calendar, the ‘Deĥiyot’ [postponements] of Rosh Hashana. Our major claim is that Deĥiyah D [postponement from Wednesday to Thursday] and Deĥiyah U [postponement from Friday to Saturday] entered the calendar c. 532 AD as an ingenious Jewish response to Emperor Justinian’s ban against the Passover feast (Nisan 14) falling on a Saturday, instituted to mend a famous calendar rift between the Roman and Alexandrian churches. Next we claim that Deĥiyah A [postponement from Sunday to Monday] became part of the calendar no earlier than when the 2nd day of the festivals Rosh Hashana [New Year] and Sukkot [Tabernacles] acquired the status of sacred day and we raise the lower historical boundary of Deĥiyah A’s introduction in the calendar up to the time of the first Gaonim [heads of talmudic academies in the Arab caliphate] (c. 658 AD). We also suggest the reasons for the timing of three other deĥiyot.

The annual total of births fell substantially in Hong Kong in the past 20 years, and the average fertility level of 0.9 births per family has now fallen below the notional replacement rate for the existing population. Nevertheless, short run periods of high birth rates have occurred, particularly in the Dragon Years of 1988 and 2000. This rise in fertility may be related to zodiacal beliefs about fertility and the presumed favourable time for births, but this needs to be investigated more systematically.

Georg Joachim Rheticus (1514-1574) was central to the development and popularization of Copernicus’ heliocentric theory. He is most well known for the first published account of the theory, the Narratio Prima in 1539, and his persuasion in obtaining Copernicus’ manuscript for publication, De Revolutionibus (1543). Rheticus’ poem ‘Concerning the Beer of Breslau and the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac’, written circa 1542, sheds light on two aspects of Rheticus’ early involvement with the heliocentric theory. The poem helps us understand the approach to astrology which would prove decisive in Rheticus’ acceptance of the heliocentric theory and offers a glimpse into Rheticus’ association with Wittenberg’s controversial group of young poets. This relationship significantly injured Rheticus’ career and the heliocentric theory in turn.

Kelly’s and Saklofske’ crilticism of Smithers’ 1981 study are examined and it is suggeseted that they have not fully appreciated the argument presented: that astrology may be an unwitting source of self knowledge. Since people vary in their knoweldge of astrology and of themselves, it is not surpprising that the apparent sun sign correlations should not emerge in all studies. Further data are presented to show that it is extremely unlikely that the patterns described in Smithers’ study were produced by some weakness or artefact in the measuring technique. lt is important to establish whether the apparent astrological effects on self image are transient or nt. This is currently being investigated.

According to Geoffrey Dean’s tampering hypothesis, superstitious parents of just-born babies who later would become eminent professionals tended to report wrong birth dates at registration offices so as to make the births fall on auspicious days, including Christian feast days. I scrutinized the validity of this claim by counting births on Christian feast days for a sample of French priests (Gauquelin data, N=884) and Belgian Benedictine monks (Verhulst data, N=1506). Dean’s sample of non-clerical Gauquelin professionals (N=15,942) served as a mundane reference sample. Since Christian families bringing up future priests and monks are generally more religious than families bringing up children of mundane professions, their motivation to shift their children’s births on Christian feast days should be stronger than among families with mundane offspring – provided that such motivation exists at all. Consequently, birth counts on Christian feasts of future priests and monks should be more numerous compared to birth counts on Christian feast days of future actors, journalists, military leaders etc. However, the results show that births of future clergy on Christian feast days are not significantly more numerous than birth counts of mundane offspring. Birth counts differ between fixed and movable feasts, with births on fixed feasts alone perhaps slightly supporting Dean’s stance, but births on movable feasts entirely disconfirm his hypothesis. The fixed versus movable feast difference is unexpected and escapes any interpretation in terms of tampering. It is concluded that birth counts on Christian feasts cannot responsibly be used as indicators of superstition.

Wunder takes issue with my study of rural-urban differences of popular belief whose results showed that Geoffrey Dean’s eight indicators of superstition are not valid. He doubts that country people from Gauquelin samples were more superstitious than townspeople. A review of past studies on rural-urban differences, however, provides abundant evidence that country people, even still of late decades, do tend to be more superstitious and more conservative in general than townspeople. Seeming counter evidence from studies of recent changes in urban and rural beliefs, provided by Wunder, makes sense only in particular contexts (such as revivals in urban settings of esoteric practices) which have no bearing on widely acknowledged differences between rural and urban belief systems. The critic thus fails to save Dean’s explanation of Gauquelin planetary effects, which is based on a theory of parental tampering.

The importance of harmonics in describing the diurnal distributions of natal planetary positions for groups of professionals in data collected by the Gauquelins is discussed. The hypothesis of “parental tampering” is is explored although it is considered unlikely because the distributions are, in some respects, contrary to traditional astrological expectations.

It is suggested that conventional statistical significance tests are inappropriate for research in astrology and that Bayesian methods are better. Bayes’ theorem is explained using probability tree notation and examples from everyday life. It is argued that Michel Gauquelin could have inadvertently biased his work on planets and character traits – but still have been right. Examples are offered from the history of science to show that prominent scientists have often embellished results to make them more convincing. Finally, a Bayesian analysis of the Astro-Questionnaire results taken in conjunction with Gauquelin’s character trait work indicates that a prior probability of 1/5 develops to a post probability of nearly 2/3. It is proposed that this analysis gives support to the contention that further experimental work on the character trait hypothesis is needed.

Previouisly unpublished data has aided the analysis of Bradley’s Jupiter-rainfall study. It is shown that Bradley’s results are spurious, due to the astronomical artifact of the Moon’s sidereal period being nearly commensurable with the Earth’s rotation.

Data provided by 3,480 respondents were used to test various hypotheses relating personality to date and time of birth. As predicted by astroogy, an alternating pattern with sun sign was found for extraversion. The water signs were found to be more emotional than the other elements but the distribution of neuroticism scores throughout the year was not random. It is suggested that if self-descriptions are influenced by knowledge of astrology this effect is not trivial. In the present study the sun sign connection could not have been picked up from hints given by the circumstance of testing. Gauquelin’s finding that associations between personality and planetary positions do not appear among ordinary people is supported, and presents something of a puzzle.