The astrological concept of the ‘dragon of the lunar nodes’, responsible for eclipses of the sun and the moon, may have derived from a combination of ideas prevailing in Late Antiquity with respect to the ourobóros or ‘tail-biting serpent’—that it constituted a ring of darkness, that it was bent around the sun and that it was positioned on the ecliptic band. Various Mithraic, astrological and alchemical images of celestial dragons appear to represent this aspect of the dragon.

The Leofric Missal (late ninth- or early tenth-century French-English) explains that the ‘sun stood still’ for Joshua at Gibeon because the battle occurred on leap day, precisely when, in the Roman calendar, two consecutive days had the same date. A tenth-century Old English text by Ælfric also mentions and critiques this ‘priestly’ computistical explanation.

This paper analyses the involvement of the astrologer Manuel Galhano Lourosa in the restoration of political independence of Portugal from Spain between 1640 and 1668. Lourosa was the most successful astrologer and almanac maker in seventeenth-century Portugal. He published astrological almanacs for several decades, wrote an astrological and astronomical treatise on comets, and addressed astrological writings to Portuguese society urging support for the new political order that issued from the revolution of 1640. Some of these writings were consistent with the feelings of the urban professional and mercantile classes. We argue that, by publishing and using his social prestige in favour of the Restoration cause, Lourosa used the sphere of public opinion to act politically along with the interests of the urban middle class.

BACKGROIUND: Russion astronomer A.L. Tchijevsky published in the 1920s, a study comparing the approximately 11-year cycling of “sunspot activity” and “historical process”, analysed globally since the 5th Century BC to the 19th Cenutury AD. According to him, phenomena of societal “excitation”, as revolutions occurred synchronously with the solar maxima, and, oppositely, those of peaceful activities of masses, as science and arts, with the solar minima. Recently, Slovak philosopher E. Pales describes periodic fluctuation of historical events in mutually distant geographic areas during more than three millennia. The period lengths, however, are longer, one of the most pronounced being around 500 years. THE QUESTION was therefore posed: does a similar correlation with sunspot activity, as found for 11 year cycles, exist also in the 500 year cycling? MATERIAL AND METHODS; The historical data consisted of two time series concerning revolutions in Europe and China, and of eight time series from activities in science and arts registered from five geographic areas. For the comparison, parallel time series of sunspot (Wolf) numbers, available since the 2nd Century BC, were constructed. Using perodic regression function, the times of peaking were estimated for each dataset. RESULTS; In agreement with Tchijevsky’s hypothesis, revolutions culminated near to solar maxima while cultural flourishing was seen usually distinctly near to solar minima. This conclusion is based on the level of statistical significance a =0.05 CONCLUSION; The solar impact on the geomagnetic field could be one of elucidating mechanisms. Recently, electromagnetic influencing of brain function has been realised artificially.

In 1985, Nature, one of the world’s most prestigious scientific journals, published “A Double Blind Test of Astrology”, now known as the ‘Carlson experiment’. The conclusion was that natal astrology as practised by reputable astrologers was no better than chance. For astrology, it was a landmark experiment that continues to undermine the credibility of every astrological consultant, researcher and school. Recent research shows not only that Carlson’s conclusions were wrong (Vidmar 2008), but also that his experiment produced evidence that the tested astrologers performed their tasks successfully to a level that could not be explained by chance (Ertel 2009).

This article attempts to synthesise the evidence from different sources with some additional observations. It seeks to clarify how Carlson imported the results of one test into another separate test. This led to sampling errors that disguised results that favoured the astrologers – results that were later discovered by Professor Ertel. To balance this, an attempt is made, here, to present the sceptical reaction to this new evidence. Graphics have been compiled to display the astrologer’s predicted rating of their matches weighted by the frequency and to show how enabling astrologers to make these confidence judgements with the data amplifies the precision.

Eleven prison riot dates were examined to see if there were any associations between phases of the moon and incidence of riots. In this small exploratory study findings suggest a possible relationship between certain degree areas of the lunar cycle and incidence of rioting. Further research on larger samples is recommended.

The relevance of the golden ratio is presented in relation to the solar-llunar periods and the Jupiter Saturn cycles.

An earlier article (Kollerstrom and Power, 2000) presented evidence that the full moon had an effect upon the fertility of thoroughbred mares (as used for breeding of racehorses).Here a further data-set from the same breeding station is here used to complement the original findings. These showed that there were peaks and troughs both in the likelihood of conception (‘fertility’) of the mares, and in the number of ‘coverings’ i.e. mating-pair events at the studfarm, at specific parts of the lunar month. The peak occurred around or just after the Full Moon. The data was taken from studbook records over fourteen consecutive years, 1986-1999 all from one single studfarm, in Newmarket UK. In all, 2318 mating-pair events are here examined. The results show that, while there is a dominant three-week rhythm in mare fertility that is endogenous, i.e. the estrus cycle, there is also a monthly, exogenous rhythm relating to the lunar cycle, which is significant for fertility and could be large enough to be of practical relevance. This article puts forward the evidence for this lunar-monthly effect.

Objective: to determine whether a relationship between urinary retention and temporal rhythms exists. Design: retrospecive analysis of patients presenting over three years. Setting: urology departments in two hospitals. Patients: 815 patients presenting as emergency admissions with urinary retention and requiring immediate decompression of the bladder. Main outcome measures: calendar date of each admissionto determine circadian, monthly, and seasonal periodicity. Results: no association was found between urinary retention and circadian,monthly, or seasonal fhythms. A significantly higher (p<0.001) incidence of urinary retention was observed during the new moon in compariosn with other phases of the lunar cycle. Conclusion: urinary retention is periodic in nature. This should be considered when the workload of a specialist urological department is organised.

The astrological classification system of polarities, elements and qualities is obviously of mathematical origin. It is based on the formula Nx mod 360 and Nx mod 30, respectively. It appears that after raising every individual degree of the circle (N) to a higher power and deducting the multiples of 360, the residual values show that only 14 configurations differing from each other are possible, as the constellations from the 3rd to the 14th power are repeated cyclically as of the 15th power onwards. It becomes evident that the whole Zodiac is interconnected like communicating tubes. Every sign contains all 4 elements, all 3 qualities and both polarities , but to a different percentage. All signs have more plus polarity than minus polarity. Only full degrees are considered contrary to Harmonics where also minutes and seconds are included and an interpretation of the underlying figure is done. A break-down of every degree into its components is available.

The classification system presently in use is a simplification as parts have been forgotten in the course of history. The presented method further could shed light on a number of questions like the composition of the 15th degree, the sign borders, etc. E.g. it becomes obvious that the 29th and 1st degrees of every sign are connected with every prime figure degree in every sign except for 3 and 5. The numerical strength of degrees may be judged according to the number of hits in the cyclic repetition.
The method has proven valuable, combined with traditional methods, in making correct predictions, e.g. in presidential elections, chart comparisons, etc.