The author argues for an alternative model of how astrology works. He proposes that only a few percent of people are “enhancers” or “starborn” and for those people astrological indicators work well. This theory accords closely with the Gauqulelin findings and also with his own work on time-twins. Finally, he presents evidence from questionnaire research that the starborn (as a small proportion) can be found among “ordinary people” by discerning planetary traits from their answers to carefully selected questions. It is suggested that the significance of this work would be much enhanced by independent replication.

This article summarises the evidence for the reality of Gauquelin’s claim of planet-birth frequency correlations The existence of planetary effects, however, exemplified by Mars and sports champions, is denied by skeptic circles. The grounds for this point of view are traced to biased investigations. The skeptics tend to work out insufficient designs, to collect unfavorable data, to prevent planetary effects from emerging, to ignore positive results if they show up or to obliterate them by reinterpretation and to defame authors whose results confirm planetary effects while providing evidence for the skeptics’ unfairness. The conclusion is that an increasing number of unprejudiced scientists is required who are ready to acknowledge the existing positive evidence while augmenting it by replications.

In this paper evidence is presented that political and economic cycles of activity are correlated with celestial cycles. Political patterns of war and peace, and economic patterns of recession, depression, recovery and prosperity are closely associated with the fundamental and harmonic waves of the five outer planets of the solar system throughout the 20th century. Correlations of political and economic dependent variables with several planetary waves are statistically significant. Graphs of outer-planetary fundamental and harmonic waves for the 20th and 21st centuries are presented and interpreted from a political and economic perspective. Global warfare is predicted beginning in 2032. Recommendations are made for further research.

Modern philosophers generally accept astrology as a source of sympathy and support, but they reject it as a source of knowledge. This matches the idea, introduced in KT1, that astrology can be viewed in two ways, one in terms of the purely subjective satisfaction enjoyed by users, and the other in terms of its objective accuracy. The discourse looks at some philosophical (I.e., conceptual) problems revealed by each viewpoint. Astrology from the satisfaction viewpoint is generally unproblematic: (1) Satisfaction typically rests on value judgments and subjective feelings, both of which can legitimately differ. So arguments about the extent and type of satisfaction provided by astrology may be pointless. (2) The astrology so viewed need not be true and is therefore uncontroversial. (3) Nevertheless problems can arise if astrologers needlessly embrace assailable arguments. Why undermine uncontroversial claims with assailable arguments? (4) Problems can also arise if satisfaction depends on perceptions that are in fact false. Action based on false perceptions could be harmful. Astrology from the accuracy viewpoint faces numerous problems: (1) Astrology is defined as precisely not the result of any means we know of. (2) Astrological effects are essentially statistical, are non-identifiable except after the event, and therefore cannot be an independent source of knowledge. (3) Astrologers have been reluctant to describe what their model predicts, the criteria by which it could be tested, and the evidence they would accept as showing it had failed. (4) No claims to accuracy can be justified unless astrologers make proper experiments and distinguish between alternative explanations and have independent reasons for thinking that astrological effects exist.

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.

The author challenges the supposition that the belief systems proposed by Dean (2000) should be more pronounced in rural than urban areas and uses empirical data to demonstrate the validity of that challenge. Rural-urban disparities in the percentage of people who agree to the item “Good luck charms sometimes do bring good luck” (results based on answers from n = 14395 respondents from 12 different countries) suggest that rural people are not more superstitious than those from urban areas. The implications of this are discussed.

Leo Knegt (1882-1957) was one of the Netherlands’s most eminent astrologers. When tested in a 1933 blind trail by the lawyer Cornelis van Rossem, his interpretations were found to be both accurate and at times amazingly specific, certainly more specific than most astrologers today would consider possible. In effect, Knegt seems to have been an astrological white crow, living proof of the impossible. So the big question is how did Knegt do it? What was the secret of his success? The author suggests that this is simply not known and goes to state that if it were, it could revolutionise astrological practice and research. In this article, the author looks at the blind trial in detail, giving examples of Knwegt’s specific interpretations and the charts they were based on, and asking the readers of Correlation for help in trying to find out how Knegt did it.

The author scrutinises the results of the Mars – Redhead project coordinated by Hill and Thompson in the United States where birth data from nearly one and a half thousand redheads were gathered and tested to see if the position of Mars in the zodiac correlated with the colour of their hair. In this critique of that paper, suggestions are offered on alternative ways of testing future replications for clearer significance levels.

The relevance of character traits to extreme pathological subjects is discussed. Evidence is presented for a Gauquelin Effect in a sample of habitually violent criminals. The distribution of Mars positions is significantly different from the typical professional data for Mars, previously reported by the Gauquelins.

The claim based on a study by James David on Alice Bailey’s theory of “Seven Rays” that, using this theory, photographs of people could be accurately matched to their sun sign is tested in this paper.200 photographs were sent to James David of which he chose 58. After subjecting the choices made by James David to analysis the author concluded that they were no better than chance. James David’s response arguing that the author’s method of analysis could be disputed is included in the paper with a discussion of the grounds for that dispute.