Whitehall’s Astrological Personality Hypothesis

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Whitehall’s Astrological Personality Hypothesis

While I’m a pretty scientific person, working in a very technological business, the personality predictions made by the better astrologers just have too much empirical success to ignore. In other words, the “sun” sign predictions tend to be rather useful in dealing with people. Not perfect by any means, but one can reasonably expect a Leo to pay attention to their hair and to demand attention, a Scorpio to be intense and passionate, a Taurus to like a good meal, a Libra to be always “relationship shopping,” and to look refined, etc.

So why would that be, I ask myself? My hypothesis is based not on BIRTHDAY but on how the fetal development corresponds to the maternal hormones. In turn, material hormones vary with the seasons. The course of neurological development is pretty fixed for the growing fetus. A brain structure scheduled to have a growth burst during the 28 week might well develop differently if the mother is laying on the beach during the Summer Solstice than if the mother is bundled up in furs and getting 6 hours of weak sunlight during Winter Solstice.

We know that the timing of certain maternal events will have specific effects on the fetus (MD Consult – Start Session Cookie Error=). It remains to chart the brain structure development and correlate it with personality. The relationships of the structures to personality is already being actively investigated – see a book I reviewed in the Lounge called “Sex on the Brain.” There are many others.

Any scientific hypothesis has to be able to make predictions and to be testable. So far, I know of no psychological tests that correlate with astrological predictions so we seem to lack this basic measurement tool. In fact it is difficult to make testable predictions but we can certainly see “artful” trends – are they subjective or objective? Of course, the brain continues to grow and change after one’s birth but the basics are in place already.

So my theory makes the following predictions:

**1) the effect is stronger at the higher latitudes

We know that Western astrology theory developed in Northern Europe. Note that Rome is the same latitude as Detroit. Cultures in the tropics didn’t develop a similar theory – compare China’s system which is based on years rather than months.

**2) **the southern hemisphere, at the higher latitudes should be reversed

I’ve been angling to visit Cape town and Johannesburg on business for years. A Capricorn conceived and both there should act like a Cancer from the Northern Hemisphere. The difficulty with this test is that Cape Town is only 33 degrees south – about equal to New Orleans. That’s also about the same southern latitude as Sydney but Hobart is about the same as New York or Rome.

**3) **Moon birth signs and planetary charts aren’t predictive

Some people claim predictive effects for Moon sign and for planets. I haven’t really looked to see if these are as specifically predictive and as useful. If they are, then that might blow my theory too.

Feedback, experiences, arguments, etc welcome.

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V interesting post, Whitehall.

Have you read the work of Percy Seymour? Slightly different basis for his posited mechanism, but it is also solidly biologically based.

Astrology: An Interview with Dr. Percy Seymour by Bronwyn Elko

"
** Percy Seymour**: In the process of trying to formulate a mechanism to explain Gauquelin’s results, I was led to consider magnetobiology, a vast body of knowledge that links planetary alignments with magnetic events on the Sun and the biological consequences of fluctuations in Earth’s magnetic field. That’s what actually gave me the idea that there is a mechanism, magneto tidal resonance, which can not only explain the Sun’s magnetism, but also why specific fluctuations in Earth’s magnetosphere can get phase-locked with the tidal effects of the planets.
Research in magnetobiology shows that a wide variety of organisms respond to changes in Earth’s magnetic field.[14] (Astrology: An Interview with Dr. Percy Seymour by Bronwyn Elko) For instance, Professor Franck Brown of Northwestern University, who has done much work in this area, showed how mudsnails and turtles followed the lunar daily magnetic variation even when these creatures were removed from the sea and lodged inside laboratory tanks.[15] (Astrology: An Interview with Dr. Percy Seymour by Bronwyn Elko) The experiments of Dr. Robin Baker of Manchester University suggest that humans are also sensitive to changes in Earth’s magnetic field.[16] (Astrology: An Interview with Dr. Percy Seymour by Bronwyn Elko) Baker first placed people inside a darkened room and asked them to locate North. Most of the time people got it right. But when Baker then fitted these same subjects with a little magnetic skullcap, they lost their ability to find North. This strongly suggests the presence of an internal compass or biological clock.
What I think might be happening is that the fetus’s neural network acts as a sort of antenna that tunes into fluctuations in Earth’s magnetic field. The imprinting of the neural antennae depends on genetic heredity, which gives us our basic congenital personality. Thus, the fetus is genetically predisposed to hear specific planetary signals, much as a radio is resonantly tuned to receive a particular station. So it’s not that the planets make the person. Rather, the planets label a person’s genetic predisposition to respond to specific magnetic signals."

By the way, the current credit crisis was predicted in Dec 2005 by financial astrologers Manfred Zimmel and Ray Merriman, amongst many others.

Amanita Market Forecasting Manfred Zimmel

Merriman Market Analyst - The Cardinal Climax: 2008-2015

Forecasts 2005

The year 2005 begins the 12th year following the great Capricorn Climax of 1988-1993. It is also 3 years before the great Cardinal Climax that will commence 2008-2015.
The Cardinal Climax

  • An equally important geocosmic event will soon unfold, known as the “Great Cardinal Climax.” From 2008 through 2015, Saturn, Uranus, and Pluto will all ingress into cardinal signs, and form square and/or opposition aspects to one another. The entrance into cardinal signs will actually take place 2008-2010, when each of these planets will be in an almost (but not quite) T-square aspect pattern to one another. But the final square between Uranus and Pluto will not end until 2015, and thus we should consider this entire 7-year period to be significant, although the most significant within that period (from an astrological point of view) is most likely 2008-2010.*
  • Saturn and Uranus have a 29- and 84-year orbital cycle period around the Sun. Pluto however, takes 248 years to makes its orbit around the Sun. During this period, when each enters into a cardinal sign, they also make one of the “hard” aspects to one another. A “hard aspect” in astrology consists of a conjunction, opposition, or square aspect between planets. A Saturn-Uranus planetary pair cycle, as pointed out earlier, commences about every 45 years. Saturn and Pluto begin their planetary cycles about every 32-37 years. Uranus and Pluto however, come together only every 126 years. The frequency of these three planets forming “hard aspects” to one another, in a T-square, is quite rare. The last time it happened was in 1931, in the midst of “The Great Depression.”*
    The fact that a similar configuration coincided with something as economically devastating as a “Great Depression” is within the themes suggested by these planets in these aspects. Saturn represents “the structure of a thing,” such as a government, or a format by which people conduct business. Uranus represents a sudden shock, oftentimes accompanied by unwise and massive speculation. And Pluto represents the principle of termination: a time in which many things can end, and a need to rebuild becomes evident. Pluto also rules the banking system, or more specifically, the matter of debt, and the inability to pay a debt off through the usual means, or according to the usual schedule. With Pluto and Saturn in a hard aspect, there can be the experience pain and trauma in the economic area. An increase in debt and even taxes is oftentimes witnessed. The integrity of the structure – government or economic - is threatened by these conditions, and drastic measures are called upon to deal with the crisis.
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WOW… all i have to say is… I’m A TAURUS and I DO like a good meal… LOL

~Haz~

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Sorry there PheroQuirk, but I don’t see it. You have to posit too many new and undiscovered physical and biological mechanisms for your theory. A reasonable test is how many existing good explanations have to be revised or violated - the fewer the better.

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Not my theory, Whitehall. But Percy Seymour is an established astronomer who came to believe the value of astrology quite late in his career and wrote a book ‘The Scientific Basis of Astrology’.

In general, I think one is often well served by putting one’s speculations about how the world might work into context of the history of thought. Magnetobiology is an established, mainstream field and possibly if trying ot understand the effects of the stars on humans, one might first consider the effect of the stars on other, simpler organisms. Astrology is obviously an ancient subject, and people have been considering many such questions (of how it works, for example) for thousands of years.

In particular, as regards the seasonal aspect of your theory, you might consider the strong seasonality in the incidence of geomagnetic storms and the well-documented effects such storms can have on peoples’ endocrine systems (ha, finally a pheromone link :wink: and moods. For example
Geomagnetic storms: association with incidence of depression as measured by hospital admission – Kay 164 (3): 403 – The British Journal of Psychiatry
http://www.frbatlanta.org/filelegacydocs/wp0305b.pdf

I’m not sure I entirely agree that a good test for a theory is how many existing good explanations have to be revised, particularly when there are many anomalies not explained well by the prevailing view of the world. As an example of one such anomaly, here is a chart of the Treasury bond future along with highlighted dates of the full moon. Not to hijack your thread, but if the stars affect people, it is likely they affect people in all kinds of ways.

736×527 30.6 KB

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There is a saying - “Correlation is not causation.”

I had a friend who did magnetic effects research for the Navy Aerospace Medicine Institute. They seemed to find little correlation in behavior with magnetic fields (I didn’t dig into it.)

For a good introduction to the processes of science, read this one:

(“The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” by Thomas Kuhn)

A new theory is valued for its explanatory power. It has to not only explain prior mysteries but also explain what was understood before.