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Language Inaudible to Man
It is the interpretation of a given chart that determines whether an astrologer is adjudged good, mediocre or bad. And it is here that astrology's scientific pretensions are tested, and fail. If astrology works in any way other than intuition on one side and faith plus hope on the other, the key question for modern man is "How?" The how of things seldom bothered the Babylonians, for whom a mountain might fly through the air or the sun stand still. Later it was assumed that some kind of emanations issued from heavenly bodies to affect the characters and destinies of men. When scientists found no emanations powerful enough, sophisticated astrologers abandoned causality altogether and eagerly embraced Jung's theory of "synchronicity"—that everything in the universe at any given moment participates through that moment with everything else that shares the same unit of time.
These days, though, the emanations may be staging a comeback. Some astrology apologists point to the fact that experimental oysters transported from Long Island Sound to Evanston, Ill., and shielded from light and temperature change, gradually altered their rhythm of opening and closing from the tidal cycle of Long Island to what it would have been in Evanston—if Evanston had had a tide. Apparently, the moon was communicating with the oysters in some language as yet inaudible to man. Japanese Dr. Maki Takata found that the composition of human blood changes in relation to the eleven-year sunspot cycle, to solar flares and sunrise, and during eclipses. French Science Writer Michel Gauguelin foresees a new science of astrobiology, which could vindicate the intuited conclusion of the ancients that extraterrestrial forces affect human life, and at the same time explode the anachronistic conglomeration of myth and magic cluttering up modern astrology.
Lucky Break?
In the meantime, astrologers must continue to uphold the fancy that particular planets influence particular facets of human personality or specific events. Even under these ground rules, there are so many variables and options to play with that the astrologer is always right. Break a leg when your astrologer told you the signs were good, and he can congratulate you on escaping what might have happened had the signs been bad. Conversely, if you go against the signs and nothing happens, the astrologer can insist that you were subconsciously careful because you were forewarned.
Sensitivity, intuition and maybe even clairvoyance make the difference between such tomfoolery and "good" astrology. The good astrologer senses the mood of his client, perceives his problems and finds