Gauquelin Planetary Effects - Frequently Asked Questions

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Misunderstandings, Misrepresentations Frequently Asked Questions & Frequently Voiced Objections

About the Gauquelin Planetary Effects

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Objection: Gauquelin set out to “disprove” astrology, and then discovered his

planetary effects. Answer: Exactly the opposite. Gauquelin had an avid interest

in astrology as a young man, which he details in various books (most

particularly in Neo-Astrology, a Copernican Revolution). Because of the

derision he met with from some, and inspired by the work of astrological

statisticians such as Karl Ernst Krafft and Paul Choisnard, he set out to prove

astrology had a real basis in fact, beginning a systematic study of it in 1949

through the use of professional directories and other biographical sources, and

aided by the public status of birth information in France. However, by the time

he wrote his first book, L'Influence des Astres (1955), he was increasingly

critical of astrology, since he had discovered flaws in the work of his

predecessors and had failed to demonstrate many of astrology's basic tenets

(e.g. aspects and signs). Because of this, he tried for many years, beginning

with that book, to separate his “new” findings from their astrological origins.

By the 1970s, he had begun to change his mind, and by the end of his life (for

which, again, see Neo-Astrology) he had accepted the fact that his findings

were astrological, though he remained critical of modern astrology, due to the

reluctance of astrologers to change and grow when faced with new information.

Objection: These “effects” only seem to show up when the Gauquelins are

involved in the experiments. No one has replicated them independently. Answer:

Not true. First of all, Suitbert Ertel and Arno Müller, working separately or

together, have replicated findings including a study of members of the Académie

de Médecine (done entirely after Michel Gauquelin's death), Italian writers and

German physicians. Secondly, data gathered by three skeptic groups on athletes

shows the Mars effect as specified by Gauquelin (part of a complex story, so

see the "Mars effect" chronology for further elaboration). Though some members

of organized skeptic groups still contend at least two of these studies failed

to support Gauquelin, a growing number accept the Mars effect, as a genuine

anomaly (i.e., not due to simple explanations such as bad statistics or data

manipulation), while rejecting any “astrological” explanation. Objection: It is

easy to find significant correlations. If you do a lot of random studies, a few

will be “significant,” but this doesn't mean anything. Answer: True in general,

but this doesn't apply to the Gauquelins' work on planetary effects for

successful professionals. Significant results involving 5 planets and 11

professions first found in French data were then replicated by the Gauquelins

with data from other European countries and the U.S. Several of their findings

have also been replicated independently by others. The hypotheses derived from

these findings are very specific in stating the conditions under which these

effects can be demonstrated, and the overall findings themselves show unique

structured relationships between the five planets for which results have been

found to date. There is nothing random or scattered about the Gauquelin

planetary effects. Objection: Gauquelin's findings are due to biased sampling.

Answer: Neither Gauquelin (or the Gauquelins, to be more precise, since much of

the Gauquelin work was done jointly by Michel and Francoise) nor his prejudices

in handling his data can be considered as the "explanation" for the Gauquelin

findings with regard to planets and profession, since, as pointed out above,

these planetary effects have been replicated independently by others. Michel

Gauquelin's sampling biases and how they affected his treatment of data and his

results have been well-documented. In fact, the most exhaustive study of his

sampling practices to date, by Suitbert Ertel in 1988, showed that while

Gauquelin's biases may have tended to enhance the Mars effect for sports

champions, this was only true for experiments in which athletes he considered

eminent were looked at as a group. The clearest demonstration of the Mars

effect is seen in Ertel's ranking of Gauquelin's athletes according to the

number of volumes from a fixed set of sports references in which each is

mentioned, and Gauquelin's bias actually tends to mask the effect when the data

is looked at in this way. When this bias is corrected for by ranking all of

Gauquelin's athletes together (including those Gauquelin considered champions

and those he considered less accomplished), the upward trend from those with

fewer citations to those with more is even more significant than for

Gauquelin's "best" group alone. What this means is that while Gauquelin's

biases may have affected the outcome in certain situations, they did not (in

fact, could not) affect the outcome in all situations. The same is true for

skeptic groups. While two of the three skeptic studies on the Mars effect are

demonstrably biased in emphasizing lower-rank athletes and show average to low

amounts of Mars in the places where Gauquelin said these figures should be

high, as in the case of Gauquelin, the skeptic data shows a significant upward

trend when ranked by citation counts. In other words, the Mars-effect bias of

Gauquelin and the anti-Mars-effect bias of the skeptics affects the outcome

most for any specific sample of athletes as a group. Ertel's citation-count

method is independent of sampling decisions made by either Gauquelin or his

critics (it works best when all available data is used) and shows the same

results for all cases. Sampling decisions made by Gauquelin's critics in most

cases seem to have been affected by a preference for lower-eminence athletes,

but also may have been influenced by prior knowledge of Mars positions during

the sampling process (this latter was the main source of Gauquelin's problems

with his data - for a consideration of how this problem affected both sides of

the Mars-effect question, see Ertel and Irving's "Biased Data Selection in Mars

Effect Research"). The real truth of the matter is that there is data-handling

bias on both sides of the line, and overall it does not affect the fundamental

findings relating to planetary effects. Objection: Gauquelin's positive

findings are "not astrological," and in fact run counter to what astrological

tradition might lead us to expect. Answer: Gauquelin's findings clearly

demonstrate several fundamental astrological principles: 1. The centrality of

the planets. From Margaret Hone's Modern Textbook of Astrology: "The planets

are to be studied first of all, because they are the centre and core of

astrological tradition." The ancients were perhaps more specific about just how

planets were the "core," but modern astrologers say essentially the same, if

only sotto voce under the rattle and din made by the clash of abstruse parts,

nouveau planets and esoteric points. As Geoffrey Dean and Arthur Mather note in

Recent Advances in Natal Astrology: "Without planets there is no astrology...."

2. The principle of specific action. Even in the most arcane astrologies, the

planets are differentiated in a distinct way from each other: Mars is active

and aggressive, Venus is charming and agreeable, and so on. Consider this,

continuing the quotation above from Recent Advances: "...In contrast to

virtually all other astrological concepts there is generally no fundamental

disagreement about what each planet represents...." p. 215. 3. The doctrine of

angularity. Again from Margaret Hone: "The strength of Angularity is better

expressed by saying that the planets are undoubtedly strong when they are close

to one of the angles, especially to the Ascendant or Midheaven, irrespective of

which side of these they may be on." The same doctrine of angularity is central

to the Western sidereal astrology of Cyril Fagan, who began an effort to restore

a kind of proto-classical, pre-Greek astrology several years prior to Michel

Gauquelin's first publication of his findings. Consider this, again from Recent

Advances: "Angularity is one of the oldest, most fundamental and least disputed

of astrological concepts...." p. 371 Note that Hone defines angularity in a way

that makes it independent from houses and that she also considers it to

encompass a zone on both sides of the Ascendant and the Midheaven, a point

which can be found in astrological writings as early as Vettius Valens. While

there are certainly differences between elements of Gauquelin's findings and

what one sees in astrological textbooks, criticism that considers only the

differences and ignores the similarities often proceeds from a viewpoint which

requires that any study of astrological variables must have an "all or

nothing,up or down" result, such that a negative result "disproves"

astrology, while a positive result can only be wrong - due to bad methodology

at best, and fraud at worst. On the contrary, if there are any correct

observations contained in astrological tradition, when a well-constructed

research program such as the Gauquelins' is used to investigate that tradition

it is more likely to show that some things are true, some are not and some are

true but require modification. This latter is the case with angularity, as

aside from the zone within 10 degrees or so on either side of the angles that

astrologers seem to agree on, there has been less agreement on the shape and

scope of the "power zones" outside of that, with Valens for example extending

them counterclockwise (i.e., into the 1st, 10th, etc.). However, Valens had

only 100 or so birth charts at his disposal and used informal observational

methods, while Gauquelin had tens of thousands of pieces of data from eleven

different professions, and used modern statistical methods as part of a

well-designed and comprehensive research program. The Gauquelin findings (and

more recent ones by Ertel and Müller) are thus in fact coincident with a

particular astrological tradition, that of angularity. Where these findings

diverge from that tradition is not in regard to houses (which in fact have only

an indirect connection to angularity in Hone, Valens or many other authors) but

in regard to the actual placement and extent of the angular zones. The work of

the Gauquelins made it possible to measure these zones exactly, confirming the

idea of angularity on the one hand while showing where it required modification

on the other. It is worth mentioning at this juncture the recent distinction by

Robert Schmidt of Project Hindsight in the preface to his translation of Book

III of Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos, between "dynamical" and "topical" division of the

celestial sphere by astrologers, with the former being for the purpose of

establishing planetary strength and the latter for the purpose of considering

various areas of life (e.g., the 2nd as the house of "money" in modern

astrology). For the most part in modern astrology, both planetary strength and

the houses which indicate areas of life are measured from one or another of the

angles of the chart, but after careful consideration of the available original

works of Ptolemy and other authors, Schmidt says he finds no evidence in Greek

astrology for anything but "whole sign" topical houses, meaning that the 1st

house is the entire sign in which the Ascendant falls, rather than the

Ascendant marking the boundary of that house. Thus, modern house systems seem

to have been derived from a mistaken understanding of certain passages in

Ptolemy. This creates vast problems for modern astrology (except for that

practiced by the Hindus, which is virtually alone among modern forms of

astrology in its use of whole-sign houses), but indicates more clearly than

ever that the presumed contradiction between Gauquelin's findings and houses is

based on erroneous assumptions. More interesting than angularity is the fact

that where Gauquelin's findings on the planets were concerned, he very clearly

delineated structural relationships between the planets in his first book and

very clearly outlined a research program meant to explore and understand that

structure more fully in relation to professions and to demonstrate its

existence in other areas (e.g. planetary heredity and character traits). Until

quite recently, no one paid much attention to this aspect of his work. However,

in the last couple of years Graham Douglas (in the UK) and Kenneth Irving (in

the US) have been pointing out that the structure of Gauquelin's results very

specifically displays a form which is found quite often in ancient philosophy

and astrology but which has disappeared for the most part from modern

astrology, a form based on two unrelated sets of opposite qualities (a more

modern terminology would be two "orthogonal" dimensions - a set of cosmic

Cartesian Coordinates by which we define certain fundamental differences

between planets, such as benefic/malefic). Consider the following table, in

which + indicates a significant excess in the Gauquelin "key sectors" and -

indicates a significant deficiency in the same region. Note that when Jupiter

and Saturn are both significant for a given profession they are significant in

opposite directions, and that Mars often shows significance in the same

direction as either Jupiter or Saturn, but not with both at the same time.

Results in parentheses are tentative findings by either the Gauquelins or

Ertel.

The Gauquelin Professional Results

Group

Mo

Ve

Ma

Ju

Sa

Actors

 

 

 

+

-

Doctors

 

 

+

-

+

Sports

-

 

+

 

 

Military

 

 

+

+

 

Executives

 

 

+

+

 

Politicians

+

 

 

+

 

Journalists

 

 

 

+

-

Playwrights

 

 

 

+

 

Scientists

 

 

+

-

+

Writers

+

 

-

 

-

Painters

 

(+)

-

 

-

Musicians

 

(+)

-

 

 

Now consider this along with the diagram below, which shows a fundamental

relationship between the seven ancient planets on the basis of two "qualities"

that are said to flux and flow with planetary movements. The principle of the

dynamic relationship between the two pairs of opposites (hot-cold and

moist-dry) goes back to Aristotle, can be found in the writings of Galen, and

also appears in the work of medieval astrologer Ramon Lull, with the planets

and temperaments added by Lull and Johannes Schöner, among others. The diagram

is also (sans planets, but with temperaments) historically related to modern

trait psychology. H. J. Eysenck in particular posits that the hot/cold

dimension equates to some extent with extraversion/introversion and the wet/dry

dimension with neuroticism/stability. Results for several professional groups

shown in this table have been replicated independently of the Gauquelins (e.g.

Mars for sports champions, Mars/Saturn+ for members of the French Académie de

Médecine, Mars+ for eminent German physicians and Moon/Jupiter+ and Saturn- for

Italian writers), so it would be very difficult to make a case that Gauquelin

"structured" his data to agree with this. Note that Mars and Saturn appear on

the same side of the wet-dry axis, and that Jupiter is on the opposite side of

that same axis. However, Mars and Jupiter appear on the same side of the

hot-cold axis while Saturn is on the opposite side of that axis from both Mars

and Jupiter. Now consider this in light of what was said about the table and it

should be clear that this structure very obviously connects with the Gauquelin

findings. What this says is that a very fundamental astrological observation

about the differences and similarities between the ancient planets has been

demonstrated by modern scientific methods. While we should certainly be aware

of Gauquelin's negative findings on various facets of astrology, we shouldn't

consider them in isolation from the positive findings on planetary effects, nor

from the connection of those positive findings with astrology. Objection: The

Gauquelin effects are too small to be of much consequence, amounting to a

deviation of about 5% from the expected number in the case of famous athletes.

Answer: First of all, the total range of the Gauquelin effects is much larger

than often supposed. Since this criticism is usually based on the positive Mars

effect for sports champions, it doesn't take into account the fact that there

are both positive and negative Mars effects for 8 of the 11 professional groups

studied by the Gauquelins. Even more interesting, however, is the fact that when

just the sports champions are used and they are ranked according to the number

of volumes in which they are cited (done by Ertel, using a specific set of

references, as mentioned above), the range from the lowest-citation athletes to

the highest is about 8%. However, if we consider the range from the highest

ranks in "Mars effect" professions such as sports to the highest ranks in

"anti-Mars" professions such as writing and art, using Ertel's citation counts

we find it to extend from 32% down to 17%, or about +/- 7.5% In other words,

the numbers are often assumed (incorrectly) to be small because a particular

effect is being viewed in isolation from the others. But when we look at

relationships between groups, and between coherent classes within those groups,

we see a quite different picture.

Ken Irving

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