Capricorn symbolism (Garth Allen)

[Jim Eshelman]

Other -Ologies
(from "Your Powwow Corner" by Garth Allen, American Astrology 2/58)

At a meeting in Cleveland last November, the American Public Health Association heard a report that is of astrological significance from Dr. Hilda Knoblock, professor of pediatrics at Ohio State University. She and a psychiatrist, Dr. Benjamine Pasamanick, had theorized that if there was a seasonal variation in the birthday frequencies of mentally deficient children, it would be reasonable to expect the greatest percentage of retardation cases to be born in the late summer and early fall. The theory: virus infections, which are known to damage the fetus in the earliest stages of pregnancy, are commonest in winter so that the accumulative damage should show up in birthdate distribution over the year.

Obtaining the birth dates of close to 6,000 mentally deficient children born in Columbus over a 35-year period, they found that the opposite was true – the fewest cases of mental deficiency were born during August, September and October. The highest incidence occurred during the first quarter of the year with an outstanding peak among February births. This meant that the critical early months of pregnancy were the summer rather than the winter months. In pursuit of a scientific explanation, the researchers noticed that the Ohio winters following exceptionally hot summers had a correspondingly larger number of handicapped births. This correlation suggested a tie-in with seasonal weather phenomena, leading finally to the conclusion that the summer eating habits of newly gravid women probably account for the situation. People generally do not eat enough during the heat of summer, and mothers-to-be are even more apt to have an unbalanced diet, lacking adequate protein in particular, resulting in chemical damage to their developing infants.

The dietetic explanation for the variations is more admirable than convincing, we feel, simply because the February upshot is too graphically distinctive. Moreover, if the chemical condition of mothers-to-be is the underlying factor in mental deficiency of their offspring, a similar explanation should, scientifically speaking, apply to many of those other factors for which an abnormal birthdate distribution has been established. Can the dietary theory be made to impinge on the statistics showing different peaks and troughs for people with natural artistic ability, athletic prowess, criminal tendencies, acumen for mathematics or for the medical profession and so on? And why should the most outstanding excesses or shortages of birthdates, when they do occur, tend to block themselves off into roughly 30-day groups?

[Jim Eshelman]

What are the Facts (about Capricorn)?
(from "Many Things," American Astrology 10/69)


Letter: Evangeline Adams claimed that the Hall of Fame was crammed with solar Aquarians, whereas Cyril Fagan claims that sidereal Capricorn produces the most "mentally backward." What are the facts? – Doubtful Reader

Answer: There is no contradiction, as proven by numerous non-astrological studies the results of which are widely known. In his famous book Season of Birth, the late Yale geographer Ellsworth Huntington produced massive statistics showing that I.Q. averages for children were significantly lower for those born in January and February. Locus-of-the-mode analysis shows that the center of the month-long dip is close to February 1st [center of Sidereal Capricorn – JAE]. Other studies of prison and asylum populations show a peak in February, even after proper adjustment of the figures for the live-birth ratio (which shows a few percent more people being born at this time of year).

Several years ago a team of Ohio doctors published statistics on the birthdates of mental retardation cases which revealed a mystifying high peak in late January and early February. The fact that the peak was a rather sharply defined four-week period militated against the best theory known to the investigators, which was a dietary one assuming that early pregnancies in hot weather suffer from poor summertime eating habits of incipient mothers. Earlier this year, at a symposium of psychologists concerned with genetic differences between races, it was demonstrated that the statistics concerning intelligence ratings of school children of various ethnic backgrounds could be cleverly manipulated, by someone with biases to justify, through under or over representation of certain birth months in the tests. A tallying of the birthdates of persons who, over a ten-year period, applied for professional counselling because of personal difficulties or shortcomings showed that there were three times as many tropical Aquarians (sidereal Capricornians) as would be expected on the basis of normal representation of the general population.

The reader must take care not to jump to erroneous conclusions from all of this (which has until now been generally ignored by the astrological press lest it offend or upset a segment of the readership). Mother Nature is a wondrous witch, it seems, for she always maintains a balance. To compensate for the situation at the low end of the scale, she enhances the upper end by producing more creative geniuses during January-February as well! here are born the precocious Mozarts, the multitalented Schweitzers, the imaginative Poes and clever Franklins. You mothers of Aquarian children have no call to be worried about them – because statistically they are the achievers of the zodiac, not the underdogs.

Astrologically, we feel that what the many different studies are really showing is not 'intelligence" as such, but the basic disposition and mental orientation. January-February births rate much higher in 'actual achievement' than the April-May period [Sidereal Aries – JAE] which produces the highest average Intelligence Quotients but, at the same time, the fewest number of people eminent enough to be awarded inclusion in Who’s Who! The April-May group may be the brightest, statistically speaking, but they are also the underachievers in a worldly sense. Contrast this oddity with the reverse situation in January-February. Of the now 93 past Americans elected to the Hall of Fame, 13 were born with the Sun in tropical Aquarius, 12 in sidereal Capricorn, against an expectancy of 9, although the excesses are not really large enough to have a mathematical significance (which would start at 15 out of 93 as a minimum requirement). One can hardly say that the Hall of Fame is "crammed with solar Aquarians." It must also be pointed out that Hall-of-Famers are not primarily selected for high intelligence per se, as witness the actors, politicians, activist reformers, philanthropists and generals, who were hardly to be classed as intellectual giants, on the honor roll. This would call to mind the enormously provocative fact that fully seven of 12 confederate generals were born during the 21-day period spanning January 19th through February 8th, the tropical span of "humanitarianism and freedom." The suggestion that this span is prone to military leadership, as a possible explanation, fails to satisfy in the light of Paul Fields' 50 Thousand Birthdays wherein it is shown that only one out of 19 famous German generals were born at any time during the first three months of the year! (Six of the 19 Prussian militarists were born in sidereal Scorpio, however, which makes pretty good sense without having to bend the Sagittarius symbol to make it fit this scarfaced fraternity.)

As we said, the key to the many unbiased studies made by people outside the astrological field seems to be not differences in the actual level of intelligence, but differences in its dispositional quality, i.e., 'how' they think, not how much. But this does not adequately cope with the fact of the excess of physical defectives of various kinds, in addition to mental retardation, that is observably more prevalent among late January and early February births. (It is well known that dicephalism is peculiarly prone to occur in January-February, an interesting medical fact that may have some connection with the Roman ordination of two-faced Janus as the opening of the year.) In any case, being born at this Saturnian time of the year sometimes means having more burdens to bear than ordinarily, which in turn strengthens the character of those born in January-February. Presto, a higher than average number of candidates for Halls of Fame of every sort!

[Jim Eshelman]

The Happy Chemist
(from "Your Powwow Corner" by Garth Allen, American Astrology 7/56)

And while we're on the subject of Manilius, consider the birthdate of Leason H. Adams, the noted physical chemist whose contributions to industrial science include an ingenious process for annealing glass. Adams, who won the Franklin Institute's Longstreth medal for this achievement, was born on January 16, 1887 – in Capricorn, of course.

Manilius' poetic homage to the constellation Capricorn dwells on the theme in this manner: "by thee that art is infused,/ Which fire assists, and where a flame is used;/ ...by thee they melt, by thee they work the mould,.../ The forge dissolves, and forms the easy mass:/ By thee, the ovens heat, and baths acquire,/ And happy chemists blow enriching fire..."

[Jim Eshelman]

Wonders Never Cease!
(from "Your Powwow Corner" by Garth Allen, American Astrollgy 7/56)


Irving Oglesby bought a television set. The waters of the Red Sea part for the children of Israel, seagulls saved the Mormon crops, and Brooklyn won a World Series, but to top all wonders, Irving Oglesby bought a television set.

Mercury was squaring my Mars so I was braced for some inflammatory intelligence "when suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door." It was Irving, the erudite eremite of our beach community, my extraordinary neighbor from three doors down the street. I recoiled out of instinctive fear of the unknown at his announcement, "I bought a television set this morning."

To appreciate the magnitude of this miracle one has to know Irving, but to know him is to suffer unless one has a high degree of what psychologists call frustration tolerance. Irving is a pleasant and highly intelligent fellow, a whiz at chess and utterly astounding in his knowledge of mechanics and the more advanced sciences. He is passably good-looking and tidy about his person. It's just that he might as well be living on an asteroid. There isn't a weed in the northern hemisphere Irving can't rattle off the Latin name for, but about the genus people he knows nothing and doesn't want to know. To Irving other human beings generally are necessary evils, his only close acquaintances being, like me, occasional chess opponents. And were there a way to play chess solo, even we would be dispensed with.

Irving is living proof of astrology. Although born at 33°31' North and 86°49' West, for years he has holed up in a partitioned corner of the garage of his aunt's house on a southern California beach. Half a mile further down the beach is the plush residence of his socially prominent parents – to whom he has not spoken even a courteous hello for more than fifteen years. Yes, Irving is living proof of astrology for he was born on the day when one of this century's most intense configurations took place in the constellation of Capricorn! Here are the sidereal longitudes of those six bodies crammed within a span of less than six and a half degrees:

Jupiter 7°24' Cap
Venus 7°37' Cap
Moon 9°41' Cap
Sun 11°49' Cap
Mercury 12°11' Cap
Uranus 13°48' Cap

Add to this amazing circumstance the fact that Saturn is conjunct the Midheaven of his birth chart and you have a planetary parlay which more than accounts for the fact that Irving Oglesby often "out-Saturnizes" the textual concept of Saturn. Almost everything Irving owns he made himself, including a small radio encased in orange crate ends neatly nailed together. Although not exactly poor, he concentratingly keeps tab of every penny and will walk a mile to save two cents on the price of a can of beans. On the shelf which serves as a pantry is an ample store of canned goods, not one label among which is recognizable as a national brand name ("They cost more," says Irving with finality). Irving prides himself on making his own soap the old-fashioned way, saving every drop of fat for the periodic soap making project. I nearly flipped on one occasion when I asked why he was using a clothespin for a bookmark and was told that it wasn't a bookmark, that the book was a vise for the clothespin until the glue had set. The ancient pin had split and Irving was making sure that it would see action on many another Monday morn. A clothespin, mind you.

Among Irving's other contumelies is his pride in never having read a work of fiction written since the death of Mark Twain, and he boasts that the last movie he ever saw was during the mid-thirties ("They'll never rook me for another nickel!"). The thing that Irving hates worse than anything else, even worse than he hates tobacco and liquor, is a show of human emotion. He simply holds no quarter for romance of any kind, and quickly turns the dial of his radio at the first signs of any broadcast utterance construable as an expression of love or emotional abandon or moral weakness.

In contrast to his intolerance of the world generally, Irving does have several fondnesses, including a love of science and natural history, and, of all things, opera. He restricts his radio listening to two types of program – half-hour cowboy stories and good music. Taboo – news commentators, pop music, drama and mysteries. He is surely the most Capricornian Capricorn I have ever known.

So when Irving bought a TV set, I hastened to dig out his chart from the horoscope file, agog with anticipation of a possible intellectual coup on behalf of astrology's advancement. As expected, his lunar return and its follow-up, his demi-lunar return, were truly spectacular. The nadir of his lunar return turned out to be the eighth degree of Capricorn, with Venus closely conjunct the Moon at 8°21' and 9°41' of Capricorn respectively! Such a conjunction so close to an angular cusp is a planetary blessing that many people can spend a lifetime without once experiencing.

Irving's most potent long-range transit meanwhile was Uranus conjunct his natal Mars in 14°07' Gemini. Moon-Venus was working away softening up old Flint Heart.... It was too much for his prejudices to bear, this overpowering mixture of enjoyment stimulating Moon-Venus and habit over-throwing Uranus-Mars.... Irving succumbed to the planetary impulse which is famous for liberalizing personality and uprooting behavior patterns. The month this occurred was, in the meantime, being dominated by as pretty an aspect, Moon conjunct Venus on the meridian, as even the most optimistic hedonist might pray for. Irving Oglesby bought a television set. Score another point for the authenticity of the Sidereal Zodiac!