Angular planets in 68 terrorist charts

[Jupiter Sets at Dawn]

May 23, 2013 3:20 pm

Although a sample of 68 birth charts is too small to be statistically powerful, this study does agree with both the theory of angularity and the traditional psychological meaning of two planets—Uranus and Saturn. In the Summer 1985 issue of Geocosmic News (vol. 10 #2) Frances McEvoy published an article titled "A Profile of a Terrorist" looking at various astrological factors in the charts of 68 accused terrorists whose birth data had been printed in the May 1985 number of Francoise Gauquelin's journal Astro-Psychological Problems. Not surprisingly, Frances was unable to come up with a valid traditional signature for this presumed personality type, but the table that she reprinted from APP giving sign and house placements allows a fairly stark difference to emerge. Only one house/planet cell is completely empty—Saturn never appears in the 9th, which is a powerful position on the positive side and an equally powerful position when empty. As an explanatory contrast, famous doctors have Saturn prominent in the 9th and 12th, while military leaders have Jupiter in these sectors, according to the Gauquelin research. A simple division of 68/12 shows that Saturn would be expected in each house approximately 5-6 times. Saturn also shows up at a very high level in the background 5th house—13 times! He is in the 12th at the normal level of 5 times. By contrast, revolutionary Uranus is in the powerful rising position of the 12th house 13 times, and in the 9th 4 times, so there is a near symmetry between these two planets, with Saturn under represented by about the same amount that Uranus is over represented. (Uranus is in the 5th only once.) This fits both astrological theory and other research findings, so it would certainly be worthwhile to gather a larger sample to discover if this trend is an artifact of the sample or something more broadly representative of the "terrorist" personality.

Best,
Wayne

PS It is of course true that one community's terrorist may be another community's hero. The American patriots fighting for independence also had Uranus as their guiding "star."

[Jupiter Sets at Dawn]

May 23, 2013 3:37 pm

Wayne, can you give the actual breakdowns?

Houses have a lot of technical problems in calculating probabilities, but one sweet little thing emerges: If you overlap the quarters, the probabilities mostly level out. Campanus pushes a bias toward the horizon and away from the meridian; Placidus and Koch do the opposite. It would be good to have the Campanus individual breakdowns.

[Jupiter Sets at Dawn]

May 28, 2013 3:53 pm

Hi Jim,

I donated my collection of APP to Kepler College a few years ago so I'm unable to supply the original data. You might try contacting either Kepler or the Boston Chapter of NCGR to see if they can provide a copy/scan of the data from APP. (According to one website there may have been only 150 subscribers to the early editions of APP.) Here is an online abstract that provides a few more details.

"Sixty-Eight Birth Charts of Terrorists
Luigi Squitieri, APP 1985, 3.2, 16-21. Definite statistical conclusions can hardly be drawn from a study of 68 cases only. But the author's clear starting hypotheses (eg low frequency of Cancer and 4th house, high frequency of 11th and 12th houses, angular Mars, Uranus and Neptune) are so strongly contradicted by the outcomes that more cases would probably not change the present conclusions: tradition is not confirmed in the case of terrorism. Includes birth data." From here: http://www.astrology-and-science.com/d-rese2.htm (I didn't find anything helpful for a Luigi Squitieri search.)

As you may know, the Gauquelin's used Placidus house cusps for their research, which were later refined by Thomas Shanks and Neil Michelson at ACS to actual diurnal arc positions. (It is remotely possible that ACS has the 68 chart data on an archive disk somewhere, but finding it could be a chore.) The Campanus mundoscope does have a problem in that it does not reflect rising times or true altitudes but a geometric position on the Prime Vertical. It does eliminate the rather egregious error of referring to a planet as being in one house position when its latitude actually puts it in another, such as being in the 12th when it is bodily in the 1st, ie above the horizon when it is below it. The table in McEvoy's article does show one more interesting and consistent anomaly: Saturn is in the 1st twice, and in the 10th 3 times, for a total of 5, six less than expected. Uranus is average at 5 and 5. It is also important to note that positions in natal charts are not necessarily using the same "rules" for angularity as those in return charts, where propinquity to the angles seems more rational, ie an orb of ± 10° taking latitude into account.

Best,
Wayne