Solunars by Aldebaran Sidereal Academy

In the early 1950s, Garth Allen (Donald A. Bradley) published a statistical study of the nativities of 42 murderers. Though the sample size was small, this study unlocked many important general principles and has been a basis of considerable interpretive practice in the intervening 70 years.

I recently noticed that my compilation of murderer horoscopes numbered 71 - two-thirds more than Allen's study. This is still a modest number, but seemed worth breaking down for a comparison. It has the weakness (perhaps shared with Allen's original study) that the examples aren't from a consistent source - they're literally what I had on hand and was able to grab over the years.

Garth Allen didn't detail his procedures, but I'm pretty sure (from some half-obscure statements) that he was using an early version of the angularity curve and aspects curves he worked on (on and off) through his life, probably through a special chi-square way of calculating that Gary Duncan showed him. Eventually (perhaps somewhere around TMSA 1.1 <g>) we'll be able to do the same sort of thing but, for now, I've worked out methods that give comparable results: Since aggregate statistical significance of aspects drops off just after 3°, we get much the same results by straight tabulations (head counts) of Class 1 aspects. I've found it useful to tabulate trines and sextiles separate from the hard aspects and then add them in for comparative results (I know Allen used all five in his tabulations). For this particular study, in order to better emulate the effect of a graduated curve, I had the inspiration this morning to add an extra point if the aspect is partile.

I'll show these in three stages. First, though, a review of what was found in Garth Allen's original study: Overwhelmingly, Venus-Mars aspects overwhelmed everything else. (They were so numerous and prominent that he had to show the results as a broken bar; otherwise, it would have flowed off the right edge of his bar chart.) The other highly distinctive aspects were Moon-Saturn, Sun-Mars, Sun-Neptune, Mercury-Neptune, Mars-Neptune (and Venus-Jupiter looks longer than most). There was a distinct shortage of Moon-Venus aspects (different from the charts I have in the present set), Mercury-Jupiter, and Sun-Pluto. We won't necessarily copy these results (since we have different data), but it's good to know what was found before.

I have added Eris and Sedna aspects, which have something to teach us here.

Of the 45 aspects out to Mars-Sedna, we exclude Sun-Mercury, Sun-Venus, and Mercury-Venus as having different (and very difficult to calculate) probabilities. (They also don't produce any interesting results in the current study.) Calculating all natal ecliptical conjunctions, oppositions, and squares within 3° (and adding an extra point if the aspect is partile), the aspect scores run from 1 to 13.

Those which showed least often (1 or 2 times) were Sun-Jupiter, Sun-Uranus, Sun-Neptune (a high-scoring aspect in the earlier study), and Mercury-Pluto. The most common aspects were:

13 - Moon-Sedna, Sun-Eris
12 - Moon-Jupiter, Venus-Mars
11 - Moon-Mars, Moon-Saturn, Moon-Neptune
10 - Mercury-Eris, Venus-Pluto, Mars-Neptune

Mostly - at least for the planets out to Pluto - these are exactly what we'd expect within only one exception: Moon-Jupiter is a surprise. I suspect this is a power (plus several of the murderers actually lured their victims with what seemed kindness or hospitality). This is clearly a shadow expression of Moon-Jupiter.

Excluding Eris and Sedna, the other aspects are the previous leader, Venus-Mars, plus Moon with the three malefics (including duplicating the Moon-Saturn that ranked strongly before), Mars-Neptune (strong in the prior study), and Venus-Pluto.

Burt... Moon-Sedna! Yes, this is quite interesting - even a pleasing result, since it's consistent with working interpretations of the aspect. My working interpretation includes the sentence, "At worst, a very few express monstrous, sadistic cruelty." Moon-Sedna people in general seem misfits, some of them belligerent misfits. There may be other specific characteristics.

The Eris aspects are less obvious. (I'm not worried about that with a planet we've only started studying, though we tend to understand Eris better than Sedna.) I think Mercury-Eris is related to the hypersexuality that shows for the aspect (this is at the bottom of many of these murders). Sun-Eris is disrupting and intruding but not inherently malicious, so it's less clear.

To this list - to see if and how it changes and judge the relative impact of another aspect family - we add trines and sextiles, so that we are checking all Class 1 major (i.e., Ptolemaic) aspects. Of the 43 planet pairs, the combined tallies of the five major aspects (ecliptical, Class 1) runs from 5 to 21 points per aspect. The highest scoring are these:

21 - Mercury-Eris
20 - Moon-Sedna, Venus-Mars
19 - Moon-Jupiter, Moon-Neptune
18 - Mars-Neptune

These are all contained at the top of the prior list. Below 18 occurrences, we get into ambiguous territory as we drop out of statistical unusualness: Sun-Eris recurs and we add Venus-Jupiter, which was a border-line aspect in the smaller 1950s study. At 16, we pick up Moon-Mars and Moon-Uranus. At 15, the aspects start getting numerous (characteristic of getting into statistical normalcy: Other than Venus-Pluto, we hit aspects that weren't at the top of the prior list but also aren't absurd (Mars-Pluto, Venus-Uranus, Venus-Neptune, Venus-Eris).

I suggest concentrating on the half dozen aspects above. Their recurrence between the two approaches suggests that, while adding trines and sextiles changes the picture somewhat, the changes are small enough to validate the 'soft' aspects as legitimate inclusions in our natal aspect model.

Over the last year or so, major hard mundane aspects have been incorporated routinely into our working methods. However, we don't have a single orderly study that supports this - just a whole lotta single-case, anecdotal experience that only goes so far and, ultimately, proves nothing. The current undertaking is the first orderly inquiry and its results are not straightforward.

Having tabulated all the Class 1 mundane conjunctions, oppositions, and squares in the 71 timed charts, the first reasonable step is just to look at how they stand on their own - whether, as a set of aspects, they resemble (and describe the same sample group as) the ecliptical aspects.

The 43 aspect pairs run from 0 to 12 instances each. The only 0 occurrence is Mars-Uranus, which hasn't been a feature of this group in the two prior aspect layers. None of the aspects with 2 instances ranked high, either (there aren't any with only 1), and one of them (Sun-Jupiter) was a previous low-scorer.

The most frequently occurring mundane aspects mostly overlap what we've seen before, but not necessarily what we'd most like to see. There is the inescapable (and seemingly descriptive) Moon-Jupiter which remains a little counter-intuitive (but not counter-logic). Venus-Sedna fits. But it's a surprise to see Mercury-Jupiter also in the high count. It's not one of the highest scoring overall (just within the mundane aspects themselves), and, I suppose, pertains to the same "smooth talking" traits as Moon-Jupiter. Similarly, with 11 occurrences, we get Sun-Neptune, which we expect, and Moon-Venus, which we do not - but which, again, reflects charm which was a basic tool of many of these murderers (but apparently not of Garth Allen's group, who had Moon-Venus as the least frequent aspect).

So - looking at the mundane aspects ONLY - the results are mixed. Even if they are all correct, what we see on the face is that some are exactly what we want but some seem to miss the mark.

The real question, though, isn't how they stand on their own (since we don't use them on their own). but how they mix with the ecliptical aspects and portray these murderers. Adding the mundane conjunctions, oppositions, and squares to the ecliptical aspects (hard and soft) counted above, we get head counts from 9 to 31. Here are the half dozen most common:

31 - Moon-Jupiter
30 - Moon-Sedna
28 - Venus-Mars
27 - Mars-Neptune
26 - Mercury-Jupiter
25 - Moon-Mars

What's most remarkable here is that Moon-Sedna - which is going to be quite different mundanely than ecliptically - adds nine more aspects. It was an extremely common ecliptical aspect and quite descriptive, was boosted on the mundane count, and still comes out among the most common. This is quite interesting and reinforces confidence in our working methods. Venus-Mars is, of course, always expected to be strong in this category. (And I've learned to live with the Moon-Jupiter.) Mercury-Jupiter is the new interloper, which I report without working too hard to justify.

After these first six, we get borderline aspects that aren't objectionable at all, but probably don't meet statistical scrutiny, including Mars-Pluto and Venus-Uranus. Beyond that, the aspects are quite questionable (and statistically ordinary).