I have read and studied this critical review of astrology since its 1977 edition,
which you may find, fully cross-referenced, in my personal library. As a mathematical epidemiologist, statistical tests of hypotheses — and the related methodologies — are an integral part of my professional work.
I can personally attest to the validity of the main conclusion of this work: most of the current practice of astrology is not a reliable predictive system of reproducible knowledge. Therefore, it cannot be “proven true” with empirical data, and most of its current predictive rules can be falsified.
Like Kant’s “things-in-themselves,” the objective, critical mind cannot fully assess its depth, even less assess the validity of a “soul-centered” (esoteric) astrology. Likewise, the 2-D circumference cannot fully grasp the reality of the 3-D sphere in Flatland. A crucial difference, though , is that the critical mind — unaided — can correctly infer the reality of the sphere. The matter becomes more complicated when we consider non-Euclidean geometries. However, valid inferences can still be made, even if quite difficult to visualize.
In sum, in the current reductionistic, “scientific” model of reality, which denies — without proof — the existence of spiritual (non-physical) dimensions cannot ever assess metaphysical concepts. However, why should we consider metaphysics as “unreal?”
Age is one of the most powerful predictors of morbidity and mortality in epidemiological research. Without a proxy for the “age of the incarnating soul,” it is virtually impossible to build predictive astrological models. An immature (less experienced) soul would modify the effect of any astrological influence. This principle was crudely tested in Gauquelin’s research with reasonable, though disputed, success.
So, how do we build adequate astrological research models? I suggest that we begin by asking a most fundamental epistemological question: what is a fact?
Quantum physics has revealed fascinating answers to this question, such as the “collapse” (instantiation) of “probability waves” mediated by the act of observation itself.
As long as we consider the mind to be a byproduct of physical matter (brain), we would never develop research models able to include the dimension of consciousness as a factor in assessing any reality, astrology included.
That consciousness is the primary cause of material reality, that our “creative imagination” builds our subjective reality, which is eventually reproduced in the physical world, is a necessary premise enabling correct inferences about the spiritual (metaphysical) worlds. This “fact” is ascertained as a self-evident truth only by those with an expanded scope of consciousness.
There is a hidden, undeveloped human faculty that ascertains self-evident truths. This is the intuitive sense, a seventh sense unfolding in advanced humanity after fully developing the sixth sense, the rational mind.
For successful visionary business leaders in the corporate world, the reality of the creative imagination is a self-evident truth. No need for hypotheses testing to validate this truth. However, as Wilber’s Integral Theory has proposed, we do need a community of peers, each sharing a similar scope of consciousness, to validate self-evident truths by consensus.
Once we stipulate the reality of the human faculty of creative imagination, what the authors of “Understanding Astrology” discuss about astrology as poetry (“astro-poetics”) would make more sense. Although their apparent intention is to deride such animistic, archetypal approach to astrology as fanciful and nonsensical, this is exactly the bridge that makes possible the integration of astrology to a scientific belief system based on facts, physical and metaphysical facts.
The beauty of meaningful, non-causal associations in the daily practice of mindfulness needs no statistical tests. The psychological counselling practice of astrology “recognizes the multidimensionality, intra-dimensional variability, and polyvalence of astrological archetypes, which underscores their inherent indeterminism.”
Nine Essential Features of Archetypal Cosmology
1. Correlates planetary cycles with archetypal patterns in human experience.
2. Aspires to methodological rigor and epistemological humility in knowledge claims—thus, is research oriented, evidenced based, and value-neutral.
3. Extends psychological astrology’s growth oriented perspective and renders more precise its explication of the intrapsychic realm.
4. Situates astrology within an archetypal ground, defining archetypes as cosmological principles that are both transcendent and immanent, and which shape, inform, and animate Nature at every level, within and without.
5. Recognizes the multidimensionality, intra-dimensional variability, and polyvalence of astrological archetypes, which underscores their inherent indeterminism.
6 Emphasizes the co-creative, participatory role of the psyche in attracting formative experiences that shape behavior, thus highlighting the self’s responsibility for its continually evolving fate.
7. Establishes synchronicity as the key to understanding feedback relations between internal and external reality, and for overcoming the false dichotomy of a living, purposive, evolving self embedded in a dead, random, mechanistic universe.
8. Draws upon science, philosophy, and religion in formulating a theoretical basis for the observed correlations between psyche and cosmos, thus paving the way for a broader world view.
9. Focuses on the interiority (ensouled nature) of the cosmos—its consciousness, intelligence, and apparent teleology—and how this interiority is both the ground of psyche and the basis for an interconnected, evolving cosmos that is hierarchically structured and holonomically organized.
While these nine essential features could be fleshed out and more fully explained, I trust they suffice to provide a quick glimpse into the general nature of archetypal cosmology.
https://aaperry.com/archetypal-cosmology/
Such intuitive approach to astrology is not possible until the 3-D brain consciousness unfolds into a 4-D (and higher-D) soul consciousness capable of grasping causality in a new light. A 3-D brain consciousness will only sense probability waves (uncertainty). Only as we expand our scope of consciousness do astrological “proofs” become self-evident.
In conclusion, I congratulate my fellow scientific servers for falsifying flimsy hypotheses in the current practice of astrology. However, falsifying the science and art of astrology, as practiced by the Knowers of the Human Race, is a quite different endeavor.
Is Beauty true? Is the finding of meaning in life a falsifiable event? Is Reality contingent on scientific standards? Only a true scientist, who has explored “the breadth, and length, and depth, and height”, can honestly aspire to answer these questions. Only then would scientists be in position to approach “the real substance.”
JB, https://sevenray.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/thequestingscientist2.pdf
As the true astrology comes into its own and is developed into a reputable science, the charts of the soul and of the personality can be related to each other; then the etheric body will be checked by correct astrological conclusions, and the physician will be on far surer ground than he now is. The astrology of the past concerned the life of the personality; the astrology of the future will indicate the purpose of the soul, and will completely revolutionise medicine (among other things). It must, however, be lifted out of the hands of those interested in predictional astrology, out of the hands of the thousands who at this time spend much time “casting” horoscopes (seeking to interpret their usually erroneous conclusions), and placed in the hands of trained mathematical scientists and in the hands of those who have given as much time to scientific training along astrological lines as is now given to training a reputable physician, a chemist or a biologist.
These astrological findings will not only be related to the personality and the soul charts, but will also enter the field of medicine, particularly in relation to the etheric body. Today, any astrological investigation done in the field of medicine has relation to physical disease within the physical body; in the future, it will concentrate upon the condition of the etheric vehicle. This is a new and imminent development in astrological research.
Teachings of the Tibetan Master Djwhal Khul penned by Alice A. Bailey, published by the Lucis Trust.
The Hands of the Cosmic Clock
Agni Yoga 
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