This is a hoax forged 5 years after Einstein passed away and it was published in German in the 1960 Huters astrologischer Kalender. From there tranlated into French and later into English.

Einstein said in printing in 1951 that astrology was the INNER ENNEMY!!! of Kepler.

For the whole story of my search, see my paper published in the Skeptical Inquirer magazine of Nov.-Dec. 2007 available at:
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-170731922.html

The same applies to the Newton-Halley dialogue not on astrology by on religion. You can find it in a biography of Newton by David Brewster publishe in the 1830s.

And the one by Kepler: ”20 years…” was forged from an actual sentence by him which condemns at the end the whole business of astrology. It can be found in his Harmony of the World, Aiton et al.

Best regards.

Denis Hamel

Well actually you do. Otherwise you need to build a well-constructed lineage from other events that have been done with experiment and produce, what is only a theory, about what will happen. Unless you don’t want to live in the scientific world as it’s currently defined. So one could conclude that you aren’t capable of using logic or scientific theory, making you a poor source for conclusions. Many mistakes in science have been made by projecting “common sense” of the times instead of using the scientific method.

Astrology is based on a division of 12 and various archtypes for each of them. The planets are attached to the archtypes, but they AREN’T them. So if one comes or goes, it doesn’t effect the underlying process. (I represent red with an apple. I destroy all apples. Red doesn’t go away. Now I use fire ants instead.) Archtypes isn’t really the right word for it, but the idea is that Pluto’s reassigment doesn’t do much but require an change back to using Mars as the substitute in the same way Mars was used before Pluto was discovered.

Does astrology work? Some studies say no, some say yes. So that’s not help unless one does a full scientific methodology peer review of the various studies. Newspaper quotes are meaningless since they are so totally superficial to how it’s done, and don’t say anything about astrology.

And does astrology work by directly predicting and describing – or is a place where people’s perceptive abilities come through (both normal perceptive & unusually perceptive)?

Personally I think it’s often more useful as a way for a particularly perceptive person to pull in ideas and describe them to a client. However, I have also had a few experiences that were eere. I certainly am not going to rule in, nor rule out an entire long lasting process, just because it’s unconventional. I’d need to do the heavy research myself. I won’t rule it in – or out. Making you laughter at it, very 8-grade ribbing sounding.

One of those eere experiences… I had a reading done by a woman my sister knew vaguely for a month. I’d had a series of unusual experiences that were knocking me off my feet in quick succession and had never had something like this in my life before. I didn’t tell her anything about it, nor had my sister. Yet she described a process as transient and shocking, knock me off my feet, in quick succession events and had the start of it right. (The ending seems right to but I didn’t pay close attention at the time.) That felt good and was interesting. But not much I could make of it.

However as she was putting away her books I asked her about a particular date. She could have assumed it was good or bad, but that’s all she had to go on. Looking down at the books, she saw on that date an accident, and death for me. Then looked up at me puzzled and said, “but your not dead” and looked down and said, oh, a friendship saved you. It was all done very quickly and without looking at me beyond the glance.

I’d asked about that day because I’d been hit by a car and thrown to the ground while walking along with a friend in a mall parking lot after hours in winter in upstate NY. We both passed out. She woke up, but I didn’t and would have likely frozen to death. She shook me awake and got us to the dorm & from there we were taken to the hospital. I was so out of it from the hit to my head that I tried to jump out of the car driving us to the dorm & the concussion lasted close to a year. I woke up the next morning in the hospital and thought that she’d saved my life. Afterward, I aways held in that way in my thoughts – whether that was true or not. So, her prediction was “vague”, however, it was also eeriely specific and accurate.

(FYI, my friend and I weren’t idiots. The movie ended. The bus was on the other side of the mall. The security refused to let us walk through the mall and insisted we leave and go through the parking lot. We were the only ones we needed to do. It turned out that drunk drivers often drove throught that parking lot from the bars to the neighborhoods on the other side.)

I called the woman a year later for a reading, this time over the phone. None of it was particularly “on” or interesting. Maybe a little click, but it didn’t have the intense “clicking” sense of the prior year.

There is much we don’t know about our world. It’s best not to mock something, just because it’s different, or doesn’t seem like it would make sense. Wait until you’ve experimented with it and explored it. As someone earlier said.

But test we can, and it’s come up short, including tests made up by astrologers themselves. If you can think of a better test, then by all means, let’s hear it.

Tests like these being cited as “proof” of the supposed invalidity of astrology is like saying CPR is a bad idea because folk who aren’t trained in its application end up injuring or killing the people they try to save.

The tests themselves are invalid—they do not measure what they claim to measure, pure and simple.

The fact of the matter is, astrology is not a tool of prediction, but of insight. It’s not a case of “a therefore b”; it’s a case of “these archetypes and relationships are more strongly emphasized than these others”. It’s a matter of associations, influences, symbolism. Astrology does not predict, it illustrates, illuminates.

No, you don’t have to drop an anvil on your foot to know it will break your bones. But comparing that to astrology-or tea leaf reading for that matter-is like comparing apples and communication satellites. Apples and oranges just ain’t in it. Heck, comparing astrology to tea leaves is just as invalid. Tea leaves are a method of scrying, more like unto fire or crystal gazing than astrology.

No, you don’t have to drop an anvil on your foot to know it will break your bones. But knowing this fact does not tell you everything there is to know about gravitation and osteopathy.

Okay. You haven’t heard – or don’t want to admit – Gauquelin’s famous Mars Effect. That’s been written up a lot, including by your friends over at the Skeptical Inquirer, where it was a fiasco back around 1980. His wife, Francoise Gauquelin herself, once gave me a stack of Fate Magazine’s sTar Babys, the monograph by Dennis Rawlins. He was a member of the SI panel until he was forced out for actually looking at the data, rather than cooking it.

You haven’t heard – or don’t want to admit – J.H. Nelson’s famous RCA studies, in the 1940′s & ’50′s, of planetary positions & short-wave radio reception. For his efforts in getting RCA good reliable radio transmissions, he was run out of his professional organizations & ended his life as a member of The American Federation of Astrologers (AFA), who would at least give him a fair hearing.

On my shelves is Mark Urban-Lurain’s Astrology as Science, a study of alcoholism & astrology. This was a Master’s Thesis submitted to Michigan State University back in 1981. You haven’t seen that as it was eventually printed by – guess who – the AFA.

There are more. The problem with studies that confirm astrology is that they are rejected by the scientific community, regardless of merit, and are then studiously ignored. Try to find any in a library anywhere. Or try to find someone who will talk about Michael Gauquelin, who eventually committed suicide.

Studies that reject astrology – including quack efforts by your friend Mr. Randi (no scientist he) – get great play. We never hear the end of them.

So. You won’t cast a chart, you won’t read a book, you have conducted no experiments of your own, you have not assisted at any experiments, you’ve not been a participant at any experiment, you have, I presume, never talked first-hand with any member from any experiment, so I think we may safely conclude that your opinions are mere hearsay.

This makes you a proud member of the Flat Earth Society.

Yesterday I found your site from a link at Cursor.org. Cursor said something about Palomar. I knew Palomar to be a wonderful, aging 200 incher, so I hit the link & found Bad Astronomy, a surprise. But I knew the sort of site it would be, so I searched it for “astrology”, knowing what I would find.

And I was not disappointed. The usual hack work. You ask, why don’t astrologers use planets from other solar systems? They don’t, for the same reason they don’t use Jovian or Saturnine moons. You would know the reason instantly if you ever looked at a chart.

While you were all bamboozled by sun-signs in the newspapers (actually lunar-based stuff, invented by R.H. Naylor in 1930), real scholars have been tearing up the countryside, undercutting you.

The late David Pingree, Professor of the History of Mathematics at Brown University, spent his career hunting down, compiling & translating ancient astrology, among other topics. From early Greek, Latin, Sanskrit & Arabic, all languages he translated. I am trying to imagine him doing this for a lark, but it’s just plain hard work to run down all the various fragments of Carmen Astrologicum that can be found around the world, and in three languages to boot (1976, reprinted 2005). I am trying to think that he wasn’t an astrologer deep in the closet, and then I think of his last project, a wonderful new compilation of Vettius Valens (2nd century AD). Valens is the greatest of all ancient astrological sources, a large treatise in itself. Pingree died a year ago, before he could set about translating it. His chair at Brown has been folded into the Classics Department, his scholastic heirs can be found at the Warburg Institute, in London.

Pingree was a protoge of Otto Neugebauer (died, 1990) who was supposedly a scholar of the history of the exact sciences, but, funny thing is, when you get into the ancient history of science, as well as ancient mathematics, you invariably end up in astrological territory. (Spherical trig, for example, exists almost entirely for the production of horoscopes. JPL gave it a new lease on life.) So if Neugebauer & Pingree couldn’t stand astrology (if they were scientifically orthodox, in other words), they would surely have found some other area of the classics to peruse, or so I imagine.

You may not have heard of Messrs. Pingree or Neugebaur, or their numerous associates (the late Jean Rhys Bram at Hunter College (translator of Firmicus), the late R. Ramsay Wright (translator of Al Biruni), the very living Charles Burnett at Warburg (I am hoping for Valens) all come to mind) but thanks to their work of reviving ancient astrologers, astrology is set to explode back into every day life.

You have written about the harm astrology inflicts on the world. It is certainly true that the misuse of any powerful thing creates harm, and astrology is certainly powerful. (Millions of people believe in it, and anything so widely believed is powerful.) You should consider the harm science does when it bandies about ignorance & misinformation about its favorite bete noirs, of which astrology is but one of many.

Virtually all the best astrologers, including myself, started as skeptics. Virtually all of them, including myself, believed the scientific position, that astrology was rubbish. Virtually all of them, including myself, had the same scholastic justification for their beliefs: Ultimately, none.

What is the difference between you and me, between astrologers & scientists? The astrologer picked up a book on astrology & read it. Under the onslaught of facts (which he tried to rebut, but could not), he then changed his opinion about astrology, but more than that,

He realized that he had been lied to. That Science, that great god of all gods, had lied. Repeatedly. Blatantly. He never again had the same unquestioned confidence in science. I have gone further down this path than most. My confidence in science was shattered years ago. I now think you all fools.

So you look at society & you see superstition & “new age” & psychics & astrology & tarot cards & witchcraft & much more, flooding in like poison. I see it too, and I am just as concerned. All of these are harmful when misused, and misuse is easy. But in its mindless, irresponsible denunciations, science is creating this problem, feeding this monster. The world is not the black & white that science thinks it is. People at first accept the scientific world-view – it’s indoctrinated in every school in the world – then at some point real life breaks in & that world-view is shattered. (This sometimes happens at the death of a close family member.) At that exact moment, science has lost.

So I don’t care what your opinion about astrology may be. Just please be aware of the harm you can cause promoting a crappy one. Hate astrology all you want, but hate it for the best reasons. Leave your posts on astrology on line & accept that you are ignorant, or study & write diatribes with real punch.

The best anti-astrology that I have read were from 17th – 18th century London. Jonathan Swift himself, the great Dean, authored many, under the pseudonym of Isaac Bickerstaff. They are hilarious. They would look good on your site, or on mine, for that matter. Swift ended up insane, unlike John Partridge, his astrological sparring partner & frequent target.

I think that line deserves an “oh, please.”

I don”t need to read tea leaves to know they don’t work. I don’t need to drop an anvil on my foot to know it will crush my bones.

The onus is on you. All tests done correctly — all of them, every single one — show that astrology doesn’t work. Show me the ones that support astrology… or better yet, show them to Ivan Kelly who has been studying this for years. Then we can talk.

Until you’ve cast a chart, your chart, you haven’t done your homework. There are no excuses.

Physics is tested by physical means, but not by chemistry. Chemistry is tested by chemical means, but not by physics. Astrology is the same. It is tested by astrological means, not astronomical. Right this very minute, radio waves from Beijing are passing through my body, yours, too. Only a short-wave radio receiver can detect them. All other methods will fail. Only a horoscope can detect “astrology waves”, which, by the way, if they exist, seem to be clearly non-linear. Astrology is, in fact, weirder than than the skeptics imagine. If you only knew, you would have so much more ammunition.

New planets have to be studied before they can be delineated. This takes time. Pluto did not become noted in astrology until the 1950′s (20 some years after discovery) and did not become popular until the 1970′s. Now I think there’s too much of it. Lazy astrologers reach for it instead of their brains.

Chiron (1977) has eclipsed Ceres (1801) in that Chiron is a singularity, whereas Ceres comes with at least three others (Pallas-Athena, Juno, Vesta), which slows use down. Currently the best-known asteroid astrologer is Demetra George. The best asteroid astrologer is Martha Lang-Wescott.

Chiron was tirelessly promoted, from the early 1980′s, by Zane Stein, working with the New York astrologer Al Morrison (now deceased). Whatever actual value it may have long ago got buried under an idiotic “wounded healer” mythology. Astrology has fads like anything else. Can I talk to you about cold fusion?

Chiron was anticipated, back in the 1930′s, by a certain Maurice Wemyss. He called it Jason, said it ruled Sagittarius & put it between Saturn & Neptune. This was from his book, The Wheel of Life vol. 3, which is of course available at your local library, in their extensive section on astrology. Wemyss drew up an ephemeris which in places matched the eventual orbit of Chiron, which is in fact located between Saturn & Uranus & is said by its fans – few of whom have ever heard of Maurice (who died or disappeared around 1960) – to rule Sagittarius. Eric Francis, whose name came up hereabouts, has lately been promoting it & a number of fellow “Centaurs”.

Trans Pluto was a fad. It faded long ago. I was surprised to see it here.

You want invisible? There are eight TransNeptunians, invented – or discovered – by a couple of Germans back in the 1920′s. I am fairly certain none of them exist in physical space. They are so far “away”, they move so “slowly” as to hardly move at all. Invariably they turn up in critical places in precisely timed charts of natural disasters. Earthquakes & such. You tell me why.

Geoffrey Dean is skeptical, but he’s still an astrologer. This is an important distinction. His famous book, Recent Advances in Natal Astrology, was published, if memory serves, 30 years ago. When you can take an ephemeris & a table of houses & cast a chart – by hand – and then draw conclusions from it, good, bad or otherwise, as Geoffrey can, you will be worthy of your opinion. Not before.

This is the price of admission to any discipline. Creationists are roundly derided for being ignorant of Evolution. Astronomers have made their ignorance a fetish. So my advice to skeptics is to pay the price. There’s an urban legend among astrologers that any astronomer who seriously studies astrology – with an eye to destroying it, of course – is always & invariably converted, even against his will & better judgement. For their efforts they are then driven out of The Scientific Establishment, a terrible fate (like excommunication, which it resembles), or so says Urban Myth. To avoid that, do they hide behind willful ignorance & endless cheap shots?

I cannot check every astrologer, every astrology site, every book, every article. But I can look at the tests done, and the physics underlyting astrology. That’s why I can say unequivocably and without hesitation: astrology doesn’t work.

You haven’t done your homework.

Cast your chart. You can do that on-line at various places. Here is Astrolabe’s: http://alabe.com/freechart/ You MUST USE the birth time on your birth certificate. (Your real birth certificate will have a time. The abstract will not. This is the only hard part. Science demands precision.)

Read your chart using a standard book. Debbi Kempton-Smith’s, and Sakoian & Acker’s both come to mind. They are cheap & easily obtained.

Live with your chart for a year.

At the end of a year you will have an anti-astrology argument that will make astrologers tremble. Rather than laugh.

Be the one who nails this coffin shut. Surely you are not afraid that actual exposure to astrology will render you a blithering idiot?

My (distinctly non-astrological!) prediction is that the Next Big Thing in terms of a supposed physical rationale will be quantum entanglement. But they’re probably ahead of me….. (and if not, why not?)

http://ephemeral.info/trp/

…don’t sprain an eyeball in the telescope looking for TP (why is that such an apt acronym?)…

http://www.newscientist.com/backpage.ns?id=mg19125682.500

(Sorry, I don’t know the syntax for putting links in comments. Last time I tried it didn’t work properly.)

Besides the Einstein “quote” above, there are at least two others in that list that are fallacious.

A touchstone to determine the actual worth of an “intellectual”, find out how he feels about astrology.
- Robert Heinlein [/blockquote>

That statement was almost certainly not meant as a validation of astrology, but a condemnation of self-proclaimed intellectuals. If they value astrology, they aren't all that bright.

That we can now think of no mechanism for astrology is relevant but unconvincing. No mechanism was known, for example, for continental drift when it was proposed by Wegener. Nevertheless, we see that Wegener was right, and those who objected on the grounds of unavailable mechanism were wrong.
- Carl Sagan

This is a valid observation. However, Sagan was by no means a believer in astrology, and that remark is definitely removed from the context. Sagan goes on to explain that the real issue is not if we can observe a mechanism, the first detail is to observe the phenomenon. We can then study the possible mechanism after we validate that something is occurring. And the data for astrology is that there is no justification that something is occurring.

Courteous Reader, Astrology is one of the most ancient Sciences, held in high esteem of old, by the Wise and the Great. Formerly, no Prince would make War or Peace, nor any General fight in Battle, in short, no important affair was undertaken without first consulting an Astrologer.
- Benjamin Franklin

Again, this is an example of someone mocking the importance of astrology.

Let's also look at some of the other quote sources:

Sir Isaac Newton: Okay, so he was a very bright man, and a good scientist, responsible for numerous discoveries in physics. He also liked the occult, and studied astrology, numerology, and alchemy. What that shows is that even intelligent people can be wrong.

Hippocrates, Fifth Century B.C. : I think that pretty much disclaims itself.

C. [Carl] G. Jung: Early 20th Century psychologist. A lot has been learned since then about psychology, and much from then has been refuted.

Johann Kepler, Larousse Encyclopedia Astrology: Kepler lived in the 15th Century.

Claudius Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos: Ptolemy? He’s the guy with the Geocentric model of the universe. He didn’t even get Astronomy correct. NEXT!

Louis Pasteur: That quote is so vague it could mean anything.

Donald Regan: Wall street brokers use astrologers? No wonder the stock market is so unpredictable.

T.H. Huxley: Yet another vague quote that could mean anything.

However, if one were to sit down, erect and thoroughly delineate a particular person’s natal chart, it proves astonishingly accurate.

It is unfortunate that there are charlatans going on about Transplutos and such. While astrologers have long felt that mundane science would ultimately discover a total of 12 planets orbiting our sun, no astrology etxtbook of which I am aware makes any claims about “tracking” any celestial body which has not already been observed by science.

Quite the opposite. It took quite some time after the discovery of each of the “modern” planets–Uranus (referred to in older texts as Herschel) Neptune and Pluto–for astrologers to determine how they fit in to the overall schemata of astrological thought. The basic theory about their influence is to consider them as a “higher octave” of the classical planets.

Now, as far as Pluto’s “Scientific” de-classification as a planet—well, many astrologers will completely ignore this arbitrary declamation. Many will begin re-assessing the way pluto is viewed astrologically.

Ultimately, it will have little overall effect on the practice of astrology, due to the fact that its effect is generational rather than personal, taking as it does hundreds of years to transit the entire zodiac.

Pluto is regarded astrologically as the planet of Transformation, of Rebirth—-its reclassification will most likely be regarded by astrologers as a function of its own energy; that Pluto made some kind of transit, formed some kind of aspect, that triggered the astronomers of this generation to begin heated debate on what is or is not a planet.

“Re that Einstein quote. This is a good example of astrologers quoting each other nth hand, but with nobody ever checking the original quote. In a letter in ‘Correlation’ June 1991… I chased it back to a book (in French) by the late Swiss-Canadian astrologer Werner Hirsig, ‘Manuel d’astrologie,’ where the quote appears in French in the preface, but with no source given. From there it was quoted by Solange de Mailly Nesle (1981), from which it was quoted by Tad Mann (1987) and Percy Seymour (1988), and from there ever onwards seemingly without end…. Various people including Solange, Percy and myself have checked Einstein’s writings and biographies but have been unable to verify it, so Solange and Percy have deleted it from later editions of their books. His biographies contain nothing to suggest that Einstein had any interest in astrology, and its style differs from that of authentic Einstein sayings.”
”
http://www.randi.org/jr/02-09-2001.html