ASTROLOGY

[AYANAMSA] Ayanamsa and Garth Allen's Synetic Vernal Point: "The synetic fiducial point was not contrived by whim on the basis of a few score "examples," liberally larded with cultural preconceptions of musty scriptural allusions." "It owes its existence to the outcome of painstaking and massive scientific research and not to some sorry passage from relic literature preserved on boundary stones or palm leaves or tomb walls." * * * *

Garth Allen, "How to Unvex a Vexed Question!" 8/64 A. A.

It was bound to happen, sooner or later, that the validity of the Synetic Vernal Point would be challenged by those who owe their allegiance to some other "ayanamsa" for chauvinistic rather than scientific reasons. The Hindu word 'ayanamsa' is the term applied to the arc of ecliptic longitude that separates, at any given date, the point called "zero degrees Aries" in the tropical zodiac from its counterpart, zero degrees Aries in the sidereal zodiac. Sidereally persuaded astrologers of the western hemisphere, representing the "Fagan school" of conviction, generally use the standard value of 24d02'31.36." for the astronomical beginning o the year 1950. That is to say, at the epoch 1950.0 we assume that the mean sidereal longitude of the vernal equinoctial point was at 5d57'28.64" of the constellation Pisces. For other dates and times, this value is continuously altered to keep abreast of the precessional shift, in the amount of about 50.26 seconds of arc per year. In addition, this mean or average value is appropriately amended to account for nutational displacements of the actual point. Nutation is a minor oscillation of true figure back and forth over the mean figure. Astrological practice of scholarly merit demands the use of the true value of the ayanamsa when dealing with zodiacal position in exacting seconds or arc, such as the Sun's longitude.

The correctness of the timing of a solar return, or a solar ingress, for instance, depends critically upon a to-the-second determination of solar longitude. One of the most astonishing statements we have ever read in the astrological press--which press has a penchant for outlandishly illogical material--has the following to say, among other remarkable things: "One final word of warning to the unwary student. Some astrologers of the West have published tables and values of the Ayanamsa purported to be correct to the hundredth part of a second arc. This is all eyewash and clearly meant for propaganda purposes. Nobody can determine the value to that degree of exactness and even if they could, values tabulated at ten-day intervals, would, for technical reasons, be quite valueless. So the student should not think that because there is a 'show' of precision, the figures are any more precise or reliable than, say, the figures given in other publications."

This excerpt is a paragraph from an article in the symposium series titled "The Vexed question of Ayanamsa" carried in the leading journal of Hindu astrology, its September 1962 issue. Because that same author illustrated his dissertation with solar ingress charts preceding natural disasters, the unwary student has a right to question how in heaven's name those charts were calculated without the use of astronomically dictated precision. Hundredths of second are not necessary, of course, but formula-based computations offer this precision and guarantee a correctly rounded-off value when rounding off is desirable. Every difference of ten seconds of arc in solar longitude, as of an ayanamsa itself, means a four-minute error in the correct time of a solar ingress. Every four minutes of time change the cusps of a chart by one degree of zodiacal longitude. No wonder, that the "examples" of ingresses used for calamitous events did not bother, in their delineations, with that most central precept of workable astrology--the significance of the Midheaven and Ascendant cusps as point and not broad areas. We begin to see the light upon examining the example delineations, such as the one for the "Aries ingress" preceding the June 15, 1896 earthquake and tsunami that hit Sanriku, Japan. The key configuration cited was the Neptune-Pluto compunction which lingered within a five-degree orb for fully ten years toward the close of the nineteenth century! "Pluto, planet of quakes and destruction, is conjunct Neptune, planet of water and waves, in the first house." Sounds good, but for some odd reason a published scientific catalogue of the history of seismic waves shows a below average incidence of these events during the decade when the Neptune-Pluto conjunction was in operation. The 8th-house "lord" and a parallel of declination were also mentioned in the analysis, but these are hardly worthy of rebutting comment. We'll also withhold comment on the accompanying Navamsa maps, inasmuch as these are obviously incalculable apart from precisely-timed chart moments and, or course, computation of solar ingresses is an exacting procedure.

But enough of such piecemeal haggling.
Let us get to the core of the matter, which is the question of comparative validity of the synetic versus other feasible sidereal "fiducial points." First off, we legitimately resent the effort to drag the synetic vernal point into a controversy involving the company of these other claimants, for this resounding reason: The S.V.P. is not at all in the same class with these other "determinations." It is of an entirely different species. It owes its existence to the outcome of painstaking and massive scientific research and not to some sorry passage from relic literature preserved on boundary stones or palm leaves or tomb walls.
Even so, it was probably inevitable, in view of the nature of the typical astrological mind, for this fact to be soon forgotten, or else not realized in the first place. Let us nip this thing in the bud right now, before it balloons into an international argument reminiscent of the perennial ferment over house-division systems.

The synetic fiducial point was not contrived by whim on the basis of a few score "examples," liberally larded with cultural preconceptions of musty scriptural allusions. You people who want to go on arguing about different ayanamsas can do so, all you please--but after the facts are faced up to, keep the synetic determination out of your quarrels! These quarrels are remindful of the endless attempts by Fundamentalist theologians, within the countless denominations of Christendom, to affix beforehand the date of the Second Advent and "the end of the world." Every few years, century after century, some Bible scholar will come forth with another prediction, couched in quotations from ancient scrolls and usually keyed to number mysticism, often with something supplementary of seemingly tangible nature, like a Great Pyramid time scale or some such gimmick. Meanwhile, the world goes on and on, blithely unaware that it should have engulfed itself in flames at least a hundred times, "according to the Book." Several things, judging from contemporary literature on the subject, characterize the "ayanamsa controversy." Chief among these is ignorance of the subject being dealt with, such as precession. We have not seen thus far, for instance, a correct handling of the annual precession rate, and if so simple a matter as arithmetical calculation of this value (as a rate, not an amount--a big different) for any year is beyond the ability of a thesis-writing astrologer, one can only question his authoritativeness where the subject of precession is concerned. Come to think of it, what else but ineptness could be expected of a mind which gives equal weight of consideration to the statements of sixth-century copyists and twentieth-century astronomers?
There is an unbridgeable distance between a conclusion stemming from apotheosis and one arrived at through coldly objective science. Another thing, in some ways even more surprising, considering the background of the reason why there is an ayanamsa in the first place, is the apparently automatic assumption that there are two "zodiacs" of concurrent validity, after all. At least, there seems no other way to interpret efforts to ascertain the date "when the two zodiacs coincided. "Even worse, from the scientific point of view, are the attempts to link this epoch of coincidence with some mechanistic phenomena, such as synchronizing of "both" Aries ingresses or a unique stellar situation like a star's conjunction with a tropical colure on the celestial sphere. If there had been an eventuality of universal significance marking the transition of "ages," that pivotal event would be quite obvious and of unarguable magnitude. Recently in the April 1964 issue of SPICA, our esteemed Indian correspondent S. Rajagopala Iyer, commenced a series of commentary articles in which he elicits his reasons for continuing to use the ayanamsa on which Lahiri's Ephemeris is based. This endeavor commands our respect and attention because it represents an earnest, honest effort to ferret out the facts on the basis of observation rather than ethnic favoritism.

Lahiri's value is essentially, though not precisely, the "Spica reckoning" originally adopted by Fagan on the reasonable grounds that it was the best one available at the time. A few years later, after his monumental achievement of solving the age-old enigma of the list of planetary exaltation degrees, Fagan's own findings forced him to switch from considering Spica as the marking star for 0 degrees Libra to its more logical office as defining 29 degrees Virgo. (Would that other "veteran" astrologers had the intellectual integrity to willingly alter their views in accordance with new and better information!) The synetic vernal point is merely a refinement of the true point for which the bright first magnitude star Alpha Virginis was the closest practical approximation. Obviously, no single star, no matter how prominent in the sky, could possibly be the sole determinator of the zodiac as a cosmic structure. We all knew that the true point of 29d00'00" Virgo lies very close to the ecliptic longitude of the star Spica. The only known method through which the true value could be pinpointed by "astrological observation" was the concept of solar and lunar ingresses. This fiducial of "Spica plus one degree" for defining 0 degrees Libra was christened the HYPSOMATIC AYANAMSA to distinguish it from the Spica one previously used, which orientally is called the "Chitra ayanamsa," after the star's Hindu name. Amending the hypsomatic value was simply a matter of narrowing down which minute and second of arc in the neighborhood of the presumed value gave the best results on a statistical basis. It took literally hundreds of historical events, almost all of them geographically localized disasters, to nail down the likeliest value. At long last it became clear that ingresses calculated for an ayanamsa six minutes and five seconds of arc further along the ecliptic than the hypsomatic figure being used gave the best results in the light of actual cases considered in the aggregate. That is, the Synetic Vernal Point places Spica, at the epoch of 1950.0, in 29d06'05" rather than 29d00'00" of the constellation Virgo.

It is important to keep in mind that any ayanamsa, true of false, could be used for personalized horoscopy on a sidereal basis, without affecting the moments of, say, one's solar and lunar returns, or progressions--so long as astronomically correct precessional rates are made use of in the ayanamsas computation. But mundane astrological charts require exactitude of the true ayanamsas value for any date in question. To illustrate, the 0d06'05" correction adopted means a difference of about two and a half hours in the timing of a solar ingress--more than 35 degrees difference in the cusp of a mundane chart. Lunar ingresses of the cardinal constellations, on the other hand, are displaced only three degrees or so by the changeover from the Hypsomatic to the Synetic value. Our worthy Eastern colleague, Rajagopala Iyer, is approaching the matter in terms of those few instances in the annals of Western sidereal astrology where an apparent failure of a synetic-based ingress was admittedly noted. These disappointments do occur occasionally, and we agree that the right way to respond to the situation is to search for the reasons behind the seeming miscues. After all, it is this very fact-finding attitude towards things astrological that sparked and nourished the growth of the Western sidereal movement to begin with. Our reservations about the single case by single case approach, however, are embodied in the question: How many times have you worked with erroneous birth data and found admirably apt indices for everything that happened in the native's lifetime? We've all had this jarring experience many times in our professional careers, the explanation being that we have so many techniques in modern astrology to draw upon, it is easy to find appropriate planetary "contacts" for anything and everything, by one method or another. Give me some false data, for instance, telling me that the native was born within 15 minutes of the specified time, and that he broke his leg in his 23rd

[AYANAMSA] Ayanamsa and Garth Allen's Synetic Vernal Point: "The synetic fiducial point was not contrived by whim on the basis

of a few score "examples," liberally larded with cultural preconceptions of musty scriptural allusions." "It owes its existence to the outcome of painstaking and massive scientific research and not to some sorry passage from relic literature preserved on boundary stones or palm leaves or tomb walls." * * * * Garth Allen, "How to Unvex a Vexed Question!" 8/64 A. A. It was bound to happen, sooner or later, that the validity of the Synetic Vernal Point would be challenged by those who owe their allegiance to some other "ayanamsa" for chauvinistic rather than scientific reasons. The Hindu word 'ayanamsa' is the term applied to the arc of ecliptic longitude that separates, at any given date, the point called "zero degrees Aries" in the tropical zodiac from its counterpart, zero degrees Aries in the sidereal zodiac. Sidereally persuaded astrologers of the western hemisphere, representing the "Fagan school" of conviction, generally use the standard value of 24d02'31.36." for the astronomical beginning o the year 1950. That is to say, at the epoch 1950.0 we assume that the mean sidereal longitude of the vernal equinoctial point was at 5d57'28.64" of the constellation Pisces. For other dates and times, this value is continuously altered to keep abreast of the precessional shift, in the amount of about 50.26 seconds of arc per year. In addition, this mean or average value is appropriately amended to account for nutational displacements of the actual point. Nutation is a minor oscillation of true figure back and forth over the mean figure. Astrological practice of scholarly merit demands the use of the true value of the ayanamsa when dealing with zodiacal position in exacting seconds or arc, such as the Sun's longitude. The correctness of the timing of a solar return, or a solar ingress, for instance, depends critically upon a to-the-second determination of solar longitude. One of the most astonishing statements we have ever read in the astrological press--which press has a penchant for outlandishly illogical material--has the following to say, among other remarkable things: "One final word of warning to the unwary student. Some astrologers of the West have published tables and values of the Ayanamsa purported to be correct to the hundredth part of a second arc. This is all eyewash and clearly meant for propaganda purposes. Nobody can determine the value to that degree of exactness and even if they could, values tabulated at ten-day intervals, would, for technical reasons, be quite valueless. So the student should not think that because there is a 'show' of precision, the figures are any more precise or reliable than, say, the figures given in other publications." This excerpt is a paragraph from an article in the symposium series titled "The Vexed question of Ayanamsa" carried in the leading journal of Hindu astrology, its September 1962 issue. Because that same author illustrated his dissertation with solar ingress charts preceding natural disasters, the unwary student has a right to question how in heaven's name those charts were calculated without the use of astronomically dictated precision. Hundredths of second are not necessary, of course, but formula-based computations offer this precision and guarantee a correctly rounded-off value when rounding off is desirable. Every difference of ten seconds of arc in solar longitude, as of an ayanamsa itself, means a four-minute error in the correct time of a solar ingress. Every four minutes of time change the cusps of a chart by one degree of zodiacal longitude. No wonder, that the "examples" of ingresses used for calamitous events did not bother, in their delineations, with that most central precept of workable astrology--the significance of the Midheaven and Ascendant cusps as point and not broad areas. We begin to see the light upon examining the example delineations, such as the one for the "Aries ingress" preceding the June 15, 1896 earthquake and tsunami that hit Sanriku, Japan. The key configuration cited was the Neptune-Pluto compunction which lingered within a five-degree orb for fully ten years toward the close of the nineteenth century! "Pluto, planet of quakes and destruction, is conjunct Neptune, planet of water and waves, in the first house." Sounds good, but for some odd reason a published scientific catalogue of the history of seismic waves shows a below average incidence of these events during the decade when the Neptune-Pluto conjunction was in operation. The 8th-house "lord" and a parallel of declination were also mentioned in the analysis, but these are hardly worthy of rebutting comment. We'll also withhold comment on the accompanying Navamsa maps, inasmuch as these are obviously incalculable apart from precisely-timed chart moments and, or course, computation of solar ingresses is an exacting procedure. But enough of such piecemeal haggling. Let us get to the core of the matter, which is the question of comparative validity of the synetic versus other feasible sidereal "fiducial points." First off, we legitimately resent the effort to drag the synetic vernal point into a controversy involving the company of these other claimants, for this resounding reason: The S.V.P. is not at all in the same class with these other "determinations." It is of an entirely different species. It owes its existence to the outcome of painstaking and massive scientific research and not to some sorry passage from relic literature preserved on boundary stones or palm leaves or tomb walls. Even so, it was probably inevitable, in view of the nature of the typical astrological mind, for this fact to be soon forgotten, or else not realized in the first place. Let us nip this thing in the bud right now, before it balloons into an international argument reminiscent of the perennial ferment over house-division systems. The synetic fiducial point was not contrived by whim on the basis of a few score "examples," liberally larded with cultural preconceptions of musty scriptural allusions. You people who want to go on arguing about different ayanamsas can do so, all you please--but after the facts are faced up to, keep the synetic determination out of your quarrels! These quarrels are remindful of the endless attempts by Fundamentalist theologians, within the countless denominations of Christendom, to affix beforehand the date of the Second Advent and "the end of the world." Every few years, century after century, some Bible scholar will come forth with another prediction, couched in quotations from ancient scrolls and usually keyed to number mysticism, often with something supplementary of seemingly tangible nature, like a Great Pyramid time scale or some such gimmick. Meanwhile, the world goes on and on, blithely unaware that it should have engulfed itself in flames at least a hundred times, "according to the Book." Several things, judging from contemporary literature on the subject, characterize the "ayanamsa controversy." Chief among these is ignorance of the subject being dealt with, such as precession. We have not seen thus far, for instance, a correct handling of the annual precession rate, and if so simple a matter as arithmetical calculation of this value (as a rate, not an amount--a big different) for any year is beyond the ability of a thesis-writing astrologer, one can only question his authoritativeness where the subject of precession is concerned. Come to think of it, what else but ineptness could be expected of a mind which gives equal weight of consideration to the statements of sixth-century copyists and twentieth-century astronomers? There is an unbridgeable distance between a conclusion stemming from apotheosis and one arrived at through coldly objective science. Another thing, in some ways even more surprising, considering the background of the reason why there is an ayanamsa in the first place, is the apparently automatic assumption that there are two "zodiacs" of concurrent validity, after all.

At least, there seems no other way to interpret efforts to ascertain the date "when the two zodiacs coincided." Even worse, from the scientific point of view, are the attempts to link this epoch of coincidence with some mechanistic phenomena, such as synchronizing of "both" Aries ingresses or a unique stellar situation like a star's conjunction with a tropical colure on the celestial sphere. If there had been an eventuality of universal significance marking the transition of "ages," that pivotal event would be quite obvious and of unarguable magnitude. Recently in the April 1964 issue of SPICA, our esteemed Indian correspondent S. Rajagopala Iyer, commenced a series of commentary articles in which he elicits his reasons for continuing to use the ayanamsa on which Lahiri's Ephemeris is based. This endeavor commands our respect and attention because it represents an earnest, honest effort to ferret out the facts on the basis of observation rather than ethnic favoritism. Lahiri's value is essentially, though not precisely, the "Spica reckoning" originally adopted by Fagan on the reasonable grounds that it was the best one available at the time. A few years later, after his monumental achievement of solving the age-old enigma of the list of planetary exaltation degrees, Fagan's own findings forced him to switch from considering Spica as the marking star for 0 degrees Libra to its more logical office as defining 29 degrees Virgo. (Would that other "veteran" astrologers had the intellectual integrity to willingly alter their views in accordance with new and better information!) The synetic vernal point is merely a refinement of the true point for which the bright first-magnitude star Alpha Virginis was the closest practical approximation. Obviously, no single star, no matter how prominent in the sky, could possibly be the sole determinator of the zodiac as a cosmic structure. We all knew that the true point of 29d00'00" Virgo lies very close to the ecliptic longitude of the star Spica. The only known method through which the true value could be pinpointed by "astrological observation" was the concept of solar and lunar ingresses. This fiducial of "Spica plus one degree" for defining 0 degrees Libra was christened the HYPSOMATIC AYANAMSA to distinguish it from the Spica one previously used, which orientally is called the "Chitra ayanamsa," after the star's Hindu name. Amending the hypsomatic value was simply a matter of narrowing down which minute and second of arc in the neighborhood of the presumed value gave the best results on a statistical basis. It took literally hundreds of historical events, almost all of them geographically localized disasters, to nail down the likeliest value. At long last it became clear that ingresses calculated for an ayanamsa six minutes and five seconds of arc further along the ecliptic than the hypsomatic figure being used gave the best results in the light of actual cases considered in the aggregate. That is, the Synetic Vernal Point places Spica, at the epoch of 1950.0, in 29d06'05" rather than 29d00'00" of the constellation Virgo. It is important to keep in mind that any ayanamsa, true of false, could be used for personalized horoscopy on a sidereal basis, without affecting the moments of, say, one's solar and lunar returns, or progressions--so long as astronomically correct precessional rates are made use of in the ayanamsas computation. But mundane astrological charts require exactitude of the true ayanamsas value for any date in question. To illustrate, the 0d06'05" correction adopted means a difference of about two and a half hours in the timing of a solar ingress--more than 35 degrees difference in the cusp of a mundane chart. Lunar ingresses of the cardinal constellations, on the other hand, are displaced only three degrees or so by the changeover from the Hypsomatic to the Synetic value. Our worthy Eastern colleague, Rajagopala Iyer, is approaching the matter in terms of those few instances in the annals of Western sidereal astrology where an apparent failure of a synetic-based ingress was admittedly noted. These disappointments do occur occasionally, and we agree that the right way to respond to the situation is to search for the reasons behind the seeming miscues. After all, it is this very fact-finding attitude towards things astrological that sparked and nourished the growth of the Western sidereal movement to begin with. Our reservations about the single case by single case approach, however, are embodied in the question: How many times have you worked with erroneous birth data and found admirably apt indices for everything that happened in the native's lifetime? We've all had this jarring experience many times in our professional careers, the explanation being that we have so many techniques in modern astrology to draw upon, it is easy to find appropriate planetary "contacts" for anything and everything, by one method or another. Give me some false data, for instance, telling me that the native was born within 15 minutes of the specified time, and that he broke his leg in his 23rd year of life and, by gum, the chances are good that I'll be able to find a "convincing" configuration, progression, transit, key cycle, revolution, direction or Dasa that is appropriate to what happened--and with multiple confirmations, too, making everybody cluck about how marvelous astrology is. Each of us, as conscientious astrologers, must be our own mental watchdogs, ever alert to the dangers of our endless, habitual toying and toiling with charts and numbers and symbols and systems. Too many times we have found that somebody was really born in 1923 and not 1924; or a rural doctor mistakenly wrote P.M. instead of A.M. on a birth certificate; or someone who arrived on these shores as a child from eastern Europe was still using the Old Style birth date written on his original passport; or a birth hour should rightly have been recorded in daylight-saving time--and so forth. But even though the information was seriously in error, the gears of the chart work seemed to click off just fine.
The point we are getting at here is that a randomly invented, wholly groundless ayanamsa will yield highly "significant" ingress charts for a majority of events. Yes, we said majority, and meant it. A phony vernal point will "work" so well, so much of the time, that at first glance any value your might fabricate on the spur of the moment has a good prospect of seeming like a major astrological "discovery." If you are reluctant to believe this, take the first telephone number having six digits in your local directory and con yourself into considering it to be the genuine ayanamsa in degrees, minutes and seconds, for any event you want to "study." The odds are surely better than 50-50 that by your third ingress chart for the event, using this fake ayanamsa, pretending it to be real, you'll come up with a persuasively "accurate" horoscopic picture of the event. If the event is a catastrophe, there are enough malefics in the sky, and more than enough square aspects within reach of at least one of your two, three, four or more sets of angular cusps to fill the bill and produce a "triumph" for the ersatz ayanamsa employed.
But is it science? That's the big question, and on this question hangs the whole disposition of astrology's worth-whileness. And now for the proof of the pudding that we have been leading up to, even though it was necessary to risk shaking the faith of newcomer students in the process. There is scientific truth in astrology. And there are overwhelming, unquestionable scientific proofs that, despite the weaknesses in our present-day astrological practices, planetary, zodiacal and cuspal influences do exist--with full force too.

As for the synetic vernal point, proving its authenticity is almost too easy. And we can thank the Creator for decreeing the laws of statistical probability when He put the universe together and flipped the On switch. certainly, we admit that many ingress charts based on the S.V.P. fail to seem "earthquake-prone" when geared to the time and place a big tremor actually took place. But that is just the point. Using the synetic value, for the 13 greatest earthquakes that occurred in the world since 1900, Saturn is within two degrees of conjunction or square the meridian of the epicenters seven times oftener than "chance" would tend to allow. Mars is found in these critical small-orbed zones five times oftener than could occur by coincidence; Uranus three times oftener and Pluto twice oftener. The Chitra or Spica ayanamsa, by dazzling contrast, yields quite normal expectancies and therefore cannot be genuine.
These high-frequency counts apply to both the solar and lunar cardinal ingresses preceding the disasters. Moreover, Saturn and Mars are found conjunct or square the meridional cusp line of the progressed solar ingress charts three times oftener than they could if the synetic vernal point were not "the real McCoy." We could cite numerous other ratios showing the high rating of statistical significance attained by application of the SVP value-- levels which cannot possibly be arrived at by fictitious ayanamsas (which otherwise perform so beautifully in single-case studies). Take any published list of a given type of disaster, say airplane crashes or a nation's most damaging tornadoes, and tabulate the angular propinquities of the malefic planets in two sets, the synetic and the Lahiri frameworks. Honest evaluation of the cross-compared sets will quickly settle the issue that may have been bugging you. The truth remains, that the "search for the true vernal point" commenced with a massive compilation of ingress charts based on the original Spica ayanamsa--and the Spica maps en masse clearly called for a wholesale "correction" to make them truly meaningful in accordance with the doctrine of angularity.
Of course, we could have selected, say 25 of the 100 worst-tornado charts, based on the list of historic twisters given in the World Almanac, and confidently "demonstrated" the efficacy of the Spica or hypsomatic fiducials. Dido, for train wrecks or coal-mine disasters. But this would not be science--it would be a defending of a mental commitment or professional posture. To save face is usually to sacrifice facts. The illustration herewith is the upshot of it all, the only single "proof" which tells the ayanamsa story without any ifs or buts in the telling. A few years ago, a team of scientists at a major university undertook to look into "unorthodox" means of weather forecasting and includedin their mass-data anaylses certain claims of what we call astrometeorology. These men are our personal friends and we have been 'au courant' of their work all along. We finally prevailed sufficiently on their curiosity that they experimented with the Jupiter-rainfall correlation we reported on in the pages of "Your Powwow Corner" back in 1957. We found, you will recall, a mathematically abnormal tendency for Jupiter to be on an angle at the moment of the Caplunar ingresses covering dates and places of record- breaking amounts of rain. In view of professional and institutional considerations, we are requested to divulge only a bare minimum of information about this project. Permission to publish an adaptation of one of the diagrams, and tell its content, however, has been cordially granted, in the mutual hope that it will nip in the bud this growing threat of a "controversy" over the synetic fiducial. The diagram simply consists of the quadrant frequency of Jupiter's distribution at the moments of the synetic lunar ingresses of Capricornus preceding the twelve dates over the past century on which maximum 24-hour downpours of precipitation were recorded at every functioning weather-observing station in the continental United States. The grand total of events amounts to--hold your breath--fully 49,576 items in all. The complete information as to date, place and amount for each of 49,576 separte record entreis has been officially published y the U.S. Weather Bureau, so there can have been no "doctoring" of the raw data to yield the result that can be seen in the illustration--and marveled at. GRAPH: On left from bottom to top, standard deviations from -25 to 0 to +25. On bottom, Quadrants superposed Measuring Eastward from Midheaven 0 to 90 (to 0) degrees. Angular Cusps using SYNETIC Ayanamsa show near +25 standard deviation. The negative peak is between -20 & -25 for 45 degress eastward from Midheaven. And Angular Cusps using CHITRA Ayanamsa show near -5 standard deviation.
The abscissa of the graph is in units of standard deviation. Statistical significance commences at the two-unit level, at which the odds arc 20 to 1 against the proposition that the deviation occurred only fortuitously. The odds are around 10,000 to one at four standard deviations. At six units the chances against mere coincidence become incalculably large, running into the billions. As you can observe for yourself, the departure from mathematical "normalcy of occurrence" skyrockets into the trillions and zillions again the premise of pure coincidence. Scientifically, this is incontestable proof that the astrological claim concerning the influence of lunar ingresses--the one into Capricornus, at any rate--it true. Needless to mention, this finding and others like it have caused considerable excitement over the "potential possibilities" among scientists who are privy to it--but it is obvious why we cannot dwell on this particular phase of the matter for the time being.
How ironic it is, that these research findings should have their first public disclosure in form of an effort to enlighten siderealists about a fundamental property of their own zodiac!

We have been saving this material, for a long time now, against the day it would be needed to (a) squelch so-called scientific deriders of astrology, and/or (b) demonstrate to tropical astrologers that there is something solid to astrology after all, thus allaying their unspoken fears. You people who are entertaining other ayanamsas must now face the issue raised by this and other equally revealing displays of evidence which underscore the reality of the SVP. That issue is, to put it bluntly, the glaring fact that either the synetic vernal point is pretty close to being 'right on the nose," or else is some 3 degrees wrong, three degrees being the minimum error which these irrefutable statistics will permit to exist. That is, if the fundamental principle behind astrology in regard to angularity of planetary position for appropriate events is true, and if the SVP is more than a few seconds "wrong," the only possible alternative is that the true ayanamsa is far enough away from the synetic point that this same Jupiter-rainfall curve can be reasonably duplicated only by at least a three-degree displacement of the actual figure. In summary, let us say that the Synetic Vernal Point conceivably could be wrong. But if it is, it is wrong by a hell of an amount and not by just one or two degrees! Using the median amount of daily motion of the Moon as the criterion for spacing, we have marked arrows on the graph showing the contrasting positions of the angular cusps (quadrants being successively superposed) for the synetic versus the expectations from use of the Lahiri fiducial. Note how closely the SVP Jupiter distribution peaks out near the lines of the angular cusps themselves, with least frequency falling just 45 degrees from the angles. If my faith in astrological verities were in the least diminished proper to this knowledge, though of course it wasn't these scientific facts would have restored it to full bloom. How about you pumpers for other ayanamsas, with whom I now conclude my first and last argument on this particular subject? Here's a faith restorer.
Help yourself. * * * *