Is Astrology Relevant to Consciousness and Psi.pdfVIP

Geoffrey Dean and Ivan W. Kelly Is Astrology Relevant to Consciousness and Psi? Abstract: Many astrologers attribute a successful birth-chart reading to what they call intuition or psychic ability, where the birth chart acts like a crystal ball. As in shamanism, they relate consciousness to a transcendent reality that, if true, might require a re-assessment of present biological theories of consciousness. In Western countries roughly 1 person in 10,000 is practising or seriously studying astrology, so their total number is substantial. Many tests of astrologers have been made since the 1950s but only recently has a coherent review been possible. A large-scale test of persons born less than five minutes apart found no hint of the similarities predicted by astrology. Meta-analysis of more than forty con- trolled studies suggests that astrologers are unable to perform significantly better than chance even on the more basic tasks such as predicting extraversion. More specifically, astrologers who claim to use psychic ability perform no better than those who do not. The possibility that astrology might be relevant to con- sciousness and psi is not denied, but such influences, if they exist in astrology, would seem to be very weak or very rare. Introduction Astrology has one sure thing in common with parapsychology — a highly visible outpouring of market-driven nonsense that threatens to bury the work of serious researchers. Just as parapsychology means ghost busting and psychic phonelines to the ordinary person, so astrology means sun signs and newspaper columns. Here we ignore the latter view in favour of serious astrology, the study of pur- ported relationships between the heavens and earthly affairs. The case for astrol- ogy was lucidly put by Charles Carter (1925), the leading British astrologer of his day, as follows: Practica