<span style="color: #D4AF37">Kindred births and planetary recurrences:
Seeking the larger 'scope' of the birth moment</span>
//The following is the 'script' for my Sep 8, 2018 presentation on kindred births, at the Qualitative Research Methods online workshop. Thanks to the Kepler Conference folks for hosting this workshop.
-- Kyle Pierce//
When we zoom out from the natal chart and shift our attention to the planets in motion, the birth moment becomes the center of a wider time window. We become aware of planet events, like aspect contacts (perfections), stations and sign ingresses. These events often coincide within a few days, and can be studied in this way, which is my topic.
In the zodiac, the planetary aspects are based on geometric figures, and they combine to form aspect patterns. When planet events coincide within two or three days of each other, they are also participating in a different kind of pattern that is time-limited. This pattern I will call an //event-figure//: a coinciding of planet events that I use to study symbolic parallels during recurrences of the figure, when they form the same combination.
A case study begins with choosing a single nativity. A //kindred birth// shares the same event-figure at birth as the native, as well as showing biographical parallels. Potential kindred births are selected from a list of notable persons born during different recurrences of that same figure.
Here are two of //Time// magazine's //100 Most Important People of the 20th Century//, together with their closest known kindred births.
<span style="color: #D4AF37">Case Sketches</span>
• [[Aretha Franklin]]
• [[Che Guevara]]
[[Steps in a search for kindred births]]
[[Doing the Math: How is rarity calculated?]]
[[Tips for finding kindred births]]
[[Symbolic kinship rating scale]]
[[A private study]]<span style="color: #D4AF37">[[Aretha Franklin->Aretha Franklin links]]</span>
<img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/5hAzfrTF6TcXp3fJU9LKk4VUUEi9CJlKlhLGeWIYgife3jd7NwpObEeeArCdKinNsYTSao1ziQ0D8RHUnD5Vy2FVryirW_jgqsPzpf89tNtodAEDJ6zF8QAZHAsvdS5rIl8CrTrNMg=w2400">
Kindred Births: Aretha Franklin and [[Avra Theodoropoulou]]
Aretha's closest known kindred birth is a Greek pianist and music professor. Avra was a co-founder and long-time president of the League for Women's Rights in Greece. Both women are considered national treasures, for their musical gifts and their contributions to the empowerment of women, as agents of cultural change.
To identify an event-figure to study, I draw a //near-birth// chart. It shows a list of planet events within one week of the birth date, and a simple wheel with a line for each aspect contact in that list:
<span style="color: #D4AF37">Aretha's near-birth chart</span>
<img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/RQrP2IuZJZBgDOzSxmUsUKWJzB4jMwvAYbawdsJwjqgW9iuaJSDaIUuTuWiuDE-WQ_eLLIL80MBeR3lo_iUC03qKwlphvCbSGEkm_8wuK7BJCqr6JAoPpYSGiHCAl2Nn53fs6PrKdg=w2400">
This is a study of the Sun's aspects to a close Uranus-Neptune trine, forming a wedge with its opposition to Neptune and sextile to Uranus.
The chart diagram shows aspects over the week before and week after birth. Each aspect line is color-coded for the aspecting (faster-moving) planet. It omits lunar aspects, which are too frequent to be usable at this stage of the search.
<span style="color: #D4AF37">Tips for finding //kindred births//</span>
This method makes possible a novel type of investigation, based on the idea that recurrences of an event-figure can reveal similar themes and forces in the life stories of those whose birth charts share that figure. A //kindred birth// is selected from a list of candidates who have the chosen event-figure at birth. This is one who stands out as significant for the native, and ideally who also fits the symbolism of that figure. This person's life and quality of soul can stand out, starkly or more subtly, as metaphors for the native's, so the biography becomes a possible key to the native's story as well.
Aside from this, when I choose the main figure for a kindred birth search, it is my rough guess about the relative rarity of event-figures in the chart that can make the choice clearer.
The point of using a narrow (2-3 day) time window for planet events is to first screen out all but the closest coincidings of events, and then to include only the birth dates closest to those coinciding events. This use of event-figures is well suited to study untimed births and has been developed with that in mind. So there's no reason for an unknown birth time to stand in the way of a study.
<span style="color: #D4AF37">[[Che Guevara->Che Guevara links]] </span>
<img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/2BkvK7fIfJ6Pg1KE3U5tB6FsFXUJs2DpkvX-XeIQGyus3r3dgIvAt2SyYJuSB86hnkYN0mia4lbHGguGKyGFlPfaij8moQHz94z5CfoqQrJrXRwr2y1oIIPCWf0Km-J5zCfxYKYSjQ=w2400">
Kindred Births: Che Guevara and [[Haim Bar-Lev]]
This study begins with one near-legendary military man, and ends up with another military man of legend. Both men were high-level commanders in two wars of independence of the mid-20th century.
The Cuban Revolution succeeded in 1959, with Che Guevara as second in command to Fidel Castro. In the series of Arab-Israeli conflicts that led to the creation of the nation of Israel in 1948, Bar-Lev played several roles including battalion commander.
Both men served as high-level government officials following independence. Their fates diverged from there. Guevara was executed by Bolivian rebels in 1967. Bar-Lev was a commander in major wars of Israel from 1967-1973. His military retirement was followed by his political career.
<span style="color: #D4AF37">Che Guevara's near-birth chart</span>
<img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/4YK90nzBJvg0Dho6BBEejaQF7Gp4IvO76-88YXvULeuTxB0NL6vQDyYeqygesU4CiH1i1jgchzWkMFTiLo-j0I4ZBywjU4zvGXppuqKdn_n59tXkjhxl-WaInUWVc2QmRMzsAssBdg=w2400">
This is a study of the event-figure that brings together these two births: a Jupiter-Neptune trine and Sun-Neptune square.
The chart diagram shows aspects over the week before and week after birth. Each aspect line is color-coded for the aspecting (faster-moving) planet. It omits lunar aspects, which are too frequent to be usable at this stage of the search.<span style="color: #D4AF37">[[Haim Bar-Lev->Haim Bar-Lev links]]</span>
<img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Mpl0UU6r4JWHaxFd37fWH0MDtVnGP5THJA-NEbyLjc1Kx2LiFDc139Kph_FiR2GurDR1mxd9dzPqeG29DaKZ5KO2qbnvU88Rn-r0rjmWDeXf9nLdjvTj4N-NSNfCY388qVYoscztOg=w2400">
Haim Bar-Lev's near-birth chart
<img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/6ynuAnINfQ4Mw7u-gP_tOQlW2lFsgyXtBLNi4s7GRH13KMw_Xl44LI7Ub_p6MxnNfooCCuQ19iTvUOrQW9PTyGiZ7egYQikbuaT6tPDz3AIpnKh9dyod01274M8G_gNrZl-PZ-vw7w=w2400">
List of kindred-birth candidates
<img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blQ28RGXtjyCUn3ebCkI6H8hBeMVMvyAiqaM8FxXQ7bB6A6CbmmUxrpTkTduG20emLNLWQzxi7dLiXYhvSqwq-NYUpWVguBBYGnK80i_25DBjZF_awy0Eabyvtx-AfI5c0R8dm4dow=w2400">
Timeline
<img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/9vmK69cnVR6yh23qjsjD-AjPljon7UOkSfTRXoTvkoCt5ljheN78XGXVvsMRITAs-JwWREJDjEdFjp0gv04-z4oYkAvbSKqccX5WrmXqorXK9xtNIFF2VWB8oZACZx514Ib9Cafv0A=w2400">
<span style="color: #D4AF37">[[Avra Theodoropoulou->Avra Theodoropoulou links]]</span>
<img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/ruCeDc9Kl8EmFLLqNf7A3iHp2V6BYjGlwqhj41Oq1OOwj95Of3oEl6sfGejV77O6TWb7HXPQ1N9Qz1B61GkGIAxOZsceXK9QVHm9qk9ZR0635pLOHFJE6FQhqloF67rKI5C44U-IzQ=w2400">
Avra's near-birth chart
<img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/6U47CABD4nFD82FGCRlGTLAwjD5O-jTOpupcZCrNB_OZNw6WpESiBfqBHw9ijVIqaJu5kH6UlrPH9hMnw0u7BK6Syfp-YDpVrgqu1u6qy74zN-SVTSLzHn9jrEFOGe1S75gGyUEn0A=w2400">
Avra in a list of candidate births
<img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_kjs6aAwqbHm-WSZweBmZWioJQ9Tsw_X6bXnVb0GOpB72bsfBY9gjnNXJu4d5WvXgBEN6vReTH0SYkUvpTiznIlMlyuUk0P65j6Py-XLS_dWtKJQeW6J5sIyvcVkYs9tCf_R7u9SNQ=w2400">
Timeline
<img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/PRC-J_ANB4uDSJ1OM0oSn1DssG51-PPA6ELIvhi9Dr29jFzD05vqBRQhxWffqQPHLr8HPqbcJZ2XueXBgViJwzQumrMnC4YVxk5P6Kl6qKvI8VJcfFpuNjUNilqhVlNJyGsSmroukg=w2400">
<span style="color: #D4AF37">Symbolic kinship rating scale</span>
0 = no association
1 = a similarity in profession, character, or situation
2 = two similarities or one strong one
3 = three similarities or one very striking one
5 = an analogical association
7 = two analogies or one strong one
9 = three analogies or one very powerful one(open-url: "https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Che_Guevara")
(live:1s)[(undo:)]
(open-url: "https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Haim_Bar-Lev")
(live:1s)[(undo:)]
(open-url: "https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Aretha_Franklin")
(live:1s)[(undo:)]
(open-url: "https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Avra_Theodoropoulou")
(live:1s)[(undo:)]
I have an old friend who is pretty skeptical about astrology. I did her near-birth chart and homed in fairly quickly on the woman who wrote this book. When I brought up to my friend the name Beryl Markham, she excitedly replied, "I've read her books!" I could tell she was a huge Markham fan; I had never heard of her before.
I think this episode might have put a dent in her armor.
<img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/RPEKDPe3LKn4bG5yjsJyU8kkDKaI08L9fTPUT38g8rtk1gH_RXlitkooxsfJBVnSoSJ_LyHBVpcD20qGwQ5KdYUHHy_M8hwqWaKK2X9B_MR11t3Xd0JnEfkC_oq1h28IRtDeeVCfow=w2400">
<span style="color: #D4AF37">Steps in a search for kindred births</span>
1. Draw a near-birth chart for the study subject (the native).
2. Select an event-figure based on rarity and relevance to the subject.
3. Find the dates when this event-figure recurs over the centuries.
4. Find notable births very close to those dates, and biographical sources for them.
5. Read these sources to find parallels with the life of the native.
6. Connect these parallels with the symbolism of the event-figure.
7. Evaluate the presence or absence of symbolic kinship between births.
<span style="color: #D4AF37">Additional tasks for statistical measures</span>
It isn't a huge leap from the steps above to a more formal treatment, with a control group for hypothesis testing:
• Assemble a control group of births that lack the selected figure.
• Compare symbolic kinship measures of those with the figure and those lacking it.
And on the scale of individual births:
• Find the probability that a random birth would share the selected event-figure with the native.
<span style="color: #D4AF37">Open questions</span>
The objective is to determine whether there is higher symbolic kinship with the native among persons who have the selected event-figure at birth, than among those who do not. This will depend on how rarely the figure occurs, as well as on intuitive measures.
So here we have two distinct measures, one intuitive (kinship of a native with others) and one astronomical (rarity of an event-figure). Can these measures serve as sources of evidence for each other?
Do intuitive measures of high kinship offer evidence for the reality of correlations between planetary recurrences and human stories? Or is it that kinship becomes a source of evidence when these correlations are made more accessible? The former depends on the latter, it seems.
<br>
[[restart->Kindred births and planetary recurrences]] Doing the Math: How is rarity calculated?
Glenn Mitchell asked about how I picked the Sun-Uranus-Neptune wedge in Aretha's chart, rather than the combo of Mercury-sqr-Mars and Sun-tri-Pluto which is closer in time. I didn't have these numbers available at the time, but there's a clear-cut mathematical reason for my choice: the Sun-Uranus-Neptune figure recurred 21 times during the period 1500-2100 (with a cutoff of 3 days between events). The combo of Mercury-sqr-Mars and Sun-tri-Pluto recurred 48 times during the same period. The Venus-sqr-Saturn and Mercury-sxt-Saturn, a third possible figure, recurred 77 times. These numbers are from search results computed by software I wrote.
Since this is a labor-intensive activity, I try to use the most efficient way of finding the needle in the haystack, so I picked the rarest of these figures. I don't always strictly follow this rarity rule, but for the most part and for these cases, I did. The Sun-Jupiter-Neptune figure in the Guevara case recurred only seven times from 1500-2100. This makes it easier to choose which recurrences to use. When there are more recurrences, I try to go with the one that has the most closely coinciding events.
So in the final step, I select one of the recurrences, then query dbPedia for births within a 5-day range that is centered on the midpoint in time (rounded to nearest date) of the two planetary events that define this recurrence. The result of this query is a list of candidates for selection of kindred births.
To clarify the 5-day window for births and the 3-day cutoff for figures: Let's say the midpoint in time of the figure is on a Wednesday, and remember we are dealing with untimed births here. So in order for a birth to show up on the list, it must be between Monday and Friday, 3 days (inclusive) on each side of Wednesday.
I should also note that the above counts include mirror-image figures, since I'm not distinguishing between right- and left-hand aspects. Heresy, perhaps, but the aspect doctrine that equates these seems to go back a very long way, to whoever gave them names. In any case, that is another filter that could be applied if desired.
[[Odds of being born during a recurrence]]The odds of being born during a recurrence of a given event-figure:
Odds = 1 in //total-days// / //recurrences// / //window//
Where:
//total-days// is the total count of days in the 600 years 1500-2099,
//recurrences// is the count of recurrence events for the event-figure,
//window// is the size of the time window, set to 5 for these studies
For the Guevara study, with 7 recurrences found:
total-days =
600 years * 365.25 days =
219,150 days,
/ 7 recurrences =
31,307.1429 days,
/ 5-day window =
6,261.4 days
So the odds of being born during a recurrence of the Guevara figure = 1 in 6261. Obviously this doesn't take into account the distribution of births over time, but that factor would be dwarfed by the odds against, would it not. This is still not the whole story, but it's pretty much the mathematical heart of the story.