The types Gauquelin studied were almost identical to the planetary types developed by Rodney Collin, so I had to satisfy myself that there was some scientific validity here, so I did my own tests. I collected nearly 400 horoscopes of well-known individuals along with photographs of each. My aim was to determine their body types to see where the planets fell.
If a subject was, for instance, a Martial type I would look for this planet in key positions. Chance results would produce numbers around 16-20%. Approximately 70% of my selections showed planets in the required positions. The second sample comprised a total of 33 friends and acquaintances of which 31, or 94% contained the appropriate planet in a key position. For my third test I enlisted the aid of the National Council of Geocosmic Research in the US. Of a total of 44 subjects I was able to identify 42 as types, from which I predicted 29, or 70% correctly.
All this was rather encouraging, producing results way, way above those expected by chance alone. But I didn’t really trust my outcome completely. A bona fide scientist could probably pick my testing methods apart, finding statistical errors and biased selection, and all sorts of mistakes due to inexperience. However, with such high numbers, I felt strongly that there was something here that needed further testing, and I tried to enlist the aid of others to verify what I found, with little success. So one of the aims of the book is a recruiting brochure for astrologers or other individuals to help with replicating these tests to put them on a surer footing.
So, if I truly did have some scientific evidence for the influence of the planets, I had to have a go at explaining how that is possible. My type, the Saturnine type, is not satisfied with easy answers, and has to burrow down to the root of a problem and come up with the truth. So had anyone already come up with a theory to account for planetary influences? The answer is yes, and not just anyone, but a British astronomer, Percy Seymour. Dr Seymour was the principal lecturer at the Plymouth Polytechnic Institute, and devised a plausible mechanism for celestial influences based on the concept of resonance.
Seymour believed that the movements of the planets produce tides in the solar wind that streams out from the sun and bathes the solar system, and also in the magnetic fields and atmosphere of the Earth. The earth’s magnetic lines of force vibrate like telephone cables, and can be tugged or set vibrating by the solar wind, just like the strumming of a guitar. Some of these earthly strings have been tuned by the movements of the planets.
Rodney Collin stated that the endocrine glands are tuned to such frequencies and at birth are set or calibrated, and the most dominant planet at the time of birth determines your most dominant endocrine gland, and therefore, your glandular type.
A lot of the book investigates this vast area of harmonic science and how the principles of music inform and underpin the physics of our world. It’s a fascinating study, and came in very useful as background for this theory of planetary influence. The music of the spheres had become real. I was also influenced by the work of Hans Cousto, who had written a book called the Cosmic Octave, which set out the harmonic structure and properties of the planets and solar system, and attempted to assign a musical scheme and individual notes to the planets. THis harmonic approach could be summed up by this quote from George Leonard
“At the root of all power and motion, there is music and rhythm, the play of the patterned frequencies against the matrix of time. More than 2,000 years ago, the philosopher Pythagoras told his followers that a stone is frozen music, an intuition fully validated by modern sciences, we now know that every particle in the physical universe takes its characteristics from the pitch and pattern and overtones of its particular frequency, its singing. And the same thing is true of all radiation, all forces great and small, all information. Before we make music, music makes us …The way music works is also the way the world of objects and events works …The deep structure of music is the same as the deep structure of everything else.” George Leonard, from “The Silent Pulse”
A few chapters are chockers with examples of the influence of the planets on biology, such as the sensitivity of the animal and human nervous systems to fluctuations in the magnetic field of the earth. There is a solid theoretical foundation here for a science of celestial influence. Now all its needs is further testing to move forward.
So after all my diligent research I wrote it all up, and tried to shop it around to a few publishers without success. So it went in the draw. I wrote a few other things that also found their way into the draw – an illustrated collection of quotes from spiritual teachers, philosophers and gurus, a small booklet that attempted at sum up my own view of the teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, plus a few other odds and ends. Eventually, I managed to get a few articles published in national magazines, some popular glossies and others a little more dubious. My publisher heard about an article I had done on Ouspensky and another on Rodney Collin, and wanted to use them in a biography he was doing on Collin.
I eventually told him about the manuscript I had the planetary types, and since he was already familiar with the Fourth Way, he asked to see it. He emailed back and said he would like to publish it, I said yes please, and so, here we are.
So, what do you do with this? I make no apologies for the science, which might be a bit of a hard slog for some. Be prepared for a little brain exercise. However, once you start asking pointy questions about paranormalities like astrology and framing questions in terms of physics, you have to be thorough. Because science is thorough. Otherwise medicines wouldn’t work and planes would fall out of the sky. I am sure a true physicist would label what I have done as pseudoscience, but I believe it is one of the best attempts I have seen to wed physics with metaphysics, and that is saying a lot, as Saturnine types are traditionally very, very modest and humble.
Hello Tony
I enjoyed your book. It was interesting to see your scientific approach to astrology, and how you kept building on Gauquelin’s and others’ research. A lot to learn there. I think this is a book that it would be no problem to present to someone of a “scientific” or “skeptical mindset”. (Except to those “skeptical scientists” that have already made up their minds and so are unable to learn anything new.) The connection you found between astrology and music was also very interesting. I really enjoyed reading about that.
I also think you have found good examples for the types. Something I think the authors of “Human Types” and “The Body Types” failed at. (Pictures of Caucasian Solars with dark hair…)
I’m working on a (small) book about the body types myself.
You presented many valuable things; f.ex about the relation between types and heredity/family. This is something I’ve been wondering about. I also have some more questions:
1. Is it maybe true that DNA and “essence” are indeed the same thing?
2. Can we speak of “group body types”? Are f.ex Africans, East-Asians, Germans, Polynesians and so on belonging to certain “group body types”? To me this definitely seems a possibility. Something I believe Rodney Collin also mentioned.
3. What of the “Neptune type”? The perfected man? And is “the way” longer for a Lunar than f.ex for a Mars type?
4. Can we speak of a “body type octave”?
5. Is it correct to speak of 7 types, or are there rather really 6 types (+the Solar influence)? The 6 can be placed in succession around the Star of David – and then the Sun in the middle…
Well well – I was happy for the book. I’ll look in it many times in the future I think. And I recommend it to everybody.
B
Many thanks, Baxter. I am glad you enjoyed the book – you seem to have a kindred mind – curious, open, yet sufficiently skeptical. As to your questions:
1. I think DNA and ‘essence’ according to 4th Way teachings are different. The theory is that essence comes from planetary influence, but of course, if my experiments do not bear this out, then we’ll have to look for another source. It may be connected to DNA, but the recent discoveries of epigenetics may mean this is not a simple matter of genes and heredity.
2, I don’t know if we can speak about ‘group’ body types, although some body types do have a strong ethnic flavour, eg latin-american/venus/mercury, etc. Maybe we can only answer this when we answer the previous question.
3. I don’t know if we can relate ‘perfected man’ to Neptune. Planetary types only relate to mechanical man, not to what transcends that. At least, that is my opinion.
4. I believe octaves only relate to something with a beginning and end, so would need more info to know what you are referring to here.
5. It is true that the Solar type is definitely still a type but very different from the others, and I still have no strong clues about the mechanism of its influence. More research needed here.
Tony
Hi Tony
Just some thoughts….
4. Octave: I think of something like a staircase – where once you reach the top it starts again. An octave: Lunar->Jupiter – then there’s yet another octave (still Lunar->Jupiter), but on a new, higher level. Something like that.
Or: like Rodney Collin postulated (maybe he k n e w ), as I understand it – when a man has developed all the types in himself; perfected himself in “the body type octave” and in the Work in general, he, like the Buddhist escaping the Wheel of Life, escapes the body type octave into the New Man, which Collin called “Neptune”.
(I’m not sure why Collin chose Neptune, and not…Uranus…?)
I don’t think I can paste a picture here, but imagine the Star of David with the 6 types around it, one at each of the 6 points of the symbol, and then Solar in the middle. Or – the perfected man in the middle (or being the whole symbol).
Octave… I think we maybe can relate the octave of colors to the “octave of the body types” – we have seven colors, starting with red with the slowest vibration, and ending in violet with the fastest vibration. I think that’s a bit like with the body types. (If we look at light and electromagnetism, we’d definitely find another octave above, and below, any octave we examine…
I think Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs has body type symbolism. (How could they have done it? It’s amazing.) The seven dwarfs match the 7 body types quite well, including the beardless dwarf, the solar. And Snow White represents the Higher centres, or perfected human. …..
I visualize the body type …sequence.. as something like a shape that’s spiraling upwards. Like some round-shaped stairway.
The big problem, as I see it, with harmonizing the body types with the octave, is that it’s hard to really say they are 7 (notes) in a sequence like the Do-re-mi musical scale. I can’t really “translate” the two. Putting the musical octave with notes around the Enneagram works fine, but with the body types it’s a bit….different. As I see it.
5. I think there isn’t a Solar type. Only from a certain point of view. I see 6 types – or 3 pairs. + the Solar influence that colors some more than others. As I see it there’s no Solar, but Solar/Saturn, Solar/Venus and so on. This also “rhymes” well with the solar system; the big sun is in the middle and shines on all the other bodies.
Mythology…. I can see no god or goddess that really portrays the Solar. (While the other types have “perfect” representations in the god/goddess pantheons.) Yes, there’s always a sun deity. Usually, if not always, male. Apollo, the Norse god Balder, and many more. But do they really represent the solar type? I’m not so sure. …..
I find your examples Mia Farrow, Michael Jackson, Prince and Madonna to be perfect.
A friend of mine invented a really good (and funny) allegory explaining the types:
Situation: a body type is alone in a small boat with a malfunctioning outdoor motor.
Lunar: pulls the motor-rope (what is it called in English?), and it’s not working. Then, pulls again. Still not working. Then pulls again, still not working. Then (pulls again)….
Venus: Pulls softly one time. Not working. Lays down and enjoys the beautiful, sunny day.
Mercury: pulls one time. Not working. Gets irritated and gives the motor a slap. Quickly pulls again. Not working. Gets more angry – punches the motor. Pulls again – not working – gives it a really strong punch (and now it’s definitely not working.)
Saturn: Slowly and carefully pulls the rope. Not working. Tries one more time. Still not working. Then slowly and methodically opens the motor to find out what’s wrong.
Mars: Pulls. Not working. Pulls again. Harder. But still not working. (Starts getting irritated). Again – not working. (Getting really angry.) One more time – not working. Takes the entire motor and throws it overboard.
Jupiter: tries a few times, but it’s not working. So he starts to think of how he will tell this amusing story for his friends when he gets back.
Solar: A few tries. But it won’t work. But the solar sits in the boat in such a way that someone comes by and helps him
4. I am not sure that the body types represent a progression, where each step builds on the last, they seem just ‘different’. And I think Collin based his ‘Neptunian’ man on the cycles of regeneration that Neptune was supposed to govern. I think its hard to single out any period in history and call it a cycle, eg a cycle of war. These things seem to be pretty consistent throughout history. In any case, I think it is a symbolic representation rather than an actual influence. And at the moment, I am into ‘actual influences.’
The pure Solar type is very rare, and I’m not sure I see one that doesn’t have traces of the ‘circumference’ types. Michael Jackson and Prince seem to have some Mercury, as does Audrey Hepburn. Marilyn has plenty of Venusian. But I have met a few specimens who seem to be all solar. The thing is, the Solar tends to dominate more than other types influences in an individual.
I like your allegory on the types also, very accurate and to the point.
Hmmm….
Yes, it’s a great allegory. 🙂