Astrology is essentially all about numbers.
There are 12 signs of the Zodiac with the same number of houses, symbolising completeness, order and perfection.
It is found in the bible with the 12 apostles, the 12 tribes of Israel and with the 12 deities of Ancient Greece.
There are 12 members of the jury because this number is held to represent balance and fairness.
It is a multiplication of 4, as in the elements of Fire, Earth, Air and Water and 3 qualities, Cardinal, Fixed and Mutable.
Most followers of astrology would have an instinctive understanding of numbers in that 1 is unity, 2 is duality etc.
But when you analyse much of what is said in astrological circles, it becomes clear that understanding of numerical frequency is fairly unsophisticated.
By this statement I mean how long and how often a particular astrological phenomenon occurs.
Most people could tell you how long a planet would be in a sign, ranging from the Moon (just over a couple of days) to Pluto (just over 20 years on average).
So they would know that Pluto being in Libra for example would only have a generational effect because everyone in the world born between 1972 and 1984 (it was moving faster than usual) would have that placement.
They would also probably know that this same limited effect would not apply to Pluto being in the 7th house, because due to the Earth’s daily rotation, its house position would change roughly every two hours, just like all the other planets.
I have heard people say things like “she is my soulmate, because her Pluto is in my 7th house” presumably because the 7th is the house of mates and Pluto is something to do with reincarnation.
But if we subject this statement to rational analysis it makes little sense.
Presumably the person making it knows what their Ascendant is, because if not they would have no idea what is in which house. So if we say for sake of argument that their Ascendant 0 Aries, then every single person in the world born between 1972 and 84 would have their Pluto in that person’s 7th house.
That’s a lot of soulmates.
Any astrological statement that we make can only have significance based on the frequency of its occurrence.
We know that if the person making the above statement was talking about their soulmate’s Moon falling in their 7th house, the chances are on average 1 in 12. I say on average because the length of houses can vary depending on the time of day and place of a person’s birth so the Moon could be in the early degrees of Scorpio and still fall in their 7th.
It’s better but that’s still a lot of potential soulmates.
Say for sake of argument their Sun is at 10 degrees Libra in their own 7th house. If their soulmate has the Moon in the same degree of that sign, we can say this is a lot more significant because we now have a chance occurrence of 1 in 360 (the number of degrees in the Zodiac).
It might appear to be 12 times more significant (1 in this 4320) because of the 7th house connection, but it isn’t because that person is already starting from the fact of having Aries rising and the Sun in the 7th house.
One thing that seriously complicates matters is that someone making an astrological statement based on a particular placement is unlikely to acknowledge all of the other placements that they would have also considered to have pointed in that direction.
At the moment of making that statement they might not even have been conscious of it themselves.
So the above person has a sense that X is their soulmate because she has the Moon in their 7th house, but would they have also accepted Venus in that house as having similar credentials? Because here we are down to a chance occurrence of 1 in 6.
Or Jupiter? If so we are back on dodgy territory because anyone in the world born between November 1980 and the same month in 1981 would have it there.
Astrologers do this all the time. We look at a chart of a murderer and see they have a Mars/Pluto conjunction. We point to this and say this would be a major contributing factor in that behaviour.
We are not daft, we don’t claim it is the sole factor. If we did, then this world would be a much more dangerous place because it happens quite often.
If we allow a 10 degree orb, either side we are looking at a 20 degree possibility and the chances of that occurring are 1 in 18 (360 divided by 20).
But if that Mars/Pluto is also opposite Saturn then we are looking at a chance occurrence of 1 in 324 (18×18). So we feel we have got our man and its fair to point to this astrological combination as being the major cause of it.
However we don’t declare what aspects we would have also accepted as evidence.
That we would probably have included Mars conjunct Saturn opposite Pluto or Mars conjunct either one and square to the other or square to both. This would give us 6 possible options which bring the chances down to 1 in 54.
Some people would have included all kinds of other possible links between these three planets including minor aspects but also all kinds of other things that they have in their astrological palette.
Many would have accepted that we could have perhaps dropped one of Saturn or Pluto and substituted Uranus instead.
What we don’t realise is that by giving ourselves so many potential options to explain something the odds of that thing occurring quickly come down to the level of chance itself.
We believe we have intuitively picked up on the astrological reason for our subject being a murderer without knowing how many other indications would have ticked the same box.
So we might think we have caught a serial killer but we have unwittingly pointed the finger of suspicion at much of the rest of humanity at the same time.
And if we don’t have a structure that can reliably and consistently tell the difference between our soulmates and a potential murderer we should have no business claiming to be an astrologer.
If we don’t understand how our prognostications stand in relation to the laws of chance, our predictions cannot be taken seriously and anyone with an O level in Statistics would rightly be able to dismiss them.
The other side of that coin is that we often miss the incredible power of astrology, the absolutely mind boggling figures that would completely blow away any scientist who was prepared to take a serious look at the subject.
One area where astonishing odds are repeated constantly is in that of astrological family patterns.
I have a client who has the Moon at 6.54 Libra. Her father has his Moon at 6.30 Libra.
This is undoubtedly powerful synastry, there is less than half a degree between them so if we accept that it could have been either side we are still coming up with a connection that has odds of over 360/1 against.
My client has one sister, she has the Sun at 6.08 Aries, exactly opposite her Moon and their father’s Moon.
Even if we are being generous you could say a further 180/1 against.
However, note that we are talking about the Sun and not the Moon, so we have to acknowledge that by giving ourselves the other light as an option we are down to 90/1.
Also we have included the opposition as well as the conjunction, so that takes us down to 45/1.
Even so if we multiply this by the 360/1 thing between her sister and father we get again over 16,000/1.
The girls’ mother has the Sun at 8.57 Aries, so allowing for either side of this 3 degree orb we have a 60/1 chance, which given that we would also have acknowledged the same degree of Libra makes it 30/1.
Recognising that we would probably also have taken the Moon in the same degree area brings it to 15/1
There are no other children in this family, the chances of this Sun/Moon sign distribution synastry occurring are over 240,000/1 against.
The father however has the Moon in the 7th house of marriage, which is obviously a pertinent factor given that he was married to someone whose Sun was in opposition to it.
This would add another 12/1 factor, but we might also have allowed the mother to have her Sun in the 7th, so let’s make it 6/1.
So now we have a chance occurrence of something approaching 1.5 million to 1 against.
The two sisters as well as having this exact Sun/Moon opposition have a Moon/Sun conjunction.
My client’s Sun is 11.48 Virgo, her sister’s Moon is 10.54 Virgo, so a 200/1 chance.
We are now almost 300 million to 1 against.
There are many other powerful synastry connections that they all have, not least the fact that my client also has an Ascendant at 11.27 Pisces, with an exact opposition to her sister’s Moon.
Their father also has an Ascendant at 14.46 Pisces.
Their mother has Mercury and Venus at 16 and 17 Pisces.
So you can quickly see that the odds against this particular family coming together by astrological chance are zillions to one against.
Forty years of doing astrological research, using chi square tests and constantly asking myself what is the probability of this or that occurring in large samples of charts, has trained me to make these calculations instantly.
I believe that it is this training that enables me to reach the most significant points in a chart straight away.
These days with astrology software you can call up every possible feature of a chart or its transits and straight away read hundreds, even thousands of different paragraphs of interpretation that apply to it, many of which will provide conflicting advice.
How do we give relative weight to all of these different views?
A very simple way to do that is around frequency of expected occurrence.
If we take the charts of the above family we should expect transiting planets going through these degrees of Aries or Libra to impact on them all.
The Moon would do this every two weeks and its effects would last a few hours.
Transit Uranus would do it every 42 years and the effects would run for a year at least.
Consequently a transit of Uranus would be 1,000 times more powerful than that of the Moon.
Which is absolutely true because when Uranus transited through those degrees in the first decanate of Aries, conjunct two Suns and opposite two 7th house Moons, the two girls were in their teens and the parents separated.
Anyone claiming to be an astrologer should be able to recognise patterns like this extremely quickly but in my experience many of them can’t.
They would also try to cover up this ignorance by coming up with all kinds of bizarre alternative suggestions.
If we think of astrology as a numbers game, when we read a post on astrotwitter we can ask ourselves whether the writer understands how their prognostications relate to the laws of chance.
Probability not.
Posted on August 23rd 2025
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