Capricorn Research has always advocated a scientific approach to astrology. This has been a guiding principle behind all of the articles on this site. I have never posted any observations that would not stand the test of statistical analysis.
I have little interest in using astrology to describe personality. It absolutely does do this but my lack of focus on it is because character assessments must have a largely subjective quality. I am interested in facts that can be verified in the lives of famous ( or even infamous ) people.
I also subject everything other astrologers write to the same scientific rigour, and this is why most of them don’t like me very much.
If someone states that a placement or transit will cause a certain type of behaviour or event to occur and uses an example chart to back this up, then we have to expect that the same thing could be linked with similar events in other people’s lives at least to a greater extent than pure chance. Otherwise it is a meaningless, purely anecdotal reference and of no use to anyone.
But my experience is that very few astrologers, even those considered to be quite senior in the subject, have a real clear understanding of the laws of chance and how they operate with reference to their prognostications.
This is because they give themselves so many options to explain a behaviour. And they do this without realising that they do it.
There are hundreds, probably thousands of different astrological theories and methods. Computer software gives everyone, access to many of them.
I’ve watched one young man who seems to be obsessed with predicting the exact date of death of his grandparents, only to find the old folks stubbornly refusing to go along with his plans. Undeterred, he picks another method and revises his predictions.
One day he will get it right, but this would not mean that he has stumbled upon the secrets of the Grim Reaper himself, merely that he will have used so many options that chance alone will win out.
So much of astrology is bound by understandings that have accumulated ( or not ) over the years about what certain portions of space actually mean.
Even the areas where there is broad agreement, like Zodiac signs, have no real identifiable clarity.
We have made the assumption that there are 12 equal signs but there are no lines in the sky, or marks on the ecliptic that mark them out.
In the whole of astrology, the only thing that is unarguable is planetary aspects.
We know that there is a Full Moon, it is a simple statement of fact, the sign or house that it occurs in is open to dispute.
The same is the case with all other aspects.
Over the best part of half a century of observing the charts of people both famous and unknown, my experience is that the real drivers of the events in a person’s life are aspects. Signs can give a behavioural flavour to these events and houses can describe details of setting but its the aspects that make things happen.
And the tighter the aspect, the more powerful the drama.
The reason why I choose to write so often on the astrology of murder is because this is so singular and abhorrent an act that is well outside the experience, or even the contemplation of the vast majority of us. And for this very reason, it is an act that should be clearly identified by astrology.
As my many writings on this subject have proved beyond reasonable doubt, ( Murder Most Horrid ) the act of murder is largely the province of Pluto.
Rather than write any subjective assessment of the character of this article, I will just paste large chunks of his Wikipedia page.
” Jürgen Bartsch murdered four boys aged between 8 and 13 and attempted to kill another. The case of the sexual offender Bartsch in German jurisdiction history was the first to include psycho-social factors of the defendant, who came from a violent early surrounding, to set down the degree of penalty.
Bartsch was an illegitimate child whose birth mother died five months after his birth, and he spent the first months of his life being cared for by nurses. At 11 months he was adopted by a butcher and his wife, who suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder and was fixated on cleanliness. He was not permitted to play with other children, lest he become dirty. This continued into adulthood; his mother personally bathed him until he was 19.
Jurgen was physically abused as a baby and was often discovered with visual scarring and bruises. His mother also physically beat him, often in the same room where his father, the butcher, cut up carcasses. He was detained in an underground cellar for six years and was also sexually abused by his mother during bathing sessions. At eight years old he was sexually abused by his thirteen-year old cousin, and later by his teacher when he was thirteen years old.
Bartsch began killing at the age of fifteen. He persuaded all of his victims to accompany him into an abandoned air-raid shelter, where he forced them to undress and sexually abused them. He dismembered his first four victims.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment which was reduced to 10 years of juvenile detention under psychiatric care.
The psychiatrists considered various therapy concepts : psychotherapy, castration and even psychosurgery. Bartsch initially refused any surgery but finally agreed to voluntary castration in order to avoid lifetime incarceration in a mental hospital. The doctors chose a castration methodology that accidentally resulted in Bartsch’s death. “
This is a Pluto story on so many levels so you would expect the planet to be heavily featured by aspect in Jurgen Bartsch’s chart.
Jurgen Bartsch had the Sun in Scorpio in square aspect to Pluto. But that is only a part of it.
The orb between them is only 2 minutes. This clearly demonstrates that very tight aspects have much more power and dominate the person’s life to a greater degree.
In most instances this natal aspect would have a massive impact when the transiting Pluto came to the Sun by conjunction, but Bartsch didn’t live that long.
His killing spree and imprisonment occurred while Pluto was sextile his Sun and square to his Ascendant between 1962 and 67.
His death occurred when his progressed Sun was trine his natal Pluto in 1976.
Just to be clear the chances of anyone having a natal Sun / Pluto square aspect with 2 minutes of arc are 2700 / 1 against. This would compare against the chances of having any square aspect at 9 / 1 or 15 / 1 ( depending on whether you use an orb of 10 or 8 degrees respectively ).
For this to include a Scorpio Sun – 32,400 / 1
To include one of the planets being in the 8th house – 194,400 / 1.
So even without looking at Saturn’s involvement and the Moon’s opposition to Neptune or any of the other factors that make Jurgen Bartsch’s chart so unique, we can see the incredible power of the Sun / Pluto square.
There are many astrologers who will go to great lengths to deny Pluto’s power and will come up with all kinds of alternative explanations using their own fanciful methods.
If we remove the outer planets or even diminish their role, there is nothing that even remotely explains Jurgen Bartsch’s life.
But I’m more than happy to receive any alternative theories.
I’ll wait.
Posted on February 27th 2021