There is a saying that people get the political leaders they deserve. There is probably some truth in this although the recent advance of the Republican right wing in the US and the UKIP party in Britain, suggests that we must all be very naughty indeed.
Capricorn Research feels that much the same must be true for Astrology, and the rise of Sun sign based horoscope columns sadly reflects and increases our inability to think for ourselves.
But there have been many improvements too over time. Astrology in the past was held much more in the grip of value judgements, good / bad, right / wrong. The language that pervaded the subject where planets could be and often were afflicted or debilitated and interpreted in a way where nothing good could possibly come from them, has certainly changed over the last half century.
A planet like Saturn that was considered bad has been reinvented as the great teacher much of it helped by astrologers like Liz Greene, and now we think of a strong Saturn as an essential component in a chart if someone wants to actually achieve anything concrete in life. Naturally Capricorn Research is much in favour of this relatively new way at looking at the old devil.
But as in everything a balance has to be struck. If we are looking towards a more holistic approach to astrology where we see the positive sides of Saturn and Pluto, perhaps we should also consider the negative aspects of planets like Jupiter and Neptune.
It could be argued that too much Jupiter has always been known as a problem due to excess, pride and overindulgence and there is a general recognition that you can have too much of a good thing. People who expect and get used to things always going for them can become lazy and squander their energies.
Its also interesting to look at which type of aspects to Jupiter can bring out the more negative traits of the sign, but that is the theme of another article, to be written soon. This one is focused on the darker side of Neptune.
Neptune is the realm of the intangible, it rules things that can’t be nailed down. It has no shape or structure, it is formless and is asking us to let go of the illusory certainties that we hold onto. It is a spiritual planet that asks us to trust the great unknown, if we can go with it, it brings tremendous illumination, but it requires us to be able to live on much subtler and more sensitive levels than the other planets.
All three of the extra Saturnian planets require us to be able to absorb and deal with change, but in a sense Neptune is the most demanding of all because it removes the very ground from under our feet. So what happens to people who are not able to respond positively to these Neptunian challenges ?
We tend to think in terms of confusion and loss of direction in life, of dissolution, but Neptune can account for as much deviant behaviour as Uranus and Pluto. In fact the 871 charts Capricorn Research has of criminals show that aspects of the personal planets to Neptune, occur far more frequently than to Uranus and Pluto, with a particular strength for the mysterious planet’s conjunctions with the Moon and Mars with scores of 126 and 129 % respectively compared to the expected figures.
Is there a particular type of crime that Neptune would be attracted to ? The planet does have a reputation for deception and fraud so we might expect it to figure highly in the charts of 144 Finance Criminals. Indeed this sample shows that conjunctions with Neptune consistently outscore those of Uranus and Pluto, with Mercury and Venus figuring particularly strongly at 156%.
Crimes of violence however are not really considered to be Neptunian territory as we look for indications of Mars, Saturn and Pluto.
This approach could be misleading however as the charts of 545 Murderers show us that The Moon’s and Mars conjunctions to Saturn score very highly at 134 and 127 % but the same pairing’s conjunctions with Neptune are not far behind at 127 and 122 %.
But the one area where Neptune really does score highly is in sex crime. Capricorn Research has 123 charts people who have committed this type of crime. Granted it is not a very big sample, but there are some extraordinary findings.
Its a fair bet that if people were asked to guess which Sun signs were most likely to commit these crimes, the two Mars ruled ones, Aries and Scorpio would come high in the list. In fact Aries is by a long way the lowest scoring Sun sign in this sample with a figure of only 49%, Scorpio scores 88%.
The joint highest are Gemini, Leo and Pisces with a figure of 137%. These findings are relatively insignificant given the small size of the sample, but its interesting that the Sun is in Cardinal signs 28 times, Fixed 45 and Mutable 50, a distribution that provides an interesting P figure of 0.039.
In dealing with criminality however, Sun signs are not a particularly good guide. It seems that the Moon, Venus and Mars are far more relevant and provide much stronger statistical findings.
This is backed up in this sample as the Moon occurs most frequently in Aries at 166 %, Venus in Aquarius at 185 % and Mars in Virgo at 195 %.
But its when we come to the aspects that an really interesting pattern emerges. By far the strongest player is Neptune, its conjunctions with the Sun occur at 132 %, the Moon at 176 %, Mercury 166 % and Mars at 183 %.
Its oppositions occur frequently as well with the Moon at 176 % and Mercury 146 %.
But the strongest single aspect of the whole sample is Neptune’s conjunction with the Ascendant which occurs a whopping 231 %.
There are of course cases where sex crime becomes murder and Capricorn Research has 74 examples. In this case the Moon in Aries still scores highly at 162 %, but the top scoring Sun sign here is Capricorn also with 162 %. The highest planet in sign frequency is taken by Mars in Virgo at 227 %.
In terms of the aspects for Murder including Sex Crime, Pluto makes an appearance as would be expected. The Sun is conjunct Pluto 268 % of the expected number of times, and the Moon is opposite the same planet at 219 %.
Neptune, however still holds a significant position, its conjunctions with the Sun occur at 146 %, the Moon at 219 %, Mercury 213 % and Mars 152 %. Venus appears most frequently with Neptune in square aspect at 243 %.
But the staggering figure, and again by far the highest score of any aspect is Neptune’s conjunction with the Ascendant at 333 %.
How to explain this phenomenon ? We might be tempted to think that some sex criminals having difficult opposition or square aspects to Neptune might point to an inability to live in the real world as other people do, and so might feel sufficiently outside of its normal sphere of influence to be able to commit these kind of crimes. Its interesting however, that its mainly the conjunctions that score highly rather than the so called difficult aspects.
It’s also the case that Neptune scores highest in aspect with the Moon, Mars and Ascendant and all three of these have a clear connection with the physical body. The Moon / Neptune relationship is interesting in that it scores equally highly in conjunction and opposition, which is not something that normally happens in most distributions.
There is one factor that might work to skew these findings and that is that over half of the people in the sample have Neptune in either Libra or Scorpio because they were born between 1942 and 1970.
Because of the relatively small samples involved Capricorn Research is not going to make any definitive statements about the role of Neptune in sex crime, but does seem to be a factor.
As with all of my work, I hope to stimulate more research perhaps from groups of people with access to considerably more data and sophisticated methods than my own. Or perhaps I would do it myself if someone would be happy to sponsor me so it can be a full time activity.
Many of my reservations about astrological advice is that much of it is handed out as hearsay and not really tested by research. Every day I read all kinds of things that are supposedly indicated by all kinds of placings or planets, midpoints, fixed stars and imaginary points in the sky, with very little evidence put forward to back them up.
The reasons often given for this is that astrology is a subject that does not lend itself to these materialist methods, it is essentially Neptunian and cannot be tied down in this way but Capricorn Research has proved that is nonsense.
The role of Neptune is to challenge our so called certainties and our assumptions, even about astrology and the planet itself.
So when we read a horoscope column that tells us that the Moon is conjunct Neptune today so we can indulge our dreams and fantasies, maybe we should apply some kind of Saturnian limits. Perhaps the old devil can come in handy after all.