Fixed Stars and Judicial Astrology

This sequel published in 1990 to Dr. phil. George Noonan's  Classical Scientific Astrology  (1984) looses one star due to its failure to meet minimal academic standards befitting the qualification of its author: numerous typographical errors, no index, no glossary, no bibliography. This failure also reflects poorly on the publisher.Like Claudius Ptolemy, who is frequently quoted, the author, 19 centuries later in spite of laudable efforts to be 'scientific', still did not divest himself entirely from interpretations of fixed stars based on the constellations' shapes, mythologies, and the like that have much differed over time and amongst various civilisations. Nevertheless, using spectroscopic analyses of the colours, he made an effort towards more consistency with, surprisingly, very few differences from Ptolemy's catalogue. He also clarified that Ptolemy's terse style ('Tetrabiblos' is a sequel to the 'Almagest') often resulted in a basic misunderstanding, i. e. that for example 'Jupiter and Venus' did not mean the fixed stars of the constellation combined their comparable elemental qualities (see Aristotle) but rather that some of the stars have elemental qualties resembling those of Venus, others those of Jove. Dr. Noonan also contributed to resolving the issue of ecliptical latitude vs. paranatellonta in astrological evaluation of fixed stars' positions.The author's principal thrust in this book was judicial astrology. With texts expanding on and explaining Ptolemy's terse style as well as some examples and excellent illustrations, Dr. Noonan demonstrated that, contrary to the opinion of some modern astrologers, Ptolemy's system of judicial astrology remains quite valid and merits serious examination. Ptolemy's approach is confirmed by the fact that the current geographical centre of Earth (see Wikipedia article), strictly speaking "the superficial barycenter of the mass distribution produced by treating each continent or island as a region of a thin shell of uniform density and approximating the geoid with a sphere", is only about 300 km north-northwest of Ptolemy's position given in 'Tetrabiblos', both in current Turkey, an 'error' of about 0.75 % of the planet's circumference!However, like most astrological texts, this book sorely lacks validation. With a ratio of speculation to validation of 9:1 or greater, it is hardly surprising that astrology, even 'scientific' in the classical sense, finds little acceptance amongst current natural scientists.

This book is a must have for fixed stars.