 | Spirit And Sky Top Spiritual Site 2005 |
TAARP - TR-001 -
Preface
This is the first annual report of The Alpha Astrophysical Research Project (TAARP). It covers the first year of research that Glenn Johnson and I performed from April 1995 through April 1996 in our pursuit of understanding natal astrology. I had been investigating astrology in general on my own for a few years prior to Glenn joining me in April 1995. The report should be viewed more as a detailed plan of attack than as a presentation of hard, concrete results.
Our approach to investigating the scientific validity of natal astrology is two pronged. There is an analytical, quantitative element and a meaning oriented, qualitative element. The analytical, quantitative element serves a dual role. It functions to aid in the meaning oriented, qualitative interpretation of natal horoscopes and as a process in itself to attempt to accomplish such tasks as distinguishing one group of natal horoscopes from another group. An example of this latter role would be to identify a set of astrological features or parameters that assume one distinct set of values for creative geniuses and another distinct set of values for people of average intelligence.
Since April 1996 we have made very little progress on the analytical, quantitative part of our investigation simply because we have not spent much time on it. We have made some appreciable progress in our ability to execute meaning oriented, qualitative interpretations of natal horoscopes, but again we have not been very dedicated to concentrating on natal chart interpretation. We have not produced any reports other than our first annual report.
The first annual report is almost exclusively involved with our analytical, quantitative approach to natal astrology. It is not designed to be casual reading. It is a scientific, technical report. It must be studied to derive any appreciation of it. The report and the great majority of our research is focused exclusively on the astrological writings of Aleister Crowley, and in particular we are attempting to understand exactly what he means by the term "astrological complex", and how to identify and interpret astrological complexes in natal horoscopes. The reasons for our concentration on Aleister Crowley's astrological writings are given in Block 9: "In Praise of Aleister Crowley".
Right up front I want to apologize to the reader for the organization of the report. It was put together in great haste and it has never been given a serious technical review. It is definitely a rough draft, and if I ever decide to make a final report out of it I will completely revamp its organizational structure. The primary thing wrong with its organization is that the term "astrology" rarely appears until the last appendix in the report, Appendix E. The reason for this is that I wanted to present a method of approach that would be appropriate for studying the possible correlation between the manifestation on the face of the earth of any phenomenon whatsoever and the patterns of the heavens at the moment of manifestation of the phenomenon. So, all the way through the report up through Appendix D I refer only to the PHENOMENON and only in Appendix E does the reader discover that the particular phenomenon under current specific consideration is natal astrology. It would have been a much more coherent report if I had started off discussing natal astrology and then in the last appendix presented an explanation of how our approach to natal astrology could be adapted to other similar correlation problems.
Pursuant to these considerations I recommend reading "The Technical Report (Introduction)", and then reading the report itself in the following order:
Anyone seriously interested in studying this report who is not familiar with natal astrology should at least make a cursory read of a book that covers the fundamental elements of natal astrology prior to tackling this report. Examples of such books are:
Each of these books has serious technical, scientific errors and fundamental flaws. I do not know of a really good book that presents the fundamentals of astrology.
To fully appreciate the report, a mathematical background in differential and integral calculus and Fourier series is required along with some appreciation of scientific computer programming and adaptive computer software algorithms.
