5) Twins
While twins are an interesting and challenging problem for astrology, it’s not an insurmountable one. In my talk “Little Lots and Arabic Parts: Big Differences in Similar Charts” at last year’s ISAR conference, I demonstrated how you can differentiate between the charts of twins using Lots and Zodiacal Releasing.
The problem is that the likelihood of unrelated “time twins” will increase as the annual number of births approaches 525,600 within a degree of latitude and longitude, a 138×276 mile area. I laid this all out in a weirdly popular post of mine How Many People Share The Exact Same Natal Chart? (And Other Boring Math). To put this into a simple and extremely scientific equation:
1 Rising Rectangle + (Rent births/year) = Total Dick Move to Astrologers
Now we’re quite a ways off from that, but we will likely get to that point in some parts of the world. And when that happens, we will have to use more than natal charts to tease out the differences between people (for example, the synastry with the charts of their parents may potentially have more explanatory power).
4) Conjoined Twins
The only thing more problematic than time twins…are twins who are born at the same time while connected to each other. Separate consciousnesses with connected bodies and the exact same birth time. To a large degree, they will lead very similar lives by necessity of their connection, so that doesn’t necessarily disprove astrology. They will always be in the same place together, same classes, same jobs, etc. However, since each twin will differentiate themselves from their twin, otherwise small differences could turn into wider divergences which should be able to be explained by astrology, if one only knew how. I suppose that the divergences themselves could be explained by the natal chart, but still, I don’t know if I have a really good answer for this one. Thanks, world.
3) People Who Are Born Twice
Watch this amazing heartwarming story that is unexpectedly gory and mildly frustrating for astrologers.
So…do we use birth time #1 or birth time #2? I’m inclined to think birth time #2 because it directly preceded the child’s life outside the womb. If they were able to put the child back into the womb then they must have still been connected by umbilical cord and not taken its ‘first breath’.
In some ways this question is an extension of the debate about conception charts vs birth charts. The astrological phenomenon is bigger than a single snapshot in time. The natal chart is important for sure, but we’re also part of a continuum. General transit patterns through one’s gestation can be very telling, and often involves a cycle that appears to follow a family’s history, generation to generation. From my own experience of having children, their natal charts seemed to be determined by patterns that were established prior to conception, in the charts of important moments in my relationship with my wife.
Is it too much to ask for people to be born once? Thanks, world.
2) Head Transplants
Seriously, the world is deliberately trying to dick with us. So there’s this surgeon Sergio Canavero who’s ballsy enough to try to perform a head transplant surgery, and this other guy Valery Spiridonov who’s desperate enough to want to their head transplanted onto another body. This is actually happening. ‘Okay, so what’ you say, it’s some freaky science. But it poses a pretty weird issue for astrology should it be successful. How do the natal charts of the head patient and the donor body interact or do they? Would the donor body still react to their transits even though the body is directed by the head which belongs to a different nativity? Would it be considered the start of a new nativity or just the continuation of the life of the guy who gets his head transplanted? What becomes of the significators of the body and death when your body dies but your head lives? Or when you die but your body continues to live with a new head? I want the data of the patient, the donor and the doctor!
1) Extraterrestrial Births
Some day in the future, probably sooner than you’d think, the first person will not be born on Earth, either on other planets, moons or in space. If people are born on other moons or planets, then what happens to the meanings of the planets? Do they change or stay the same? For example, what would the astrological significance of Earth be from the perspective of Mars? If people are born on space stations in between planets, what becomes of horizonal considerations? I covered some of my thoughts on all this here. If we’re being honest, the only form of astrology that could survive some of these unprecedented circumstances is heliocentric astrology, and even that would be less certain if we ever left our own solar system. And if all that wasn’t enough, we all know what this is heading towards.
At some point in the future, there will be two sets of conjoined twins with head transplants born at the same time twice. In space.
