Re-evaluating the Gauquelin Data

Introduction to materials to aid research into astrology

1. Background

Psychology departments may want to offer modules on the Gauquelin work, which was a topic of major controversy in the last decades of the 20th century. The material here is offered as complementary to the excellent pages on the French CURA website. This site aims to have a special focus upon the uploading of the Gauquelin-databases onto a home computer. This is basically a quite new situation - nearly all of the published debate hitherto has been by people lacking that ability. The main professional groups went up onto the CURA website in 2009, and then have been re-cast into a more easily-uploaded form in 2014 (by Derek Norcott, UK), which Patrice Guinard then kindly added onto his CURA page.

Students now are able to evaluate the data themselves, in a manner that was not available to an earlier generation of astro-researchers. This website is not concerned to advocate any particular view or conclusion. It aims to make relevant data available, as fully as possible, and thereby promote informed debate.

Is human fate linked to the heavens above? If so, can statistics show this? We here endeavour to reactivate the greatest astrology-research project ever conducted, in a 21st-century context.

(IMPORTANT NOTE Some files generated by the hyperlinks below require picture, Word, or spreadsheet software to load.)

1a. The Gauquelins at a UK astrology-research conference, chaired by Charles Harvey. Left, close-up of Françoise Gauquelin. (Copyright: anyone wishing to use these images should seek permission from the UK's Astrological Association.)

Photo of Françoise Gauquelin from Geofrey Dean's article in Correlation 26(1)

I would argue that the ground-breaking research of French statistician Michel Gauquelin provides us with compelling evidence for the existence of meaning in our world.

~ Ray Grasse, The Waking Dream, Unlocking the symbolic language of our lives, 1996, p.266

For nearly forty years, contrary to what skeptics claimed, the Gauquelins had been right. They had found a replicable planetary connection that was also independently replicable by others.

~ Dean and Smit, Astrology Under Scrutiny, 2013, p.128.

The Gauquelins have no way of proving that they did not cheat

~ Georg Abell, 'The Mars Effect', Psychology Today 16(7) 8-13

The evidence for the Mars Effect is better than for most of the 'facts' you will encounter in your psychology textbooks

~ Hans Eysenck, Correlation 15(1) 1995: Review of The Tenacious Mars-effect, p.54.

I have read all the criticisms...and I do not think any of these criticisms remain. At the moment this data stands as absolutely impregnable...which does not mean one cannot improve certain aspects of the work.

~ Hans Eysenck, Report of the 2nd World Congress of Astrology, Lucerne, Switzerland:Correlation,1984, 4(1) p.4.

Both those who are for and against astrology (in the broadest sense) as a serious field for study recognise the importance of Gauquelin's work. It is probably not putting it too strongly to say that everything hangs on it.

~ Arthur Mather, Zetetic Scholar 1979 Issues 3&4

A journey of discovery awaits those on both sides of the astrological divide who can put aside their hopes, fears and notions of what ought to be and who can instead look at what is.

~Ken Irving, in The Tenacious Mars-Effect, Ertel & Irving, 1996, p.vii.

The following is intended as a helpful guide to the controversies. Firstly, here are all of the articles on the subject that have been published in these seven journals: Astro-Psychological Problems (edited by Françoise Gauquelin) Correlation, The Humanist, The Journal of Scientific Exploration, Leonardo, The Skeptical Inquirer and the Zetetic Scholar.

1c Ertel's Gauquelin-related publications with summaries (.docx format) kindly sent by him

1d A detailed Chronology of the Events (.docx format) from a US viewpoint (by Jim Lippard)

1e Image of G-sectors (with kind permission from Geoffrey Dean) showing the two out of twelve Key Sectors (1&4), compared with the eight out of 36 as an alternative division.

1f Jigsaw Astrology Research software offers a comprehensive range of tools. Click here for more information. The Cura site offers .DAT files that can be imported and work with Jigsaw. Click here (.docx format) for how to upload data from tbe CURA site, using the Jigsaw program.

1g Michel's first article - in German!

In the year 1958 three articles appeared in the German journal Zeitschrift fur Parapsychologie (see above, section 1b): firstly, Carl Jung's famous paper on Synchronicity, which featured a marriage-synastry test: the most discussed and quoted astro-research experiment, ever; secondly, an article by Arno Muller (see Section 5) reporting on his attempt to replicate this marriage-synastry experiment by Jung; and thirdly, Michel Gauquelin's article - surely the first he ever published on his results - available to read here. If anyone feels like doing an English translation, we'd be happy to host it here.

Here is the one and only article published by Michel in an academic psychology journal: 'Spheres of Influence' in Psychology Today 1975 October, pp.22-27, reprinted in Philosophy of Science and the Occult, Ed. Patrick Grim, 1990, pp.37-50.

We've here alluded to eight different journals covering the subject, above. But, the great debates raged in more than twenty different journals on both sides of the Atlantic - including:

Astro-Psychological Problems (by Francoise Gauquelin) • British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology • Les Cahiers du RAMS (Paris) • Correlation the Journal of Research in Astrology (UK) • The Humanist • the Journal of Scientific Exploration • Journal of the American Statistical Association • Journal of interdisciplinary Cycles Research • Leonardo • NCGR Research Journal • New Behaviour, (UK) • New Scientist • Personality and Individual Differences • Phenomena, the News Journal of Cosmic Influence Research, (Canadian) • Psychology Today • Scepsis, (Dutch) • The Sceptical Inquirer • Science et Vie (French) • Zeitschrift fur Parapsychology (Germany) • the Zetetic Scholar.

That list does not include ordinary astrology journals.

Note: The Frenchman Thierry Graff is building up an excellent overview of the primary Gauquelin databases, at https://tig12.github.io/gauquelin5/historical-tests.html. I am collaborating with him in trying to clarify and improve some of these.

Gauquelin Data section 2 →

Re-evaluating the Gauquelin Data

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Introduction to materials to aid research into astrology

1. Background