|
CD-B DIRECTORY
|
COSMIC DATA-BANK A BEGINNING Our solar system is our greater environment. I instinctively knew this to be true from an early age but the first people I met who actually talked about it were a group of astrologers I met in Vancouver while I was taking my B.Sc. degree at the University of British Columbia. I attended many of their meetings, read hundreds of astrology books, traveled to astrology conventions in different parts of North America, and met many of the leading astrologers of the day in the 1960s and 1970s. At first I found astrology to be curious, complicated, and confusing with little agreement between astrologers on anything, but I didn't give up quickly; astrology had been around in one form or another for over six thousand years. The problem was that I could not find any significant evidence to back up astrological beliefs. That did raise quite a few warning flags for me as I had grown up in a community, heavily influenced by religion, where unchallenged believing was considered fundamental to being a good citizen; a kind of thinking that will send you down some very slippery slopes. I began to see astrology not at all like a science but more like a religion; even though astrology uses geometry in some of its procedures, it is primarily a belief system. A few years later, still living in Vancouver, I purchased a remarkable book titled "Recent Advances in Natal Astrology, A Critical Review 1900 - 1976" compiled by Geoffrey Dean, PhD, DIC, ARCS, assisted by Arthur Mather, BSc, MIInfSc and published by The Astrological Association and The Urania Trust of the United Kingdom. The opening lines of the 'Introduction' on page one jumped right at me and I couldn't put the book down for several hours. What follows are the opening lines of the 'Introduction' that had such an impact on me: "The astrological literature is filled largely with demonstrations of belief. What it is not filled with are demonstrations of truth. The result is chaos. If truth is to replace belief, research is essential...In this book 'astrology' means the study of correlations between living organisms (especially man) and extraterrestrial phenomena. It does not mean Lucky Stars or similar absurdities masquerading under the same name." Dean and Mather were obviously not men who minced words and their frankness impressed me. Their book is a classic study on the failure of astrologers to legitimize their beliefs at any time over the past 6,000 years. Reading the book confirmed my own views but on the other hand I was disappointed that in all this time so little had been done by scholars to test astrological beliefs. I met more astrologers at congresses and conventions who were equally less interested in testing their astrological beliefs. The usual comment to me was that astrology was a mystery and unknowable by science. I began to look at astrology and astrologers not as a source of questionable information but of failed opportunities. LIFE IN A SOLAR SYSTEM Over the years my career path took some very interesting as well as enjoyable twists, but on my own time I began to vigorously explore the question of the human relationship to our solar system and to design ways I might test it. One summer day as I strolled barefoot along the beach at Spanish Banks I realized that the proof of the presence of the very relationship I sought to investigate, surrounded me. I lived it every day as did all other living things. Let me explain. Initially the universe was chaotic and atomic, an extremely violent place. After a some expansion and cooling it became elemental, and eventually molecular. With continued cooling and expansion, electro-chemical complexes emerged, and further down the time-scale, solar systems began to form. Systems have always been an important feature of the universe and for all life forms developing on Earth, the dominant system at the time was our solar system. The evolution of every form of life on Earth over the past two billion years took place within the parameters established by our solar system. The principle truth of our solar system has always been very simple, work within the parameters set by it or perish. In order to succeed, every evolving life form must contend with some difficult parameters such as the demands of gravity, different types of radiation, the diurnal cycle of light and dark, the seasonal cycles of heat and cold, a molecular world of constantly increasing complexity, and a physical reality that includes daily electro-magnetic fluctuations. There were many life-forms that didn't make it but eventually, natural evolution produced the earliest humans as well as our own species, Homo sapien, molecular humanity grown large and conscious. Our physical bodies are composed of elements found throughout the universe and all of them have originated in a dying star. Everything we eat has been generated by sunlight. We are molecular beings composed of stardust and light; significant changes in our lives begin at the atomic level. The unseen world of the really small is critically important and includes the ongoing communication between our subconscious and the planets of our solar system. There is more than enough proof for that statement in the transit studies I have placed on this website. Your relationship to our solar system is built into you and this website is a great place to explore that fact. HOROSCOPES In these early years of the 21st century, educated people don't talk about our relationship to our solar system because to do so sounds like we're talking astrology and everyone knows that astrology is a lot of silly fun, primarily for the superstitious, the mystical, and the believers in gods and monsters. Whether it was initiated by fear, superstition, priests, or profit, the early astrologers connected humans to the solar system. In Hellenistic Greece one could only see six of the planets with the naked eye and so they constructed their astrology using Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The more enterprising amongst those early people made money by providing horoscopes and predicting future events for their customers. The basic horoscope is a circle with a dot, representing the Earth, in the center, drawn on a piece of paper. The circle is divided into twelve 'houses' and there are many ways of doing that, each defended vociferously by astrologers. (There is little agreement between astrologers on anything which simply adds to the overall confusion.) The nine planets (Including Pluto) and the Sun are then arranged around the circle according to their addresses at the date and time of the moment under scrutiny (your birth day for example). Do you see anything wrong with this basic horoscope? HINT: The Earth isn't at the center of our solar system, the Sun is at the center and Earth is one of the nine planets. The Earth-at-the-center horoscope is called the Geocentric view, an apt anagram of Egocentric view, and that view is still the popular one used by many astrologers to this day. THE ERLEWINES Until the late '70s, horoscopes were calculated and constructed manually. It was a time consuming, error prone process. In the early days of personal computers there were no commercial software programs that could accurately construct a horoscope and print it on command. Before software became available, calculating a horoscope was a manual effort requiring a minimum of thirty minutes of time if you were experienced, and an hour or more if you weren't. However, where there is a vacuum something will move into it and the people who decided to do something about this vacuum were computer savvy as well as skilled in astrology. Brothers Michael and Stephen Erlewine opened Matrix Software in Big Rapids, Michigan, and produced software for astrologers in 1978. Other entrepreneurs, such as Robert Hand at Astrolabe, retailed their own software and for most astrologers these new products made the task of constructing accurate horoscopes very easy and vastly enlarged the number of astrological techniques available to them. I saw the arrival of this software to the retail market as a joyous event. The new software offered me a window of opportunity that I could not resist, the opportunity to do research now that so many of the laborious and time consuming tasks had been computerized. COSMIC DATA-BANK In 1987 I opened the Cosmic Data-Bank research center in downtown Vancouver at Helmcken and Hornby. The building was an old house built in 1935, the same year I was born, but I made it as efficient and as attractive as I could and got down to business. By this time I had mastered the astrological software from Matrix and tested its accuracy. Did it pass all the tests? It did and I was very impressed. The next challenge was to design a project that might shed some light on THE QUESTION. Is there a relationship between humans and their solar system that is measurable? The first thing I did was throw out the astrological bathwater, but I kept the 'baby'. The 'baby' is the ancient concept that everything is connected. Was the connection measurable? Certainly some astrologers had shown hints of promise but had never followed through to the point of offering any proof. I wanted to have a go at answering the question. The parameters I set at the beginning of the work are listed below:
More than two decades and twenty-two projects later I have listed most of the finished projects on this website. The experience has been thrilling to say the least; not only did I have the opportunity to explore unknown territory, each and every project taught me something new. I call the work astrobiology and while it may appear to be another form of astrology, it is not, for astrology is based upon beliefs and astrobiology is based upon observations. HELIOGRAMS Astrologers construct horoscopes and astrobiologists construct heliograms and they differ in important ways. The heliogram is based on a Sun-centered solar system and horoscopes are not, they are based on an Earth-centered view of the solar system, a self-centered view at best. Heliograms are easy to make: draw a circle and put a large dot in the center to represent the Sun. Divide the circle into twelve equal sectors of thirty degrees and number them. Place the planets around the Sun according to where they were at the time in question and you have a heliogram. The information on the planets' positions may be obtained from a heliocentric ephemeris on the internet or at your local library. Better yet, if you have Win*Star, the latest software from Matrix, it will make the calculations for you and place the heliogram on your computer screen, almost instantly. APPLIED ASTROBIOLOGY We live in a solar system composed of nine planets orbiting an average Sun. The solar system is our greater environment; we are part of it and interact with it on a constant basis. Here are two easy steps to get started.
BIOLOGICAL CLOCKS The following was written by Karen Wright in Scientific American magazine, September 2002, page 59. "In human bodies, biological clocks keep track of seconds, minutes, days, months, and years. They govern the split-second moves of a tennis serve and account for the trauma of jet lag, monthly surges of menstrual hormones and bouts of wintertime blues." "The pacemakers involved are as different as stopwatches and sundials....Some are set by planetary cycles, others by molecular ones. They are essential to the most sophisticated tasks the brain and body perform." TUUM EST! The research undertaken at the CD-B has enabled me to stay very interested in life, to further understand why we do the things we do, as well as make use of an important aspect of our human circumstance, the cycles of life. There have been many ideas to ponder along the way and what you see on this website is a distillation of the fruit of my labor. It is a good beginning and I feel rewarded that I have been able to contribute this knowledge for everyone's benefit. The planets of our solar system mark the extent of our greater environment. They make very useful clocks which help us understand our personal relationship with our solar system. I can show you the way but the rest is up to you. Tuum est! Learn more about astrobiology: HELIOGRAMS For the most recent Win*Star software go to the Matrix website: www.astrologysoftware.com/ The 'Express' version which is suitable for astrobiology, costs US$50, and is available for both pc and Mac. The software is written primarily for geocentric astrologers, but includes all the heliocentric techniques required for astrobiology. Disclaimer: I receive no compensation of any sort from anyone for advertising the excellence of Matrix 'Win*Star' software. I recommend it because it is the best software for heliocentric research of all the different ones I have tried. Questions? Jeffrey Kent Simpson jef@cd-b.com
|