The Father of Medical Astrology
I suppose the worst criticism, and the least called for, comes from a few medical scientists who use arguments that are no longer scientifically valid and are unworthy of their own status in the world of science. But scientists generally love to argue, and it is rare that a group of scientists is in complete accord, even when talking about their own field. I always wonder why some scientists are so reluctant to study astrology, yet are so ardent in refuting it. For instance, if they feel it is a superstition, long dead and buried, why bother to bring it up so frequently? If it is nonsense, then someone should examine it thoroughly and come up with a valid thesis against it. I defy any thinking person to study astrology seriously for a year and still maintain that it is not valid. Astrology is based on the laws of the universe that are the very laws of science, of action and reaction, and of cause and effect.
~ Sybil Leek, My Life in Astrology, 1972
We are so impressed with the work of Robert Carl Jansky, that rather than complete a substantive biography of this man's life, we have decided to reprint much of his most famous and powerful contribution to the realm of Medical Astrology, his book Astrology, Nutrition, & Health. Seven chapters are available now, beginning with Chapter One, below. This book is a MUST READ for any astrologer and any reader interested even remotely in the astrology of nutrition and health. No modern writer to date has such accurate insights on the subject. Jansky combined his interest in these topics with a strong background and training in biochemistry, also his father's life work, and this no doubt contributed to his obtaining, wearing, and never losing the championship belt of the Father of Medical Astrology. Robert Jansky was a pioneer in the realm of medical astrology, and his work has not been touched, rivaled, nor neared by any other writer since, including names like Omar Garrison, Noel Tyl, even Charles E.O. Carter.
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Astrology goes back several millenia to the rich alluvial plains of Chaldea, which lie between the mighty Tigris and Euphrates rivers. According to present-day research, the ancient people who lived there – the Chaldeans – were principally shepherds. It was wild land, where jackals and other predators roved, waiting to pounce upon a stray sheep. Thus, the shepherds had to remain vigilant against attack night and day. The land, originally covered by sea, is a vast and almost perfectly flat plain. With no mountains and few clouds to obstruct their view of the heavens, it is natural that the shepherds turned their attention to the firmament and studied the movements of the stars and planets.
Astrology has been on the scene for over 4,000 years; modern medical practice had its origin less than 100 year ago; and nutrition is barely 50 years old. Most authorities consider Louis Pasteur to be the father of modern medicine, because of his important discoveries. Before Pasteur’s time, most Church authorities thought it heresy to apply chemistry and biology to understand the chemistry of urine, and the presence of sugar in the urine had been recognized as a symptom of diabetes for many years, but no one who wanted to keep his head on his shoulders dared suggest seriously that the laws of nature and chemistry applied to the human being, cast in God’s own image.
In Pasteur’s time in the late 1800s, chemistry was a new science. Hundreds of chemical reactions take place in every individualized cell, but scientists had no way of studying chemical reactions on this minute scale or even realizing that they existed. The role of minerals in the diet was unknown, and vitamins had not been discovered. In the early 1600s, Harvey had discovered that blood circulates within the body, but the fact that outside agents like bacteria, protozoa, and viruses could cause disease was not known. Plague, tuberculosis, and smallpox were rampant. In the migration to the West in the United States, thousands died from diphtheria. Surgery was still performed by barbers. Even as late as the early 1900s, astrology books stated that the spinal canal contained “humours” or gaseous substances that liquefied only when penetrated by a hypodermic needle.
What was required was a sophisticated method for studying minute chemical reactions in the body, which had to wait for the development of modern electronic technology in the 1940s. However, some excellent pioneering work was done before that time by scientists who attempted to wed the sciences fo biology and chemistry into a new field of research called “biochemistry.” Pasteur was perhaps the first true biochemist.
For the most part, modern American medical practice may be described as allopathic medicine – a system that combats disease by administering chemical remedies (drugs) to counteract the symptoms of the disease. In general, these drugs are artificial chemicals that are not part of a healthy person’s diet, and although they alleviate the symptoms of the disease, they do not go to the heart of the problem. Instead, they block some natural body process or function. The few exceptions to this are the antibiotics and such natural substances as thyroxin (thyroid extract) and insulin, all of which have a natural origin.
Modern medical practice is actually in its infancy, for far less is known about the basic chemistry and functioning of the body than most people imagine. Billions of aspirin tablets are sold each year for the relief of minor pain, and yet no medical doctor can adequately explain in simple terms why aspirin relieves pain. Modern medicine simply does not yet know how aspirin works! Most of our modern drugs are used because, on the basis of empirical observation, they relieve the symptoms of disease without causing undesirable effects in most people.
Although aspirin in now synthesized in the laboratory, it was originally extracted from the bark of the willow tree. In fact, until the 1930s, most of the so-called drugs in the doctor’s satchel were extracted from natural plant substances. Quinine, from the South American cinchona tree, was used for the relief of fever and malarial symptoms. Digitalis, from the foxglove plant, relieved circulatory problems. Belladonna, a species of nightshade, was used to treat nausea and vomiting. Licorice and cascara were laxatives, and ipecac was the emetic used to induced vomiting. Molasses, from sugar cane, was mixed with naturally-occurring sulfur and taken as a general tonic. Crude horse serums were used in the treatment of such diseases as pneumonia. For centuries, alcohol distilled from natural grains and fruits, was the only anesthetic and disinfectant. It was not until the late 1800s that chloroform and then ether became available as general anesthetics in surgery, and nitrous oxide (laughing gas) in dental procedures. During World War II the discovery of the synthetic sulfa drugs saved the lives of thousands of wounded soldiers. And later, penicillin, which was originally from Penicillium notatum, simple mold, proved such a great boon to combating infection.
Today, the South American Indians think us civilized people “crazy” in our inordinate hunger for chocolate, a substance that they use only as a drug. The rauwolfia plant, from which we extract an essential alkaloid, is used in the treatment of high blood pressure. And the list of natural medicines goes on and on. Even marijuana is beginning to find medicinal use in relieving fluid pressure within the eyeball caused by glaucoma, as well as in treating asthma.
THE TAKATA EXPERIMENTS. In 1938, Dr. Maki Takata at Toho University in Japan began a biochemical study of the ovarian cycle in the human female. The presence of chemical messengers, called “hormones,” in the body had only recently been recognized, and their monumental influence on personality and physical development was not yet understood.
To carry out his program of research, Takata needed to develop a method of removing the protein albumin from the blood, because this substance interfered with his work. Takata’s method, now called the Takata reaction, consists of adding certain compounds to a blood sample, causing the albumin to flocculate or precipitate out of the liquid portion of the blood so that it can then be removed by centrifuging.
Up until this time, scientists had believed it to be an ironclad law that if a series of identical chemical reactions was performed under the same set of conditions (heat, light, purity, humidity, etc.) each reaction would proceed at the same rate in any geographical location. Takata discovered that this law did not seem to apply to his albumin flocculation reaction. At certain times it went faster, at other times slower. He set out to discover why this was so, after carefully verifying that other scientists using his test around the world were observing a similar phenomenon.
Takata assumed that his variation in rate for the precipitation of albumin in the blood did not occur in males. But in January 1938, he observed this phenomenon in the blood of males as well! Takata was determined to discover the cause of this cyclical variation in the precipitation mechanism. After examining all plausible explanations, none of which corresponded to his findings, he was driven to examine the implausible causes. It turned out that the rate of the reaction varied with the time of day, the date of the year, the eleven-year sunspot cycle, eclipses and magnetic storm’s in the Earth’s ionosphere. Heresy! Clearly, celestial influences were exerting a powerful influence upon the protein in the blood. Takata knew that proteins are the only chemical substances capable of “life” as we know it on Earth, and here he had demonstrated in his test tubes that celestial influences were affecting the chemical behavior of this protein. Could they be affecting other proteins in the body as well?
Proteins belong to a group of substances known to chemists as colloids. In 1951, at the University of Florence in Italy, Dr. Giorgio Piccardi became interested in Takata’s work and decided to repeat the Takata experiments, this time using a nonbiological colloid called oxychloral bismuth, which is prepared by dissolving trichloral bismuth in water. Heresy upon heresy – Piccardi discovered that the speed of this oxychloral bismuth reaction also varied according to celestial conditions! Unusual sunspot activity, eclipses and magnetic storms tended to interfere with and slow down the reaction, while periods of lesser cosmic activity tended to speed it up.
In 1954, Caroli and Pichotka in Germany took the work of Takata and Piccardi and demonstrated again that the rate of reaction varied with time and celestial conditions. There seemed little doubt that something out there in the heavens was definitely affecting events on the Earth. They could see it with their own eyes and time it with their stopwatches.
Piccardi also made another fascinating discovery when a boiler technician at the university complained to him that twice each year the rust in his boilers peeled off contaminated the water. And he could do nothing to control it. Piccardi theorized that the surface tension of the boiler water must have been reduced for some unexplained reason. But why? He noted that this phenomenon always occurred in September and March (to the astrologer, when the Sun is transiting through Virgo and Pisces). When the surface tension of water is reduced, it becomes “wetter.” Softening agents added to wash water reduce the surface tension, thus increasing the water’s ability to dissolve dirt. In Piccardi’s case, the softened water even dissolved the rust.
Schwenk’s experiments seem to support the idea of moving rapidly under favorable cosmic influences and more slowly when influences are adverse, for by remaining relatively quiet we are far less suspectible to outside influences. That, of course, is purpose of bed rest an illness.
BIOLOGICAL CLOCKS. At Northwestern University Dr. Frank Brown has done some fascinating work on mechanism that seems to be built into all living things, which Brown calls biological clocks. This refers to the ability of living organism to sense changes in the Earth’s magnetic field, which is only one ten-millionth as strong as the emanations given off in the immediate area of home electrical appliances. These changes in the Earth’s magnetic field follow a predictable schedule related to the positions of the Sun, Moon planets. For example, Brown discovered that oysters kept their cycle of opening and closing according to the Moon-timed tidal phase of their original home even when transported a thousand miles inland.
This biological clock mechanism can easily be tested in your own home. In the Fall, place some flower bulbs in darkest part of the cellar, away from all light, and leave them there until the following Spring. Check them periodically, and you will find that they do not sprout during the Winter months. But when their normal growing time arrives in Spring, they sprout even in storage.
When bulbs are stored, the tissues do not die, they “breathe.” Dr. Brown carefully measured the rate of respiration (utilation of oxygen) by bulbs in the stored condition. His experiments showed that as Spring approaches, the rate of respiration increases; they require and use more oxygen. The only possible signal these bulbs could receive is from the magnetic-cosmic field surrounding the Earth.
If you wish to learn more about biological clocks, read The Living Clocks, by Ritchie R. Ward, published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York. It contains a very fascinating account of this research.
RADIO TRANSMISSION Perhaps some of the strongest supporting evidence for astrology, especially the effect of aspects, has come from another non-astrologer, John H. Nelson of RCA. In the earlier days of long-distance (short-wave) radio, it was observed that ionospheric conditions had a marked effect upon the quality of short-wave broadcasting. It was important to RCA to be able to predict in advance when transmitting conditions would be adverse so that arrangements could be made to bypass the interference.
They awarded grants totaling several million dollars to some astronomers, who spent the money but produced little of value. RCA then turned to their own engineering staff, headed by John Nelson, who discovered that he could predict the conditions of transmission quite accurately by looking at the angular relationship between the planets on a given day: in other words, planetary aspects.
His forecasts were more that 95 percent accurate, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce in numerous yearly publications. Nelson describes his work in the book, Cosmic Patterns – Their Influence on Man and His Communication, published by the American Federation of Astrologers.
At about the same time, Bell Laboratories in New Jersey was also interested in this phenomenon, because the telephone network sends its signals by microwaves, which are very sensitive radio waves transmitted from tower to tower along a line of sight. Atmospheric conditions garbled these transmissions too. Bell Labs assigned this problem to Dr. Karl Jansky, who developed an electronic receiving instrument called a parabolic reflector, with which he was able to focus on certain sectors of the heavens and “zero” in on interfering radio-wave sources of radio transmission in the heavens where no stars could be found by even the most powerful telescopes.
Jansky’s findings led to the brand-new field of radio astronomy, which specializes in locating stars that radiate radio waves but no visible light. Jansky subsequently became known as the “father of radio astronomy” and his invention, the parabolic reflector, was the prototype of radar transmitting and receiving equipment.
THE HUMAN AURA For many years certain individuals have claimed the ability to see “auras,” that is, colors radiated by certain forms of energy in the body. Science at first gave this little credence, but within the last few years, specialized techniques have made it possible to actually photograph auras. The leaders in this field have been Russian researchers and scientists of the University of California at Los Angeles, notably Dr. Thelma Moss.
Physicists have long known that when current flows through a conducting material, such as an electrical wire, it sets up an electromagnetic field about the conductor. This current can be measured by an electrical instrument called a galvanometer, which is the principle on which electrical generators are based.
The human nervous system is also a conductor of electrical current. Messages are transmitted over the nerve fibers via tiny electrical impulses that can be measured with such instruments as the electrocardiograph and electroencephalograph. (Alpha and beta brain waves are electrical waves.) We already know that when current moves through a conductor, and this magnetic field is probably the “aura” that certain people claim to see.
When the drum or armature of a generator moves within a magnetic field, or cuts magnetic lines of force, it creates a flow of energy. Likewise, as your body moves, cutting the lines of magnetic force flowing from the Earth’s magnetic poles, a counter current is set up along the conducting fibers of the nervous system. Thus, we can clearly see from the preceding experiments that the galactic cosmic field influences the earth’s magnetic field, and that changes in the earth’s magnetic field influence the electrical character of the transmissions of the nervous system. Thus, a cause and effect relationship can be established “scientifically” between what is going on “out there” and what is happening here on Earth.
ADDEY’S RESEARCH Astrologers have not been totally “out of it” all this time! We just haven’t had the means to communicate our findings through scholarly journals as scientists do. One British astrologer, John Addey, has made another breakthrough. His mathematical and statistical work links astrology with nuclear physics rather directly. Addey took the birth times of more than 7,000 medical doctors and clergymen and computer-sorted them according to the location of the Sun in space at the moment of birth. Addey found that many of the doctors’ birthdates were grouped every one-fifth, twenty-fifth, and one hundred twenty-fifth of the way along the circle of the zodiac signs, beginning at vernal point of 0° Aries (where many of the birthtimes he studied were clumped).
Why did the number five figure so importantly? According to classical numerology, five is the natural number of the healer. Paracelsus, father of modern pharmacology (the science that deals with drugs), wrote of the correspondence of fiveness with healing. Addey rediscovered this phenomenon, as any modern statistician would, when he subjected the data to harmonic analysis (Fourier analysis). This was exactly the method used by such renowned nuclear scientists as deBroglie in the 1930s to unlock the secrets of the atom
The scientific proofs for astrology continue to multiply. However, as scientific knowledge proliferates, scientists must become more and more specialized, to the point that research in one area goes unnoticed by a scientist in a different area who might profit by it. Sadly, this is exactly what has happened in astrology, principally because it has never been accepted as a legitimate science, despite the experimental evidence we have described, and also because astrological research has never been adequately funded.
Pharmacology is concerned with the physiological effect of “foreign” substances introduced into the body: in other words, drugs and poisons. How or why the early drugs worked was not of particular concern to doctors at that time. The fact that they worked at all was the important thing. The ancients and not-so-ancients had discovered the curative properties of certain herbs, and that was that.
But there were those who “cared.” And these pharmacologists and herbalists set out to discover why certain drugs worked and how they changed the chemistry of the body. Some biochemists who related the first biochemical discoveries to diet in order to improve the health of the body were in fact nutritionists. The discovery in this century of certain chemical compounds essential to body health, called vitamins, spurred this research on.
Unfortunately, both biochemists and nutritionists overlooked a vast body of knowledge, which at the time was in disrepute, that would have helped them immeasurably. That body of knowledge, of course, was astrology, the oldest science. Because astrology is empirical, based on gross observation alone and unprovable in the test tube or under the microscope, it is generally considered irrelevant to their studies. This situation is still not much changed today, but the nutritionists are learning, as are the forward-looking astrologers. One day the teachings of all three sciences will be merged for the greater benefit of mankind. Perhaps this book will help. It is the first attempt that I know of to bring together the teachings of medicine, nutrition and health.
Your Astro-Nutritional Library
A question that my students often ask is, “What books do you recommend that I buy for my astro-nutritional library?” A good library of this sort should contain not only books on medical astrology, and there are a few on this subject, but also some good basic texts on anatomy, physiology, and nutrition. In order to study and understand any health condition, it is necessary to first understand in detail how the diseased are of the body functions normally and then what has happened to this area because of the abnormal condition. It is also necessary to understand how the subject’s nutritional habits and psychological factors may contribute to this condition.
Possibly the best basic textbook for the layman on anatomy and physiology that I have seen to date is The Rand-McNally Atlas of the Body and Mind, edited by Mitchell Beazley, published by Rand McNally, Chicago, 1976. It is beautifully illustrated, nontechnical in approach, and covers this entire field extremely well. This book is more expensive than most you will buy (over twenty dollars), but it is certainly worth the cost.
The foundation stone of your library should be the monumental treatise Encyclopedia of Medical Astrology by H.L. Cornell, M.D., now in its third revised edition, published jointly by Llewellyn Publications in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Samuel Weiser, Inc., in New York City. Cornell wrote this book in 1933, at a time when little was known about Pluto. The revised edition contains an introduction by Laurel Lowell with more recent findings regarding Pluto. In this book, you can find the astrological symbolism corresponding to any medical problem that was recognized at the time Cornell wrote the book. Of course much that we now understand was not recognized in the 1930s, so you will not be able to find everything here that you might be looking for. However, this book is as complete as any that exists now and much more accurate than all of the others, in my opinion.
The book stores are full of books today on nutrition – some excellent and some bordering on quackery. About the best textbook I’ve found on this subject for the layman is Nutrition Almanac, written by Nutrition Search, Inc., John D. Kirschmann, director, and published in 1975 by McGraw-Hill Book Company. Within these pages is all of the information on nutrition you’ll need. I am particularly impressed by the section on various disease conditions and the nutrients that may be beneficial in treating them. A considerable portion of the book is devoted to the nutritional content of the common foods we eat, information that is vital in planning a well-balanced diet.
You will wish to add many other books to your library, but the three mentioned above are the core; they should provide well over 90 percent of the information you seek.
