Today we are talking about what is known as The Mars Effect. If you don't know what I'm talking about then buckle your seat belts because we are going to be talking about statistics. LOVE IT.
But first, a bit of quick backstory. So there was this guy Michel Gauquelin. He was born on November 13, 1928, in Paris, France. Which I just found out is also Jimmy Kimmel's birthday. Cool. Michel thought astrology was rad™️ but his teacher was like, "no, it's fake and lame." So then he was like, "Oh, ok," and went into statistics instead, pretending to hate astrology, but studying it in secret (Those aren't exact quotes, but you catch my drift). He lived his normal life and eventually married this lady, Francoise. He had told her about his guilty pleasure of astrology and that he wanted to do some stat studies on it. She told him to Just Do It and that she would help him out.
That was the beginning of what would eventually be a series of studies that all tested the validity of astrology, one of them being The Mars Effect. Since there was no internet and therefore no Facebook pages where everyone could post their charts and beg for free readings like inconsiderate twats, Michel and Francoise had to go to city halls in several different places to gather birth data. They started out just in France, but due to the fact that Francoise spoke French, German, and Italian, they were able to get birth data in different countries as well. I can barely speak English (as you can tell by this blog), so I am very impressed by this fact. Over the course of many years, they collected and calculated over a HUNDRED THOUSAND birth charts, which again, they had to do BY HAND because Astrocafe didn't exist yet. With these charts, they were able to test the validity of a BUNCH of different astrological concepts that mainly focused on career since that was something that was easily observable from an outside perspective.
Now that we got all that background out of the way, let's get into The Mars Effect itself. It states that: "Sports champions were born more often than ordinary people after the rise of Mars (Mars in the 12th house [Gauquelin's "key" sectors 1 and 2; ed.]) and after the culmination of Mars (Mars in the 9th house [Gauquelin's "key" sectors 6 and 7; ed])" (source). Which, is just a fancy way of saying that people born with their natal Mars up to 20 degrees before the ascendant and up to 20 degrees before the Midheaven, are more likely to become Famous Athletes. Here's a pic of the graph:
I'm gonna be brief on the math stuff cause I was in low-level math in high school and dropped out of college without ever taking math, but here are some numbers that are taken from Michel's book, Cosmic Influences on Human Behavior: The Planetary Factors in Personality. If 17.17% or fewer people were born with Mars in these placements it wouldn't mean anything, but anything above that was too frequent to just be a coincidence. He originally tested 567 people in 1955 and then an additional 1,632 people in 1960. It turned out that 22% of the professional athletes tested did indeed have one of these placements, meaning it was too statistically frequent to be chalked up to sheer coincidence. In other words, this is the first time we ever saw someone "prove astrology"...right? Well, that's where the controversy comes in.
Let me to break down the actual astrology, if you are a super pro, you may have already picked up on the problem people had with his findings, but I'm going to walk through it for the people who don't know.
Mars is what I call: "The Planet of shit that men feel like they need to be due to toxic masculinity." So things like strength, ambition, anger, dominance, sex drive, are all determined by Mars. So, looking at where people's Mars sign falls makes a lot of sense if you're looking for astrological evidence of famous athleticism since men stereotypically like sports.
The ascendant (or rising sign) is the line that indicates the start of the first house on a chart. It determines things like how strangers perceive you or the kind of mask you put on for the world (Isn't that the most original way anyone has ever described the ascendant, no one's ever used that metaphor before). The first house itself indicating basic personality and identity. Having Mars in a person's first house could mean that they might gravitate to things like sports since they identify heavily with that side of their personality.
The Midheaven is the line that indicates the start of the tenth house on a chart. It determines things like the reputation you will leave behind and the life that you create for yourself. The 10th house indicating career and your standing within that career. Having Mars here could also indicate being a professional athlete in a pretty straight-forward way.
You may be saying at this point: So what is the problem then if all that checks out? People should be using this against skeptics, this should make the news! Well, the study kinda fucks up how astrology works in a very foundational way.
Let's go back to what the study says again (in my own words though, because I doubt you wanna weird the crazy mumbo-jumbo again). People that are born with their natal Mars up to 20 degrees before the ascendant and up to 20 degrees before the Midheaven are more likely to become Famous Athletes. That's the problem. The ascendant and midheaven are the beginnings of the first and tenth houses. So if Mars shows up, up to 20 degrees before those points than they don't fall in the first and tenth house, they fall in the ninth and twelfth, which have NOTHING to do with career. The ninth house is the house of philosophy and the twelfth house is the house of the subconscious. While yes, having Mars conjunct the ascendant and midheaven would remove the need to have it in the first and tenth house since conjunctions blend meanings of 2 points together, but if Mars is 20 degrees away it is not an actual conjunction.
In conclusion, according to the Mars Effect, Mars relates to the ascendant and Midheaven, which would make sense astrologically, but not in the way that it's "supposed to".
Along with these findings Michel stated that he believed in astrology, but only the parts of it he could prove statistically, and kinda came up with his own way of doing things based on his findings. This pissed off the astrology community hardcore and they pretty much shunned him and his studies. As for the scientific community they did give him some attention, but only because they wanted to prove his findings were wrong in some way.
The Mars Effect was re-tested 3 times by skeptic groups. The first group came to the same conclusion but claimed it was because there was something wrong with the math, they just didn't know what it was. The second group also came to the same conclusion as Michel but intentionally tampered with the data until they could make it seem like they disproved it and then published the fake results. This lead to a huge exposé coming out by the founder of said skeptic group about how he could no longer support the group due to their unethical practices and 2 of the other people who ran the test came out with public apologies to Michel and Francoise. The Final skeptic group just kinda waited for Michel to die to publish anything and what they did publish was basically a slander piece on Michels character based on letters they had sent back and forth and not on any actual science at all. Francoise, who was still alive, gave them a bunch of shit for that, but all the drama surrounding this study turned a lot of people away from it and no one ever re-tested it afterward.
And that's how someone actually managed to prove some validity to astrology (kinda) and got hate from both skeptics and astrologers for it. What do you guys think? Is there something to what this guy is saying and that we should change the way we do astrology? Or do you think things are fine the way they are, whether or not math can prove it? Honestly, I just think it's cool that someone could prove any of it and wish there were more studies done on astrology, but that's just me.
Thanks for reading. Levi
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