Page 23 - Talented Astrologer • Volume 2 Number 1 • Winter 2019

require an accurate birth time and hours of complicated math to draw up a unique birth chart. According to Goodman, knowing your birthday was sufficient.
To be fair, in the Forward, Goodman points out that merely interpreting the Sun sign is no substitute for a complete analysis of your natal chart. She briefly mentions the functions of the other planets, and she also separates her work from the sign-based predictions in the horoscope columns of newspapers and magazines. But who reads the Forward? The majority of the readers who pick up this book turn directly to their own Sun sign, followed by the Sun signs of the significant people in their lives.
Taken on its own merits, Goodman’s book has quite a lot of value. But the popularity of her book also raised the profile of daily horoscope columns based on Sun signs, which at best have value as entertainment, and this generated a serious backlash.
In 1975, a group of 186 self-proclaimed “leading scientists” published a hysterical, poorly-researched, scattershot,
reactionary manifesto filled with straw man arguments titled, “Objections to Astrology.” They cautioned the public to avoid any contact with astrologers because astrology lacks any scientific foundation. It’s unknown
whether they wrote this paper to demonstrate what a lackofscientificfoundationlookslike,buttheirony is exquisite. This is the origin and wellspring of every
“scientific” and skeptical attack on astrology.
The next milestone occurred in 1971 when Neil Michelsen, a systems engineer at IBM, became interested in
astrology.
Working on his home computer (years before computers were personal or portable), Michelsen manually input planetary positions from the ephemeris and house cusps from the tables of houses and developed the first
computer program capable of calculating a horoscope. In 1973, Michelsen founded Astro Computing Services,
which offered computer-calculated astrology charts and reports to astrologers.
It’s hard to appreciate the impact computers have had on the practice of astrology if you have never had to create a natal chart by hand. For thousands of years, the practice of astrology involved considerable mathematical skill. Casting a natal chart by hand requires hours of tedious calculations, and that requirement vanished virtually overnight. Math was the single biggest obstacle keeping those
with a passing interest in astrology from pursuing that interest. (It’s still the biggest obstacle preventing astrology students from taking the NCGR certification exams.)
Astro Computing Services soon partnered with Para Research to
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