Brief

For a tonally subdued yet perhaps notionally volatile beginning, here is a cautious assertion. If intent focused on anticipatory consequence were to be the sole criterion to deliver judgment upon a thought, then there can be only one possible verdict, which is that the thought is right and always so.  A wrong thought cannot exist, except within the confines of the luxury of hindsight. That some thoughts get throttled in their infancy, never to see the light of day; some do and manage to morph into muted, nondescript actions; while some others get transformed into glorious deeds and are remembered long after they have had their moment under sunshine, is a story apart.

A walk down the path of evolution reveals that the primary and perhaps the only purpose of every life-form is replication, that compelling attribute of all entities that have nucleic acids and certain other classes of compounds as their basic biological movers, or that class of material conglomerates that traditional science refers to as 'life-forms'. At each step of the evolutionary process, these compounds don an extra layer of protective gear that include the necessary infrastructure to interact with the surroundings and a superstructure to hold the gear and its associated supports in place, to survive environmental changes and competition from rivals. The objective of survival however remains unaffected, which is - replication.

Going back even further down the path of evolution, we see a set of fundamental physical constants that define the contour and innards of the universe that we perceive and that also describe and delineate all processes within it. Physical cosmology endeavors to explain the universe as an expression of the interaction of energy and matter in time, subject to definite laws of existence. The evolutionary archetype has a role here too, but the focus appears to be more on transformation and stability than replication. On reaching a certain level of transformation and stability, conditions become conducive to include the routine of replication into the scheme of encoded happenings, move it up the functional hierarchy, and accord it the pride of place.

The entire process then appears to be the unfolding of a set of basic laws in time, with each instant seeming to add to the apparent complexity of situations, but when viewed in isolation, entirely derivable, and having only one possible outcome, if the attributes of the environment at that instant are completely known.

A thought, when reduced to its logical nudity, is a set of chemical reactions within the structure that we call the brain; the strength, virility, duration, and byproducts of the reaction determined by the chemical equivalents of related experiences, current environmental conditions, and anticipated result. Going by the arguments above, it appears that there can be only one result of such a reaction, and hence the cautious assertion that a thought can only be right and always so.

If the above arguments were to be true, it implies that time is the determining factor in all processes in existence. It further implies that apparently unconnected and parallel processes would lend themselves to be correlated, if a correspondence between their attributes can be experimentally established. If there exists a procedure to compute one of these parallel processes in contention with a reasonable degree of accuracy and reliability, for a time spanning the past and the future, correlations too could be attempted within this period of reasonableness. This could perhaps be one possible explanation for the apparent results obtained from astrological correlations. The reservation is about the extent of accuracy and the level of consistency of such exercises.

The 'Thousand Children Project' is an attempt to verify the validity or otherwise, of this reservation, and in effect, the legitimacy of the arguments offered to explain the basis of astrological correlations.

Focus

Replication having been the center of attention of deliberations leading up to the development of the project idea, human indulgence in this exercise lent itself as the appropriate focus for such an analysis.

The endeavor was to explore the possibility of deriving dates of birth of children and their gender from the astrological birth charts of parents, consistently.

Only those conventions from such astrological practices were to be considered for correlation that were amenable to scaling, and therefore expressible as numbers that could be subjected to arithmetic operations.

Approach

Astrology cannot be expected to be exempt from the characteristic diversity of existence. It is certainly not so, with each land, culture, and region practicing a different brand; their approach flavored by their respective cosmological tenets and mythical beliefs. Even the celestial objects and points considered for correlation and the attributes assigned to them differ, as do the schemes of zodiacal divisions.

Needless to say, all claim applicability. The argument that "apparently unconnected and parallel processes would lend themselves to be correlated, if a correspondence between their attributes can be experimentally established", were to be acceptable, then the applicability claims of all brands of astrology is a possibility too.

For the purpose of this project, a particular brand of Indian astrology has been selected. Familiarity is the only reason for this choice. An assertion can of course be made later, if the analysis results in the validation of the supposition, that that wasn't the reason and it was no choice,  but a right thought at the right time, and an inevitability.

If astrological tenets were to be classified as territorial and effectual, then the territorial tenets have been adopted almost as they have been proposed. The technique of scaling of effects however has been steered by real happenings rather than speculative principles.  

The exercise of processing the birth chart of a parent to derive the birth dates of all children of the individual involves the following steps:

• mapping the celestial positions in a chart to a matrix of all possible combinatorial possibilities involving the positional, directional, and motion attributes of the celestial objects and points.
• adding the numerical strengths assigned to the attribute-combination involved and identifying the dates that correspond to those combinations that cross a threshold value according to respective dating schemes associated with each brand of astrology.
• if the dates so computed do not match the actual birth dates of children, then modify scales of the affected combinations and rerun the procedure over all charts to ensure that the modified scales do not effect those charts that have been already processed.

About a decade ago, a similar exercise was attempted with a meager sample size of 100 charts. The approach then, though largely similar, was much less organized and haphazard, and in conclusion pointed to the need of a sample target of at least 1000 children involving about 500+ parent-charts to be considered as the minimum required to obtain any meaningful result. Work continued in spurts and dribbles on this and many other projects. Having reached the desired landmark on this one, it appears that the ideal sample size would be at least ten or even a hundred times more, volumes that become increasingly difficult to handle for an individual. But this situation also seemed appropriate to share the findings so far with others with similar interests, in the hope that inputs and suggestions so obtained would facilitate charting a further course for this exercise. 

At the end of the exercise of processing one thousand children, the matrix of combinatorial positions referred to earlier, has a count of the number of times each of them occurred in the processed charts, and the optimum strength - as positive or negative, corresponding to their being beneficial or detrimental to the required outcome - that each could sport, to give the associated birth dates of children. The database of occurrence patterns and reproductive-potential scales so created, also provides a platform for comparison of the extent of compliance of astrological rules associated with positions, directions, and motion of celestial points, as mentioned traditional texts.

Peculiarities

It is assumed here onward, that the reader is aware of basic astrological principles and no attempt is made to explain in detail general terms associated with the subject. The primary features of the brand of Indian astrology selected for analysis are:

• Sidereal zodiac
• Seven celestial bodies and two celestial points of relevance
• Zodiacal divisions of significance: 12 signs(30˚), 27 lunar mansions(13˚20'), 108 navamshas(3˚20')
• Vimsottari dasa as time scale with 360 days to each dasa year.

In addition to the above astrological features, an assumption of the procedural kind has been made that appears to make the model work smoothly. It is that a virgin chart comes with a quantifiable potential to bestow a certain number of children. After each child-bestowal, the potential is depleted by a certain fraction, and when its value crosses a minimum threshold, bestowal ceases. The quantum of depletion is also determined by the positional, directional, and motional attributes of the celestial points in a chart.

By the model developed and employed, the process of computing the date of birth of children from the birth chart of a parent involves the following steps:

• Drafting the astrological signature of a parent in a manner required by the model
• Mapping the signature to the general reproductive-potential database to obtain an individual-specific reproductive-potential table.
• Using a standard data-derivation routine to derive birth dates of children from the table so obtained.

A pictorial representation of the steps mentioned is shown below.

The column headers for Table 0 translate as:

    c   Celestial point

    m   Motion of celestial point - N=normal, R=Retrograde

    s   Zodiac sign

    l   Ruler of the lunar mansion in which celestial point posited

    n   Navamsa of celestial point

    h   House in which celestial is resident

    r   Ruler-ship of houses

    j   Conjunction of celestial points

    a   Aspect from celestial points

The first step is drawing up the astrological birth chart from birth details of the parent. The next step involves establishing the birth chart signature that consist of the following values for each of the nine celestial points considered for correlation: motion, sign, lunar mansion ruler, navamsa, house in which resident, lordship of houses, conjunct celestial points, aspect of celestial points, and the situation of being hemmed in between malevolent and/or benevolent celestial positions.

This is followed by establishing a reproduction-potential table for the individual - Table-1, obtained from mapping the birth chart signature to the general reproduction-potential database, and also identifying the celestial sequences that conform to the birth dates of the individual's children according to the vimsottari dasa expansion for the chart. 

The column headers for Table-1 and Table-2 translate as:

    c    Celestial point

    s    Reproduction potential - Strength

    e    Reproduction potential - Eligibility

    m    Mark for eligibility above threshold

    r    Recurrence ability

    d    Potential depletion factor

Rearranging the order of celestial points on strength and eligibility (columns 2 and 3), the items would appear as in Table-2. Forming a celestial sequence based on the potential values in the rearranged table subject to the peculiarities of repetitive occurrence (column 5) translates to a date that is one day away from the actual date of birth of the only child of the individual.

Reduction in potentials after the bestowal of a child, moderated by the reduction parameter in column 6 leads to a residual potential table (Table-3), which indicates that the individual will have no further bestowal of offspring. The minimum value of eligibility is set at 2 units and there is no celestial measuring up to this norm in Table-3.

A little hop-skip-and-jump of faith

Even though appearing arbitrary, certain declared astrological norms have been accepted as reference standards for the purpose of this study. This is on the premise that if found to be applicable consistently, they stand to be validated along with the derivations based on them. Chief among such norms are the following:

• Division of the zodiac.
• Ruler-ship of celestial bodies over signs and lunar mansions.
• Distribution of ruling periods to celestial bodies in the vimsottari dasa scheme.
• Significance accorded to certain specific angular positions between celestial points over others (aspect).

Tolerance limits and factors effecting accuracy of computations

Birth dates computed to be within a range of ±30 days, is deemed to be correctly derived. Computing the exact number of children for an individual in a possible life-span of 75 years within such a tolerance range was assumed to be reasonable.

There are a number of indecisive factors that force such a standpoint. The significant among them are:

• The reference year for computing precession.
• The extent of precession each year.
• Accuracy of birth time.
• Undetected celestial combinations that may contribute incremental potency subtly altering the child-giving celestial sequence, which will essentially be a deficiency of the model.

Data Spread

For accuracy of data, sources have been restricted to relatives and friends. There are a few from acquaintances too, who vouched for the correctness of information provided. The geographical spread of the data sample is shown in Table-4.

The data spread by time is shown in Graph-1. This graph would keep changing as more charts are added in time to the sample. The axis denotes the year of birth of the parent and the ordinate marks the number of charts that form part of the sample for a given year. It can be seen from the graph that the year 1962 has the maximum number of charts.

Stumbling blocks and Side tracks

On completing the first task of analyzing 543 charts corresponding to the birth of 1039 children, the need to improve the process on many fronts before expanding it to a larger data set has been felt, and planned. The distribution of number of children for each individual in the sample of 543 charts is shown in Table-5. From the perspective of the model in its present avatar, the prospect of computing birth dates of children for individuals who have more than 6 children appears quite daunting. A fair share of enhancements and fine-tuning will have to be made to the model to ease this condition. A few charts of parents with more than 6 children that are there in my collection have not been included in this analysis for this reason. Table-5 gives a count for the number of charts in the sample corresponding to the seven possible options for a child-bestowal between 0 and 7.

A practical complexity needs to be mentioned in this context. One of the assumptions made for the model is that all 'child-births' count - including still-births, but not abortions. The validity of this assumption can only be verified over a large data set, and such facts being recorded during the process of data collection. To the extent possible, volunteers have been subjected to such questioning and the sample for the current exercise can be deemed to conform to the set norms.

Then there is this exercise of normalization of rules. There are 13,644 of them; at least; and this is the manner they add up to that apparently unreasonable number. 10 celestial points, each in 12 possible signs, with 5 of those points prone to retrograde motion also, permutes (5 x 12 x 2)  + (5 x 12) = 180 combinations. Each of these combinations can be resident in any of the 12 houses, can be conjunct any of the other celestial points or subject to specific aspects by them, or can be hemmed in between other malevolent or benevolent points. This swells the permutations to 180 x 30 = 5,400. Each of these parameters are scaled separately for strength and eligibility, doubling that number to 10,800. Finally, multiple house significations, and a similar identity to do with lunar mansions, brings the total number of rules to 13,644. They can be broadly classified into generic and specific rules. The process of normalization involves establishing a semblance of consistency to the generic rules without effecting derivation of children's birth dates already made. This will need to be done over many cycles. The normalized rules are further compared with corresponding tenets in astrological texts.

Beginning now, the agenda ahead is to update the blog with highlights and oddities of the model, as this exercise proceeds. Interested readers are welcome to offer suggestions, point out lacunae, or involve themselves in the process in any other manner that is feasible, with an intent of taking it forward and see where it leads to.

Behavior of the 'Bestower'

In a celestial sequence representing a date on the vimsottari dasa calendar for a chart, the  one in the second position is the determining element. It performs the role of a 'Child Bestower'. If there are no celestials in the reproduction-potential table with a value greater than or equal to 2 in the eligibility column (column 2) as well as a positive value in the strength column (column 1), the individual representing the chart can have no children. It is interesting to see inherent tendency of celestials to  bestow children by considering their occurrence as a 'bestower' in the 1039 such instances analyzed.

A, B, E, and M, certainly display a lesser tendency than the others in being the 'bestower'. This could to an extent be attributed to the fact that these four entities operate for the least time at any particular level of the vimsottari dasa scheme. Going by astrological traditions, three of them are designated malevolent celestials while the fourth is partly so. However, G, another designated malevolent, holds the pride of place, ahead of D and F, the celebrated benefactors, the latter also being the declared significator of offspring. Apparently, the occurrence pattern so far, is nor strictly according to reputations.

Each of the nine celestials are further probed to ascertain the reason for their complicity in being a 'bestower'. Other than their inherent tendency, the factors that are said to mainly abet this inclination are a celestial's residence in a particular zodiacal sign, house, and its ruler-ship of one or more houses in a chart.

Table-7 is an expansion of Table-6, with occurrence pattern of celestials as a 'bestower' further categorized as residence in sign, residence in house, and house-ruler-ship. The column titled "All" in Table-7 corresponds to the data row of Table-6. 

One observation that stands out from a study of the table above is that no celestial has an exclusive propensity for bestowing offspring. The complexities of a chart determine which of them take the lead, which don't; and hopefully within the ambit of a set of heuristic rules - why.

In essence, the endeavor is to establish whether or not a given combination of celestial placements subject to the applied segregating parameters, behaves consistently across the time period in focus in Graph-1, and contributes the same element of reproductive potency - divided as strength and eligibility - to the chart. Stating this differently using that standard measure of time for most life-forms on earth - a day, it is equivalent to finding one significant day in 27,393 (75 years of life) with a tolerance of ±30 days. The procedure additionally provides the possibility of determining the gender of the child born as well.

Going back to Table-1 discussed earlier and reproduced below, the strength and eligibility points accorded to each of the nine celestial points are made up of eight components. It may just be pertinent to mention that at the beginning of this exercise, which was a few years ago,  the number of such component-contributors were over fifteen, and later reduced to eight for ease of working. However, the need is now felt to increase the number again. 

Table-9 that follows, lists the individual rules that have been framed involving the celestial in question with regard to its location and association with other celestials, and the values that they contribute towards its strength and eligibility, which in turn determines its position in the child-giving-celestial-sequence. The occurrence numbers for the rules in the sample of 543 charts give a broad picture of their possible reliability.

                         The birth-time sensitivity experiment

With a set of established rules - its correctness still far from being unquestionable, a platform is available for experiments based on suppositions to check whether the results obtained from such experiments come anywhere close to reality. The first of these was to establish the sensitivity of the model developed so far to birth time of the parent, all other parameters being constant.

To set a backdrop to this endeavor, consider the following data for the city of Hyderabad:

• 6,809,970       : Population of Hyderabad in the year 2011  
• 17.5 births/1000: Crude birth rate of Hyderabad in 2011        
• 119,174 births  : Number of births in Hyderabad in 2011       
• 327 births      : Births per day in Hyderabad in 2011        
• 13.6 births     : Births per hour in Hyderabad in 2011       
• 4'24"           : Average time between births  

The above computations reveal that a model's sensitivity to birth time should be at least 4 minutes and 24 seconds to be able to mimic reality to a reasonable extent.

Computations for 30 fictitious births on the 5th of May, 1962, from 0:15 hours to 7:30 hours at intervals of 15 minutes, using the model in its present configuration yields the result shown in Graph-2.

This particular date (May 5, 1962) has been selected for analysis because there are two real charts in the sample for this date and - as can be see from Graph-1, the year 1962 has the maximum representation in the sample. In consequence, the rules are better primed to interpret the behavior of celestial positions occurring during this period than any other.

The extent of sensitivity is revealed by the number children computed for each chart, as well as the celestial combinations that point to the birth dates of those children. An apparent random occurrence of children's birth dates would logically point to better sensitivity than a uniform or gradual shift in those dates with increasing parent birth times.

Table-10 shows that this is indeed the case. It marks the month and year of birth of a child from the birth-time sensitivity experiment, while the number inside each colored box indicates the serial number of the fictitious individual corresponding to the axis in Graph-2.

The three yellow colored boxes mark the time-positions of the three children computed for fictitious parent number 15.

This experiment points to the fact that at the current level of sophistication of the model, sensitivity has reached a point of saturation. It also points to the possibility of increasing sensitivity to the desired levels and perhaps even beyond by including certain additional features to the model.

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Comments on what has been explained so far about this project, queries on any specific point, suggestions for improving the model, and accurate data to increase the sample size are welcome.