For example, Albert Einstein came up with his world-changing Theory of Relativity before his 27^th birthday.  But career success and visibility didn’t arrive for master chef and television personality Julia Child until much later in life.

Astrologer Edith Hathaway says a system of astrology based on methods from seers or “enlightened beings” in ancient India gives modern astrologers a predictive tool – the Dasha systems – that can be used to determine which planetary influences will be most pronounced, for better or worse, at different times in an individual’s life.

Hathaway is author of In Search of Destiny: Biography, History & Culture As Told Through Vedic Astrology.  In her book she provides more than 30 biographical studies of individuals whose careers sequentially peaked at different times based on planetary periods unfolding from their moment of birth.

She says there are more than 55 different Dasha systems in the ancient Vedic astrology system. The most important of these is called the Vimshottari Dasha, or 120-year cycle.

The 120-year Vimshottari Dasha assigns a specific number of years to the sun, moon and the five planets visible from earth with the naked eye. Also included in the sequence are the moon’s north and south nodes, known as Rahu and Ketu in the Vedic system.

The nodes are sensitive astronomical points defined by the moon’s orbit around the earth.

“The order or sequence for the planets comes from the rishis, or ancient seers, as do the number of years assigned to each,” Hathaway explains.

The same planetary sequence is repeated with smaller time increments during the sub-periods.  How the period of the featured planet plays out depends greatly on its original placement in the individual’s birth chart – where the planet was situated in the heavens at the moment of birth.

For example, Albert Einstein was born in 1879 and died 76 years later in 1955.  From his Vimshottari Dasha sequence it would be apparent to Vedic astrologers that by far the most creative years of his life would occur during the 20-year Venus Dasha when the planet Venus was most involved in shaping his individual destiny.  This Dasha began in December 1895 and ended in December 1915.

It would also be apparent that major recognition most likely would come during the following 6-year Sun Dasha, when the sun’s energy was most pronounced.  For Einstein this period ended on December 14, 1921.

In March 1914 Einstein became Director of Physics at the prestigious Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin.  He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for work he had done in 1905-06 during his so-called “Annus Mirabilis” or miracle year, when he was an unknown 26- year old.

Though he was revered and recognized for the rest of his life, all of his scientific work after this 26-year period (December 1895 to December 1921) is considered to be of less importance, Hathaway says.

Julia Child was on a much different timetable.  She was born in 1912 and died in 2004, but at age 49 her long public career as America’s most renowned expert on French cuisine was only just beginning.

A significant 16-year Jupiter Dasha between April 1941 and April 1957 found planet Jupiter asserting its influence.  This period brought her foreign travel and residence and her first meeting with husband Paul Child, a career diplomat in the Foreign Service.

Child began testing and collecting recipes for her now famous cookbook during this period.  But her career remained in the shadows until her Saturn Dasha, the next planetary period in the sequence dominated by Saturn.

Hathaway says this 19-year period began in April 1957 and held sway through April 1976.

“Saturn’s results do not come to fruition quickly.  However, after some initial delays and setbacks, Alfred A. Knopf published Child’s 734-page cookbook in 1961, an event that coincided with the couple’s return to the U.S.,” she said.

Child’s television series began in February 1963 and went on to become the longest running program in the history of public television.  Child continued to do the program until shortly before her death at age 92.

Hathaway says the Dasha system produces valuable insights for the famous and not-so-famous alike.

“If the most auspicious Dashas occur early in life it’s sometimes difficult for a person to accept what comes next.  If they come later in life the challenge is to not lose faith that one’s gifts and goals will come to fruition at a later date,” she said.

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Editor’s note:  This news feature is based on an article, Mysteries of the Vedic Dasha System, published in the NCGR E-News Commentary by the National Council of Geocosmic Research on April 14, 2013.  This article and more information on the author can be found at www.edithhathaway.com

And one of the most prestigious sculptors of the day, John Quincy Adams Ward, sculpted a statue of Garfield that was placed on an ornate pedestal on the road island to the southwest of the Capital.

Perhaps only a few in the immense crowd gathered for the Garfield statute dedication noticed what appears to be an entire horoscope cast in bronze and depicting planets in astrological signs on the northwest side of the statue’s plinth or base.

David Ovason, author of The Secret Architecture of Our Nation’s Capital, believes this may be the only such astrological figure on any public statuary in the U.S. But, inexplicably, astrological symbolism is everywhere on display in public buildings and elsewhere in the nation’s capital.

The city is teeming with zodiacs and zodiacal images. Many are in official buildings, including the Capitol Building itself where one would never expect to find such symbols of the spiritual world.

In Ovason’s 1999 book he says, “There are 23 important zodiacs in the city and at least 1,000 zodiacal and planetary symbols.”

Kenneth McGhee, an Arlington, Va., astrologer who lectures on the subject, suggests the number of important zodiacs in the city is higher. By his count there are 30 zodiacs with 12 of these located in the Library of Congress Building alone.

A tour of this building turns up a zodiac dome and zodiac clock in the main reading room. There’s a floor zodiac in the Great Hall and zodiacs also are found in marble columns, in a granite arch, on the arm rail of the main staircase and in a hallway painting of Urania, who in mythology is the muse of astrology.

“There is even a zodiac in the wallpaper of a meeting room,” he says.

The Library of Congress Building was completed in 1860. But there also are zodiacs in buildings completed much later in the 20th century, such as the ceiling zodiac found in the Senate Dirksen Building, completed in 1958, and a light fixture at the Ariel Rios Building, built in the 30’s.

McGhee says astrological zodiacs are visually prominent on armillary spheres located throughout the city in such diverse locations as the Air and Space museum, the Reston Town Center, Friendship Heights, Montrose Park in Georgetown and U.S. National Arboretum. These spherical sculptures are modeled after the instruments used by ancient astrologers to determine the location of celestial objects before telescopes were invented.

According to McGhee, the staid Federal Reserve Building and the Freer Art Gallery have zodiac light fixtures. And there are zodiacs on the Mellon Fountain and in the Hillwood Museum garden.

“But nothing is more bizarre than the arch zodiac above the alter at the Catholic Church’s National Basilica on Michigan Avenue. Or the zodiac symbols embedded in an entry door at the National Academy of Sciences,” he said.

So why do we find so much astrological symbolism in the nation’s capital city today?

In his book, Ovason addresses the issue:

“The more I have explored the city and the more I have been touched by the many zodiacs it contains, the more I have marveled that so little research has been done into the arcane aspects of its design. One consequence of the scholarly silence is that the majority of my questions have remained unanswered,” he writes.

But Ovason describes the Founding Fathers’ flirtation with the esoteric ideals of the Freemason movement in the late 18th century. And he suggests this may somehow be connected with the proliferation of astrological symbols we find in the capital city today.

The city itself was planned by George Washington and was initially surveyed using stars as guides. The nation’s first President was also leader of a Masonic Lodge, and Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and many of the nation’s other founding fathers were part of the Freemason movement.

In this era Masonic elders used astrology to time the laying of foundation or corner stones for every significant new structure rising in the district, including the White House and Capitol Building, he points out.

McGhee thinks the birth chart or horoscope he uses for the capital city provides some clues to the mystery.

“The city’s birth chart has a lineup of planets (including the Sun) all clustered in that section of the horoscope astrologers identify with mysteries and the occult. Which fits with all the secret symbols found in the city today,” he said.

It may be difficult to accept, but what we think of as going on outside our bodies – and even inside them – is a complex construction entirely subjective in nature. We gravitate toward family, friends and colleagues, sharing our opinions and absorbing theirs, thereby completing the web of illusion that makes up our daily lives.

Our body of opinion that has shaped our experience of reality over the last few hundred years is scientific materialism, which is directly concerned with the perception and measurement of the objective world. Instruments have been developed of greater and greater sensitivity to measure more and more subtle effects. When a new force is perceived and measured, it seems to have philosophical repercussions, which slowly sift down through society, until the fabric of collective consciousness is subtly reconstituted.

Perhaps this is due to the vocabulary that invention generates. When Newton’s laws of motion were expounded, the vocabulary of push, pull. Leverage, attraction, action and reaction became a way for us to represent reality, and these laws and words spawned a mechanistic view of understanding nature.

While Newton’s heritage was a vocabulary of gravity Einstein’s was a vocabulary of light and of relativity that has profoundly reshaped collective consciousness. Relatively sounded the death knell for scientific materialism because it made experience of the object dependent on the perception of the subject. Subject and object are a continuum. And just as subject and object are interrelated so too are body and mind, and matter and energy – with consciousness free to dwell at any point on this duality spectrum. Where before the whole crux of scientific investigation was to be as detached as possible from the object, relativity theory has shown this to be an ineffective and inaccurate means of investigating subtle nonmaterial forces.

Where Astrology Comes In…

This is where astrology comes in as a tool for perceiving reality. Dealing more with the mind and senses of the subject, or individual, there is an intrinsic acceptance that the object – that individual’s experience – is mutually interrelated and interdependent. Rather than life simply happening to us we are constantly evoking events in a complex dance between our character and our fate, or between our consciousness and the object of our consciousness.

An astrological consultation I once gave may serve to illustrate this phenomenon. It was for a middle-aged lady who had a very tenuous grasp of reality, with powerful delusions about being followed by men. I did my best to persuade her that she was probably imagining most of the incidents, based on the astrological fact that she had the astrological sign Pisces rising on the ascendant (where the sun comes up in the East) and the planet Neptune on the descendant (where it sets in the West). In astrology speak, Neptune is the planetary “ruler” of Pisces and has been negatively identified with illusion and delusional patterns of behavior. Simply, this particular configuration might be expected to evoke a tendency for the woman to be confused in her relationships with others if other elements of the birth chart confirmed this possibility.

It was an unconvincing consultation undermined by my inability to deal with her mental state. A few minutes after she left my office I decided to go out shopping but on opening the door I found the lady on the stairs studying a bus timetable and muttering to herself. Not wishing to appear to be following her, I smiled weakly and retired to my office, waiting until she had proceeded on her way.

Acutely aware that I might confirm her fantasies if I crossed her path I walked into town using a circuitous route. Twenty minutes later I arrived in the town square and as I did so the bus pulled up alongside me and my client stepped out. She took one startled look at me and started walking rapidly in the other direction.

Experience had vindicated my client and proved to her that her version of reality was the correct one. The extraordinary thing was that my own behavior had been altered, and events had conspired to bring about that which I had wanted to avoid. This scenario plays out in all our lives as our personal character stamps its impression on a reality that is constantly adjusting to who we are and what we do.

The corollary of this is good news in terms of free will. By adapting our behavior, we can alter reality and our experience of it. And everything in our world will alter in it, including the people we relate to.

Herein lays the power of astrology, which can be released by judicious work with the energies reflected in the horoscope. And herein lies the possibility of transformation.

The unidentified woman was arrested after defacing Eugene Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People, an iconic painting commemorating the July Revolution of 1830 in France.

According to American astrologer Ray Grasse this is the painting said to have inspired Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi, the French sculptor who created the Statue of Liberty that was gifted to the United States in 1870.

It’s also the painting that was featured on the pre-euro, 100-franc French banknote.

The unidentified woman, described by police as “unstable,” scrawled a 12-inch graffito on the bottom of the painting before she could be restrained by a museum guard.  The incident occurred on February 8.

“Fortunately the woman took a pen, not a knife, to the painting.  Museum officials say the canvas should be easily restored,” Grasse said.

Considering the revolutionary nature of world politics today this particular incident may seem little more than a minor footnote in a turbulent historical era.   But Grasse believes the symbolism of the painting’s iconic imagery coming back into consciousness at this time is “very synchronistic.”

Grasse is author of The Waking Dream: Unlocking the Symbolic Language of Our Lives and Signs of the Times; Unlocking the Symbolic Language of World Events. He provides this astrological explanation:

Delacroix painted Liberty Leading the People in the fall of 1830.  The exact date the painting was finished isn’t known but at about this time the planet Pluto was transiting the astrological sign of Aries and was either in or near the eighth degree of the sign.

When the painting was defaced earlier this year the planet Uranus was at about the same degree of Aries and applying a challenging aspect to Pluto 90 degrees away in the sign of Capricorn.

“From an astrological perspective, the sensitive degree placement and angular relationship between Pluto and Uranus might reasonably be expected to trigger the famous painting’s birth chart or horoscope quite strongly,” he said.

Although astronomers have downgraded Pluto to minor planet status astrologers hold a contrary opinion.  Grasse says the icy planet is viewed as the powerful, transformational archetype that empowers, overwhelms, destroys and resurrects the universal life force at every layer of existence.

Uranus represents the principle of change, freedom, rebellion and revolution and is identified with unexpected developments of all kinds. When dynamically paired with Pluto the combination has been linked to upheaval and change throughout human history, he noted.

True, he was fed up with establishment views in America and chafed at the fact that professional colleagues rarely shared his enthusiasm for astrology. But, he recently told a BBC journalist, the main reason he left his comfortable lifestyle and professional achievements behind was because this existence failed to make him happy.

He gave it all up to become Deepak, an ashram astrologer living in India in sparse and frugal surroundings. He sums up his passion for astrology with these words:

“Astrology is the most misunderstood subject of all human knowledge. It is not about knowing your future…it is about knowing yourself. It is about the journey of your soul through this world and what this is all about. And it is about the process of self-awareness and what is true for you,” he observes.

“Astrology can tell you what, when, where, and how. However, something else will have to tell you why,” he adds.

Although there are few worldly trappings in the living space he now calls home, Professor Vidmar hardly fits romanticized notions sometimes associated with disaffected societal dropouts. Among his meager possessions are books, papers and the computer that keeps him tethered to the outside world.

From time to time, he drops in to remind anyone who might be listening of the ways intellectual priorities in the western world continue to run amuck.

A Life or Death Issue…

A few years ago, for a major astrological journal, he wrote a scathing critique of the Shawn Carlson research study which, according to the researcher, purportedly proved that astrology doesn’t work. More recently, an essay published in the OxfordStudent newspaper synthesized his adamant views on how western science is dodging obvious astrological truths.

Dr. Vidmar’s OxfordStudent essay is published here in its entirety. He writes:

“What if astrology is real? It is not only a multi-trillion dollar question; it is a life or death issue. It is the missing element in all the fumbling disciplines of quasi-knowledge being taught in the universities today. Without this missing element, not only can the institutions not solve the current problems we are facing, they are actually creating them.

“Let’s be clear about what we are talking about. We are not talking about a mystic teller with broken teeth and dirty fingernails who will tell you your fortune. We are talking about a universal constant that shows its effects in every body of knowledge we possess today.

“Astrology is just a word made up from Greek roots in the 14th Century. It is many thousands of years older than that and has had many names and applications. It is better in this age to call it the ET Effect.

“As a licensed psychologist and professor of psychology for 20 years, I gave over 3,000 psychological evaluations. As an ashram astrologer in India for 20 years I have given over 3,000 sessions. The end conclusion is that the ET Effect in the field of personality is real.

“If the ET Effect is real in the field of personality, then it may be a real effect in other disciplines also. I have just spent 50 hour weeks for the past five years researching this question. The end conclusion is that the effect is universal.

“Take biology. We are not disconnected and isolated on Earth from the rest of the Universe. F.A. Brown is the classic researcher here and has found fiddler crabs, clams, potatoes, seaweed, etc. to be phase locked to cosmic frequencies of solar and lunar cycles. The whole phenomenon of exogenous biological clocks pertains but is unexplained.

“Chemistry also – Giorgio Piccardi has extensively tested that chemical reactions on Earth vary according to sunspot cycles. Maki Takata found flocculation of albumen in blood serum varied to sunspots and sunrise. A.M. Comunetti found electrical conductivity of pure water changed with cosmic factors.

“And even in history, the orthodox position of a linear progressive model is illusionary and not supported by the evidence. Instead, the flow of events is cyclical with ups and downs.

“Whilst I have mentioned just these fields, similar situations apply in economics, physics and medicine.

“If these results were in any other field but ‘astrology’ the evidence would have lead to more funding than LHC (the Large Hadron Collider). This is a culture bound prejudice since 1666 when science/society went psychotic thinking reductionism/facts (left brain) could explain anything, while pattern recognition (right brain) was ignored.”

More on the unique views of Dr. Vidmar can be found on his website http://www.astronlp.com.

Her fascination with astrology has never waned.

Gryphon moved with her family to Seattle as a pre-teen and later earned a BA, MA and JD law degree from Stanford University in California. She continued to study traditional astrology even while attending law school.

In addition to work with clients she has taught classes on a variety of astrological subjects, including how to use astrology to elect favorable times for business and investing. Her astrological predictions have appeared in USA Today, Associated Press, Reuters, Chicago Tribune, Sina.com, Times of India and other publications.

Gryphon recently completed a mundane research study that successfully pointed to winners in U.S. Presidential elections dating to 1880 with uncanny accuracy. At the United Astrology Congress (UAC) earlier this year, she was one of five astrologers on a panel of experts asked to predict the outcome for the 2012 Presidential election in the U.S. All predicted that President Obama would be successful in his bid to win four more years in the White House.

In making her call, Gryphon used the same technique and rules she successfully applied in her study of earlier U.S. elections, including President Obama’s victory in 2008. But she doesn’t believe the research broke any new ground.

“At its core, the concepts used to evaluate the political climate for winners and losers was first set down in writing by the Sumerians four millennia ago and, in all likelihood, dates back much farther than that,” she explained.

The ancient predictive technique used by Gryphon is keyed to interpreting what astrologers call an Aries ingress chart. Simply, this is a birth chart or horoscope created for the exact time the Sun enters the astrological sign of Aries and can be prepared for any location on earth, including Washington D.C.

Ancient astrologers used Aries ingress charts to predict the fortunes of kings in power and those who might challenge or threaten the throne. Gryphon reasoned that a similar situation might be set up when titans from the major political parties battled for political supremacy. It was her idea that ingress charts prepared for the capital city during an election year should reveal something meaningful about the candidates over the next 12 months.

“The ancients thought of the Spring Equinox – when the Sun arrived at zero degrees of Aries – as the yearly anniversary of the creation of the Universe, the first moment of its existence containing the seeds of the future unfolding through time. The Persians still celebrate this day as Nowruz, the New Year. So it is a theory with a respectable pedigree and is worthy of examination,” she said.

In the Aries ingress chart, specific rules regarding layout of the astrological map and the planetary patterns within it apply. In her study, Gryphon analyzed results for 32 elections held over the132-year period. A more detailed explanation of the research can be found here.

In an interview with the Astrology News Service (ANS) she provided these additional insights:

ANS: Was it especially challenging to apply ancient astrological rules and techniques to events in the modern world?

Gryphon: After examining a few horoscopes I found a consistent pattern. In the Aries ingress charts, the planets of the winning party were found to have a connection with other strongly placed planets, whereas the losing party’s planets were either not doing anything or were being actively harmed by other planets. This is extremely basic astrology.

When I started doing the horoscopes the first rules I applied worked on about 80 percent of the charts. But it was clear I wasn’t seeing the whole picture. I took some time off and came back to all the horoscopes with a less expectant attitude. And more of the rules underlying the remaining 20 percent (of the charts) gradually began to reveal themselves. Given a random horoscope from my sample, I’m now able to predict the outcome correctly 90 to 95 percent of the time. Any lack of accuracy I attribute to operator error.

ANS: Have you been able to test the technique elsewhere?

Gryphon: Earlier this year, when Francois Hollande defeated Nicolas Sarkozy in France, I used the rules and technique from the study to predict Hollande would be the winner. This prediction was reported in advance in the monthly Gryphon Astrology Newsletter. With so many past and present elections in the offing the theory clearly is testable.

ANS: What is the climate for astrology like on college campuses these days?

Gryphon: Historically, astrology has flourished at times when culture and economic prosperity was at an apex – the Italian Renaissance, the Arab advancement of science, mathematics and culture, the Elizabethan era in England, and so on. We in the West have just lived through a period like this, the second half of the 20th Century, and Western astrology has been immensely enriched as a result.

Unfortunately, due to the economic situation, students today are probably less likely to explore ideas they do not see preparing them for the task of earning a living. My hope is that there is sufficient momentum in astrology – and a sufficient number of young people entering the astrology world.

ANS: What about the corporate world. How is astrology doing with business people?

Gryphon: In my experience there is a great demand for astrological advice in the financial and corporate worlds; one simply has to speak the right language. In any highly competitive sphere, people want to gain an edge over the competition. Our earliest texts indicate that astrology was developed to advise the rich and powerful. The early Babylonians spent considerable time watching the Sun and Venus specifically for information about the political and economic situation in their land. This is one application for astrology that does not get much play in the public eye, yet is extremely useful and very frequently used.

Many use astrology yet few will admit it publicly, partly because it is socially unacceptable to speak against the prevailing scientism but also because no one wants to give away their advantage. I’ve come to realize we live in two overlapping worlds. There’s the world described in our public discourse, such as the news media, where things are portrayed as rational, scientific and measurable. And there’s the world we actually live in, which motivates our decisions and which is far richer, more complicated and filled with things reason cannot explain. Astrology brings together reason and instinct to help us function in the realm of our choice.

ANS: You have a law degree. If you were to defend astrological truth claims in a court of law what might your best legal arguments be?

Gryphon: Any lawyer or politician will tell you that to win an argument one must be in control of definitions. The naming of things defines our reality, and thus contains great power. The first task, then, is to define “astrology” in such a way that gives us a chance defending its truth before an imagined objective court. So I would exclude from our definition astrology packaged as entertainment, such as mass media astrology columns. While these predictions may be entertaining, I would not be prepared to defend their accuracy in a court of law.

A working definition of astrology for our case could be: “A means of using celestial bodies to forecast future events.” If we can convince our judge to use our definition, and prove that astrology can perform according to its definition, then we will have won. If astrology can do better at predicting than its mainstream equivalent, this would be an added bonus.

Of course, astrology can be used for much more than just prediction, but predictions are easy to verify. So, our argument would rest upon being able to show that astrology is right a certain percentage of the time in a relatively unambiguous field, such as weather forecasting. Astro-meteorology has an illustrious history, with practitioners as well known as Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler. And there are many fine astro-meteorologists carrying on their work today. The added benefit of predicting the weather is that we can compare astrologers’ results with those of mainstream meteorologists. If astrology does better than the meteorologists, which I believe would be the case given the skilled practitioners, astrology would stand alone among the sciences. In either case, a world-view revision would be in order.