Declination in Astrology: The Steps of the Sun

Granted, I haven't studied other astrology books on declination, but I found this book to be an excellent introduction to the subject for me, an absolute beginner on the topic of declination. It has lots of interesting information and real-life examples that make reading it interesting and informative. Having read only this one book on the subject, I have started incorporating this information into my astrological chart readings, with good results.

Mr Newman's book is a salient example of how to write a book presenting astrology, mostly to 'new age believers', as a titillating form of pseudo-scientific infotainment and in so doing disqualify it from serious consideration. Unfortunately the vast majority, but not all, contemporary astrological authors are of the same vein as Mr Newman.The objective astronomical information, tables and illustrations especially in Chapter 1 and to a much lesser extent in Chapters 7 and 8, earn a second star for the book.ALL of the other chapters are replete with '100 % positively skewed samples' of astrological charts and therefore can prove nothing about the astrological effectiveness of parallels etc. of declination. They do, however, illustrate the author's skill in selecting data. Like nearly all other contemporary astrologers, Mr Newman shuns the hard work of:- Taking a random selection of say 250 accurately timed charts,- Defining the relevant parameters and ordering the data accordingly,- Writing tables showing which amongst the data sets contain the phenomena of declination he wishes to examine,- Recording if these significantly correlate to the hypothetical astrological delineations,- Recording if the correlated astrological delineations of the control group are significantly less frequent.Self-indulgence in unproven speculations is, indeed, much easier and probably sells books. Nevertheless, if astrologers like Mr Newman who purport to apply geometry and astronomy shun another branch of mathematics - statistics - they simply cannot be considered coherent and perhaps do not care.In Chapter 2 Mr Newman clumsily attempts to appeal to the growing readership offered by Neo-Pagans, whilst not entirely neglecting the Christian readership, by 'proving' the accuracy of habitual dates of holidays. Those who synthesised Neo-Paganism, instead of doing a clean job of it, attempted to demonstrate its origin in 'traditions' (sic!: customs, habits and usages) by for example celebrating four heathen holidays between the solstices and the equinoxes on their habitual dates instead of the astronomically accurate ones. Mr Newman engages in mental acrobatics resembling those theologians who apologetically 'prove' why one can and should worship God but not Goddess, Father but not Mother, Son but not Daughter, Spirit but not Body, etc. Mr Newman misses entirely the most obviously possibility to demonstrate his own approach: the Sun reaches 12º north declination on about 22 April, 15º Taurus ecliptical longitude on about 7 May. The arithmetic mean of the two is about 30 April.Declination certainly deserves serious astrological research. Hopefully Mr Newman and other astrologers will engage in such research in the future.