THE TRUTH IS IN THE STARS

Last year, when pollsters and pundits were scrambling frantically to predict the next President of the United States, Larry L. Shea says he already knew the answer.

Shea, a Cambridge astrologer, had long before prepared an astrological chart for the United States. He based the chart on the positions of the stars on July 4, 1776, which he says indicated the nation was due for a dramatic change this year.

As soon as independent candidate H. Ross Perot with-drew from the race in July, Shea says, the outcome was perfectly clear.

Similarly, Shea says the outcome of the abortive 1991 coup attempt in the Soviet Union was a foregone conclusion--because the star chart of the Communist regime showed hardliners were not destined to return.

Skeptics say such conclusions are hocus-pocus, claiming and that it's easy to boast predictive success after the fact. But Shea and others stand behind such astrological predictions and say the stars' arrangement during a person's birth has a lifelong impact on the person.

Dean of the College Archie C. Epps III, a Taurus, is aware of his sign and says some of its characteristics, perhaps coincidentally, are true of him.

"[Tauruses are] known to be generals, leading large masses of people, and stubborn and persistent," Epps says, although he declined to specify which Taurean traits apply to him.

Many Harvard professors say the practice has no scientific basis, and is little but superstition, but some Harvard students sheepishly confess they often take a peek at their horoscopes, and even occasionally find truth there.

"Yes, I do [read horoscopes]. Sometimes the monthly thing is really right. It's scary," says Y. Judy Shen '96.

"I love them," says Lisan L. Goines '95, a Libra, although she doesn't believe in the predictions because they always forecast "good stuff."

But Goines says that inadequacy doesn't stop her from using them for certain social purposes. "I do research on the guys that I stalk."

Other students, who share Goines' disbelief, still read the predictions for fun.

"I think they sound specific, but they're vaguely-enough worded so any person reading it can apply it to him-or herself," says Noel C. Allen '95.

But other students refuse to read the predictions and say they are little more than a waste of time.

"I don't look at them at all," says William W. Minton '95.

He and his roommate last year shared the exact same birthday, but had absolutely nothing in common. Since then, he says, he has not believed the stars at a person's birth determine his or her personality.

The Expert

Shea, who has a degree in the history and science of astrology from the University of Massachusetts, teaches classes in astrology at the Seven Stars bookshop in Harvard Square and predicts clients' futures from their star charts.

He says his belief in astrology grew over the time he studied the practice. He says he is "able to tell more than chance what a person's sun sign is," and can shed light on personalities and past histories from star charts.

"I've been right a number of times, and I know it's not based on chance," he says.

Kathleen I. Finnegan, who prepares star charts for patrons at Seven Stars, says the persistance of the ancient practice of astrology is good proof of its effectiveness.

"Over 8,000 years of humanity observing things, they've been able to come up with pretty good ideas of what happens, say, when Mars is an Aries," she says.

As an example, Finnegan, 40, offers her intuition throughout her life that she would never have children. When she discovered her star chart had "Saturn moving backwards in the sky in the fifth House," which meant that she was extremely unlikely to become a parent, her belief in astrology was confirmed.

"Basically, the birth chart is a physical map of the heavens, the places the planets are in relation to each other." she says. "Because there is no one else born at the same exact time, it's unique."

But Harvard professors dispute the astrologers' claims and dismiss the use of the stars to predict personality and the future as groundless.

"It's like a religion more than anything else," says Professor of Astronomy Robert P. Kirshner, who chairs the Astronomy department. "There's no evidence that astrology predicts the world better than chance."

And Assistant Professor of the History of Science William R. Newman, who teaches a class on the history of the occult sciences, says the astrological predictions are not legitimate.

"I think the answer is very simply no," Newman says of the practice's validity. "There is no scientific basis."

But salespeople at bookshops specializing in the occult say despite the academics' skepticism, they have seen no slacking off of demand for astrology books and readings.

"Some people really believe it determines your life," says a salesperson at Arsenic and Old Lace, a bookshop with a large stock of resources on the occult.

And Phillip I. Johnson, a salesperson at Seventh Sign bookstore, says the business in astrology books, readings and charts is brisk.

"They're serious," he says of the astrology customers. "They talk astrology to each other.... People call and ask how long a certain planet is going to be in retrograde."

Johnson himself says a quote in an astrology book stocked by the store convinced him of the practice. "We have a book here with a quote from Einstein, who I have a phenomenal amount of respect for. If Einstein says it, I have to believe it," he says.

But even as customers snap up scholarly tomes and not-so-scholarly works on astrology, much about its origins and practice remain shrouded in mystery.

Astrology might have originated in ancient beliefs about the procession of the day, Newman says.

"It possibly is related to an ancient Egyptian idea that as the heavens rise during the day it is equivalent to birth, middle age, old age and death," he says.

Astrology today has an equivalent to this formulation in the use of middle, low, ascendant and descendent positions of the sun in predictions, Newman says.

But astrology as we know it, he says, came together when ancient Babylonian astrology, which focused on omens predicting the fates of nations, united with Greek scientific traditions.

"Astrology as you and I know it as a supposedly predictive science only comes into existence around the third or second century B.C.," he says.

Through the Middle Ages, he says, astrology survived as a scientific practice, often in monarchies which employed court astrologers for the sovereign and country. Major decisions of national policy were often decided based on the stars, he says.

Astrology fell into disfavor beginning in the 15th century, he says, but pockets of belief existed even with the rise of astronomy. The famous astronomist Johannes Kepler, for instance, was a convinced astrologer.

The current practice of astrology is a melange of the ancient methods with today's high-tech science, as predictive astrology now uses up-to-date computer systems to design charts.

The original science of astrology was based on the rotation of the sun around the earth, Newman says. The sun was supposed to travel an elliptic path around the planet, and the zodiac is simply a band along that elliptic divided into 12 parts. The zones at that time were named for the 12 different constellations in the zodiac.

A person's destiny and character was supposed to be set by the movements of the planets, sun and moon through the 12 zones of the zodiac and the position of the heavenly bodies at the moment of birth.

"The more fundamental idea," Newman says, "is that the planets and stars have rays they send forth" which affect those born under them.

Finnegan says the disapproves of predictive astrology but does believe "your personality, your inclinations, your instincts, how you work with people, how you relate to things" are all influenced by the form of the heavens at your birth.

Shea links the influence of the star chart to beliefs in karmic reincarnation.

"There's a certain amount of free will," he says. "That particular soul picks or chooses a time, a place and a particular moment to incarnate." That time and place can tell things about the reincarnated person, he says.

So why, in today's scientific society, do people hold to the astrological beliefs dismissed by the academic world?

"I think it's one of those fundamental questions. Why do people believe the Bible is literally true?.... Why do people believe in UFOs? Why do people buy lottery tickets? People have a sort of quasi recreational attaction toward these things," Newman says.

But Finnegan responds differently, remaining loyal to her field.

"These images [of the zodiac] speak to all peoples at all times," she says. "Most people know a lot about astrology without being taught it."