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Mark McDonough and Lois Rodden
Mark, what are your three favorite features in AstroDatabank?
Lois's bios – I love the way Lois writes. She has a wry wit and I often find myself chuckling as I read her descriptions of the weird lives documented in her AstroDatabank.
The Chart button – With the click of one button the birth data is instantly transferred to one's favorite charting program. I like the instant gratification of searching for a name, reading the bio, and then clicking to see the chart.
AstroSignatures – This is the feature I am most passionate about. Why has there has been only one astrology research study that has survived replication? I believe it is because all the research designs were simple single-factor studies. Yet as astrologers we know better than to look for a single factor in a chart to explain a biographical trait. So why have we persisted in doing single factors studies that were doomed to failure? I believe the answer is simple – our software tools did not support multiple-factor studies.
AstroDatabank's AstroSignature feature allows researchers to easily teach the computer to analyze charts with much of the subtlety of a human astrologer. It isn't any more complex than counting planets by element, but we have extended this paradigm to count just about any chart factor.
How did you get into the business of building astrology software?
I was going to astrology lectures and hearing things like, 'If the ruler of the 10th is in the 4th, you will work at home.' I wanted to test out these aphorisms, but there was no easy way. My charting software couldn't search for this and I didn't have enough data. I went to the 1996 ISAR conference on 'Computers and Astrology' to see if anyone had integrated database technology and astrology. No one had. I also went out to meet Lois Rodden. I knew she had the best data in the world and I would need that if I was going to do research. We hit it off immediately and six months later decided to become business partners – after she took a very long look at our synastry.
I felt called into the field of astrology research. In the 80's I designed a popular easy-to-use microcomputer database and in the 90's I trained as a marriage and family therapist. I've flirted with astrology since I was 13, but never expected to end up in a serious relationship. I found it too complex and contradictory. In Lois's presence astrology became much more straightforward. Experts always make their subject matter seem much simpler.
The calling came in these words, 'Astrology has been around for 5,000 years. It is time that we used modern technology to prove it, disprove it, or improve it.' My fervent hope is that AstroDatabank will be used to improve astrology. I suspect we will be able to prove that astrology works as well. But the main goal is to provide an easy way for astrologers to refine their theories about what astrological patterns are correlated with particular biographical traits. Lois has made this task so much easier for us by the mind-numbing detail work she has done to collect over 20,000 birth data, and classified it with 660 biographical traits. The AstroDatabank software makes this data easily accessible through biographical or astrological filters.
Today's astrology research is mostly comprised of qualitative research. We scan charts looking for common factors. As time goes on the quantitative analysis will be automated, the statistical tests will be built-in, and then computers may start teaching us new things about astrology.
Are there any areas of astrology that hold a special appeal to you and thus may be covered in extra depth in your program?
Not yet. It has been a Herculean effort to cover the 80% of astrology that all astrologers share in the Topical world and then do the same for the Vedic world. Our next focus will be on automated research. Then we may get into the more esoteric areas of astrological knowledge.
I have a prejudice that the core astrology techniques should be sufficient to create AstroSignatures that work. I find the modern and rediscovered ancient techniques fascinating, but I suspect that most of them are 'confirmation' techniques. The basic pattern of the chart should show up using the time tested techniques which have been canonized by generations of usefulness. I am fundamentally agnostic about any particular technique. They all look interesting and I look forward to the research that demonstrates their effectiveness.
That's why I built AstroDatabank. I wanted a way to cut through the confusion of techniques. I wanted an easy way to find out which techniques were the fundamentals that worked 80% of the time and which were the confirming techniques that show up less frequently but are important for confirming major trends.
What is your vision for the future of astrology software 5-10 years from now?
Astrology research software will become more and more automated. Computers are best at doing boring repetitive tasks. We should have computers searching through the charts of 500 arthritis patients and telling us what factors are most prevalent. All previous attempts to prove the statistical validity of astrology through single factor designs have been far too simplistic. When we have computers building multi-factoral models, I believe we will finally be able to prove that astrology works in the language of science.
These multi-factoral models can then be used to predict biographical traits. Like the human genome project, astrological profiling can be used to predict vulnerabilities and strengths. Report writers will use formulas too complex for humans to do on their own. Future computerized report writers might weigh 100 factors before suggesting writing as a profession, a communications course with your mate, or an anti-arthritis diet.
Human intuition in chart synthesis works very differently. People can generally integrate only about seven factors at a time with their conscious mind, but with intuition we can integrate thousands of factors. Computers do numeric integration; people do symbolic integration. These are complimentary methodologies. There will always be a role for humans to draw the big picture patterns that emerge from the chart. Computers will bring more precision in the prediction of traits and events, but we will always need human intuition to give context to even the most sophisticated automated reports.
Lois, what are your favorite features in AstroDatabank?
I am immensely proud of the long Source Notes in the AstroDatabank. As thoroughly as possible, sources have been kept from dozens of books and thousands of magazines, some materials dating from the earliest documentation of data. In this way we have an historic record of astrological data collecting.
Secondly, I love our biographies, especially the long, long bio's with dozens of dates of events, all the wonderful stories of the hopes and fears of people's lives, the drama and the trauma and the grand stories of overcoming obstacles and winning achievements.
Sorting and filtering data into the categories is so much fun that we can't call our work anything else than pleasure.
How did you get in the data collection business?
When I began my study at the Church of Light in 1961, my first desk was a card table in a corner and my first files a cardboard box with files marked by the category, 'Actors, Politicians, Crime, Family, etc.' Collection was my instinct from day-one, but documentation of source did not come for another decade. In the '70s, I began to list my data in notebooks. Richard Ideman was looking at my book one day and said, 'I have a different time for Clark Gable,' and 'This is not right for Stalin.'
I was as offended as though it were a personal insult. My data was wrong, amazing! With that 'insult,' I hit the ground running and was off on a quest. Burt Granite introduced me to a Hollywood astrologer who had about 1200 magazines dating back to 1890 and I paid her a rental fee to sit in her library week after week, going through every magazine for data. The Church of Light gave me permission to go through their thousands of files looking at their data with a stringent examination each day to see that I did not take any data of private individuals.
My correspondence began to extend world-wide with other collectors, contacts I treasure to this day. Most data collectors are gracious and sharing, as delighted as butterfly- collectors in catching a rare beauty and I believe strongly that it is not only essential to record all the source notes regarding a datum but an inviolable courtesy to give credit to the person who originated the data. Outside of tracing old sources, magazines and biographies, much of my data has come from trades. By filling a need of the community for good data, my office gradually has become a central trading-post, so to speak. When people send in data, they benefit and in turn, their data is valuable to the community as a whole. As the great collector Frances McEvoy remarked, 'In sending you data, I know that it will reach all astrologers.'
There is a pantheon of astrologers who have shared their data. Ed Steinbrecher and I worked together for a decade, along with Tom and Thelma Wilson. As they have withdrawn from collecting, Grazia Bordoni has developed her immense collection and many other data-folks send their books and articles. Marion March has been an active part of AstroDatabank, sharing her one-hundred-plus notebooks of charts and biographies, and we have had eight capable astrologers writing the extensive biographies for AstroDatabank.
On July 3, 1996, Chicago, about 8:00 PM, a good-looking young astrologer approached me and with guileless audacity said, 'I'm Mark McDonough and I'd like to be an important person in your life. I can help with your databank.' My progressed Sun was in the 6th house trine Uranus in the 2nd house (Equal House) and true to form, that moment changed my life! Mark and I found that we had the same vision, the same quest; he, to give astrologers the tools to craft their art and I, the materials with which to work.
What aspect of astrology are you most passionate about?
I am I have been collecting birth data for 30 years. So I would have to say my chief passion in astrology is collecting accurate well-documented data. We can't expect to get valid results from our studies unless we start out with validated data.
When I started this work there was no rating system of data accuracy so I had to invent one. There are other more complex rating systems that people have tried to promulgate, but I believe the Rodden rating has prevailed because it is so easy. AA – for birth certificate, B for Biography, C for Caution and DD for Dirty Data, etc.
I have been a bit of a gadfly to the community always pressing to publications to put the source next to the birth data. I am gratified to see that this is finally becoming common practice in major magazines like The Mountain Astrologer and even in the many local astrology newsletters that are set to me. We have also lobbied all the major software vendors to put a Data source/Rodden rating field on the data input screen. It is so important that we capture this information when it is most readily available – at data entry time.
My current gadfly mission is to teach the community the difference between a 'source' and a 'reference.'
- Reference denotes where we read or obtained the data.
- Source is the origin of the data, where did it initially come from. It is not enough to say 'B.C.' or give the Rodden Rating, 'AA.' There are people who say 'B.C.' when they apparently mean 'Before Coffee,' and please, who has the B.C. or who makes the quote? Even saying the data is 'From Rodden' means nothing. I am just a reference. What matters is the source. Where did the data originally come from?
To make a professional presentation of data, we give the date, time, time signature, place, L&L, the Reference and Source.
What are your hopes for the future of AstroDatabank and astrology as a whole?
I am looking forward to AstroDatabank growing much bigger – not just from more public figures, but private people as well. We are looking forward to contributions from AstroDatabank users. The lives of their family and clients are often better documented with more events than the lives of public figures. We have a special anonymous button on our data input screen that makes it easy to export one's data and send it to me without the name.
All of this work is towards one end. We wish to supply a resource that will help the astrology community learn and grow. More and better data, easily accessible through astrological or biographical filters will let us test out techniques and improve our delineations.
