André Barbault

André Barbault (born October 1st, 1921, at 5 p.m., at Champignelles (France)[1] and deceased October 7th, 2019, at Colmar) was a French astrologer.

According to Daniel Verney[2], he was a precursor between Astrology, Psychology and Geopolitics. His approach to astrology was essentially symbolistic, moderately determinist, and in favor of statistical verifications. According to his empiricist approach, the credibility of astrology derived from proof through experimentation.

According to Richard Pellard, the most important positive contribution of André Barbault was perhaps to have re-secularized astrology, to have reformulated a naturalistic and materialist vision of it which was already that of Ptolemy and Kepler but which then vanished into spiritualistic occultism.[3]

Barbault was an excellent popularizer. Another of his positive contributions to Symbolist astrology was the use of a modern, clear language to evoke and describe the planetary and zodiacal meanings.

As regards temperaments and planetary astrology, André Barbault criticized the generalized scoring grids which, to assess the relative power of the Four Elements in a chart, are based only on the zodiac and on the number of planets (or on the Ascendant) occupying this or that Sign, without taking into account the Elemental nature of the planets in their calculations. He denounced this process which "ignores the essential: the planet, king of the astrological universe. It is the planet in itself, in its own nature, that is the first principle. […] The zodiac of the Elements is the planetary zodiac. Each sign is endowed with the Element of the ruling planet. Thus, Fire reigns in the Marsian signs of Aries and Scorpio, as in the solar sign of Leo; Earth in the Mercurian signs of Gemini and Virgo, as well as in the Saturnian signs of Capricorn and Aquarius; Air in the Venusian signs of Taurus and Libra, as well as in the Jupiterian sign of Sagittarius; and Water in the lunar sign of Cancer and the Neptunian sign of Pisces. It is planetarism that we find here, extended in a zodiacal reconstruction, and it is this that should serve as a reference for our temperamental-type interpretations. "

He also was attracted to Freudianism, and aimed at putting in evidence the links between psychoanalysis and astrological symbols

He was a partisan of forecasting through transits, and extremely cautious as regards horary astrology. Generally speaking, he expressed much skepticism in front of divinatory techniques and Traditional Astrology beliefs.

André Barbault was passionate about mundane astrology and he believed to have discovered correspondences between planetary cycles and major stages of world history. Patrice Guinard is rather skeptical about that[4]. However, noting that the Russian Communist Party took power under the conjunction of Saturn and Neptune in 1917, André Barbault announced in 1955 a "reshuffle" or "succession of statesmen in the Kremlin" during the Saturn-Neptune conjunction of 1989. This announcement remains his greatest predictive success.

He was a pioneer of computer-assisted astrological interpretation (Astroflash 1967) with Jean-Pierre Nicola, and the founder of the magazine L'Astrologue in 1968.

Source: https://www.astro.com/astrowiki/en/Andr%C3%A9_Barbault