rhythm method is, according to Czech researchers, 98 percent effective as a birth con-
trol method.
Jonas became interested in astrology as a student but kept this interest separate
from his profession during the early part of his career. In the mid-1950s, however,
neighboring Hungary legalized abortion. This motivated Jonas, a practicing Catholic,
to search for alternatives, even in such unlikely subject areas as astrology. According
to Ostrander and Schroeder, from the ancient system of Mesopotamian astrology, he
found a fragment asserting that “woman is fertile during a certain phase of the moon.”
No other clues illuminating this statement survived. Using this assertion as a starting
place, however, Jonas painstakingly researched birth records until he broke the code
of ancient astrological science: A woman is fertile during the phase of the Moon that
replicates the phase the Moon was in at the moment of her birth.
Jonas’s second rule is based on the Pythagorean notion that odd numbers are
male and even numbers female. Hence, since ancient times, the first, third, fifth, sev-
enth, ninth, and eleventh signs of the zodiac (Aries, Gemini, Leo, Libra, Sagittarius,
and Aquarius) were regarded as masculine, while the second, fourth, sixth, eighth,
tenth, and twelfth signs (Taurus, Cancer, Virgo, Scorpio, Capricorn, and Pisces) were
regarded as feminine. The Moon, as the traditional ruler of conception and mother-
hood, might well have been anticipated as the key to influencing the sex of a child.
Using the sign of the Moon at the time of conception, Jonas found he could predict
the sex of a child with 85 percent accuracy. This effect of the Moon sign was apparent-
ly known to Hellenistic astrologers.
The third rule flows out of Jonas’s search for possible astrological factors in
miscarriages and birth defects. Jonas found a significant correlation between such
complications and the presence of opposition (180°) angles—particularly when the
Sun was involved—during conception. While this particular finding has no known
correlate with traditional astrology, the negative effect of an opposition aspect in a
natal chart (in contrast to a conception chart) has been well known since antiquity.
That the Sun, as the traditional ruler of vitality and life force, is involved in such
complications is not surprising.
As Jonas’s work became established and grew, his center counseled couples in
all three of the areas covered by his three rules: birth control, selecting the sex of chil-
dren, and avoiding birth complications. This work flourished during Czechoslovakia’s
“springtime of freedom,” the country’s short-lived experiment with an open society
prior to the Soviet invasion in the late summer of 1968. Jonas’s center remained in
operation another year and half following the invasion before being closed by the gov-
ernment. The doctor was demoted and his work stopped. After the collapse of the iron
curtain, Jonas revived his work, though the official website of the Centrum Jonas
International indicates that Jonas is living in retirement.
Although most of the relevant research of Jonas and colleagues is contained in
untranslated books, pamphlets, and articles, since 1972 the English-speaking world
has had the basic information on astrological birth control available to it through
Ostrander and Schroeder’s Astrological Birth Control.The authors had discovered
Jonas’s work while researching their popular Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Cur-
THEASTROLOGYBOOK [89]
Birth Control, Astrological