I don't have a problem with astrology. However, I do have a problem with a lack of logical reasoning.

New Orleans, as I've just described it, conjures the astrological Pluto, god of the underworld.

Nope. You could just as easily say "people are fighting irrationally and killers are roaming the streets, therefore Mars rules". Remember that Mars was the serial killer of that mythology. Pluto actually was a cold-blooded kind of ruler of a (literally) dead-end world. That whole description is conflated with the Christian concept of Hell, and would have had no relevance to the Romans, whose mythology these gods came from.

In other words, it's been written by someone without a good grasp on mythology. Are these the people you trust for your interpretations of events?

As regards the "ancient" nature of this study, I'd remind you that Pluto wasn't discovered until well into this century (1930 IIRC), so any significance attached to it can't have been thought up any later than 75 years ago. And even the name "Pluto" was a fairly arbitrary choice (unless you believe there were deeper forces at work when the name was chosen, which is a belief system and not something that can be proved/disproved).

Pluto enters Sagittarius on January 16, 1995. Pluto re-enters Scorpio on April 21, 1995 and enters Sagittarius for good on November 10, 1995 (Pluto then stays in Sagittarius until 2008).

If you had Pluto entering Sagittarius on that day, during the hour of the flood, then maybe you'd have an interesting coincidence. But this happened TEN YEARS AGO and will still be the case for another THREE YEARS after the event!

Imagine how many other newsworthy events have happened in that time. The Asian tsunami could just have easily been tagged with that, couldn't it? (That's assuming that your description of the significance astrologers attach to the event is correct - I couldn't say myself.) Why should the New Orleans disaster be particularly remarkable amongst the many, especially since the number of people who died there is insignificant compared to the numbers killed in all the other tragedies (natural disasters, man-made disasters, and wars) over the last 13 years?

It is probably true that I turn to astrology after the fact as a means of understanding why things happen.

And therein lies the problem.

As previous posters have stated, religion and mythology (and hence astrology) are a great source of comfort in times when you feel helpless. Astrology explicitly says that life is pre-ordained and we can't do anything about it, so it isn't our fault that we're in the shit (to be Plutocratic ;-). In an ancient world with no support structures and no hurricane warnings or whatever, that kind of fatalistic comfort was the best you could do.

But for the relatives of people who died in New Orleans, this isn't much comfort. Fatalism excuses the criminal negligence by FEMA, US central government, armed looters and NO citizens who failed to leave in time after the hurricane warnings, who all had shares in a man-made disaster. Fatalism tells you "it would have happened anyway". But why would it? The hurricane was natural, but the disaster was 100% man-made, and being man-made it was therefore 100% avoidable. And whereas primitive man with primitive mythologies had no-one to blame for his cave getting flooded, modern New Orleans residents can point the finger fair and square at individual people who made decisions that led to this all happening.

If you're not saying "it would have happened anyway", then why would a predictable astronomical event has any effect on this? And if a predictable astronomical event had an effect, why do you (and others that you've quoted) make the connection?

Please don't think I'm saying this to get at you. It isn't any kind of attack on you. Rather, it's an attack on the faulty logic that has people trying to use astrology to try and make sense of past events. It may be fun, and if it gives you pleasure then by all means keep doing it. (Writing computer software gives me pleasure, and that's a pretty bloody illogical state of affairs! ;-) But it isn't, and can't ever be, a useful guide.

Graham.