Self-indulgent Saturday-Sunday #9 ~ Regarding Astrology

Astrology has played some part in my life for over 50 years. For the greater part of that time my knowledge was sketchy at best. I strained to understand a world beyond Sun signs, which I knew existed, but had difficulty accessing. In my younger years things were very different from now. The Astrology Bandwagon proper had not yet started to roll, it had not been fuelled by the spread of home computers and the internet.

I lived in England in a small town where the library and book store carried no books on astrology. I would scour magazines and newspapers for articles expanding on the scanty Sun sign columns which were carried then. Astrology, at its most seminal level, was with me though, sketchy or not. Where my very first "feel" for astrology came from I can only guess - I suspect it emerged from a big door-stopper of a book owned by my maternal grandmother. I think its title was something like "Encyclopaedia of Superstitions". From that volume I still clearly remember going to a section about what I now know to be geomancy. I think, perhaps, that there might have been a section on astrology in that volume, and that would have been my first ever introduction to it.

As the 1950s morphed into the '60s then the '70s, things began to look up for astrology.
Hippies, their culture, and Hair the musical with its hit song The Age of Aquarius brought astrology into focus, more people began to take an interest. By now I'd moved from small town Yorkshire. I'd married and awaited divorce. I puzzled over the fact that my marriage to a Libra Sun person had failed dismally, when Aquarius and Libra were thought to be such an excellent match. I started reading more books and any specialised magazines I could find. Nothing I read enabled me to get much beyond Sun sign astrology. I was hampered by my blind-spot in mathematics. Trying to calculate a natal chart from written instructions with nobody to ask for advice was too daunting a task.

In the early '70s a new relationship began in my life - with a Sun Taurus guy. According to all information Aquarians and Taureans are not a good match. In spite of our Sun signs the relationship lasted for 33 years, until his death. With a more stable emotional background, a new home base in the northern city of Leeds, new job in the civil service, a new era for me began.

Among colleagues in my new job were 3 who shared my interest in astrology. Glory be! Barbara, a lady nearing retirement who first taught me my job, Pat who was originally my immediate supervisor, and Mike, who eventually married Pat. These three friends opened the doorway into astrology a wee bit wider for me. Pat sorted out my Moon sign, and Mike introduced me to tarot cards, and a strange shop in Leeds called The Sorcerer's Apprentice where I bought tarot cards, books and an enormous pile of back issues of Prediction magazine.

I bought my first "proper" astrology report sometime during the 1970s, answering an advert in one of the Prediction issues. The British astrologer, Patrick something or other, was quite well known then. The report was expensive, and took a long time to arrive. It was produced on a typewriter which had seen better days: uneven type, fading ink upon three foolscap sheets of good quality blue paper. I remember its appearance, but no longer have it. It was lost along with all of our possessions in a disastrous fire in 1996. This report on my natal chart told me, at last, something about natal positions of other planets. It was confirmed that Moon was in Aries, as Pat had calculated. The astrologer estimated my ascendant to be in Leo, from the birth time I had given, which later proved to be inaccurate. I laboured for years under the misapprehension that I had Leo rising (rather than my 99.9% likely Cancer ascendant). Most of the other content of that report has faded in memory, except that the astrologer said I'd be likely to experience disappointments in dealings with the opposite sex. I reckon that's true of any human on planet Earth! I still haven't worked out what in my chart prompted him to write that. As it turns out, I've been luckier than most in my relationships.

Later on, other office colleagues shared my interest in astrology. We'd swap books and information, but much was still beyond my understanding. We were like kids playing blind-man's buff. My copy of Linda Goodman's Sun Signs did the rounds of our office a few times, and eventually disappeared.

Astrology columns in newspapers and magazines had become common by this time, improved in both quality and quantity. Russell Grant's, in the Daily Mirror, a tabloid which Bill insisted on buying for sports coverage and because it was the only left-wing newspaper then, apart from the rather snooty Guardian. In those days Russell Grant was doing well as a popular newspaper astrologer, he'd often come up with bits and pieces to which I could easily relate. I felt his style gradually changed though, as he began to concentrate more on becoming a "celebrity."

I don't remember exactly how or when I discovered Jonathan Cainer's columns. Perhaps it was in a popular magazine for women, or in a Sunday newspaper. I immediately felt that this was the one to watch. We couldn't bear to buy The Daily Express, even for Jonathan Cainer's column - that newspaper was far too conservative! I'd beg or borrow copies, and buy any other publication I could find where his writing appeared. Then he took over from Russell Grant in The Mirror! His page there was interesting and entertaining. In those days it carried all kinds of information as well as Sun sign forecasts. Later he moved to The Daily Mail, and we moved to The Mail too. (Link to his website is in my sidebar.)

I can't say exactly why I was so keen on these Sun sign columns. I knew that there was much more to astrology, yet these columns presented something to hold on to, something regular, day by day. At some point, probably in the late 1980s, a friend had given me a book on astrology containing, as an addendum, a very cut-down version of ephemeris-type data. This opened the astro-window a tiny bit wider, but it was really those newspaper columns that helped to keep astrology alive for me. Perhaps I was holding on instinctively, intuitively knowing that someday I'd reach a point from which I'd be able to discover more. That point came, at last, with the purchase of a home computer in late 2001. I discovered astrology message boards and read them regularly. Then, in my early years in the USA, I bought astrology software. WOW! I could now produce a natal chart! Because of everything I'd absorbed, knowingly and unknowingly over 50 years or more, learning enough to fill many of the gaps in my sketchy knowledge came with comparative ease, assisted by a huge collection of astrology text books bought on E-bay, late property of an astrologer. I also bought an instruction course, with lessons, prepared by American astrologer Zipporah Dobyns. I continued reading, learning from, and occasionally contributing to several astrology message boards online.

I don't recall how, or why, I felt tempted to try writing an astrology blog. Maybe astrology message boards had grown stale for me, blogs were overtaking them, just as Facebook has now overtaken blogs.

It was in the fall of 2006 that Learning Curve on the Ecliptic was born, shortly after our return from a wonderful vacation among Colorado's Rocky Mountains. Blogger, back then, offered a fairly limited selection of fancy blog backgrounds with help, if required, to get started. I chose a background, concocted that over-long blog title, and got started. After a year or so I was able to customise a different, simple, background for the blog - the format it has retained, with occasional tweaks to the main title font.

Learning Curve on the Ecliptic was a solitary experiment for a while, an internet backwater nobody ever reached. I have to thank several established astrology bloggers for helping me along, with encouragement: Elsa of Elsa Elsa Advice Blog was the first, then Jeffrey Kishner, now of Sasstrology, Julie Demboski and April of Big Sky Astrology - they're all linked in my sidebar. If it hadn't been for the acceptance of these astrologers I'd almost certainly have given up within a few months.

After some six years writing about astrology and related subjects I diversified a wee bit, broadened the blog's scope to take in politics and more general topics. This blog has never attracted a wide readership, even before Facebook began leeching the life out of blogs in general. From time to time, over the years, some loyal regular readers and commenters have appeared, travelled along with me for as long as they could, and become welcome friends.

I suppose I really should wade into the waters of Facebook, as so many other bloggers have done, but doubt that I shall do so, unless perhaps Google were to decide someday to take Blogger off their menu.