My Life in Astrology
AMERICA
There is not a place in my memory when I did not know the time of my birth. For some reason, this was information that my mother thought relevant, along with the fact that I was a Gemini. At some point in my childhood sun sign columns appeared in the local papers and she read them after breakfast – in the kitchen in the winter, out on the lawn in the summer. This was on the days we didn’t walk down the hill to the road where we waited for the bus to school. My youngest siblings don’t have this memory, but I was the eldest of five and we lost our parents quite early, so perhaps, had she lived, we would have all grown up with this astrological sense of ourselves.
From mid-teens to my early twenties I was in a Roman Catholic boarding school and later a Catholic college taught by wonderfully intelligent Ursaline nuns and Jesuit priests. I don’t remember any astrology there at all, not even in our subversive phases. (We were already reading the then most controversial Père Teilhard de Chardin only a few years after his death). But once I was out and free to fly, it seemed to be everywhere. It was the mid 1960s and a new kind of freedom was flourishing amongst the youth of America and Europe. After graduation, I worked in an office for three months to make the money to go to Europe. I planned to travel a bit and then come home to further my education; become Something.
EUROPE
In October 1967 a college friend and I were standing in Trafalgar Square in our duffel coats and our innocence, open to everything. We had come to ‘undo our education’ in every way we could. A rather dishevelled young man with a beautiful speaking voice came up and asked for a cigarette and that began an adventure that lasted for years. That summer I ended up on the Isle of Wight working for his splendid Capricorn mother in her hotel and astrology was around to the extent that we all knew each others’ signs and she read us our horoscopes every day from the newspaper. One night a cantankerous old man in a pub heard me say something about astrology and began baiting me: “You just guess what sign I am if you’re so smart.” I said, “I don’t need to guess. You’re a Taurus.” I was as shocked as everyone else to get it right and responded sweetly and with delight when he bought us a round of cider.
What stands out most powerfully from that time was that there were kindred spirits everywhere. It was mostly the music that bonded us in our youth, and the substances that were floating around that aided us in seeing patterns we might not have noticed without special training!
AMERICA
By the end of 1968 I was back in America and in early ’69 five of us ended up in Yucatan, Central America. We stayed on a remote farm for some months, mediating and eating nothing but fruit and nuts. We lived in an orchard, slept in hammocks, and had ten books between us. It was there that astrology first really found me.
One of the books was about astrology. I’ve thought for years the book was Jess Stearn’s A Time for Astrology but the web tells me that was published in 1971, so it cannot have been that book. It was by someone who went to investigate and debunk astrology and ended up falling in love with it. I read it in a hammock amongst the fruit trees. Finishing it, I stood up, walked into the long low hacienda, and said, “I have to go back to America to find someone who will teach me astrology.” Soon after that, we were forced to leave Mexico in rather dramatic circumstances. We were flown to Dallas Texas; two of us went to California, and the others returned to the East Coast.
We stayed in San Francisco for about a month and one afternoon a group of us were eating lunch at a long table in a room that had huge window overlooking the bay. We decided to try to draw an astrological chart. There was an ephemeris and a table of houses left by someone on a shelf and one of us knew something about calculations. Slowly, person after person left the table. In the end, there were just two of us. For some reason he and I would not give up. We stayed there until, at about three in the morning, we got it! We drew up our charts. We’d figured it out. Such a feeling of triumph.
I wanted to stay in San Francisco, but someone said a great astrologer, called Isobel Hickey, was teaching in Boston. So when a car was going back to Massachusetts, I got in. Once back, I got distracted and went to New Hampshire to hang out with the Baba Ram Dass’ crowd. There I met a young man who did my chart. He said I should study astrology; that I was made for it and he would teach me. “Great chat-up line,” I thought!
The only other thing I remember is sitting in a field one day, weeping for a long time. I had been given Dane Ruhdyar’s The Pulse of Life and read it in a day and then had a powerful dream that night which I now can’t remember. But there in the field with The Pulse of Life in my hands I knew I wasn’t going to go on to get an M.A. and then a PhD; I wasn’t going to return to a ‘normal’ life, all mapped out by my background. For some reason I felt this as a loss, very powerfully, on that day; I wept for the loss of a ‘predictable’ future and at beauty of that book.
And so I went to Boston and found Isobel Hickey in June of 1969. Her reading cost $10. She said I was an astrologer born and must come and study with her. I remember thinking, “Do they all say this?” But I listened with fascination. She told me her next class began in September and I should go and study with Francis Sarkoian and Louis Acker for the summer then come to her in September. Years later, I found out that they were not friends and it was unheard of that she would send me to them. I think she was afraid I would get distracted (being a Gemini!) and go off elsewhere, but she was sure I should come to her to study and become an astrologer.
When a new friend asked me what I needed in order to stay and study, I told her; a flat, preferably with an astrology student, a job and a bicycle. She found all three for me within a month. My flatmate was a delightful person (Capricorn again) who was also studying with Isobel; amazing grace! My job was as a secretary at M.I.T. My bicycle was blue.
I began studying with Frances and Louis immediately. They were so exciting! And when Isobel started her classes in September, I carried on with them and also studied with her. My strongest memory of her teaching is the ‘prayer’ we said before starting – it invoked protective deities for our work, and made us aware that this was a sacred task. She taught re-incarnational astrology and she told us that we had been in Atlantis and had not paid attention and Atlantis had collapsed. We were incarnated here again at another critical time and we must not fail in guiding people to pay attention, because if it collapsed this time, it might not recover. She made us feel the responsibility very keenly.
Today I would not use the language that was natural to us then in describing our work or ourselves. But the sense of our responsibility has never left me nor the people I still know who studied with her in those years: the awareness of the sacred art we were learning, its antiquity, and the necessity of using it well. I am eternally grateful to her for instilling that responsibility in us.
All of the people I associated with during those years were familiar with astrology – or if they were not, I never knew it, nor would it have occurred to me to have a friend that was anti-astrology. Nathalie, whose flat I shared, and I were a centre of social activity. In fact, that is where I first met Howard Sasportas. He was a regular and most engaging visitor! (When I left Boston, and America he told me he was now going to study astrology too – he would go to England and study with the Faculty of Astrological Studies!). The food was always good (Nathalie was a brilliant vegetarian cook) and the conversations exhilarating. Of course, I knew there were people ‘out there’ who thought our ‘esoteric’ way of seeing reality was foolish. After all, I was working at M.I.T. while studying in the evenings! I was one of three secretaries in the psychiatry department – there were 13 psychiatrists for the brilliant and highly-strung students, in those days.
All of the psychiatrists knew I was studying astrology, but I never experienced aggression about it from any of them, although there was one who was sceptical – he questioned me endlessly. He was a Gemini, like me, and we sparred energetically. The others seemed to find it more or less interesting. A few wholly supported my studies, and I remember them with great affection. They found it much more disturbing that I would not join the anti-war marches – that I was not ‘political’. My 19-year-old brother was in Viet Nam and I was writing to him constantly and I knew that he would be hurt if I was part of that movement. The politics of the time were so powerful, as was the feminist movement, and I was verbally attacked by passionate adherents of both for not joining them. It was an intense time for all of us.
SOUTH AFRICA
In January of 1971, having learned as much as I could from my wonderful teachers, I left Boston, and America. Several months later, I found myself in Johannesburg, South Africa. It was time for a change and someone I’d met in Europe invited me to come down there, so I thought I’d go for a visit. Isobel warned me that if I left then, June of 1971, I would not get back to America for a very long time, as my pSun was on my Saturn. I stayed in South Africa for 12 years.
It was in Johannesburg where I really began to practise the art of astrology. Within about three months of arriving, people began asking me to read their charts. I never said no. And never charged anyone money. After about eighteen months, I was doing several charts a week, always after coming home from the museum where I was recording and transcribing the lore and practices of the sangomas.1
One day, on a visit to Capetown, I met a woman named Delphica, who, I think, was in her seventies. She’d lived in London in her youth, and studied astrology with the Theosophists. After spending a weekend with her, she said, “You must begin charging money.” She had never done that, for philosophical reasons, plus a lack of confidence, and, anyway, she had inherited enough money to live modestly.
She told me if I dared to charge people for doing their charts, “In five years you will learn more than I have learned in fifty.” Such a dramatic statement! I returned to Jo’burg in mid-December and in January of 1973 an artist named Clarence Wilson2 came to me and at the end of the session he said, “How much do you charge?” I said, “I don’t.” And he took out a ten rand note and handed it to me, saying “You do from now.” And from then, I did.
When I began doing charts the client and I sat on cushions on the floor with notes I’d taken in preparation, and some books I’d brought from America all around us. I used the notes and books as I went along. Right from the beginning I used a ‘format’ that I still use (though I no longer sit on the floor nor do I quote from books much) : I would give the person paper to take notes and then just start talking about the chart, saying everything I could about the chart in front of me. After some minutes, when I could think of nothing more to say, I would look up and ask the person if it made sense so far, or I would simply ask a question about something I had seen. Looking back, I can see that there were two reasons that led me to this approach: Every day I was with the sangomas who were telling me about their practices. At some point, once I had become trusted as a person who was truly ‘working with the spirits’ (the extraordinary Credo Mutwa formally named me Nonokanyazi, ‘Child of the Stars’), a beloved sangoma named Dorcas, asked me why white doctors asked so many questions when you went to them. “Da, shouldn’t they know what is wrong with you?” She asked this because the sangomas were taught to ‘see’ what the person had come for – sometimes they used the bones3 and sometimes the insights which they accessed through trance. A big part of their training was the development of what we would call intuition; day after day, the twasas (initiates) were trained to find things that had been hidden. Seeing them work that way, I fell into the same habit. I had the chart in front of me. I had the person in front of me. Why should I not see what they needed me to see? As I did it for free for the first eighteen months, I used that time to refine my ability to gather the various pieces of ‘information’ in the chart into my heart’s mind – planets, aspects, etc; – and then let it flow out to the other person. Because I was not charging money, I could say, “It’s important you tell me when I get it wrong, because you are part of my learning now.” Over time, my ability to leap from bits of information to a clear image became refined and after a time I began recording the sessions for people.
During this period I became close to a woman who was fascinated by Carl Jung and even more, James Hillman. (She later went to the Jung Institute in Zurich, and became an analyst). I began reading deeply. I’d read Jung at university, having majored in psychology (with philosophy and theology as minors), but this was different. Yvonne was steeped in Jung and we talked for hours, every moment I was not in the museum or with the sangomas or doing charts. And somehow, the combination of these conversations – with the sangomas and with Yvonne drew me away from the reincarnational view of the chart towards something more ancestral and archetypal. I was beginning to see ancestral influences in the chart and how they were brought to life through the psychological interactions of the parents with each other and the child when the person whose chart I was doing was very young. With every chart I learned something new.
Soon I was doing charts of the spouses, children, parents, lovers, friends of everybody I’d seen – Johannesburg’s English speaking community was a relatively small community and it seemed to me everyone knew everyone else. And that led me to the one rule that has so far been unbreakable4: the rule of confidentiality. From quite early on I realized that not only must I keep people’s secrets, I must keep their identities secret. It was also because I realized that if I consulted someone and I thought they might tell their spouse or friends about me, I’d not like it. So that meant I could not tell anyone at all. And so the habit developed. I know that now many astrologers have supervisors and I suppose the closest I got to this was a combination of Yvonne and the sangomas. But still I never revealed names – not even to Yvonne, even though she was a rare outsider not integrated into the community; she was a loner. I talked to the sangomas about awkward clients, without naming them, and that was immensely helpful too. The sangomas taught me so much about dealing with people who came to me for guidance.
The big test of my confidentiality principle was doing the chart of a very famous person, a great film star and not being able to tell anyone afterwards. I remember that I shook with the tension of it when I saw my friend, Yvonne, but I got through it and the habit became easier with time. In general, I learned to wait for a few days and then tell her I’d seen someone with this or that difficulty and I’d dealt with it this or that way. Then we’d discuss it, her from the psychological point of view and me from the astrological. Also when I had really difficult people I would ask one of the sangomas how they would deal with such a person. I learned so much from them, about how to deal with what we call ‘boundary issues’ today.
The conversations with Yvonne also made me aware that to do this work I must be prepared to face myself, my own hidden sides. When a client was too much like me, I’d either love them or judge them without understanding that. When they were too unlike me, I’d try to find where they were like me so I could identify with them. I became aware that if I had trouble with a client, it may not be the client, it may be something in myself that could not see the client with clarity and compassion. If I liked someone too much, it may be that my vanity was being activated. Self reflection became a daily task which is now a lifetime habit. Sad to admit, I still fall into the same traps – but the recognition is often so quick now that I’m able to fling myself back to the middle space of compassionate objectivity – at least I hope that is true. There have been three incidences in my life as an astrologer where I have told the person to leave, not allowing them to pay me, so unable was I to find compassion for their actions. They were shocked, and so was I, but I knew I had to do that at the time.
At some point during this period, Liz Greene’s book Saturn arrived in my hands. I read every word with my heart singing and felt that for the very first time I had ‘met’ someone who was seeing astrology – describing the work of it – in a way that lit up my mind and touched my soul. It was so exciting. I read it out loud to everyone I saw for a long time.
After I’d been doing people’s chart for some time, ‘forecasting’ had become a real problem. People kept wanting me to see into their futures. I only wanted to see how I might help them with their difficulties, inner or outer. (I had not developed the notion of ‘navigating by the stars’ yet.) I kept saying, “I don’t do forecasting,” and they would say, “but you can see where the planets will be in a year – what do they say?” I had the feeling that it would be somehow wrong to look at the future that way and, worse, what if I could actually see the future? I didn’t want that gift. And what about Free Will? My Catholic background was rising to the surface5!
At that time I was not yet reading ‘deep texts’ but just whatever took my fancy. I came across a book by Frank Herbert called Dune. And then I read the sequel, Dune Messiah. By the end of the book I felt I could look at the future. I don’t remember the details but I remember thinking this: There is an almost inevitable destiny that is inborn in each of us. But, if we are able and willing to look at ourselves and willing and able to exercise immense discipline we might veer away from the ingrained direction and choose another version, or even an unknown version. There might be moments when such a decision is possible, and even feels necessary. Most people would simply live out their given natures. However, some might feel the necessity of breaking away, for the good of themselves or of others.
This is simplifying the vision I took from the book, but it illuminated my imagination. I began to see that ongoing transits and progressions could be a way of working with one’s fate, or destiny, rather than just living it out. We could use the chart for soul work – get to know our natures so that we might bring out the finest possibilities through working with progressions and transits throughout our lives. One day I heard myself say to a person with a non-Saturnian chart who was experiencing a heavy Saturn aspect, “You can feel cramped and stuck or you can dedicate this time to a particular practice, a discipline, so that when Saturn moves on you will have more ability to carry things through. And you will find yourself to be more rigorous in the pursuits of your aim. Find someone to complain to and then just do the work!” And I taught myself to follow my own advice – to experiment constantly with how things might work. (Now I would say, ‘to cultivate the nature one was given.’) When Rob Hand’s book on Transits came into my hands, I leapt with excitement again – I read the relevant bits of it to every client that came to me.
There was a time in Johannesburg when it seemed that people wanted me to be a guru. At that point I was not even teaching yet, just doing charts, day after day. I noticed this the first time when, at a party, a woman I’d seen as a client, criticised me when I told her I’d felt horrible all week, but was suddenly feeling better having fun at the party. How could I feel horrible when I knew so much? Over the years this sort of thing has happened again and again in various ways. Sometimes people have ‘fallen in love’ with the wonderful astrologer, and then invited her home and over time become disillusioned with the ordinary creature I can be, when I am not being wise and splendid! It never stops upsetting me, but I learned long ago that I must not defend myself against people because they might do that. When someone whom I’ve taught or whose chart I’ve done gets to know me in another context I take the chance that it might or might not work. Some of my dearest friends first saw me as astrologer, teacher, wise person. Over the years they have gotten to know my fragile and annoying sides, and when they can accept this, our friendships have deepened. But sometimes that doesn’t happen, and I am a great disappointment. I’ll continue to risk that because of the generally wonderful things that happen. And of course, over time, I have discovered that I can do the same thing to others – after finding someone magical, I have lost interest and slipped away. We always do what we see done to us, in one way or another, it seems to me.
When I’d been in Jo’burg about eight years, a woman who had invited me to give some classes in her home got frustrated with me one evening and said, “Why won’t you let us make you a guru? It’s so annoying!” It’s really because I’m not the type – can’t follow one, can’t be one. I see myself as a mixed creature, alternating between being psychologically frail and strong, with a wonderful gift that I do my best to honour in every way I can. And I won’t let anyone get close to me who does not honour my gift, as I hope always to honour their particular gift.
In 1978 the man with whom I shared everything, including my life with the sangomas, died. I retreated from that world, and mourned deeply. Some time later, the sangoma to whom I was closest also died. Her name was Ndlaleni Cindi. In my heart, I left Africa then. But it took some time for life to bring the next opportunity. My astrology work kept me alive – I had so very many interesting people coming to me. And a few friends with who whom I shared companionship and love.
LONDON
In 1983, one of these beloved friends (who later became my husband) and I came to London. He wanted a change, and I was aching for conversations with astrologers. I was sure I’d find them in London after a dream about a London bookshop where people met in the back to talk astrology. On waking I longed to find that bookshop, knowing there must be a community of astrologers there. I only knew three people in London; Howard (Sasportas), Liz (Greene) (whom I’d met on my one trip to London) and a friend called Bridget6.
Through work, grace, and Bridget’s clear guidance, we found and moved into part of a house in Hampstead owned by a German artist who had fled Nazi Germany with her husband and companions in the 1940s. Crystl was in her mid-70s and not only fascinating, but magical. She loved astrology and she sent all of her friends to me. One day we were talking about our mothers and I described her mother through her Moon Venus position and aspects. The next day we met by chance on the street. In passing she said, “Thank you for helping me with my mother,” (who had died decades ago). I said, “Still??” She grinned and said, “Forever”. I learned so much from her and her friends who were in their 70s, 80s and 90s.
Living in London fulfilled everything I dreamed of, although I never stopped missing South Africa and its indigenous people. Finding the astrological community here, with its multi-varied ways of doing astrology, its clan allegiances, its endless rifts and reconciliations, its gatherings and opportunities; a blessing beyond reckoning. I had the idea that if I learned to lecture and to write’ then I would have access to the best astrological conversations in the world. Slowly over the years I learned to teach, lecture and give seminars – starting at home with small groups, endlessly asking for criticism of those I trusted. Invited by Liz and Howard to teach at the CPA in 1987 gave me a perfect home within the community. With Liz’s encouragement I began writing books for the CPA press. In 1988 I was invited to teach in Cologne, and from then, teaching in other countries became part of my life as an astrologer. Like many others, I have travelled the world teaching – and learning – each country having its own cultural colours that we have to recognise and honour when interpreting the patterns in the heavens for their people.
Another richness of that period was becoming part of a small group at the Company of Astrologers, led by Graham Tobin, translating medieval Latin astrological texts into English. It lasted for seven years and began a life-time love affair with ancient texts, going back farther and farther into antiquity where some of the roots of our art had their first appearances.
In 1989, Jim Lewis, of Astrocartography fame, came to London and gave a brilliant talk on the Saturn-Uranus-Neptune in Capricorn conjunction in terms of its historical implications. He ignited a passion for collective historical cycles in my heart and mind and opened my awareness to the outer planets in a wholly new way. It changed my teaching and the way I did charts from then on, allowing me to weave the individual and personal life into the larger historic cycle and into a new tapestry of understanding.
In the early 1990s I began teaching at the Faculty and, through the years, have found this to be another beloved home for my heart and mind.
In the 2000s I began working with Frank Clifford and The London School of Astrology with its again very different and delightful teachers and students. And it was also in the first decade of the new millennium that the M.A. in ‘Cultural Astronomy and Astrology’ was born at Bath Spa University. Many of us became part of it with such excitement – some of us teaching it, and others of us becoming students of the cultural history of our ancient stellar art.7
It seems that the astrological world has deepened and expanded beyond anything I could have imagined in the 1960s. However, it was not really until London that I realized what being such an ‘outsider’ meant in my life. In South Africa, working with the sangomas and being an astrologer were just who I was. I met lots of people with conventional attitudes there, but somehow being different was just not a problem. A year after arriving in England I was invited to a somewhat ‘grand’ dinner party in Kensington. I was used to my wonderful landlady and her interesting artistic friends, but had not met very many conventional English people yet. My host introduced me as ‘a rather wonderful astrologer’ and the woman who took my hand looked at me down her long nose and said, in the most Maggie Smith Downton Abbey’ish way, “Aoooo, how quaint!” I later told my friend, our host, never to introduce me as an astrologer again, unless I decided it was OK!! And I never again told anyone I was an astrologer unless I thought the conversation would be interesting. It’s easier than one thinks: most people are distracted when you are truly interested in their lives and opinions. Having said this, I’ve had some of the most interesting and unexpected conversations with people at dinner tables all over England once I decided to tell them I was an astrologer.
Of course it is often known that I am an astrologer when I come into a group of people. Again, early on, I was very clear that I would never allow astrology or myself as an astrologer to be disrespected. As soon as it’s mentioned, I become very alert and attentive. Once, at a party, I was introduced to the Astronomer Royal, and people stood around, rather looking forward to a sharp encounter as someone asked him his opinion about astrology. I went into my alert, slow-motion attention. But I needn’t have worried. He was incredibly graceful at diffusing the tension – and I followed his gentle lead – and as the group dispersed we had a brief but delightful conversation together about the intermixed history of our beloved but now divorced, disciplines. I have found that really intelligent people are rarely frightened of astrology.
Over the years, I have become aware of the growing desire of many people in the astrological community to be accepted into the conventional world. Having consciously left the conventional world, yet being of service within it, albeit often secretly, this seems to me a great freedom. It once upset me when a regular client, the head of an organisation, said, “I could never put you on my published board of advisors.” In time I have become grateful for that. It seems right to live outside the tribes – in the vast spaces of the stars, observing the ever-changing patterns in their mystery and wonderment. It seems right to then come deep into the heart of the world, with all the various types of people who find us and can use our help at navigating by the stars – and then to return to contemplation and wonder. It feels right not to be constrained by the demands of a conventional professional life and the limits it would impose on us if we joined them.
I see the astrological world expanding, variating and deepening, I am glad to have been part of its return into culture, but also glad to be an ‘elder’ now – listening, attending, witnessing the new generations of astrologers as they rise up, bringing new insights and inspirations to our sacred art. I find myself to be a fierce critic, for better or worse, of any astrology that is not aimed towards guidance in what I call ‘the work of love.’ But I am also willing to listen, to learn from anyone who is dedicated to our ancient and sacred art and vocated to its depth and beauty. That matters more than anything else – and those who are its servants are my family.
Footnotes
1This is another story, and some of it is told to Gary Phillipson in an interview for ‘The Mountain Astrologer’ in 2004which is on my website and on SKYSCRIPT.co.uk. More of this story is described in an essay called, ‘The Call of the Spirit: The Training and Practice of Sangomas in Relation to an Astrologer’s Vocation’ in Daimonic Imagination: Uncanny Intelligence, ed. by Angela Voss and William Rowlandson. ( Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013).
2Clarence is an exception to my rule of silence as he and I dined out on this encounter many times in the following years in the various social circles we shared. He died in the 1980s. He was a wonderful artist and delightful person and I shall always remember him for his Cancerian concern and his Leo rising way of giving me courage.
3The ‘bones’ are the divination tools of many sangomas. They are bits of bone, stones, ivory, shells, gathered over time and they are thrown on the ground and the patterns they make give information to the sangoma about the person asking guidance. I once asked Dorcas what it was that I was doing, and she said, “Da, in the beginning God threw the bones (she gestured to the stars) and you read them.”
4With one or two exception where I have had permission.
5At university we read Thomas Aquinas, of course, but I don’t think we read his words on astrology. Years later, in London, I went to see a priest to ask him if being an astrologer kept me out of the Church. (I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be ‘in the Church’ but I wanted to know my position, if I ever chose to participate in its rituals again). He asked me many questions about how I dealt with ‘seeing the future in the stars’ and I told him how I tried to help people to get to know their natures so they might exercise their ‘free will’ in situations where instincts and desires might lead them to actions they would regret in their pursuit of excellence. At the time I was becoming fascinated by the ancient Greek notion of arete in its association with the inherited or learned ability to choose honourable behaviour over brutish behaviour. This word arete (Greek ἀρετή) seemed to denote the essence of things and the assumption was that the true essence of a human was to choose what I thought of at that time, as Excellence. He told me that I was doing nothing against the teachings of the Church and in fact, helping people to see their natures and their choices was very good work. He must have read Aquinas and the passage which describes how the wise man rules his stars as opposed to the unwise man who does not chose to go against his instincts and desires. (Summa Theologica, I,I 115 4 AD Tertium (5.544)
In spite of beginning to understand something about fate, destiny and free will, I still find it something of a mystery. In 2005 when I was studying for my M.A. in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology at Bath Spa University, I wrote a paper on ‘Fate and Free Will’ so I could think about it all over again. I enjoyed the research immensely. These days I still love the big questions, but no longer require answers.
6She had come to South Africa from London with Tony Buzan (of Mind Mapping fame ) and Michael Gelb to help with a project I’d become deeply involved with to do with education for children in Soweto.
7This later became the MA in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David.