Wednesday, December 21, 2011

I want a Curmudgeon for Christmas


John Lennon: His Inconvenient Truths

If you, the reader, have not yet read my previous blog entry, “Lovely Lori (Reta Gene),” it would be best that you set this article aside, go back and read the other first.

As I pointed out in that earlier article, my late wife really did know the Beatles. She had to contend with a lot of prejudice on the part of astrological snobs who felt that since she (and I) were not part of the elitist subset of the astrological community, that we had no right to discuss celebrities as if we knew them. I'll admit that I did not know John Lennon; Georgie was the only one who did.
When the Beatles traveled to India to visit the Maharishi, it was the beginning of a great metaphysical experience for them. They all gained a lot knowledge and some wisdom, in varying degrees in accordance with their own needs. Before the trip to India, John did not have much interest in astrology to speak of. He blithely accepted the birth data that his aunt thought she reembered for him: October 9, 1940 at 6:30 p.m. GMD in Liverpool. At that stage in John's life, astrology was no great concern.
After the Beatles returned to England, they were changed men in many ways. John thought that astrology might help him to get a better handle on the meaning of life. After some personal investigation and in-depth research, John found a more satisfactory birth time and abandoned the prior one. The 6:30 chart gave him an Aries ascendant and an Aquarius Moon. Neither of those placements really fit John. Physically, the only Aries trait that John exhibited was his prominent adam's apple. If John really did have Aries rising, he would have probably gone bald before the age of 30. Other astrologers think that an Aquarius Moon was a good fit because John was eccentric and because his wife, Yoko Ono, had the Sun in Aquarius. Believe me, limiting the study of synastry to Sun signs is much too shallow to dignify here.
The data that John was able to ascertain was October 9, 1940 at 7:14 a.m. in Manchester, U.K.. Perhaps the location in Manchester may be incorrect, but the time is most believable. This chart gives John a Libra ascendant and a Capricorn Moon. In my analysis of this chart, I realized that if I tweaked this time by a scant 4 minutes to 7:18 a.m., Neptune would have arced exactly to his ascendant on July 15, 1958, the date that John's mother was killed when a drunken driver ran over her. The conjunction of his Nodal axis with his ascendant-descendant axis reflected John's closeness to his mother. John was devastated by the his mother's death, and he never did recover from the emotional blow..
John's Capricorn Moon illustrated John's need to have an older woman serve as a mother substitute, and Yoko was 7 years older than John. Likewise, as Capricorn is ruled by Saturn, Yoko's darker complexion also fit the physical description provided by the Capricorn Moon. In the words of Noel Tyl, a person with Capricorn Moon needs “to administrate (sic) progress and to make things happen. In John Lennon's case, it reflects the battles he had with Paul McCartney over the course they each wanted the Beatles to take. John was looking for a venue for his highly personalized self-expression in music, prose and art. But Paul wanted the Beatles to be crassly commercial, reflective of the career of Paul's father, a British music hall entertainer.
Looking again at the death of John's mother, we must remember that solar arcs do provide the background framework for any event. But still, transits are necessary for these events that are called the “big bells”. The most revealing transits are Venus and Mars both squaring the Moon—and sopposing each other. Most likely, she died a few minutes later when the transiting ascendant was conjunct his Moon..
John's midpointology is also significant. The morning chart shows VE = AS / MC = SU / MC = NO / MO. The evening chart cannot possible come close to anything resembling those midpoint pictures. Although some people feel that John got his outrageous side from an Aquarius Moon, I submit that his midpoint picture, AP = UR / PL applicable to anyone born October 9, 1940, would suffice. Former major league baseball player, Joe Pepitone, was an astro-twin of John, and his own outrageous side was documented in Ball Four by Jim Bouton.

There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that John Lennon was born in the morning and is a double Libra with a Capricorn Moon.

Don “Donbee” Borkowski
dgborkowski@msn.com

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Lovely Lori (Reta Gene)

If I could remember the exact date that I met the woman I was to marry, the presentation of the astrology behind it would be even more dramatic. I do know I met the woman I'll always remember as Georgie in June of 1975. I'll just have to approximate the date for the middle of the month, using June 15th to check for the solar arc positions. I had SA Moon = Neptune, as well as SA Saturn and SA Mercury both = my MC.

This is a very difficult story to start at the beginning. As it stands now, there are so many factors that have to be weighed with the perspective of the lapse of many years between then and now.

I met Georgie at Press and Ima Roberts' Arcane Book Store in Portland, Oregon. Once after visiting his store one Saturday, Press suggested that I give her a ride home. I did and the next week I asked her out to dinner. On our first date, just to make conversation, I asked her if she knew any famous people. When she started stammering, I should have suspected something. Since she, herself, was extremely psychic, she probably just assumed that I was equally psychic, and suspected something. In reality, I am as psychic as the legendary bag of hammers. Later when I discovered her to be a compulsive chatterbox, I concluded that my simple, innoocent question must have really shaken her if it made her clam up so tightly. Later, it took a lot of work on both her part and mine, but we eventually got to know each other, somewhat. After experiencing a number of supernatural occurrences, it came out that not only had Georgie met the Beatles, she was friends with some of them. In fact she had even changed her name in a court of law to Georgeanne Veronica Harrison to honor her favorite one (and one of her favorite saints, as well.)
As the months went by, and I got to know her and her relatives, I became rather puzzled why her 17-year-younger half-brother always called her “Sister” and never by her name. I was later told that it was to make it easier on him having to deal with her name change. But it turned out that she had a number of names floating around in the ether for her. Officially, her given name was Loreta Gene McClearen. Since Loreta has only one “T”, the “E” is lengthened, as compared with “Loretta”. Add to this the fact that since her mother's name was also Loreta, my future wife was called “Reta Gene” by her family members. She didn't like that because she wanted her own identity. So she had her friends and peers call her “Lori”. Keeping in mind that because she was a compulsive chatterbox, she gave this background to most of her friends--including Paul McCartney. When she told Paul that in the United States, traffic wardens were called “meter maids”, he thought that was the funniest thing he had ever heard. So what started out as gentle teasing, “Reta Gene the Meter Maid” morphed into the hook on which “Lovely Rita” of the Sgt. Pepper album was based. In fact the term “meter maid” was not used in England until the Beatles popularized it.

Here is a link to read about her in the Astrologers' Memorial web page: http://www.solsticepoint.com/astrologersmemorial/borkowski.html

Friday, December 16, 2011

The Birth of An Arabic Part

In the 40-1/2 years since I began my study of astrology, many cultural and attitudinal changes have taken place. Some are good; others are not as good. One aspect of of an astrological study that I truly miss is the willingness to share new ideas with others. Back in the day, people shared new ideas most willingly. If a new idea had merit, it skyrocketed. If a new idea was bunk, it would peter out and just fade away. The marketplace of ideas would separate the wheat from the chaff. Nowadays, astrologers look on new ideas as ways to make money, and people are reluctant to share lest they get lost in the lurch, especially if they have put some substantial time and effort to introduce a new technique to the astrological community.
Now, more than ever, astrologers have become obsessed with mathematical rigor. I suppose that is necessary, but I truly hate to see how such stilted formality is stifling creativity. I think new ideas should be pursued with enthusiasm and joie de vivre at the outset. Once the new idea starts to take root only then should it be formalized. In the meantime, astrological creativity should not be stifled.
Nowadays, if some object has some astronomical significance, astrologers will assume that it must have some astrological significance, whether it does or not. Some astrologers will toss anything into a chart, even the kitchen sink. (I don't know for sure, but I am tempted to bet money that someone has probably gone so far as to name an asteroid “Kitchen Sink” by now.) In fact, Pluto had been known for 40 years when I took up our craft, and yet even then, many astrologers were afraid of committing themselves to adding Pluto to their astrological pallette. Pluto was generally ignored until Sakoian and Acker first published The Astrologer's Handbook in 1973.
Back in the early 1970's, I was a lonely, unloved man, and I truly envied all the people in my life who were sexually fulfilled. I spent far too much time and effort trying to ascertain when I would join the ranks of the sexually active. I noticed that my most fulfilled peers tended to have Pluto and Venus in a harmonious aspect—usually a trine where Pluto was 4 signs ahead of Venus. My choices of Venus, as the planet of romantic love and sensuality and of Pluto, as the planet of pure sex were fairly straightforward. Then I experimented with how to combine Venus and Pluto in a meaningful manner. If I went with Venus and Pluto in the other direction, my new Arabic Part would show up in the 9th house, tather than the 5th for those fulfilled people. By Jove, I then realized that I was onto a brilliant idea. When I computed this new Arabic Part for my own chart, I found it to fall in my first house. Oh well, it was plenty obvious what that meant.
I promoted my finding in the letters column of the March, 1974 issue of American Astrology magazine. I kept on promoting it every chance I got. When Press and Ima and I wrote Signs and Parts in Plain English, I included the Part of Sex Drive along with all the other Arabic Parts that had been known and used for centuries. Then when Astro Computing Services offered lists of all the possible Arabic Parts, I suggested to them that the formula of Asc. + Pluto – Venus be called the Part of Sex Drive, they adopted that name for it. Now my work is an official part of the astrological literarure. It figures that I have not been given the recognition that I deserve. But the right people do know from whence it comes.
Don Borkowski
dgborkowski@msn.com