Hi there - I'm trying to put together some understanding of the astrological system of W J Tucker (1896-1981). He was active in the UK during the 1930s-1970s. He seems to have self-published most of his work (one tranche in the 1930s, and another significant number of books in the 1960s and 1970s). He doesn't seem to have been associated with any of the mainstream institutions or schools of British astrology.

He rates a mention in Holden's Biographical Dictionary of Western Astrologers, and there is a part list of his works included in the entry. Philip Graves has posted here some years ago on Tucker's work: viewtopic.php?t=2988&hilit=w+j+tucker

I would be interested if anyone can offer any clues on Tucker's methods, particularly his 'house system' for solar charts which seems peculiar and idiosyncratic. He puts greater store on the solar chart than on the natal chart in his methods of prognostication.

I have tried to recreate some of his methods based on the two case studies in The Principles, Theory and Practice of Scientific Astrology (published by Science and Humanity Ltd, London, but undated). Unfortunately both charts seem to contain significant calculation errors which render them all but useless in trying to define his methods.

Broadly speaking he puts great store by a large number of fixed stars falling within the ecliptic belt, many of which in themselves are quite obscure (not rating a mention in any of the standard texts on fixed stars such as Robson's work, and Hinkley Allen's book).

It's all quite odd, and I can see why his work has fallen into obscurity. If anyone has any information I would be grateful.

Ed

Hi again - this is the notice of his death from The Astrologer's Quarterly, vol. 56, no. 1 (1982) published by the Astrological Lodge:

Dr. William Tucker

We learn that Dr. Tucker died on the 9th December, 1981. He was 85. The sign Scorpio was strongly represented in his horoscope and he was quite happy to "go it alone " in sponsoring his own unique kind of astrology, based largely on the fixed stars as marking points.

It is a long time since Dr. Tucker spoke at the Lodge and his ideas did not appear to have any great impact on members. It will be interesting to see whether his numerous writings, published by his own Pythagorean Publications , achieve for him a degree of posthumous recognition not accorded in his lifetime. We send our condolences to his widow and family.

https://www.astro.com/astro-databank/Tucker,_William

Name Tucker, William
Gender: M
Birthname Tucker, William Joseph
born on 19 November 1896 at 08:19 (= 08:19 AM )
Place London, England, 51n30, 0w10
Timezone GMT h0e (is standard time)
Data source
From memory
Rodden Rating A
Collector: Rodden

Ed

Tucker's views on house systems

I've been able to reference Tucker's 1960 volume Astrology for Everyman. This was self-published by his own imprint, Pythagorean Publications. In Tucker's oeuvre this book comes at an early stage of his 1960s and 1970s publishing rush. In fact I have the second reprint from 1969, so he must have sold quite a few of these books.

Tucker must have been something of a master of self-promotion! He describes the book, in self-styled fashion, as "THE STANDARD TEXTBOOK ON ASTROLOGY" (his all caps!). Stand aside Mrs Margaret Hone, who would have been Tucker's contemporary. Stand aside Mr Jeff Mayo, who would have been active as a teacher as well in this period.

In this book, Tucker seems to have changed his view on house systems. At one point he seems to allude to discarding his earlier system (described in his Your Stars of Destiny) and promulgating a new house system which he calls the Zenith System of House Division. (Astrology for Everyman, Ch. 10, p. 89).

However, this is not what it seems, and he does not described the orthodox Zenith system, which takes as its poles the Zenith and Nadir (points directly above and below the observer), and which describes great circles on the celestial sphere running through 12 equal divisions of the horizon, commencing at the East Point.

Tucker cites work by his brother, James Tucker, which he says led him to review his theory of houses. He says that the zenith is a primary point on the sphere and needs to be central to any house system. To cut a long story short, in this chapter he seems to subscribe to the equal house system and gives a technical justification for adopting this system.

In Tucker's view, the critical factor that commends this system to him is the fact that the great circle described on the celestial sphere, running through the poles of the ecliptic and the zenith and nadir becomes the 10th house cusp. The point at which this circle intersects the ecliptic is, in fact, the nonagesimal degree, or so it seems to me, although Tucker does not specifically use this name for his cuspal degree.

It seems rather presumptuous to rebrand the equal house system as his own 'zenith' house system, particularly since Hone and others were advancing the equal house system through their teaching with the Faculty of Astrological Studies at this time. Hone also advances the equal house system through her Modern Textbook of Astrology, first published in 1951.

However, Tucker seems satisfied with his choice, although he does not illustrate his ideas with any case studies in his textbook.

To be continued!

interesting read... thanks for sharing ed..

No problem James. Tucker's a bit of an enigma, and I like an astro-puzzle.

Ed

Houses in natal charts in Tucker's work.

It looks to me like Tucker advocated equal houses from the MC in his early work (The Principles, Theory and Practice of Scientific Prediction, c. 1930s). This is quite unusual as the house system (M-Houses, or MC-Houses) is quite obscure. Hone referenced this system (M-Houses) in her Modern Text Book of Astrology on p. 142. She identifies her source as a 1951 pamphlet on the subject published by the The London Astrological Research Group. I'm not sure whether Tucker was part of this group.

However, in a later edition, Astrology for Everyman (c.1960s-1970s), he seems to have moved to equal houses from the ascendant for the reasons noted in the post above. He seems drawn to the importance of the tenth house cusp being the nonagesimal degree, on the basis that a great circle can be drawn through poles of the ecliptic and the poles of the horizon (zenith and nadir) - the point at which this circle intersects the ecliptic is the nonagesimal degree.

The nonagesimal degree represents the point at which the Sun would be at its highest point above the horizon in the course of its diurnal cycle, if it was occupying that degree. It is the degree which is midway between the ascendant and descendant degrees.

Tucker notes in Astrology for Everyman that the coincidence of the MC and nonagesimal degree only occurs twice a day - at the moment at which 0 Aries or 0 Libra rises. It is only at these moments that the great circle running through the poles of the ecliptic also runs through the poles of the horizon. At other times, when using M-Houses, the great circle running through the poles of the ecliptic will not run through the poles of the horizon.

I think there is a certain logic to Tucker's conclusions, and many will attest to the power of the nonagesimal degree. If this is preferred as the tenth house cusp, the MC will be a 'free floating' point in the chart, moving between houses 8-11 at moderate latitudes, according to which degree is on the ascendant. By insisting that the tenth cusp is defined by two sets of key points on the celestial sphere (the poles of the ecliptic and the poles of the horizon), the cusps do seem more adequately anchored to a particular time and place.

Some comments in response to Ed's posts about W. J. Tucker:

I think there are two main reasons why Tucker's work has 'fallen into obscurity'.

The first is very simply that of his publishing arrangements. Although most of his books first published in the 1930s and 1940s were either published or distributed by the major British astrological publisher Fowler at the time, he later took all his books in-house under the Pythagorean Publications imprint, which he seems to have launched around 1960 and named in honour of his late brother, whose pen-name in astrological magazines was Pythagorean.

Then when Tucker died, there was no arrangement in place for his work to continue to be published, so all his books became 'orphan works'. Before the Internet, it was very hard to find second-hand copies of niche books that were out of print, so with Tucker's death, his corpus effectively disappeared to the generations of astrologers active in the 1980s and 1990s. It was only really with the advent of mass-adoption of the Internet in the 2000s that his work started to become more visible again through second-hand book listings online, and it was in this climate that I became aware of it and collected his works that decade.

The second reason I would suggest is that Tucker was much in tune with the scientific astrology movement of the early 20th century. In the mid-1930s, he participated in at least one International Congress on Scientific Astrology held on the European continent, and his ability to speak French no doubt assisted him in that. The scientific astrology movement was very strong in continental Europe in the first half of the 20th century, so Tucker would have found plenty of like-minded astrological philosophers there, more than he would in the predominantly theosophical British community. This difference in astrological philosophy with the theosophists probably also accounts for the rather harsh comments in the Lodge obituary - Tucker's ideas had never been in tune with theosophy, and the Lodge was the primary centre for theosophical astrology in the UK, so it is hardly surprising that his ideas had made no great impact on its members. But this overstates the case for Tucker's ideas being obscure more generally - they were very popular for a while among a different, non-theosophical astrological readership that coexisted in time and place with theosophical astrology.

The scientific astrology movement fell out of broader favour with modern astrologers from the 1970s, when organised anti-astrological scepticism took root largely thanks to the efforts of Paul Kurtz, and progressively deterred astrologers from identifying with astrology-as-science. At the same time, Jungian psychological astrology, which tended to see the planets more as symbols than causes, took off, and later on, the late Geoffrey Cornelius influentially suggested that astrology was primarily divinatory in nature. This all added up to Tucker's ideas, as well as those of the European scientific astrologers of the early 20th century, falling out of currency with English-speaking astrologers of the late 20th century.

I incidentally proposed a conference lecture on Tucker's ideas for this year's Astrological Association conference, but because I spoke at last year's, my application was turned down as per the AA's policy of only hosting speakers once every other year, which I had not known. I may well propose the exact same lecture again for 2025 and see what happens. I still have a full set of his astrological books, as well as the complete bound run of Science and Astrology magazine, in the astrological library I maintain, which is now in Newport, South Wales, and no longer in Stockholm, where it was when I first posted about Tucker on Skyscript in the mid-2000s or thereabouts.

There is brief coverage of some of the core ideas of his books of the 1930s in a lecture I gave on the history of the scientific astrology movement from 1890 to 1939 for the Fifth European Conference on Astrology, 2023, the full text of which can be found here (I hope I'm not breaking any rules by sharing the link):

https://www.astrolearn.com/astrology-ar ... 1890-1939/

Philip

Hi Philip - thanks for your response. It's most helpful to have your views. When I have understood his system in a bit more detail, I hope to script a module for Planetdance to recreate his methods. It must have been difficult for him to work in isolation in one sense, and I get a feeling that the lack of recognition, apart from that of his acolytes, must have frustrated him. The tone of the obituary in the Lodge's journal is very much 'damned with faint praise' and rather ungenerous in spirit. I can see his distance from the theosophists is, in part, at the root of his isolation from the mainstream community.

I find Tucker's work fascinating and frustrating in equal measure. I am not sure that there are really any scientific credentials underpinning his work, although he was keen on identifying his ideas with this thread of astrology and contemporary physics. On one level, he is a 'back to Ptolemy' reformer, and the main historical source that he cites is the Tetrabiblos. His commentary on the Tetrabiblos is actually an interesting volume and worth reading, although the thinking around Ptolemy's work has moved on since Tucker was alive. Tucker came very much from the natural science/Aristotelian end of astrology, rather than the Theosophical or Platonic end. I think he was probably caught between the Lodge and Theosophy, and the Astrological Association and Addey's Platonism, not really fitting into either community.

I'll say one thing for Tucker and that is that he has made me think about some aspects of astrology that I hadn't considered for a while. His ideas on equal house, underpinned by his brother James' initial work, are interesting and make this house system more rigorous theoretically than it might first appear.

Many thanks. Ed

Ed, when Tucker was at the height of his success in the mid-1930s, the Astrological Association didn't exist yet. Nor did the Faculty of Astrological Studies. Tucker had set up his own organisation called the British Association of Scientific Astrologers. He was not as isolated as you appear to think, but probably didn't need the support of Modern Astrology Office or the Lodge because he had plenty of other contacts and supporters internationally.

And then Tucker also launched his own independent astrological magazine, Science and Astrology, with a whole team and budget behind it. And he successfullly marketed it both in the UK and in the USA, to which regular export orders were sent. The magazine closed down after 12 issues in 18 months because of his bad luck: owing to a fault (perhaps a printer's error) in a batch of his magazine sent to the USA, the entire shipment was rejected unpaid-for by his distributor there, which resulted in a crippling loss that bankrupted his operation.

While the British Association of Scientific Astrologers may not have had as many members as E. H. Bailey's organisation, the British Astrological Society, let alone as the Lodge, it certainly had its supporters. Because he was such a good international networker, Tucker corresponded widely with astrologers in both continental Europe and the USA, and I recall finding evidence that he was instrumental in persuading an American astrologer (possibly Adrian Ziegler) to found his own equivalent organisation called the American Association of Scientific Astrologers, which came into being in 1936 and was the forerunner to the American Federation of Scientific Astrologers (launched 1938), which eventually shortened its name to the American Federation of Astrologers, but is an indirect descendant of Tucker's organisation nonetheless.

The British astrological community was inherently fractured and diverse in the 1930s. Even without Tucker, the course taken by E. H. Bailey (assisted by Sepharial) in working as editor of the British Journal of Astrology was quite distinct from that taken by Charles Carter as editor of Astrology: the Astrologer's Quarterly (for the Lodge). And at the same time, Modern Astrology magazine was still in print, with Scottish astrologer Duncan Macnaughton (a.k.a. Maurice Wemyss) having taken over its editing after Bessie Leo died. So that's three major British astrological periodicals serving as focal points even before Tucker came on the scene. But there were also other notable independents such as Alec Stuart, editor of the monthly 'Starlore' for around 16 years from the mid-1920s to the early 1940s, and P. J. Harwood, author of a series of thoughtful books.

To sum up, there were quite a few astrologers working and publishing outside the Lodge, and outside Modern Astrology Office. Tucker was arguably one of the more prominent and successful ones in that he managed to get the major publisher Fowler to distribute several of his books.

I've also come upon evidence that another independent British astrologer from the mid-20th century, Edward W. Whitman, was content to distribute Tucker's later self-published books through his mail order service, alongside his own, in the 1960s, before Whitman's own life was cut short by death in a car crash - which also claimed that of Whitman's wife.

Thanks Philip - fair points. His second period of publishing did occur once the AA (1958) and FAS (1948) had been set up. I couldn't find any acknowledgement of his work in the AA's Index to the Astrological Journal (1959-1989) but there might be something in the publications that was missed from the record. It's a pity that despite his output, the AA doesn't list one review of his books in the Index.

There's a very DIY ethic to Tucker's work, which makes it intrinsically interesting in my view. I actually admire what he tried to do and it's a pity that his work is not more widely known. That he actually prospered to a degree outside the English astro mainstream is a credit to him. What a pity about his magazine - as you say, he had bad luck with that.

As far as Solar Charts, please see the work of Don "Moby Dick" Jacobs and his son Jayj. They put as much emphasis on the Solar Chart, even when they had a rock-solid birthtime, and would use both charts...

Thank you Astralwanderer and Philip for this very interesting post. Read your article on scientific astrology with great interest Philip.

I am no expert in explaining the vision of Tucker but it seems that he is talking about an Horizon System, which is not linked to Houses but to directions (North, South, East, West).
We are more familiar with the Ecliptic and Equatorial Systems in our measurements of a birth chart.

Here is how Steve Cozzi describes the Horizon System (Planets in Locality, p.140,141).
"The plane of reference in the Horizon System is the visible or sensible horizon. This means that if you were standing on the ideal surface of a flat plane, such as a desert floor, you could see an even horizon in all directions... The complete circle around you is measured in azimuth, and it contains 360 degrees. The other measurement is called altitude and pertains to the elevation of a planet... The important thing to grasp is that the planets are located within 360 degrees of azimuth, and therefore they fall un line with the cardinal directions of North, South, East and West, just like on a compass...
And the Zenith is always directly above your head. This is an exact representation of time and space (place), and even more exact than the natal chart, because it shows how the cosmos is seen by an observer at any location and moment in time."

Regarding the Horizon System, another interesting point investigated by Johndro in his book 'The Stars' is the influence of the Fixed Stars in certain geo locations on Earth. How they amplify the good, bad or mixed influences of the planets in a given locality.

So what Tucker was investigating seems very close to Locality Space.
Johndro called the Horizon System, the "merry-go-round", a circle on the horizon around us, with ouselves at the center.
Finally, where we search in our practice a mass or a body in the sky to validate astrology might be electro-magnetic fields running alongside the spine of the universe.

Einstein said "Magnetism is a purely relativistic effect, something that would not even be there without relativity. Magnetic fields are a relativistic correction that you observe when charges move relative to you."

Maybe I am wrong altogether but this post on Tucker that you brought up astralwanderer led me to this reflection.

Ouranos