Margaret Cahill at the Wessex Astrologer tells me she will publish a new book by Kim Farnell, Flirting With The Zodiac, on March 13. Margaret says it's "a history of Sun sign astrology going back to Babylonian times".

I thought sun-sign astrology was an invention of Alan Leo & R.H. Naylor. I did not know it had a past. Kim, what can you tell us about it?

Kim, what can you tell us about it?

It's a jolly good book and everyone should buy it

You wanted more? Ok, then.

Everything has a past. It seemed to me completely blinkered to think that ancient Babylonians could work out all sorts of complex astronomical factors, and yet somehow hadn't noticed that the Sun spends a month in each sign. So that made a good starting point.

Alan Leo certainly didn't invent it. He stole Hiram Butler's work when he produced his only Sun sign book. (First edition of Everybody's Astrology.)

RH Naylor only ended up doing his newspaper column because Cheiro was busy. The main reason we think he invented it was because he kept telling everyone that he had. But he was taught the technique by Cheiro and wasn't responsible for the first twelve paragraph Sun sign forecasting column. That came out four years before Naylor's in a magazine called Your Destiny in the USA and was written by William Franks. Despite popular myth, Naylor didn't write one until 1936. The technique of calling the Sun sign the ascendant and working from that for forecasting is documented in the sixteenth century, so I may be being a little picky here.

But even if we just talk Sun sign astrology, without the twelve paragraph forecasting form, Naylor no more invented it than he did the wheel.

Raphael called it an "ancient superstition" in 1831. Byrhtferth set out the Sun signs in a book in 1011 (that is not a typing error), and described it as "the folly of wise men of old." Hippolytus described the appearance of those born under Taurus in the third century CE. Babylonian zodologia predict people's fate based on their Sun sign.

Sun sign astrology most definitely has a past.

Before the modern version, its last big moment was in the late nineteenth century, though we tended to call it solar biology then. (I know that solar biology was intended to be different, but that doesn't change the fact that the term was used to describe Sun sign astrology.)

But its really big moment was in the fifteenth/sixteenth centuries, with the Shepherds Calendar, a phenomenally popular book that gave lengthy descriptions of the Sun signs. Philip will be reviewing Flirting soon, and I'm not going to give the whole plot away, but as I have Pisces to hand from the Shepherds Calendar, you might like to see what I mean. This is my translation:

Those that be born under Pisces, from mid February until mid March, shall be wise and cunning in many sciences and shall go far, and be a marriage breaker and very covetous. He shall say one thing and do another. He shall find hidden money. He shall trust in his wisdom, and defend widows and maidens and motherless children, and shall pass lightly all his troubles and shall live for seventy-two years. The woman that is born there shall be given to pleasure, have the courage to please with familiarity and shall have great sickness in her eyes and be slandered and defamed. Her husband shall forsake her and she shall have great pain with strangers and she shall not have it that it?s her own fault. She shall have sickness in her stomach and in childbirth. She shall live for seventy-two years. Saturday and Tuesday are evil to them, as much to the man as the woman, and they shall live faithfully.

This started life as my Masters dissertation and just grew and grew. Lots of gold stars to Margaret, who made me rewrite it in English for real people. It's taken me a VERY long time, as no one had tried to put all the info together before. And I'm relieved it's over. Now I just have to think of what to do next...

Kim

Edited to add - If you happen to be a Piscean female, please go and have a nice cup of tea, don't panic, just think of the pleasure. And cheer yourself up with the thought that Aquarian men will be bitten on the cheek.

Kim, it sounds wonderful. I love stuff that peeks into old corners & turns up with new stuff.

Deb tells me I should put my store's URL at the end of my posts (I would never have presumed), so I will add that I will stock, and write my own notes, as soon as I can get my hands on it.

Since you're the Sepharial expert, I might mention that about the time your book gets out, I will publish a compilation of Silver Key, Law of Values, and Arkana, or Stock & Share Key. Am planning another Sepharial compilation, but don't yet have source material, so will keep quiet on that. Philip Graves & I are also planning to put Raphael's Description of the Faces & Degrees of the Zodiac, together with Sepharial's Birthday Book, into one volume. Don't think either of them have been published in a century.

And while I'm here, have you seen what Robert Blaschke has done with La Volasfera, in his Book 5?

So many, many books to get back into print. At least a few of them are already in English!

Kim, it sounds wonderful. I love stuff that peeks into old corners & turns up with new stuff.

This is what I do :-)

Deb tells me I should put my store's URL at the end of my posts (I would never have presumed),

You're training to be English?

so I will add that I will stock, and write my own notes, as soon as I can get my hands on it.

You'll have it very soon.

Since you're the Sepharial expert, I might mention that about the time your book gets out, I will publish a compilation of Silver Key, Law of Values, and Arkana, or Stock & Share Key. Am planning another Sepharial compilation, but don't yet have source material, so will keep quiet on that.

What don't you have? I might have it. Email me privately.

Philip Graves & I are also planning to put Raphael's Description of the Faces & Degrees of the Zodiac, together with Sepharial's Birthday Book, into one volume. Don't think either of them have been published in a century.

Philip had told me about this, we've been following one another around Ebay. They haven't.

And while I'm here, have you seen what Robert Blaschke has done with La Volasfera, in his Book 5?

No. Is it scary?

So many, many books to get back into print. At least a few of them are already in English!

Once my present hoo ha dies down, I'll be cataloguing my collection. You may want to talk to me

Kim

I love that "wise and cunning in many sciences" . I just hate it when we Pisceans are called dreamy and unorganized. Must be that imagined connection with the Neptune and the 12th house...

But I think I'll ignore that "great pain with strangers" and other stuff...

And while I'm here, have you seen what Robert Blaschke has done with La Volasfera, in his Book 5?

No. Is it scary?

It's wonderful. He takes techniques from his Book 2 (Sabian Aspect Orbs) & susbstitutes La Volasfera. Run GW Bush's prenatal eclipse into La Volasfera & you'll be stunned. I asked him about this, why use one book over another, and he said that for Book 2 he got permission to quote from Jones & so went with that. Myself, I don't think all the degree symbol books are created equal, but I'm a minority opinion. I'm blowing my own horn, but read my remarks on Book 5 here: http://www.astroamerica.com/fore2.html#b101

So many, many books to get back into print. At least a few of them are already in English!

Once my present hoo ha dies down, I'll be cataloguing my collection. You may want to talk to me

I will!

Dave

getting old books back into print is something that is very dear to my heart. I figure the mroe places around the world we library the great texts, the less likely they are to be lost to us! And more translations too!

rosetta stones all!

Granny