Hello Kim,
My notes on your new book are on-line. You can see them here:
www.astroamerica.com/history.html#f48
I think it's an excellent book & a good compliment to Benson Bobrick's Fated Sky. Which, if you've not seen it, you should.
On Cheiro. You mention his encounter with HP Blavatasky, who said that he was Cagliostro reincarnated. Some Theosophists believe that HPB herself was Cagliostro. It might be they have misconstrued the Cheiro story, or it might be that stories about meeting HPB are like stories of meeting JFK, I do not know.
However, I am convinced that charts for two consecutive lives, of highly developed people, will show strong similarites, and by this means such claims may be judged. Planets strong by sign in one chart will generally be strong by sign in the next, though, of course, the actual signs will change considerably. With a nod to M.E. Jones, those with a bundle pattern in one life will not have a splay in the next. What most fascinated me was the casual discovery that houses occupied in one chart will tend to be occupied in the next chart, or, in the case of bundles, similar houses. By this means, if the time of birth is known in one life, it may be deduced in the other.
Dave