FOR MY ENGLISH-SPEAKING READERS
The English version of my Italian book “CRITICAL READING OF THE NATAL CHART” is now available: ASIN B0HDBFLPJ4
Unfortunately, I must report that for about a month I’ve been trying to publish my book “MAN AND THE STARS – INTERVIEW WITH ASTROLOGY” using the Kindle-Translate format, but without success. I’ve tried to understand the reason with KDP Support officials, but they haven’t been able to provide an explanation. So far, the only reason I can think of is that the book is too large for this type of operation (822 pages).
As for this book, however, everything went smoothly and without any problems.
You can read the preface here.
PREFACE
One day, many, many years ago, when I was offering advice to people from all over Italy and even abroad, I met a friendly architect in his forties in my office in Naples.
It took me a long time to explain to him that he was a Virgo and not a Sagittarius as he thought: he was born within two hours of sunset, and from every perspective, the sixth sign of the zodiac “jumped out at me.”
I saw him as rather skeptical, annoyed, and even annoyed, and he greeted me in the same way.
But then, just two days later, he called me: “I’d like to see you for half an hour, not for a consultation… I’d just like to explain why you’re wrong about my being a Virgo…”
I saw him a few days later, and I must say, with a hint of sadism, that it was one of the most hilarious scenes in my entire life. The subject—whom we’ll call Stefano—sat down, searched for and found the most comfortable position, also in terms of vision and perspective for our conversation. Then he took out from his briefcase, which looked like it had been bought just hours earlier, a wonderful notebook that I’ve never been able to find on the market: a truly precious object, with glossy or semi-matte paper that printers called “mozzarella,” and with which I myself, at the dawn of the computer age, used to make the mirrored films of my books, which I delivered directly to the printing technicians, who then only had to put the book in the press and print it…
Stefano, with the utmost care and attention, placed the cover of the notebook on the spine, taking great care not to create “ears.”
Then he took a beautiful, admittedly expensive fountain pen from his inside jacket pocket, unscrewed the top, and positioned it, ready for use, a few centimeters to the right of the notebook, but not just anywhere.
Then I looked at the notebook again and saw a long list, handwritten in an elegant, unedited hand, of entries, all preceded by a horizontal line and a blank space.
At that point Stefano announced: “Here are twenty-seven points that will prove to you that I’m not a Virgo!” and he began to list them for me, immediately crossing out the first word of each line with his wonderful pen…
I confess I couldn’t help but burst into laughter…
Now, this is one of the funniest amarcords of my consultations, but I could recount thousands of them, all different and not even ironic or funny…
However, I believe that this one, besides being the first that comes to mind, is also quite indicative of the peculiarities that have characterized my long journey of astrological studies and research, which today, in December 2018, is concluding a forty-eight-year cycle spent exploring very new and original paths in many areas of Urania’s art.
This, obviously, scandalized and even irritated many people, like this charming architect, a Virgo to the bone marrow, who refused to resign himself to losing his Sagittarian identity.
As many of you know, I love astrology more than my own life, and so it pains me greatly to see its current state of decay. I’ve tried to illustrate this, from my perspective, in all its facets in my fairly recent book, Requiem for Astrology (the text is in both Italian and English, both in the same volume).
Before continuing, I’d like to clarify once again: I’m not irritated by colleagues who fight me or are harshly critical of me, but I’m literally furious with those among them who are profoundly confused and wish to remain so, as well as astrologers who change their opinions every other month and behave like the reeds in the wind Grazia Deledda wrote about.
I hate any form of pharisaism, and even more so those concerning astrology.
I hate small and large scammers: those who cheat on our knowledge, especially towards their own young students.
In the next chapter, to better clarify my position, I will reiterate a few individual paragraphs on this topic: one from the text Requiem for Astrology and three others from my recent blogs.
When I read—and it happens to me quite often—that someone who has just opened an astrology school introduces himself and claims to have noticed that Libras often behave as if they were Aries… I am shocked.
How can one claim to practice Einsteinian physics if one hasn’t first studied the physics of the millennia before Christ, then that of the centuries after the birth of Jesus, and then arrived at the theories of Galileo and Newton?
Likewise, if one doesn’t possess a completely critical view of the astrological Weltanschauung of every great author, one won’t be able to forge one’s own path.
And most of all, I am offended by ignorance disguised as ecumenism: “Yes, I know that great modern authors reject this, but one must have a broad mind and accommodate everyone’s astrological thinking…”
Even that Francesco Sizzi who, centuries ago, theorized that there couldn’t be more than seven planets in our solar system, given that there are so many orifices in the human body?
I’ll repeat it until I’m bored and dead: I’m perfectly fine with anyone—and even everyone—saying and writing that they’re absolutely against my school and my discoveries. But I expect anyone who says so to at least know what they’re talking about!
A dear friend of mine, Lorenzo Vancheri, who generously helped me edit several of my books, and who could have written excellent ones himself, was “brutalized” (I imagine) by some horoscope-reader and “resigned from astrology.” If he hadn’t, I would have asked him to write a book for my publishing house, Ricerca ’90, in which he would proceed with ten-page index cards and, with his excellent critical eye, identify the key and specific points of each school, but reading them—precisely—with his extraordinary acumen, which allows him to be the first to compare them.
I believe he changed his email address because I’ve written to him a couple of times in the last two years and received no response…
And so, after much consideration, even though I’m aware that my list of enemies will now grow to tens of thousands of colleagues, I have nevertheless decided to write this book of critical reading of the Natal Chart.
I want everyone to be clear: for me, critical reading does not mean extolling my own school while mocking that of my opponents. Absolutely not.
Although I jokingly say that psychological-philosophical-esoteric astrologers are man’s best friend, when I stop joking, I maintain that they legitimately practice an astrology that appeals to them and that appeals to their students/clients/readers at least as much as I do.
I will never try to dissuade them. I regard a good engineer with equal respect as a good philosopher or musician: there is not and should never be any competition on a disciplinary level. Everyone is free to follow their own ideas or those of their masters.
Of course not!
To paraphrase one of the most famous mottos in history, attributed to Voltaire, I will always shout: “I will fight your ideas all my life, but I will also fight all my life so that you can express them!”
I don’t mind at all when someone reads a Natal Chart inspired by Dane Rudhyar or Stephen Arroyo or Alan Leo, but I get angry if someone, claiming to be a disciple of these men, then interprets a Natal Chart by copying my books or those of the great André Barbault, never referring, not even indirectly, to the names I just listed.
And now we come to the example I never wanted to give and which I absolutely must cite, first and foremost out of respect and love for a colleague with whom I have shared a long life journey, despite our completely different astrological thinking: Lisa Morpurgo.
Let’s proceed with a very brief introduction and an equally brief story.
Who, a few months after its publication, wrote a long and laudatory review of “The Stone Guest” in a publication that was openly hostile to it?
Myself.
Who resigned as vice president of a national astrological association when all the other members tried to “lynch” Lisa Morpurgo?
Yours truly.
Who gave her all the space she desired, for herself and her students, in her quarterly magazine, whenever she wanted it?
Yours truly.
Why? Because I was a sincere admirer of her splendid intelligence as well as her formidable classical learning. Moreover, I loved her, a great deal, like an older sister.
I could cite a hundred episodes to confirm this, but there’s no need because everything is written down, on paper, unlike today where you can completely change what was published online a month, a year, or ten years ago.
I didn’t consider Lisa an astrologer in the strictest sense, and when I got down to business, I found myself much more comfortable reasoning with Peter Van Wood than with her, but I admired the depth and brilliance of her critical and speculative thinking.
The story of the four parallel universes, each with twelve celestial bodies, has always fascinated me. From the philosophical point of view of astrology. But I never thought, and I still don’t think so, that this could translate in the slightest into a useful and practical reading of a natal chart.
The very slight differences in throne and/or exaltation, for example, of a Venus in Cancer or Pisces, do not produce any substantial or practical difference in the reading of a natal chart.
The point is, if one firmly claims to be a Morpurgo follower, one should consequently also proceed to interpret the Natal Charts of Maradona, Asia Argento, or Matteo Salvini, explaining how the four parallel universes and the twelve stars for each equivalent zodiac would allow us to draw up a supposedly specific life path through a reading that’s neither better nor worse, but simply completely different from what, say, a Henri J. Gouchon would do of the same characters.
And anyone who claims to read a Natal Chart according to Lisa Morpurgo’s school should also have the mental correctness to never interpret an astrological chart starting from the dominant (which Lisa completely rejected) or, depending on the case, also resorting to the interpretation of the subject’s Solar Returns (another “devil’s” argument for beloved Lisa!).
So, I repeat: I’m fine with anything, but not with someone who presents themselves as vegan eating porchetta “only when it’s very cold and in the mountains…”
Be vegan.
Be carnivores.
Be cannibals.
Be whatever you want, but don’t arbitrarily and unregulatedly combine the good and the bad of each orientation and cook a huge mixed meatloaf to be served in different variations depending on the situation you find yourself in at any given time.