FOR MY FRENCH, SPANISH, GERMAN, PORTUGUESE AND ITALIAN READERS
I am pleased to announce that my book “SOLAR RETURNS – Interpreting Solar Returns: Predictions”, already published in English, is now also available, thanks to Amazon KDP’s Kindle Translate, in French, Portuguese, Spanish, German and Italian.
This new publication gives me the opportunity to add a few clarifications intended especially for those who are interested in Active Astrology and, in particular, in Aimed Solar Returns.
For the past few days, the fourth edition of my book “Transits and Solar Returns” has also been available, in Italian in print and in several languages on Kindle. Taking as a reference the English edition published by the American Federation of Astrologers in 2013, we have gone from approximately 240 pages in that edition to 673 pages in the current one.
But, in my opinion, for scholars who are particularly interested in this subject, it is also important to understand where we started from and through which stages we arrived at the present work, which has been revised and expanded many times over the entire period during which I have devoted myself to this field—a field that, from the very beginning of my astrological studies, became one of my principal points of reference in the art of Urania.
Here, then, are some of the milestones I would like to recall.
1) Between 1970 and 1975, I published several articles and took part in the first broadcasts of Italy’s independent radio stations, as well as cable television programs, speaking about Aimed Solar Returns, which have nothing whatsoever to do with Alexandre Volguine’s book, often inappropriately cited in this context.
A particularly significant testimony to this path of mine is my study of Luigi Pirandello, which I published several years later in some of my books as well. As anyone can verify, I calculated the great Pirandello’s charts for Rome, where he lived for almost his entire life, and not for Girgenti (Agrigento), where he was born.
2) In 1979, with the publisher Federico Capone, I published my “Prontuario di calcoli” (“Calculation Handbook”), which was also useful for calculating Solar Returns.
3) Also in 1979, with the Milan publisher Giovanni Armenia, I published “Gli Astri del Successo”, containing many portraits of famous people in which I explained the use of Solar Returns and Aimed Solar Returns, also referring to portraits of mine that had already appeared in ASTRA magazine in 1977, 1978 and 1979.
4) In 1984, in my “Guida ai Transiti” (“Guide to Transits”), I devoted approximately one third of the book to Solar Returns and Aimed Solar Returns.
5) In the following years, I published several other books on the subject, both in Italian and in English, including “Trattato Pratico delle Rivoluzioni Solari” and “Nuovo Trattato delle Rivoluzioni Solari” (“Solar Returns” in the United States).
6) This brings us to 1997, the year of the first Italian edition of my “Transiti e Rivoluzioni Solari”.
It is a date I could never forget because throughout 1996 I worked in despair, with the subjective certainty that I was going to lose my mother, who indeed passed away during the night of December 26, 1996.
In that book, I established the famous 30 rules, which several years later would become 34.
The first edition was also very successful in translation: in French with the highly prestigious Éditions Traditionnelles of Paris, and subsequently in Spanish, German and also Russian, in collaboration with the Higher School of Astrology in Moscow.
7) And this brings us to the present day, to the Fourth Edition of “Transits and Solar Returns”, greatly expanded compared with the previous editions, and to the new possibilities that Kindle Translate is opening up for making these studies available to Readers of many different languages.
Within this journey, “Solar Returns” therefore represents an important stage in the history of my studies on Solar Returns and Aimed Solar Returns, together with “Guida ai Transiti”, “Trattato Pratico delle Rivoluzioni Solari” and “Nuovo Trattato delle Rivoluzioni Solari”.
Indeed, I believe that understanding the genesis of a specific cultural and intellectual journey is at least as important as knowing its most recent results.
In the book you will also find examples dating back many years. I remember, for instance, the case of a client of mine who was unable to leave for an Aimed Solar Return and consequently found himself with Mars in the First House. He was a person who was usually incapable of making forceful decisions, and during the following months he experienced a year that we might describe as “galvanizing.”
But, in recounting that experience, I also warned Readers that the same young man, during that year, fell from his Vespa and broke his leg.
It is precisely through hundreds of cases such as this one, studied over the course of more than half a century, that my work on Solar Returns and Aimed Solar Returns has developed.
And this is why I find it particularly moving today to see these texts becoming accessible, almost simultaneously, to Readers of different languages and countries.
As I have already written in connection with my recent publications, I consider Kindle Translate an extraordinary technology.
I particularly appreciate the fact that Amazon also subjects translations to rigorous quality control: KDP states that translations must pass a seven-step verification process, which takes into account, among other things, fidelity to the original, idiomatic expressions, terminological consistency, grammar and spelling. If a translation does not meet the required standards, it is not published.
I have personally experienced this aspect as well with another book of mine: of the four translations I requested, only the Portuguese one initially passed the quality check, while the other three were held back.
And I regard this too as an indication of the great seriousness of the project: I certainly prefer a system that says “this translation is not yet good enough to be published” rather than one that automatically publishes any result.
Amazon also explains that translations rejected because of current technological limitations are automatically processed again as the service improves and are then subjected once more to quality control.
Kindle Translate is still in beta and, therefore, we are probably only at the beginning.
And yet, to be able to see one of my books published today almost simultaneously in English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, German and Italian seems extraordinary to me and reinforces my conviction that we are witnessing an epoch-making transformation in the international dissemination of books and written knowledge.
I will therefore continue to follow the evolution of this technology with the greatest interest, and I hope that many more languages will soon be added.
Enjoy your reading, Everyone!
P.S. In this brief overview, I have not mentioned my many books also devoted to Lunar Returns, exercises on Aimed Solar Returns, and Aimed Lunar Returns.
