Letters from Garth Allen

[Jim Eshelman]

I've finally unboxed a file that had a collection of letters I received from Garth Allen (Donald A. Bradley) in 1970 and 1971. This isn't the whole of his correspondence, which lasted almost three years longer until his health failed. There is also nothing special or unique about his letters to me - he was in touch with so many people over the years and had an instinct for mentoring. They were, of course, unique and special to me as a 15-year-old sorting my way through Sidereal astrology.

Soon after the last letter in this collection, I began writing occasionally for American Astrology and Spica. By the summer of '73, Don told me his cancer was back. He passed in the spring of 1974.

I'm retyping these letters mostly because I think they will have general interest for some of you. They serve as a reminder, if I ever get impatient with what seems a silly or misdirected idea, that I've had plenty of silly and misdirected ideas in my life (and continue to have them). Fortunately, I had someone at the beginning (sharing my Aquarius Moon) who modelled and prodded on critical thinking. I suspect he also had some idea from his own early life what it might have been like to be a 15-year-old boy in a small Midwest town with a far-reaching mind and interests in strange things like astrology.

For example, the first letter below (the first he sent) was in response to my writing him a grandiose, over-arching theory about how both the Tropical and Sidereal zodiac probably both existed and how that all worked together. (I've never written that theory down again for fear that, even in my disowning it, someone would take it seriously.) His answer is wonderful in and of itself and also (I can now see) because of the style and process of thinking he displayed.

[Jim Eshelman]

Dear Mr. Eshelman,

This is just a hurried note to express thanks for the compliment. And also to enclose the more extensive tert-equivalent tables for whatever use you may have for them (not that you goofed a bit on your multiples from 9 hours and 9 years on). By the way, these are old tables; I was not asking for such tables but giving the basic figures for each unit since it is devilishly expensive to typeset figures for publication.

About once every few years, for the past two decades we receive a letter attempting to philosophically (or otherwise) rationalize the "two zodiacs" concept. When you delve deeper into the history of astrology, as well as the pertinent three-dimensional astronomy, you'll come to realize that such rationalization is simply not legitimate or logical. One of the two zodiacs is a colossal mistake; and besides, it is so completely local spacewise and timewise that it simply cannot exchange or receive charges from anything else it cannot touch. When you say "zodiac" you have to keep in mind that it is a sequence of zones, one of which is Mars-ruled or Marsish, the next Venussy, the next Mercurian, the next Moonish, and so on. Also that one symbol is the Twins, the next a crab or scarab, the net a lion, then a Virgin or maiden, and so on. There is no zodiac apart from these symbols (or their cultural equivalents) in their proper sequence. When you ponder these requirements or definitions, you simply have to face up to the fact that the tropical Mars-ruled Aries is a direct borrowing from the one and only Aries the Ram that ever existed (the classical one, obviously). And so on with the Venus-regented Bull, the Mercury-patronized Twins, and so on. I think you get the drift of what I'm trying to purvey in just a few words.

Let me hear from you sometime.

Cordially but hurriedly,
Garth Allen

[Jim Eshelman]

Dear Mr. Eshelman,

Several times this past month I've started a letter to you, only to be diverted by something coming up. So this is just a friendly quickie to acknowledge your letters in recent weeks, all of which both Mrs. Clancy and I find most interesting and worthwhile. So rest assured that you are not being intentionally neglected, it is just that we are always so busy with necessary chores, there is precious little time left for correspondence of the friendly sort.

Anyway, I do wish I could common to you about all the fascinating subjects you bring up, but this just isn't possible. Incidentally, hold off monkeying with hypothetical planets until you rad Charles Montgomery's three-part pieces on "hypos" that we will carry next Spring; nonexistent planets seem to be a favorite preoccupation of those who don't really understand the planets that do exist -- there are no exceptions to this rule as you'll find out for yourself as the years toll by and you become more critically analytical as a thinking astrologer.

It's good that you are keenly interested in mundane astrology too, as there is always a dire shortage of writing mundane astrologers. By the ay, learn to typewrite as you get the chance since editors just don't bother with handwritten material; and you have the makings of a good astrological writer. Continue to feel free to drop us a line when you have something to say; we'll try to use excerpts of your views in Many Things (this is unfortunately a no-payment department0. Meanwhile, keep up the good work!

Sincerely yours,
Garth Allen

[Jim Eshelman]

Dear Jim,

Here's just another quickie. Glad you liked the Digest, though I must confess a personal detestation for the kind of writing I have to do for this "popular" sort of publication. The only reason I agree to do it (most years) is that there just aren't any good mundane astrologers around anymore. Mr. Smollin's efforts are characteristically frightening; he keeps predicting disaster upon tragedy upon mortality upon catastrophe, ad nauseum, so of course he is "right" when something bad happens -- he couldn't possibly miss with this strategy. What is wrong with that strategy, however, is that it makes astrology look ridiculous to educated people in general!

Mrs. Clancy has settled on a policy regarding the octoscope and our magazine -- a wise one, I think, in view of the strange circumstances concerned. We will not, for the time being, publish articles using octoscopes, as illustrations, although any textual writing can discuss it at length and at will, so to speak. Fagan's widow seems to be withholding Cyril's concluding thoughts about the octoscope, including what he decided was the proper way to calculate its cusps, so until this information is loosened up for publication, we can't promote the octoscopic theory.

I seriously question the validity of solar and lunar returns for national foundation charts; Rupert Gleadow spent years with mundane forecasts based upon them (not the US's) with mighty poor overall results. I prefer the SIbly chart equated to Philly or Washington, but the Hazelrigg chart gives the best "fit" for distinct events (see "Astrology and the U.S." by Lewis Howard, published by Llewellyn, and again available). It was on the basis of the Hazelrigg chart that Kennedy's death was so accurately predicted by Leslie McIntyre -- in advance.

Hurriedly but with best regards,
Garth Allen

JAE NOTE: Donald Bradley was Garth Allen, Lewis Howard, and Leslie McIntyre.

[Jim Eshelman]

JAE NOTE: This letter takes on the topic of whether quotidians, and progressions in general, should be calculated by the mean (RAMS-measured) or apparent (RAAS-measured) flow of time.

Dear Jim: Just a hurried note; the officed has been closed down for an eleven-day vacation for everybody and there is a huge pileup of work. But your letter, again hitting onto the solar-anomaly question, calls for a quick and forthright reply. Virtually everybody who becomes swept up in technical astrology gets snared in this question and few are able to straighten themselves out alone. It is mainly a matter of semantics, not mathematics.

The term "fictitious time" is itself fictitious if you confuse revolutions with rotations! Even Cyril in his dotage couldn't separate the two logically, though of course he knew better in his brighter years. GET THIS STRAIGHT: What is called fictitious time in astronomy RUNS AT THE SAME PACE AS SIDEREAL TIME -- and by pace I MEAN LINEARLY. The Earth turns, for all practical purposes within one part in millionths, EXACTLY AT THE SAME RATE WHETHER IT IS AT APHELION OR PERIHELION. THE SIDEREAL ROTATION OF THE EARTH IS UNIFORM, AND IT IS SURELY THE SIDEREAL (THAT IS, CELESTIAL) SPHERE WHICH IS THE TRUE FRAME OF REFERENCE.

It is pitiably simple to establish whether the Q charts should be rotated sidereally or in terms of the solar anomaly. Study just a few cases (a lot aren't necessary) of events occurring in October-November for February-born people, and you have a big surprise coming. Reverse the process, studying progressed charts by both methods for autumn-born people with the events in February. The flow of time is uniform in astrology as well as in physics.

Also, any statistical tabulation of "scores" for testing which is valid, Q1 or Q2, the Q2 column always shows a three-to-one total in its favor.

Hurriedly, as usual, but amiably as I consider you a potentially great astrologers. But don't take anyone's word for something -- study it yourself, using the scientific method, so that preconception or wishful thinking doesn't influence your conclusions.

As ever,
Garth Allen.

[Jim Eshelman]

JAE NOTE: For reasons unclear to me in the letter below he is reserving the term "SNQ" to refer only to the Q1. This was likely historic usage, based on Fagan's introduction of the Bija method of calculation, etc. We've become used to using SNQ whether we mean the Q1 or Q2 - I sometimes distinguish them as the SNQ1 and SNQ2 - so I thought I should clarify before you hit the potentially stunning statement in the first paragraph.

Dear Jim,

Just got your letter and am spurred to make a quickie reply. Maybe I didn't make it clear that i totally reject the SNQ, having done more than one objective statistical test (with accurately recorded birth and event times) to see which is the valid one, the Q1 or the Q2. The SNQ is the Q1.

Whenever you take a batch of data, tallying an X under Q1 or Q2 whenever one or the other shows clearer and more apt contacts, the Q2 column will always have about three times more Xs than the Q1 column. (Notice that Cyril was making more of the Q2 also as time passed.) (I have a 21-year accumulation of Cyril's charts, correspondence, etc., and time after time they'll bear the notation, "The Q2 is more lucid for this case," or some remark to that effect.)

I simply reject the SNQ according to the evidence.

Now consider the display of temper/temperament -- the emotional outburst -- you underwent last August 24th. A straight transit to your natus alone would make this a mentally and emotionally taut day, it being so close to the Mercury-Pluto conjunction virtually exactly on your natal Ascendant, as witness:

Natal MC - 1°46' Gem
NATAL ASC - 2°18' Vir

Tr.Mercury - 2°22' VIR
Tr.Pluto - 1°55' VIR

Meanwhile, this was the week of maturation of your progressed Moon-Uranus square:

Prog. Moon 3°24' Lib
Natal Uranus 3°20' Cancer
Prog. Uranus 3°33' Cancer

Moon-Uranus usually coincides with nervous tension and edginess.

And now for the Quotidian situation:

Outbursts of anger are surely as Neptunian as Martian; Neptune rules heightened feelings, dramatic outbursts, paranoid-like temperamental moods akin to situations in which one feels victimized, unfairly dealt with, the target of someone's unfairness.

Your astronomical age at this point was 15y 20:57:07, making the Q2 sidereal time 3:41:47. Midheaven 3°36' Taurus. Transiting Neptune 3°51' Scorpio. Certainly close enough a fourth of one degree). It was an emotionally frenzied or frantic moment; Neptune, I suggest, fits as well as transiting Mars.

In any event, I cannot accept any example of the Q1's efficacy -- I've seen too many quotidian charts of both kinds.

Anyway; don't accept my own conclusions -- this is what we're all after, to arrive at the closest approximation of the elusive truth!

Again in a hurry, but most amiably,
G.A.

[Jim Eshelman]

Dear Jim,

The anlunar return is the lunar return to the longitude of the Moon in the native's solar return. For instance, your solar-return Moon this year of your life is 23°02' Capricorn. Your last anlunar return occurred at 5:31 UT on December 31st, 1970, The map accentuates Mercury, Sun and Uranus, which in turn are stimulating your solar Mercury and Uranus; a pretty good month for intellectual progress, discovering new things, etc.

I have no formal opinion about the relative power of an anlunar. Perhaps it merely underscores the influences we know to be the basic ones. Maybe it helps isolate which of the four or five "PSSR crossings" during the year are the strongest ones. For instance, if you had a Mercurian or Uranian crossing these past few weeks, maybe the fact that the anlunar emphasizes Mercury and Uranus helps narrow down the importance of the crossing this month -- I'm just thinking out loud.

I have one poignant memory about anlunars, worth mentioning. Richard Nixon's 1960 solar return had a Mercury-Saturn conjunction almost exact to the minute of arc, but in a background position -- so I discounted its importance, feeling strongly that he would win the election over Kennedy on the strength of other configurations. But the anlunar showed this Mercury-Saturn conjunction exactly on the Ascendant for the month covering election day itself. Other things, of course, contributed to his defeat (it was clear afterwards), but I'll always remember that Mercury-Saturn-on-an-angle anlunar chart!

The kinetic is a bit complex. The kinetic lunar return is the arrival of the transiting Moon at the exact longitude of the progressed Moon. You have to do some precise calculation to get the progressed Moon's position on the date of the kinetic return in order to have an acceptably accurate chart.

I do accept the idea of the kinetic return -- but only for the Q2 (that is, the standard day-for-a-year rate) chart. We've got a few good cases in our files of the efficacy of the solar kinetic return - the Sun's arrival at the exact place of the progressing Sun. But I don't have a firm idea of its relative effectiveness. I do know that the happiest date of my entire life fell in a period preceded by an astonishingly beautiful kinetic lunar return!

But all these things really have to be researched thoroughly. If you feel, as I did in the past on occasion, that we have too many "possible" charts to work with, look at it from the scientific standpoint, that all the charts -- all the crossings of the transiting Moon and Sun to lunar and solar longitudes, and their oppositions and quadratures, too -- may be all single instruments, of varying importance, in a great orchestra of "vibrations" that dominate our lives experientially. There are two or three basic charts, and a host of minor ones which can usually be neglected since they only slightly modify the basic ones. But if a lot of minor charts modify the basic ones in the same direction (either good or bad, say), then the indications of the basic ones are more likely to materialize in pure form as indicated. [JAE NOTE: I'm sure he meant the opposite of what he typed, that he meant to say, "then the indications of the minor ones," etc.] Again, like you, just thinking aloud...

Progressed systems as such have nothing to do with the question of zodiacs. Progressions are all time-equations, not spatial relationships. Astrological factors are impressions made along a time-track, rather than the other way around. One of astrology's blindspots, I feel, is our habit of assuming that the universe is beholden to the solar system, instead of the other way around. Our astrological theories tend to reflect this habit -- and we even force our mathematics to agree with that habit!

Cordially, with best regards,
Garth

[Jim Eshelman]

Dear Jim: Another hurried note. Your method of handling the PSSR is a bit faulty but I think maybe your original solar-return figures may account for some of the discrepancy. I get 1970 Oct 10d 12:34:04 UT for your solar return last year, and 1971 Oct 10d 18:58:41 UT for the next one. Using coordinates for your birthplace, I get a ST of your current solar return as 8:09:00 and, for the next one, 14:28:42. The reason I did a quickie on this was because I've never seen, that I recall, a difference as great as the 6:31:08 you mention in your letter. I get 6:19:42, which is astronomically more likely.

Well, anyway, you are progressing the return by the mean rate and not by solar motion times 1.256 or whatever the ratio is. This is okay for spot checks and quickie calculations, of course, but for your example (for March 23.0, 1971) we differ by over 28 minutes of time in your PSSR -- seven degrees makes a heck of a difference. The progression rate of the quotidians is paced by the apparent turning of the celestial sphere, but the PSSR progression is necessarily solar (times 1.256 or whatever), i.e., apparent solar motion in right ascension. This does not, then, permit of spreading the extra 6:19:42 over the year, applied as an increment onto the Q1 (not the Q2) chart (that is, the QSR). Work on the idea some more.

Your letters continue to be interesting, keep up the good work.

Busy as blazes, but regards anyway,
Garth

[JAE NOTE: His time for my 1970 SSR appears to be a typo. TM gives 10/10/1970 12:39:08 - five minutes different - and 10/10/71 18:58:24. As the RAMC differences 6:19:21 is almost exactly what he gave, a typo is the best explanation. -- The more important note is that, while he corrected me on the accepted way of calculating PSSRS (using apparent solar rate), and I repeated this for years, I no longer think it's right. I think the PSSR actually operates at the mean rate (linear flow of time) just like the other quotidians.]

[Jim Eshelman]

Dear Jim:

Your letters, all interesting, keep coming and I do wish I had the time to comment on all of them. Your latest, this morning, however, simply has to be replied to pronto. While reading it I had a hunch your lather over Terry's chart was due to errors of some kind.

Lo and behold, a glance at the ephemeris alone sufficed to show miscalculations had taken place. Terry's Moon is in Libra.

[JAE NOTE: I felt chastened for years at the number of times Bradley caught and corrected my math errors. Then, a year or so after he had died, I timidly asked Gary Duncan if Don every made bit math errors back in the day. Gary let out a deep belly laugh before saying, "Of course! All the time." A dark cloud dispersed! - Please remember when I correct any of your errors that it's easier for me to see them because I was so good at making them. PS This letter snapped some things in place for me on natal chart interpretation, especially regarding simplification.]

Then a check on the birth time quickly showed that Muskegon has been on EST since 1931. This takes Neptune off the meridian and gives a whole new Ascendant picture. Instead, the resulting chart (assuming the data you gave was error-free) is an unusually good one! Virtually all of your fears about the chart, even for that close Sun-Saturn square, are unjustified, as you can see for yourself. [November 27, 1948, 8:15 PM, Muskegon, MI]

The Moon is now conjunct Venus, a conjunction that throws close sextiles to Mars-Jupiter and trines to Uranus. This is a magnificent natal picture. Add to this the Gemini Ascendant and you have all the ingredients for an attractive, athletic personality which has a way of making people gravitate affectionately toward him. He is physically attractive and has a way of getting into difficulties because of the liaisons he establishes with other people. The worst thing about the chart is its Sun and Moon sign combination. Sun-Scorpio and Moon-Libra is one of the least desirable combinations, if not the very worst of all 144, judging from my files and notebooks. Of 13 people I know something about with this combination, five are homosexual, two were murderers, and the others societal messes (such as Robert Welch, the Birch Society founder; Larry Parks, the blacklisted Communist actor; and one is an Astrologer, which seems to prove something or other!). Do not overemphasize the high ratio of homos in this group; one out of every six males is more homo than hetero during his lifetime, anyway, so the fact that I know this about 6 out of 13 cases may show only that I happened -- just happened -- to hit onto four others in addition to the statistically expectable two out of every 13.

In any case, almost everything that had you worried about Terry's chart does not actually exist, fixed stars, noviens, etc.

The self-destructive Sun-Sturn configuration (weak by mundane placement here) in the average case works out merely in the compulsive need to work hard and long. There is often an emphasized fear of death in people with this aspect, so they keep dodging the subject and keep themselves overly busy in order not to think about the star facts. There is often a deeply rooted resentment of parents, and sometimes an obsessive need to be neat and clean about one's person (the opposite being true in the unconscious mind). Terry has a problem involving both morale and morals; he is a bundle of contradictions in this respect. He reacts to problems through physical action (slamming doors, driving fast, drumming fingers, etc.) rather than through contemplation or taking them to someone else for advice or succor. But in everything he is and does, he tries to be "beautiful" both literally and figuratively; he uses his sex appeal as one of his primest assets and weapons.

-------------

In another connection: I have always contented that the Hypsomata did not originate as implied in Zodiacs Old & New. And it is illogical to use the 786 BC placements of the outer planets as their exaltations. I cannot visualize any really practical use for outer-planet exaltations anyway. The list of degree placements of the traditional thrones no doubt originated in 786 BC, but this must have been in the nature of approximations to the points of greatest intensity of exaltation. Pisces 27° plus-minutes 1° is very definitely related to Venusian factors, and so on.

Hurriedly, but warmly as usual,
Garth

PS: Monday A.M. 8/16. It is ridiculous that an astro magazine should run a piece about Crown Prince Rudolph's tragedy, using only his solar chart, since his true chart is a famous one in astrological literature: RUDOLF was born at 10:15 P.M. Vienna LMT, 48N12, 16E23, ST=20:14:34. The bodies were discovered at 6:00 A.M. LT, Meyerling, 1/30/89.

[Jim Eshelman]

Dear Jim:

Your letters are always interesting and welcome; each one makes me want to sit and type a detailed reply, but there is seldom time to give in to this impulse. Comments must be brief, and on a variety of topics, so don't mistake terseness for seeming agitation.

I do wish you were an amateur astronomer along with your astrology; you'd be a lot better equipped, from firsthand experience with the sky, to cope with the writings of those who "think astronomically" without a good foundation in practical astronomy.

For instance, the Vulcan sightings in the 19th century, upon which Weston first came up with the basic elements underlying his ephemeris, upon which other Vulcan ephemerides are based (given a push by a nonastronomical "clairvoyant"), were all naked-eye phenomena, that ism, visible passings across the solar disk. Anybody with any brains at all would know that to be interMercurian and still visible in solar transit, a body would have to be considerably larger than Venus. You can kick such observations around all you want and you'll still not come up with a case in behalf of the existence of a "planet" as the explanation for the transits. (It is interesting to note, as an exercise in psychology, that saucer enthusiasts automatically embrace all the supposed Vulcan sightings as within-the-atmosphere sightings of mother-size ships; at least by keeping these things within the local space environment they are doing the least violence to anybody's sense of logic and awareness of time, space and dimensions.)

Courten's "objects" are in the same class. You can discount much of the newspaper report about them; there are internal clues and cues which reveal a lot more than the reporter could himself grasp. The keywords are "tracks" and "a special scanner." (1) The maximum duration of totality of the 1966 eclipse was 1m57s; Courten's pictures were taken in far less exposure-times than these. Nothing planetary or asteroidal could have made a "track" or typical asteroid-streak on a photographic plate in so brief a time. The maximum duration of the 1970 eclipse was 3m28s; it would take at least two hours for an asteroid-track to show up on a plate. (2) The objects are so faint as to need a scanner to register their presence as streaks on the plate; they are therefore at least 12th magnitude. At Mercury's distance alone objects of this magnitude, even in slim-crescent "phase" as seen from Earth, could not be more than the size of Icarus. They would therefore be members of the gravel bodies which number somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 in the solar system. Courten could possibly have captured traces of any real planetary-type body on his plates. What makes it all so laughable is that this is the umpteenth time a second-rate astronomer took pictures of something "orbiting the Sun" at eclipse time, especially in recent years. There are roughly 6,000 pieces of junk orbiting the Earth right now (they can keep track of only 1,300 of these artificial satellites). Courten no doubt picked up "tracks" (which would produce faint asteroidlike streaks in less than one minute of exposure time) of either orbiting junk (around Earth) or stratospheric aerosol objects of lower levels within the atmosphere. A few years ago a similar "new planet" flap was created by a role of toilet paper suspended in the atmosphere. The 60-inch Catalina telescope is, on any clear day, able to pick up objects floating in the stratosphere by directing the scope to a few degrees away from the Sun where the visibility is best. Newspapers 12 or so miles high are the favorite "Vulcans"; they can identify cardboard boxes as well as unfurled rolls of teepee.

Be more skeptical and ore logical when you read things in the papers or books by people whose productions are so bad they are not worth discrediting by simple displays of knowledge or logic.

Churchward's Mu books are a good example of incompetent work that has been discredited for decades. Hardly a single point the Colonel made can stand up against simple knowledge of geology, oceanography, or archaeology. There are several hundred people who have spent their entire brilliant lives researching the origins of peoples and their artifacts; there are several thousand people who spent their careers researching the changing fate of the Earth landwise and seawise and otherwise. They are the people you should be reading (critically, of course).

Jim, you are going through the same phase most of us do early in our careers -- we go through the Atlantis and Mu phases, the rounds-and-races of Theosophy, Rosicrucianism, and occult philosophy as a whole. We read Manly Hall and Albert Pike and Stacey-Judd and Edgar Cayce and Buckmann and Eliphas Levi and LePlongeon and on and on and on -- because we want to mentally revel in such delicious "knowledge."

You haven't gone through your Gizeh phase as yet, it appears; but the Great Pyramid should have captured your fancy and willingness to believe by now.

Study the Mayans and Aztecs formally, through the source materials of Central American archaeology available in any good library. Then compare that information and those appraisals with what a certain author, with an air of familiarity and authority, dares to say is reliable data. You'll be shocked at the misinformation given you.

There appears at this point to be no question about the correct identification of Plato's Atlantis with Third and the Santorini catastrophe of circa 1400 B.C.

If you want to read the best case in favor of a continental Atlantis, read Stacey-Judd's "Atlantis: Mother of Empires." It is brilliant and persuasive. But it is all wrong. Stacey-Judd was not even a scientist or archaeologist; he was an architect with a flair for archaeology and Mayanism and the Great Pyramid. His work is an impressive, nice try. But northing more.

Where most of these guys fail is in their lacking a sense of time and space. They are small-bore thinkers and visualizers without an awareness of time. A few thousand years seems like an eon to these nonscientists. Since the dawn of decipherable history, the continental drift, for example, has been less than a fraction of a mile. And our galaxy has, in the whole span of historical man, rotated only a few seconds of arc! And yet their whole attentions are riveted onto centuries B.C. and A.D.!!! They think on such a puny scale, in all of their mental peregrinations, and have the gall to think that they are thinking grandly and have made discoveries missed by those who do know what they are dealing with. We have close to three thousand books on occultism and mysticism and arcane philosophies, ad nauseam, and the world would not lose anything worthwhile if they all went up in smoke this very day.

You're a Virgonian -- in time you'll develop the sort of cold-logic reasoning that will make you one day look back on the things that are currently impressing you and have a good laugh at your own teenage gullibility.

Now, don't feel offended. I firmly believe that you have a hundred times more on the ball intellectually, both now and potentially, than 99.9% of the whole shebang of astrologers and occultists and supernaturalists. Someday I shall bow to your superior knowledge -- while, hopefully, maybe even secretly, being proud that I helped in some small way to keep you separating the grain from the chaff during your early years.

Oh, yes, before I forget: your minutes part of the quarternary values you sent is in error. I keep playing with quarternaries, by the way, but have not come up with a fixed opinion as to their efficacy. Many times they do seem valid, but further cases then make this conclusion seem doubtful. Will keep playing with them, anyway.

It is good that you are interested in Hindu astrology. Just be skeptical as you delve into it. It is loaded with both logical and physical absurdities too, just as western astrology is. And be analytical, in the sense of historical criticism of forms. There is nothing in Hindu astrological literature older than the 6th century A.D., all the chauvinistic claims to the contrary going by the board. Their own astronomy is proof enough of this; history and archeology verify it. Little wonder that Dr. Raman insists that "Hindu astrologers are not interested in origins." They know better.

There is tremendous value in the Dasa-Bhukti systems of periods and subperiods, using 360-day Egyptian years of course and not the flat "years and months" values copied from one author to the next. I went through my Hindu phase in the late 1940s and early '50s. My tables to shorten the work n dealing with Bhuktis are old and raggedy now, but I'll copy them sometime for you.

We've decided, in view of the evidence, to start pushing Hindu astrology more in the magazine. I'm going to do an article sometime soon giving a "western efficiency method" for using the periods and showing how the subdivisions of the zodiac have value from the standpoint of pure (sidereal, of course) "areas" alone. For instance, the Saturn-Saturn in the first third of the zodiac (Aries to end of Cancer) spans 3°20'00" to 5°26'40" of Cancer. (Repeated in Scorpio and Pisces.) It is remarkable how many "bad things" happen to people when their progressed Moons are going through these degrees of the "watery" constellations. (I'm using watery as a shortcut to identify the quadruplicity [sic] in question.)

We recently received a Help! letter from a girl who developed a phobia of groups and crowds 9even a restaurant is impossible for her to enter) two years ago. She is a 20-year-old recluse now and feels her life is utterly ruined. Because this affliction spanned more than one year, on a hunch we checked her Bhukti. One-fortieth of all the nine periods is spent in Saturn-Saturn. But danged if we didn't hit it on the nose. The girl is currently in the third of her three-year Saturn-Saturn Bhukti!

Years ago I tabulated the Bhuktis for the deaths of every well-timed death case in my files and found a remarkable excess of Mars and Saturn Bhuktis. Incidentally, such statistics, through simple Chi-square methods, show that the Synetic Vernal Point is so "on the nose" that a shift of only half a degree will change the high Chi-square ratings significantly.

Not for one moment do I believe there is a real mechanistic connection between the "Nine Planets" of Hindu astrology (two of which are Rahu and Ketu; the nodes, presumably), and the subdivisions of ecliptic longitude, but the Nakshatra system carries within itself fabulously valid systemries that we cannot ignore -- even if the Hindu astrologers themselves do not really believe in their own system (as shown by the easiness with which they switch Ayanamsas at will, each time coming up with results which "fit" impressively anything they want them to fit). The Nakshatras, like most of the other basic things in Hindu astrology, are clearly of nonIndian origin. The system was perpetuated, it seems clear, in the absence of reliable ephemerides.

You can forget about the "Palm Leaves," if you have encountered them already, as they are obviously hokey from the astronomical point of view -- as well as from the ethnocentric and cultural point of view. They, too, "work" for those who do not have accurate ephemerides on which to base their delineations.

Well, this turned into a messily typewritten series of harangues. But, if I had to make an organized, respectable presentation, I'd never have time to drop you any kind of line!

Best regards,
Garth Allen

[Jim Eshelman]

Probably not long after that last letter I called him at home for the first time. We had an occasional phone call here and there for a couple of years. There may be other letters that weren't stored with these and that I'll find sometime. Sometime, I think, in my senior year of high school (which began in the fall of '72), Don suggested Gary Duncan - who then lived one state over in Ohio - reach out to me (a combination of mentoring and to perhaps involve me in some of Gary's future projects).

Gary and i met for the first time in the summer of '73 when I was working in Lafayette. I visited him at his home in Cleveland that Thanksgiving break and flew to California to live with him for a short while (and start various projects) in June '75.

Donald Bradley - Garth Allen - died of his final round of cancer April 25, 1974.

[Veronica]

What a kind thoughtful man.

and I mean you too Jim.

Thank you for sharing.