Phyllis Seckler (Soror Meral)
Posted: Mon Aug 17, 2020 12:39 pm
Many of you won't know who Phyllis Seckler was, but many who are regularly or occasionally here will know her name quite well. She was my personal teacher for a quarter century and founded the spiritual school which I head. She was one of the most important female occultists on the 20th century.
Phyllis was born June 18, 1917, in Edmonton, Alberta. No birth time was recorded. During the 1940s, an astrologer she knew in Hollywood rectified her chart. When Phyllis first showed me the chart, she didn't have a time written on it, she just noticed that he had come up with (Tropical) 10° Taurus rising. I worked backwards nd discovered this gave a birth time of 1:56 AM. (This made me mildly suspicious because the number 156 was symbolic for a goddess of rapturous sexual devouring in the circles in which she and the astrologer met each other - I wondered if it was as much seduction or wishful thinking as it was rectification <g>.)
I never had a strong opinion on her birth time. Nothing about the chart required that it be just as it was or that it be different. I didn't particularly notice, over the years, significant events corresponding to contact with its angles. Nothing was closely foreground, so my view of the chart's description of her character wasn't really affected one way or the other. I had it mentally filed as, "Well, that's what she gave me as her birth time."
I now think it's wrong. I think she was born at 5:12 AM. I nearly stumbled into this. I want to tell you the story, and then also provide a permanent public posting of her chart here.
Preliminary thoughts
I'm currently working on Taurus Moon's interpretation. Phyllis had a Taurus Moon. As I compared my list of Taurus Moons I knew best to the written text interpreting Moon in Taurus, Phyllis stood out as "more Venus" than the rest - things I'd often thought were solidly Taurus traits weren't as prominent for most of the others as for Phyllis. She was a producing artist and poet (two things not rare for Taurus) but had character traits that were more emphatically Venus-like than most Taurus Moons I know. Her spiritual motto, Meral, is a Qabbalistic encoding of a phrase identifying her with love. While Phyllis had a razor sharp saber of a mind and tongue (close Mercury-Mars conjunction), those who knew her well usually saw her as especially Venus-like. When I saw that Moon in Taurus doesn't actually account for all of this, it was more puzzling that her alleged 1:56 AM birth time made Venus so weak.
Aspects for death
Her chart is also quite inexpressive of her death, which occurred in Oroville, CA on May 31, 2004. In fact, she only had one transit for her death - and it was not at all descriptive of the conditions or nature of her death. That one transit was Saturn conjunct natal Venus to the minute of arc. Her solar and lunar returns for death had nothing of any significance. The charts were basically dead, worthless.
A digressin - note that will make anyone chuckle hearty who ever talked astrology to Phyllis: She learned astrology when Pluto was only been discovered about 10 years and adopted the then-correct view that we didn't know enough about Pluto and it probably meant nothing at all. But she held onto this view the rest of her life. We often joked about it: I began referring to Pluto around her as "that little sliver of ice out past Neptune." I told her in 2000 that I was really worried about something devastating hitting in August or September of the next year because of the approaching Saturn-Pluto opposition and she pooh-poohed it - then, after 9/11, we never talked of it again <g>. -- Anyway, the one solar arc for her death, not depending on an accurate birth time, was directed Pluto square natal Sun!
So, I spent a few minutes glancing over the solunar returns for her death. (There wasn't anything interesting in her progressions or transits - other than that bizarre Saturn transit to natal Venus to the minute.) By now, I was pretty sure that the 1:56 birth time simply wasn't correct but I had no idea where to go with it until I looked at her final SSR (for Oroville, CA) and noticed that it had very appropriate aspects - they just weren't in the right place. For example, she died of heart disease following a serious of falls and painful bone-breaking in her last months and the SSR had Saturn not too far from Sun plus a Mars-Uranus conjunction. These described that last year perfectly (including a few more details I haven't mentioned).
So, I decided to see what would happen if I put Saturn (near Sun) on the SSR Ascendant. That's all it took!
First of all, there is an interesting alignment that Phyllis final SSR and final SLR for Oroville have more or less the same Ascendant as her birth chart for Edmonton. (This is going to be true for most birth times throughout the day.)
So... by putting Saturn on Asc of her final SSR, it put a Sun-Saturn conjunction on Ascendant and a Moon-Mars-Uranus conjunction near MC. With Saturn rising, it also had Pluto setting (but you have to calculate mundanely to see it). This was great!
Second, this birth time put Venus 0° from Ascendant at birth! I'd already forgotten that this is the observation that set me looking in the first place - that her Venus was way stronger than the 1:56 AM chart suggested.
But - oh! - it also solved the big mystery of transits at her death! Since transiting Saturn conjoined natal Venus exactly for death, and Venus was rising at birth, it also means that transiting Saturn conjoined natal Ascendant for her death. Now, that made more sense! (Uranus was also transiting her MC.)
Finally, Saturn was also less than a degree from Ascendant of her final SLR May 20. (This time it conjoined Mars.)
With one move, everything fell in place, including things I'd forgotten I was still looking for.
It sure looks like 5:12 AM
I checked a couple of other events and they responded positively. Also, the chart is extremely descriptive. Besides all the descriptive details that we know simply from sign placements and aspects, angular placements highly the truly stand-out features of her character. For this time, she has Venus half a degree above Ascendant. (Also, do her immortal chagrin, this time gives her Pluto half a degree below Ascendant - and it fits! It also gives her a partile mundane Venus-Pluto conjunction, their midpoint exactly on the angle, which explains, oh, everything about her relationship history in ways that a simple Gemini Sun and Taurus Moon wouldn't).
Also, her close Mercury-Mars conjunction squares MC. It expresses some of her most marked traits
Finally, she has a widely foreground Sun. That fits. I'd think it fits anyway because her Sun was on my MC and I always experienced her as a solar figure; but others who knew her have indicated they agree with a solar character.
For those interested, here is what I believe was Soror Meral's actual birth chart.
Phyllis was born June 18, 1917, in Edmonton, Alberta. No birth time was recorded. During the 1940s, an astrologer she knew in Hollywood rectified her chart. When Phyllis first showed me the chart, she didn't have a time written on it, she just noticed that he had come up with (Tropical) 10° Taurus rising. I worked backwards nd discovered this gave a birth time of 1:56 AM. (This made me mildly suspicious because the number 156 was symbolic for a goddess of rapturous sexual devouring in the circles in which she and the astrologer met each other - I wondered if it was as much seduction or wishful thinking as it was rectification <g>.)
I never had a strong opinion on her birth time. Nothing about the chart required that it be just as it was or that it be different. I didn't particularly notice, over the years, significant events corresponding to contact with its angles. Nothing was closely foreground, so my view of the chart's description of her character wasn't really affected one way or the other. I had it mentally filed as, "Well, that's what she gave me as her birth time."
I now think it's wrong. I think she was born at 5:12 AM. I nearly stumbled into this. I want to tell you the story, and then also provide a permanent public posting of her chart here.
Preliminary thoughts
I'm currently working on Taurus Moon's interpretation. Phyllis had a Taurus Moon. As I compared my list of Taurus Moons I knew best to the written text interpreting Moon in Taurus, Phyllis stood out as "more Venus" than the rest - things I'd often thought were solidly Taurus traits weren't as prominent for most of the others as for Phyllis. She was a producing artist and poet (two things not rare for Taurus) but had character traits that were more emphatically Venus-like than most Taurus Moons I know. Her spiritual motto, Meral, is a Qabbalistic encoding of a phrase identifying her with love. While Phyllis had a razor sharp saber of a mind and tongue (close Mercury-Mars conjunction), those who knew her well usually saw her as especially Venus-like. When I saw that Moon in Taurus doesn't actually account for all of this, it was more puzzling that her alleged 1:56 AM birth time made Venus so weak.
Aspects for death
Her chart is also quite inexpressive of her death, which occurred in Oroville, CA on May 31, 2004. In fact, she only had one transit for her death - and it was not at all descriptive of the conditions or nature of her death. That one transit was Saturn conjunct natal Venus to the minute of arc. Her solar and lunar returns for death had nothing of any significance. The charts were basically dead, worthless.
A digressin - note that will make anyone chuckle hearty who ever talked astrology to Phyllis: She learned astrology when Pluto was only been discovered about 10 years and adopted the then-correct view that we didn't know enough about Pluto and it probably meant nothing at all. But she held onto this view the rest of her life. We often joked about it: I began referring to Pluto around her as "that little sliver of ice out past Neptune." I told her in 2000 that I was really worried about something devastating hitting in August or September of the next year because of the approaching Saturn-Pluto opposition and she pooh-poohed it - then, after 9/11, we never talked of it again <g>. -- Anyway, the one solar arc for her death, not depending on an accurate birth time, was directed Pluto square natal Sun!
So, I spent a few minutes glancing over the solunar returns for her death. (There wasn't anything interesting in her progressions or transits - other than that bizarre Saturn transit to natal Venus to the minute.) By now, I was pretty sure that the 1:56 birth time simply wasn't correct but I had no idea where to go with it until I looked at her final SSR (for Oroville, CA) and noticed that it had very appropriate aspects - they just weren't in the right place. For example, she died of heart disease following a serious of falls and painful bone-breaking in her last months and the SSR had Saturn not too far from Sun plus a Mars-Uranus conjunction. These described that last year perfectly (including a few more details I haven't mentioned).
So, I decided to see what would happen if I put Saturn (near Sun) on the SSR Ascendant. That's all it took!
First of all, there is an interesting alignment that Phyllis final SSR and final SLR for Oroville have more or less the same Ascendant as her birth chart for Edmonton. (This is going to be true for most birth times throughout the day.)
So... by putting Saturn on Asc of her final SSR, it put a Sun-Saturn conjunction on Ascendant and a Moon-Mars-Uranus conjunction near MC. With Saturn rising, it also had Pluto setting (but you have to calculate mundanely to see it). This was great!
Second, this birth time put Venus 0° from Ascendant at birth! I'd already forgotten that this is the observation that set me looking in the first place - that her Venus was way stronger than the 1:56 AM chart suggested.
But - oh! - it also solved the big mystery of transits at her death! Since transiting Saturn conjoined natal Venus exactly for death, and Venus was rising at birth, it also means that transiting Saturn conjoined natal Ascendant for her death. Now, that made more sense! (Uranus was also transiting her MC.)
Finally, Saturn was also less than a degree from Ascendant of her final SLR May 20. (This time it conjoined Mars.)
With one move, everything fell in place, including things I'd forgotten I was still looking for.
It sure looks like 5:12 AM
I checked a couple of other events and they responded positively. Also, the chart is extremely descriptive. Besides all the descriptive details that we know simply from sign placements and aspects, angular placements highly the truly stand-out features of her character. For this time, she has Venus half a degree above Ascendant. (Also, do her immortal chagrin, this time gives her Pluto half a degree below Ascendant - and it fits! It also gives her a partile mundane Venus-Pluto conjunction, their midpoint exactly on the angle, which explains, oh, everything about her relationship history in ways that a simple Gemini Sun and Taurus Moon wouldn't).
Also, her close Mercury-Mars conjunction squares MC. It expresses some of her most marked traits
Finally, she has a widely foreground Sun. That fits. I'd think it fits anyway because her Sun was on my MC and I always experienced her as a solar figure; but others who knew her have indicated they agree with a solar character.
For those interested, here is what I believe was Soror Meral's actual birth chart.
