In episode 97 of the podcast I talk about the recent release of my new book on ancient astrology, titled Hellenistic Astrology: The Study of Fate and Fortune.
The book provides one of the first comprehensive surveys in modern times of the type of astrology that was practiced during the time of the Roman Empire, roughly from the first century BCE through the seventh century CE.
The purpose of the episode is to provide an overview of the book and talk about some of the topics that I cover in it, but also to talk about the process of writing the book and what went into it, especially over the course of the past year.
Where You Can Get the Book
You can order the book and get a preview of the introduction and table of contents here:
http://www.hellenisticastrology.com/book/
I am also currently offering a package deal with my online course on Hellenistic astrology, where when you sign up for the course you get a free copy of the book:
http://www.hellenisticastrology.com/courses/hellenistic-astrology-course/
The book is also available through other online retailers, although I have a slight preference for orders placed directly through my website, which I linked to above.
Pivotal Contributors to the Book
I want to thank and give credit to a few people who were instrumental in helping me to bring the book to completion this year:
Aaron Cheak edited the book and helped to shape its structure.
Paula Belluomini designed the cover as well as many of the diagrams.
Shannon Garcia did the layout and typesetting for the book, as well as the index.
Transcript
A full transcript of this episode is available:Â Episode 97 transcript
Listen to This Episode
You can either play this episode of the podcast directly from the website or download it as an MP3 to your computer by using the buttons below:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:54:50 — 52.9MB)
A big congratulations Chris on publishing you first book. I look forward to reading it.
Congratulations Chris! Being Hellenic I am definitely longing to read your Hellenistic astrology book! I’ve read articles of yours on Hellenistic astrology and heard your relative podcasts and I believe that you have published a great book!
Congratulations, Chris! Being a student of your course, I know that it will be a thorough and engaging read, a permanent fixture in any astrological library. I’m looking forward to getting it.
Wishing you every success in your endeavors. You are an excellent teacher and researchist and make the complex simple. Thank you for sharing this monumental work. The references and acknowledgements alone are overwhelming! It is a testament to those who came before to make this possible, and to your discipline and dedication to the astrology community and a subject few of us would have had the opportunity to understand.
Looking foward to reading your book. I stopped listening to the podcast at around 15:00, when you go into fine detail about the curriculum at Kepler college.
Bravo Chris! What a huge undertaking to write your big book and what an important contribution to the astrology community. I look forward to reading it.
Congratulations on this marvelous achievement, Chris. I ordered the book from Amazon before listening to the podcast, and had no idea that doing so would take money from your pocket . My apologies to you.
Don’t worry about it, it isn’t really a big deal. It is just sort of something that got messed up when Amazon launched earlier than expected, but is not necessarily a huge loss, as I still make a bit from each sale. That people are buying the book at all is awesome, and I’m really excited to have different people all over the world reading it already.
Thank you for your gracious reply, Chris.
I ordered your book on Feb. 26, and Amazon shipped it the next day – so they do appear to be shipping quickly, now that they have worked out their launch and shipment date issues..
Why you didn’t release a Kindle/ebook edition?
There are too many diagrams, charts, and tables, so it wouldn’t really work very well in the Kindle format. I might release some sort of ebook version at some point in the future, but for now it is just a print book.
Please! I have a nomad lifestyle, I can’t afford the added weight and space of a 700 page book
Out of curiosity , what was your reading list for the medieval/vedic astrology course you took? I started with ‘Western’ astrology but I’ve been wanted to start looking into Vedic.
The two main books that we read when I took the intro to Indian astrology course 10 years ago at Kepler were 1) The Astrology of the Seers by David Frawley, and 2) Light on Life: An Introduction to the Astrology of India by Hart de Fouw and Robert Svoboda. The first one is a little bit easier to read if you are just learning Indian astrology as a modern western astrologer, while Light on Life comes off as a bit more detailed and authentic as a book on Indian astrology, although it has a steeper learning curve.
Chris, congratulations on the book!
As a digital nomad, I’d second Pedro’s request for a Kindle edition. Other books I’ve purchased I tend to read all the text and then switch to a device with a bigger screen when I want to study tables and diagrams closely. I’m not anywhere long enough to have the book shipped to me.
I hope you’ll consider bringing on a guest host for some topics. It’s hard to interview oneself!
There were a bunch of questions I had… But the burning ones are, since you had an inception date for the book and produced a draft very different from the final release, do you think the inception date is good for all drafts, no matter how different? Or do decisions to completely revamp, revise, add-on and change the tone count as separate “births?” I write long form creative projects so I’m especially curious because you have your drafts dates and the final release dates.
Also, now that you’ve seen how Amazon does pre-sales, would you choose release dates differently for future publications?
Yeah, Kelly had originally suggested having someone else interview me about the book, but in the end I needed to get it out by the end of the month and wasn’t able to line up another person to talk to, so I decided to just record the episode on my own.
I did end up choosing separate electional charts for some of the different reboots of the book along the way, although some material from the first drafts still ended up making it into the final book, and so ultimately I’m kind of inclined to think that the original chart still held the most sway. Something that seemed to almost confirm that recently was some of the recent eclipses on the Virgo/Pisces axis, which ended up being on the angles of the inception chart for the original book (Virgo rising), which is kind of an interesting correlation I noticed after the fact. At some point it would be interesting to look back at all of the different drafts and electional charts that went into it, once the dust has settled a little bit.
In the future I would set the publication date and on sale date far enough in advance to ensure that Amazon and other retailers would not list the book for sale before I was done with the initial set of direct sales through my website. If Amazon had followed the rules then it wouldn’t really have been an issue, but I guess it is what it is.
Here is an interview I just did on the book yesterday on the Bridging Realities podcast that does a better job of discussing the book and talking about some of the topics and themes surrounding it:
https://soundcloud.com/bridging-realities/ep-47-a-chat-with-chris-brennan-about-his-new-book-on-hellenistic-astrology