The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 262, titled:
The Life and Work of Noel Tyl, Astrologer
With Chris Brennan and astrologers Basil Fearrington and Kathy Rose
Episode originally released on July 10, 2020
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Note: This is a transcript of a spoken word podcast. If possible, we encourage you to listen to the audio or video version, since they include inflections that may not translate well when written out. Our transcripts are created by human transcribers, and the text may contain errors and differences from the spoken audio. If you find any errors then please send them to us by email: theastrologypodcast@gmail.com
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Transcribed by Mary Sharon
Transcription released June 21, 2021
Copyright © 2021 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hi my name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. Today is Wednesday, July 8th 2020 starting at 1:30 p.m. in Denver, Colorado. And this is the 262nd episode of the show. In this episode I’m gonna be talking with Kathy Rose and Basil Fearrington about the life and work of the late astrologer Noel Tyl. So, hey. Welcome to the show, guys.
KATHY ROSE: Thanks, Chris. Happy to be here.
BASIL FEARRINGTON: Thank you, Chris. And definitely always happy to be in an intelligent astrology discussion.
CB: Yeah. So we’ve got a lot to talk about. We’re gonna be talking about Noel Tyl who was a major astrologer who just passed away last year. He died on December 31st 2019 on his birthday. He turned 83 years old, and he was one of the most prolific astrologers of the late 20th and early 21st century. I know back when I was first getting into astrology in the early 2000s his online forum his discussion forum on his website was very active, and his books and his teachings through that website were one of my early influences. I almost did an interview with him last October that another astrologer Matthew we met was trying to arrange and set up, but it didn’t end up coming through. And then Noel passed away just a few months later, so I always regretted not having gotten that interview. So I wanted to sort of make amends for that today by doing this interview with two of his main students who continue to teach and promote his methods which are Basil and Kathy. So I want to start first by just introducing each of you to my audience and maybe just briefly touching on what your background is and your connection is with Noel in general. So, Basil, you connected with Noel way back in like the mid 1970s, right?
BF: Yeah, as the story goes which is one that I love telling. I’m a musician, professional musician. Been professional musician since I was 17 or so. And born and raised in Philadelphia. I was working in a band, jazz band. And we had a rehearsal. I had to leave Philadelphia and get up to New York in time. I had an option whether I want to get there an hour late or an hour early. So, obviously I’m gonna get there an hour early. I had been reading about a place called the New York Astrology Center which was Fifth Avenue Midtown in the ’40s or something like that. I figure I’ll get there an hour early and I go to the New York Astrology Center and maybe walk out with a bag full of great astrology books. So I walk in, and I walk over to the books. What I saw was books by Noel Tyl, right? That definitely was my first. And I’m looking through them. And holy cow. And it was the 12-volume series. So that day I walked out with the 12-volume series, all 12 volumes. Started reading them obsessively. And I made it a point that, “I got to meet this guy. I got to see how he does what he does.” So, I wasn’t able to get to him until the next year. What I did was I wrote to Llewellyn, and I said I wanted a consultation with Noel Tyl. So they arranged it. And I never forget when I called him. I said, “Hello, my name is Basil Fearrington. I’m calling for Noel Tyl.” And he said, “My name is Noel Tyl.”
[Chris laughs]
BF: I’m like oh, mad embarrassed. Oh. I messed up already. But in any case, had a consultation a month later. And we hit it off. And he sort of left the door open for me to ask questions. I will either call him or send mail. And there was no Wi-Fi or anything like that back then. And for years, that’s what I did. If I saw something on a book that I had a question about, I would call him or write to him. He would get back to me. And then things started to fast forward in the ’90s when I started to get articles published and so forth. And he allowed me to be part of two of his Llewellyn books that were series books that had lots of astrologers in them. One of them he had me write the introduction, so it was the first time that anybody ever wrote an introduction to a Noel Tyl book. So I was really, really honored that he believed in me that much. So that was my start with Noel, and of course in 1998 he asked me to relocate to South Africa. And I taught the Tyl method in Johannesburg for a year.
CB: Right. And you authored The New Way to Learn Astrology which was supposed to be like an introductory text to his methods and his approach?
BF: That book, we were sitting out on top of some sort of like a mountain resort area. And he said, “Well, Basil, we’ll have to have a discussion here about this book you’re going to write for our students.” [laughs] “This book I’m going to write?” “Yes, you’re going to write a book. I’ll watch over it for you, but you’re going to write it. And Llewellyn will accept it. It’s done. Do it.” So, I did it.
CB: Amazing. Nice. Wow. And, yeah. And I was just rereading that last night. It’s actually a really great introduction. I wanna circle back and actually ask you more questions about that later, but I think that sets on pretty well that you had that connection with him since the 1970s and then you wrote the introduction to one of his books and collaborated and then wrote that book explicating some of his methods.
BF: Mhm.
CB: So, Kathy, what is your background in astrology? And when did you first start collaborating with Noel?
KR: Well, I actually started studying astrology when I was eight. So, very young. And in a way I sort of just remembered it which if you’re not a spiritual person or open to that, that may sound pretty crazy. But that’s how it was. So I started reading books eight, nine years old following kids around at school profiling them and taking notes astrologically. And I continued studying and then started my private practice professionally earning my entire living in Denver at 24. And have done that ever since, earned my living from astrology. And when I started having babies in ’91, I had two children. And I decided being a mom was incredibly important. My career was going great guns at that point in the late ’80s and early ’90s. I was booked solid, and I was really happy. I was doing really well. But as a lot of women do when they make a decision to have children, you put part of your career in the background. So, for a while there I put it slightly in the background. Then we moved to Virginia Beach. I still had not met Noel at that point, had not ever even read a book. Had not ever had an astrology teacher, mostly self taught. So when we moved to Virginia Beach in 2000, it was the first trip I ever made away from my children. I went back to Astro 2000, and I met Basil there. He doesn’t remember it, but I met him. And I remember I had solar arc–
BF: Wow. [laughs]
KR: Yeah, I cornered you. I just about took you by the collar asking you these intense questions. You looked panic and ran. [laughs] Because I had solar arc Mercury on my midheaven. And I said, “Why isn’t my career going great guns?” Well, one of the Tyl theories that is so absolutely right is when a woman steps into motherhood and steps out of career a bit, the horoscope doesn’t respond in the same way which was true for me. I was still very committed to being a mother first, career second but very conflicted about it because I enjoyed my career so much. So I still hadn’t met Noel then. I attended one of his lectures, came back to Virginia Beach. And in 2005 decided to contact him. Went to his forum, started looking at the vocational profiling, and decided I was going to try him out as a teacher. And the way I did that was I called him and said, “I wanna schedule you to Virginia Beach, and I wanna organize a seminar. And I’ll bring the participants. You show up and teach.” And he said, “Fine.” We did that in October of 2005, and then December of 2005 I was signed up for his course. Went to my first student seminar that he hosted yearly in January of 2006. And then it just went from there. Shortly after that, I talked him into doing the DVDs. And then he made me his teaching assistant, and that’s where it went.
CB: Right. So your husband does video production, and you tried actually for like a year or two to talk with Noel into filming a series for his master course to get some of his methods on tape using high quality video and audio production. And eventually you did it. And that took what, a series of like three trips?
KR: It took three trips having him out here to Virginia Beach. We had great fun spending time with him in our home, and it did take me two years. Good thing I’m persistent because he kept saying no, and I just kept hammering away until I got my way. And he was wonderful. He’s such a great performer. All we had to do literally was turn on the camera and shoot. And we had great fun. Great fun. And we’ve sold the DVDs all over the world. It’s like inviting Noel into your living room, so it’s a good thing.
CB: Brilliant. All right. Well, I think that’s a great starting point then in terms of both of your connections and perspective with him. So what I wanna do in this discussion in this episode today is I wanna first start by talking and outlining a bit about Noel’s biography and his background in astrology in his life and work, and then I also want to get into though his approach to astrology and what makes it distinctive and unique as a modern astrologer and as an approach that was crafted and taught to students in the late 20th and early 21st century. Does it sound like a plan to you guys?
KR: Perfect.
BF: Sounds good.
CB: Cool. All right. So, I wanna start first with Noel’s birth data. So he was born on December 31st 1936 at 3:57 p.m. Eastern Standard Time in West Chester, Pennsylvania. And I wanna put up a copy of his chart. What was Noel’s preferred system of house division?
BF: Well, he–
KR: He was a Placidus guy.
CB: Placidus. Okay. Let me just share. And this is using my own layout, but hopefully it’ll suffice for our purposes for the most part. So he had zero degrees of Cancer rising on the ascendant or that’s what that time gives. And I don’t know if that’s from his birth certificate or if it was rectified, but obviously there would be a little bit of a question initially if an astrologer just first glanced at this chart about whether the native had 29 Gemini rising or whether they had zero Cancer rising. But there’s probably pretty good reason to believe that he had Cancer rising I believe, right?
BF: Absolutely.
CB: And why is that?
BF: Because if a TV commercial had emotion in it, he would cry.
KR: Mhm. Mhm.
BF: He would express emotion heartfelt at you name it. He is a very, very emotional guy. Now of course when you hear him speak, it would be easy to start thinking in terms of Gemini communications and all of that stuff. But there’s no question. When you get to know him, there’s no question about the Cancer ascendant.
KR: Well, and the other thing is he treated the students like a family. And that’s why there are so many students. So many people have taken this course who have such incredible loyalty to him because we became a family, and that’s the Cancer rising. And, Basil, are you thinking what I’m thinking when you look at this chart that Noel would not be pleased that that midheaven is not at crosshairs–
BF: Absolutely. [laughs]
KR: –with the ascendant? He was really big for the crosshairs of the angles.
BF: Yeah, midheaven at noon. And all of the houses are appearing equal.
KR: Yeah.
CB: Okay. Yeah, sorry about that.
BF: Yeah.
KR: Oh no, it’s just a point.
CB: Sure. Whole sign house, guys. So this is just set up using the default, but I switched it to Placidus. So it’s not showing the degrees of the angles. The other thing obviously about his ascendant though is that if it’s Cancer rising, then the ruler of the ascendant is the Moon which is placed at 27 degrees of Leo not too far–
KR: Yeah.
BF: [unintelligible 00:13:41.26] degree.
CB: Okay, and not too far from the fixed star Regulus. But that’s one of the things that stands out to me is that when you see this guy or when you meet this guy, he has this voice, this very deep baritone voice. And he was a big guy, right? He was like six foot nine–
BF: Eleven.
CB: –or something or six–
BF: Eleven.
CB: –six foot seven.
BF: Eleven.
CB: Six foot eleven.
BF: Yeah.
CB: Wow. Okay. So he was very sort of a tall and imposing figure not just physically but also in terms of his voice which everybody always attempts to imitate. But it’s very hard to do a good imitation of a Noel Tyl voice cuz it’s just so deep and sort of commanding.
KR: Yes. His Moon in Leo in that position afforded him incredible authority and command whenever he wanted it, wherever he was. Yes.
CB: And here’s a picture of him just really quick for people watching the video version. I think this is his old headshot that you sent me, Kathy, that’s on the back of many of his books.
KR: Mhm.
BF: His favorite picture of forever.
CB: Okay. And then just back to the chart just to read off some of the positions for those that are just listening to the audio version of this episode. So he has zero Cancer rising. The Moon is at 27 Leo. He had the Sun and Jupiter and Mercury in Capricorn, Venus in Aquarius, Saturn in Pisces at 17 degrees of Pisces opposite to Neptune at 18 degrees of Virgo. Mars was at 27 Libra. Uranus was at five degrees of Taurus. He had Pluto at 28 Cancer opposite to Mercury at 29 Capricorn. And the nodes were at 24 degrees of Sagittarius as the north node, and 24 Gemini is the south node. And then finally I guess the degree of his midheaven looks like it’s had about seven ish degrees of Pisces.
KR: Yes, 702.
CB: Okay.
KR: Can I jump in and say something right here real quick?
CB: Sure.
KR: Last night I did a Zoom class for a lot of the Tyl students, and it was entitled All Things Venus. And I used Noel’s chart as an example in that because he has Venus opposing his Moon. And when Venus is so strong like that, many times there is great charm. There’s great magnetism. So in addition to his Moon being in Leo and the third house ruling the ascendant, Venus just brought about such great magnetism and charm. And he would smile and light up the room, and he could get sometimes anything he wanted when he would do that because Venus would light up. So it was on my mind. I just talked about it last night in that class.
CB: Brilliant.
KR: Mhm.
CB: So let’s talk a little bit about his life. So early in his life he excelled academically and athletically, and he ended up being accepted to and he ended up going to Harvard. So he did well enough in school that he went to a prestigious university. There he got really interested in and developed his first career as an opera singer which lasted for something like 20 years of his life, right?
BF: Right.
CB: Okay. And I guess he did a bass baritone. He was a bass baritone opera singer in the ’60s and ’70s, and he traveled all over the world singing in different opera houses.
BF: He lived in Germany, and he was a specialist in the works of Wagner.
KR: He was Wotan, king of the gods. Yeah.
CB: Okay. I can’t do it right now, but I might play a little clip just so you can hear his voice and him introducing himself at some of the videos that you recorded with him Kathy just to give you some idea of how deep his voice was because as an opera singer you have to be able to fill up the entire auditorium and have it so people in the very back of it can hear you just through the power of your own voice. And that was something that he could do.
BF: Absolutely. Easily. [laughs] The profession is large enough to encompass different fields. There’s the field of research for example, and I’m not a good researcher. And then there’s the field of analysis, and I believe I am a strong artist analyst.
CB: So, he’s an opera singer. He’s doing that for like 20 years very early in his life. And then sometime during that I think he did meet his wife relatively early on, right?
BF: The very first one? Yeah.
CB: Okay.
BF: There were three. I never met the first one. I don’t even know her first name. The second one was Haloli Richter, and of course she passed away some years ago.
CB: Okay. Yeah, I was a little unclear about that. And that was one part I was having trouble with with the biography, but I did figure out that he became aware of astrology sometime after college at the age of 28 which would have been during his Saturn return approximately, right?
BF: That’s something that I can’t–I don’t know.
CB: Okay.
BF: I’m not sure about the age of the beginning.
CB: Okay. I think I was reading in one interview that he said 28, so, it should have been around that time period. And he was living in New York. And in an interview that Kathy has from the DVD series, and this video is up on YouTube. It’s like 45 minutes. It’s really interesting talking about his life. It’s titled TYL unfiltered: A revealing conversation with Astrologer Noel Tyl. He tells a story about how he was watching TV at one point, and he saw an interviewer named David Susskind who was dismantling a few astrologers like three or four astrologers on TV one day. And he said despite the sort of poor performance of astrologers, they weren’t doing a great job defending themselves. He thought there might be something to it, and he wanted to find out. So he went right then with his wife to a local bookstore in New York City that was run by the famous astrologer named Zoltan Mason. And have you guys heard this story before?
KR: Oh, a thousand times.
BF: Absolutely.
[Kathy and Basil laugh]
CB: A thouand times? Okay.
KR: A thousand times. Yes.
CB: This is like a legendary story, and Zoltan Mason himself was a legendary figure because he’s been mentioned by a number of astrologers. I remember I did a episode on Robert Zoller who also passed away just a few months ago, and I did an episode on him and played an old interview I did with him. And he also mentioned going to Zoltan Mason’s bookstore in New York City and buying astrology and occult books there. And Zoltan Mason was this Hungarian- Slovakian who immigrated to New York City in 1948. And apparently Noel Tyl went there to this bookstore, and he sort of engaged Mason in what sounded like a somewhat skeptical discussion initially about astrology, right? Like he kind of was interested, but he was also kind of like challenging him or something like that.
BF: Yeah. To this day, I don’t know whether or not he was joking or not. But as the story goes, he said, “Mr. Mason, you don’t want me–” Mason said something like, “You could be a great astrologer.” That’s what it was. And Noel said, “You just want me to buy a bunch of your books, that’s all.” And as the story goes, Zoltan said, “I don’t see it in you. I see it in your horoscope.”
CB: Right. Yeah.
BF: He told Noel that he could be a great astrologer.
KR: Mhm.
CB: Yeah, that sounded like a really impressive encounter where initially it was like Noel was asking him sort of skeptical questions like what happens. Surely not everybody’s birth chart indicates that they’ll die, if there’s a major disaster or something like that. And he’s kind of poking him a little bit, and then Mason correctly inferred that Tyl was a Capricorn and that his wife was a Pisces which was true. And Tyl says he was reasonably impressed, and he bought two books and then went home and learned how to calculate his birth chart by hand. This is in like the 1970s, he would have had to at that point. Or actually it might have been the 1960s. But he later was interested enough and started getting into astrology and went back and set up a consultation with Mason, and he wasn’t particularly impressed by the consultation. But he did say that Mason said a few solid things about his life that were reasonably correct. And as the consultation was winding down, Mason said something that stuck with him and that he repeated for the rest of his life which is he said, “You could become a very fine famous astrologer. You can be a great teacher in astrology.” And Tyl says that this is more or less verbatim cuz he has the recording. And Tyl replies, like you said Basil that, “Mason, you just want me to buy your astrology books.” or something like that. And Mason replies, “No, Noel. I don’t see it in you. I see it in your horoscope.” And that really stuck with him for some reason, and subsequently it was actually ironically somewhat true cuz he subsequently did buy hundreds of books from Mason. And he ended up moving away from New York and going to Germany following his opera career, but there he would have those books even shipped from Mason in New York to Germany and kept buying books and getting more and more into astrology. So that seems like his initial connection and his initial starting point that he was just buying astrology books, and he ended up being self-taught just through reading these books on his own which is kind of unique then that he was a self-taught astrologer rather than somebody who had a teacher or a mentor.
KR: Exactly. And a lot of those books he bought from Zoltan Mason I have in my library now because I have Noel’s library, and it was just incredible to open it up and see that store stamped on the inside of the books. It’s just wonderful.
CB: Wow.
KR: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. And I’ve heard like Robert Zoller buying books there. I know Robert Corre had a connection with Zoltan Mason and got into the work of Morinus, Jean-Baptiste Morin as a result of that. And I think I’ve even heard of like Rob Hand mentioning going to Zoltan Mason’s bookstore and buying books there, so it seemed like a pretty important place. And Noel actually tells his funny story in that Tyl unfiltered video about then, he would move all over the world and all over the country. And then eventually one day he was in New York doing a book tour, and this must have been in the late 1990s or early 2000s. And he tried to look up the bookstore, but the bookstore was closed and had been closed for many years. And Mason was in his 90s by that point, but Noel was able to track him down and called him up on the phone. And they met up one last time, and they met at Mason’s apartment. And when Noel went in, he saw that the shelves were lined with books and that he had a bunch of Noel’s own books on his shelves. And when he’s telling that story I think to you Kathy, he sort of tears up at how moving that was to him as that’s where he got his start and then seeing the guy that he got his first reading from or consultation from had all of his books lining his shelves and they still had that connection after all those years.
KR: Full circle. Yes.
CB: Yeah. So that’s brilliant. And then Mason died, he said only a year or two later which would have been in the year 2002. So, Noel was self-taught. His first book was titled astrology as identity, and that was published in 1973. And one of the things that was interesting, he must have written that while he was in Germany. And he submitted it to Llewellyn which was a astrology publisher based out of Saint Paul, Minnesota. And he tells a story in one interview about how impressed they were when they received the manuscript that they invited him to come out, and they had some sort of meeting. And they published that book, and it ended up being successful. And it launched a very not just successful career for Noel as an author and writer of more than 30 astrology books by the end of his life but also a great cooperation between Noel and Llewellyn publishing who he published all of his books with.
KR: Yes, you have to remember Noel was a Capricorn Sun conjunct Jupiter in the seventh house. And not only was he very friendly and outgoing but he was also very strategic. So he made good friends with Weschcke, and they hit it off. And they were best buddies for many, many years.
CB: Yeah. It sounds like he ended up moving to Saint Paul, and he lived next to the owner of Llewellyn publishing at that point who is Carl Llewellyn Weschcke. So Noel ended up publishing 30 books in his life, lived in Saint Paul, and had a connection at one point with Carl Llewellyn Weschcke. And I have a quote from him that says, “Noelle can write a book in a couple of months or so.” And some of his books were written really fast. Like he would just take it all what was in his mind and put it in paper very, very quickly evidently.
KR: Mhm.
BF: Absolutely. He told me that he did his epitome Synthesis & Counseling in Astrology. Yeah, he described to me four five days of getting up, not brushing his teeth, sitting there at the computer typing. And that book has, I don’t know what, 700 pages in it or something. He did it in less than a week. It was absolutely–
CB: Wow. Yeah, it’s like a thousand-page thick book.
KR: Mhm.
BF: Yeah.
KR: I think it’s more like 1100 pages.
CB: Is it? Okay.
KR: I think. I don’t know. My microphone is sitting on two copies of it right here on my desk.
CB: Okay.
KR: But I’m gonna move it to look.
CB: Right. I love that. So, yeah. That was his main book, and it’s one of his largest books. And, yeah, he was reputed to have written it in a week, he said. And that’s really crazy.
BF: His course was modeled after Synthesis & Counseling, and he wrote the course up real fast. I remember he called me one day and told me he had an idea about creating a course, and then like a week later it was done.
CB: Mhm.
BF: Boy.
CB: Okay. So he had initiative, and he got stuff done. And his first series that he started with Llewellyn back in the 1970s was The Principles and Practice of Astrology which was 12 volumes. And that was his first set. And that’s the one that you said that you walked out with when you first came across his work, right?
BF: Yep, that’s it. The volume that I went to initially was volume five which was the first time that I ever saw any deep psychological references to anything in astrology. And I have in my horoscope singleton Mars in the 11th house. All I ever heard from astrologers was, “You’re gonna be contentious with friends, and you’re gonna attract people in the military.” and all of the standard slack. I’m not a contentious person. If you act out with me, I simply turn you into Casper the ghost. You don’t exist anymore. I’m not gonna argue. I’m not gonna fight or get your silly. He had an explanation in that book for the 11th house. At that point I had been reading books for seven years or so. For the first time, “What? Wow. Now, that makes sense.” And then I started looking at all the other horoscopes that had 11th house emphasized, and for the first time I could make sense of stuff when I couldn’t make sense of friends, hopes, and wishes.
CB: Mhm.
BF: Somebody has Saturn in the 11th house which would have to do with hopes and wishes. I never understood it. But after reading that little bit in that chapter, “Oh, man. This is brilliant.” And that’s where I got the whole series.
KR: You bring up a good point, Basil. Because that 11th house orientation that he came forward, that theory that he proposed changed my life, too. So we focused on the fifth house being love giving, the ability to express love in the 11th house about loveability and your ability to receive love. So his theory was if the 11th house ruler was under high developmental tension or if a planet in the 11th house was under high developmental tension, then there were perhaps the suggestions of loveability issues, needing to work on that as your life purpose. And that was revolutionary and absolutely crystal clear changed the direction of my astrology, that one point right there.
BF: Yep.
KR: So amazing.
CB: Brilliant. So part of it, and this will start getting us into the next section about his approach. But it’s probably fine if we go there at this point. But it seemed like part of his focus was a move towards humanistic astrology. And he was motivated by an interesting psychology especially developmental psychology as well as the desire to modernize astrology, and part of his background from Harvard was being influenced by psychological need theory that was taught by a professor named Henry Murray. But I guess this also goes back to like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and things like that, but that was sort of a cornerstone. It seemed like a psychological approach in some sense, right?
BF: Absolutely. It was another major thing that changed everything for me because when you start and you read the books that are available, it’s mostly cookbooks. The few astrologers that I saw before I met Noel, it was all, “Look at the horoscope.” And, “Your Sun is in the seventh house.” And that means this, your Sun is squared by Saturn. And that means this–And it’s an astrology lesson. It’s not a discussion about your life. When he came along, just adding that one word need Mercury and Cancer–No, you don’t think emotionally. You need to think in terms of emotional security. That changes everything, and you’re not confining a person’s life to what you think you know about astrology. And that happens all too often that somebody who’s been studying astrology books for two or three years will read something in a book. And then every time they see that in the horoscope, they just automatically anoint that person with whatever that meaning is. And that doesn’t work because 100 people with the exact same horoscopes are not going to be the same person. One could have been a farmer in New Zealand. The other one could have been born to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie or whatever the case might be. But the idea that he came up with is that you have to apply the horoscope to the life of the person living and not the other way around.
CB: Mhm.
KR: Yes, and he also said our job as astrologers is not to describe personality. Our job as astrologers good astrology is helping them understand how they need fulfillment and how they can resolve tension in their chart, how they can evolve and grow to become the best version of their chart. So this tendency to sit a client down and describe personality to them didn’t fit the model that he taught.
CB: Okay. And so that was probably then tied in with this other thing which is that it seemed like the most important thing for him was having a meaningful consultation or a meaningful–
KR: Conversation.
CB: –conversation with a client so that the consultation would change their life. And partially as a result of that, he preferred referring to them as consultations rather than readings.
BF: Right.
KR: Yes, absolutely. Because reading infers a one-way conversation, and a consultation is the two people connecting. And the two people, the astrologer learning how the client is living their life. Yeah, it’s a big, big difference.
CB: Yeah, that’s something I didn’t realize until last night that I had internalized from his teachings in the early 2000s and have for the past 20 years that I never recognized until last night where I got that from in also preferring to refer to them as consultations instead of readings.
KR: Mhm.
BF: Hey Chris, let me interrupt you with a short story for a second.
CB: Sure.
BF: When we were in South Africa, there was the equivalent of The Tonight Show. And Noel was asked to be on that show. Of course, I was asked to be there. We were rolling out the program and all that stuff. So as a result of that show, I got a lot of things going on. And the first client that I had down there was a black African. I say black African because when people say Africa, you think everybody’s black. But it’s not true. South Africa has more white people than anything else. First client was a black African. Now understand, this guy was raised in apartheid. You’re not allowed to learn how to read or–it’s apartheid. And he was working in a convenience store, pumping gas and so forth. So, he approached me at the TV station. He said he wanted to talk to me about his horoscope. And when he gave me the data, I knew from the date that it was the same as Bill Clinton. But then when I did the chart, the chart was as identical as could be based on the differences in the latitude and longitude. This guy had one planet and a house that Bill didn’t have. But otherwise, it was pretty much the same horoscope. And I use this as an example of like what was I gonna–If I had this guy and Bill sitting in front of me, I’m gonna say the same things to both of them. This one guy came up in apartheid with nothing. He just had no shot at doing anything. And these are the kinds of things that you have to look at first as an astrologer. If you just assume that this person is going to be what you read in a book, you can get egg on your face.
KR: Mhm.
CB: That’s a great example. Yeah. So that’s something Noel emphasized a lot that the social and economic and cultural and other contexts of the person’s life matter, and you have to take that into account when delineating a chart. Because you can have two people born in completely different contexts or different family upbringings, and they’re going to respond to that chart or grow into it in ways that can be radically different.
BF: Absolutely.
KR: Yes, and it brings up the issue of freewill because you cannot–from looking at the chart, you don’t know how they are living their chart until you talk to them because they do have a role to play in freewill in choosing to live it at the highest level or the shadow level. Even with a great early life, even with great parents and everything handed to you, you could still choose to live your life in the shadow level. So you have to connect with the client, in my opinion. In my opinion, to determine how they are living their life and not assume ahead of times. And that’s why the word in the course the other word that Noel brought forward that really changed things for me when I sent in my first lesson and he put red marks all over it and I got a little talking to cuz I didn’t use the word suggest. And boy, did that change my life. So you look at the chart and you say, “Mr. Tyl, you have Moon opposite Venus in your chart. And this suggests a great deal of charm. This suggests this, that, and the other.” And that is a very respectful way to approach the client as opposed to saying, “You are this, that, and the other.” So that word suggest is so wonderful.
CB: So suggest, the placement suggests something instead of that it means this, this, and this?
KR: Mhm. And then the client confirms it. In a sense, what I tell my students is I chum the water a little bit. Maybe that’s not a good example. But I throw it out there, and I let the client tell me how they’re living their life so that we can move forward. And then each consultation really is a jam session. You’re prepared. You’ve done all your calculations, but you’re jamming. Because if you’ve never spoken to that client, you have to figure out in the first five or 10 minutes how they’re living their life and then redirect and go from there. Noel was an expert at that. He had Jupiter oriental. He was really, really good at living in that moment and redirecting.
CB: So it sounds like two things we’re coming up with already here that sound important. One is, he seemed very sensitive to language and the meaning of certain words especially when used in like let’s say consulting setting and how that’s gonna come off to a client that may not know anything about astrology and the subtle difference between one word that you might use versus another. And maybe that had some background perhaps. I think he did like a PR firm or something at one point before he became an astrologer. Is that true?
BF: He had already been an astrologer when he had the PR firm. It was in McLean, Virginia. I was actually there. He had a staff of about, I don’t know, seven people or something like that. And he had written at the time his only self-published book, Holistic Astrology. And I remember him telling me that at that point–And I can’t remember what year it was. I remember him saying that he thought that his career in astrology might be done because there was nothing else to say after this book, Holistic Astrology. And so he had set up the PR firm and everything. And that’s what he was going to do. But destiny had other plans.
[Kathy laughs]
KR: Exactly.
CB: So and that was a self publish. That was the only book he self-published, and then he must have gone back to Llewellyn.
BF: Yeah.
KR: Mhm.
CB: Okay.
BF: Yeah.
CB: So it sounds like–
KR: But he was very sensitive to words. He was an auditory man whereas I’m more of a visionary. I get images, I see pictures, I describe in visual terms. He was an auditory man. And the word you used was very important, the precision in words, the tone of your voice. Yeah, that was his protocol.
BF: Yeah.
CB: Right. So that seems important. And then the other thing that’s important is the orientation towards doing consultations and helping clients and helping to change their lives and different things surrounding that to optimize your effectiveness not just from a technical standpoint but also from a standpoint of psychology or of counseling in and of itself.
BF: Absolutely.
KR: Yes, and he also called himself an artist analyst.
BF: Mhm.
KR: And it’s something he says on the DVDs, “We are artists analysts.” And I think that’s just absolutely beautiful because it describes the creative process in astrology, and Noel really operated very much from the right brain. He was brilliant, intellectually brilliant man. But he operated very much from the right brain, that creative process. Yeah.
CB: Mmm. Okay. All right. So that’s gonna take us down into his technical thing, but I just wanna wrap up some of the biographical stuff first. So at one point, he began teaching what he called his master’s course in astrology where he would–This was his highest level course that he would teach to students. Do either of you know when he started teaching that approximately?
BF: I remember in South Africa receiving the email from him of the election of it, and I have that horoscope in my database somewhere. It was in the late ’90s. I can’t remember the exact year, but he sent me a copy of the election.
KR: Mhm.
CB: Okay, so late ’90s early 2000s. He was also a founding member and early presiding officer which was their name for like president of AFAN which is the Association for Astrological Networking which is one of the big astrological organizations in the US.
BF: Yeah.
CB: So he was involved in that. He was also involved in organizing the very first United Astrology Conference or UAC which took place I believe in 1987.
KR: Mhm. Mhm.
CB: And then finally he received the Regulus award at the United Astrology Conference in 1998 for enhancing professional image and the Regulus–
BF: Chris, I have that Regulus award here. He sent it to me. It was sent to me after he passed away.
KR: Mhm.
CB: Yeah, that’s actually what the genesis of this episode is. I did an episode with Sam Reynolds last month, and your name came up as like a prominent black astrologer who’d written a book and it’s like well-known. And then I went and looked at your website just to see what you’d been up to cuz it had been a little while since I looked at your blog even though I subscribe to it. And I saw that post where his wife had sent you Tyl Noel’s Regulus award, and you had that picture of you and him at that United Astrology Conference in 1998 just showing the sort of connection and how far back that goes between the two of you.
BF: Yeah. And I’ll tell you I knew it was coming, the Regulus award. But the day I received it and I opened it–
KR: The rush of emotions was intense. Yeah.
BF: I can’t even talk about it now.
KR: Yeah, yeah.
BF: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. And I’m sure that must have been also a highlight of his career for most astrologers I talk to that when they receive a Regulus award, that’s a really big deal for them because it’s the highest award that at least in like the US astrological community that astrologers can offer because that’s when all of the major astrological organizations pool their resources to host one big mega conference. And when you’re receiving an award like that, it really is your peers recognizing you in some major way as the leader in the community.
BF: Especially for what he received it for which was basically the idea of being the person who presented astrology most as a business instead of projecting the image of somebody sitting in a half-darkened room with incense burning and a crystal ball and that kind of thing which is unfortunately still what the great majority of the world thinks about those kinds of things when the word astrologer comes up.
CB: Yeah.
BF: So he was very, very proud of that. And I remember when he came back, he said, “Basil, you keep going. You’ll get one one day.” Turned out to be I got his.
[Basil and Kathy laugh]
CB: That’s brilliant. Yeah, that’s a really good point because that is then probably one of the key or defining things about his astrology was an attempt to put a more professional spin whether that happened deliberately or whether it was just a byproduct of who he was as a person but to put a more professional image on astrology in general. And so you’re right that receiving the award from the community for enhancing professional image is probably actually pretty meaningful.
KR: Mhm.
BF: Absolutely.
KR: Mhm.
CB: Okay. Brilliant. So that’s what I have in terms of his bio for the most part. I’d like to transition I think at this point into talking about his approach to astrology. One of the things I want to start with is who his background influences were as an astrologer. And I did establish so he wrote at least 30 books. I’ve seen another report saying 40. I haven’t seen a master list yet, so I don’t know what the correct amount is. But it’s definitely 30 or more books during the course of his lifetime including one cookbook which was kind of a funny aside.
KR: Yes.
CB: He also liked to cook. And that was a thing for him as well, right?
KR: Yes.
BF: Yep.
KR: Yeah, he has that. And I think he always said he wrote 35 books. That’s what I recall him always saying. I haven’t counted them though.
BF: Yeah, me neither.
CB: Okay, so that means really like he rivals–So a little bit below but almost rivals Dane Rudhyar who was the other most prolific author of the 20th century as far as I can tell. But Noel Tyl is definitely up there. And if for no other reason, that’s one of the reasons why he was so prominent and influential. But one question I had is, who were his primary influences as an astrologer? Basil, I think in one of your articles you say Marc Edmund Jones and Dane Rudhyar. It also seems like Reinhold Ebertin was a major influence. And then Alan Leo, Kathy you said that that may have been a major influence for him as well?
KR: Yes, when I got his library, when I received the books that he had in his library. And I’ve been flipping through them. He made notes and underlined and put things in the margin for many of those books. And the one that he underlined the most or the–I should say the ones because it’s more than one book were the Alan Leo books.
CB: Mhm.
KR: And I can see where he got his theories, what triggered his thinking, I can see the insight, it’s just the most amazing thing to follow this. Now, I do have the Marc Edmund Jones books from his library and also the Rudhyar books. But the ones that have the most markings are the Alan Leo. Maybe those were the earlier books. I don’t know. But I know it influenced him greatly. Greatly.
CB: Mhm. Okay. And Basil you really emphasize especially Marc Edmund Jones and Dane Rudhyar which is definitely when things started going in a much more like psychological direction especially with Dane Rudhyar and the idea of humanistic astrology. Because Noel got his start in like the ’60s and ’70s, some of these guys were still alive through the 1980s. I think both Marc Edmund Jones and Rudhyar were, so Noel may have actually met them or had some personal connection at some point.
BF: He did. Definitely with Marc Edmund Jones. He frequently told his story at lectures. He went to visit Marc Jones at his place, and I think it was in the Pacific area of the country somewhere on the west, maybe northwest. And it was Marc Edmund Jones who said to him that sextiles and trines keep things the way that they are. And it’s the hard aspects, the squares that make things happen. And that was the first time that Noel had heard that he was already thinking that way. But the fact that somebody like Marc Edmund Jones who was so much more established than him at that time made that kind of a statement, that changed it for him. Even if you study with Noel for a month, you know that that’s the philosophy that when you look at a trine, you’re not looking at this great thing. And I’ll add this little story. I was introduced to astrology when I was 13 years old by my oldest brother 10 years my senior. He was born in that section of the 40s, like 44 45 46 when there was a lot of grand trine stuff happening. He has two grand trines. And he used to brag to me, “Oh, I’ve got these two grand trines and I’m gonna be this, and I’m gonna be that. And you’ve got Sun square Saturn and you’re going to be nothing.” It’s basically what it boiled down to. So, guess what? Everything that we had in common, guess who achieved more? Kind of… you can continue. [Kathy laughs]
CB: Right. I think you won in 1980 like a… Spacing out the name, what was the name of the award?
BF: Yeah, it was… I didn’t win it. Are you talking about music what I think you are talking about? Yeah. I was part of the production team and in 1980, we won the Grammy Award for R&B Song of the Year Stephanie Mills Never Knew Love Like This Before. Now, this wasn’t presented to me directly, there were two people who were head of the production team, but we were Roberta Flack’s band. We got two hits with Roberta, decided to leave and form this production team in 1980. It’s sort of all culminated.
CB: Nice. That’s really cool and that’s a whole side thing as you’ve had a successful music career in addition to your career as an astrologer.
BF: Yeah, probably more success in music because it’s more quantifiable and in astrology, I don’t know. It’s more difficult to… Like, who’s a great astrologer? The astrologer that has 5,000 clients or? I mean, how do you know? How do you tell?
CB: Right. Not everybody can write like 30 astrology books or write 1000-page book in like a couple weeks or what have you.
BF: Yeah, yeah.
KR: Yeah, right. When you are in the trenches dealing with clients every day, it is hard to quantify success. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Because as Noel I guess would have said that the success there comes from the impact that you make on an individual client’s life through the consultation.
KR: Yes, absolutely, the service that you provide.
BF: Yep. It’s not the number of likes on Facebook.
CB: Right. So, let’s see. So, you may have had a personal connection with Marc Edmund Jones and then that aspect thing that you mentioned, Basil, became like a cornerstone of his entire career that idea that hard aspects are developmental and that you end up focusing on those more in that soft aspects. Even multiple ones like a grand trine can sometimes because they are not as challenging or developmental from his perspective that they cannot always be as useful.
KR: But the grand trine can be developmental. Noel proposed the incredible theory that a grand trine is connected to a potential defense mechanism of self-sufficiency and isolation and he really rocked the boat. You were there at that time, right, Basil? When he proposed the grand trine can be the self-sufficiency, it’s like having a castle with three moats, a three-sided moat and no drawbridge. You can’t get in, you can’t get out. And in order to get in or out, you have to provide that drawbridge to get out of that behavior because it just cycles around and around and around. Emotional self-sufficiency for the water grand trine, motivational self-sufficiency for the fire grand trine, intellectual self-sufficiency for the air grand trine, practical for Earth. It was very revolutionary. He rocked the boat. He took a lot of arrows for that. But on a therapeutic psychological level, wow, it is just brilliant.
CB: Okay, so that’ll take us into some of his technical stuff and his technical innovations or areas where he was unique or had unique proposals or insights. One of the things to start off this session when I was researching this and try to remember everything and talking with Matthew Ouimet is that he was saying that Noel crafted an approach that was both technical and psychological and that’s something that’s distinctive about him as an astrologer in the late 20th century without necessarily having to sacrifice one for the other where sometimes especially in the past decade or two with the revival of older forms of astrology, sometimes psychological astrology is criticized as being as lacking in technical rigor or something like that whereas traditional astrology is perceived as being more event oriented or predictive. However, Noel’s approach was actually still highly technical in some ways and his approach was that psychological is not just character trait focus, but also dealt with maturation and internal evolution and Noel married both a technical approach as well as a psychological approach.
KR: Yes, it’s a therapeutic approach and it involved the right brain as opposed to just measurement oriented left brain intellectual. It married both, yeah.
BF: Absolutely. Chris, I’ll add to that. In my life, anytime there’s been Saturn anything with my Sun, it’s been like win the lottery, Basil parade in the middle of downtown Delaware, you name it. I met my wife when transiting Saturn was exactly square my 7th house Sun. And I made my audition with Roberta Flack when transiting Saturn was exactly on my Sun in August of 1976. But a newbie who reads a book gets digested with all this Saturn’s stuff, all of this crap and they associate Saturn and other things only with something that is bad. Yeah. So, the whole thing is that you have to look at the life that a person is living first and then apply that to the measurements. If a person has been selling drugs and solar arc, Neptune is coming up to the midheaven, that’s different than if someone in Thailand who is a Buddhist monk meditating all the time has Neptune coming to the midheaven. You have to look at the life that the person is living and not it’s not just a one size fits all endeavor.
KR: How are they going to use that energy? How are they going to utilize that cycle? They have freewill but also, what do they already have currently in motion that will propel that cycle forward, whether it’s a solar arc or a transit? He emphasized that all the time in his teaching the wisdom of that and I thought that was just spectacular.
CB: Right. And this might be a good segue into one of his distinctive things was that he had a real strong opposition to the use of the terms benefic and malefic, the traditional terms for the two benefic planets Venus and Jupiter and the two malefic planets Mars and Saturn. And I think in the last time I met him in person, he mentioned this that he had made it his personal mission to remove those terms from astrology and to some extent, may have been successful because I know I’ve talked to an editor at Llewellyn at once years ago who said that there was like a standing policy that those terms were not to be used and were banned from Llewellyn publications for a while [Kathy laughs] and I wonder if that wasn’t partially due to Noel’s influence. But part of his approach in describing that was that if Mars and Saturn represent developmental needs because going back to his developmental need theory and his integration of that psychological approach into astrology, then they shouldn’t be labeled as bad because it’s something that’s necessary to grow and the idea that force and limitations are fundamentally necessary in life. But that was definitely one of his distinctive takes on astrology is he really didn’t like the terms benefic and malefic, right?
BF: Yeah, because it automatically makes you prejudice. You’re a brand-new astrology person, you don’t know anything about anything and you read this stuff. And human beings have a tendency to hold on to the things that they learn first. They just do and no matter what you say, well, if it’s not like what I learned first, then you get this opposition. You have to look at life philosophically. We all have a journey, we all have a path, we all have a necessity to be in this life and grow and we’re going to grow through obstacles, we’re going to grow through good things, we’re going to grow through a lot of stuff. And so, you’re naive if you think that life is a trine. It just doesn’t work that way. It’s a mixture of things and so it shouldn’t be those malefic things. When I’m teaching students, I use the word times of challenge as opposed to this is bad. I was part of a Facebook group for about a month until right about the time you called me for this, Chris, actually. And on a daily basis, you saw astrology in its absolute worse just embarrassing just stuff. And I took a martyr attitude initially and thought that maybe I could help, but [Basil laughs] I wasn’t able to help and I got out of it. But yeah, clearly, I’m definitely on that bandwagon of malefic planets are not bad. There’s a challenge. Life has challenges. If you go through school, there’s going to be times when a test is challenged. Once you get out of school, you’re going to be challenged. And that’s what these hard aspects represent, an opportunity to grow.
KR: And I find myself over and over again with new students who have been studying for years who have had anchored into their consciousness things like if you have Mars-Saturn conjunctor in your natal chart, you’re cruel. And it’s an automatic blanket statement, oh, I see Mars Saturn conjunct in this person’s chart, they’re cruel. And they diagnose this person is cruel and they have that anchored in. And not only that example, but anything having to do with a Pluto transit where it’s the self-fulfilling prophecy if you anchor it in, if you are telling yourself that about that situation, you will surely manifest it. You get to be right because of the self-fulfilling prophecy. I have a lot of people arguing that concept with me to say, hey, if Pluto comes and hits my chart, it is going to be bad period, end of story. And I said, “You get to be right. Maybe it doesn’t have to be, maybe you can change what you are telling yourself about this situation.” But that’s my personal view. That’s how I choose to see it. And there’s enough room in astrology in the world for us to see it in all kinds of different ways and I think maybe we’re all right. And from the quantum spiritual level, maybe what we energize and how we see the world becomes our reality and we all get to be right. And Noel embraced that too. Noel embraced the bigger attitude saying he knows what he believed but he said there’s space for all techniques because everybody uses a different tool. And I like that about him because I don’t like limiting that there’s only one way to see something. So, I respected that about him very much.
CB: Yeah, he seemed to have his own technical approach, but also sometimes was open to other ideas. I mean, certain ones he certainly had a stronger view on especially when it came to benefic and malefic and that being something detrimental to especially consulting setting and rejecting it for that reason. But other things, technically speaking, he would just say this is what works for me and it seemed like he would let people do what they were going to do to some extent otherwise.
KR: Well, and I also got to know him in his older years so I really started connecting with him in 2005 and after. And as you get older, your attitude changes, you soften a little bit. Basil knew him in the early years where he was just GungHo really developing skyrocketing up, right? So, we knew him in different phases. I got him in the more mellow stage. [Kathy laughs]
CB: Was he more ardent or aggressive in promoting his theories or something in the ‘70s or ‘80s as far as you know, Basil?
BF: He was never really. He would always talk about the fact that he has Mars in Libra and you can see both sides of an issue kind of a thing. So, it was one reason why AFAN chose him to be a presiding officer because he was saying all the time, I can see both sides of an issue. So, he was not the kind of person to just throw stuff in your face but he just made it clear about where he was coming from. If somebody asked him, he would lay it on him, but he always gave people the respect for what they were doing but it was never like this is the only way in my way or that kind of deal.
KR: But we have to remember in those early years, he came out with so many new theories, the grand trine theory, for example. You haven’t gotten to it yet. I’m sure you’re going to talk about the Saturn retrograde theory, the hemisphere emphasis theory, the fact that he called on aspected planets peregrine planets. I know you’re going to talk about all this. But he came out with these new theories, pioneered new ideas and took a lot of arrows in the beginning when you shake things up and you come up with something new. So, I didn’t know him in that phase, but naturally when a person is in that phase, you are more assertive because you have to be because you’re having reaction. I got him afterwards when people had already started accepting that and that’s when I became friends with him and started working with him.
CB: Yeah, there’s a big difference between when you’re the up and coming the young upstart and you’re putting forward new ideas based on your own reflections and insights and that in some instances, those are new or unique or go against the grain of the established tradition and you’re like an outsider versus once you’ve been around for a few decades and your peers become the people who are the mainstream at that point and your views become more part of the mainstream. It’s not as fighting against anybody because you’ve won at that point, in some sense. Yeah, so I was reading this interview that I found on the Internet Archive, it was an interview he did with The Meta Arts website. Okay. So, he says he was living in Europe, this is in like the 1970s I guess, and he was brought to Seattle to sing at the opera there and he found a local bookshop and connected in Seattle which was not the Astrology Et Al bookshop, I don’t believe, but he connected with an astrologer named Dorothy Hughes who was a retired president of the AFA. And through her, he ended up impressing her with some discussion they had and through her and that connection ended up speaking at an AFA conference. And he said at his first presentation, he only had like 12 people there during his first presentation, but then it went well enough that he had maybe 80 people show up the next lecture. And then finally, he says he had 270 to 300 at the next one. And then eventually, he gave another lecture that was just filling up the entire room or something like that. He says, it filled the ballroom and there was 1200 people there because he gave a lecture on sex and sexuality which was, he said like scandalous or something in the 1970s to give a talk on such a topic. So, we can see how some of the things that he might have been doing at that point or addressing might have been edgy, but it was certainly speaking to or it filled some need that was there in terms of the astrological community at the time.
KR: It takes a lot of courage to do that. It takes a lot of courage to be a pioneer and stick to your guns and speak from the heart. And yes, he had a lot of ego, you have to have a lot of ego to do it. He has that gigantic Moon or he had that [Kathy laughs] gigantic Moon in Leo and you have to be able to sustain that without crumbling. Yeah.
CB: Right. Yeah. All right. So, let’s get into some of the technical stuff that he was unique for like we’ve said aspects. He had a focus on hard aspects especially because hard aspects were seen as developmental, softer aspects were seen as static. I’ve heard there may have been different stages in his career where he may have used more of a sixth-degree orb for hard aspects early on, but maybe it may have moved to like a seven-degree orb later on, is that true? Or can either of you confirm that?
BF: The lights are seven and the planets five.
KR: Except that the same time, he would say especially in his later years, that the orbs are a span of consciousness. And so, the older he got, then he would say to him, it wasn’t reasonable to have absolute orbs, that in certain occasions, you’re going to feel in the natal chart those two planets are reaching out to each other. And if it seems true, if it works, then great. So, the older he got, the less he was rigid about orbs. And I’ll tell you what, rigidity about orbs is something that I have as my personal bandwagon because I don’t find it necessary at all. So, when I knew him, it was 7° and that’s what I use because it seems to work so well for me.
CB: Okay. And so that was with the Ptolemaic. He used the Ptolemaic or the major aspects. Primarily, when it comes to minor aspects, he didn’t use the inconjunct because he said that he didn’t find that it worked very well in his experience. Had you guys heard that?
BF: Yeah, I did.
KR: Well, one thing he always said was everybody find certain techniques that work extremely well for them. And while he said the inconjunct is a great aspect, it wasn’t his favorite, it didn’t speak to him, he didn’t resonate with it. And so, he can respect the other aspects, the other techniques but we all specialize in something, it sings to us. And we get the same information whether you’re using a different technique or I’m using a different technique. And Basil, you may have more to say on that. That’s just what I remember.
BF: Yeah, as well. At a certain point, he talked about how much information do you really need [Kathy laughs] to understand a person’s identity? I mean, you think about everybody you know, think about the most complex person that you know and you know what’s wrong with them. It’s not going to take you more than five minutes if it takes that long to talk about what it is that this person does to create problems for themselves. If you go by the astrological alphabet and you use everything that there is to use, you can miss the boat, you can miss what’s really going on with the person’s identity if you use them, conjunction, semi-sextile, sextile, semi-square, inconjunct, quintile. I mean, if you just use all of that stuff and you end up with 30 aspects, then it dilutes things. And so, that’s what I ended up-
KR: How many measurements do you need, right? It wasn’t there that thing in German where they were, yeah.
BF: You look in the software that we all have and you can do like all kinds of stuff like a million different ways, but are people that complex? I really don’t think so. So, he got to I think towards the second part of his career, I would say he got to the point where it was like, I’m only going to use what’s necessary and not use a semi-sextile, not use a semi-square because it’s just too much. Even with midpoints, he preferred to use a 45-degree sword instead of 90 because for his eyes, 45 brings in that semi-square and sesquiquadrate. It brought in too many contacts for him.
CB: Did you mean to say that he preferred to use a 90-degree sword instead of 45?
BF: Absolutely, yeah.
CB: Okay, got it.
KR: And for those of us who learned astrology doing the chart by hand like I did, doing the actual math, doing the interpolation, when you have to calculate all the aspects by hand, you come to a very quick conclusion that I only want to calculate what’s important and what works. You don’t have the computer and you don’t press a button and you don’t get the list of 25,000 measurements which can take up space in your brain and lead you to never making a conclusion. And Noel did that too. He started doing the calculations by hand. I did that for years and years by hand and so I value simplicity. I take the spiritual astrological machete and I cut out extraneous things that slow me up and that take too much time and I try to get to the essentials, and Noel was a big proponent of that. It’s why I studied with him. I resonated with that part of him.
CB: Sure. So that being said, he did develop a special interest in two minor aspects. One of them is the quintile which is 72° and the other is the quindecile which is [Kathy laughs] 165°, right?
KR: Quindecile, quindecile. Remember, Noel with the big rolling Rs rolling his Rs in the big voice. He said, “I know the British are going to mangle this word. It’s the quindecile and if we didn’t say that word correctly, we were in big trouble.” Just like if you abbreviated Sagittarius, you would get in trouble. Never say Sag. Sagittarius is a beautiful word. But yes, quindecile and quintile. [Basil laughs]
CB: Right. He preferred to put like an Italian pronunciation on the term or something like that. Yeah
KR: He was an opera star. He was an opera star. He was a dramatic speaker, yes. And the quindecile is a really interesting aspect. I had a conversation with Susan Miller at the NCGR conference in Baltimore and we were sitting in the lobby and she goes, “That darn Noel, he just made up aspects.” And I said, “What are you talking about?” And she said, “That crazy one, that 165° one that’s not a real aspect.” I said, “I beg to differ. I find it to be quite fascinating.” Yeah.
BF: And besides, he didn’t create it. It was originally from a German astrologer Thomas Ring. He just rediscovered it.
KR: Yes.
CB: Okay. So, 165° so that’s like 15° short of an exact opposition. And I think the keywords in your book, Basil, were intense focus or obsession and that’s for the quindecile is the keywords for that.
BF: It’s that feel. You can add more words, but that’s the essential, compulsion, obsession, a cause that you just won’t stop at until you achieve it and Kathy can add more.
KR: No, that’s exactly it, quite necessary focus. The need press is very strong with the quindecile.
BF: I don’t know if I can get on board with calling it quindecile. It sounds like something that was on my burrito yesterday or [Kathy laughs] something like that. The quindecile? But what were the keywords for quintile which is 72°?
KR: Creativity in vocational profiling when he got to that stage and that’s when I entered the mix here when he came out with that midheaven extension process. The quintile became very important because he always said, if you find the three or more quintiles using fairly tight orbs for these minor aspects, then there is the suggestion that the person needs a creative outlet. He was very proud of that. And in vocational profiling, it really flushes out. It works in my opinion.
BF: It really does. And through the years me being a musician and all, I had umpteen opportunities to test that out and I found that you really didn’t even need three or more. Sometimes if a person has one, then the next… I mean, I have two in my horoscope. Sometimes I’ve seen I can’t mention a name, but a singer who is very, very huge right now and she has one quintile has never done anything but sing but for sure like that quintile is very important aspect for her creativity, and he prided his own.
KR: Yes, he did. But here’s where I want to mention one of the other concepts that Noel drove into us all the time was about themes being echoed and reinforced. That you don’t want to ever just look at one tiny measurement and make a pronouncement. Themes are echoed and reinforced over and over. So maybe somebody has one quintile, but maybe they have other reinforcing aspects in their own horoscope that suggest major creativity. Yeah. Getting to that core theme quickly and finding that process is what it was all about for him.
CB: Okay. And when you mentioned a tight orb for minor aspects, we’re talking about 2° or so or 1° or?
KR: For quindecile, I use 2° and for quintile, it’s about two give or take. Yeah. What do you use, Basil?
BF: Pretty much the same. Sometimes like he was saying earlier about the span of consciousness, I mean, if you meet somebody, they are a virtuoso musician or a barber or whatever the case may be, they’re obviously using lives creatively and the orb is 3°, well, then that person has a quintile. It’s not a concrete rule. Sometimes when it makes sense, you stretch things. The idea of limiting it is to keep you from having so much vegetable soup to digest your analysis.
KR: Again, I want to say artist analyst. We are artist analysts, which is very different than people who measure with a ruler or measure the aspects in a rigid way. Artist analysts allows the creativity of the right brain to come through. And that’s very important for me. I have Neptune very strong in my chart and that artists analyst concept sings to my soul.
CB: Right. All right, so that’s minor aspects. So that’s a good transition at this point to [Kathy laughs] move into aspect patterns which was another thing that he seemed to emphasize, perhaps drawing on I know Marc Edmund Jones was really a major pioneer of that in early 20th century astrology so perhaps getting it from there. He seems to emphasize the grand trine, the T-square, and the grand square as well as other things that might be labeled as aspect patterns that involved quadrant or hemisphere emphasis.
KR: Hemisphere emphasis is one of the first steps for quickly and immediately looking at the horoscope and seeing patterns, and he did it differently than most people. He focused on what planets were not retrograde, where do you find the majority of the planets not retrograde, and that hemisphere or quadrant that is emphasized says so much about the basic orientation. Basil and I both have Western Hemisphere emphasis, right? And so, do you know well that 7th house emphasis and that is that orientation of being aware of other people, potentially giving yourself away, leaving yourself behind, checking the room, checking the reaction of others, that’s that Western Hemisphere emphasis. That’s a huge part that’s in lesson one of the course that you pay attention to that hemisphere emphasis. It was innovative and simplified.
BF: It’s the first thing it puts everything else in the horoscope is within the context of that first impression, like you see Kathy said both of us are West, Donald Trump is East. And so, those of us who are till people, when you hear East, you’re thinking of a person who’s defensive. They’re defensive, they’re protecting the ego, they’re not opening themselves up to others. It’s me, I, I, me, me, I, I, me.
CB: So, East is having a preponderance of planets on the left side of the chart towards the direction of the Ascendant whereas West is having a preponderance towards the right side of the chart towards the Descendant?
KR: Right, non-retrograde planets. So, you ignore the retrograde planets, you go to where the planets are direct. And then he developed in… What was it, Basil? The Creative Astrologer, I believe. He talked about therapy flow which is, I think, absolutely brilliant. So, if you have an intense Western Hemisphere like I do where you give yourself away, I volunteer too much, I offer to help too much, I give and I give and I give and I give until I’m drained, then the therapy flow is to develop the eastern side, which is boundaries to protect yourself. And that theory can be true for all them if you have a Southern Hemisphere emphasis up by the midheaven. It’s the suggestion of being potentially victimized by circumstances not having a solid base from which to operate. So, the therapy flow goes toward the Northern Hemisphere which is the fourth house area which is find a connection in a secure base. And I can go on and on, but it was revolutionary and quite wise, I thought.
CB: Okay. And is this a good place to mention his definition of singleton planets? What is a singleton planet in Noel’s approach?
BF: His definition didn’t differ much from tradition. It’s a planet alone in a hemisphere by itself. You look at that planet, the house that it’s in, the house that it rules and those things if they aren’t emphasized, they need to be emphasized. I have a singleton Mars, it rules the third house. I have Mercury exactly trine to the midheaven. It starts to build a profile of a person who should communicate, needs to write and that kind of thing. So yes, basically what he said was that you look at that planet that’s in a hemisphere by itself and you go from there.
CB: Do you share your chart data, Basil?
BF: I have no issue. I mean, I got surprised the other night, I was looking for Angela Basset’s data, not in Astrodatabank but in Astrotheme. When I typed in B A S, my name came up. [Chris, Basil and Kathy laugh] It’s like, oh, wow. Okay. But yeah, I do. It’s August 1st, 1954 at 7:31 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time in Philadelphia.
CB: And do you mind if I put it up on the screen?
BF: No issue at all.
CB: Okay, you’re from Philly. Do you still live in Philly?
BF: I live in Bear, Delaware.
CB: Delaware, okay. So, there’s your chart. What planet were you saying was a singleton? Mars, okay, got it. So, all of your planets are… So, you have what? 27ish Capricorn rising?
BF: And I don’t want to know what degree Pluto is in right now. [Kathy laughs] If you look at my horoscope, I don’t want to know.
CB: All right, we won’t talk about it. [Kathy laughs] Let’s just say it’s in Pisces or something. So, you have all of your planets, the MC is up at like 20 Scorpio, and the IC is down at 20 Taurus and all of your planets are over on the right side of the degree of the MC-IC axis except for Mars which is over at 25° of Sagittarius. So, then Mars would be the singleton planet in your chart? Got it, okay. And so, the singleton planet does it take over? Did I read that correctly or what is the core interpretation of the singleton planet?
BF: It emphasizes things. It leads development. For me and Noel’s definition of the 11th house, the love that you hope to receive. And if you look at Mars as the application of energy, I realized after reading Noel and studying that a whole lot of what I did, especially being involved in music, is for the purpose of receiving love and attention and it’s not actually love when people clap, but it gives you the feeling of being appreciated. And every endeavor that I’ve ever been involved in has been something that I can receive an applause. And so that Mars in the 11th, the need to be loved a certain way has been very, very important to me. But the definition is that it can lead behavior in terms of the house that it’s in and the house that it rules.
CB: Okay, got it. And then I meant to ask Kathy, do you share your chart?
KR: You’re seeing a Scorpio look on my face, aren’t you? [Kathy laughs]
CB: It’s actually fine if you don’t want to. I’d never, I always-
KR: It’s fine. It’s fine. November 21st, ’58 4:29 p.m. Denver. Yeah.
CB: Denver, that’s a good place to be born. Let’s see. So, do you mind if I put it up? And we can-
KR: No, that’s fine. It’s fine. No, I’ve had it in articles before in The Mountain Astrologer so it’s out there. I am who I am. It doesn’t matter.
CB: So, you have 20 what 27-28 Taurus rising?
KR: 27 Taurus rising, Algol.
CB: Okay. And do you have any singleton planets? It doesn’t look like you do. It’s more distributed.
KR: Right, right. And my midheaven if it were straight up and down would please me, but [Kathy laughs] I’m not getting on your case on that. It’s like I want to tilt my head.
CB: Right. So, let’s see. So, getting back to aspect pattern. So, we’ve talked about hemisphere emphasis. He also used the grand trine we did mention that once briefly earlier. Is there anything else we need to say about that in terms of his distinctive approach? Because it did seem like even though we did, there was a caveat to that, he still did have a distinct approach that he introduced relatively early on that it may not be the best thing ever because it may lack developmental tension or something like that.
KR: Well, it tends to lead to isolation, the grand trine. You can’t get in, you can’t get out. That self-sufficiency often results in isolating yourself in relationships. And so, when you are talking to somebody with a grand trine, it’s something I bring up. That’s self-sufficiency.
BF: And also, easy self-contentment because you’re lacking motivation, you’re not really trying as hard and can be easy to impress yourself with the idea that I’m okay, this is okay and you don’t try because you’re satisfied with things the way that they are. Whereas if you have a whole lot of squares, it’s just not that way.
KR: Well, you can say examples to somebody with a grand trine in water, there’s the tendency or the suggestion of self-sufficiency emotionally as if you don’t want to open up because you don’t want to be hurt again, or self-sufficiency in an air grand trine, don’t tell me how to think I’ll figure it out myself. It sometimes can manifest as not being able to receive help, not wanting to open up to help because you’re just doing it yourself. And sometimes it’s problematic, sometimes it’s not, depends on how the person has lived that. But you want to check it out, you want to ask about it. I’ve had many clients who just talking about the grand trine and suggesting to them maybe you need to create a moat to get you out of that castle in which you are so isolated. And sometimes that’s been the biggest therapeutic breakthrough for them. It’s amazing how sometimes that helps tremendously.
BF: And Chris, what we didn’t mention before was that when there is a planet that is in opposition or square to a point in the grand trine that is a potential release point for all that defensiveness and self-sufficiency and all that stuff. So, say, for example, a person has a grand trine and you have Venus is in the first house, and Jupiter shows up in opposition to that Venus in the 7th house. Well, then you’re looking at relationships as a way into and out of that person’s tendency to be self-sufficient and closed off.
KR: But it is important to determine is it problematic because it’s not an assumption that it will always be problematic. Again, that goes back to you don’t want to presume something as bad. I mean, one of the lectures I’m going to give for ISAR conference and one of them I gave at my Empowered Astrology Conference was on anxiety signatures in the horoscope and the theories of how you can see anxiety potential. I was hesitant to teach it because I don’t want people going, oh, I see in this person’s chart and they have anxiety. They don’t want to pronounce or diagnose how somebody is living that chart. And the same true for grand trines. So, you don’t want to automatically assume it is a problem. It is a suggestion of this pattern. Let’s check it out. Let’s find out how you’re living it. Because somebody is going to live their chart very differently when they’re 60 than they are when they’re 20. And you’re going to hope that they’ve evolved, and they’ve worked on their issues, and they’ve worked some things out, and that’s an honorable thing to ask.
CB: Probably. So, then that’s a good transition point to the other two major aspect patterns that he did recognize which were the T-square and the grand square. What are some quick interpretive tips for those using Noel’s approach or how did he conceptualize them?
BF: Drawing on in my studies, T-square was I didn’t know what to do. The thing that Noel did that really cool things out for me was just explaining how to analyze it and you analyzed the opposition op axis first and you give it the energy of the planet that’s squaring. So, I always like to do Venus Mars because it’s sexual and people can easily relate to sex. So, if you’ve got Venus in opposition to Mars, let’s just call it passion. The other person has Saturn making the T-square to both planets. Well, then there’s a suggestion that there’s some control factor on that person’s sexual thing, their passionate thing. If it’s Jupiter, then it is a suggestion that it’s expensive, that it’s rewarding and all that kind of stuff. So that’s basically how he helped me a whole lot was just understanding how to analyze the T-square because prior to that, I don’t know what I was doing but it didn’t allow me to come up with anything effective in communicating what a T-square was about.
KR: And I think if you step back and look at holistically that it also points the way to where there is tension in the chart. And my philosophy is if there’s tension in the chart in that area, you’re going to strive, you’re going to work really hard to relieve that tension, to release it, to learn. It’s like having a blister in your shoe. It’s like, I did a hike in the Grand Canyon for 12 miles and I got a blister from my hiking boots and I had to go 12 miles with that blister. And the first thing I did when I got to the top of the Grand Canyon was take the damn boot off and I wanted to throw it in the Canyon. Well, that’s like how you feel when you have a T-square. It’s tension, it’s irritating, it’s annoying. And your soul, in my opinion, is going to try to resolve or heal that tension. So points the way to a lot of life purpose issues, it points the way to where there will be growth right off the bat.
BF: He referred to it as a reservoir of energy.
KR: Yes, yes.
CB: Okay. So, I think that is a good transition point into another section which is the houses. So, we already established here, you said Placidus was his default system of house division, right? Okay. And it seems like he didn’t dismiss all of the traditional house meanings, but he did focus on what was psychologically and behaviorally important about the houses. So, a good one is perhaps the start with is the second house and his take on this second house as how you view yourself as a resource and focusing on notions of self-worth and self-esteem when it comes to the second house. Is that more or less correct?
BF: Absolutely, that was a huge one. And I’ve got a booklet coming out towards the end of the year titled The Second House is More Than Money. And in it, I’ve got for reference purposes so far, 150 horoscopes of very, very well-known wealthy people. I even have Bezos’ chart. And what you’re taught in astrology is to look at the second house, look at the condition of the second house for your financial potential. Every single one of these horoscopes has by traditional standards, horrible bad second houses. Off the top of my head, I can think of one. Oprah Winfrey, she has a Sun-Venus conjunction in the second house squared by Saturn. She has Mercury in the second house opposed by fifth. So that chart to somebody who’s been reading astrology books for three or four years and they have no client experience, they’re going to say poverty and this, that and the other. As well, he would use this example, you’re going to talk to Tibetan monk who sits around and meditates all day, is that’s Tibetan monk has 12 planets in the second house, you want to talk to them about money? It doesn’t work. But everybody has something to say about how they feel about themselves in terms of self-worth and value. No matter what your status is in life, you feel a certain way about yourself, and we begin to uncover that in the second house.
KR: But that doesn’t discount the second house with money and value and all the traditional meanings of the second, it just says you’re looking through a different lens. When you are looking through the psychological lens, then you can look at the second house, perhaps a self-worth. When you are looking through the mundane lens, then you’re going to view it differently. Yeah.
CB: Sure. But certainly, his orientation was more about psychological and like need and things like that. All right, so that’s a good touching on this second house. What are some of the other houses that he touched on that he gave a unique spin or more of a psychological spin on that stand out to each of you that were distinctive in terms of Noel’s approach?
BF: Go ahead again.
KR: Well, I already mentioned the big one for me was the 5th house giving love, the 11th house receiving love and your ability to receive primarily my clients because I do astrology full time. This is how I earn my living. This is how I pay all my bills, mostly consultations with some teaching thrown in. And the majority of clients I have are women. And again, and again, and again, when I’m seeing 11th house issues, it is are you able to receive, you know? I know you’re good at giving, can you receive? And they will frequently say, “No, I’m terrible at receiving.” And I say, why? And so often, if you have a mutable sign like Gemini on the cusp of the 11th, then guess what you get on the cusp of the second house more often than not, is Virgo ruled by the same sign or the same planet. So, so often you see issues from the 11th house connected to issues of the second house and self-worth gets in the way of being able to receive or feeling that you are lovable. And the therapeutic principle then moves toward teaching or helping them to understand they are lovable inherently. They don’t have to earn it. Something got in the way in their early life and they don’t feel they’re lovable. So that 11th house piece was really, really important to me and the fifth house too, ability to give love, ability to receive love in the second house of self-worth, cornerstones.
CB: Okay. So, let’s see. Aside from that, he was somewhat unique. When I learned astrology, modern astrology in early 2000s, I didn’t feel like there was a lot of focus, there’s more focus on planets in houses. And for me, it wasn’t until I came across like a relatively new Alan Oken book on the rulers of the houses that I saw a really detailed treatment of planets ruling houses being placed in other houses. But that was actually something that Noel focused on; was the rulers of the houses using the modern rulers of the signs of the zodiac, right?
BF: Significator dynamics, yes, absolutely.
CB: All right. So, he used the term so he didn’t say ruler, he used the term significator when talking about the ruler of, let’s say, the 7th house, the planet that rules the 7th house and where it’s placed in the chart. Both, okay.
BF: Yeah, it was mostly significator, but it was both.
KR: And that becomes very, very important therapeutically. The ruler of a certain house being in developmental tension would drive the core themes.
CB: Okay. And Matthew Ouimet said to me that Noel would actually emphasize the ruler of the house more potentially than planets placed in the house. Is that your understanding?
BF: Well, that’s not. My understanding is that tension is tension, whether it’s the planet in the house or the planet ruling the house. Obviously, the planet ruling the house becomes more important than when there’s no planet in the house, the person that has the ruler of the 4th house involved in a Grand Cross, that’s huge in terms of giving us an idea that there may have been some parental tension to talk about and we need to see to what degree if any that has affected a person’s life. It’s not more than it actually is either.
KR: Exactly, I agree. Yeah.
CB: Got it. And in terms of the rulers of the houses or the using the modern rulers of the signs of the zodiac, Basil, in your book I know you mentioned both the modern rulers and then the traditional rulers as co-rulers. Was that part of Noel’s system or where did he stand in terms of that whole thing?
BF: It’s in the book because the idea was that we wanted to be able to get students into the school who knew nothing at all about astrology just zero and we wanted to have a book out that took them through all of the basics to the point where by the time they got finished doing the book or reading the books and studying it, they could do a decent job with the horoscope. But no, Noel never went around talking about traditional rulers. It was just like only educationally but he would in terms of using it in analysis-
CB: It was 100% Uranus rules Aquarius, Neptune rules Pisces, and Pluto rules Scorpio?
BF: Yeah, he would stretch out a little bit with elections in horary of course, but with natal analysis, it was always modern.
CB: Okay. So, then he would have been one of the first generations of astrologers then where it was like fully that scheme of just using the modern rulers since Pluto was discovered in the 1930s and then there’s like they’re arguing for a couple of decades about what sign it should be assigned to. But when Noel comes in the 1960s and ‘70s, he’s pretty firmly adopting and promoting that scheme. Okay. So, moving on another distinctive interpretive principle that I know is pretty distinct to Noel and I guess he came up with was his interpretation of Saturn retrograde as being related to self-worth issues or related to the experience of the father and having some unique interpretation of that. What was his take on that? Yeah.
KR: [Kathy laughs] Well, his authoritative statement is that when you find Saturn retrograde, there is a suggestion that the father may not have been present, or have shown the leadership necessary, or could even have been tyrannical. Now, I modify it slightly and I’m not a person who adheres to any rules hard and fast about anything. I weigh too much Uranus in my chart to do that, so I’m a rebel. I’m a maverick. I agree very much with Saturn retrograde in most cases can suggest the father may not have shown the leadership necessary in some form or may have not even been there or may have been too passive. I think it works the majority of the time, but there are some cases where it doesn’t, and this is where you check it out with the client. But when Noel came up with this theory, he was working with people, he was working with a different generation, especially people who had been born right after the World War Two, and there was a tightness and it was a different stereotype. Certainly, when he went to Asia, he found that to be hard and fast, you know? Saturn retrograde and the father is not present because the father is so busy with career. But that’s the theory and you check it out and you ask. There’s a suggestion here that your father may not have been present or may be passive or didn’t show the leadership necessary and oh, my God. That’s all you need to say. The client confirms, the client will tell you. And then also, the house that Saturn rules, you look at that. But you have more to say about that, Basil, because this is personal for you too.
BF: Yeah, for sure. You’re right. It doesn’t always work that way but it passes the 85% rule. 85% of the time, you’re going to find that it’s true. In my family, I have two older brothers. The oldest brother is 10 years older and the other one is eight years older. Now, our father’s mother passed away giving birth to him and his father never let him forget about it, beatings, whippings and so forth. So, before any of us were born, he had his own psychological pattern based on how he came up. So, my oldest brother has Saturn retrograde. The next oldest brother has Sun conjunct Saturn. I have sun square Saturn. So, you look at this family is like what is the deal with this father, then you talk and you find out what happened. This guy had a bad experience and he laid it all on the children. Now my two older brothers, they got a lot of beatings and whippings and that kind of parenting, I didn’t. I got one time I took my allowance money and I went and put it in a pinball machine and my father was sitting up there getting his shoe shine, I told you not to get not to blah, blah, blah and I got spanked a little bit. It was no big deal. But my brothers, they got the kinds of things that parents get locked up for today.
CB: That’s interesting. So, they both had Saturn retrograde but it’s direct in your chart?
BF: It’s direct in my chart. I should have said it’s not just Saturn retrograde, it’s Saturn conjunct square in opposition to the Sun can manifest the same kinds of things. So, my family all three brothers, the oldest one with the two grand trines, he has Saturn retrograde ruling the fourth. The next oldest one has Sun conjunct Saturn and I have sun square Saturn.
CB: Got it. So, it’s an echoing theme. So, it’s not just Saturn retrograde, but similar echoes or similar themes can come up with hard aspects between the Sun and Saturn. And then you had a bit of the youngest child situation where sometimes parents can go easier on the younger child because they’re worked out or old.
BF: They got older. They got mature, they got older and started feeling badly about it or whatever.
KR: But the theory that Noel had was that if Saturn is retrograde or stands out in the chart as in potentially the father wasn’t present then the mother is going to be emphasized in the horoscope. And he always talked about the seesaw. So, the mother and father at each end of the seesaw, if the father is down, the mother is up. If the mother is down, the father is up. So, who’s going to be emphasized? So, if the father is passive or didn’t show the leadership necessary, then usually the mother was going to be emphasized in some way. You see that in the horoscope with aspects to the Moon or the ruler of the fourth house. Noel saw the mother is the fourth house and the father is the midheaven. I know in classical astrology is the opposite. In the end, does it matter? No, you ask the client. I mean, in my mind, I think they all work. You ask the client. I’m not a rule-based astrologer obviously.
But the bottom line is what do you do with Saturn retrograde therapeutically? How do you handle that? Why do you need this information? You don’t want to just say Saturn retrograde your father wasn’t present. You say how can you build discipline and authority within yourself? Has it affected your self-worth? How can we work out this behavior so that you feel more whole? And so often, many men become a father to heal their own Saturn retrograde. They become the best father they can be in order to release or heal the buildup they’ve had because of their own Saturn retrograde and on and on. What do you do with this information? That’s more important than the hard and fast rule because I am always cautious of these things because people will go Saturn retrograde means your father wasn’t present. My daughter has Saturn retrograde in Aquarius. My husband and I are totally devoted to our children. And if I asked my daughter, “If an astrologer said to you your father was passive or wasn’t present, what would you say?” And she told me, “I would say they’re crazy. You guys are the best parents in the world.” I loved it when she said that and that sounds like bragging, but she did say that. But my daughter, I’m open to past lives, I’m open to the concept of reincarnation and from day one, she was always super focused on books or shows that dealt with orphans, that dealt with the loss of parents and I watched her and I observed her and she may have come in with that and then she may have chosen a family that was going to be really super focused on her, but she doesn’t exhibit Saturn retrograde in the father energy at all. And so, there are those exceptions and you ask the client and you find out.
CB: Sure. And just for clarification because that’s something that’s absent in Noel’s work as a modern astrologer despite the fact that he was drawing on some of the tradition that was influenced by some of the New Age movement and like Alan Leo and Dane Rudhyar and Marc Edmund Jones who were all theosophists, but that’s something that’s absent from Noel’s work. He didn’t really have like a spiritual or a metaphysical backdrop necessarily.
KR: Behind the scenes, he did. Behind the scenes, I had many conversations with him about past lives and spirituality and the mystical stuff but in print, he did not. Yeah.
BF: He was very practical dealing with clients and he would often describe in a lecture, oh, they say all these things about the north node and all that you need. It was that kind of attitude. Now, I’m totally about all of that stuff, north node, south node in terms of traditional, this is where you need to go and that’s where you’ve been and what you’ve mastered, that whole type deal. I’m totally into it. Even though Jeff Green Steve Forrest’s evolutionary, I’m totally into it. Noel that just wasn’t, he felt that it had nothing to do with helping the person to pay their bills.
CB: So that’s interesting. So, then part of what characterizes Noel’s approach is a technical and a consulting and somewhat psychological focus, but it’s largely agnostic in terms of spirituality or anything like that.
KR: On the external, not agnostic so much, but just very structured. Yeah.
CB: I know he was concerned about his personal views as much as what he taught and the influence that he had on the astrological tradition in terms of public output.
KR: He was totally Capricorn there, needs to be applied practically in real life right now. I think he just didn’t want to muddy the waters because he was a teacher. First and foremost, more than anything else, his legacy is that he was a teacher catalyst and I think he wanted to keep it crystal clear and clean. That’s my sense. He always told me to rein in my Neptune. I have a very strong Neptune also. So, we had many conversations where he was trying to pull my Neptune down to Earth.
CB: Sure. And it’s distinctive in terms of the generation that he was in and the generation that came in 10 years after him with like the Pluto and Leo generation that did come up in the ‘60s and ‘70s and was sometimes very tied in with the counterculture movement or the New Age movement. And a lot of those ideas from earlier theosophists did take much greater prominence in some of those approaches like evolutionary astrology in terms of an orientation towards past lives or spirituality and metaphysics but that was something, again, it just seems like his approach is more technical and more consultation oriented and perhaps that goes back to why, for example, winning the Regulus Award for what is it public image and that that was part of his preoccupation almost in some ways.
KR: He wanted to be seen as the professional, he wanted to be seen as practical. He did not want to be seen as the mystic even though he was. I mean, in those last years, I spoke to him many times a week and we had many mystical conversations. But professionally, he wanted to be seen as practical.
BF: And one of his favorite books was Tibetan Book of the Dead.
CB: Interesting, okay. And in terms of other technical things that he was unique for, one was his definition of the term peregrine [Kathy laughs] where he developed his own definition and the way that he defined it as I understand it is that it’s a planet that does not have any Ptolemaic aspect, minor aspects were not considered and there was a notion somehow that a peregrine planet that’s unaspected would take over the chart due to a lack of relationships with other planets. And this created I guess, some tensions later once traditional astrology was revived in the ‘90s and some astrologers doing Renaissance astrology started using the old 17th century definition of the term peregrine which meant that a planet doesn’t have any dignity, that there was some conflict because Noel had been using the term with a different definition at that point.
KR: He’s a pistol, isn’t he? I mean, [Basil laughs] he purposely, [Kathy laughs] he could have chosen unaspected but he chose peregrine because peregrine means wanderer or foreigner and he thought that resonated with the concept he came up with. Subsequently, when I teach, I say unaspected. Yeah, I don’t either. But it’s a very interesting theory, though.
CB: It’s interesting that we feel justified in doing that because in his astrology, concepts of like dignity and minor dignities and terms and decans and stuff aren’t used. So, it’s not relevant if you don’t have dignities [Kathy laughs] as a concept for the most part, so he probably felt more leeway and also maybe to some extent, his self-taught and innovative approach to things was part of what fed into that, perhaps, but that was still the notion of unaspected planet being important in the chart was a distinctive feature of his astrology.
KR: Yeah, and I definitely agree with that theory. Unaspected planets are a big part of what I teach and I see it as very important. But Noel was a word Meister. So, in his defense, he wasn’t really just trying to poke classical astrologers in the eye. To him, the meaning of peregrine was wanderer or foreigner and that’s how he sees the planet that is not aspected by one of the five main Ptolemaic aspects that it dominates the chart, it takes over because it’s not connected. It’s a wanderer. It is not integrated. [Kathy laughs] Yeah, tooth in the mouth. That’s-
CB: That’s what he would call it?
BF: Among other things, yeah, the aching tooth in the mouth. It draws all of the attention.
KR: It makes a lot of noise because it’s not integrated. Makes a lot of noise and the house that it rules can dominate life purpose experience.
CB: And so, this would be a planet with no aspect with an orb within 7° basically?
KR: Well, except sextile is a smaller orb. I use 4° for sextile, I use 7° for the others. But yes, it would be conjunction, sextile, trine, square opposition within the orbs that you use. Some people use really, really tight orbs, other people use gigantic orbs, you have to work that out within yourself. But when a planet is not connected to the other players in the chart, it’s not integrated, it’s a maverick. I call it the maverick planet. I wrote an article about it in The Mountain Astrologer. No, where was it? Yes, it was in The Mountain Astrologer. [Kathy laughs] I can’t remember where it was published, but I wrote it about that. And I’m sure Basil has written many things about unaspected planets.
BF: Yeah, if you’re a Tyl person, it’s part of the wallpaper.
KR: Exactly. It works in my, I mean, I find it to be incredibly helpful in-
BF: Yep, and one of the examples with it that he would always use in lectures, Chris, I don’t know if you’re old enough to have experienced and I just forgot his name, Howard Cosell, unaspected Mercury. Howard Cosell was a sports announcer who had a very unique approach. The whole thing about him was the way that he talked. He was an incessant constant talker and he had a way of saying things that was on the unique side and he had an aspected Mercury and that whole thing. I mean, outside of being a communicator for what he did for a living, it was just the way that he did it was so distinct and Howard is a Mercury dominated person.
KR: There are many, many good examples like that, yes.
CB: Okay, let’s move on. One of the things that was also distinctive that he introduced was solar arcs as a timing technique and he published what I think is one of the first if not the first English language full like textbooks on this subject in 2001 titled Solar Arcs: Astrology’s Most Successful Predictive System. Was this one of his distinctive techniques?
KR: Absolutely. Yes, he simplified it. I mean, that’s what was so great about Noel. He simplified it. He simplified the concept that if you’re born between March and October, the Sun moves slower so you’re going to have a deficit in solar arc accumulating at age 45 or the solar arc accumulated sex semi square or the solar arc accumulated sextile. That for people born between October and March, will have it happen at around age 60. But if you’re born between March and October when the Sun moves slower, you have it more at 62. He simplified that. And that was his gift at taking these big subjects and simplifying them and getting to the core themes very quickly. Yeah. So, I use solar arcs and transits.
CB: Absolutely. So, those are the two primary predictive or timing techniques of solar arcs and transits?
BF: The primaries, yeah. He would also the secondary progressed Moon and that’s the only part of secondary progressions that he that he used. The idea with secondary progressions is that if you look at the planets, I don’t know Jupiter or Saturn on out and even right now, if you did the secondary progress chart for yourself for 90 years from now, Pluto might even still be in the same degree. So, what happens in secondary progressions is that you lose Saturn through Pluto as being able to make anything happen that wasn’t already happening at birth. And really is a similar logic with the rest of the planet. So, we only use the secondary progressed Moon to the contact to the angles. And for me, I pay attention to when it’s conjunct square or oppose Saturn because that can be an enormous time of planning of having to change things or having to get it together. President Obama had Moon Saturn when he was running for office. So yes, the transits to solar arcs, secondary progressed Moon. What am I forgetting?
KR: Tertiary progressed Moon sometimes for little bell triggers. But in the end, you’re distilling down and finding techniques that work for you so that you, and I find solar arcs and transits to be equal in strength. Some people think solar arcs are more powerful than transits. I see them as equal and I see them overlapping and working together. So, for me, I don’t look at only solar arcs, I don’t look at only transits, I look at how the rug is being woven by these fibers overlapping each other. Yeah.
CB: And solar arcs are approximately what you do as you basically move each planet forward about 1° per year, right?
KR: 1° per year of life and then you can look at the early arc so easily.
CB: What do you mean by that?
KR: If you look at the horoscope and for example Noel’s Moon, I’m looking at his chart here, his Moon was 27 Leo, his 4th house cusp is seven Virgo. So, if you add 10 years to that 27° Leo Moon by arc, you move it forward 10°, it would have hit his 4th house cusp while at age 10, he had big things happening in life. So, one of the things we do is you can arc and that’s why it’s really nice to have the degree of the house cusps on the chart because [Chris laughs] no that I mean, you can’t see it as well this way. But one of the things we do in the early part of the course, the course that now Basil and I are teaching, the master’s degree correspondence course, one of the techniques is you arc the angles forward to hit planets or you arc the early degrees or the planets forward to hit angles because the angles are the most sensitive parts of the chart. And that’s the other theory he had, the angles are the most sensitive parts of the chart. So, at age 10, Moon equaled 4th house cusp and-
CB: Because the 4th house cusp is at seven Virgo and the Moon is at 27 so that’s 10°. And since we’re saying 1° equals one year, at 10 years old, the Moon would conjoin. So, you’re directing the planets to the natal positions in the chart, not to each other, right?
KR: Yes. Well, and then also look at the midheaven which is seven Pisces and it arched forward to hit Saturn at age 10. So, at age 10 and then at age 11, he had the 4th house cusp hitting Neptune. So, right away, your IC is at age 10 and 11. What was going on for you, Mr. Tyl? Well, his father left. This is a classic. He has this story in many of his books. But you see it with your eye, we teach students to do that very quickly. Now we don’t teach them to proclaim or to with absolute conviction say what happened, we teach them to see there was major activity at that point in life for that child and you got to check it out. Developmentally, something took place. What was it?
CB: And you’re mainly focused on the hard aspects, right? So, conjunction, square, opposition when you’re doing solar arcs? Okay. And then the other thing that this brings in is because sometimes with solar arcs, you can direct stuff and it won’t hit natal positions for a long time. One of the things that gets integrated into solar arcs is the use of midpoints. And this seems to be something that he picked up from the Cosmobiology School of Reinhold Ebertin and this is a major thing that he brought over from Reinhold Ebertin was the use of I think solar arcs and midpoints, right?
BF: His goal with Ebertin was to simplify that stuff. That book Combination of Stellar Influences, he felt that it could be updated and made easier to understand. And so, towards I don’t know, I guess from Synthesis & Counseling on and out, the back always had references to those midpoints. You can actually use it for transits too, but yeah, we had lots of long discussions about midpoints.
KR: But his main focus with midpoints wasn’t so much with the solar arcs although he called them indirect arcs and he would look at when a planet made an indirect arc to a midpoint, but that wasn’t the main focus. It was more in the natal chart looking at natal combinations through the 90° midpoint search especially the Sun-Moon midpoint which is the essential midpoint in my point of view. To know if there’s a planet conjunct square opposite that Sun-Moon midpoint is very much part of the life purpose that planet comes forward, the power comes forward. I have Neptune equals Sun Moon, and midheaven equal Sun Moon, and my Neptune dominates. But that-
BF: It’s like it’s on the Ascendant. To me, that’s still how I think of when I see something that the Sun-Moon midpoint, it’s like it’s on the Ascendant. It’s part of the identity.
KR: Now one of Noel’s other students was Don McBroom and before Noel promoted me to be his assistant in the seminars and that was in about 2012, Don McBroom was his assistant in those yearly seminars. And that was when Noel could still easily get contracts for people at Llewellyn and Don McBroom wrote the most brilliant midpoint book called Midpoints by Llewellyn and directly influenced from Noel’s teaching and it’s excellent. Basil, you have a midpoint eBook also, right? And it’s equally brilliant. So, it simplifies it, it makes it so, and it’s a much lighter than a Ebertin. Ebertin is too negative for me, too heavy. I can’t go there. I can’t go there.
CB: Right. Noel characterized, he said he updated Ebertin’s midpoint delineations when he adopted them in Synthesis & Counseling in Astrology in 1994 and then especially in the back of the Solar Arcs book in 2001, he said that they were World War Two era delineations and he characterized them as being too pessimistic.
BF: Absolutely.
KR: Yeah. It’s not the viewpoint I want to have of the world is to automatically see a midpoint involving Saturn and Pluto and its dire, horrible, terrible things coming up. I mean that you anchor that into your consciousness, you’re surely going to create it. So yeah, Noel lightened it up and added some psychodynamic aspects.
CB: Okay. So, part of it was to reconceptualize it more in a psychological context?
BF: Yeah. Like Kathy said, you don’t want to be thinking that this is good and that is bad and that kind of stuff. First of all, it prevents you from thinking that you are the one that’s responsible for your life. Ultimately, no matter what’s going on in your horoscope, it is you. You’re the one making the decision about whether or not you should marry this girl whose reputation is been that she slept with 350 people, but I’m going to marry her anyway because I can change her and you’ve got Neptune in the 7th house. Well, did Neptune make that mistake or did you? It’s really that practical thinking that this horoscope is not controlling you. You are living through it, it is living through you, but the famous quite often said Tyl statement and Kathy can finish it before I even say it, planets don’t make anything happen, people do.
CB: So, part of it was changing the orientation towards focusing on the things that are within the control of the native and not focusing so much on the things that are outside of the control of the native. Okay. So, midpoints, solar arcs, vocation, he had a very special vocation or a particular vocational technique for determining a person’s vocation and he did weekly vocational exercises on his forum, right?
KR: Yes, and I want to say… No, thank you, Basil. You’re very nice. But I wanted to say it’s not to determine vocation, it is to understand what is going to be most fulfilling. And in the vocational profile, we sort into five different categories so to speak. And in fact, when Noel was trying me out to find out if he was going to allow me to start teaching at those student seminars, one of the first things he gave me was the opportunity to present something on vocational profiling. This was back in 2012. And I came up with what I call the vocational mandala based on his work and I went out and I got the hat from Harry Potter, the sorting hat that they used when the students would first arrive at Hogwarts and they would be sorted into the houses Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, or whatever it was [Kathy laughs] and Slytherin and I used that concept that vocational profiling is very much like that sorting hat where you’re going to sort through the vocational network and you’re going to find out into which category the majority of energy is sorted for vocational fulfillment. And those five categories are business administration, creative expression, performance, communication, or helping and healing channels for fulfillment. And what I did was something really fun, and went out and got a Dumbledore hat and got a cape and put the sorting hat on a stool and had my husband who has a broadcasting voice. And I would put up a chart and I would have the sorting hat say where that person was sorted, into which channel. And then I had Noel come up with the Dumbledore hat and the big cape on because he was the headmaster of the Tyl group. It was so much fun, and he did it with a flourish. But the bottom line is, I think that vocational profiling, that midheaven extension process was a stroke of genius on his part. But it is a process. It is a process. It is not pronouncing you should be in business. It is a process of finding where the vocational channel needs to go in order for fulfillment.
CB: Yeah. So again, it’s following up on the idea of an astrologer focusing on social or psychological needs as what’s indicated in the birth chart.
KR: I’ll tell you what though, adding it to your practice is extremely helpful. Both of my kids are mid to late 20s now and when they were in college, I had so many consultations, mostly pro bono from their friends in college doing vocational profiling, helping them understand what is going to help them feel fulfilled and career. So, a lot of those were just simply based on the vocational process. And it was incredibly helpful to kids at that age, I mean, it was incredibly fulfilling for me even though I didn’t get paid for most of it. [Kathy laughs] Yeah.
CB: Brilliant. All right. So, moving on, because we have been going for two hours and 20ish minutes now. [Kathy laughs] So just to wrap up, the last of the technical stuff, he used the Aries point as like a sensitive point and I think that’s another thing coming from Cosmobiology or maybe from the Homburg school, and also used developmental cycles just to touch on one transit related thing. We’ve touched on how solar arcs and looking at early solar arcs in the life might have indicated crucial things that happened in the childhood but also potentially looking at other early maybe transits or outer planet transits like Saturn transits as events that happened in childhood that had a formative effect on one’s character and psyche. Okay. So, this is part of, again, just marrying psychological and event astrology by looking at events that happened during early developmental stages and unifying the two instead of them being completely separate. Okay. All right. What are some of his most important books? So, if we’ve established that he wrote something like 30 plus books, it seems like the main one or the pinnacle of his writing career was his 1000-page Synthesis & Counseling in Astrology from 1994.
BF: Absolutely, it was. He timed. He told me, I’m not sure how long before the event, but he told me that he has solar arcs on and coming up to his midheaven and he wanted to do something to take advantage of it and that taking advantage of was his favorite book Synthesis & Counseling in Astrology. If he were here, I’m certain that he would say that Synthesis & Counseling and Holistic Astrology were his favorites. Just the self-published book.
CB: Oh, that’s the self-published one? So that’s probably out of print, right?
BF: Probably, or surely you can find it for $1,000 or something like that somewhere.
CB: Yeah, [Kathy laughs] the vocation book is out of print and it’s going for like $900 right now on Amazon.
KR: Right, right. You can’t find very many of them and same with Synthesis & Counseling in Astrology. Yeah, yeah. It would be nice to get them back. There’s one thing that you haven’t mentioned and that is just one last piece that really has affected me and my practice and that is Noel came forward with the idea of idealism and how idealism is shown in the horoscope, the idealistic mindset and the therapeutic issues around idealism. And that’s a completely different topic. It’s worthy of an hour conversation, but it has affected my practice deeply because most people who come in for an astrological consultation are highly idealistic in their disappointment cycles because they’re projecting idealism into life and missing reality signals but that was one of Noel’s breakthrough concepts. Incredibly valuable, incredibly.
CB: Okay. Are there any other things like that that were distinctive about his approach either technically or just procedurally that are worth mentioning really quick before we wrap up or that I didn’t include in my outline?
KR: So many, but I think I’m-
BF: Yeah, we got the basics. [Basil laughs] When there’s so much to consider, it’s hard to remember it all.
CB: Sure. And Synthesis & Counseling in Astrology, that’s not like an intro book. That’s more advanced and assumes more of basic knowledge, right?
KR: Yeah, that’s the manual that goes with the master’s correspondence course which is like a two-year almost master’s degree in a sense in therapeutic astrology. It’s a heavy book and it is about 800 pages. I was wrong, I was thinking it was 1,100. I looked it up and it’s 800.
CB: 800, okay. Well, I guess that’s long enough. 800 pages, [Kathy laughs] that’s not bad. So, let’s see other titles that. Me and Matthew were talking about Solar Arcs which came out in 2001, Prediction in Astrology which was 1985, Vocations: The New Midheaven Extension Process which was published in 2006, the Astrology of Intimacy, Sexuality & Relationship in 2002, the Astrological Timing of Critical Illness in 1988, The Creative Astrologer: Effective Single Session Counseling in 2000, Noel Tyl’s Guide to Astrological Consultation in 2007, and then his early series, The Principles and Practice of Astrology in 12 volumes. So those are just a few of his 30 something titles and-
KR: And the Astrology of the Famed which was all about rectification and was incredibly brilliant, the astrology of-
BF: That’s the one, Chris, I mentioned that about writing an intro. It was-
CB: That you were looking forward to? Okay. And that was one where he went back and he tried to rectify the charts of several famous figures from history like Leonardo da Vinci and other people? Nice, okay. And your book, Basil, is The New Way to Learn Astrology and that came out in 1999. Okay. And that’s another one as Llewellyn and it’s out of print, too. Is there any plan to bring that back at some point or-?
BF: Absolutely. Right now, I’m thinking about October. I have to see how things go in the world. But I own the text, Llewellyn owns the title. So, there’s going to be another one called, I haven’t determined a title yet, and it’s going to have three, maybe four additional chapters that were not in the book. Because as far as I’m concerned, when somebody’s learning astrology, it should also include solar arcs and certain things. So, this will have a complete chapter on solar arcs, solar arcs to midpoints. There’s a branch of astrology not very populated I’m interested in called draconic astrology, there will be a chapter on draconic astrology. So, it will be basically the same thing with three or four additional chapters.
CB: Okay, brilliant. That’s exciting. And you’ve got a new website on the way that’s called newwayastrology.com. You also have a blog which is newwayastrology.tumblr.com. And last year, Noel reached out and asked you to digitalize 18 of his favorite lectures and turn them into mp3s and that’s something that you have available for purchase, right?
BF: Yes, I do. Just email me basilfarrington@gmail.com and I’ll get you hooked up.
CB: Brilliant, okay. And then Kathy, your website is roseastrology.com and one of your primary things is teaching Noel’s master’s series course, right?
KR: Yes, Basil and I are both teaching that master’s correspondence course. Yes.
CB: Okay. And where can people go to find out more information about that?
KR: They just need to email me, email me personally. And then I do the yearly conferences, the Empowered Astrology Conference. My next one’s coming up March 11th of 2021. Crossing my fingers, we’re going to meet in person.
CB: Yeah, you had a funny I didn’t know this until this past week, but I thought NORWAC was one of the first major conferences to go online but in fact, your conference, and this was all Noel Tyl students presenting lectures, but it was scheduled to take place in late March and that’s right when the country basically shut down. So, you were actually one of the first astrology conference that had to move online as a result of that.
KR: Yeah, and it is no easy task, especially when the conference is just, I mean, I’m the only one on the contract so you’re liable for all the rooms, you’re liable for the expense of the contract. And I was lucky enough to hit the timing where the hotel worked with me, but yeah, we took it online and it was really, really successful and it went just fine. So, we have 15 lectures and that lecture series is still available and all the information in that conference is very practical for consultation astrologers, you know?
CB: Brilliant. So, there’s lectures by you, by Basil, Matthew Ouimet and a number of other-
KR: Elisabeth Grace and Hiroki Niizato, who needs to be mentioned because he is now teaching Noel’s material in Japan and he’s incredibly successful out there. He was Noel’s interpreter when Noel would go to Japan and so he interpreted well over what was it 100 or 200 consultations live and he’s a brilliant astrologer. He’s just incredible.
CB: Also, we’ll have to have him on at some point in the future since there’s lots of other things to follow up on. So, recordings from that conference are available from the Empowered Astrology seminar. How can people get a hold of those?
KR: Email me directly.
CB: What’s your email address again?
KR: roseastrology@yahoo.com. Yeah, Elisabeth Grace did a few I mean, so yeah, we have a good collection of and Matthew Ouimet did one on annual perfections. Shout out to you.
CB: Brilliant. Yeah, I like Matthew’s work in synthesizing modern and traditional astrology. And you also, as we mentioned earlier in the show, you filmed a series with Noel of The TYL Masterwork Series which was like a series of DVDs and you still have some of those left and then you’re going to be putting those into some digital format at some point as well.
KR: At some point, yeah. We’re almost out of stock, but we still have them. Nine DVDs, Noel comes into your living room if you play it on your TV or your computer. They’re very good. They’re very good. And it helps personalize the information because Noel’s very poetic and a bit abstract and some of the things he writes, some people have to really think about what did he mean because he was a poetic man. So, the DVDs make it simpler.
CB: Yeah, and I like that because your production quality like the audio in the video is really good and that’s because your husband has a professional background in production and audio video design. So, it’s nice having-
KR: Yeah, yeah. He does all my videos. We have a home studio and I put out two videos a month and he’s my director, producer, editor. [Kathy laughs]
CB: Brilliant. Well, people can find out more information about that at tylmasterwork.com. And then also you have a bunch of previews where people can watch snippets from that on a YouTube channel which is youtube.com/tylmasterwork and some great interviews that you did with him and other things like that if people want to get a better sense for his personality and approach to astrology. Awesome. Well, thank you guys for joining me for this today. This is amazing. I can’t believe how much we covered. I feel like [Kathy laughs] we did our own Synthesis & Counseling in Astrology 100-page marathon today. But yeah, thanks a lot for joining me. I appreciate it.
BF: It’s a joy. It’s always a joy to talk about Noel’s work and all of that. Aside of anybody named Farrington, he was one of the three most important people in my life [Kathy laughs] without a doubt.
CB: Yeah. Well, it’s good to hear that the personal connections that both of you had with him and history in the making in terms of the shaping and molding of the astrological tradition over the past few decades, not just through his work, but also through the work of his students and collaborators and how that’s continued on through both of you.
KR: Thank you. And thank you for all you do, Chris. I mean, you’re doing a lot for the astrological community.
BF: Yeah, thanks for having us really.
CB: Yeah. All right. Thanks, guys. Well, thanks everybody for listening to this episode of The Astrology Podcast and thanks to all the patrons who support our work and make it possible that we can like send microphones out to get good audio and video. And that’s it for this episode. So, we’ll see you again next time.
Thanks to the patrons who helped to support the production of this episode of The Astrology Podcast through our page on patreon.com. In particular, shout out to patrons Christine Stone, Nate Kradic, Marin Altman, Arena Tutor, Thomas Miller, Bear Ryver, Catherine Conroy, Michelle Mariela, and Kate Colada, as well as the Astro Gold astrology app available at astrogold.io, the Portland School of Astrology at portlandastrology.org and the Honeycomb Collective Personal Astrological Almanacs available at honeycomb.co. The production of this episode of the podcast is also supported by the International Society for Astrological Research which is hosting a major astrology conference in Denver, Colorado September 10th through the 14th, 2020. More information about that at isar2020.org. And finally, also Solar Fire astrology software which is available at alabe.com and you can use the promo code AP15 for a 15% discount on that software. For more information about how to become a patron of The Astrology Podcast and help support the production of future episodes or getting access to subscriber benefits like early access to new episodes or other bonus content, go to patreon.com/astrologypodcast.
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