the-astrology-book

Rudhyar, Dane
(unpublished) books, Man, Maker of Universes (1940) and The Age of Plenitude
(1942). His circumstances worsened during the war, and his marriage broke down
completely. Rudhyar was sustained during this period by his friendship with D. J. Bussell,
head of a small, liberal esoteric Christian church.
The crisis over, on June 27, 1945, Rudhyar married Eya Fechin, daughter of a
famous Russian painter, Nicolai Fechin, who died in Santa Monica, California, in
1955. They left for Colorado and New Mexico, where Rudhyar did most of his paintings
and wrote The Moon: The Cycles and Fortunes of Life (1946; reprinted as The
Lunation Cycle, 1967) and Modern Man’s Conflicts (1946; rewritten and published as
Fire Out of the Stone, 1959). He also continued writing his monthly articles for astrology
magazines. All of Rudhyar’s colored paintings were done between 1938 and 1949,
although he continued doing works in black and white during the 1950s.
In 1948, the pianist Bill Masselos discovered and performed Rudhyar’s piano
piece Granites, thus setting off a new period of interest in Rudhyar’s music among a
small group of musicians. Rudhyar and Fechin moved to New York, where some performances
took place. The rendition of a string quartet by the New Music Quartet at
the McMillan Theater of Columbia University was particularly memorable.
After several years of apprenticeship to Jacob Moreno, the founder of psychodrama,
financial pressure forced Fechin to accept the task of starting a psychodrama
department in a mental health institute in Independence, Iowa, where she and her
husband lived for two exceedingly difficult years. During this period, Rudhyar turned
to science fiction, writing short stories, novellas, and a novel, Return from No-Return
(1954). When Rudhyar’s second marriage collapsed, he returned to California, accepted
his 1954 divorce philosophically, and began rebuilding his life at age 60.
After a few months at the Huntington Hartford Art Colony in the Santa
Monica hills, where he completed his orchestral work Thresholds, Rudhyar began a
series of lectures on astrology while still writing his articles, mainly for Horoscope and
American Astrology. With secretarial assistance from a friend, Virginia Seith, he began
publishing monthly mimeographed booklets under the series title Seeds for Greater
Living. These came out regularly for seven years, until 1962. Despite the maturity of
his philosophy, he could find no publisher for any of his later works, astrological, musical,
or literary.
After years of isolation in a small Hollywood apartment and another painful
crisis in 1957–58, Rudhyar accepted an invitation to visit Switzerland from a Madame
Honegger, whom he had aided with astrological advice. During this trip, he stopped in
Boston, where Marcia Moore arranged lectures for him; in New York, where he lectured
under the sponsorship of the astrologer Charles Jayne; and in London, where he
was honored at an official dinner arranged by Brigadier Roy C. Firebrace, at which the
major British astrologers paid tribute to the effect that his early book, The Astrology of
Personality, had had on them. In Switzerland, after Madame Honegger became ill,
Rudhyar found himself alone in a renovated sixteenth-century tower overlooking the
Rhone Valley. There he completed and translated into French Fire Out of the Stone.
After a few months of lecturing in Paris, Rudhyar returned to the United States,
but after a dismal year in Redlands, California, he returned to Europe for a longer stay.
THE ASTROLOGY BOOK
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