the-astrology-book

Rudhyar, Dane
At a lecture in Holland, he met the Dutch publisher Carolus Verhulst, who offered to
reprint The Pulse of Life, a Dutch translation of The Astrology of Personality, which had
been circulated in 1946–47. At last the logjam blocking Rudhyar’s career was broken; a
gradual stream of his other books was published by Verhulst’s Servire Press.
In 1963, Rudhyar, while in Italy on a third journey to Europe, received a letter
from a young woman named Gale Tana Whitall, then living in Edmonton, Alberta,
Canada, where she had heard about his work from a music teacher. Returning to
America on November 22, 1963—the day of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination—Rudhyar
met Whitall about a month later in Palm Springs, California, during
her Christmas vacation. They were married on May 27, 1964, and after a lecture tour
to St. Paul, Minnesota, and Boston, they settled in San Jacinto, California, where
they lived for the next ten years. Whitall soon became a proficient typist, editor, and
organizer of Rudhyar’s work and sustained him as he learned to cope with his growing
popularity among the young. As often happens to creative innovators who live on
into their seventies and eighties, Rudhyar finally received the recognition and respect
he had worked so hard for during the last decade and a half of his life.
The far-seeing initiative of Samuel Bercholtz, founder of Shambhala Bookstore
and Publications in Berkeley, California, allowed Rudhyar’s books to become
acceptable to such New York publishers as Penguin, Doubleday, and Harper & Row.
Beginning in 1965, life became very full for Rudhyar and his wife, as she diligently
typed manuscripts for offset printing in Holland. The volume of correspondence
mounted, as did the number of lectures from coast to coast. His books during these
years included The Practice of Astrology (1966), Astrological Study of Psychological Complexes
and Emotional Problems (1966), The Rhythm of Human Fulfillment (1966), Of
Vibrancy and Peace (1967; poems) Astrological Triptych (1968), and Astrological Timing:
The Transition to the New Age (1968). In March 1969, feeling the need to promote his
approach to astropsychology more vigorously, Rudhyar founded the International
Committee for Humanistic Astrology but refused to build an official organization that
could lay claim to this new field. About this time, thanks in part to Claudio Naranjo’s
interest in him, Rudhyar was invited to speak at Esalen, a human potentials institute
in Big Sur, California, and to similar groups.
More books followed: Birth Patterns for a New Humanity (1969), A Seed and Directives
for New Life (1970), Astrological Themes for Meditation (1971), The Astrological Houses
(1972), The Magic of Tone and Relationship (1972), Person-Centered Astrology (1973),
An Astrological Mandala (1974), and The Astrology of America’s Destiny (1975). The number
of his books in print grew from zero in 1960 to 25 in 1975, and most of them were
either entirely new or thorough revisions of older works. Of these, Rudhyar considered
The Planetarization of Consciousness (1970) to be his most basic work, condensing all his
thought into a single integrated statement. It was followed by We Can Begin Again—
Together (1970), My Stand on Astrology (1972), Occult Preparations for a New Age (1975),
The Sun Is Also a Star: The Galactic Dimension in Astrology (1974), From Humanistic to
Transpersonal Psychology (1975), and Culture, Crisis, and Creativity (1977).
Rudhyar’s marriage to Whitall ended in 1976, and he married Leyla Rasle in
1977. The last years of his life were especially rich. He wrote Astrology and the Modern
[582] THE ASTROLOGY BOOK