Alan Leo
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Alan Leo, born William Frederick Allan, (Westminster, 7 August 1860 - Bude, 30 August 1917), was a prominent British astrologer, author, publisher and theosophist, and is considered by many to be the father of modern astrology.
Leo, who took the name of his sun-sign as a pseudonym, founded the Astrological Lodge of the Theosophical Society in 1915.
He is credited as being one of the most important astrologers in the 20th century because it appears that his work had the effect of stimulating a revival of astrology in the west after its general downfall in the 17th century. Leo was a devout Theosophist and he worked many of religious concepts such as karma and reincarnation into his astrology. He used the Theosophical Society’s vast international connections to publish, translate and disseminate his work across Europe and America and it was in these countries that astrology began to be revived.
[edit] Astrological technique and influence
Leo was somewhat discouraged very early on in his studies at the complexity of much of astrology and how inaccessible it was to the average student. As a result of this he set out to simplify astrology drastically in order to make it easier to disseminate, learn, and practice. One example of this simplification was his teaching that the meanings of certain signs, houses and planets are all essentially very similar and interchangeable, almost to the point of being the same thing or having the same meaning.
He also started the movement towards a more psychological astrology because he was the first astrologer to really direct the focus more towards character interpretation instead of the prediction of events.
Towards the end of his life, in 1909, he travelled with his wife to India where he studied Indian astrology for a brief period of time. Two years later in 1911 he returned to India for a second time. As a result of his studies in Inidia, he later attempted to incorporate portions of Indian astrology into the western astrological model that he had created, and although this synthesis of the two traditions never fully caught on in the west, there were a few specific techniques that were picked up by later astrologers such as the decanate and the dwadashamsha.
[edit] Sources
- Nicholas Campion, Astrology History and Apocalypse, Centre For Psychological Astrology Press, London, England, 2000, ISBN 1-900869-15-2
- James Holden, A History of Horoscopic Astrology, American Federation of Astrologers, Tempe, AZ, 1996. ISBN 0-86690-463-8
- Alan Leo, Esoteric Astrology, Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont, 1989. ISBN 0-89281-181-1
- AstrologyNotes article on Alan Leo retrieved 6/11/2006 under the GNU Free Documentation License
