Episode 250 features a lecture by the late astrologer Alan White on an introduction to Hellenistic astrology, followed by an audio interview with Alan about his life and work in 2010.
Alan began studying astrology seriously in the 1980s, and then in the mid-1990s he discovered Project Hindsight and developed a deep interest in ancient astrology.
In the 2000s, he created an introductory lecture on Hellenistic astrology using a flip chart that he presented at a series of astrological meetings, and one of these presentations led to Demetra George teaching a course on the subject at Kepler College in 2001.
Alan died on August 18, 2011 at the age of 69 after a long battle with cancer. I visited him a few months before his death and asked him to write down a version of his introduction to a lecture on Hellenistic astrology so that I could place it in the historical record.
The first 90 minutes of this episode after the intro is Alan’s introduction to his Hellenistic astrology lecture, and the second half is an interview I did with Alan for my old podcast, Traditional Astrology Radio, which was recorded and broadcast on December 7, 2010.
Below I’d like to include the obituary I wrote after Alan’s death, since the old astrologer memorial website that used to be him has disappeared.
You can also find high resolution images of Alan’s flip chart in the gallery below.
This episode is available in audio and video versions below.
Alan White (1942-2011)
Born on January 1, 1942 at 11:37 a.m. in Washington, D.C Alan White Birth Chart
Died August 18, 2011 at 1:36 PM in Edenton, North Carolina.
Astrologer Alan White died on Thursday, August 18th in Edenton, North Carolina after a long illness. He was 69 years old. He is survived by his wife, Jean Stevens-White, and three children, Janet, Christopher and Virginia.
A resident of Washington, D.C., Alan joined the Army shortly after graduating high school in 1961 and served in Vietnam in 1963-64 as a Green Beret with the 5th Special Forces Group. After his military service, he focused on his education and held a series of jobs as a mechanic, traveling salesman and astrologer before retiring.
Alan’s interest in astrology began in Saigon in 1963 when he bought a Zodiac clock that displayed the phases of the Moon. Initially skeptical of the subject, he began to study it seriously in the 1970s and eventually attended his first astrological conference in the 1980s. Frustrated that many of the approaches to astrology he encountered at the time were too “airy”, he wanted to be more specific about the subject. He found what he was looking for in 1995 when he discovered traditional astrology through Project Hindsight while attending the second PHASE Conclave in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. Alan later became a staunch supporter of the project and eventually a close collaborator.
He began giving introductory lectures on Hellenistic astrology in the late 1990s and was an active member of the Northern Virginia Chapter of the NCGR in the early 2000s. Summarizing his astrological philosophy, he was particularly fond of the medieval astrologer Guido Bonatti’s statement that the purpose of astrology is to reconstruct the past, understand the present, and predict the future.
In May 2001, he was sent to Seattle to hold a booth for Project Hindsight at the annual Northwest Astrology Conference. The first class of students at the recently opened Kepler College of Astrological Arts and Sciences had completed its first year and the entire class participated in the conference. One night at a conference, Alan was sitting in the hall with a group of Kepler students talking stories about Hellenistic astrology, and they were interested enough to prompt him to give an impromptu lecture on the subject to an empty conference room that night. The lecture was particularly successful because Kepler students encouraged Demetra George, one of the lecturers who attended the lecture, to develop a course on Hellenistic astrology for the Kepler curriculum. Demetra later traveled to the east coast and studied for several months under Alan and Robert Schmidt of Project Hindsight in the winter of 2001/2. He began teaching a course on Hellenistic astrology at Kepler in 2002, introducing many students to the subject for the first time. To the extent that the subsequent revival of Hellenistic astrology today and in the future is the result of Demeter or the teachings she taught, it is thanks to Alan that this transmission took place. In many ways, this is his most lasting legacy and contribution to the astrological community.
Alan’s Introduction to Hellenistic Astrology Flip-chart
Here are some high-res images of the flip chart Alan used to introduce his Hellenistic Astrology lecture:
Time signs
Here are some timestamps for the topics covered at various points in the episode:
00:00:00 Login
00:03:22 Alan’s birth chart
00:04:35 Impact of Alan’s lecture
00:09:00 Robert Schmidt and Project Hindsight
00:12:00 Alan’s obituary
00:17:56 Part 1 of the lecture
00:21:00 Definition of astrology
00:22:10 View project
00:23:10 Revival of Western Astrology
00:24:13 History of astrology
00:29:04 Planets
00:31:20 Sunday
00:32:19 Mercury
00:33:05 Venus
00:33:29 Mars
00:34:00 Jupiter
00:34:30 Saturn
00:34:56 Moon
00:36:24 Damage
00:37:05 Department
00:38:18 Houses
00:40:17 Part 2
00:40:27 Signs
00:48:21 Aspects
00:52:20 tempering sympathy
00:53:35 Dominion
00:59:08 Solar phase
01:04:24 Concepts of the Moon
01:10:25 7 Hermetic lot
01:15:04 3 big approaches
01:16:15 7 Hellenistic styles
01:17:22 7 actual methods
01:19:34 Lords of Time
01:24:05 Transit
01:28:38 Thema Mundi
01:35:01 The period of Pisces and Aries
01:36:37 Age of Aquarius
01:37:07 Outer planets
01:51:39 Start of Chris’ conversation with Alan
01:52:42 Alan’s background
02:02:00 Influence of Alan’s military background
02:04:40 Alan and Robert Schmidt
02:05:20 Sun ruled Cancer
02:07:05 Modern astrology
02:09:45 Discovery levels and outer planets
02:16:50 1775 Jul 6 US Schedule
02:28:18 Politics in Astrology
02:30:55 Definition of astrology
02:32:22 Astrology and academics
02:38:30 Critique of Evolutionary Astrology
02:41:30 Purpose of Sect
02:43:20 A lot
02:43:50 Planets and causes
02:46:18 Fate and free will
02:47:40 Closing remarks
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