Modern Astrologers: The Lives of Alan and Bessie Leo

by Kim Farnell

Alan Leo was the first modern astrologer. He argued for a loose interpretation of trends of experience rather than specific predictions, leading to the birth of Sun sign astrology and horoscope columns. Throughout much of his life, Alan worked alongside his wife Bessie – this is her story, too. In this extract from the author’s new book, we learn more about his ideas, business and commitment to self-empowering astrological education.

By 1909, Alan Leo’s workload had increased so much that he had decided to take on offices at 42-3 and 50 Imperial Buildings, Ludgate Circus. Renting offices wasn’t as straightforward as it should have been – back in 1906 he’d been refused a lease in the Strand owing to the nature of his business.

On balance, life was good. Alan had bought a pianola, a self-playing piano that contained a mechanism that operated the piano action via pre-programmed music recorded on perforated paper. Foot-operated bellows provided the vacuum needed to operate a pneumatic motor driving the take-up spool while inrushes of air through a hole in the paper roll were amplified to strike a loud note. He spent many happy hours listening to Beethoven, Chopin, Wagner, Mozart and others, and even occasionally played himself. Otherwise, he would read a little, play draughts, or potter around his garden. “He loved the evening shadows and walked amongst the trees and flowers musing and meditating”.(1)

However, his work took precedence as Annie Barley pointed out. “Frequently when in the presence of people not directly connected with the work, he would keep up a light kind of airy banter, immediately dropping it as soon as they had gone with the air of – ‘Now then, let’s get to business.’ For with him the work was everything, and all the rest was mere bubbles on the water; though I sometimes suspected that he had a deeper motive underlying the apparently easy chit-chat.”(2)

His tactic of sending review copies of Modern Astrology to anyone who showed the slightest of interest – or no interest whatsoever – had long ago paid off and resulted in coverage of his predictions (or at least, predictions published in Modern Astrology as he was generally given credit no matter who came up with them). His prediction that, “The Government [is] likely to be very unpopular, and it will come near to being defeated, if it is not actually so. Changes are likely to take place in the Government”4 was widely published, especially given that the January 1910 General Election, called in the midst of a constitutional crisis after the Liberal’s ‘People’s Budget’, which sought to tax the wealthy to fund social welfare had been blocked by the House of Lords. At the time of Alan’s prediction, Britain was under a Conservative/Liberal hung parliament and it was widely known that a second election would take place soon, as it did in December 1910.

By now, the concept of duplicated horoscopes had been copied again and again and they were no longer lucrative – even as tasters – so Alan ceased offering his shilling horoscopes in 1910. Plus, he’d been shown a copy of an article that had appeared in the journal Truth, reporting on the popularity of cheap horoscopes and suggesting the law should be involved. London was undergoing an epidemic of fortune-tellers and many people were agitating for a clampdown.

Alan now sought a much more upmarket (and therefore safer) audience and recommended that for a full horoscope you should expect to pay £5/5– (about £500 in today’s terms); and a life horoscope that covered the “whole of the future” should cost about £10/10– (about £1,000 today). Whether he actually received that sort of payment seems unlikely.

In 1913 Alan gave a full horoscope to his secretary, May Robbins, as a gift. The extracts below should give a taste of what he expected people to pay so highly for.

One ship drives east and another drives west
With the self-same winds that blow.
’Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales
Which tells us the way they go.
Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate
As we voyage along through life:
’Tis the act of the soul
That decides its goal
And not the calm or the strife.

The following pages are written to help you rightly to guide your course through life in knowledge of your latent powers, and to enable you to judge the significance of the precept ‘KNOW THYSELF.’

The judgment is based upon the assumption that the birth data, from which the nativity has been cast, is correct, for unless this is so, no true horoscope can be given. It should be read as much between the lines as literally, for the most any astrologer can do is to interpret the planetary influences according to the light of the spirit that is within him; he cannot, without assumption, say that his judgment is infallible, neither can he say that all his reading will be correct. For the stars incline they do not compel.
Now with regard to your marriage, I judge a late marriage, although some romantic love affairs are indicated, but marriage is not a strong feature of this nativity, for if you marry, you would marry a man much weaker than yourself, for his significator is weaker than your own. But marriage in your case would require a special judgment for the man for you is denoted by Uranus rising in Libra, since the Sun first applies to this planet by direct sextile.

The work done in compiling material for the test horoscopes wasn’t put to waste. Alan compiled it into a book, The Key to Your Own Nativity, published in 1910. For an extra 2/6 (the book cost 10/6 with postage) he would include a copy of your chart. If you had a copy of your chart and were baffled by it, you could send it with your book order and receive instructions on how to read it – which seemed pointless as this information was included in the book. Selling horoscopes alongside subscriptions to Modern Astrology or book sales seemed designed to move the spotlight. There was also advice regarding how to set out your horoscopes:

In cases where a written delineation is given, it is worth while to arrange that every paragraph has a page to itself. As each contains just enough to go comfortably on a page of an ordinary exercise book, there need be no difficulty about this, and the advantage of having the reader’s attention focused on one paragraph at a time is obvious.(3)

It was, as Alan pointed out, a false economy to write on both sides of the paper. Many people simply copied out the interpretations and combined them in the way they’d been used for the test horoscopes. Indeed, the text was presented in such a way to enable you to do just that:

Aries was rising at your birth. This is a cardinal, moveable and fiery sign. This gives much energy and activity, both of body and mind, much impulse and enthusiasm, with many changes in the course of life. You are courageous, enterprising, frank and outspoken. You face difficulties promptly and bravely; you know your own mind and are seldom at a loss what to do or say when called upon to decide. You are ambitious, self-reliant, and adventurous; and you will win your way in the world largely through these qualities and through your confidence in your own ability to succeed. You are a great lover of freedom and independence, and you get along badly when you are in any way hampered, restricted, or interfered with. You are generous and quickly responsive to appeals to the emotions. You are a zealous and energetic supporter of any person or cause that enlists your sympathies. Most of your misfortunes will arise through too much hastiness and impulse, whether in action, in judgement, or in the feelings. You are somewhat lacking in coolness, in calm deliberation, and self-restraint, and you do not find it easy to give way to others, even when justice or prudence demands it. Mars is the ruling planet of the sign Aries.(4)

Alan was in a writing frenzy. “On an average he wrote a book once every three months rising as early as 6 o’clock in the morning and working till 9 o’clock at night,” said Bessie.(5)

This is an extract taken from Modern Astrologers: The Lives of Alan and Bessie Leo by Kim Farnell. Available in Kindle, paperback and hardback formats.

By now, Alan had fourteen of his shilling manuals for sale. The pocket-sized guides offered instruction on a variety of astrological matter, all written by astrologers associated with Modern Astrology. For many people, and for years to come, these books served as their first introduction to astrology. Those with more money to splash out could buy a range of textbooks, some of which had already gone through multiple editions: Astrology for All, Casting the Horoscope and The Art of Synthesis amongst them. He’d also now published his pride and joy Esoteric Astrology, later described by Charles Carter as “a big volume containing virtually nothing”.(6)

Alan made no claims as to originality. In fact, he was often “criticised for picking other people’s brains,” as Ralph Shirley pointed out.(7)

However, viewing the Sun as the single most important factor in the birth chart, Alan had gradually discarded the centuries old list of zodiacal attributes and he ignored physical characteristics to focus on inner character. His descriptions of the signs set the tone for future Sun sign descriptions. For example, Aries:

Represents undifferentiated consciousness. It is a chaotic and unorganised sign, in which impulse, spontaneity, and instinctiveness are marked features. Its vibrations are the keenest and most rapid, but without what may be called definite purpose, except towards impulsiveness and disruption. It signifies explosiveness, extravagance and all kinds of excess. Its influence is more directly connected with the animal kingdom, in which life is full and without the directive power of fully awakened self-consciousness.(8)

Alan’s prime motivation was to encourage people to interpret their own horoscopes rather than pay someone to do it for them. To this end, the Astrological Institute, with Bessie as its President, offered a series of classes, lectures and lessons at 5 Upper Woburn Place in Bloomsbury. That ran alongside the newly resurrected Astrological Society (of which Bessie was also president) which held its first annual meeting 28 May 1910 – maybe, just maybe, there’d be an astrological college in the future, but that time was yet to come.

And a comprehensive correspondence course was available for those who couldn’t attend meetings, offering qualifications on completion, at a cost of five guineas for seventy lessons.

The correspondence lessons were typed and sent out lesson by lesson to subscribers:

RULES FOR STUDENTS

1. This lesson is the property of Alan Leo and may be kept by the student for ten days, during which time the student is advised to make a copy for his private use.
2. After ten days the lesson must be returned with, or without, the answered questions.
3. No further lessons will be sent out until this lesson is returned.
4. The correct answering of all the questions is necessary if a certificate of qualification is desired.
5. Students must write on one side of the paper only.

The questions weren’t easy, but neither were they surprising:

1. What planetary positions and aspects account for the complaints and accidents during infancy?
2. What significance has the ninth house in this horoscope?
3. Account for the sympathy or for the lack of it, existing between the native and her father and mother.
4. What were the natal influences in this horoscope that pushed the native into publicity?
5. How would you expect Jupiter conjunct Uranus to translate itself in the native’s life?

However, once the student reached a more advanced level, they were expected to address such questions as:

• Why are we born into this world?
• Why do we live to suffer and enjoy?
• Why do we die when we are just beginning to learn how to live?
• And why are there so many inequalities in the human race?

Fortunately, Alan pointed out:

From an astrological standpoint there is only one hypothesis by means of which we may expect to answer these questions.
Every human being is a ‘Divine Fragment’, a centre within the Universal Divine Consciousness, inseparably united with every other centre, and ultimately all blended in one by the Universal Life and Consciousness in which they are centred. If we compare the Universal Life with a flame, the human soul is a spark of that flame, not really separated from it. If we use the comparison of a diamond, the soul is a facet of that diamond. If we employ the symbolism of sound, the soul is one note in the mighty chord that sounds throughout the whole of creation. It is beginning-less and endless but apart from the Universal Life it is nothing.
The small blank circle is the ‘Self’ and all that exists apart from the ‘self’ or ‘That’ in the circle of the horoscope is the ‘Not Self’. I know this sounds very metaphysical, but the idea should be grasped, if we wish to penetrate into the mysteries of esoteric astrology, that the ‘Self’ is eternally pure, immortal and divine. In essence it is one with God, and until this essence has identified itself with a form in which first self-consciousness, and afterwards super-consciousness is reached, it does not know itself as part and yet ‘one’ with its source.(9)

That would obviously be clearer to Theosophically-inclined astrologers than it would to any other type of astrologer – or indeed, any other sort of person. Fortunately, (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view) Alan rarely simply held a conversation. He always had one gem or another to offer as Annie Barley commented,

Curious little ‘pearls’ would often drop from his lips, which proved extraordinarily useful and illuminating in times of difficulty. For instance, if a hail of bombs were dropping around, I am certain that his quiet and half-amused remark would be ‘Well, it’s all experience!’…‘Take it all as just a vibration’, he would say….(10)

And those happy vibrations led Alan and Bessie back to India. In November 1910, they set off for Adyar.

Notes:
1 Bessie Leo, The Life and Work of Alan Leo, London, Fowler, 1919, p. 129.
Ibid, p.133.
Alan Leo, Key to Your Own Nativity, p. 285.
Ibid, p 287.
Leo, Life and Work, p. 72.
In Search, Vol.2, No.2, Spring 1959.
Occult Review, October 1917, p. 195.
Leo, Key to Your Own Nativity, p. 17.
Alan Leo’s lessons. Section 5; series 9; lesson 1, ‘Special Instructions in Esoteric Astrology.’
Leo, Life and Work, p. 163.

Image sources:
Astrology for all: http://books.google.de/books?id=hDG1Os7_YdcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=alan+leo&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=true
Others: Public Domain / fair use

First published by: The Astrological Journal, Mar/Apr 2019

Author:
Kim Farnell has been a professional astrologer since 1990 and has taught astrology and lectured extensively in the UK and overseas. She has an MA in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology from Bath Spa University College, a diploma from the Faculty of Astrological Studies and is the author of several books. These days she uses traditional techniques "almost exclusively". Since 2008, Kim has been President of the Astrological Lodge of London. Website: kimfarnell.co.uk.

© Kim Farnell

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