The Life and Work of Astrologer Alan Oken
The Astrology Podcast2019-09-24
Alan Oken#Theosophical Society#Theosophy#Esoteric Astrology#New Age astrology#modern astrology
12K views|4 years ago
💫 Short Summary
Renowned astrologer Alan Oken shares his journey into astrology, blending linguistic skills with astrological expertise. Influenced by mentors and spiritual teachings, he emphasizes consciousness in astrology. Oken's Soul-Centered Astrology merges esoteric and traditional principles, impacting readers worldwide. He discusses teaching in China, personal evolution, and the importance of continuous learning in astrology. His personal journey as a gay man in the astrological community highlights challenges and self-acceptance. Oken's career milestones, from computerized astrology to book publications, reflect his dedication to astrology and spiritual growth.
✨ Highlights
📊 Transcript
✦
Alan Oken's journey into astrology began at 23 years old after a mystical experience.
01:42A Tibetan monk urged him to study astrology, leading him to pursue the path.
Oken's passion for astrology started with purchasing books from an astrology bookstore in Manhattan and studying intensively.
Despite initially studying Romance languages, Oken's linguistic skills and astrological talents flourished, supported by planetary alignments influencing his communication abilities.
His unique blend of language proficiency and astrological expertise shaped his successful career in astrology.
✦
Importance of Language in Astrology.
06:14Astrologer emphasizes the significance of language in astrology and its impact on chart readings.
Birth Data and House Division Preference.
Discussion on sharing birth data, including birth time, and the preference for house division in astrology charts.
Comparison of Astrology Trends.
Reflection on studying astrology during the 1960s and comparing it to the current resurgence in popularity.
Infusion of Consciousness in Astrology.
Mention of the infusion of consciousness in astrology during the 1960s and the relationship between visible and invisible realms.
✦
Speaker's spiritual journey from LSD to astrology.
08:52LSD helped individuals move beyond inherited patterns and focus on individuation and spirit.
Message from the spirit of LSD warned the speaker to stop using substances.
Speaker's interest in spirituality led him to explore various religions and eventually esoteric subjects like astrology and theosophy.
Encounter with Swami Satchidananda led the speaker to yoga, meditation, and vegetarianism, shaping his future career in astrology.
✦
Influences on Astrologer's Philosophy and Approach.
14:04Mentors like Isabel Hickey and Rodney Collin shaped his approach to astrology.
Studying under Hickey had a significant impact on his life.
Experiences with diverse astrology students during the civil rights era.
Theosophical lineage influenced his intuitive and intellectual abilities in astrology.
✦
Influence of Alice Bailey's Esoteric Astrology on Soul-Centered Astrology.
19:08Emphasis on integrating exoteric and esoteric astrology, attuning to archetypes, and applying astrology through intellect and heart connection.
Mystical orientation and belief in knowledge passed down through lineage shape Alan Oken's approach.
Balanced approach caters to practical concerns while infusing spiritual and philosophical elements, aiming to elevate individuals without imposing beliefs.
Humanistic and practical astrological style rooted in real-life experiences and family responsibilities.
✦
Alan Oken discusses his spiritual beliefs and influences in astrology.
23:54Oken talks about his journey into astrology, starting with his first book in 1970, and eventually leading to the compilation of 'Alan Oken's Complete Astrology'.
He mentions creating the first computerized astrology program in 1969.
Oken discusses his early career translating rock 'n roll songs.
His work has spanned decades and continues to be relevant and respected in the astrology community.
✦
Alan Oken's experience working as an astrologer and translator for a record producing company.
29:52Oken assembled a team of well-known astrologers and developed a computerized astrology program called Aquariscope in 1969.
Despite owning 15% of the company, Oken declined a buyout offer.
The company went bankrupt, leading to the end of Aquariscope.
This paved the way for the popularity of computerized astrology in the future.
✦
Importance of Books in Astrology Marketing
33:53Acknowledges the importance of books in gaining clients and respect in astrology.
Considers other platforms for establishing expertise in the modern era of social media.
Emphasizes self-publishing over traditional publishers for creating a legacy.
Focuses upcoming books on prediction techniques and self-transformation in astrology, with an emphasis on consciousness as love in action.
✦
Astrology as a tool for human consciousness development.
39:08The speaker chose to help people grow as individuals over seeking fame and wealth in astrology.
Despite not achieving great wealth, the speaker found joy and purpose in their decision.
Growth in consciousness is linked to the manifestation of horoscopes, requiring discipline and humility.
The speaker supports social welfare policies and acknowledges varying levels of consciousness.
✦
The segment explores the influence of fate, karma, and consciousness on shaping one's life.
42:21It highlights the importance of biological inheritance in determining individual identity separate from familial influences.
The discussion touches on the impact of spiritual evolution on material life and the potential for a more joy-filled existence.
The speaker contrasts material poverty with spiritual wealth, showcasing the deep religious life and generosity of the Balinese people despite economic circumstances.
✦
Changing one's life through intentionality, consciousness, and self-discipline.
47:10Advising an anxious businessman on meditation and mind programming to reduce anxiety and improve business success.
Debate among astrologers on the extent of change possible in life, emphasizing discipline and awareness.
Importance of self-acceptance and acknowledging limitations, while still making efforts towards positive changes.
✦
Analysis of Virgo and Capricorn relationship in astrology.
53:18Capricorn symbolizes fulfillment and attainment in the relationship between Virgo and Capricorn.
Importance of rulership and dispositorship in astrology for understanding energetic patterns.
'Rulers of the Horoscope' book provides rules and guidance for intermediate astrology students.
Debate between modern and traditional ruler schemes in astrology and efforts to reconcile differing perspectives.
✦
Importance of Traditional and Modern Rulers in Astrology.
57:41The speaker shares a story about meeting a 75-year-old swami who taught him about perspectives and astrology.
He explains the significance of traditional rulers in astrology, such as Mars representing destruction and Pluto symbolizing transformation.
The speaker discusses using both traditional and modern rulers in his astrological interpretations, using Scorpio as an example.
He emphasizes the importance of considering different levels of consciousness in astrology readings.
✦
Symbolism of planetary glyphs in astrology.
01:03:46The cross symbolizes Earth and manifestation, related to the Passion of Jesus and merging with the soul and Spirit.
The semi-circle represents the reception of Spirit's energies and the link between higher self, soul, and personality.
The circle symbolizes the all and everything, Spirit.
Emphasis on the interconnectedness of these symbols in understanding astrology and spiritual evolution.
✦
Symbolism of Jupiter and Saturn in relation to the soul and matter.
01:06:32Saturn symbolizes the illusion of power when prioritizing matter over spirit, leading to limitations.
Importance of structure, order, process, and form is highlighted through personal anecdotes.
Venus and Mars glyphs represent the balance between spirit and matter in earthly power dynamics.
Mercury symbolizes the link between higher and lower mind, facilitating soul-personality fusion.
✦
Overview of Soul-Centered Astrology by Alan Oken.
01:13:28Oken's book is inspired by Alice Bailey's approach to astrology, merging esoteric principles with traditional astrology.
The goal of the book is to provide a deeper understanding of natal horoscopes by bringing ancient wisdom teachings into modern astrology.
Oken emphasizes that the book was written out of love and duty, not for fame or profit.
Despite being published 30 years ago, Soul-Centered Astrology remains in print and continues to impact readers worldwide.
✦
Teaching Esoteric Astrology in China
01:14:32Astrologer teaches esoteric astrology in China without translated reference books by creating diagrams and glossaries for students.
Expresses gratitude for students attending workshops and mentions being busy teaching, publishing books, and working with clients.
Talks about mentoring private students, including Chinese students, and acknowledges David Railey's contribution in bringing Western astrology to China.
Supports the revival of ancient forms of astrology but mentions the lack of time to study them personally.
✦
Astrologers develop their own synthesis and system of sources early in their career, refining it over time.
01:21:56The astrological community tends to stick to their approach for most of their lives, constantly refining it.
Alan Oken emphasizes continuous learning and scholarly orientation in astrology.
As individuals age, the exuberance for learning may decrease, requiring longer periods of rest between studies.
A magnetism towards goals increases one-pointedness and eliminates distractions automatically.
✦
Speaker's Reflection on Personal Life as an Astrologer from a Different Time Period.
01:24:23The speaker reflects on their marriage to a homosexual woman and raising a child together despite societal challenges.
They accurately predicted the gender of their child after their first intimate experience with a woman.
The speaker was involved in Woodstock as part of a famous rock group's entourage.
Despite facing internal struggles with their sexual orientation from a young age, they navigated their identity and family life in a monogamous relationship.
✦
Speaker shares journey of self-acceptance as a homosexual man in a heterosexual world.
01:28:14Speaker discusses marriage, raising a child, and experiences as a father and husband.
Encounters with a young astrologer, offering support and scholarships.
Emphasizes importance of empathy and understanding in counseling others.
Highlights challenges and discrimination faced by LGBTQ individuals in heteronormative society.
✦
Speaker shares his experience as a gay man in the astrological community.
01:32:18Emphasizes that his sexuality has always been a natural part of who he is.
Reflects on societal challenges faced by LGBTQ individuals in the past.
Expresses gratitude for the acceptance he now experiences.
Mentions happily being married to a Balinese man and highlights that his sexuality has never been the central aspect of his life.
✦
Gratitude for Mentor's Impact
01:38:11Speaker reflects on past favor from mentor and efforts to pay it forward.
Success in Astrology
Mentor expresses pride in speaker's achievements in astrology.
Challenges Faced by Gay Astrologers
Mentor praises speaker's accomplishments and credits modern technology for global reach.
✦
Astrologer Alan Oken discusses his journey from opening a business in Bali in 1983 to teaching astrology in Portugal and overseeing translations of his books into multiple languages.
01:44:04Oken emphasizes the importance of direct involvement in translation rights for his future book publications.
Viewers are directed to his website, AlanOken.com, for more information about his work, including free monthly newsletters and upcoming webinars.
The conversation concludes with gratitude and well wishes exchanged between Oken and the interviewer.
✦
Acknowledgment of patrons and sponsors on The Astrology Podcast.
01:45:25Special mentions to patrons Christine Stone and Nate Craddock for their support.
Promotions for the Astro Gold astrology app available at AstroGold.io.
Promotions for the Portland School of Astrology at PortlandAstrology.org.
00:00CHRIS BRENNAN: Hi, my name is Chris
Brennan, and you’re listening to
00:02The Astrology Podcast. This episode was
recorded on Wednesday, September 18, 2019,
00:08starting at 8:10 PM, in Denver, Colorado,
and this is the 223rd episode of the show.
00:13In this episode, I’m going to be talking
with astrologer Alan Oken who’s the author
00:18of a number of highly influential
astrology books, such as Alan Oken’s
00:22Complete Astrology, and Rulers of the Horoscope.
For more information about how to subscribe to
00:28the podcast and help support the production
of future episodes by becoming a patron,
00:32please visit theastrologypodcast.com/subscribe.
Hey, Alan. Thanks for joining me today.
00:38ALAN OKEN: Oh, a pleasure to
be here, Chris. Thank you.
00:41CB: Where are you joining me from?
AO: I live in Bali, Indonesia, where I’m
00:46proof there is a tomorrow because right now it
is Thursday morning, at 10:12 AM, here in Bali.
00:53CB: I love that, yeah. It’s eight o’clock at night
here in Denver, on September 18th. What I also
01:00love about that is our charts for the start of
this episode are just completely different based
01:05on our relative locations as well.
AO: Absolutely, yes.
01:08CB: All right. Brilliant. Thank you so much for
joining me today. I’m excited about this partially
01:14for almost purely personal reasons because your
book on astrology, Alan Oken’s Complete Astrology,
01:23was actually one of the first astrology books
that I ever bought and that I learned astrology
01:28from. So it’s actually a great honor to
have you on this show because you were
01:33essentially indirectly one of my first astrology
teachers back when I was still a teenager.
01:38AO: Thank you.
CB: You actually started
01:42learning astrology as a teenager as well, right?
AO: No. Actually I started learning astrology at
01:4923 years of age, after what would
be called a mystical experience.
01:53CB: Okay.
AO: Shall I share that?
01:56CB: Sure. What was the experience?
AO: Well, I wasn’t on any drugs or anything
02:02like that. I wasn’t on alcohol or anything
that would disturb the focus of my awareness.
02:07CB: What year was this, by the way?
AO: This was 1967. It was about 10:10 PM. I’ve
02:16already drawn up a chart for it, of course. 10:10
PM, on the 24th of October, Sun at 0 Scorpio,
02:23exactly trine my 0 Cancer Mars in the 8th
house. So there was a rebirthing, if you please.
02:31I had been meditating from the time I was
about 19, studying yoga and meditation at
02:38the Integral Yoga Institute in New York,
under the late Swami Satchidananda. And so,
02:46that evening, I was meditating and a Tibetan
monk appeared in my inner eye and said to me,
02:55“Study astrology, my son. That will
lead you to your path in life.”
02:58So I bowed low. I said, “Yes, sir, I will do
that.” And the next morning--I was living in
03:05a commune in the Village because it was
those years, you know--I called my mother
03:10who lived in the suburbs and I said,
“Can I come home and study for a while,
03:16and can you lend me some money? I need to buy some
books,” so my mother said yes to both of those.
03:22I went to the suburbs, got some money, looked up
in the Yellow Pages where there was an astrology
03:27bookstore. There was one in Manhattan,
on 67th Street or something like that,
03:32and Lexington Avenue. So I went right back
into the city, bought the astrology books,
03:37came back to my mother’s house, locked myself in
and started studying, and that’s how it began.
03:42CB: Wow, at 23-year-old?
AO: Yes. Up until that point, I was
03:48taking post-graduate work in Romance languages.
CB: Right, because actually one of your great
03:53skills is you have a way with languages, right?
AO: Thank god, yes. I have Mercury trine to
03:59Jupiter in the 9th house and they both sextile
to Saturn in Gemini, and Saturn in Gemini rules
04:05grammar. Saturn rules structure. Gemini
rules language. Saturn in Gemini, structure
04:10of language. So I’m pretty good with grammar,
and I speak, lecture, write many languages.
04:17CB: How many languages do you know?
AO: I speak seven languages. I can
04:22lecture in five in them, and the two other
ones I’m quite conversational in. I’m very
04:29conversational in Indonesian, in German,
but I wouldn’t lecture in either of those
04:34languages. I lecture in French, Italian,
Spanish, Portuguese, and of course, English.
04:38CB: Okay. Brilliant. So you’ve always
had a way with languages. Did that come
04:43in handy in your early studies of astrology?
AO: Astrology is a language, so I had to learn
04:50the vocabulary. But instead of translating from
one part of my lower mind to another part of my
04:56lower mind--i.e., French to Italian or something
like that--I had to translate from my intuition
05:02into my intellect in order to be able to be in
touch with the archetypal dynamics of astrology,
05:08and then come into an intellectual explanation
of what those archetypes mean relative to the
05:15level of consciousness of my client and to what
the client needed from me. The ability to choose
05:22the right keywords and the right level of applying
those keywords, that was where language capability
05:31came in handy, absolutely.
CB: Okay. Brilliant. And
05:34do you share your birth data?
AO: Oh, easy. I was born on March 28,
05:401944, in the Bronx, New York. I have 23:56, I
believe, Scorpio rising, almost 7 Virgo at the
05:53Midheaven. The birth time is 11:04.
CB: 11:04. It looks like my
06:00database has the wrong time.
AO: Well, that’s the published
06:03chart and I rectified it.
CB: Okay.
06:05AO: So when it’s rectified, it will be 11:04.
CB: Got it. You said AM?
06:14AO: PM.
CB: I’m sorry.
06:15AO: Yeah, that would be 11:04 PM,
and that would be Eastern War Time.
06:22CB: There we go. So 23:48 Scorpio rising.
AO: There we are. That’s it.
06:28CB: Brilliant. And what form of house division
do you prefer? This just defaulted to whole sign.
06:34AO: Well, I’m an old fashioned
astrologer. I use Placidus.
06:38CB: Okay, no problem. Let me
throw it up using Placidus.
06:41AO: How nice it would be if my Mars
were in the 9th house, but it isn’t.
06:45CB: Yeah, well, it’s not like you ended up in a
foreign country, or speak many foreign languages,
06:51or do astrology or anything.
AO: No, no, not like that at all.
06:54CB: Right. So here it is: 23 Scorpio rising and
your Midheaven is at--what is it? 7-8 Virgo?
07:03AO: It’s 6:47-6:48 of Virgo, 7 degrees of Virgo.
CB: Got it, okay. So you’ve got that Jupiter,
07:12Pluto, North Node conjunction up in Leo in the
9th quadrant house. Mars is over in the 8th...
07:18AO: Yeah.
CB: ...and the Saturn, Moon,
07:20and Uranus in Gemini in the 7th.
AO: That would be it, yes.
07:23CB: Okay. And there’s the Mercury
you were talking about; that it’s
07:27trining Jupiter and sextiling Saturn.
AO: Exactly. Very strong Jupiter,
07:32very strong Mercury, yeah.
CB: Brilliant. All right, well,
07:35thanks for sharing that.
AO: Sure.
07:36CB: So back to your story. It sounds like you
started studying astrology right when it was
07:42hitting its heyday in the late 1960s basically.
AO: Absolutely. I came in on that wave.
07:47CB: Okay. So what was that like? We’re having a
similar but I want to say smaller wave right now,
07:54where suddenly there’s a new generation
of astrologers coming in, in their 20s,
07:57and even late teens. Astrology’s suddenly
become popular or trendy in the past year
08:03or two and gotten a bunch of media attention.
Relative to the late 1960s, it’s nothing like
08:10what was going on during that time, right?
AO: Well, the 1960s, for many of us was
08:16incredible because there was an infusion of
consciousness into the human collective. A
08:25lot of us were discovering that there was
a relationship between the visible and the
08:30invisible that had never existed before because
those definitions were always subjugated to
08:38the boundaries of orthodox religions.
Many of us were finding our communal
08:45spirit orientation outside of our
ethnic and religious background,
08:52and I have to say one of the great helpers in
that respect was LSD. The use, not the abuse
09:02of LSD was so helpful for so many of us to be
able to go beyond the boundaries of inherited
09:14responsive patterns to life and to move into a
very strong focus of individuation with a very
09:22clear identity to Spirit. Unfortunately, many of
my contemporaries got lost in that drug dynamic.
09:34I remember the last time I took LSD, the
spirit of LSD gave me a message. It was,
09:41“You are now higher than where we can take you.
Stop, or you’ll go down.” I said, “Thank you,” and
09:50that was the last time I ever took any substance
at all, and that was many, many years ago.
09:57I’m very grateful to that lifting up of a veil
that allowed me to come into a spiritual quest,
10:06and that’s what the inner teacher told me when I
was 23 and I was not on any substances. The inner
10:15teacher said, “Astrology would lead you to your
path.” And I was, if I might say, intelligent
10:22enough to follow what he said, and here we are.
CB: Sure. So if you were already meditating by
10:28that point, did you have an interest in other
metaphysical studies or theosophy at that point?
10:34AO: Absolutely. Well, let us say that I had
always, from the time I can recall--seven,
10:44eight years of age--visited different churches and
temples. I lived in Midtown Manhattan. There were
10:50many different churches and temples available just
in my neighborhood. And if I searched out further,
10:56which I did as a child, I would be finding
myself in Buddhist service. I’d be finding
11:02myself in a Catholic service. I’d be finding
myself in a Jewish service. I just had a real
11:06interest in things of the Spirit, but at
that time, it was all cloaked in religion.
11:15When I was a teen, a late teen, I came
in contact with Swami Satchidananda,
11:21and I started practicing hatha yoga, becoming
a vegetarian, meditating. Then when I found
11:32astrology, when I went shopping at the astrology
bookstore--no, it was a little before that. No,
11:38I beg your pardon. I was 21. I was still
at graduate school at New York University.
11:43There was a place called Weiser’s. Weiser is a
very famous astrological publisher. But before
11:50Weiser was an astrological publisher, he owned
a used bookstore, a huge used bookstore in Lower
11:56Manhattan. The basement of Weiser’s was all
esoteric books. So you would go down there
12:02and you’d meet other teens and young people who
were interested in all these esoteric subjects.
12:07For $5, I saw on sale a two-volume set of
Madame Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine,
12:14which is a cornerstone to theosophical teachings,
and it was on sale for 5 bucks. Even in 1966 or
12:22‘61, whenever it was--I was 18, 1963--even
5 bucks was still cheap for these two, big,
12:32beautiful volumes. So I took out my 5 bucks
and I bought them. I started to read them,
12:36couldn’t read them at all, and I said, “Wait,
Alan. In a few years, you’ll be able to read these
12:41books. So just put them away for now.” And I did.
Then when I started studying astrology, when I
12:51went to buy my first astrology books, at the time,
I thought I had Leo rising. I saw a book on the
12:59shelves called Esoteric Astrology by Alan Leo, and
I said, “Oh, well now, this is interesting. We’re
13:06both named Alan, spelled with one ‘l’. He’s
Alan Leo, I have Leo rising. It’s esoteric.
13:13I like the sound of that.” I grabbed the book.
He was a theosophical astrologer. So I started
13:21studying theosophy, in broad terms, ancient wisdom
teachings, simultaneously to studying astrology,
13:28so the two went hand-in-hand.
CB: And that’s really crucial for
13:34your future career because there were a number of
prominent astrologers of the theosophical lineage,
13:42starting with Alan Leo in the early 20th century,
and then onto Marc Edmund Jones, and even Dane
13:47Rudhyar. But I really consider you to be one
of the most recent, most prominent astrologers,
13:54broadly speaking, of the theosophical lineage.
I feel like you were the most prominent one.
13:59So that would really come to influence
your entire philosophy of astrology,
14:04as well as some of your technical approach?
AO: And my way of living. It’s at the center
14:12of my spiritual life, and then my spiritual
life is at the center of my life. Also the
14:20theosophical material plus astrology helped
to structure this link between my intuitive
14:26perceptions and my intellectual abilities to
express what I’m perceiving. And it’s also
14:32helped me to have a healthy distance from
the physical life, even though, of course,
14:37I’m physical. I believe the older you get,
the more physical, you have to pay attention
14:41to. But I’m able to keep a certain dynamic
of abstraction possible so I can really see
14:51what’s going on in the chart, as best as I can.
CB: So you came in as part of that wave. This
15:00is basically the Pluto in Leo generation,
especially the people born in the 1940s and
15:04mid-1940s that all came into astrology at the
same time in the late 1960s and early ‘70s.
15:12Besides Alan Leo, what were some of your other
main influences astrologically at that point
15:17early in your studies?
AO: Marc Edmund Jones.
15:18CB: Okay.
AO: Marc Edmund Jones has written
15:23some of the most boring books a person could ever
imagine, which I highly recommend to everybody,
15:29because once you get through the dry and dusty
language, there’s treasure after treasure of
15:37astrological wisdom. So Marc Edmund Jones,
especially the book, Essentials of Astrological
15:43Analysis, absolutely one of my bibles.
Isabel Hickey. Isabel only wrote two
15:51books that I know of, but I studied with her
personally. She had a short career in astrology,
15:58only 10 years. She started at 65, she passed away
at 75, but I was one of Izzy’s kids. She had a
16:06group of young people, and we followed her up to
New England to study at her home in New Hampshire,
16:11and just followed her around. So Isabel
Hickey was a wonderful influence on me.
16:20CB: Wow, that’s crazy that you’re one of
the students of Isabel Hickey because she
16:24also mentored, or at least very briefly had a
number of other students that would go on to
16:29become prominent astrologers as well, right.
AO: Yes. Yes, we were Izzy’s kids. We were
16:34all in our 20s and she was our mom, our
astrological mom. At the time, in the ‘60s,
16:42you formed families. So you lived in communes
and you formed families. And so, our astrological
16:50family were all Izzy’s kids that surrounded her.
I remember one time her lover was a black man and
16:58just this wonderful guy. She was invited to teach
a group of all-black astrology students based in
17:05Harlem, and she invited me to come along.
I was the only white guy that was there,
17:11and I was met with all sorts of negativity,
because at the time there was this incredible
17:18tension of the civil rights movement.
I had to confront this group of black students
17:25to say, “I think you’re all prejudiced. Can you
get over my skin color and let’s get on to study
17:29astrology?” Well, that did it, and we all made
friends, and it was a beautiful weekend together.
17:35It was fabulous. I’m glad I was an Aries. I could
stand up there and say, “Wait a minute.” So Isabel
17:41was very influential in my life in many ways.
And then there was a man I never met who died
17:49before I came into contact. His name was Rodney
Collin. He was a student of Ouspensky’s, and he
17:57wrote a book called The Theory of Celestial
Influence. That’s another one of my bibles,
18:03The Theory of Celestial Influence, an incredible
book. And then, of course, I have to speak about
18:10Max Heindel, who was the founder of astrological
Rosicrucian in the 20th century, who wrote
18:17these astrological books in the Rosicrucian
modality, and so, he was a strong influence.
18:28Finally, I would say Alice Bailey’s book,
Esoteric Astrology, which was written by
18:33the Tibetan Master D.K. through Alice,
led me to write my book, Soul-Centered
18:41Astrology. It helped me to shape my approach to
integrate exoteric and esoteric astrology as a
18:48practical means of interpreting the chart.
CB: Okay. Yeah, I know Alice Bailey’s work
18:54definitely influenced your Soul-Centered
Astrology book, which came out in 1990, right?
18:59AO: It came out in ‘88. That approach, the
integration of exoteric and esoteric astrology
19:08was a major factor in shaping my approach.
CB: Already, very early in your studies,
19:18it was a major influence?
AO: Absolutely. I’m a little mystical.
19:28Little--I have a strong mystical orientation.
So this sense of knowledge being passed on
19:36through the descent of wisdom, from a link to
a lineage has dominated my life from the time I
19:48was 23-years-old, and still dominates my life.
When I read a horoscope, I read for bankers.
19:58I read for housewives. I don’t just read
for mystics. One of the abilities that one
20:05acquires is to be able to take astrology--which
really is an intuitive science focused through
20:14the intellect--and being able to attune one’s
self to the archetypes, and then apply them also
20:21through the opening of the heart because you’ve
got to be in contact with the person the person
20:25that you’re reading for.
I’m not a medium, but one is
20:34receiving a certain degree of understanding about
things that one has worked very hard to achieve
20:40the mind that can receive that understanding,
and then apply that on the level where it’s
20:47appropriate. I just yesterday did the horoscope of
a Indian man from Singapore who was just totally
20:54interested in money and business. The transcendent
life didn’t interest him at all. So I read for the
20:59gentleman because that’s what he required of me.
CB: How do you balance that then if your primary
21:05interest is more philosophical or spiritual in
terms of the astrology, when people are coming
21:12to you with really practical concerns about
the concrete, day-to-day events in their life?
21:17AO: I’m not prejudiced. I’m not prejudiced
racially. I’m not prejudiced on levels of
21:24consciousness. I mean, wherever I can be of help,
I try to be of help. Now I’ll give you a little
21:30secret because you’re a Scorpio, so I’ll tell
you the secret of it. I always throw one in for
21:37God. No matter who I’m reading for or whatever, I
always try to get in there and pick it up a notch.
21:45In the case of this gentleman, I reminded him
of his Hindu traditions, and I reminded him of
21:51the writings of the rishis and things like
that. He wanted to learn how to get out of
21:59a certain situation, so I recommended some works
of some Hindu rishis to him. So I’m always trying
22:05to bring the level up, but never trying to
convert anybody. That’s not my karma. It’s
22:12just that I’m an astrologer; I try to help people.
CB: Sure, so you’re not trying to force anything
22:18down people’s throats, necessarily.
AO: Not necessarily, no.
22:22CB: It sounds like your influences or your
interests in the authors that you gravitated
22:29towards in your astrological studies were
more theosophical and more philosophical or
22:35spiritual. It seems like some astrologers
were going for more of this psychological
22:43or depth psychology route at that point.
Was that a direction that didn’t interest
22:48you necessarily as much? To what
extent were you influenced by some
22:52of those strands of the tradition?
AO: Oh, I definitely am interested in
22:57humanistic astrology. I’m a pretty good
nuts-and-bolts, practical astrologer. I
23:07live in Bali, but where I’m coming from
is I’ve raised a family for God’s sake.
23:14I have grandchildren. I mean, I’ve had to earn
a living. I’m from New York. I’m not ‘woo-woo’.
23:23I’m just a man who lives a ‘spiritual life’.
In other words, when I say live a spiritual life,
23:31the sense of the spiritual as a reality
is in my heart, and the grace of God,
23:39I hope is in my heart, and that means a great
deal to me. But I’ve certainly studied some
23:46wonderful modern astrologers who have contributed
enormously to the realm of humanistic astrology,
23:54definitely. I’m not ‘woo-woo’, but I do
definitely stand on a spiritual foundation.
24:01CB: Sure. I guess I was just thinking, one
of the other people that studied under Isabel
24:07Hickey was Liz Greene. I don’t think she
studied with her long, or maybe they had
24:11a falling out or something.
AO: I would think they
24:13would have had a falling out.
CB: Okay. Why do you say that? Are
24:17you just making an assumption?
AO: No, comment.
24:21CB: Okay. Strong personalities are something
maybe. But she very much focused on the work
24:29of Carl Jung, primarily focusing on that approach
to psychology and integrating that into astrology.
24:34I guess I was just wondering to what extent--it
seems like you focused more on a different part
24:40of the 20th century tradition...
AO: Yes.
24:42CB: ...and even though you kept
things relatively grounded that
24:45wasn’t necessarily your interest primarily.
AO: I got a lot out of Howard Sasportas. I
24:50got a lot out of--oh, what’s the name
of that gentleman, a very famous book
24:59on transits--Rob Hand, a man for whom I
have enormous respect. Quite the scholar,
25:05and a wonderful contributor to astrology. So I’ve
read his books--not the ones on Latin and Greek,
25:12but the ones on transits--and I’ve attended some
of his talks when we were at congresses together.
25:21There are people who I have a great deal
of respect for, for whom they’re not
25:27necessarily ‘spiritual astrologers’,
but who definitely know their stuff.
25:34CB: Sure. So you started studying astrology in the
late 1960s, and the book that I primarily know you
25:44by and that I feel like is your most well-known
book is Alan Oken’s Complete Astrology. But this
25:50is actually a compilation of three smaller
works that you wrote in the 1970s, right?
25:55AO: Correct. That’s right, I did. I wrote three
books that were called As Above, So Below,
26:00The Horoscope, the Road and It’s Travelers,
and Astrology: Evolution and Revolution.
26:04And 2-1/3 of those books were incorporated
into Alan Oken’s Complete Astrology by the
26:15original publisher which was Bantam Books.
It’s had several publishers since then,
26:22and it’s still selling. People are still finding
it useful. The first volume came out, I think it
26:32was 1972, As Above, So Below. So here we are,
what, 47 years later and the book is still in
26:44young people’s hands like yourself, Mr. Brennan.
CB: Right. That means that you wrote the first
26:50portions of it, or the first book
that eventually went into it maybe
26:54four years into your study, if it was 1972.
AO: Yes, that’s right. I wrote my first book,
27:00and it’s completely out of print now, but it
was called An Astrological Guide to Living
27:07in the Age of Aquarius. It was a 300-page,
little paperback. I wrote it in 1970 and it
27:18came out in ‘71. And then I was picked
up in 1970 or early ‘71 by Bantam Books,
27:27and they gave me a three-book contract. The result
of that three-book contract were the three volumes
27:34that were later synthesized into Alan Oken’s
Complete Astrology which they also published.
27:39CB: Wow, and this started prior to
your Saturn return it sounds like.
27:45AO: Listen, I put together the first
computerized astrology program ever used.
27:50CB: When was that?
AO: That was in 1969. In 1969,
27:59I was hired by a huge record manufacturing
company. I had been a translator of rock ‘n
28:09roll songs for famous rock groups in the late
‘60s because of my languages. So I would take
28:16the groups into the studios and teach them how
to pronounce the words so they could sing in
28:22French and Spanish, Italian, what have you.
The owner of the company, a big corporation,
28:29that owned this record producing, they knew I
was also an astrologer as well as a translator,
28:36so they hired me, and I was 25-years-old and
I was to pick an astrology team. So I chose
28:45some very well-known at the time astrologers
who were old enough to be--well, one of them,
28:55Rod Chase. And then there was another one--I
forget their names now. My short-term memory
29:02is not always the best these days. I’m 75, but I
remember my astrology and I remember my French.
29:07Anyway, I had this team of very fine, established
astrologers that were hired by this record
29:18company, and they set me up in an office on 5th
Avenue and 53rd Street. I had this secretary, and
29:26I’m 25-years-old, and they gave me a whole bunch
of money. I had just gotten married and just about
29:35to have a baby. I was like, hallelujah, but the
other astrologers, because they were old enough
29:43to be my grandparents, they were a little--anyway.
We put together a program called Aquariscope, and
29:52it first opened in Grand Central Station in 1969.
They had 1,600 places where they were going to put
30:05these computers. I had gone to Atlanta, Georgia
to work with an insurance company who were part
30:12of this much larger New York corporation who were
innovative in computer design, so that we could
30:20then program all the astrology that I had gotten
together--the copy that I had gotten together from
30:26these other astrologers and myself--to make these
astrological reports. And it opened up to great
30:33fanfare in Grand Central Station.
CB: Wow.
30:36AO: I owned 15-percent of the
company as part of my deal,
30:41and I said, “Oh, God. I’m going to make
a fortune here. My kids are going to go
30:48to the best schools. This is fabulous.” And
then the lawyer came up and he said, “Alan,
30:55sell us your 15-percent. We’ll give you $25,000,”
which at the time would have been about $200,000.
31:02I said, “No,” and he said, “Trust me. Sell.”
I said, “No,” and within six weeks, the entire
31:09company went bankrupt...
CB: Oh, no.
31:11AO: ...and that was the end of Aquariscope
and the end of computerized astrology until
31:18some other company picked up on it, and
then it became extraordinarily popular.
31:22CB: Okay.
AO: But that was that story.
31:24CB: So there were some road bumps along the
way in terms of your career--speed bumps.
31:30AO: My dear friend, I can remember having
no money for rent one month and having to
31:37take on a job which required three hours of
transportation to Long Island from Brooklyn
31:42and three hours back in order to get for
eight weeks of traveling enough money to
31:48pay my rent. Yes, there were bumps along the way.
CB: Sure. So you had some lean times, but do you
31:59think it was when your book came out, the thick
book, Alan Oken’s Complete Astrology--was that
32:05in 1980? Do you feel like that’s what established
your career and established you as a well-known,
32:11international astrologer?
AO: It certainly helped. It
32:15certainly helped. I can assure you there was
a period of time in the ‘70s, middle ‘70s,
32:27when I was on food stamps; married with a child
on food stamps and still an astrologer. It only
32:33started to really open up in the early ‘80s.
Yes, I remember being 40-years-old in 1984 and
32:41going, “Phew, okay, financially we can handle life
right now,” so yes, that’s true. And at the time,
32:52of course, there were no emails, so people
contacted you by telephone for readings.
32:57CB: Okay. Yeah, that’s something that’s really
changed over the past few years where bookstores
33:04are virtually on the way out...
AO: On the way out.
33:08CB: ...and all the astrologers are moving
to self-publishing, and major publishers are
33:12hardly publishing astrology books anymore. And
there’s also so many different platforms online,
33:20and social media platforms that people are
establishing themselves and becoming famous
33:25as astrologers without publishing a book. So
there’s a question now of if publishing a book
33:31is even still necessary in order to establish
oneself as leading astrologer in the field today.
33:37But I feel like back in the ‘60s and
‘70s that was just one of the things you
33:42had to do in order to establish yourself.
AO: Essential. Absolutely essential. If I
33:48hadn’t had these books, I wouldn’t have had all
these clients, and I wouldn’t have been able to
33:53be respected as someone who knows what they’re
talking about when they talk about astrology.
33:59CB: Sure.
AO: But also, writing books,
34:06aside from being a wonderful exercise for a
person, I don’t know anymore if it’s leaving
34:13behind a legacy because so many things have
different platforms, as you’ve just said. I mean,
34:19what is an intellectual legacy at this point? Can
it be manifested in terms of written material?
34:27I have three or four manuscripts sitting right
here in my office waiting to be finished and
34:34edited and wanting to be published, and I
pray to God to finish them over the next
34:40couple of years and get them out as books. Will
I send them to a publisher? I doubt it. Will I
34:46publish them myself? More likely.
CB: Right. What are those books,
34:50just out of curiosity? What are the topics?
AO: One is a book on prediction techniques.
34:53I won’t mention the title now, but the theme is
prediction techniques because it’s something I’ve
35:00really specialized in over the years. Although,
certainly--remind me of that gentleman’s name,
35:09that one from New England.
CB: Hand?
35:13AO: Rob Hand, yes. Although Rob Hand’s book
is very authoritative, and although Sasportas
35:20has some wonderful work on this too, I’d like
to get something out by Oken on transits and
35:26progressions and add to the body, to the library
of work on that. And then I have another book
35:33on the astrology of self-transformation
which speaks about the use of astrology
35:39as a technique to evolve consciousness.
CB: You said that consciousness has become
35:47one of your focuses or main areas
of interest in terms of astrology.
35:51AO: It’s the main focus.
CB: Why is that? Or,
35:55what do you mean by consciousness? Why has it
become your main focus? What’s of interest there?
36:00AO: Look at what’s going on in the UK. Look
at what’s going on in the United States.
36:04Look at what’s going on in Russia. Look at what’s
going on in Bulgaria. Look at what’s going on in
36:09China. We need some consciousness, thank you
very much. There’s too much unconsciousness.
36:15And by the way, consciousness, to me, is love.
I’m a ‘60s kid, you know, love and peace. So,
36:23to me, consciousness is love, and love is
consciousness, and I don’t mean romantic
36:28love. I don’t mean Venus trine Neptune located in
the solar plexus; I don’t mean that. I’m talking
36:36about love as a power to manifest the higher
will. And I believe that an important aspect
36:45of the higher will is love in action.
As I work to, in my small way--really,
36:52this is not false modesty--to bring
consciousness into the lives and to
37:01support the efforts that growing consciousness
in the lives of all my students, all my readers,
37:06all my clients, and in my own life, it’s a
work in progress. My master said to me in 1967,
37:20“Become an astrologer. That will lead you to your
path in life, my son.” He didn’t say astrology
37:27was my path. He said it would lead me to my path.
So astrology has led me to my path and that’s the
37:33path of the evolution of human consciousness.
I love astrology as a science, and I hope as a
37:41science, I’ve contributed to its techniques,
especially through my book, Rulers of the
37:45Horoscope. I hope I’ve helped with giving people
some delineation techniques through that book.
37:51So I’m very respectful of the science that I
love and that I share with you and our hearers,
37:59but my job is to help develop human consciousness.
CB: Sure. So maybe you see astrology not as the
38:07end goal, but as a means to an end in some way.
AO: The idea is quite correct. Astrology is a
38:13branch of the ancient wisdom teachings, and my
focus is on the ancient wisdom teachings, and my
38:19specialty within that is astrology, absolutely.
CB: Okay.
38:23AO: That’s why a long time ago, I had a choice.
I lived in New York, and I had a choice to
38:29become a very rich and very famous astrologer to
the stars and to these people who had corporations
38:37and all of that, but in order to do that I had
to focus my astrology on sex, drugs, and rock
38:43‘n roll. I had to focus my astrology on success.
I had to focus my astrology on winning over men
38:49or winning over women, banking investments and
things like this, and then go to all these fancy
38:55parties where I’d be a noticed, invited guest,
and so there would be a lot of drinking involved.
39:01I would be on Park Avenue, but I’d be
lost. So I left that, went on food stamps,
39:08and moved to New Mexico. That was a conscious
choice and then the conscious choice continued to
39:16be an astrologer to the masses, or to have niche
where I was focusing on people who were working
39:22to develop themselves as human beings. I took
that niche. I never became a wealthy person,
39:28but I certainly had become a person full of joy
and full of purpose, no doubt about it. Oh, yes,
39:35and at 75, I’m still healthy, thank you.
CB: Yeah, which is not necessarily the
39:41case for everybody from your generation
that didn’t necessarily go that route or
39:44that got stuck in some of the more, I don’t
know, ephemeral focuses or what have you.
39:50AO: Yes, sir, that is true--and
the drugs, and the alcohol.
39:52CB: Sure. Consciousness though, circling back
to that, there’s sort of a debate that comes up
40:01a lot, and I was curious what your opinion
is. There’s a debate about to what extent
40:06consciousness does make a difference
in terms of how the horoscope play out
40:12for a person, in terms of their birth chart.
It became very common, it seems like, in late
40:1820th century astrology to say that that was the
entirety of the answer, that the chart itself will
40:25only manifest in certain ways depending on the
person’s level of consciousness. But sometimes
40:30this would almost set up a hierarchy, as if
there were people that were more or less evolved.
40:36And there became questions about whether that
was true or not, in the sense that will a person
40:43experience bad things if they’re not evolved
as a consciousness and if that’s not a great
40:51way to look at it, or not a great way to frame
things because it almost makes negative events
40:54in a person’s fault their fault when some
things might be outside of their control.
40:59Where do you come down on all of
that? What’s your perspective?
41:02AO: Well, first of all, Chris, that’s a beautiful
synthesis of many different streams of thought,
41:10all of which are current and active, and I can’t
address in one response all of those currents.
41:16CB: Yeah, it’s like 20 different things.
AO: Yeah, but let me address certain of them.
41:22CB: Okay.
AO: All right. First of all,
41:25from a point of view of politics, I love Bernie,
okay. I mean, I believe in everybody having a
41:36free, higher education and everybody having free
medication and everybody having enough food to
41:41feed themselves and their kids. Okay, but from
a spiritual point of view, I’m not a socialist.
41:47There are different levels of consciousness.
Certain people are born aware. Certain people
41:54have to learn awareness. Some people are
born aware and lose their awareness. They
42:00dynamics of human consciousness are malleable.
In order to grow in consciousness, one needs a
42:08discipline; Saturn has to be involved.
It is hierarchical. There are levels,
42:14okay. And just because a person is at such
a level, and one person’s at another level,
42:21the higher you are, the more humble you get.
The higher you are, the more inclusive you
42:26become. The higher you are, the more loving you
are. The higher you are, the more perceptive and
42:31less judgmental you are; it’s as simple as that.
And you are born with a certain fate. You are born
42:43with a certain karma, if you will, never mind the
question of past lives. I’m not going to get into
42:48that right now. But at the very least, you’re born
with a synthesis of your biological inheritance
42:56that comes through your genes and lives in
your cells. At the very least, you’ve inherited
43:01that much from the past and you play it out.
And you play it out until, symbolically speaking,
43:10there is your progressed lunar return
and then your progressed Saturn return,
43:14that 27- to 29-year-old stage in there, where one
begins to get the awareness that, “Wait a minute,
43:22I can objectify my antecedents.” I
can objectify my antecedents and I
43:28can create a dynamic of consciousness that is
connected to my own process of individuation.
43:34Now to be able to come to that realization
intellectually is, “Hello, how are you?” I mean,
43:41that is a ‘come to Jesus’ moment, hello. A lot of
people don’t know that in those terminologies. I
43:47give it those terminologies because I’m a teacher
of this path. But it comes as a realization that,
43:54“Wait a minute. I’m not just my mother’s kid.
I can be myself.” Simply said, that’s it.
44:00How you go about becoming yourself can change
the orientation of what’s in your horoscope.
44:05A very old, old astrological saying is, and I’m
sure you know it, Chris: The horoscope impels,
44:13it doesn’t compel.
CB: Right.
44:16AO: But it compels more if a person is living
in their Moon, if a person is living in their
44:23solar plexus and below. The compelling dynamic
lessens when the instinctual power over the
44:32material life is raised up by being centered in
the heart. Once we become centered in the heart,
44:38the dynamic of a certain degree of
free will begins to express itself.
44:44And then as we move out from the heart,
this little point here, this 3rd eye point,
44:50this center of Buddha begins--to combine
‘Westinese’, the center of Buddha combines
44:57with the center of Christ. These two synthesize,
and then all of a sudden, you’re finding
45:02yourself on a path, a path of self-creation.
The material you have to use to create that
45:10self is in your natal chart. But are you
bound in that natal chart? In some ways,
45:15you are, and in other ways, you can be free.
In other ways, sometimes, you can be free.
45:21CB: That’s the question though. Can one
through one’s state of consciousness or
45:27level of consciousness actually be free to any
great extent from their karma and from their fate,
45:34or does one’s level of consciousness alter? Does
that necessarily mean if you’re more spiritually
45:40evolved that you’re necessarily going to
have a better life, materially speaking?
45:44AO: No, it doesn’t mean that, but you’ll
certainly have a more joy-filled life.
45:49CB: Okay.
AO: I live on
45:51an island where the majority of people are very
poor. This is Bali. People come here and they go
45:57to the tourist parts of the island. They live
in lovely hotels, or they rent lovely villas,
46:02and they have these nicely-dressed, Balinese who
serve them and all of that, but the villages are
46:06very poor. Some Balinese have money, most of them
don’t, but they have a very deep, religious life.
46:15They believe in an animistic form of Hinduism,
or Hindu form of animism. And they have a caste
46:22system here too, only nobody is an untouchable
in Bali. And they’re happy, and they’re kind,
46:29and they’re a generous people within their
poverty. They’re joy-filled, and they’re
46:35spiritually aware. One of the main reasons I
live is I’m surrounded by these people that
46:42are spiritually aware. They’re not necessarily
educated, but boy, are they spiritually aware.
46:47So that makes all the difference because I’m
surrounded by people who are centered in their
46:52hearts. That’s kind of nice. It makes things
rather gentle in the neighborhood, you know.
46:57CB: Sure. There was one extreme version
of some of the ideas that came out of
47:06the New Age movement that I think went in the
direction of The Secret and stuff like that...
47:10AO: Yeah.
CB: ...where by simply changing your
47:12intentionality or setting your intentionality,
depending on your level of consciousness,
47:17you could literally manifest whatever material
benefits you want versus the other extreme of the
47:23spectrum, let’s say, the ancient Stoic perspective
that you can’t change the fate that is in your
47:30horoscope, but you can only accept it or choose
not to accept it on an internal level, and that’s
47:35where freedom resides, an internal quality.
Where do fall on that spectrum
47:40of those two extreme versions?
AO: Yesterday, I was doing the horoscope
47:45of an Indian gentleman who is a businessman
from Singapore, a handsome man in his mid-30s,
47:53so filled with anxiety. Saturn squaring
Mercury in the chart in mutable signs;
48:01so filled with anxiety, so filled with
negative thoughts. He also had this Mars
48:09aspect which showed he had high blood pressure.
I said, “You’re going to burst all your blood
48:13vessels if you keep this up.” I had to speak
to him really strongly. He was very male and
48:20I had to be very male in return for him to get
what I was saying. And I said to him, “You know,
48:27you need to meditate. You need to recognize
that your mind is not you and that you have
48:35the ability to program your own mind. And that
once you get into that place, your avenue in
48:42business will be a lot easier, and you’ll have
much less anxiety.” And I talked along those lines
48:47with him for a while. It didn’t go in very far.
In any event, what I’m saying is that’s an example
48:54of working on mutating your life. Any of our
listeners who have been working on doing certain
49:02types of exercises, or following certain diets,
or following certain meditation procedures have
49:09seen very positive changes take place in their
lives which otherwise the horoscope would say,
49:15“You don’t stand a chance, buddy.”
So I do believe we can make certain
49:20qualitative changes in our way of being.
Quantitatively? I don’t know, that’s a
49:29big question, but certainly, qualitatively.
CB: Sure. Yeah, I guess one of the internal
49:35debates that astrologers have been having
for a long time is just what you can change
49:39or how much you can change in your life.
AO: Absolutely. It’s a huge question.
49:42But I tell you, just as you can’t change
your color, unless you’re Michael Jackson,
49:52there are certain things in your karma you can’t
change because that’s the coloring of your energy
49:57field. And then there are certain things you can
do to modify your energy field, and that requires,
50:07to me, certain disciplines of mind that create
avenues for the descent of a higher awareness that
50:17can be practically applied in the daily life.
CB: Sure. I guess one of the ambiguities or
50:22the thing that was always hard for me is that
you don’t ever fully know which certain things
50:27are changeable versus which things are not
changeable. In some instances of your life,
50:32there’s that ambiguity.
AO: You’re right.
50:34CB: Sometimes the best thing is just to
attempt to make the change when you can,
50:39no matter what, to whatever extent
you can. And if you can, you can.
50:43If you can’t then you did your best, at least.
AO: I agree with you a hundred-percent. There’s
50:49a certain thing called self-acceptance where you
go, “Phew, okay, I’ll accept that and get on with
50:58it.” But the human nature has a certain grace
connected to it, and unless you are disabled
51:10in some mental or emotional way--in other words,
you’re schizophrenic, or you have a severe mental
51:16deficiency, or you’re paralyzed--there are certain
things that cannot be changed. But in many ways,
51:24there are things that can be changed, and we
just have to find the methodology of doing it.
51:30That is the relationship between Virgo
and Capricorn. Virgo are methodologies,
51:35processes, and techniques of self-improvement,
and Capricorn, 0 Capricorn, is the degree of
51:46fulfillment, the degree of attainment;
an attainment that comes from doing all
51:53of those disciplines that Virgo requires.
CB: Brilliant. That makes sense. All right.
52:00Let’s see, moving on to some other topics.
Consciousness was a big one, but I think we
52:05could get stuck there this entire time pretty
easily, but that’s probably good for now.
52:12One of the things I’ve always meant to ask you,
one of the treatments I always liked in your
52:15books--actually before we get there, you already
mentioned it first in passing a little. But one of
52:22your other books that was very influential for me
was a somewhat later book that you wrote in 2000,
52:28I think, titled Rulers of the Horoscope.
AO: That one, yes.
52:31CB: Like I said, your Complete Astrology was
one of my first books, but I found Rulers of
52:40the Horoscope several years later when I
was at more of an intermediate stage. And
52:44it just happened to be that perfect, intermediate
astrology book that dealt with the technique of
52:49looking at the ruler of one house when it’s
in another house. It seemed like that was a
52:55concept that was less prominent or treated
less in late 20th century astrology than
53:02it was in earlier forms of astrology.
Did you get that impression as well,
53:05and is that why you wrote the book?
AO: Yes. You see, I had some pretty good
53:10astrologer teachers who were older,
much older than myself. Therefore,
53:18their roots were in an earlier astrology.
Dispositorship and rulership were fundamental
53:27to making our way through the labyrinth,
and I recognized that modern astrologers,
53:33later astrologers were not using that technique.
I find that that technique of dispositorship and
53:41rulership is fundamental--I’ll use the expression
again--of making our way through the labyrinth
53:48because the natal horoscope is a labyrinth.
So how do you get in there? How do you make your
53:56way through without getting lost in the energetic
maze? I developed a system which I called a
54:05system--I don’t know if I developed it--but I
call the system ‘energetic affinities’. So I try
54:10to find the energetic affinities between planets,
signs, and houses using the energetic affinities.
54:17For example, Jupiter is always going to be related
to your 9th house. It may not rule your 9th house
54:25natally, but it rules it naturally, and Jupiter’s
always going to be related Sagittarius planets.
54:32So you try to find all of these relationships, and
by finding these relationships and these actual
54:39rules--in my book, Rulers of the Horoscope, I give
out rules, the rules of following dispositorship.
54:46Mutual reception--what is that all about? Final
dispositor--what is that all about? And by being
54:53able to follow the energy patterns, you will
be able to make your way through the labyrinth
54:59without getting lost in the maze. That was the
purpose of the book. And it was specifically
55:03written for intermediate astrology students.
CB: Yeah, well, it was perfect for that. It’s
55:08very concise, but very straightforward and very
practical. One of the issues that you deal with in
55:16the book that’s become much more prominent, even
in the 19, almost 20 years since you wrote it--due
55:22to the revival of older forms of astrology and
traditional astrology--is now there’s much more
55:26debates about modern ruler schemes of Uranus
ruling Aquarius, and Neptune ruling Pisces,
55:33and Pluto ruling Scorpio versus using
the traditional rulership schemes of Mars
55:37ruling Scorpio, and Saturn ruling Aquarius, and
Jupiter ruling Pisces as well as Sagittarius.
55:44AO: Yeah.
CB: And you actually dealt with or tried
55:47to reconcile that issue in this book.
AO: I did.
55:49CB: So I was curious to talk to you about
that. How do you reconcile that issue?
55:53AO: Okay, first, I want to tell you a little story
because old people tell stories. I’m going to tell
56:00you a little story.
CB: All right.
56:02AO: I was 26-years-old, or 27 at most, and I
met a 75-year-old swami from Madras named Rama
56:14Thirtha. I don’t remember where I met him, but
I invited him to our home in New York--I had met
56:20him some place outside of New York at this
conference--and he came and he stayed with
56:24us for a couple of weeks. During that time,
Swami-ji asked me to read his horoscope,
56:30and I knew nothing about Vendantic astrology.
And so, I said to him, “Sir, at home, in India,
56:39you would be a Leo, and I have your horoscope
as you being a Virgo, and I really don’t know
56:46how to reconcile those two.”
CB: It’s the difference
56:49between the tropical and sidereal zodiac?
AO: Yes, sir. 23 degrees, currently. And
56:55he looked at me with a smile, and he said, “My
son, the universe is all the same for us all,
57:02we just look at it through different lenses.
Now how sharply is your lens focused?” And
57:10that gave me an enormous relief. It gave me two
things. It gave me the inspiration to sharpen
57:18my own lens and to make sure that I had a lens
that was individually focused but connected to
57:24universal principles and that I would be true to
that lens. So then I kept going in that direction
57:32to create and to synthesize from various
aspects of astrology, facets of astrology,
57:41my own approach to the delineation of the man.
I use both the traditional rulers and the ‘new’
57:52rulers: i.e., Neptune/Jupiter, Pluto/Mars,
and Saturn and Uranus for Pisces, Scorpio,
58:04Aquarius, respectively. And it’s
just the way you apply them.
58:09CB: You realize that’s kind of a weird
approach. By 2000, it seemed like most of
58:15your contemporaries had jettisoned the traditional
rulership scheme and everyone was just using the
58:19modern rulers. So that did set you a little
bit apart, right, or was that not the case?
58:23AO: Yes, but Mars is the shooting of the
gun--bang, bang, you’re dead. Pluto is
58:32what happens after you die. So when you have
Mars and Pluto in relationship to Scorpio,
58:40you have this entry into create destruction
because that’s what Scorpio has to do, even
58:48when it’s coming from--I’m Scorpio rising myself.
Even when it comes from even its highest nature,
58:52it’s going to go in there and smash the status
quo, leaving a space. Mars always creates space,
58:59leaving a space for something higher and more
refined to come through, or if it’s negative,
59:04leaving something sinister to come through. So
you’re going to smash the status quo, right? Okay.
59:11Then you have a process of transformation which
is not martial at all. Martial has no patience
59:17for a process. No patience for process, but Pluto
is the process of transformation. So by taking
59:26that approach just to Scorpio, I can see Mars
as the ruler of Scorpio in more immanent things,
59:33more personality-centered things, and Pluto as
a larger and longer process of transformation.
59:40So that would be just a hint, if you will,
of my approach to using the traditional and
59:50the new rulerships relative to a sign.
CB: Sure. So you pay attention to and
59:58you actually provide delineations
for both when looking at each one.
01:00:02AO: Yes.
CB: So you have one delineation
01:00:03for looking at the ruler of your Scorpio-ruled
sign, if you have Scorpio rising, paying attention
01:00:10to where Mars is placed. And then you have a
separate delineation for looking at if you have
01:00:14Scorpio rising where Pluto is placed in the chart.
AO: Yes, I do. And we have to remember levels of
01:00:20consciousness. To a person who functions
from the solar plexus downward, Pluto is
01:00:25going to represent the will of the personality to
transform whatever is in the life for the purposes
01:00:33of personality. But if we’re functioning
from the level of the heart center upward,
01:00:37Pluto is going to represent the will of the
soul. And the will of the soul is, no matter
01:00:43what destruction has to be done, the purpose is
to create greater love and greater awareness.
01:00:47And Pluto is a painful process even at its
nicest. Something has to be sacrificed.
01:00:55That’s what the will is about. It’s the will to
sacrifice. If I can get a big Christian here,
01:01:02and why not, God so loved humanity that
He gave to humanity his only begotten Son,
01:01:08and the Son manifested love through
the sacrifice of divinity. I mean,
01:01:14to me, that’s a Pluto principle.
CB: Okay. Brilliant. And that actually leads us,
01:01:21or it could lead us to, if you’d like to, one of
my favorite treatments that you have in Complete
01:01:26Astrology. I don’t know if this was unique
or if you had gotten it from somewhere else,
01:01:29but just your treatment of the symbolism of the
planetary glyphs always stuck with me. I always
01:01:36found very interesting and compelling the way
that you broke down the fundamental symbolism
01:01:42or symbolic meaning of the planetary glyphs.
Was that something you had developed,
01:01:45or you had gotten that from an earlier source?
AO: Oh, I had studied symbolism as indicated by
01:01:52the Rosicrucians, as indicated by that marvelous
book by Manley P. Hall, his encyclopedia of
01:01:59esotericism. I forgot the original name. I had
studied Qabbalah. I had studied tarot. I had
01:02:08studied--oh, my goodness. I’m a student, you know,
so I spent years and years studying symbolism and
01:02:17then was able to synthesize those studies and
apply it to the symbolic language of astrology,
01:02:24and hence, my interpretations.
CB: Okay.
01:02:27AO: Look, my friend. I’m a very 9th house
person in so far as I’m connected to lineages.
01:02:34CB: Sure.
AO: My ruling planet is in the 9th house, my North
01:02:39Node is in the 9th house, my Jupiter is in the 9th
house, and they all connect to my Sun. So I’m very
01:02:46connected to lineages and putting forth lineages.
CB: Sure. So definitely it would be hard to
01:02:54distinguish because you were drawing on
all of these sources. There would have been
01:02:59a lot of things that would have
influenced your views, especially
01:03:01when it comes to interpreting symbolism.
AO: Yes. I mean, there’s no doubt that
01:03:06Oken has an ego. There’s no doubt to that at all.
But my ego is not for me to be the prime genitor
01:03:15of astrology. It is to be a student of an ancient
science, and in some way, contribute to the world.
01:03:21CB: Sure. So if we could just maybe run through
a little bit of that, just because I think it’s
01:03:28an interesting treatment.
AO: Sure.
01:03:29CB: You break down the planetary glyphs
into, I think, two or three core pieces,
01:03:34and then say that every glyph is a rearrangement
of one of those two or three core pieces,
01:03:41and that provides the symbolism for what the
planet is actually supposed to mean in astrology.
01:03:46AO: Absolutely. So we have the cross which
is Earth and manifestation and personality.
01:03:54I mean the Passion of Jesus is the redemption
of personality and the fusion up into the soul
01:04:03where one becomes an initiate and merges with
the Father, in terms of merging with Spirit via
01:04:11soul. I am the way, and through Me, we get to
the Father’s house. So the cross of matter is
01:04:17the field through which this drama takes place.
And then you have the semi-circle which indicates,
01:04:26if I put it this way, facing upward, a reception
to the incoming energies of Spirit. And if I take
01:04:35the semi-circle this way, it’s going down through
what we call in the teachings, the antahkarana,
01:04:42or the Rainbow Bridge, the link between the higher
self, the soul, and the personalities. So now the
01:04:48soul is pouring itself into the personality.
And then the final one is the circle which is
01:04:54the all and everything, Spirit. So the Sun, it’s
the dot within the circle, the manifesting one
01:05:02atom of solar energy known as you or me.
CB: Okay. Brilliant. So for example,
01:05:10there’s several glyphs that incorporate
the cross into them. The two contrasts
01:05:19that’s actually really nice that you talk
about in the book is Jupiter versus Saturn,
01:05:24both of which have a cross in their glyphs, right?
AO: Yes. So here you have Jupiter with the
01:05:30semi-circle of the soul above matter,
and then in Saturn, you have the cross of
01:05:35matter above the soul. In other words, when
Saturn is used incorrectly, the orientation
01:05:43is to have power. There we go--there’s
Jupiter. All right, so we’ll take Jupiter.
01:05:49Here you have the energy of light, the energy
of love, the soul, manifesting over the
01:05:57Earth. So you have love infusing into matter.
CB: Okay. Because the semi-circle is in the top
01:06:05part of the Jupiter glyph...
AO: That’s right.
01:06:07CB: ...it represents the soul being above
or elevated above matter, which is matter
01:06:12being the cross..
AO: That’s right.
01:06:13CB: With Saturn, it’s literally almost
the reverse, exact reverse glyph where
01:06:19the cross is...
AO: I’m sorry.
01:06:21CB: ...elevated above.
AO: I’m so sorry.
01:06:22CB: No, go ahead.
AO: Yes. Well, the illusion
01:06:26of Capricorn is the illusion of power. It’s
the illusion of Trump. It’s the illusion of
01:06:32anyone that puts matter above Spirit. They get
limited. Eventually, they get limited. They come
01:06:38across kronos, which is the Greek word for time,
and it’s also the Greek word for Saturn, Kronos.
01:06:45They get in touch with Kronos and they die. They
expire. Poof! There goes their power. So in this
01:06:55sense, Saturn, to me, stands as a warning.
CB: Okay. Interesting.
01:06:59AO: I like Saturn. One of my first embodied
teachers was a man named Isidore Friedman.
01:07:13He came into my life when I was in my mid-20s
and he was in his mid-70s. He was a Capricorn,
01:07:19and he looked at this wild Aries guy
and he said, “Alan, structure, order,
01:07:26process, and form. You have to learn those.”
Well, I didn’t like Isidore very much. I was an
01:07:32Aries. To heck with structure. Who had patience
for form? I mean, let’s just go! You know,
01:07:39Aries from New York. But I loved him, and I
realized--that little bit of me that was awake at
01:07:46that time--that he was telling me the truth. And
so, now, in almost all my teachings, almost all my
01:07:53situations with my students, I teach them process,
order, structure, and form. Thank you, Isidore.
01:07:59CB: Brilliant. There’s a similar
symbolism in terms of the reverse
01:08:05of the Venus and Mars glyphs, right?
AO: Absolutely. Here, in Venus, you have the
01:08:12circle. Yeah, there you go. On Venus, you have
the circle of Spirit over the cross of matter,
01:08:19and in Mars, you have the cross of matter over
Spirit. Hence, the king carrying the orb with
01:08:26the cross on top, which is the inversion of
the King of Heaven. It’s the King of Earth.
01:08:32Now when the King of Earth tries to impersonate
the King of Heaven--or the Queen of Earth
01:08:38trying to impersonate the Queen of Heaven,
however you want to phrase it--there’s chaos
01:08:42in the world and there’s war.
CB: Okay. Brilliant. Finally,
01:08:49I guess Mercury combines a lot of those, or
several of those pieces all into one glyph.
01:08:54AO: Yes, it does because Mercury is the midway
point. In esoteric astrology, Mercury occupies
01:09:01a very major position as Lord of the 4th Ray, but
I don’t want to get into that. We don’t have time
01:09:07and it’s too huge a subject.
CB: Sure.
01:09:09AO: But Mercury is the midway because Mercury
rules Mind, and Mind stands in between soul
01:09:15and personality. I’m not talking about lower
mind. I’m talking about the functions of higher
01:09:20Mind as higher Mind relates to lower mind.
When we have a link between higher Mind and
01:09:26lower mind, when that link is consistent, we
are opening the door between soul/personality
01:09:33fusion. Mercury helps to do that.
CB: Okay. Brilliant. Yeah,
01:09:39so this is a whole treatment that you have
when you get to the planets, and that’s one
01:09:42of the things that you start with in introducing
the planets in Alan Oken’s Complete Astrology.
01:09:47AO: And in Soul-Centered Astrology.
CB: Okay, let’s mention that quickly
01:09:52because one of your other major book that you
published in 1990 was Soul-Centered Astrology.
01:09:59You mentioned Alice Bailey published a work on
astrology, and she introduced in that book a
01:10:05radically different approach to astrology compared
to traditional astrology up to that point.
01:10:11AO: Yes.
CB: I never
01:10:14saw after the publication of that book--I
think she published in the 1930s or 1940s...
01:10:18AO: 1930s, yeah.
CB: It didn’t seem like it
01:10:22took off or caught on. But you’re one of the only
major astrologers that continued that lineage,
01:10:29or really tried to write a major work as
an exposition of that approach, right?
01:10:35AO: Well, I consider the Tibetan master
who wrote that book to be my teacher,
01:10:40and he said in the book, I am looking for a
group of astrologers--and I’m paraphrasing.
01:10:48I’m looking for a group of astrologers who
will--now I quote--“make fair experiment
01:10:54with what I am teaching.” “And with making fair
experiment with what I’m teaching, allow that to
01:11:01go forth into more people’s lives and what this
book is.” So I said, yes, sir. I will do that.
01:11:08That’s what I said to myself. I said, yes, sir.
Yes, I will do that. I’ll take that on as a task.
01:11:13So what I did was I took the principles
in the book, Esoteric Astrology, and I
01:11:22merged them with the principles of traditional
astrological delineation, so that in the process,
01:11:28a person could have an esoteric lens into the
life of a human being through the natal horoscope.
01:11:37Just as the master Tibetan only gave us hints
about the meaning of the first two houses from
01:11:44an esoteric point of view, I extrapolated from
that and I gave the meaning as I perceived it,
01:11:51the esoteric meaning of all the 12 houses
compared to their exoteric meanings.
01:11:56And then I tried to do the same thing with the
signs and give how signs worked on an esoteric
01:12:04level and how they work on an exoteric level.
Then I divided the exoteric level up into two,
01:12:10into people functioning from the
solar plexus downward and from
01:12:13people functioning from the heart center upward.
In that way, I was trying to present the view of
01:12:19what we could call ‘transcendental astrology’,
and by so doing, hopefully bring in the ancient
01:12:27wisdom teachings in an imminent sense into
traditional astrology. That was the purpose,
01:12:32and to serve what the master requested
of his students. So I hope I did my job.
01:12:36CB: One of the ways that Esoteric Astrology is
radically different that’s notably different is it
01:12:45has a different rulership scheme for the planetary
rulerships over the signs of the zodiac, right?
01:12:50AO: That’s true, for the most part, yes.
CB: Okay. You published that book in 1990, right?
01:12:57AO: Mm-hmm.
CB: Do you feel like it’s had as much of an impact
01:13:01as you had hoped? How do you feel looking back
on it now in retrospect? I guess that was, what,
01:13:0820 years ago now? It was 30 years ago now, sorry.
AO: Yeah, pretty much. Here’s the deal. I didn’t
01:13:16write that book to make money. I didn’t write
that book to become famous. I didn’t write that
01:13:21book so I’d be known as an esoteric astrologer.
I wrote that book out of a sense of duty and
01:13:28love to my master. And when that book was put
out, I let it go. God bless it. God bless that
01:13:37work. Whoever reads it, reads it.
The point is it’s 30 years later,
01:13:40it’s still in print. And I get letters about it
from people, so I’m absolutely delighted. Tonight,
01:13:53here in Bali, it’s Thursday. I’m going to be
giving a second of eight webinars two China on
01:14:00esoteric astrology. I have a translator. I’ve
been called by Nodoor. It’s a large astrology
01:14:08school in Beijing. They teach Western astrology,
and it’s not the first time I’m teaching for them.
01:14:14But the students wanted esoteric astrology, so now
I’m teaching esoteric astrology in China. And they
01:14:21have no books, no reference books. None of the
Blavatsky books have been translated into Chinese.
01:14:26None of the Bailey books have been translated
into Chinese. I had to write a glossary and do
01:14:32special diagrams for this group of students. It
was 52 or 55 of them, so I’m so grateful, you see.
01:14:40You go to a rock concert and there’s 20,000
people screaming and paying hundreds of dollars
01:14:44for a seat. I’m delighted people pay a
few dollars and they come, 50 of them,
01:14:49to an esoteric workshop. It’s being part of a
larger work. Just as you, my friend, are holding
01:14:57the seeds of astrology for your generation and
are doing your part to become successful, God
01:15:02bless you, but also to contribute to astrology.
So I have become successful, and I’m seeking
01:15:10more and more just to contribute.
It’s as simple as that really.
01:15:15CB: Right. Brilliant. So yeah, you published that
book in 1990. You went on to publish other works,
01:15:21other books since then, including Rulers of
the Horoscope in 2000, and I think two or
01:15:27three other books in the 2000s as well.
AO: And I haven’t had time to publish
01:15:30anymore books. I’ve been so busy teaching.
So busy teaching. So busy putting out my own
01:15:37newsletter. So busy working with clients, and
loving this part, being a mentor to students
01:15:44on a one-to-one basis. This has been a delight.
Do you know know what, Chris? I have a dozen such
01:15:51one-to-one--you can’t take too many at a time. I
have a dozen of these private students that meet
01:15:58with me, some once a month, once every two weeks.
The four most advanced of my students are Chinese,
01:16:04two of whom speak English very poorly.
I mean, it’s wonderful that this wave is
01:16:13going to China and opening up in that world, that
very materialistic world, seeds are being planted
01:16:22right now. One of the biggest contributors to
that is David Railey from Atlanta, Georgia,
01:16:29who’s the director of this school. And
that gentleman has been in Beijing now,
01:16:34I don’t know, maybe 10 years, maybe more.
My hat’s off to David Railey for the
01:16:39wonderful work he’s doing to bringing Western
astrology and Western astrologers to China,
01:16:44so I just wanted to mention that in passing.
CB: Yeah, I did a whole episode, 204. David
01:16:50actually visited me in Denver, and we did
a whole episode talking about his door,
01:16:54the Nodoor Astrology School, and his work to bring
Western astrology to China over the past decade.
01:16:59AO: I’m delighted. I’m delighted you two had
a chance to meet, and I hope you’ll personally
01:17:03get a chance to go and teach there.
CB: Yeah, definitely, one of these
01:17:06days. I’m talking about having my book
on Hellenistic astrology translated into
01:17:10Chinese at some point before too long, as well as
Japanese. That actually raises a question several
01:17:17listeners asked, and I wasn’t sure if it would
actually be a good question, but that provides
01:17:21a segway into it, if you wanted to go there.
Over the past 10 or 20 years, there’s been
01:17:26this revival of older forms of astrology from
prior to the 20th century, and some people
01:17:32were just asking how you felt about that,
or what your reaction is to that becoming
01:17:39a trendy thing over the past decade or two.
AO: I work with lineages. Hellenistic astrology
01:17:48is part of a lineage, and these ancient forms of
astrology are part of the lineage. I’m delighted
01:17:58that they have resurrected. Now will I study
those books? No. Why? I don’t have time. And also,
01:18:13that wonderful, Hindu rishi told me so
many years ago to polish my own lens.
01:18:22I’m 75, and my lens is pretty polished.
It’s still a work in progress. But to go
01:18:30and study Hellenistic astrology, with all
do respect--or Roman astrology, or Arabic
01:18:36astrology--at this stage of life, I don’t have
the time for it, but I certainly support the
01:18:43effort of showing the roots of our ancient
science. I certainly support those efforts.
01:18:49CB: Sure. It seems like people developed their
studies at some point in the first decade or
01:18:55two of studying astrology. They put together
their own synthesis and their own system of the
01:19:01sources that they draw on, and then they spend
the rest of their career refining that system.
01:19:06And it’s very rare that somebody just radically
drops whatever approach they’ve been refining and
01:19:11developing--for as perfect as they can, for most
of their life--and drop that and walk away from it
01:19:18because you’ve spent so much time refining it.
I think that’s one of the commonalities in the
01:19:22astrological community. Even for somebody only
two decades into their approach, like I am,
01:19:28or into their studies of astrology, you develop
an approach relatively early on in your studies,
01:19:34and then you spend the rest of your life
trying to refine that as best you can.
01:19:37AO: Yes, but it’s not the same for my personality,
for example, because I’m learning lessons all the
01:19:44time. And so, when people say, “Alan, you better
check this out,” or when life says, “Hey, Alan,
01:19:53you’ve got a little resistance there, you need
to check this out,” I’m always open to becoming
01:19:58a better person, which is different than dropping
my astrological system to change it to another.
01:20:05CB: Sure.
AO: There is this sense
01:20:09of a work in progress, and therefore I’m not one
of those older people that refuses to change on
01:20:16a personality level. I’m open to that.
CB: Sure. One of the things I noticed
01:20:22is you actually quote some authors like
Manilius in Alan Oken’s Complete Astrology.
01:20:26AO: Yes, sir.
CB: So you did a relatively thorough literature
01:20:29review when you got into astrology.
AO: Yes.
01:20:31CB: And you have a college education, so
you knew how to do research at that point.
01:20:37And one of the reasons that your early books
stand out is they were very comprehensive in
01:20:42terms of how you tried to approach everything.
AO: I had a postgraduate, university education,
01:20:48so I was writing term papers and theses
and things like this. If I may say,
01:20:57I’m very scholarly-oriented. I love to study
and to learn. It’s always been that way. But
01:21:06when I first started writing, when I was
much younger, I had a lot more energy for
01:21:12it. And that’s why when you’re young,
you can just [vocalization] like this.
01:21:16CB: Right.
AO: And now, as I’m older,
01:21:18I need longer periods of rest in between studies.
CB: Yeah, I’m feeling that. I’m only in my
01:21:24mid-30s, but I understand that feeling now of
that exuberance of first getting into the field
01:21:30and just reading and consuming everything that
you can. But at some point, that’s slowing down
01:21:36a little bit and there’s only so much time in the
day that you can devote to study versus teaching
01:21:40or doing consultations or what have you.
AO: And then there is something wonderful
01:21:44and that is a level of magnetism which draws
you to your goal. That magnetism requires more
01:21:56and more and more one-pointedness, and
so things get eliminated automatically.
01:22:02You begin to assess what needs to be gained
and what needs to be eliminated. That you
01:22:07get intuitively and then you just have to obey.
And what happens is--and it’s a very interesting
01:22:14dynamic--the more one-pointed you get,
the more inclusive you become in terms
01:22:20of acceptance. It’s an interesting process. The
closer you are walking to your own path, the more
01:22:28accepting you are of life. It’s a nice balance.
CB: Yeah, I like that. That’s brilliant. I had
01:22:36a follow-up question there, but it escapes me
at the moment. One of the last major areas I
01:22:42was curious about is over the past decade or
two, just in my lifetime, I’ve seen a pretty
01:22:50radical change in terms of society but also
in the astrological community, in terms of
01:22:56acceptance of LGBT issues and the LGBT community.
I know that’s been part of your life. It’s not
01:23:05been a major thing that you focused your
career on necessarily. But I was curious,
01:23:10as an astrologer who came up in a different
time period compared to how things are now,
01:23:16if you’ve reflected on that, and how that
has been an experience for you in your life.
01:23:22AO: I appreciate you asking me that question,
and I take inspiration from Ram Dass in that
01:23:28respect. First of all, I’ve been married.
I have grandchildren, I have a child,
01:23:38I raised a family, but I’ve never been
bisexual. I’ve always been homosexual.
01:23:43It just so happens I married a homosexual woman.
It just so happens that we were best friends. We
01:23:53fell in love with each other and then nature
took its course. I’m being very frank with you
01:24:01and our audience. The first time I ever made
love to a woman fully, after that took place,
01:24:09I looked at her and I said, “You’ve just conceived
a male child.” And she looked at me and she said,
01:24:14“I know. I was told to come to you
and to make love with you.” I said,
01:24:19“Great. Now we have to talk about what we’re
going to do with each other about this.”
01:24:23And then we found ourselves two weeks later
at Woodstock, and I was in the entourage
01:24:30of a very famous rock group because I was a
translator and part of this large entourage.
01:24:35CB: Wait, you were at Woodstock as a translator?
AO: I was in the entourage. I was invited by
01:24:42them because I was their translator. They didn’t
need me to be a translator then but I was their
01:24:46friend. They gave me a ticket and they said,
“Come and stay at our house and be with us,”
01:24:51because I became friends with them.
CB: Wow. That’s really wild.
01:24:53AO: Yeah. They had their sound engineers and they
had their publicity agents, and they rented this
01:25:03huge mansion. They said, “Bring anybody you
like,” and so I brought Karen with me because
01:25:11she and I were lovers at the time. So I was
part of this entourage that went to Woodstock.
01:25:17So Karen said to me--we didn’t know Woodstock
was going to be ‘Woodstock’--she said, “We have
01:25:23some important things to discuss. Everybody is
going to the concert. Let’s you and I stay here
01:25:28and talk about what we want to do in life.”
And so, while everybody was at the concert,
01:25:33I promised to love and cherish this
woman and to take care of that child
01:25:39as a father, and she agreed to have the child.
And then in our group, we were the only gay people
01:25:44in our group. It was the ‘60s, for God’s sake;
everybody was sleeping with everybody else. But
01:25:48we were the only really gay people in the group,
and we were the first to get married and the first
01:25:55to have a child. How do you like that?
So then I spent those years of crazy,
01:26:02gay expression--wonderful but nuts--as a
married man, raising a child, so I wasn’t
01:26:13exposed to AIDS. I wasn’t exposed to a lot
of things, praise God. I was struggling with
01:26:22how to be married and how to have a child
and that not being my life orientation.
01:26:27CB: So you were fully open with that in terms
of yourself and your own self-recognition...
01:26:32AO: Yeah.
CB: ...but it was just
01:26:35something where because you were in a monogamous
relationship, you didn’t go outside of that?
01:26:38AO: No, I respected that. I tried my best
to convert, if you will, and so did she.
01:26:49Don’t forget, there were certain prescriptions
about being a family at that time, and trying
01:26:56to raise a family, and living within a family,
and having a heterosexual child, for God’s sake.
01:27:02It was extremely challenging because from
the time I was 7-years-old, I knew I was
01:27:11attracted on the level of the soul and men on
an emotional/physical level. And of course,
01:27:17I made friends. I was attracted to guys on the
soul too. But I knew that my primary attraction
01:27:21was to women as dear friends and to love them and
protect them, but not to make love with them and
01:27:29not to have relationships because that wasn’t
my orientation. I knew it from the time I was 7.
01:27:33It was agonizing between 7 and 16 or 17 years
because I was raised in the ‘50s in a very
01:27:45heterosexual environment. Who wasn’t, for God’s
sake? And then, after I was about 18 and 19,
01:27:56and it was the ‘60s, it was whoopie-doo,
everybody is sleeping with everybody else.
01:28:00Everybody’s experimenting with everybody else.
I went, phew, okay, now that’s become easier.
01:28:06So I accepted myself as homosexual at about 18
or 19 years of age, and I never had a problem
01:28:14with that. Other people had the problem
with it, I never had the problem with it.
01:28:18And as I said, I was married for 10 years and
eventually we separated. It was decided by the
01:28:26three of us--me, my ex-wife, and my child--that
I would raise the child, and I raised my son on
01:28:31my own for 9 or 10 years until he met a girl
and ran off with her and started his own life.
01:28:36So I’ve had the advantage, if you please,
when you counsel people and they’re married
01:28:43and they’re having problems in marriage, or they
have children and they want to know about their
01:28:47children. I’ve been married, I’ve had children,
I have grandchildren that I’m very close with,
01:28:52so I can be a good counselor. No matter what
my sexual orientation is, my natural-born-as,
01:29:00born-this-way, sexual orientation, I have
the experience as a father and a husband
01:29:08living in a heterosexual world, so I can be a good
counselor to such people. Been there, done that.
01:29:13But the truth of the matter is, Chris, it
was not easy. I’ll just give an example that
01:29:23involves you, okay?
CB: Mm-hmm.
01:29:26AO: I remember the second time we met, and I
saw in you that you were going to become someone
01:29:36very important in the astrological community.
I saw this skinny kid who needed a good meal.
01:29:43CB: When I was 19, by the way.
AO: Yes. You had come to a lecture I had given in
01:29:50Seattle, and you came up to me after the lecture.
You were 19-years-old. You said, “Mr. Oken,
01:29:55you are one of the greatest astrologers of the
20th century.” And I looked at you and I said,
01:30:01“Young man, I’m still alive.”
CB: Right.
01:30:02AO: It was 2005 or something like that. I said,
“Are you going to come to my weekend workshop?”
01:30:10And you said, “Sir,” you were so polite, “I’m a
student and I really can’t afford it.” And I said
01:30:18to you, “Young man, anybody who thinks I was one
of the greatest astrologers of the 20th century
01:30:23deserves a scholarship to my weekend workshop,”
and I gave that to you and I’m very happy I did.
01:30:30Then we met again when you
were working at UAC conference.
01:30:35CB: ISAR conference in the summer of 2005.
AO: Oh, ISAR conference, a few years after
01:30:40that. I saw you and I said to my son--now this
is going back to this whole gay thing. I saw
01:30:47you and I said, “That young man needs some
food. There’s no doubt about it.” So I went
01:30:52up to you--excuse me, I don’t want to embarass
you because you’re very successful right now...
01:30:55CB: No, that’s fine.
AO: ...but at the time, you looked
01:30:58hungry. And so, I took a few 20s, and quietly, I
put them in your hand. And I said, “I’m investing
01:31:05in your future in some small way. All the very
best to you, Chris,” and I walked quickly away.
01:31:10The reason I walked quickly away is that I
didn’t want anyone around to think I was gay,
01:31:17coming on to you. The reason I walked quickly
away is that I didn’t want you to think that
01:31:23I was coming on to you by giving you money.
That’s the frame of reference. I couldn’t just
01:31:28stand there and have a decent conversation
with an up-and-coming astrologer without
01:31:33people looking and thinking, hmmm. That’s
what I lived under, that type of pressure.
01:31:38CB: Yeah.
AO: I came to another astrological conference
01:31:43with a man I was having a bromance with. He
was heterosexual with kids. He was my very dear
01:31:48friend. We loved each other as brothers. We had
separate rooms at the conference; I like having my
01:31:55own room. And a woman came up to me and she goes,
“How dare you bring a lover to this conference!”
01:32:03CB: Oh, wow. Once you left your
marriage, and you were a single,
01:32:14gay man in the astrological community, you had to
deal with some weird, societal things that came
01:32:18along with that within the community.
AO: Absolutely. And the thing was,
01:32:23I never had a problem with my sexuality. I
always felt that it was normal and that I was
01:32:29born this way. It was other people that had the
problem. And I can tell you, I was raised at a
01:32:35time when some of my friends were put in mental
institutions by their families. It was awful.
01:32:42I’m so glad that being human is allowed nowadays.
The point is, just to bring us up to date,
01:32:54I went through a ‘gay’ phase, but I’ve always been
homosexual. By that I mean my life has never been
01:33:02focused on the gay life, except for a very short
period of time where I experimented with it.
01:33:06My life has always been centered
on my astrology, on my education,
01:33:11on teaching, on my inner spiritual life. My
particular sexuality added a certain degree of
01:33:19sensitivity to my nature which helped me to be,
I believe, more compassionate, more accepting,
01:33:27and certainly good with arranging furniture.
So it’s always been a gift to me, this sexuality,
01:33:37but I’ve never focused politically or as an
exclusive lifestyle. This is the truth: 95-percent
01:33:47of my friends are heterosexual because 95-percent
of the world’s population is hetersexual,
01:33:52or 93-percent, whatever you want to count it.
It’s never been this big deal to me,
01:33:59you understand? It’s never been the center. But
I’m certainly happy that I was born this way.
01:34:06It has given me an extra dose of sensitivity
that I don’t think I would have had otherwise.
01:34:13And I’m very happily married to a
Balinese man. I’ve never been happier.
01:34:20I was married in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Six year, never been happier in my life.
01:34:25Beautiful. I’m very grateful. That’s my story.
CB: Brilliant. I love that. Thank you for sharing
01:34:31that. And I want to expand on the story--you
talked about our second meeting--just because
01:34:35that was an important moment for me, and I always
felt like it was a testament to your character
01:34:41and something else about you that was hard to
articulate a little and a little intangible.
01:34:46So we had met at that workshop. I was
living in Seattle for a few months,
01:34:51but I was a broke college student. I was just
scraping by and basically eating spaghetti and
01:34:58peanut butter and jelly, sort of alternating
everyday for like eight or nine months.
01:35:02By the time I showed up to this ISAR conference,
I just barely made it there. It was in Chicago,
01:35:08at some resort in the middle of nowhere. So
there were no restaurants or grocery stores
01:35:13in walking distance because ISAR has a knack for
doing their conferences in the middle of nowhere.
01:35:18I just showed up there with about $20 in my pocket
which I was somehow supposed to survive for the
01:35:24course of the next week. And I was crashing
in my friend, Nick Dagan Best’s hotel room on
01:35:31the couch or something like that and I had no
plan for how I was actually going to survive.
01:35:36I just knew I wanted to go to his astrology
conference, and I was going to basically starve
01:35:41myself to make it through the week so I could
attend some lectures and meet some of these
01:35:45famous astrologers whose books I’d been reading.
One night, I think it was after the conference
01:35:50opening, very early in the conference, I had to
spend most of my money at that point to get a
01:35:57meal or two at these expensive restaurants at the
hotel, and I was pretty much broke and looking at
01:36:02five days of not figuring out how I was going
to eat. And you just came up to and you shook
01:36:08my hand really quickly, and you passed me $40
or something and said to the effect, “I think
01:36:15that you need this,” then you walked away.
It was only years later that I told you how
01:36:23absolutely broke and destitute that I was and
wouldn’t have survived that conference probably
01:36:30without you having come up and done that for
me. So I always remembered it fondly and felt
01:36:37like I owed you for that, or at least I was
very thankful for it, and I’ve attempted to
01:36:42pass that on to other younger astrologers in
similar situations in following your example.
01:36:47AO: Thank you, sir. Thank you. But I hurried away
because I felt that we would be judged, otherwise,
01:36:56I would have stayed and talked with you.
CB: Sure.
01:36:59AO: But it’s because of my little extra
sensitivity that I could tune in on the needs of a
01:37:05young man, and as a father, help provide for him.
CB: Yeah, I was kind of mystified because I
01:37:12had no idea how you knew intuitively
that I was in that sort of situation,
01:37:18but it just saved me out of a very difficult
situation. I’m sorry you had to feel that
01:37:24way in terms of the social situation, but it was
something I was always grateful for. So thank you.
01:37:29AO: Well, you’re very welcome. And my reinvestment
in you and my deeper, real belief in you has
01:37:37paid off. Look at you. You are one of the
leading figures in contemporary astrology.
01:37:43You’re going to stay in the forefront of this
science for many years to come. If I may say,
01:37:48without being patronizing, I’m very proud of you.
CB: Thank you. Well, thanks for being one of my
01:37:54first teachers. Yeah, thanks for delving
into this part of your life and career
01:38:00with me. Although it’s not well-known and
it’s not something you’ve made a major part
01:38:06of your career or writings or anything, I
thought it was notable now, in retrospect,
01:38:11that you were one of the leading astrologers in
the late 20th and early 21st century and that
01:38:17you were a gay man during that time; during a time
when we lost many other gay men who were leading
01:38:25astrologers like Jim Lewis or Howard Sasportas.
AO: Yes, or Richard Idemon, or Buz Myers.
01:38:31CB: Right...
AO: Just to name a few.
01:38:34CB: ...during the AIDS epidemic
01:38:35in the 1980s and 1990s.
AO: Yes. And thank God I was
01:38:40married and monogamous during that period.
CB: Yeah, it’s kind of interesting how that
01:38:46happened and almost protected you in some way.
AO: Yes. And I might say, my marvelous, handsome,
01:38:55intelligent, lively, 20-year-old
grandson was just here in Bali,
01:38:59and we had a splendid time. And I did something
very foolish, I decided to climb temples in Java.
01:39:06I climbed Borobudur which is an amazing Buddhist
temple, and then I climbed Prambanan which is
01:39:11this 9th century Hindu temple. When I got back
home to Bali, I had muscle spasms for a week.
01:39:19CB: Wow.
AO: But I had to climb
01:39:23with my grandson. I had to get to the top of that
mountain. Yeah, it is still a very interesting
01:39:32and blessed life, Chris. I’m very grateful.
CB: Brilliant. Well, I’m glad you’re still
01:39:37active and you’re still healthy, and you’re still
producing hopefully new books pretty soon here.
01:39:43And you’re also doing webinars. That seems
to be one of the main things in terms of your
01:39:48intellectual output at this point in your career.
AO: Yes. Now I’m giving two series of webinars.
01:39:54One is on the four angles of the
horoscope, called The Four Gateways,
01:39:57and next Monday is the third of the fourth. This
is my second, eight-week series of webinars to
01:40:06China, and I’m just thrilled about that.
And then what I’d like to tell people is
01:40:13that I’m giving a webinar in December, the middle
of December. It’s just one session in December.
01:40:18It’s when I view 2020 and what I think is
coming up for 2020. And I advertise that
01:40:25through my newsletter and on Facebook, so I hope
some of you will attend that particular webinar.
01:40:32But webinars and Zoom and Skype have given me
the freedom to live in Bali and to have clients
01:40:40all over the world and to have students all over
the world. If it weren’t for this 21st century
01:40:46technology, I couldn’t live the way I do, and I’m
so grateful for that because this is a beautiful
01:40:54place to live, Bali. And I’m just really grateful
to be here and to be able to do this type of an
01:41:01interview because of 21st century technology.
CB: Yeah, and I’m really grateful that we were
01:41:05able to do it. You’ve been living in
Bali for quite a long time now, right?
01:41:09AO: I first came here in 1983 with my son,
who was 13 at the time. Then I opened up a
01:41:17little business and stayed from ‘83 to ‘86. I
took a little hiatus from astrology, the only
01:41:23time I’ve ever done that since ‘67, and started
exploring my other talents: designing jewelry,
01:41:29designing furniture and these kinds of things.
And then in 1986, I went back full speed into the
01:41:35Alice Bailey books and full speed into astrology,
and then I moved here, Skype in hand, computer in
01:41:42hand, Alice Bailey books in hand. I moved here in
2004, and I’ve lived here pretty much ever since.
01:41:50It was lots of going back and forth to Portugal,
but Bali is home. It’s been real home since 2008.
01:41:57CB: Right. You speak Portuguese,
and you taught at an astrology
01:42:01school in Portugal for a long time, right?
AO: For six years, I taught at the Chiron
01:42:06Center. It’s there in a very minuscule way at
this point, but when I taught there, it was the
01:42:11largest astrology school in Europe. It had 1,500
associates on a seven-year program, and I was
01:42:19in charge of the sixth year, which was esoteric
astrology. And I do speak Portuguese, so it was
01:42:26an honor and a privilege to live in Lisbon during
that time, from the ‘90s until the early 2000s.
01:42:35I’m going to Portugal in about three
weeks for three months because I have
01:42:40a great deal of heart-centeredness and
lovely friends and students in Lisbon,
01:42:46so we go back every year for three months.
CB: Wow. Have you had your books translated
01:42:52into other languages?
AO: Yes, in Portuguese,
01:42:55Norwegian. I’m sitting in front with a
book here translated into Czechoslovakian,
01:43:02if you please. My monitor is sitting on top
of it. Italian, oh, a number of languages.
01:43:13CB: Because that’s an issue I’m getting
into right now, translating my book into
01:43:18other languages and some of the issues
that come along with that. But I guess
01:43:22you had the advantage of being able to oversee
some of your translations, since you know some
01:43:26of those languages. Although you probably didn’t
necessarily do the translations yourself, right?
01:43:30AO: No, I never did them, but they’ve been
translated into languages I don’t speak like
01:43:35Dutch and Czechoslovakian. I think one was
translated into Hindi. And you don’t get
01:43:43supervision over those. Sometimes I’ve found
that there were translations of my books out
01:43:50that I had no knowledge of, never mind no
income from. So it’s dicey, it’s very dicey.
01:43:58And this is one reason why, in the future, I want
to publish my own books, so that people deal with
01:44:04me directly about the translation rights. That’s
pretty important. Yeah, that’s pretty important.
01:44:15CB: Yeah, that makes sense. What is your
website, and where can people find out
01:44:18more information about your work?
AO: Sure. Very simple: AlanOken.com.
01:44:22CB: Okay, I like that. That keeps it simple.
AO: Simple. And I put out a free newsletter
01:44:29every month, usually every month unless I’m
overworked. I’d say about 10 times a year,
01:44:37I put out a newsletter and it’s free. Yeah,
anybody who wants to sign up for my newsletter,
01:44:44please go to AlanOken.com.
CB: Cool. And that’s where
01:44:49they’ll find announcements about upcoming
webinars and other things like that?
01:44:52AO: Absolutely, all of that.
CB: Brilliant. All right, well,
01:44:56people should check that out at AlanOken.com. And
I guess that’s it for this discussion. Thanks a
01:45:01lot for joining me today. I really appreciate it.
AO: Pleasure. All the best to you, my friend.
01:45:05CB: All right, well, thanks everyone for
listening or watching this episode of The
01:45:09Astrology Podcast, and we’ll see you next time.
Thanks to our patrons who help to support the
01:45:14production of this episode through our page on
Patreon.com. In particular, I’d like to give a
01:45:19shout-out to our patrons, Christine Stone and Nate
Craddock, as well as the Astro Gold astrology app
01:45:25available at AstroGold.io, and the Portland
School of Astrology at PortlandAstrology.org.
🎥 Related Videos
![Welp, Here's what the Fed *Just* Said [Fed FOMC Minutes]](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2Fl8u23oq1E9E%2Fhqdefault.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
🔥 Recently Summarized Examples
4 Steps to Master Any Complex Skill (quickly)
40 Years of Fitness Experience in Less Than 11 Minutes.
Gun Controlling Media Makes FATAL Mistake... They Have Tied Their Fate To Biden's & Gun Rights Win
GET READY! Palantir Is Officially The Next Nvidia.
Abundant Thinking: The Hidden Key to Get Everything You Want (Audiobook)