Star Patterns
This text was first published in Alphabet Magazine, No. 4, which includes a contribution by Liliane Lijn to its Astrology section.
The science of astronomy was developed five thousand years ago by the Sumerians in Mesopotamia. The Sumerians believed that the movement of the stars and planets influenced every aspect of their lives, which led them to develop the art of astrology to be able to apply their observations of the cosmos to their lives. The original connection between astronomy and astrology has not survived into the present. I therefore found it very curious that physicists and cosmologists often name their discoveries after ancient archetypes. Contemporary cosmology backed up by electro-magnetic and gravitation data and the universal language of mathematics is the creation myth of our society.
I was born one second into Capricorn with Virgo ascending and my moon in Taurus. Luckily for me they were all earth signs, since Neptune seemed to have a great influence in my chart providing me with imagination and a visionary disposition. I was told that had I not had three earth signs, Neptune and its watery world might have led me to drugs and madness. Uranus gave me a rebellious character unsuitable for employment. Saturn slowed everything down and put obstacles in my way.
My first horoscope was cast in Athens by Haskell Wexler, who at the time may have been shooting America America with Elia Kazan. A summer in the early sixties, the ease of chance meetings in Athens, Haskell was a friendly, unassuming man, and after a conversation about birth signs, he offered to cast my horoscope. I only found out later that he was a great cinematographer.
Iris Clert had horoscopes cast for all her artists and in1960, Takis asked her to do mine. I don’t really count that one, because I never saw it myself and it said nothing about my future as an artist. Only that I had a talent for writing romantic novels and could also be a good spy. Iris was only interested in male artists.
My second horoscope was drawn by a schoolmate from the Liceo of Lugano, who visited me in London in 1968. Sergio had become a physicist, nevertheless he told me that the mathematics in astrology was interesting. He was looking at a work I had made less than a year earlier, Liquid Reflections. It was displayed in a darkened room, the two clear acrylic balls, gliding across the surface of the Perspex disc, reflected and magnified the condensed water inside it, dewdrops, light flares, shadows. ‘It’s a model of cosmic forces’ he said, absorbed in following the movement of the balls. I had been asked to send my biographical details for a catalogue and I asked him for his. It occurred to me that I could cut my biography up with his: artist scientist. Instead, he wrote down my birth date and time and told me he would send me a detailed horoscope. When it arrived, carefully typed out, it was in German. On my next visit to my mother in Florida, I asked my stepfather to translate it. He was fluent in eight languages but, a mathematician, he did not believe in the validity of horoscopes.
In 1969, on a trip to Paris, a friend recommended that I see her astrologer, who lived Rue du Dragon and to whom she had already sent my birth details. A woman with fiery red hair greeted me enthusiastically with a warm hug. I did not receive a chart but she had much to tell me, predicting my creation of significant works of art and that after an exhibition in South America, I would return to acclaim in Europe. As for love, she told me I had met my destiny. It was all very exciting but I never did go to South America.
And then there was Gary Fertig. He lived on a houseboat in Amsterdam. American, he had been a gifted professional flautist but had left the States and given up a career in music to become a hippy astrologer in ‘the city of mirth’. He came to London in December to sell his calligraphic calendars, dressed in what appeared to be carefully studied rags. He would come into our house, take off his wizard’s hat in front of the entrance hall mirror and carefully comb the remains of his straggly hair with his fingers. His predictions were uncanny. His charts, all drawn in his unique calligraphic hand, were works of art.
An Argentine artist friend had invited us to his wedding with a young and lovely model. I wondered what to give them as a present and thought of Gary. Why not ask him to examine the stars for their mutual future. Instead of sending me one of his unique charts, he came to visit. ‘ I can’t give them this chart’. He was emphatic and distressed. ‘Their marriage won’t last a year’. ‘Can’t you tell them something nice,’ I asked, thinking my special gift was about to disappear. Gary was adamant, and sadly time proved him right.
Apart from my chart, he also did charts for my three children. I remember sending him a postcard with my youngest daughter’s birth details. Stephen and I had a list of names and highest on the list were Bathsheba and Catherine, the names of queens. A few days later, Gary was in town. He walked in our door saying, ‘You had better give her the name of a queen or at least a duchess. She was born on the Day of Swords and is a triple Scorpio.’ Having done our son Mischa’s, he exclaimed ‘ It’s good he’s a boy. With eight yang signs, he would have been a very butch girl.’ When he came to my Leonard street studio in Shoreditch, I was writing the last draft of Crossing Map. ‘You are writing the end of our society’. “Don’t go too deep, he advised, ‘skim the surface’.
