Richard Idemon lived to the age of 49, from 1938 to 1987. He died of AIDS. He was the principal teacher of Donna Cunningham, when they were both in New York in the 1970's. He subsequently moved to San Francisco, where excessive use of amyl and/or butyl nitrate most likely killed him, as it killed a lot of men at about that time. (Use of those two drugs has since been sharply curtailed.) While in San Francisco he studied Jung, which, one way or another, brought him to the attention of Liz Greene's Centre for Psychological Astrology, in London. There are two books attributed to him, both originally published by Samuel Weiser, in Maine, both consisting of lectures transcribed posthumously. This one, Through the Looking Glass, was edited by Howard Sasportas, who himself died in 1992, aged 44. The other is The Magic Thread. Both of these have now been reprinted by Margaret Cahill at Wessex Astrologer, in Bournemouth, UK. Margaret thinks like I think: A bookstore is just a bookstore, but a bookstore that also publishes is a lot better, in good times & bad. And as it's bad times at the moment, Margaret is eagerly printing books that she likes. As am I. I think we are fortunate that two stores, one in England, one in the US, have both figured this out, and that they have such very different tastes in the many books they print. Makes for better selection. But I digress.
Books like this are strange to me. On the back it says, In this book, Richard Idemon teaches us how to look at the natal chart to gain rich, new insights into our deepest nature so that we can gain greater understanding of our 'personal mythology' - the hidden agendas, childhood patterns, and the belief systems . . . & etc. (A poorly constructed sentence, by the way.)
We open the book & find it to be about relationships. Which, for most of us, is about whatever we can get away with without overmuch troubling ourselves. So let's start at the beginning, with Part 1, Your Personal Mythology.
The first sentence in the first paragraph of the first chapter of the book declares, My main topic today is the parent-child relationship. . . but then immediately starts to wander. In part this is because this is a transcription of a lecture & the speaker felt like wandering. In the first ten lines he wanders to Einstein, and then to Newton & apples, and then, a few lines further, back to Einstein. On the second page he brings up myth. Bottom of the second page, what people would think of Joan of Arc if she were alive today (a kook, clearly, but remember that Joan was an enemy of the English). Top of the third page, an old friend snubs another by accident. All of which, by the bottom of the page, are examples of mythology & mythologizing. "Mythologizing" the Free Dictionary (on-line) defines as constructing myths, or interpreting or writing about myths. Since that wasn't very clear, I looked up the word myth itself to find it was, 1. A traditional, typically ancient story dealing with supernatural beings, or, 2. A popular belief or story, or, 3. A fiction or half-truth, or, 4. A fictitious story, person, or thing. I see that these definitions are of two sorts: One refers to generally accepted beliefs, the other relates to privately invented lies, for lack of a better word. So I would deduce that if we apply privately imagined fictions to our personal selves, the result would be delusion. No? Where did I go wrong, then?
But we're still in the first chapter & we're still attempting to construct Our Own Personal Mythology, because that's the title of the chapter we're reading. Bottom of the third page of text (which is numbered 5), Richard says, The point I am making is that every person carries around their own system of myths, and that every person's reality is founded and based on their mythical system. In Sociology, which Richard didn't study (I only studied a little, and long ago), there are names for this, and they're not so hot. Idemon then says that you can't discover one's individual myth from the natal chart. Which is pretty much a cliff-hanger, since we're Astrologers & we study charts, so I presume he's going to resolve this.
But first Richard defines myth. There are collective myths, like that of Adam & Eve, or Jason & the Argonauts. There are social myths, which is to say, my school is better than your school (Richard flubs it slightly), and then there are family myths. Which I suppose explains families that feud with each other (Hatfields & McCoys, etc.): Competing mythologies that got out of control. Idemon says the combination of collective, social & family myths are your very own personal myths. Which makes Richard an only child, methinks. I have four brothers & four sisters & we sure as heck don't all have the same personal myths, and, yes, I'll spare you my details if you'll spare me yours.
Still in the first chapter, Richard goes for the astrology. Richard says that a woman with Sun conjunct Mars conjunct Jupiter in Aries in the first house will have one sort of life if she was born in America, and a very different sort of life if she was born in a Chinese commune, where, according to Richard, she would be a peasant. I know something about this, as I have Jupiter in Aries, but Mars in Scorpio. In the year of my birth, by the time Mars got to Aries, Jupiter was in Taurus. Which makes a Sun-Mars-Jupiter conjunction in Aries a rare event. Just how rare? It wasn't 1916. It wasn't 1928. It wasn't 1940. It wasn't 1952. It wasn't 1963. It wasn't 1976. It wasn't 1987, the year of Richard Idemon's passing. It wasn't 1999. It wasn't 2010. Which is as far as I have printed ephemerides handy.
It was 1904, March 27th. (Were there communes before Mao & the Communists?) Jupiter & the Sun conjuncted at 6 Aries, while Mars was at 22 Aries. Hey! Close is for horseshoes. Aren't you glad that Mr. Idemon used an example from real life? If the lecture in this book dates from, say, 1985 (it's not dated, and the book was first published in 1992, posthumously), that woman was by then 81 years old. If she was, in fact, Chinese, she had quite an eventful life. (Makes me wanna read Pearl Buck's The Good Earth, but I digress.)
Idemon is by this time slowly settling down to business. On page 9 he tells us of a chat he once had with his brother, about their mother, and how the two of them saw her in a completely different light. Which he explains as two contrasting mythical views. Which means that not only was Richard not an only child, but that his theory, that one's personal myth is based on factors larger than oneself, is contradicted by his own experience, because if two brothers cannot agree on the mythical conception of their own mother, then what myth can they agree on? Remember: It's a myth if more than one person believes it. It's a private opinion if it's only you. Which I think is a good guideline.
I regret this is about as far as I want to go in this book. It's a ramble. If you like rambles, then this is for you. Most people are better speakers than writers, so that when they pass away, they are immediately lost. My apologies to Donna.
Wessex Astrologer, 284 pages.
