Sudden Popularity: 1968-1971
In 1968 Birth Patterns for a New Humanity (later reisssued by Harper and Row under the title Astrological Timing — The Transition To The New Age) was written, typeset by Tana, and published by Servire in Holland. During this year many talks were given around Los Angeles and in the San Francisco area, bringing important connections to Rudhyar with the Bay Area, with the Esalen Institute, with Sam Bercholz, founder of the Shambala Publications in Berkeley, and with friends and associates such as Michael R. Meyer, Jose Arguelles and others. In August Rudhyar addressed the Seattle Biennial Convention of the American Federation of Astrologers, where he received a standing ovation. In Berkeley and San Francisco Rudhyar came in close contact with the generation of young people were eagerly reading his books, and made many friends.
Thanks to Sam Bercholz, Doubleday and Co., New York, agreed to publish in a paperback edition Rudhyar's first astrological treatise The Astrology of Personality. The demand for the book exceeded all expectations, more than 100,000 copies were quickly sold, literally revolutionizing the astrological world through the thousands of educated young people it brought into the field. No other event during the 20th century had such a far-reaching impact upon astrology and how it is viewed and practiced.
During 1969 Rudhyar made several trips to the San Francisco Bay Area, giving seminars in Berkeley, at the Stanford University, in Big Sur for the Esalen Institute and in Los Angeles for the Conference on Science and Religion, founded in 1957 by Leland Stewart, and of which Rudhyar was the President for one year. He gave also a series of lectures in Tucson, Arizona for the Gayatra Center, started by his friend Paul Barkley. A number of long articles were also written for several magazines, Horoscope, Astroview, Occult and Omen.
In February 1969 Rudhyar was prompted to initiate the International Committee for a Humanistic Astrology "in order to give more publicity to the possibility of approaching astrology and using birth-charts in a way different from both the fortune-telling variety, and the new and spreading ‘scientific’ endeavors to make astrology respectable and teachable in universities." In humanistic astrology Rudhyar attempted to show that there are at least two basic approaches to astrology: "Event-oriented" and "person-centered." He presented astrology "as a kind of Western yoga or psychosynthesis, and the birth-chart as a mandala, a formula of integration for the purpose of ‘making whole.‘" These ideas were developed in six booklets which were later combined into a book entitled Person-Centered Astrology.
The Humanistic Astrology Revolution
In his foreword to Person-Centered Astrology, Rudhyar states "this book came out of an initiative which I took during the evening of February 26, 1969, when I decided. to start the International Committee for Humanistic Astrology. The reason I made this move was that I strongly felt the need to state as clearly and widely as possible that astrology could be given an altogether different meaning. I sensed that today many individuals, especially in the younger generations, while fascinated by astrology, actually were asking for something that the 'scientific,' analytical approach could not given them. They were asking for a way of life in which their relationship as individuals to the universe would be given a constructive meaning. They wanted not so much to know the 'how,' as to realize in a new, cosmic way, the 'why' of their existence. They wanted to be made whole, and to discover how best to achieve this."
Rudhyar goes on to state that his aim in publicizing the humanistic approach "has been to stand against the present de-personalizing trends which augur so badly for our Western civilization, and to place the individual person at the place where it belongs in astrology, i.e., at the center of its concerns. I am concerned with persons, not with a system or a profession — persons who live and struggle toward the actualization of their fullest potential of being NOW."
The holistic, humanistic approach to astrology formulated by Rudhyar created a revolution in astrology, bringing to astrology thousands of young, educated people, and attracting the interest of credential people working in the helping professions.
In 1970 Rudhyar lectured in Tucson, San Francisco, Woodland, Carmel, Dallas. He addressed an audience of 2,000 at the American Federation of Astrologers in Miami, where he again received a standing ovation. In October he flew to New York for lectures and musical contacts; and he talked to a group in Pennsylvania and in Baltimore before returning home. During the summer in Idyllwild, he wrote We Can Begin Again—Together. In a shorter volume, Directives For New Life, some of the ideas developed in the larger work were condensed. A small booklet, A Seed was also published in San Francisco during Christmas 1971.
In 1971 Rudhyar completed The Astrological Houses and a smaller volume Astrological Themes For Meditation. During that year he also began one of his most significant and important astrological works, An Astrological Mandala — The Cycle of Transformation and Its 360 Symbolic Phases, in which he reformulates and discusses the Sabian symbols psychically produced in 1925 through Marc Jones and Elsie Wheeler. Rudhyar passed the summer in Palo Alto, talking to students of the Esalen summer school as well as giving two seminars for the Esalen Institute (in May at Mill Valley with Jose and Miriam Arguelles, on "Education for Rebirth," and in September in Berkeley on "A New Look at H. P. Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine"). He also lectured to students at the University of California in Davis.
