Astrology library progress report
– No. 31: 26th March, 2016
As anticipated, no further books have been received in the past week.
However, I have completed and posted a long-awaited article on the first printed sources for the astrological sign rulership of Pluto, found here. Typically enough for Pluto, this seems to be a popular subject, the social counter already having notched up over 200 views from Facebook.
This said, I’ve also been given some helpful critical feedback, and one criticism that stands out as worthy of particular attention is the fact that the article only spans sources up to and including the end of 1931. The debate on the sign rulership of Pluto, it has been suggested to me, would be better represented by sources at least up to 1935. This is a fair observation, but I had already indicated my intention to eventually work on a follow-up article covering later references to Pluto (i.e. from the start of 1932 onwards) in the text of the article itself. I have many sources already identified towards this end, but there are still a good many relevant ones from this period (especially ones in German) that remain to be acquired. It may therefore be sensible to hold back the follow-up article until a considerably later point in time, even if that is a matter of years.
In the meantime, I hope to have definitively demonstrated that Fritz Brunhübner did not initiate the astrological tradition that Pluto rules Scorpio (his first article to that effect is found in Zenit, May 1932, which is after the timeframe of all the sources in my first article). Both Ellic Howe and James Herschel Holden ran with the idea that Brunhübner’s piece in Zenit that month was the prototype formulation for astrological Pluto, but I think my investigation has completely torn up this notion, exposing it for the weakness of historical depth of its underlying research.
I have no new articles planned for the time being, and many practical matters to attend to. The absence of any offers of funding for my work through Astrolearn to date, combined with slow sales of DVDs and CDs, is unfortunately obliging me to reassess my priorities to the goal of attaining an income in the coming while. In total, just two purchases, totalling three DVDs between them, have been made in the past four months. As a result, Astrolearn may have to be put on a temporary hobby footing until such time as an institution deems my library and associated research and digital scanning projects worthy of economic support. Man cannot live on the word alone, but needs bread.
Meanwhile, there remains a serious backlog of important recent academic book titles to catch up with in order to bring the library up to date in that respect. The only way for me to fund this in the absence of DVD and CD sales or other economic support is going to be to seek alternative employment.
With best wishes to everyone, and a very happy Easter to those who celebrate it at this time of year,
Philip
Leave a Reply