Karon Meakin began studying astrology at the hairdressers, from a copy of Woman’s Own, some time around 1966. The article was compelling enough to counteract the effects of one of those hairdryers modelled on the brain vaporiser in Flash Gordon. She survived with only moderate impairment and within a few years was able to recognise the virtues of Jeff Mayo. She also got books about psychology and graphology. The psychology said nothing at all about how people tick, it required you learn the Latin for eyeball, so you would eventually be allowed to pick up a rat. Graphology seemed a great guide to human character. Astrology also seemed a great guide to human character; what raised it higher was the underlying implication that the world was built on magic. Study astrology and it might eventually reveal evidence of the human place in the divine. Maybe it was the residual damage talking but it beat rodent handling.

Reality interrupted the Magic, until some years later, when life was not proceeding as promised in the brochure, she went for a chart reading. It triggered several years of gobbling up books, interrupted only by sliding off the settee snoring at 1 am. During this phase she discovered that the reading had barely scratched the surface and it was called your first Saturn Return. Groups, clients, teaching, organising workshops, electing charts for healing, study of meeting charts, and research into the exaltation degrees followed. Three quarters of the way around her second Saturn cycle she gave up most things and bolted the doors, in order to sieve enough data for her own book. It was published at the second Saturn return, an altogether more pleasant experience than the first, proving the theory that if you understand and adapt it is not essential to remain a helpless victim. She is now copy editing Doctor Lester Ness' English translation of Bouche-Leclercq's L'Astrologie Grecque, prior to publishing it.

Karon worked in graphics, back when they used actual paint and has spent two decades working with autism. She has been married since 1976, this idea actually proved much more interesting than advertised in the brochure. Hidden from view, each half has fostered growth in the other, until both reached unexpected territory, which neither would have found alone. Despite the odd lively domestic discussion, usually round a Mars / Pluto, the whole is certainly more than the sum of its parts. The Mars / Pluto things, on occasion, and the trials of living with two practicing musicians are surmounted by a deep, abiding faith in Hotel Chocolat and very big cups of Blue Flower Earl Grey.