David Roell: Mercury’s Maven and Maverick
My friend and colleague–one of astrology's most ingenious masters–died 8 years ago this week. Here's the tribute I wrote for him. An attempt to corral and parse the amazing lessons he taught me.
“When once you grasp that astrology is in the earth and of the earth and covers the entire earth and everything in it, when you take an abstract astrology out of the sky and put it on the earth and in the ground and make it tangible and real, you will be astounded at the sheer scope and scale and power of it. We have hardly uncovered a tenth of it. As vast and complex as astrology is, it amazes me we have learned as much as we have. Astrology is reality itself.” —David Roell, (1952-2014)
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“I’M PICTURING CAR LOADS of naked dancing girls every Monday around 10 a.m. My reward for getting the newsletter out. My mind, as you can see, races sideways.” David emailed this to me shortly after meeting his Monday morning deadline.
And I responded: “Yep—the Roell mind running sideways, zig-zag, up, down, and occasionally into the velocity of your leg that’s about to kick a hornet’s nest.”
But forget the naked dancing girls and consider the quote that opens this tribute for my Mercurial-minded friend and fellow astrologer David Roell who died—too young, at 62—eight years ago on July 27—at his home in Maryland.
I want to highlight his achievements to pique your interest and the desire to explore more of David’s kaleidoscopic command of astrology. George Harrison once remarked: “The Beatles saved the world from boredom.” And David did the same for astrology.
Roell’s earth-based theory of the zodiac, to which he refers in the opening epigram, is the cornerstone of his astrological legacy. His grand idea is carefully articulated in the forward to his reprint of George McCormack’s classic Long Range Weather Forecasting. It’s also available online, in his article The Right Theory of Astrology, featured in his newsletter—the same newsletter that was emailed weekly to thousands of eager subscribers.
The Earth’s Aura
As students of astrology, we’re each taught that the Tropical zodiac is constructed of mathematical divisions of the ecliptic and thus not really ‘real.’ David’s assertion returned the zodiac to terra firma—from which all of the zodiac’s descriptive elements—air, fire, water, and earth are derived—a reattribution that solves many of astrology’s niggling mysteries.
“The theory that emerges is that planets interact with each other,” David wrote, “and that the net result of such interaction upon the Earth are the twelve signs of the zodiac, which do not fall from the sky, but radiate from the Earth itself. The signs of the zodiac represent the vibrations of the Earth.”
Like many of David’s theories, some outlandish or hyper-seminal, the earth-based zodiac impugned tradition. I pointed out once that Alan Leo and Dane Rudyhar proposed a similar concept: Both astrologers saw the zodiac as akin to the Earth’s aura, in which the Earth floated like a gyroscope. David was intrigued:
“Yes, that comes close,” he said, “but it’s slightly off and lacking.”
His theory, as you’ll read, was literal. He surmised that all planetary bodies contained hexahedrite at their center, a six-sided crystalline form of iron, which radiated the zodiacal field outwards. He highlights this crystal component in detail in one of his final newsletters.1
Child of Mercury
With his chart ruler, Mercury, in the 9th House (conjunct the Sun and sextile Jupiter), David was, as classic markers go, an astrologer’s astrologer. (The planet Mercury—not Uranus—is associated with astrologers). Publishing and broadcasting were David’s missions. And so he wrote astrology books, revived astrology books, published astrology books and touted astrology books. He was also a wily gadfly (appropriate his Gemini ascendant) with a child's precocious, uncensored candor.
As a writer, David had a clear, congenial voice; but it was never empty of insights that could excite curiosity—or animus, whenever he’d breach politically correct protocol. Often with David, I'd move from admiration to anger within a single article (or conversation) in a heartbeat. He explained to me once the rationale for his particular style:
“I am stream-of-consciousness, have been since the age of 16 or so. I do not know any other way to be, which means I have no memory unless contextual. I regret that failing to find peers, I have become more interested in me than I am in anyone or anything, which means the people who appear in my life are by default more interested in me than I am in them.”
He applied this same skill to reading horoscopes:
“Always, always, go with your hunches,” he advised. “If you stop to think about it, your brain will get in the way and kill it because that’s what brains do. Kill things.”
He continued:
“Imagine if your hunch was right. What would that mean? In other words, what’s the next hunch? And the one after that? Spin out a story, make up a fantasy, see where it goes. And when you have done that, stand back and look at the chart as a whole. Does it make sense? Does it tell you new and surprising things? Could it (gasp!) be right?”
His was the speed reading school of chart interpretation:
“Try to delineate a chart in five minutes. In sixty seconds. Speed will make your mind work. You will be right more often than you think, but even if you’re not, you can always, as they say, sin in haste and repent at leisure.”
David’s manner of reading a horoscope was reckless and opposite to my present approach to astrology. But still, I eagerly awaited his Monday morning newsletters. I delighted in David’s manner of remaking a chart to fit what he considered the truth—versus the consensus perception of a public figure.