Cyril Fagan

Irish-American civil servant 1921, retired 1956. He was almost totally deaf from the age of seven, and spent his working life as a grade-three civil servant - no more than a glorified filing clerk. Fagan was a siderealist astrologer, a discipline he adopted after some 30 years of using the tropical zodiac. A researcher, historian and a pioneer in his field, he was a prolific writer for magazines. He was a Theosophist who evolved into a Buddhist. Bored with the day-job, his sharp intellect found stimulation in his studies of ancient astronomy, mathematics, languages and modern astrology. Fagan was in dialogue with experts in these fields working in the British Museum and elsewhere. Being deaf, he didn't have to listen to anyone else; however, his handicap led to the habit of speaking very loudly in order to be heard, so he tended to dominate conversations. Fagan started up the first Irish astrological society, for which W.B. Yeats was Chairman. Fagan also helped Yeats with his astrology, especially in the 1920s. They were friends (and both tropicalists). He liked pink champagne and whisky, made excruciating puns and had a risqué sense of humor. When he retired, he moved to Tangier (an odd choice for a 60-year old Irish civil servant from repressed Catholic Ireland), which was an International Zone at the time, with very lax laws. It was therefore full of reprobates, aristocrats manqué and sexual adventurers of all persuasions, Beat poets and their entourages, smugglers, and probably pirates. There, presumably fascinated by what he was observing, he speculated on the astrology of homosexuality, pedophilia, incest, sado-masochism, sex addiction, sex crimes, and so on. He began sending copy for his 'Solunars' column in American Astrology about the astrology of sexuality, still a relatively taboo subject, but certainly so in the 1950s and 1960s. He contributed a column to American Astrology every month from 1953 to the time of his death. His wife, Pauline, called him "Cyrilly." They moved to Arizona in 1966, and Mrs. Fagan has been quoted, that he had been treated badly there by astrologers who regarded him with petty jealousy. He had a good relationship with Joanne Clancy, then editor of AA. Fagan himself wrote from Tucson on 4/01/1966 (published posthumously in The Siderealist), "Things here are as dull as dull can be. Often I wish myself back in North Africa, where I was Morocco bound. The people here are god-fearing, simple and church-going folk, despite their immense advance in science. Why are they so lop-sided? They are not real people. They seem to have walked out of the pages of Victorian fiction." He stated that it was on 2/17/1944, that he finally accepted the Sidereal Zodiac and within a week 'invented' the Sidereal Lunar Return. On 4/30/1944, he finally accepted the Sidereal Solar Return and made these discoveries public in a series of articles entitled "Incidents and Accidents of Astrology' which ran in the A.F.A. Bulletin in 1947. Fagan died on 1/05/1970, between 3:00 and 5:00 AM, Tucson, AZ, having had a stroke the year prior. He had taken a fall and cut his head but seemed to be recovering when his weak heart failed. He was definitely a major 20th century character in the field of astrology, and has stirred up a lot of argument and debate, which proved fruitful. Link to Wikipedia biography