Prier Wintle

British musician and astrologer who lived for 20 years in New Zealand, then in South Africa, a regular contributor to the magazine Considerations. During the ‘50s he did horoscope readings in New Zealand and has been a consulting astrologer for many years. He makes his home in Cape Town, South Africa. From a restrictive childhood, Wintle left home as a conscientious objector to the war, and worked for 4 1⁄2 years in hospitals as an orderly or porter. He was pleased to finally get a job he liked in an orchestra. He began a tumultuous relationship with a girl that lasted for seven years through break-ups and reconciliation's until July 1960 when she left for good. He went on to make a second marriage and divorce, with a son born in 1970. His ex-wife had taken their boy to England and Wintle planned to visit him from mid-June to mid-July, 1981 but upon being blocked, decided to go to New Zealand instead for a holiday. It became a very mystical journey, with odd coincidences and meaningful occult experiences. People whom he’d lost touch with for many years turned up, or he was easily led to them, from a friend who’d introduced him to the tarot for the first time in 1955, to former Theosophical, Qabalah and Golden Dawn companions. He also met old friends whom he’d first known on tour with the NZBS Symphony Orchestra. Wintle returned from a magnificently effervescent trip to find that his orchestra contract had been extended for one more year, but by the end of 1982, he was without a job for the first time in 32 years. After leaving the orchestra, Wintle moved to Edinburgh at the end of 1983 to take a piano-tuning course. He still practiced the horn, but missed working with the orchestra, so he joined all five amateur orchestras in the city. Gradually his confidence returned, and when he returned to New Zealand in 1985 for four months, he was immediately engaged to play the single horn part in an opera in Auckland.