In conversation: Shelley von Strunckel and Frank C. Clifford
In conversation: Shelley von Strunckel and Frank C. Clifford
you can learn. And I had some wonderful
private tuition.
VO: My personal opinion is that
astrology is run a little too much by
scholars. And this can lead to dogmatism
about how astrology should be taught
and practised. The reaction to that piece
[professionalisation] - I’ve had some
private, sometimes rude, messages from
Dennis Elwell advocates. Yet I greatly
admire Dennis Elwell’s work.
SvS: But he’s the one who said that the
likes of me – who are doing media Sunsign astrology – should probably stop
breathing.
Shelley is astrologer to the Sunday Times
FC: But I think Dennis’s issue was with
astrologers ‘trivialising’ it in thirty words.
That was his bone of contention rather
than Sun-sign astrology or solar charts.
forth. I literally began piecing the subject
together on my own that afternoon. And
a year later I got into palmistry and that
completely blew my mind in its own way.
SvS: Well I trivialise it in fifty-one words
[per sign] in the Evening Standard. I
trivialise it in sixty-five words in The
Sunday Times.
But my initiation was not a pleasant one.
I walked into the palmist’s home and
she said to me, “At twenty-one you’ll be
married and your partner will die”. So I
thought, “I’m going to learn this subject
to prove you wrong, because it’s got to be
done better than that”.
“The first thing I say
to students in Lesson
One is: “Don’t go
on the internet and
pick up cookbook
interpretations
because they’re going
to scare you” – Frank
VO: And I trivialise it in twenty-two
words in The Lady. In fact, the more
concise the horoscope the better, I say.
But anyway, this may sound boring, but
how did you both start out as astrologers?
FC: I went to a psychic – I was sixteen years
old at this point – and she recommended
an astrologer called Tad Mann. He was
living in London at the time, and I recall
it was August 1989 – around the Full
Moon. Do you know the sort of astrology
Tad Mann does? It’s called ‘Life Time’. )%Ё