Arthur H. Blackwell was a brilliant American siderealist and a scholar. He was one of the founders of Astrolabe Astrology Software and worked with them from the beginning in 1979 until his final illness.

Bruce Scofield, writing in the NCGR Journal, Winter 1992-3:

"I first heard of A.H. (as many of his friends called him) long before I met him. He was a respected astrological scholar and a leader in the sidereal school of astrology. Being a siderealist--a proponent of the zodiac that is attached to the fixed stars, not the equinox--is being an outsider in a field that is already on the outside.

"So A. H. was a fringe person, subject to misunderstanding and rejection from all quarters. But he knew his stuff and not many could talk to him on his level. Without a doubt, when he died, we lost one of the best technical astrologers in the US, if not the world.

"He used and promoted (but as I understand did not totally create), an entirely original way to draw a horoscope which he called 'Polar Azimuthal Equidistant Projection." This is a map that allows an astrologer to see all coordinate frames of reference at once. The standard astrological chart shows longitude only. A.H.'s charts show the planets in longitude, latitude, right ascension, declination, azimuth, altitude, etc.

"A.H. researched some of astrology's more remote corners and wrote on topics like Chinese omen astrology, Babylonian/Egyptian astrology, and peculiarities of time changes in parts of this country.

"He amassed a collection of accurate birth charts, checked by himself, known as the Blackwell Collection. This is available on computer disk from Astrolabe, the software company of which he was part owner. He wrote the text to Astrolabe's Monthly Astro-Report, a computer program on one of his specialties, lunar returns. He contributed to the understanding and use of local space astrology by discarding Mercator maps for more usable and accurate curved maps.

"Because he never wrote a book and hated public speaking, not many people were exposed to his incredible mind. While he was always at major astrological conferences, his Aquarian ascendant gave him such an egalitarian social nature that rather than hobnobbing with the astrological elite he would hang out with the hotel staff. I'll miss his unique perspective on things. A great loss to astrology." Bruce Scofield

BIRTH AND DEATH DATA: AstroDatabank says that Arthur H. Blackwell was born November 7, 1942, at 1:17 PM EWT, in New York, NY. He died on October 24, 1992, of bone cancer in Phoenix, AZ.

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CREDITS: Biographical information for this memorial came from AstroDatabank and the NCGR Journal. The photo was given to us by Astrolabe. The background is part of a vast collection at ABC Giant. Clip art from Art Today.