by Pam Crane
I wish to salute Zach Matthews, who edited the Astrological Journal of the AAGB for so many years and gave so many of us our first chance to share our ideas with the rest of the astrological world. It was Zach who established the AAJ among the most respected astrological periodicals in the world, and encouraged us all to set the highest standards in our study and practice. He was born 12/01/1914, 05h30, Poole, UK.
I last saw Zach at Cirencester a few years back. He had been having health problems, and his rangy frame was looking somewhat gaunt, but to my delight he greeted me with all his old spirit, warmth and humour. Living almost at opposite ends of the country as we did, and with my forays out of Kent becoming less frequent, I was conscious this might be our last joyous reunion. Sadly so it was. A sense of climax filled this year's progressed and converse patterns for Zach, with their approaching Full Moons; both tropical and sidereal Solar Returns had Uranus angular, signalling major change, and the former also said many farewells with its setting South Node and Moon. His third Saturn Return was in progress, in solemn partnership with Pluto transiting his Ascendant; and the New Moon the day before his birthday also put Pluto on the horizon, twice - the second time being at his birth-time that day, in the Quotidian or 'Q' chart. His spirit would burst its chains.
Ours was a long, quirky and very Capricornian friendship! You may remember that Zach often wrote his pieces under the soubriquet of 'Sagicorn', and here was the key to all the years from 1975 onward when, already a regular contributor, I worked on the AA Journal as Zach's Assistant Editor. He never made any secret of his birth-data and neither do I; indeed you may enjoy some of the synastry between 12/01/1914, 05h30, Poole and 19/01/1943, 22h18 BST, Birmingham. Strong Capricorn-Cancer axes and Mercury-Saturn trines drew our two picky, independent and often dogmatic minds together - but it was Sag and Aquarius that whisked us off on many an astrological adventure.
I remember with particular pleasure and gratitude Zach's and Liz's invitation to visit them in Dorset (Langton Matravers! ... where friends and I spent a night in the Church hall in 1961 when the Youth Hostel was closed!) and we spent many happy hours driving around glorious countryside arguing like mad about religion and this upstart notion of Draconic Astrology. This was Zach's gift: he was characteristically unwilling to budge from his own view-point, his own philosophical framework, because for him they were so familiar, so right, that they had to be right; yet this saturnine conservatism was wonderfully offset by a restless curiosity, a deeply enquiring mind, a profound and refreshing humour that made any conceptual challenge welcome. Thus he filled the pages of each quarterly Journal with the quality and range of adventurous thinking that ensured the world-wide reputation it still enjoys today; and thus he won the undying affection of all of us who shared our thoughts with him.
Dear Zach -- dear Uranian soul! Perhaps now, from your altered perspective, your Saturn boundaries shed, you may acknowledge the Draconic Aquarius Sun/Jupiter with which you were born and its visionary conjunction with Tropical Uranus! Perhaps now you may recognise the high ideals and standards set by that full Draconic Leo Moon with Neptune? Perhaps now you accept the driving power of the Galaxy's heart in everything you stood for, everything you professionally undertook, where it touched your Helio Mercury, Draconic Ascendant and Sidereal Sun in 25, 26 and 27 Sagittarius? With all these energies, and that feisty Mercury/Mars stirring Tropical Jupiter from the Draconic, what else could you have been but a committed ambassador for the Ancient Wisdom?.. and the most generous friend.
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