Craig Newman | April 2024

Hi, my name is Craig Newman. My sun and moon are in Aries and my ascendant is in Sagittarius.  I first became interested in astrology when I was around 13 or 14 years old but found it too imposing when I looked at an old book like the original 1910 “A to Z Horoscope Delineator” by Llewellyn George in the library and thought “Not yet!”.  A few years later in college I started listening to Darrell Martinie a/k/a “The Cosmic Muffin” on WBCN in Boston and I started getting hooked. 

 When I went to California after graduating and things didn’t turn out as I had hoped, I came back to Boston and decided to have an astrological reading by the only astrologer that I knew of, Darrell Martinie.  I found the reading interesting but also fatalistic in some parts.  At this point I knew little about astrology, but I did want a second opinion!

 I started to teach myself astrology by reading books and learning to cast basic charts.  In 1979 I started attending classes taught by Frances Sakoian, and then with Betty Caulfield.  Besides being great teachers they became great friends, and helped me through some difficult times when I was younger.  It was their generosity and love of astrology that gave me the inspiration to give back to the astrological community what had been given to me – in a different form yet still being of service.

 I can’t remember exactly when I first started attending NCGR meetings but I think it was in the 1990s.  There was a point in the early 2000s when I took over recording the lectures given at the Belmont Public Library.  It was a good match where I was able to use my equipment and years of experience as an audio/video tech to give back to the community.

 I do some work with astrology every day and do charts now and then.  The astrological calculation programs I use like Millennium Star Trax and Solar Fire make it very easy to look forward and backwards in time.  Besides Western astrology I also enjoy learning about Uranian and Vedic astrology.

I would like to see some focus on teaching how to relate the potentials for strengths and challenges when reading a chart for someone so that the reading becomes a source of what I call Vitamin H, short for Hope and Healing.

 I miss those monthly in-person NCGR lectures in this post-pandemic era, and hope that in the not too distant future we can “hobnob with our fellow astrologers” at more frequent meetings again.

 I can be reached at ck.newman@verizon.net.