Jim Lewis
  [his life]
 Part II

5^th June 1941
–
21^st February 1995

Jim’s astrology used only the most basic and established theories.  In working with angular planets, he followed the tradition of Ptolemy and the Chaldeans.  More recently Michel and Françoise Gauquelin refined, scientifically proved and replicated this planetary effect.  With the notable exception of Carl Jung, Jim seemed to bypass most Arabic, Roman and recent western astrological developments.  As well as the IC and the distant outer planets, his work focussed on visible celestial bodies in visible locations: planets rising, setting and at the midheaven.  Although, he accepted the recent addition of lines for Chiron, the Node and the ecliptic, he rejected lines displaying planetary aspects despite their commercial possibilities.  Throughout he retained this clarity, integrity and purity of his theory.   In this sense Jim was a scientific astrologer, living out the potential of Saturn conjunct Uranus in Taurus in his 10^th house.

Astro*Carto*Graphy was an evolving technique.  Jim Lewis built up his knowledge with real examples from feedback and wrote about the A*C*G of current affairs and the charts of prominent individuals of the day.  His observations were acute, radical and persuasive.  I remember his comments on the Queen’s A*C*G, with her natal Saturn MH line running along the British Isles and the essentially conservative nature of a country that allows one person to be superior to another by virtue of his or her birth.  And he had equally sharp observations for the country of his birth, where he found it difficult to express his strong Pluto, without feeling alienated.  This was a love-hate-love relationship.

As a lecturer, Jim was undoubtedly a ‘class act’, a star attraction on the international circuit.  He worked with his own excellent material: original, solid, tried and tested astrology backed up by amusing anecdotes.  True to his Pluto rising in Leo, his height and manner gave him a dramatic presence and with the Sun and two planets in Gemini a coherent and flowing delivery. 

Jim Lewis, born James Slayden on 5^th June 1941 at 9:30 am EDT in Yonkers, NY had an intriguing life outside astrology.  He recounted tales of hunting deer and other wild animals while living in a commune at Big Sur in the red wood forests of California.  Later he spent a year on a sparsely populated Caribbean island.  He was also a significant, though discreet member of the San Francisco gay community.

But it was Astro*Carto*Graphy that made Jim Lewis renowned around the world.  It was his greatest success and yet he was also a victim of the work.  Jim was strongly litigious and considerable resources and intense emotion went into protecting his trademark.  And he was not immune to the negative potential on A*C*G’s ‘planetary power lines’.  In the mid ‘80s he was struck by a vehicle while crossing Military Road, in Sydney, Australia on his Mars Ascending line.  In a strange way he felt that his illness was brought on by the pressures of the A*C*G business. Behind the tragedy, there is a cruel irony that someone so cerebral (Sun and Moon in Air) should have been affected by a brain tumour at the age of 54 years.

His work will live on.  It is a little known fact that his Astro*Carto*Graphy handbook that accompanies the world A*C*G maps has been the most successful astrological publication outside sun sign titles and the ephemerides.  Besides the continuing operation of his three A*C*G licensees in Oregon, London and Zürich and his many certified A*C*G interpreters, he will be published posthumously.  His friend and certified Astro*Carto*Grapher, Erin Sullivan intends to complete and publish his final work “The Psychology of Astro*Carto*Graphy” as part of the Penguin Arkana series.