TRIBUTES TO ALEXANDER RUPERTI:"IN MEMORIUM ALEXANDER RUPERTI"
By Barbara Somerfield, 1998"In August, 1971, while participating in the Aalen Cosmobiological Conference, I had the privilege to meet Alexander Ruperti. He impressed me with his kindness, driving me back and forth from the pension where the speakers were housed, helping me navigate a foreign terrain and language, enabling me to benefit from many conversations with European astrologers that wouldn't have been possible without his assistance.
"I experienced the magic and unprecedented nature of his healing abilities during an afternoon visit to an empty church in the Black Forest. After a few moments of still silence, he voiced and danced as if involved with another level of reality that emanated strongly through his body and voice. There was a palpable healing effect
"We discovered our mutual relationships with Rudhyar, who later wrote to me, 'I am very happy to hear of your experience with my old friend Ruperti. He is a very interesting and sensitive man with whom I have corresponded for 35 years and later met.'
"Subsequently, Alex graciously gave many seminars at the New York NASO school and nationally at our conferences. He was always available to those requesting clarification, discussion or further information and generous with his healing gifts, if anyone asked with no charge.
"Through his organization RAH, he established with his companion Marief, a journal and networks throughout France, Spain and Switzerland to widely disseminate Rudhyar's astrological work, philosophy and approach to life. Through Alex and Marief's efforts most of Rudhyar's significant works were translated and published in France.
"When Rudhyar and Alex met for the last time, March 25, 1985, I witnessed a profound expression of gratitude for all he had accomplished in France, to further the ideas that were the focus of Rudhyar's life. March 23, 1995, the Rudhyar centennial in Paris that Alex and Marief organized featuring Rudhyar's music, art, poetry, astrological and philosophical work attracted almost 1000 attendees.
"Marief provided these words recently:
'Alexander Ruperti accomplished his mission dedicated to MAN in the archetypal meaning. According to his wish his body was cremated privately on January 21, 1998. On behalf of his companions on the Path, family and friends: "May the energy of the divine Self inspire me and may the Light of the soul lead me. May I be led from the darkness to the Light, from the unreal to the Real, from death to Immortality.' (Alice Bailey) I have left earthly life, but I continue on the Path. Au Revoir compagnons, continue to walk on ......." Alex"Alex referred to compagnons, as those who eat the same spiritual bread or companions on the Path."
Barbara Somerfield, January 29, 1998
PO BOX 573, Santa Fe, N.M. 87504
TRIBUTE TO ALEXANDER RUPERTI:
By Joyce Hoen, DF Astrol S,
The Netherlands
April 17, 2000"You can read an article by Alex Ruperti on my website, but I wanted to write my memories about him here.
"It was March, 1989: the planets Saturn and Neptune were about to meet again after 35 years, for the first time since my birth (when they also where in conjunction). Planets in a birthchart are lived either within, or in relationship with the outside world, and will then manifest there -- all astrologers are aware of how a chart gives us this interesting take on reality.
"It was a sunny day in March and I was asked by Tees Reitsma (who had organized the 3rd international astrology congress of "Astro-Kring" in The Hague re this Saturn-Neptune conjunction) to pick up Alexander Ruperti and Marief Cavaignac from the railway station and bring them to the congress.
"I was driving this ugly old orange car that I was sure would not last much longer and I hardly knew the way, but I had become a real Miss Neptune at that conjunction and I knew it would ALL work out, faith was abundant. So Miss Neptune was about to meet Mister Saturn at the station bringing with him Marief Cavaignac, his wonderful partner.
"There they were! It was the first time that I met both of them. Back in the car Alexander Ruperti was sitting next to the driver's seat, firmly in control, back straight, as many who have ever met Alexander Ruperti have seen and known him. And Miss Neptune was sitting in the car in a Neptunian haze, not knowing which way to go, but since the Saturn-Neptune congress was appropriately held at the seashore, she decided to just follow her nose, head for the beach, and trust that she would get there eventually. What a conjunction of Neptune and Saturn we were at that moment in time, I chuckled to myself.
"Now, Miss Neptune was certainly in need of some Saturn, because she had lost all grip on time itself and in fact, Mister Saturn did not disappoint her, because throughout the congress and in his lecture, he would say just the right things.
"The next time I met Alexander Ruperti was during that same year, at the wonderful UAC conference in New Orleans. Ruperti had called for a meeting of all friends of Rudhyar and made an almost occult plea at that occasion to have all the work of Rudhyar released. One could see his pain, for he knew, and maybe he only knew, what a wealth of writing material Rudhyar left behind that was not published or published a long time ago in the Astrologers' Magazine.
"The plea did not much good at that time, and moreover - having discovered Rudhyar only a few years before - I was astonished to find out that Rudhyar was not the 'done thing' amongst astrologers at UAC. Many years later a Californian astrologer explained this to me. He mentioned that Rudhyar had risen to a guru-like status for many astrologers in the past and in the end that put them off apparently.
"I had an occasional correspondence with Alexander Ruperti and Marief Cavaignac in the following years and then I met them for the third time, and we knew it would be the last time too. This time I had organized a congress myself, in Amsterdam, the first and probably last conference I would ever organize- which was about retrieving the Soul of Astrology - and Alexander Ruperti gave a lecture there.
"Many people knew Alexander Ruperti from the often stern lectures he would give and by his Saturnian outlook, but I was blessed with a different impression: someone who was in control of himself, indeed a master of himself, but someone who also knew what love was about, unconditional, love of and for the spirit. I have rarely met somebody in whom love was so manifest. Yet I imagine he could fool many, because it was a different aspect of his being, and not emotional.
During that last visit to Holland I spoke for quite some time with Alexander Ruperti, a quiet man on the outside, but passionate about Rudhyar's take on astrology. I asked him many questions about the spiritual life, questions that are not so easily addressed in books. He impressed upon me the notion that in the spiritual life it was the mental state that was important, not the astral, not the emotional.
"I asked him about gurus -- the guru-disciple relationship is a relationship which is universally rooted and although he never referred to himself as a guru, it became clear to me that in fact he was one in quite an occult and invisible manner for many people in France in some way, or at least a mentor on the spiritual path. I have never regarded Alexander Ruperti as a guru, but then things started to happen which may still change my mind. Co-incidentally, my own father was on his deathbed during that congress and Alexander Ruperti and I were meeting each other for the last time too.
"When we said goodbye, Alexander Ruperti passed on much light, and I would later think: "here was a man who was not a guru, but maybe he was after all and I never knew it at the time". Because what does a guru do? He dispels the darkness and passes on the light., which is exactly what Alexander Ruperti's gift to me was at that occasion.
When Alexander Ruperti was alive I very much tuned into his sadness, mainly concerning the things Rudhyar had to give which were not always picked up by astrologers. When I met him for the last time, I tuned in to his abundance of Love, but it was only after he was gone from this planet that I learned what he had to say in astrology himself.
"' Due to some strange co-incidence, I started to translate his book "Cycles of Becoming" (reprinted as Astrological Passages by ACS in 2000) into Dutch to be published sometime in 2000/2001. This is not a book that one reads lightly and all the way thru in one go, and in fact, I had only read certain small passages in it myself.
"But now, while translating it, I met the astrological Alexander Ruperti truly for the first time, and what a blessing this has become to me. It elevated my understanding of astrology to such an extent, that I credit the incredible increase of my consultation practice almost entirely to this. It inspires me daily as I translate. I tune in to the spirit of Alexander Ruperti, there are no barriers between his mind as it pervades this book and my Neptunian mind, and I know, for a fact, that death only exists for the body, but that the spirit lives on, in another, greater, grander, more inspiring way than ever before."
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