John Addey (astrologer) - Biography

Biography

John Addey was born in Barnsley, Yorkshire in the UK on 15 June 1920 at 8.15 am and died at the Royal Homeopathic Hospital, London at 5.17 pm on 27 March 1982.

He attended Ackworth School (in Pontefract, Yorkshire): Ackworth was a Quaker School, although the Addey family were not Quakers themselves, and Addey was much influenced by the spirit of Quakerism – he was a conscientious objector during the second world war – and was later to marry a Quaker. During his time at Ackworth he showed some talent for poetry, but more so for sports: he was captain of most of the various sports teams organised by the school. He was head boy before leaving in 1939 and going on to Cambridge where he read English literature.

He left university and join the Friends Ambulance Unit: It was while working here that he was struck down by severe Ankylosing Spondylitis, and was unable to walk without the aid of a stick for the rest of his life. Initial treatment required a 18 month stay in hospital, and it was during this enforced period of immobility that his energies turned inwards towards the two areas of study which were to occupy him for the rest of his life: philosophy and astrology (he had been interested in both from his mid-teens). He studied with the Faculty of Astrological Studies and was awarded his Diploma in the early fifties.

He rapidly came under the influence of Charles E O Carter who guided Addey’s explorations in both philosophy and astrology. In philosophy this meant an acknowledgement of the worth of all the great world religions and philosophies, but an especial interest in the Platonic tradition; in astrology Carter (who was for some time the President of the Astrological Lodge of the Theosophical Society) encouraged Addey’s mystical leanings. Central to Addey’s later work on the Harmonic theory of astrology was the conviction that the mystical and the scientific were not mutually exclusive and that neither was complete without the other.

After leaving the Amubulance Unit (where he had met and married, in 1946, Betty Poole), Addey worked for a time as a private tutor in Wiltshire before taking up a teaching post at Queen Mary’s Hospital for Children, where for many years he taught young polio patients who often were hospitalised for long periods.

John Addey had three children, Etain Addey (author, A Silent Joy), Tim Addey (author, The Seven Myths of the Soul, the Unfolding Wings – the Way of Perfection in the Platonic Tradition, and Beyond the Shadows – the Metaphysics of the Platonic Tradition) and Jane Addey.