Patrice Guinard on Jacques halbronn (Englsh) in 2000

Patrice Guinard on Jacques Halbronn (English) in 2000 24. Jacques HALBRONN - born December 1, 1947 at 11.25 am (11:25) in Paris 17 ( at 12.30 pm according to his mother) (source : Patrice Guinard, r.p.) - Ph.D (several theses), historian and ethnologist of the astrological "milieu", astrology congress organizer since 1975. - author of ten books and more than thirty articles. The Guide astrologique (1984; Paris, Laurens, 1997) which carries on the idea put forth by De Herbais De Thun, is an index of astrologers and their activities. - in the bibliography of his article "Astrologie" in the Encyclopaedia Universalis (1992), he only cites 3 books - in the twenty mentioned - in which he has no direct connection, either as a publisher or author. That goes to show the seriousness of the academic intelligentisia on the subject. - in his extensive introduction to the truncated Histoire de l'astrologie by Serge Hutin (Paris, Artefact, 1986), he considers astrology to be a cultural reality : the relationship between the stars and mankind being only "A link created by man alone." (p.144). We are still waiting for the historical analysis that would justify this cultural "Lamarckism". - his most useful works remains La vie astrologique il y a cent ans [from Alan Leo to F.Ch.Barlet], Paris, Grande Conjonction & Trédaniel, 1992. - Prefering to do research on his own, historian and untimely sociologist, quick-tempered organizer of symposiums, quarrellsome observer of astrological life, megalomaniac and maladjusted character, Halbronn is sort of a Socrates in the French astrological milieu. He seeks to deliver people's consciousness and exerts a kind of dualistic "maieutics" that is ignored by the majority of astrologers and incomprehensible for the believer. "In the last analysis, astrology would be too serious a thing to be entrusted to astrologers and the counseling session a too important meeting not to be rethought about in the second degree." (in L'astrologue face à son client (Les ficelles du métier), Paris, Grande Conjonction, 1995, p.46). He successively supports conflicting theses in his works: from "sensory astrology" (1977) to "cosmotherapy" (1995), or "astrology of Tarot" (1983) to "stellar astrology" (2000), he deepens the superficial, brightens the ordinary. With time he has come to think of himself as the director of a hospital for the insane. Often in relation (and by reaction) to certain discussions that he had with me since 1983, he has developed more complex problematics. Halbronn is a better speaker than writer. He excells in confrontation, and recently reached (in December 2000, at the CURA-MAU symposium in Paris) the summit of his art. While working out new "nearly-astrological" theories, he polished up his dialectic machine and moved the boundary between astrology and anti-astrology. It appears now that all the joint anti-astrological argumentation (first the one by astronomers, but mainly the one coming from the university circles, of sociological or historical orientation) remains at a level short of the problematics that he put in place, insidious and convoluted, nevertheless salutary and invigorating for any reflection on astrology."