Astrologers sometimes get carried away and say that every chart is totally unique. That’s not really true. Obviously it’s possible for two people to be born at the same place and time – or at least close enough that there’s no real practical difference between their charts. Even people born a few days apart, but with the same degrees on their Ascendants, will have extremely similar charts. Their Moons will be in different signs, and that’s important. But much else will be the same.

Naturally as they go through life, such “time twins” will simultaneously experience almost the same transits and progressions. Because of that astrological similarity, we would expect many parallels in their lives – and in fact, we often do see exactly that phenomenon.

Here’s perhaps the most famous of these “time twin” tales:

An ironmonger named Samuel Hemming was born on the same day as the English King, George III – June 4, 1738. They apparently looked very similar and there were many parallels in their lives. Hemming opened his business on the same day that George was crowned king. They married on the same day. They both had the same number and genders of children. They were sick at the same time and they both died on the same day – January 29, 1820 – of similar maladies. 

Stories of this sort are fairly abundant. As I was preparing to write this newsletter, I was poking around the internet and followed a link (astrologerpeg.wordpress.com/2015/01/18/time-twins) to a woman who bills herself as “Astrologer Peg.” I don’t know her or what her sources are, but her site mentions that she studied with Noel Tyl, which is a good credential.  In any case, I got two particularly dramatic versions of these “time twin” stories from her. I can’t vouch for their accuracy, but I have no reason to doubt it – again, tales such as these are actually very common.

Here’s astrologer Peg’s first story:

Another strange case received attention when two poultry trucks of the same model collided in Miami in June of 1961.  Showing their I.D. the drivers discovered that they were identical twins separated from birth.  They were both in the poultry business, their wives had the same name, they had the same number of children, of the same sex and ages.

“Identical twins” of course means that they were born close together in time and space. Her second story gives me goosebumps.

Donald Chapman and Donald Brazill were born at the same hour and minute in neighboring towns in California. On September 10, 1950 when each one had just turned 23, Mr. Brazill and Mr. Chapman met for the first time, as they drove in opposite directions on U.S. Highway 101 early on a Sunday morning. They crashed head-on and each was killed instantly. They held the same kind of job and were dating girls in each others’ hometown. They also caused each others’ death at the same moment in time. 

Want to read more such tales? There’s a book from way back in 1970 that has a few more of them in its appendix. It’s by John Anthony West and it’s called The Case for Astrology. I recommend it for a lot of reasons – it’s still a compelling read. I was about to write that it would probably be hard to find, but I just checked Amazon and miraculously it’s still available.

• Naturally, we astrologers love stories such as these. They vindicate us. They prove that astrology works. A skeptic could fairly dismiss a few such parallels as merely coincidental – but what if we had a thousand of them? Who could dismiss us then?

I admit that part of me loves that whole idea. I hope some astrologer somewhere does the research and publishes it, and I hope it makes a big splash. The problem is that even though logic dictates that such pairs of time twins must be abundant, these people mostly don’t know each other. Why would they? Do you know anyone who was born in the same hospital as you on the same day? Most of us do not. That means that most time twins never have a chance to compare notes. Unless they meet in a head-on collision, they may never meet at all, so their stories tend to go unrecorded. There’s a gold mine out there, but where’s the map for finding it?

Today a researcher could use the Internet to canvass for matches, create a database, cross-correlate charts, and make e-introductions among volunteers. It’s inevitable that soon such a researcher would discover countless pairs of time twins with an endless supply of amazing stories of biographical parallels. It would be fun, fascinating, and in many ways, a big gift to the world of astrology.

So why did I give this newsletter such an ominous title?

WHY THE “PERILOUS” FASCINATION OF TIME TWINS?

I’ve spent my life battling against determinism and fatalism in our craft. We humans are not puppets. The planets do not have us by the strings. We can respond well or poorly to our charts. Two people born with the same chart are not predestined to make the same choices in life. Twins – whether they are biological twins or time twins – usually turn out differently. In my mind, the task of an astrological counsellor is to encourage people to reach for their highest potentials, not to deaden their evolutionary enthusiasm with “predictions” and "delineations.”

I really do believe all of that. I also feel that I have an enormous body of evidence for it. Much of it comes from simply watching people grow – or choose not to grow. I have met “sexy but treacherous Scorpios” straight out of the silliest Sun Sign books. I’ve also met wise, emotionally honest Scorpios who became trusted friends. Critically, I’ve seen some of those treacherous Scorpios blossom into wise ones. Evolution is a fact, not a philosophy, in other words – and, in a nut shell, that’s why I call myself an evolutionary astrologer. 

Gangster Al Capone had a Sun-Mars opposition. So does the most successful female gymnast in history, Simone Biles. They share the same configuration, but they made different choices about how to use it. That is astrological reality. Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were both born on the same day – February 12, 1809 – and, like good Aquarians, they both shook up the world. But each one did it in his own, astrologically unpredictable way. 

Fatalistic astrologers are all excellent Monday morning quarterbacks, good at claiming “I could have told you that.” But their predictive skills are dwarfed by their “post-dictive” ones. I long ago disabused myself of any need to predict anyone’s future. I revel in our unpredictability. I revel in our freedom.

• Those of you who know my work have heard me preaching from this pulpit before, so I’ll cut to the chase. To me, the big problem with time twin stories is that they reinforce the impression that astrology is fatalistic and deterministic. They are a kind of poison pill – if they became widely known and celebrated in popular culture, astrology’s plausibility would be boosted into the stratosphere – but at what cost? 

Onward through the fog. Earlier I expressed hope that somebody would do the research and publish a broad, convincing study of time twins. I said that I hoped that it would make a big splash. I would still say all that. I have my trepidations, but all in all, I think such work is probably the single most direct route to astrology’s wider acceptance. Anecdotally, it’s compelling – people relate viscerally to these stories. With enough of them, they become scientifically compelling too.

We just have to keep everything honest. Let’s never be afraid of the truth – and the truth is that, while these stories are real, they only tell half the story.

A COUPLE OF PERSONAL TALES

As an astrologer, naturally I am more alert than many people would be when it comes to sharing a birthday with someone. One such example is my astrological connection with a man I have never met. Like me, he was born on January 6, 1949 and given the name Stephen – same name, just a different spelling. Unlike me, his parents were household names – actors Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. 

All I know about Stephen Humphrey Bogart is what I’ve gleaned from Wikipedia. Like me, he has written several books, but that doesn’t prove very much. What struck me is the apparent parallels in our domestic lives. Bogart has married three times, which is essentially my own story. He married his first wife in 1969 – the year I met my own first wife. I married a second time in 1984, while Bogart married a second time in 1985. Both of our second marriages ended in 2010. He married again in 2014. My partner, Michelle Kondos and I bought a home and moved in together in 2013.

Relationships are always long, complicated stories, with wedding dates merely functioning as punctuation marks. I am confident that if Stephen Bogart and I were to compare notes on our lives, our eyebrows would be raised more than once. 

I’m not one to intrude on him and I am not even sure I could find him, but if anyone reading these words knows him, please let him know that I’d be delighted to explore any parallels in our experience. I am easy to find. His mom once said something like, “If you want me, just whistle.” I say “if you want me, just Google.”

A SECOND TALE

I have another time twin named John Grossenbacher who is now a good friend. He was actually born eleven days before me, but at almost the same clock time. The result is that our charts bear a very pronounced resemblance to each other. His Mars is in Capricorn, while mine had crossed the line into Aquarius. Naturally our Moons are in different signs – his is in Scorpio, prominent in his first house, mine in Aries in the fourth. Other than the Moon, all of our planets are in the same houses. We share a Scorpio Ascendant. Astrologically, we are practically clones.

We met when he fell in love with a woman named Tracy Gaudet who’s been one of my count-them-on-one-hand dearest friends for forty years or so. In fact, if the stars had been aligned differently, I probably would have married her myself. 

John’s long marriage was breaking up at the time. So was mine – there’s another classic time twin parallel. Even before we actually met in person, we had a heart-to-heart on the phone about the breakups we were experiencing. I could immediately sense that I was speaking with a kindred spirit, one with Capricorn values similar to mine.

If you had asked me what my plans in life were when I was fourteen, I would have said that I planned to get into the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and become a Naval officer. I was serious about it too – I actually had our local U.S. Representative enlisted on my behalf in the early stages of the application process, and I had the academic grades I needed. Along came Viet Nam and my perspective on a military career took a left turn.

Meanwhile, John graduated from Annapolis, became the captain of an attack submarine, and eventually the Admiral of all the submarines in the North Atlantic. While he was submerged under the Atlantic Ocean, I was floating around on top of it in my three sailboats, back in my Jimmy Buffett days.

When John and Tracy got married, Michelle and I attended their wedding. It was outdoors in the Grand Tetons National Park. There were about eighty people there. I never got within fifty feet of  the Justice of the Peace who performed the ceremony – but can you imagine how we all felt when he turned to John and mistakenly said, “Steve, will you take this woman as your lawfully wedded wife?”

John, fortunately, has a sense of humor like mine, not to mention a similar appreciation of life’s mysteries. Our friendship easily survived that awkward moment, and in fact was probably deepened by it.

So those are my own two time twin stories. They are fun to tell and, as I’ve said, I think such stories will eventually play a big part in astrology’s ever-deepening integration into the mainstream of society. 

Let’s just be careful that they aren’t also that poison pill!

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