Sometimes people say that there is no such thing as a coincidence, that everything is meaningful and being directed by some kind of mysterious guiding principle.
This is an idea that I like to entertain, when the mood takes me, and I am sure most of you reading this also toy with the idea from time to time.
I want to share a recent experience I had that reinforced this belief for me. But to tell the story properly we need to go back into the past.
It was 2009 and I had been studying astrology for about two years. I was fascinated by traditional astrology, particularly the astrology of the medieval period and the Renaissance.
At this time there were only a handful of medieval texts on traditional astrology that had been translated into English, and a great many more that had not. I often told myself that I would like to learn Latin so that I could read some of these books myself, instead of relying on whatever crumbs fell from the tables of translators.
One day at work I was grumbling about wanting to learn Latin. My boss, probably sick of hearing me go on about it, found a Latin class for me that was being run out of the Australian National University, a short walk from my workplace, and she encouraged me to sign up. Feeling a little sheepish that she had so easily found a pathway to the thing I purportedly wanted to do so much, I signed up and made my way to the first lesson.
There I met a great influence in my life, my Latin teacher Wendy Brazil. She was one of the most Mercurial people I have ever met - a short and slim woman, with short hair turned white with age, and a huge thick pair of owl-like glasses purchased on the end of her nose. She wore fabulous outfits with colourful scarves and shawls, and always seemed to be sashaying and dancing sprite-like around the classroom.
Over the coming months and years I spent countless hours with Wendy and my fellow students, gradually learning the fundamentals of Latin grammar and starting to build up a decent vocabulary. Wendy had devised her own approach to translating Latin - it was her magnum opus. She was a classics and linguistics scholar by trade and her PhD thesis was a new method of translating and teaching Latin, which differed greatly from the typical methods taught in English speaking schools. This was a double-edged sword because on the one hand her system was so clear and simple and did away with some unnecessary complexities in the traditional system, but on the other hand it was her own invention and she was the only person with the keys. You couldn’t buy a book on Wendy’s system of Latin, or take an online course; you had to learn it from her directly, in the classrooms and halls of the ANU.
Even after the course was over, Wendy extended to her students a generous invitation, to continue to meet with her and translate Latin on a regular basis. These reading groups were a great source of joy to me. The group met in the library at University House, a beautiful and tranquil part of the ANU encircled by a long koi pond and flanked by green luscious lawns shaded by towering old birch and oak trees. The library itself looked like it had stepped out of some long lost time, with tall bookshelves lined with leather bound manuals, and decorated with busts of scholars and great minds from history.
The beautiful grounds outside the library at University House
I spent many happy afternoons with Wendy at University House. Sometimes one of us, often Wendy, would bring along a bottle of red wine to share with the group. Wendy enjoyed Latin poetry most of all, so most of our time was spent translating passages from the great Roman poets like Ovid, Martial, Catullus and Virgil.
Wendy was also a great lover of the theatre, particularly Shakespeare, so whenever there was a production of a Shakespeare play in town she invited the class to come along with her. All the actors seemed to know her personally, and I recall meeting most of the cast of Much Ado About Nothing after their performance - they all filed out to greet Wendy with great enthusiasm. She had that effect on people: she was magnetic and flamboyant, and she made you feel like a friend.
One day Wendy broke the news to us that she was not well. She had cancer, and she had been fighting it for years. As her health deteriorated, we had to stop meeting at University House, which was a great blow to us all.
But Wendy’s love of Latin and her love for teaching was so strong that she asked us to all visit her in hospital. I can recall two or possibly three sessions where her students all sat around her hospital bed in a semi-circle and translated passages from Martial while she was hooked up to IVs and drips and machines tracking her declining health.
Her body was failing her but her mind was as sharp as ever. I think the reading group must have been very important to her; maybe it gave her a sense of legacy, something to pass on to the next generation. I know for myself that as I get older, the urge to teach and pass on what I have learned about astrology grows more intense every day - I want to ensure that this treasure I have collected can be shared out rather than going to the grave with me. Perhaps Wendy felt the same.
Wendy passed away in 2011, much more quickly than any of us had expected. For a time, the group continued to meet at University House without her. I think we were honouring her legacy, and trying our best to maintain all that we had learned from her. But over time, life happened - we got busy, we drifted apart, we made excuses, numbers dwindled, and eventually the group fell apart.
Without regular practise, and without my teacher to guide me, my Latin skills languished and grew rusty. One day I hope to blow the dust off my old textbooks and get back into Latin, but for now it is something I have sadly shelved.
Many years passed. It was October 2021 and I was in a used book shop in Katoomba, a beautiful town nestled in the Blue Mountains about 4 hours from my home town in Canberra. I had located the classics section and my eyes were immediately drawn to a Latin copy of Cicero’s De Divinatione, “On Divination.”
I knew that this book had some mentions of astrology, so I reached out to pick it up. I opened the front cover and there, on the inside cover of the book, a name was written in pen:
“Wendy Brazil.”
This moment struck me like a thunderbolt from heaven. I stood there stunned, then called over my partner and excitedly explained to her what I had found. She was equally blown away, as were the ladies at the bookshop counter when I excitedly explained it to them too. Of course I had to buy it, and now it sits happily on my bookshelf alongside the handful of Latin books I own.
Flicking through this little book is a delight, because I can see on several pages the usual notations that Wendy would make when translating Latin using her unique system - S for Subject, O for Object, Ab. for Ablative, Inf. for Infinitive, and so on. It seems Wendy shared my disrespectful enthusiasm for adding pen and pencil notations to books I am studying, which is great because I can open it whenever I like and meet her in the midst of her work.
It feels so right, so very fitting, that this book fell into my hands. I’ve been really struck by this moment ever since. I wonder if in some weird way Wendy’s spirit was guiding me to that bookstore and to that particular bookshelf, where I would be drawn to a Latin text about divination, a topic she knew I was interested in. Wendy knew I was an astrologer and often lamented to me that we hadn’t found the time to work through Manilius’ Astronomica together. Maybe one day I will do that myself, in her honour.
It is moments like this that make the magic of the universe known to us. In such a moment, we are reminded that life is filled with mystery, meaning and messages. Maybe there is a plan to all of this - or maybe it’s just a coincidence.