I’ve been studying astrology for about 27 years now. A lot of people have been instrumental in my learning but the single most important person was my teacher Dawn Bodrogi. I’m currently engaged in an astrology reading and as I switch from the natal to the secondary progressed to the solar arc with some asteroids and the eclipses thrown in and navigate with an ease I have never known before, it’s Dawn I think of.
We lost her in November 2017, but she was and always will be a luminary in my inner sky. She taught me chart synthesis, secondary progressions and about the asteroids. I was one of her lame ducks, I found it hard to learn the secondaries, I couldn’t do chart synthesis, I didn’t know where to begin while looking at a chart, I would goof up on calls with her, planets on my screen would become invisible and I was unable to answer even simple questions like, “Do you see Mercury?” She was never condescending because she was born to be a teacher and I was born to learn from her. Even now when I look at the secondaries and if I feel like I don’t know where to begin, I hear her say, “Look at the lights. Look at what the lights are doing, Neets.”
She would say, “Look at the secondaries, if it’s not happening there, it’s not happening.” I’m still a little uncertain about that but it really helps to look at just the secondary progressed chart before starting to compare against the natal. When we lost her, Dawn had her secondary progressed new moon just half a degree from the ASC in the 12th house. It was a rebirth, but she was reborn in another realm and we lost her in this one. It’s such a symbolically apt chart. She would have loved it because it underlines what she believed about the secondaries. She would have laughed and said, “You can’t make this stuff up.”
Eventually I studied alchemy with her. And once you learn to use the language of alchemy with astrology, something wonderful happens. You stop being obsessed with the sense of pain and loss that the difficult processes bring because you get to frame it in the beautiful understanding of the alchemical processes. I begged her to record or write about it. Because access to her understanding of alchemy was only available to her students. She laughed and she said I should write about it because I was so passionate about it. And I will because I will go through my recordings of sessions with her and transcribe her wisdom so that it can be shared with anyone willing to read it. But if you want to know more about it right away, please do read this: “Dynamics of the Unconscious: Seminars in Psychological Astrology, Vol 2 Paperback” – November 1, 1988 by Liz Greene and Howard Sasportas.
When I was 34 when she said to me, “I’ve been thinking about that transition in the 30s recently, because of some things people close to me are going through. You should write about it from a personal perspective. There’s the third Jupiter return, the first Saturn square after the return (which is always a doozy), the nodal return…and them sometimes the major outer planet transits. You should write what that feels like from the inside.” And now, at my Uranus opposition, I’m ready to write about those and more.
I met her in October 2009 and when I began studying with her my progressed Sun was on my vertex. Natally, my vertex was on her ASC. She pointed out the former and said, “Well, you met me, I hope that’s significant.” She has been one of the most significant people I have ever known. The synastry in our charts was very strong and very beautiful. Yes, Dawn, one cannot make this stuff up. It just blows you away when you look at the charts. A magic all astrologers feel when they work. Astrology is its own gift. It infuses you with wonder and fills you with a sense of meaning. God touches you and you find peace.
My SP MC moved to 0 Aquarius recently with SP Uranus squaring it exactly from the sixth house and right at my Uranus opposition. Perhaps I should also mention transiting Uranus’s trine to my Mercury and the fact that my progressed Mercury has stationed retrograde opposite natal Jupiter: It’s graduation time and I made it. I’ve never felt astrology flow so strongly and easily through me before. Although I’ve been writing for almost a decade and been practicing for a few years, I truly feel like an astrologer now. And I miss my teacher very, very much. I wish I could write to her and say, “Look, Dawn, no hands!” Among many others linkages, we also had powerful sixth house and Virgo links and Steven Forrest brilliantly says they also correlate with one’s lineage in the student-teacher context.
The gift one receives from one’s teacher is priceless and it lives on within one and through one. But Dawn has also left a very rich legacy of work on her site: http://theinnerwheel.com/ It’s very like her Saturn conjunct NN in Scorpio in the third. It’s not light reading, it takes effort, but if you stay with it, you find true gold and your work is enriched and transformed forever.
Oh Neeti, this is absolutely beautiful and made me shed a tear!
Thank you so much. This was so beautiful. She was unlike any Astrology teacher I’ve ever had and I actually don’t know how to keep learning it without her. Is there a way her students can all form a group so we can continue to learn and share her magic?
I am forever grateful for her and I know she is hearing me say this right now 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼💕💕
Fondly, Danielle
Sent from my iPhone
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Hi Danielle, Dawn was super special and very gifted and we were so lucky to study with her.
We can form a Facebook group or even an email group. But usually things like this don’t take off.
But nothing stops us from interacting with each other. If you’d like me to phone you to say hello, please do send me your number at neetig@hotmail.com
Neeti, you did yourself proud with your tribute to Dawn. Like you, I started studying with Dawn in 2009 and I will always be grateful for her teachings and her generous spirit. Be well and yes no wheels, Patrice.
I love that, Patrice: no wheels 🙂
Sending you hugs.
Thank you for this loving tribute, Neeti. I only knew Dawn’s work through her writing on The Inner Wheel, but the power of her insight and writing have left a deep and lasting impression on me that I shall cherish. I rue not to have had the chance to make Dawn’s acquaintance and benefit from her extraordinary gifts, and hope that her family and friends and colleagues will continue her extraordinary legacy (especially her last book, that she wrote about finishing in her last newsletter). My deepest condolences to you Neeti, and everyone who lost such a peerless bringer of light, love and understanding: vale Dawn Bodrogi.
Thanks so much for sharing this, Dotty. I often find myself going to her blog.
I see new posts to her website from 2020. Has someone taken over her website? Am I missing something?