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Numbers: I was born on a "66" day in an "11" year with an "11" name. How magical !!
Partly because of my distinctive cleft chin, my mother named me after Simon Templar, the eponymous character played by Roger Moore in The Saint, a popular British TV show that screened in Australia in the mid 1960s.
According to Palmistry I have a rare 'psychic star' in each hand -- a five-pointed asterisk in the right one (my writing hand) & a seven-pointed cluster of creases in the left. These stars are located on my life lines between my head lines and heart lines.
Sy Scholfield
My interest in "the stars" was sparked in childhood during family camping trips to pristine Moreton Island ("Mulgumpin") off the east coast of Australia, where we slept on beaches under livid but brilliant night skies. The constellations and planètes-étoiles simply fascinated me more than anything else in nature. However, indications of my destiny had already been handed to me. I was born with a star in the centre of each palm (a five-pointed asterisk in the right hand & a seven-pointed one in the left one). These stars are located on my "life lines" between my "head lines" and "heart lines." Interpreting the meanings of the stars has thus become an enduring passion.
Astrologer & astrodata collector
While mostly self-taught as an Astrologer, I was very fortunate to have been mentored by well-known American Astrologer, data collector, & writer, Lois Rodden (1928-2003), during her last few years. Her books had partly inspired me to become a data collector in the first place.
I've collected the 'astro-data' (info about the year, date, time & place of birth) of famous people since my teens and today my original research data collection contains thousands of entries. Over 700 data from my collection have been published in Lois Rodden's CD software (1998-2008) and on the Astro-Databank website (2009-), hundreds are included in Esoteric Technologies' Solar Fire "Deluxe" and "Gold" CDs, and my data has been included in books such as Frank Clifford's 2003 British Entertainers: The Astrological Profiles
and The Astrologer's Book of Charts
Queer Stars (TM) is my ever-growing online collection of free charts and profiles for famous LGBT people and events. This collection is easily accessed via my Astroqueer website which was begun at Geocities at the end of 1996, after I found very little information on the subject of Astrology for GLBT folk while surfing the Internet. GeoCities was a rather American-centric site so I moved Astroqueer's Stars, as it was then also known, to Tripod in late 1997. Now known as AstroQueer (TM), my website (www.astroqueer.com) is a global portal for all things of astrological interest to queer folk.
I'm also a published astrologer. For example, from November 2000 to September 2001, I wrote the "Star-Lust" column in the weekly Sydney Star Observer (Australia's leading gay & lesbian periodical). Although certainly not the first Astrology column by an 'out' astrologer to appear regularly in a major gay publication, it broke new ground with its lusty astrological assessments and features such as planetary digests & celebrity profiles (that went way beyond the usual Sun Sign format).
Tertiary Qualifications
Being openly-gay and of mixed racial ancestry (including a Chinese-Australian grandmother, Jewish grandmother, and a grandfather who was raised on a Pacific island), I've dedicated much of my time between jobs to academic research in the field of Cultural Studies, particularly in areas of interest that stem from my (Austral-Asian) ethnicity and (queer-homo) sexuality.
After returning to Brisbane from Hong Kong in late 1990, I completed a B.A. (in Modern Asian Studies, 1994), with Honours (in Lesbian & Gay/Gender Studies, 1997) at Griffith University. In the first degree I undertook a Mandarin language component as part of a double Major in Chinese Studies and Anthropology, while in the latter I examined imagery of erogenous zones in (not only gay & lesbian post-) modern visual art. At Griffith University in 1995 I was the first male to enrol in a subject within the Master of Arts in Women's Studies programme, probably becoming one of the first men, if not the first man, to complete a subject in feminist studies at this level in Australia.
Queer Gravity & other collaborations
During the early 1990s I was elected by my queer student peers to the voluntary position of co-convenor of the LGBT student group at Griffith University. In 1993, I joined with the leaders of other local LGBT student groups to take a bid to the annual conference of the national students group, Queer Collaborations, requesting that we host the event the following year in Brisbane. This occurred in 1994, with the conference moving away from its Sydney base for the first time.
For the conference I compiled and edited Queer Gravity (under the pseudonym, 'Simon-Alice'). To my knowledge this was the first Australian magazine produced for and by LGBT students to be distributed across the country. The magazine included the first reproduction in print of the lesbian safe sex poster, Dam Dykes, which would later be banned from the Brisbane City Council Art Gallery.
Home & Away
I'm on a long journey. I'm very lucky to have travelled widely throughout my home-base of Eastern Australia, Asia (where I lived for 3 years), and the west coast of the USA & Canada, all favourite holiday destinations. Adventurous treks have taken me through the mountains and lakes of Tibet & Tasmania, the jungles of Borneo & Far North Queensland, and the coastal and river systems of China, Malaysia & Oregon. (That's me at right at the lamasery outside Shangri-La [Zhongdian] on the Tibet-China border, in January 2009).
Between travels I enjoy an urban lifestyle, having resided in the mega-cities of Beijing, Hong Kong and Sydney; the medium-sized, leafy cities of Brisbane & Melbourne; and the smaller seaside cities of Cairns, the Gold Coast & Newcastle. I also lived for a while in a Tibetan-style house on a community farm overlooking the lighthouse at Byron Bay, at the most Easterly point of Australia, during the 2000s. And in 2009 I acquired a piece of land at the edge of a country town on The Granite Belt, a highland area near the Queensland/NSW border, where I will be renovating a century-old, timber settler's cottage as my home and rural retreat.
My Natal Astrology Chart
So what about my stars? I have all of the outer planets personalized. Pluto ("the death planet") is rising at the very end of the 12th House (my mother had a severe cold caused by influenza when I was born and so we were separated at my birth, and possibly were both near death), plus a full 8th House ruled and tenanted by Mars in Aries (helping to explain my interest in sex, gender and sexuality). My Aquarian Moon is ruled by Uranus ("the Astrology planet") which conjoins Pluto, meaning that I have the rare conjunction of these planets on my Virgo Ascendant, ruled by Chiron ("the wounded healer") in Pisces on the Descendant, just into the 7th House. Chiron, in turn, is ruled by Neptune in Scorpio, which is found in hard aspect to both luminaries. Neptune is ruled by angular Pluto, which takes us back to the Ascendant, which quinunxes the new dwarf planet, Eris, unaspected in my 7th House.
What's in My Future ?
At present, I am writing up a research Master of Philosophy dissertation (in Queer Studies). An extension of my interest in the queerness of everyday representations of the body, my thesis explores the currency and significance of imagery of sex between straight men in Australian political cartoons, 1994-2009.
Another ongoing project is a book on Queer Astrology. This ground-breaking study will present an analysis of at least one thousand star charts of well-known GLBT folk (& events), and other prominent people who have contributed to GLBT culture!
