The Life and Work of Astrologer Helena Avelar

In episode 324 astrologer Luís Ribeiro joins me to talk about the life and work of his partner Helena Avelar, who passed away earlier this year.

Helena was a respected practitioner and teacher of traditional astrology from Portugal, and had influenced many astrologers through works she co-authored with Luís, such as their 2010 book On the Heavenly Spheres: A Treatise on Traditional Astrology.

She was also a scholar of the history of astrology, and obtained PhD from the Warburg Institute in 2018, with a thesis titled “The Making of an Astrologer in Fifteenth-century France. The Notebooks of S. Belle: Lisbon, MS 1711 and Paris, NAL 398.”

Her PhD dissertation was recently published by the academic publisher Brill, and the book came out just a few months after she died, under the title An Astrologer at Work in Late Medieval France The Notebooks of S. Belle.

In the first half of this podcast episode we focus on giving a biographical overview of Helena’s life and talking about her w…