Kirk Little's review of "From Sibly to Simmonite"

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I would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank Kirk Little for his extraordinarily thorough and insightful review of my DVD compilation of colour-scanned original astrological texts entitled "From Sibly to Simmonite: Source Texts of the 19th century English Astrological Revival". Kirk's review was published recently by Deb on Skyscript.

I had not seen it, in draft form or otherwise, beforehand. Nor had I requested that Kirk review it in the first place - this arrangement was made between him and Deb. But I have read and enjoyed other reviews of his on Skyscript before, and it feels an honour to have my work treated to his scholarly appraisal.

What really stands out to me from Kirk's review is his achievement in setting the compendium in its intellectual context, with close reference to the existing secondary academic historical scholarship on the 19th century astrological revival. A more excellent job in this respect I cannot imagine being possible.

It is my sincere hope that the DVD will find its way into the hands of many more traditional astrologers, astrological historians, and astrologers in general, in the months and years to come.

Please note that in addition to the AFA distributing the title, it is also now once again possible to purchase directly from my online store at www.astrolearn.com/shop. This is a free choice, depending on whether you want to support both my work and that of the A.F.A., or just my work, with your purchase. I am delighted in either case.

For those interested in buying, the total price paid will vary according to your location. The A.F.A.'s basic price is US $99, reducible by 20% to A.F.A. members, thus to just over $79, excluding shipping at cost.

My direct price is GBP ?45 plus obligatory 25% VAT within the EU, thus ?56.25 in total excluding shipping (about ?5) - which is fairly close to the AFA prices when converted to US dollars. Outside the EU, sales are in principle VAT-free; but tracked international shipping, which is a requirement of the national Swedish tax authorities on shipments outside the EU in order for sales to be exempted from VAT at all, costs ?12.50 regardless of the number of DVDs you order - thus, the total cost on a single-DVD order to the rest of the world outside the EU would be ?57.50 inc. shipping.

Special discounts on direct sales are available to Sophia Centre staff, M.A. students and M.A. graduates, by prior arrangement with the course director Dr. Nick Campion, who can supply a coupon code to qualifying parties.

If these prices sound high, please bear in mind that there is a lot of time and work involved in producing and packaging each disc by hand, further to the months of intensive scanning and cropping of 10,000 pages of original source texts that were involved in the original preparation of each of the compilations. Further, the market for these DVDs is very niche, with typical sales of no more than a dozen copies per title per year. It is a labour of love rather than a profitable business, and it simply wouldn't be viable to offer them for less.

Thank you for your interest,

Philip