Marc Edmund Jones was born to Edmund H. and Annie Louise (Holmes) Jones
at 8:37 a.m on October 1, 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri. Little is known
of his preschool years outside of the fact that his family moved to
Chicago, Illinois in 1891 and lived next door to Christian Scientists
in a two-story brick house on what is now Lake Park.
Marc once commented that he recalled little of his early childhood except
for one memory of St. Louis, and he remembered nothing of his first
year in Chicago.
He was the first and, for nine years, the only child in the family.
His sister, Helen, was born in 1897.
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Marc described his family life as "quiet." He had no memory
of his parents talking together and he recalled that his father read
most of the time. In 1893, at the age of five, Marc attended the World
Columbian Exposition. It was there that he made his first observations
about the importance of sequence and relationships after studying an
exhibit of precious stones that were categorized according to color
and value. The thing that puzzled him was what made one stone more valuable
than another.
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His lifelong fascination with structure and pattern revealed itself
at an early age. He related in later years that he "constructed
an elaborate semaphore system on the back fence with strings running
all the way down to the yard and to my room in the house. I would manipulate
the strings, and the engineers would salute."
He also constructed cardboard railroad systems on the floor of his room,
complete with cardboard tracks and trains.
Marc attended John Dewey's experimental high school in Chicago. His
attention to detail was revealed in a story he told many years later
of planing away the surface of an entire board in a manual training
class there, trying to get its surface perfect.
When he was 16, Marc made a lifetime Christian commitment at a Presbyterian
church in Chicago. At that time, he lived at 53rd near Kimbark. He dropped
out of high school in 1907 to go into business. It is not surprising
that his first job in 1908, at the age of 20, was for the Pullman Company.
The following year, he assumed the position of Yardmaster in Seattle
and western Canada. Three years later he went to work in Santa Barbara,
California as the manager of Western Machine and Foundry.
In 1911, he left Santa Barbara and took a job at Addressograph in Chicago
where he first began to write scenarios. His first, "Mrs. Brown's
Furs" was rejected.
The next year, in 1912, he started working at Western Electric in Chicago.
On March 16th of that year he sold his first motion picture scenario,
"Twilight," for $20.00. That was the beginning of an approximate
10-year career, writing and publishing scenarios.
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In 1913, at the age of 25, Marc resigned from Western Electric and began
the study of astrology. He also moved to New York City, the headquarters
of the movie industry in those days. His goal was to become a freelance
writer.
He sold a total of 13 scenarios that year. Several of those titles give
a flavor of the times: "Curing Her Extravagance" and "The
Miser's Policy." Other titles reflect the early stages of what
was to become a lifetime of study and involvement with the occult: "The
Prophecy," "Destinies Fulfilled," and "The Sign."
The following year his mother died and he met the occultist, W.J. Colville,
author of Universal Spiritualism. Marc later described Colville in his
book, Occult Philosophy, as "having had great influence in preserving
a measure of reconciliation between Spiritualism and Theosophy."
He eventually lived in Colville's room at Hyperion House where he had
significant "spiritual experiences."
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Marc moved to Judson Tower on Washington Square, at the south end of
5th Avenue in 1914. He was particularly successful that year in that
he sold a total of 39 scenarios. Many of the titles reflect a more romantic
side of the man who would later found The Sabian Assembly as an experimental
and modern "Plato's Academy." "The Kiss" and "Our
Mutual Girl Hears Royal Romance" were just two of those titles.
In 1915, Marc went to Bermuda with a film company, sold 18 scenarios
and became the Scenario Editor for Equitable Motion Picture Corp. It
was apparent, though, that he was becoming more deeply involved in spiritualistic
pursuits as he joined the Rosicrucian Society that year. He taught classes
for the Max Heindel group and said it was there that he became thoroughly
grounded in the occult and experienced the actuality of the screen of
prophecy, or the idea of things fitting together and being a part of
each other. ________________________________________
In 1918, during World War I and at the age of 30, Marc was inducted
into the Army. Curiously, four years earlier and prior to the war, he
had written a scenario entitled "Millions for Defense." He
served as a private at Madison Barracks where he became the editor of
the camp paper. Four months later he attended Officers Training School
at Camp Lee, Virginia.
Marc was honorably discharged from the service at the end of the war
in 1919 but he found the doors of the motion picture industry closed
to him by influenza. It was then that he turned to writing pulp fiction.
He published his first article in Argosy Magazine and 13 others that
year.
The next two years reflected his ability to function in a number of
worlds at once. Following the publication in 1920 of such articles as
"The Girl Who Took a Bath," in Saucy Stories, and "The
Quakeress Vamp" in Smith's Magazine, he took a position as Executive
Head of the 6th Worlds and 28th International Christian Endeavor Convention
in New York City in 1921. He also turned to writing mystery stories
and published a total of 14 articles that year.
The year 1922 marked a turning point for the man who would later become
known as "The Cabalist." Rejecting the popular fortune-telling
astrology of the day, he began organizing and codifying his astrological
material by what he termed a "cabalistic" method. Although
his method included the more widely recognized Hebrew Kabbala, he described
his approach as a blend of head and heart, or poetry and philosophy,
that is directed toward helping the individual to integrate those functions
within himself. His cabalistic structure permeates the Sabian lesson
material.
An earlier period of Marc's study of the Fons Vitae by Solomon ben Judah
ibn Gabirol resulted in his development of a method for problem solving
that uses a special cabalistic pattern of "magic squares."
This technique has been used by many of the Sabian Assembly students
and later became the basis of William T. Roche's thesis for his master's
degree in philosophy as well as the basis for his book, A Conversion
of Manners, a modern interpretation of the spirituality of Saint Benedict.
It is currently the focus of a special Sabian student study group. It
should also be noted that Marc used the magic squares patterning to
structure the entire corpus of the Sabian Assembly study materials.
At some point in 1922, Marc began working with Zoe Wells, a recognized
commercial artist and student of his, who possessed remarkable psychic
skills. In an experimental session, Miss Wells brought through fifty-two
symbols for a pack of ordinary playing cards. Marc described this event,
in his book, The Sabian Symbols in Astrology, as the "beginning
of a conscious recognition of the ancient sources as a self-contained
and living integrity available for use."
On December 5, 1922, Marc began the first of a series of weekly classes
in astrology at the Judson Tower in New York. He uses that date and
time as the birth date of the Sabian Assembly for astrological charts,
although he designated October 17, 1923 as the official birthday of
the Assembly. It was on that date, after moving back to California in
April, that he resumed his classes at Manley Palmer Hall's Church of
the People in Los Angeles. But it wasn't until 1928 that his students
selected that name to call themselves, as representative of people who
were interested in what was then astrology. That same year, in 1923,
Marc met Priscilla Kennedy Chandler, his future wife, and Elsie Wheeler,
the psychic with whom he would work in bringing through the Sabian symbols
several years later.
Marc published nine more articles in the period of 1922-23 and then
turned to writing the first of the Sabian lesson sets in 1924 -- The
Codex Occultus, Key Truths of Occult Philosophy, and commentaries on
The Book of Daniel and Grimms' Fairy Tales.
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On some unrecorded date in 1925, Marc drove to Balboa Park in San Diego
with psychic Elsie Wheeler, who was then one of his students, and there,
during the space of a day, they brought through the now famous Sabian
symbols.
As Marc told it, "I had to find a place where the conditions would
be proper for Elsie Wheeler, through whose consciousness the laya [energy]
center in each of the three hundred and sixty cases could get in a picture
or situation with meaning in modern and common everyday life, for that
one of the Brothers who had the age-old and particular saturation in
the true Memphite (earlier Egyptian) schematism from which the zodiac
was derived originally, and myself, supplying the especially refined
cabalistic training needed for the critical interpretation or rationalization
of the relationships at the threshold of a new or atomic age ...."
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His first commentary on the Sabian symbols was experimental and he later
rejected it as too moralized, or set in the prevailing white, Anglo-Saxon
culture of his upbringing. After working out the formula pattern and
a new commentary, he went back to the original pencilled descriptions,
precisely as first put down in Elsie Wheeler's words and, in 1953, published
them in his book, The Sabian Symbols in Astrology.
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The following year, on June 11, 1926, Marc married Priscilla Kennedy
Chandler. Three years later, at the age of 41, Marc began a three year
program at Occidental College in Los Angeles. He graduated in June of
1932, and in August he began a three-year program of study at the San
Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo, California. He graduated
from Seminary in 1934 with a Bachelor of Divinity degree. His thesis
was "The Prophesy of Israel." That same year, he was ordained
as a minister and was installed in a pastorate at Esparto, California.
On July 6, 1936, he matriculated at Columbia University. On August 29
of the following year, his father died at the age of 74. In April of
1938 he moved to New York and became a student in the Advanced School
of Education at Columbia . ________________________________________
In 1939, Marc began traveling extensively throughout the United States,
speaking on astrology. The following year, he published an encyclopedic
article, "The Science of the Ages," that ran for 11 issues
in American Astrology. In 1941, David McKay Co. published his books
How to Learn Astrology and Guide to Horoscope Interpretation and eleven
of his articles were published by Horoscope and American Astrology.
From 1942 through 1943, Marc published a total of 39 articles in various
astrological magazines on topics ranging from horary astrology to a
series of Grandon Trine astrological detective stories. He was also
actively involved in the Astrologers' Guild at that time.
During the same four years, Marc wrote over 900 of his 3,002 lessons
on philosophy, the Bible and other special topics for the Sabian Assembly
students. A full listing of those sets may be found in the brochure
on The Sabian Assembly. Each set consists of approximately 26 lessons.
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From 1944 through 1947, Marc published his book Astrology, How and Why
It Works and 33 other astrological articles while working on his doctorate
at Columbia and lecturing throughout the country.
He was awarded his Ph.D. in Philosophy in 1948. His dissertation was
on George Sylvester Morris, a theistic idealist. That same year, after
the assassination of Gandhi, he wrote the book Gandhi Lives, from start
to finish, in six weeks. He also published Occult Philosophy and George
Sylvester Morris.
From 1949 through 1952, Marc traveled and lectured on astrology throughout
the country. In just one four-month period in 1951 he traveled 14,438
miles. The following year he traveled another 14,682 miles from March
to September. ________________________________________
During 1952, Marc maintained residences in both Miami, Florida and New
York City. In 1953, he helped his old friend, numerologist Florence
Evelynn Campbell, found the Metaphysical Foundation in New York City.
That same year, he published The Sabian Symbols in Astrology in book
form after having reworked the commentary for two years.
Marc moved to Stanwood, Washington in 1954 and, for the first time since
1907, established a permanent home. He spent 1955 working on his new
home, but the next year he was back on the road lecturing in Chicago,
Detroit, Miami, New York, Los Angeles and other cities. In 1957, he
published The Sabian Manual (the handbook still used today by the Sabian
Assembly students), and in 1960 he published Essentials of Astrological
Analysis.
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In 1963, at the age of 75, Marc became seriously ill and canceled an
astrological lecture in Seattle. That same year, he discontinued his
regular orthodox church and ministerial activities. Not to be kept down,
he resumed his lecturing later that year.
He started writing Scope of Astrological Prediction in 1965, a task
that would take him four years. He later commented that his mind was
"erased" in relation to that book and he started over again
in 1967. The book was finally published in 1969.
In 1973, he published The Sabian Book and the Sabian Assembly celebrated
its 50th birthday.
Marc's next book, Mundane Perspectives in Astrology, was published in
1975 when he was 87. The following year, his book How to Live with the
Stars was published. That same year his wife, Priscilla (who he always
referred to as "My Lady")died, and Marc fell at the MGM Hotel
in Las Vegas and was seriously injured.
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Marc became seriously ill with the flu early in 1977, but by June, and
at the age of 89, he was back on the lecture circuit and gave several
workshops in Virginia Beach. In August, he traveled to the Sabian Conference
in Chicago.
In 1978 he wrote that he was suffering with heart problems but was still
working on two new books that were published later that year -- Man,
Magic and Fantasy and Fundamentals of Number Significance. He was, at
that time, 90 years old. The following year he published his final book,
The Counseling Manual in Astrology.
In February of 1980, Marc wrote that he had suffered a fall. On March
5, Robert Spencer, Marc's close friend and the new Administrator of
the Sabian Assembly, wrote "I am writing this just a few hours
after receiving word of Marc's passing .... ________________________________________
Marc left a living legacy in his students throughout the world and a
voluminous body of biblical, philosophical, astrological and occult
materials that form the basis of study for groups that continue to meet
regularly as well as his "students afield."
The public knew him best as an astrologer, but his students remember
him most warmly in the poetic beauty of the closing lines of his healing
ritual:
May the temple of your living flesh
Be worthy of your high desire;
May your worldly place in daily life
Bring recompense in rich degree;
May your happiness and state of heart
Endear you everywhere you go;
And may the spirit stirring deep within
Be ever conscious in your thoughts!
---o---