After giving up music, astrologer Jonathon Cainer put future in our sights

FOR decades newspaper readers have been turning to Jonathan Cainer’s often cryptic astrology forecasts, but few could have anticipated the poignancy behind his final reading.

Astrologer Jonathan Cainer had been writing the stars for newspapers around the world for 30 years.

“WE aren’t here for long. We should make the most of every moment. We all understand this yet don’t we forget it, many times? We get caught up in missions, battles and desires. We imagine that we have forever and a day. In one way, we may be right — for are we not eternal spirits, temporarily residing in finite physical form. An elevated perspective is essential to a meaningful existence.”

This was astrologer Jonathan Cainer’s final prediction for his own star sign of Sagittarius, written for today — the day he died.

For the past 30 years, newspaper readers around the world, including his many faithful Daily Telegraph fans, have been turning to Cainer’s often cryptic forecasts before they start their day. Like the millions who also called his telephone astrology service every day, they probably imagined that the famous astrologer would endure “forever and a day”. Cainer was working in his study when his wife Sue found him dead of a suspected heart attack on Monday.

But as he predicted, his eternal spirit will live on. It was Cainer’s wish that his nephew Oscar would take over from him as astrological guru, dispensing syndicated forecasts in his uncle’s idiom.

As a child Jonathan Cainer could not have predicted the path his life would take. He was born in Surbiton, Surrey, in England on December 18, 1957, the son of David Cainer who worked in the computer room at Barclays Bank. His mother Ruth was a medical secretary. His father was a practising Jew but Jonathan had to be dragged along to the synagogue.

Jonathan Cainer with five of his six children at home in Yorkshire, England, in 2002.

Ruth left David when Jonathan was 12 and David moved a girlfriend into the family home. Jonathan left school at the age of 15 to pursue his dream of becoming a professional bass player with a band called Strange Cloud, making ends meet by pumping petrol. He grew an afro, became interested in spiritualism and was involved in left wing causes. When performing didn’t quite pan out as a career he turned to managing his musician brother but left that behind in the early ’80s, moving to the US to manage a nightclub.

There he met poet, singer, songwriter and spiritual teacher Charles John Quarto who read his astrological chart. Cainer was so impressed by its accuracy, and by Quarto’s prediction that he would some day write an astrology column read by millions, that he decided that it was what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. He returned to England and enrolled at the Faculty of Astrological Studies in London, one of the premier schools of its kind established in 1948.

In 1986, before he had even finished his diploma, he had found work writing an astrology column for the new UK tabloid Today.

Although he had turned down an offer in 1984 to dispense blanket forecasts for people, preferring to prepare more detailed charts for greater accuracy, he decided he could word them in such a cryptic way that it covered several possibilities that left
the reader thinking and wanting more.

He later created his phone service to give people a more tailored forecast, based on their birthdate.

His column proved popular with readers and his services were soon sought by many other papers, including The Daily and Sunday Telegraphs and sister papers around Australia.

The death of his wife Melanie during surgery after a 1992 car accident rocked his world, leaving him with five children to care for. He hired a nanny Sue, who later became his spouse and with whom he had a child.

In the same year as his wife’s death he also left Today to join the Daily Mail. In 2000 the Express lured him away, despite the Mail offering £1 million ($A1.9 million) for him to stay. He later said that the Mail’s bigotry had convinced him to leave, the fact the Express had labelled him a dangerous anarchist in the ’70s was immaterial.

In what was meant to be a dream move he went to the Daily Mirror in the UK in 2001 but became dissatisfied that he had been like a star footballer hired by a coach and left on the subs bench. He went back to the Daily Mail, all differences with the paper forgotten.

With his astrology phone line returning a steady stream of revenue, he continued to write 25,000 words a week for the paper.

Cainer is survived by his wife Sue and his six children.

Originally published as After giving up music, astrologer Jonathon Cainer put future in our sights