A Meeting of the Minds

Astrology’s theme song could easily be “Getting to Know You,” the song that comes from the Broadway musical The King and I, which of course was later turned into the film of the same name. This Rodgers and Hammerstein creation is based on a 1944 best-selling novel by Margaret Landon (born September 7, 1903) called Anna and the King of Siam. Landon’s novel itself was based on the memoirs of Anna Harriette Emma Leonowens (born November 5, 1831) a widowed schoolteacher who for six years taught the many children of the King of Siam’s 39. In 1870, after she had left his employ, she wrote a book about her experiences. The English Governess at the Siamese Court, which became a best-seller.

Critics have accused Mrs. Leonowens of embellishing her experiences in the Siam court, and exaggerating her influence with the king, but Landon’s fictionalized spin-off went even further by playing up the theme of a possible romance between the King and Anna, a story line that became the central theme of the Broadway and movie versions. In modern times, none of this finds favor in Siam’s successor, the constitutional monarchy of Thailand, where the general feeling is that both the King of Siam and his court are depicted as being childish and ignorant.

Setting all of that to one side we might ask ourselves if there is anything astrology has to say about the interesting literary relationship between the Scorpio who lived the story and the Virgo who used