Who was Uncle Bill?

Bill began his search in the Methodist Youth Fellowship of Pocatello Idaho. By the mid-sixties, before psychedelic substances became readily available, he was having transcendent experiences brought on by chewing morning glory seeds. It was this kind of activity that eventually caused him, shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., to be locked up in the Denver City Jail. There he had life-altering all-night exchange with an older black man with a shadowy political past and a long criminal record, who displayed a deeper understanding of life than all the professors Bill had so far met.

This experience initiated Bill in a long period of consciousness exploration using non-chemical means. First, with an old folk singer who was a secret Rosicrucian and taught him the calculation and reading of Natal Horoscopes, and then with a retired nursery school teacher who had studied with the famous Armenian/Greek Teacher Gurdjieff, in Paris. Under her guidance, he and a group of close students built a "Real School" on a farm in rural Oregon, complete with houses, shops, gardens, animals, a school for children, and a large hall for the practice of Sacred Movements.

The close and very often tumultuous relationships brought about by the intense atmosphere in this school greatly contributed to his deepening understanding of Planetary types and the purpose and meaning of life. During his seven-year involvement with the farm he made his living as a busboy, appliance repairman, professional astrologer, antique oriental carpet dealer, and cabinetmaker. This period culminated in 1977 when, on an expedition to Afghanistan buying old carpets, he had an encounter in a walled fort some distance from Kabul with Madame Jeanne deSaltzman -- an old woman who had been Gurdjieff’s closest student and was making a movie about his life.

The insight that resulted from this meeting eventually led Bill on a pilgrimage to the Ashram of the infamous Indian Tantric Guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, later known as Osho, in Pune, India. There, Bill lived in a bamboo hut, did Groups, chopped vegetables, and practiced Sacred Dancing Darshans. He became a "sanyassin" with a new name, dressing always in red robes and a mala, and living the lifestyle of a Tantric. When Bhagwan’s people bought a huge ranch in central Oregon and started building there a city for 10,000, Bill, or Swami Dhyan Achara as he was then known, became the co-coordinator for all the Commune’s Portland activities, as well as occasionally its Official Astrologer. He left when the internal and external politics in and around the Commune became physically and legally dangerous, but not before obtaining a much deeper understanding of potential human powers and frailties and gaining the ability to be danced.

After a period spent traveling and reflecting, he returned to Portland, got a technical job within the city’s purchasing bureau and began studying Chinese history, language, medicine, and moving arts. He made a number of journeys with his aging mother to ancient Megalithic sights in England, Ireland, Scotland and the Orkney Islands, focusing on experiencing the forces held within obscure Stone Circles hidden away since prehistoric times throughout the Islands.

He then studied in England with the Acupuncturist J.R. Worseley, learned the “Secret Treatise of the Spiritual Orchid” from the French Sinologist Claude Larre, and specialized in using the “Twelve Officials” as a diagnostic guide for treatment with needles, moxibustion, and qigong. While making his living as an acupuncturist, he began collaborating with the German Sinologist and Herbalist Heiner Fruehauf, Chairman of the Classical Chinese Medicine Program in Portland, on a series of expeditions to the most remote areas of Sichuan, Yunan, and Eastern Tibet, in search of the roots of Chinese qigong and alchemy.

Between 1994 and 2003, he made eight of these trips, usually in the late summer. The travelers would go high into the Sacred Mountain ranges of China and Tibet, to learn the forms of the ancient Jinjing Gong school. There they studied with Wang Qingyu, the lineage holder of this 400-year-old school. The son of a Nationalist general, Wang was born on a battlefield during the Japanese war and had survived the revolution, exile to Tibet during their struggle with the Chinese, and imprisonment during the Cultural Revolution, to become famous throughout China as a qigong healer. Heiner, with Bill, would bring 15 to 20 students on these arduous, and sometimes dangerous, expeditions -- which made an ideal laboratory for astrological and medical research.

After 2003 he stopped making these China trips and began focusing on the revival of pre-modern Western Astrology, which was being done by Robert Zoller, who was restoring Medieval Astrology; Robert Hand, who was popularizing the older astrological methods; and Robert Schmidt, who was restoring Hellenistic Astrology. Bill made trips to study with each of these pioneers, and then one final expedition to Southern France with his mother to explore the reintroduction of the feminine and the practice of romantic love which had begun there in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Bill retired in 2022 and lived out the rest of his days teaching Qigong, Cosmography, and the Twelve Officials style of Acupuncture; as well as buying and selling antique Oriental carpets in a small town south of Portland, OR.

In his final days he was surrounded by his loved ones: his children, his lineage disciples, his students, and his closest friends. He had a full and adventurous life but admitted that his final days were some of his best. Bill passed away peacefully on July 23rd, 2024 and will forever be missed.