i met him in a Banyuhay concert tour, bicol to baguio, sometime in 1978 (if memory serves) but it was in ’79 that i sought him out because i read somewhere that he was an astrologer pala, founder mismo of the UP Astrological Society.
i had gotten into astrology in 1976 when my TM teacher dropped a pile of books on my lap. he knew of my psych background (he was one of my subjects in a rorschach class), and he thought astrology would complement clinical personality tests. among the books was a Julia & Derek Parker manual (fallen apart now) that taught me how to cast birthcharts. i started with my own, of course, using a compass to draw the wheel and a protractor to get the 30-degree sections just right.
after a couple of years self-studying and finding astrology to be not just compatible with psychology but also revealing not only of personality but of karmic patterns, i found myself looking for a mentor of sorts, someone who would tell me if i was casting charts correctly and if i could ever be good enough at “reading” them for a living, or something like that, while also writing on the side.
i don’t remember who gave me heber’s phone number, but by the next day i was on my way to his place somewhere in U.P. diliman, with my chart and notes, and feeling like a student again. not that he treated me like one.
after some 15 minutes or so checking out my calculations, and cross-checking the data with his own ephemeris, he declared my casting correct and assured me that the exact conjunction of my mercury and neptune in libra in exact opposition to my moon in aries in the 8th was my window to the occult, so to speak. praktis lang, sabi niya, darating ang araw, hindi mo na kailangan mag-notes. he also warned me about my uranus-ruled 7th house, LOL.
in parting, he showed me a wheel template he had designed, offered me a ream for just a hundred bucks, and i grabbed it, of course. it was like an imprimatur from the pope!
salamat uli, heber, it was a privilege knowing you.