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About Us
Leor Warner 1941-2007 Forever in our heart
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Leor Warner, formerly of Los Angeles, CA, and one of our oldest and most cherished friends has died. Amy and I called him "The King," having learned his title from Carole Murray, who coined it and introduced his beautiful healing energy into our lives and to whom we will always be grateful for having done so.
Leor Warner was the astrologer's astrologer and the counselor's counselor, but death comes to us all. Leor Warner was killed instantly on Thursday, September 13, 2007, at 7:18 AM while driving east on I-40 in California, 5 miles east of Ludlow, CA, in the Mojave desert, when the car he was driving left the road and went tumbling into a drainage ditch. Leor Warner's partner Jim was ejected from the car (Leor was not ejected from the car) and Jim ended up badly injured, though I am told today (Sept 25th) that while he's in a lot of pain, he can now move his arms and hands and feeling has returned to them. He is presently in what I have been told is a very good hospital in Loma Linda, CA. Leor's dear Chihuahua, Zeus, survived but Jim’s little friend Apollo did not. According to Jim, who obviously knows what happened better than anyone, the crash happened because Leor, who was driving, turned around to do something with little Zeus and when he did he lost control of the car and it zig-zagged all over the road. Eventually he just drove off the side of the road into the drainage ditch where it turned over many times. Jim said that Leor died quickly and did not suffer. The witness to the accident, who reported the car driving off the road for no apparent reason, must not have seen the moments leading up to the crash. Leor Warner's death is California Highway Patrol case number 091307-1652 SY. The San Bernardino Police-Coroner’s office referred me to them, though they have their own case number 70706936. I wrote the previous cold, hard facts as a reporter and repeated Leor's full name so often in the hope that Google and the other search engines will pick up on this tribute/blog/obituary and it will therefore be searchable and pop up on Google when Leor's friends try to find out why he hasn't answered his new phone number, at least those who can use computers. It is my privilege to post some information for those who knew this dear, sweet, kind, giving, brilliant, well-read, deep-thinking, supremely talented counselor, calligrapher and artist whose loss is beyond words to anyone who was blessed and fortunate enough to have known him. There is not that much about him on the web and I’m hoping that his friends will write their own blog/tributes to him, dear “StarTrance,” his first nickname for his emails, as I recall - pre "Ancient Spring." Those of us whose lives were enhanced in numerous ways by his astrological acumen and motherly bedside manner are now remembering them all and confronting the cruel fact that we no longer have “I’ll call Leor for an appointment!” as one of the sharpest arrows in our quiver when faced with a particularly daunting life-demon. He was the court of last resort in our Enchanted World following the death of another amazingly bright light, Amy’s mother, Jessie Spicer Zerner, who also guided us to our present sorrowful but fruitful life together. It is Jessie whom I like to think I am speaking with when I do most of my channeling. I’m glad to inform you that I’ve been able to “get” Leor since I learned of his demise and that he seems perfectly acclimated to the other side though, of course, I may just be fooling myself in an attempt to mitigate our grief, the same impetus that caused me to seek to contact Jessie back in 1996 and start on the road to adding psychic medium to my resume. Those of you who’ve read my blog on the death of our dear friend Rona Jaffe will know why I believe without doubt in life after death. And you’ll also know that even though I do, it doesn’t lessen by one iota the pain of the loss of these dear hearts and the others we lost, most recently my dear uncle and father figure, Morris Harth, and an amazing young man whose friendship made Amy and I feel young, cool, and very special, Ignatius Piedilato (whom I intend to memorialize in my next blog). I mention this because I know that almost all of you have lost people whom you love and have also experienced the crushing inconsideration of people, some of whom you thought were your considerate friends, who say the most stupid things to you, trying not so much to console you as to push away their own fears about death and going through what you’re going through. When this happens, all we can do is forgive them if we can and stick to our strong center. But anyone who expects anyone to ever "get over" the loss of someone dear to them is speaking nonsense. We NEVER get over the loss of someone dear to us, we only learn some way to live without them and without killing ourselves until we all meet again (though some do take the suicide shortcut home, a deed that is forbidden by every spiritual teaching I know of, though who is to say what another person's grief should engender?) I’m rambling, of course, which is another symptom of grief. What can you say about a person like Leor Warner? "Do you know what I mean," as he used to say so often and how much I'd like to hear him say it another thousand times. Leor Warner dedicated his life to understanding the language of the stars and understand the language of the stars he did! That’s an amazing thing to say about anyone. And not only was he able to build on the encyclopedic knowledge of astrology that had been passed on to him by his mentor, a woman whose name I'm ashamed not to remember at the moment, but Leor Warner was able to "step down" his thousand amp wisdom into words of guidance that could flow through us without blowing our fuses or burning us out. Leor Warner could have been the most famous astrologer in the world, as much for his stellar client list as for his stellar wisdom and counseling skills. But he didn’t seek fame, only to make a quiet life of peace and contentment for him and Jim and their “Chihuahua marching band,” as he wrote in the last email I received from him announcing what was to us a very unexpected change of residence. Leor died while moving from Hollywood, CA, to Sedona, AZ. He left LA at 3:45 in the morning, having packed their 1991 Infiniti G20 with whatever was precious and had not gone with the moving truck the previous day. He was moving because he had seen an aspect in his own astrology chart(s) that indicated he was moving and was never coming back - to Los Angeles, CA, he thought. He had done this before, having moved from New York City, where we met him when he was living at, shall we say, a very unusually populated apartment building called the Ansonia and then moved out of there to the land of my birth, Brooklyn, NY, from where he subsequently moved all the way to Venice Beach, CA, back in 1986ish - 1987, and he never returned to New York City. His move to California convinced me that Edgar Cayce’s prediction of California sliding off into the ocean was not about to happen, since Leor, the most technically proficient astrologer I knew or knew of, had moved right onto the CA coast! And his sudden announcement around Labor Day 2007 that he was moving to Sedona caused me to wonder if Cayce’s prediction was about to manifest now and I was going to write to him to inquire, but I was “too busy” cleaning my basement and organizing the paintings in our possession of Amy’s incredibly talented maternal grandfather, the painter Clayton V. Spicer, yet another artistic wonder who doesn’t have anything written about him on the web – I’m going to change that, too. We’ve all got to start feeding Google’s spider-bots info about the wonderful unsung heroes we know, so if a whisper of their name reaches someone’s ears, they’ll be able to learn more about these lights who shone brightly but shine no longer. Leor saw the aspect in his chart that a big move was coming/required and he did his best to mitigate what I’m sure where the negative effects he saw. Sedona is a wonderful, magical place but I’ve often said that it is so special that I’m not sure that any Native Americans lived there because it was sacred, a word whose origin implies “untouchable,” and I’m not sure that any people should inhabit its sacred precincts. With apologies to those who live and/or have lived in Sedona, I don’t know if I’ve felt this way because it is true or because I precognitively knew that one of the most special people in my life would die on his way to live there. Leor told us that he would be "reading from the vortex on September 21st." I have also heard from one of Leor’s closest friends and neighbors, Dorian Hannaway, who has supplied me with the living details of this tribute, that Leor once said that he didn’t have health insurance because he saw that he would die in his sleep, just like that. It is for this reason that I originally wrote on Sept 21 that Leor might have fallen asleep while driving. According to the police report, the people in the car behind him reported that he just drove off the road for no apparent reason. I had also thought that maybe it could have been a heart attack, like the one that killed Amy’s dear father, Ray Zerner, on his way to pick her up from graduation rehearsal at East Hampton High School. Leor's friend Constance Stellas just wrote me that she actually had the reaction "I have to call Leor and tell him Leor is dead!" So sweet, so funny, so true to life since everyone who knew Leor called him when something great or devastating happened. It doesn’t really matter how Leor died or whose "fault" it was, nor does anything else seem to really matter when the loss of a dear friend is a fresh tear in one's being and you want to shout out to everyone you see "How can you be acting like nothing's happened? Don't you know that Leor Warner is no longer here? Our rock, our cornerstone, our calm center got killed like a mere mortal! That means we're all vulnerable and unprotected!!!" Like we've always been and always will be until we're all in that same place. I first felt that way when another of my dearest friends, Dr. Robert M. Giller, MD, another one of the most amazing people who have graced this lucky planet, was also killed in a car crash on October 18th, 1996. As it was with learning of Leor's death, Amy and I had our bags packed and were on our way to New York City, not to Bergdorf Goodman for a trunk show of Amy's "Spiritual Couture" (TM) evening jackets but to lecture on a cruise ship departing NYC for Bermuda that day. Instead, we drove to Dr. Bob's town house and actually slept at the foot of his widow Nancy Lee's bed because we wanted to make sure she didn't hurt herself in her understandable grief. We stayed with Nancy for a week helping her make arrangements for Bob's funeral, a precious week that we could have spent with Jessie, who was herself sick with myelofibrosis that suddenly turned to leukemia two months later and took her from us. When Amy's mother, Jessie Spicer Zerner, died, Amy, who only does self-portraits when she's sad, created her largest tapestry, the 8' X 12' work that appears on the back cover of her "Spiritual Couture" catalog as a tribute to her. Amy felt so crushed and small that she needed to make her biggest piece just to feel...just to feel. To see it on our website, click here (it's the third picture down). Magically, Leor called us out of the blue the day Jessie died, the day Uranus was exact on my Aquarian sun, and told us to buy white flowers and to sniff lavender to help us with our grief, something I think we should all do now to help us mourn Leor and endure the pain of our loss. One of the many striking symbolic features of the large tapestry piece is the Astrology chart wheel that has been ripped in half and occupies the upper corners of Amy's monumental tribute to her amazing mother. To me, this symbolizes that when you lose someone dear the very heavens are torn asunder and one's beliefs, in this case astrology, are also ripped in half, like "A philosopher with a toothache," all of one's vaunted theories turn to ashes that mock all pretentious pronouncements that fail to take emotion, loss, and death into account. We can't blame astrology or Leor not foreseeing his death in his chart for himself for Leor's dying. As Shakespeare wrote in Julius Ceasar, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not with our stars but with ourselves, that we are underlings." Like the old story of "The Appointment In Samara," not even the highest and mightiest of we human beings, we mortal "underlings," can escape his appointment with Death. I remember calling up Leor in my own anguish after looking at Dr. Bob's chart to ask why? Where is it in his chart that he was going to die that day? Because if there was something in Bob's chart indicating his death that day, I couldn't see it and I know astrology fairly well. Had he asked me if he should have gone driving down to Atlantic City to be the first on line to buy antiques for his new home in one of the most torrential rainstorms ever to hit the NY metropolitan area (nine inches of rain in one day!), I would have certainly told him not to go, but not because I saw death and destruction in his chart.
As I poured out my story, Leor was his usual patient self and, like a cloud doing you a favor and parting so you can see the sunshine for a crucial second, transformed from counselor to teacher and guided me to erect on my computer a couple of charts that, when put together, revealed the conjunction of numerous alignments on a particular degree in Scorpio.
"It was a fated event," he said softly. "There was nothing that you or anyone could have done about it."
Sigh. Now Leor’s death is the one no one could have done anything about. Now Leor Warner is on the other side with Clayton and Ray and Jessie and Ignatius and Rona Jaffe and Dr. Robert M. Giller M.D. and Professor Arnold Keyserling and Amy's grandmother, Lillias Burtenshaw (née Barclay) my father Leonard Farber and my uncle Morris Harth and KitKat and Lacey and billions of other dear souls who I hope were mourned as best they could be, the way we today can mourn and post to the web tributes to their valuable lives so they can live as electrons on our screens and on the world wide web of electricity, as they did when they were a part of the world wide web of life. I know they live on as energy beings in some form or other because I can hear/see/feel their communications.
I’m always struck by how important it is to my psychic clients, even the otherwise hard-nosed business people, to find out from me if their departed loved one is “OK” on the other side. In almost all cases I tell them that they’re doing great, it’s us who’ve been left behind who are suffering and the only thing that saddens those on the other side is when we are sad. The purpose of life is to be happy – if you don’t believe me, then read the Dalai Lama’s books! They want us to be happy while alive because that is the only reason to be alive, so we should be as happy as we can in the face of death. This difficult feat is not impossible.
The Buddha said that meditating on death is the highest mediation. This is because it brings you into reality better than anything. You appreciate every moment when you realize that, for example, smelling your loved one’s hair right now is something that you’d give your fortune for if/when she or he is no longer with you. And there’s no guarantee that it won’t be your beloved willing to give everything to smell your head one more time. This is not maudlin, it is the truest of truths. Life is beautiful, meant to be appreciated every moment, and we should not let distractions keep us from realizing that, for example, being late is a lot better than being the late Mr/Ms so and so. Remembering. Being aware of what is real and valuable as you face the inevitabilities of life and death – that is what enables you to really live as you find out who you really are in the crucible of challenge, sorrow, and pain. It is also what drives many people to drink, drugs, insanity, cruelty, and suicide. The sorrows of life can also help us to be compassionate for our fellow sufferers, helping others being yet another purpose for our living, both qualities being manifested to their zenith in the life and being of Leor Warner.
Leor always listened, never judged, and gave you the kind of advice you only get from someone who loves you and is only interested in your highest good and greatest joy. If he told you about good times ahead, you could almost count on them. If he told you that you would have to "float through it," you knew it was going to be a difficult life passage that you would soon be required to endure and learn first-hand the meaning of Nietzsche's "What does not kill me makes me stronger." Nietzsche wrote this from an asylum and crazy is how I and I'm sure all of Leor's many client/friends feel at his passing, alternating with hearing his voice advising us how it's all for the best - small comfort to we who only want to hug him one more time.
Amy and I believe from all too much experience that after someone dies, she or he gives you a gift that you know could have only been manifested by this special person in this special way. Yesterday, as I was waiting on line for my coffee, an amazing phenomenon occurred to me and I know it was Leor’s gift to me. I started off with my usual realization that everyone I saw, including the asshole who cut in line in front of me, was also missing someone they loved, even if they didn’t know it, remember it, or even if they hadn’t met this beloved person yet.
But then this calming realization kept on blooming to become the most intense feeling of love and compassion for strangers that I have ever felt, something I’m sure came from Leor. I started feeling for each person I looked at the love that could have and should have been felt by their parents! I actually felt unconditional parental love for each of these people! It was amazing. It was the same kind of love I feel for our beloved cat Zane, who can do no wrong (though he often tries!) This is the closest I've ever come to the Buddha and Dalai Lama’s understanding of the word compassion. If we all felt even just a little like this for everyone we encountered, what a different world this would be. Thanks, Leor!
And the love that I, Monte Farber, feel for my beloved wife of soon to be 30 years, the artist and fashion designer Amy Rachel Zerner? My love for my wise, beautiful, kind, generous, and supremely talented goddess, like Leor a gift to the entire world, explodes out of my heart into every corner of the universe and nourishes me and all beings and the absence of being and light. Or at least that’s the way it seems to me. Monte loves Amy, carved in a heart on a tree. Same thing.
The thing Amy and I wish for the most in our blessed lives is that as its coda we will die together at the same moment so we do not have to live another nanosecond without each other. I’m sorry for dear Jim that, as he has stated, his own wish to leave this plane of existence with his own beloved Leor was not fulfilled. Their life together is a beautiful story of love and devotion that can and will inspire us all.
May all beings attain peace and comfort in the loving compassion that permeates everywhere always and in all ways. May we all tune into that frequency of unconditional love that was Leor's gift to us all and which is available to us all and all of time, especially when we’re grieving, angry, distracted, fearful, vengeful, and otherwise ignoring the truth of what life is really all about. The purpose of life is to be happy. I’m going to keep repeating this as an affirmation. Maybe it will help me hold on to my present inspiration. That’s the best any of us can do – try our best to remember to do what we believe is the best we can do.
Here are two quotes that Leor sent us as being important to him:
"Those who catch the Joy as it flies,
Live in Eternity's Sunrise."
................William Blake
"I have come back to ancient shores where it is always now," K. Raine
Indeed you have, dear Leor. 'Til we meet again. Monte Farber for Amy Zerner P.S. Please, please, please pass the link to this blog on to everyone you know whose life has been touched by Leor Warner. And to the many, many people who knew Leor better than I, please write to me at info@theenchantedworld.com and correct anything I've fouled up and add anything you think should be added and I'll do my best to make this a fitting tribute to one of the finest human beings it has been my privilege to know and be guided by. |
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