I dipped the Red Law in a pool of blood
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Pavel Turnovský was born on 19 July 1950 in Prague. His parents were the journalist Jiří Turnovský and Kamila, née Štočková. His mother moved away after her divorce in 1951 and he spent a nice childhood with his grandmother in Kačerov, Prague. His father’s second wife Jiřina, née Drápelová, also a journalist, played an important role in his life. After graduating from the Přípotoční Grammar School in 1969, he went through a number of professions, from working at the Československá Ceramics company to working as a warehouseman of art supplies at the Dílo company. During the period of normalisation he became an active part of the underground culture. As a manager, from 1977 he collaborated with Mikoláš Chadima, Jaroslav Jeroným Neduha and their band Extempore, later MCH Band. He was strongly influenced by the surrealists, and showed a deeper interest in alchemy and astrology as early as the late 1960s. With a group of similarly oriented people, they formed an informal circle called Auroboros, and with translator and poet Miroslav Drozd they published a samizdat edition of the same name. He belonged to the core of the Jazz Section from 1977 and was educated at the so-called underground university led by Milan Balabán. State Security (StB) kept on him a file of so-called “person under investigation” under the code name “Turnov”. Although he could have emigrated to West Berlin to visit his half-sister, he did not take the opportunity. From 1981 he worked as a guard at the Loreta in Hradčany, where he met Ivan Wernisch, Václav Vokolek and Filip Karfík, among others. He consistently devoted himself to the study of astrology, which he began to teach at home seminars in 1982. After the democratic change in 1989 he co-founded the Astrological Society of the Czech Republic and opened his own professional astrology school. For his positions during the period of non-freedom he received a Certificate of Participation in the Third Resistance. In 2025 Pavel Turnovský lived in Prague.
