Rafael Bracho (RXB) was born in Mexico City towards the end of 1955 and left his home country in 1978 after studying Biomedical Engineering and Philosophy but only graduating from the former. He then spent the next 36 years in the United States, earning along the way a PhD from Carnegie Mellon in the field of robotic vision and working in research and development at Schlumberger and Sun Microsystems. He co-founded Active Software in 1995 to solve the integration problem of computing systems in large corporations, which was made evident by the Internet revolution. The company pioneered what became known as Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), went public in 1999 and merged with webMethods in 2001. After being a board member and advisor to various startups, and even co-founding a second integration company, he retired in his home country in late 2013.
Fascinated by symbols all his life, he had encountered astrology in the mid 1970s and became an amateur self-taught astrologer, making horoscopes for friends and family and even having a small venture in 1977 selling computer-made birth charts using a program that he wrote based on Grant Lewi’s book Heaven Knows What. Astrology had always been a trusted friend during trials and tribulations so he enrolled in a master’s level course with renowned humanistic astrologer Noel Tyl who unfortunately passed away on his 83rd birthday, December 31, 2019.
Unable to finish the course, Rafael embarked on a personal quest to integrate the seemingly unrelated aspects of his own personality aided by years of Jungian psychoanalysis he underwent around the turn of the century. Seeking to reconcile his scientific, astrological, and even Buddhist outlooks on life, and taking advantage of the solitude awarded by the pandemic, he studied scientific topics as diverse as quantum mechanics, general relativity and cosmology alongside philosophies of science, consciousness and astrology—the latter in the form of Dane Rudhyar’s books.
Fully embarked in what occult traditions call The Path, this blog is his attempt at sharing some of the lessons learned and the wisdom obtained thus far. The hope is that, by relating one man’s quest for living a truly meaningful life, others may find inspiration to follow their personal destiny or dharma.