American astrologer, pro since 1980, a lecturer and author of over 100 articles in astrological magazines. With a background in the business and computer worlds, and a degree in philosophy from the University of Maryland, he was a partner for many years in ARC associates in Washington, DC. His discipline is Hindu astrology, sidereal, in which he works on political, business, financial and medical astrology.
Richard Houck was widely recognized as one of the few astrologers in the world with a practical, integrated grasp of the best of Eastern and Western astrology. He was the sole sponsor of the largest Vedic conference ever held on the East Coast of the United States and he was also a featured lecturer at other major conferences.
His many books and articles were widely applauded for their freshness and practicality. Disdaining much of the vague and repetitive sign-oriented typing that passed for Western astrology (basically projection and self-attribution), Rick’s work was dedicated to demonstrating the great classical and objective strengths that can be derived from layering useful Western techniques upon the stronger Eastern baseline. He was one of few astrologers to accurately predict the chaos and confusion of the year 2000 presidential election in the United States months prior to its occurrence. His web site was devoted to documented and unequivocal forecasting for which he was recognized and highly regarded.
Prior to his astrological career, Rick worked for Arthur Andersen & Company as a manager of the Advanced Computer Auditing Techniques group for the Washington, DC office and was one of their top international trainers in that area. He was the Senior Information Officer for Intelsat, the international governmental consortium that runs the world satellite network. He was also a Director in the Information Technology Division of an executive recruiting firm, President of the largest computer security association in Washington, DC, and an independent consultant to other private companies and the Federal government. He earned a degree in Philosophy.
In 1994, Houck published “The Astrology of Death,” Groundswell Press, which was highly applauded and very well received.
In April 1999, he was diagnosed with cancer. Using diet and various alternate healing methods, he thrived through the year, feeling strong in spite of some weight loss. However, in November 1999, Rick released the information that the right lobe of his liver has six tumors the diameter of a baseball and cancer is wrapped around the aorta and has metastasized through the body. On 1 April 2001, his wife Paula send out the announcement that Rick had died.
Some time before, he had been interviewed for a program on Prophecy on television’s Learning Channel. After explaining that is wasn’t too hard to come up with the date of death for most charts he went on to say that he expected his own death on 13 September 2031 by heart attack.