Mediums Are In
IS THERE an unseen world, a world our hands cannot touch, our eyes cannot see, our ears cannot hear, a world we cannot taste or smell? And if there is such a world, does it influence life on this planet earth — my life in Yonkers or Springfield or Dallas?
The answer to this question is affirmative from a wide variety of people.
Jeane Dixon says yes, and if you were born under the sign of Cancer (June 22 to July 22), then on September 27 you had better be prepared for trouble: "Sudden changes are quite possible, which seem at this time to be cataclysmic disasters, but which later prove to be the only mechanism by which you can develop."
And because you know that Mrs. Dixon predicted the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, you listen to her, and just possibly you're a bit more careful driving your car or talking to the boss that day.
Or your read Carroll Righter's horoscope column in the Chicago Daily News of Friday, January 16, and — supposing you're a Leo, born between July 23 and August 22 — you may decide to kick up your heels a bit that day: "Act in a positive way," Mr. Righter advises you. "Be off to the social with
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charming people and have a delightful and profitable time."
According to Editor and Publisher, 1,200 daily newspapers in the United States publish horoscope columns, compared to only 100 papers 20 years ago.
Business firms employ full-time astrologers. In 1969 Lloyd Cope was retained by New York's Abraham & Strains department store as its official astrology consultant; and a member of the New York Stock Exchange "likes to conclude important deals at three A.M. because of his astrologer's counsel." (Life Magazine)
Sybil Leek is a self-proclaimed, practicing witch. Not in seventeenth-century Salem, Massachusetts, but in late twentieth-century Melbourne Beach, Florida, from which she flies (by jet) to New York and Chicago to promote fortune-telling and her new book. Mrs. Leek, who counts 400 "authentic witches" among her personal friends and acquaintance in the United States, estimates the world witch population at eight million.
Other witches (the term "warlock" for a male witch is falling into disuse) include an Air Force captain who has his degree in physics from Virginia Military Institute; a British Ph.D. in anthropology, Raymond Buckland, and his wife, who practice their craft in New York City, where Dr. Buckland edits manuals for an overseas airline; and Mrs. Florence S. (like the Air Force captain, she prefers anonymity), a Brooklyn housewife who owns a black cat named Thirteen.
Satanism is one of the most obscure manifestations of witchcraft. Several years ago Anton Szandor LaVey
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founded the First Satanic Church in San Francisco, dedicated to sensual indulgence, vengeance, and all sins. Mr. LaVey decries "good" witches; he preaches evil and wields black magic. (His "church" isn't open to visitors: telephone inquirers are told that they must first read the Satanic Bible; then, if they are in agreement with its teachings, they may make written application for membership.)
There are also mediums who specialize in communication with the dead. The late Bishop James A. Pike — in evident soul agony over his son Jim's suicide — consulted mediums in England and the United States, and was sufficiently convinced of the reality of an unseen spirit world to write a book about it, The Other Side.
Dr. Pike's book is just one of many publications in the field. A local bookstore has such recent titles as Astrology for Everyday Living; Astrology Made Practical; Fortune-Telling With Cards; Dreams and Your Horoscope; Your Character in the Stars; Numerology; Your Future in Your Hand; Astrology Answers Your Questions; Astrology, Mythology, and the Bible; Astrology and Your Destiny; The Tarot Revealed; and Your Sun Personality.
Then there are specialized books: Your Baby's First Horoscope; Astrology for Teens; and How to Find Your Mate Through Astrology, all of a personal nature. Astrological Guide to Good Health; Five-Year Diet and Health Horoscope; Cooking With Astrology and Zodiac Cookbook are for those who want health advice. For those whose concerns go beyond themselves, there are
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Astrology and the United States, and The Birdfeather Astrological Space Book.
In a class all their own are Astrology for Hounds and the Cat Horoscope Book.
The paperback horoscope business has exploded in the last few years. Each book in a series on signs of the Zodiac has sold 2.5 to 3 million copies every year, according to The New York Times. In its life of less than two years, Doubleday's occult Universe Book Club has attracted over 100,000 members from all ages, localities, sexes.
One hundred thousand gamblers bought Astrology and Horse Racing last year.
A Bantam sales executive says that the market for his company's occult line is primarily in the Bible Belt and the Deep South.
What's it all about? Why this flowering of the occult in an age of science, of the most universal — perhaps the best — system of mass education in history?
If someone knows what is in my future, whether it's today as I travel to work or the way my life will end, I'd like to find out about it, I think. If constellations can be good or bad for me, if my decisions may be enlightened by advice from those who know my time of birth, this is important. I think I'd like to know about it.
I say "I think" because I'm not really sure. There's a mystery to life's code, its unknown hours and days, that I'm not sure I'd want broken, even if an expert could do so. And there's mystery in the beyond that could make me hold back from communicating with members of my family who have died, even if a medium could call them up.
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But life at best is tough and death is inexorable. So I'd like to know whether these things are possible, whether help is available if I want it.
Are horoscopes and related phenomena one big put-on, or are they actual means of knowing the future, of taking steps beyond ourselves?
