Music Monday ~ We Need Star-Cult Part 2!

In the penultimate chapter of "The Night Sky" - The Science and Anthropology of the Stars and Planets by Dr. Richard Grossinger, the author wanders into the realm of pop culture, the chapter's title: The Pop Star Cult of the Fifties and Sixties. What he describes was also the start of a culture of youth which, before that point in history hadn't existed. He writes about growing up with the legacy of World War 2 and the atom bomb. Being a War Baby myself I understand where he's coming from. He describes the development of what he calls a star-cult.

Some excerpts:

"The sirens warned us of another holocaust for which the atom bomb was the emblem. For all the times they accidentally went off, we still survived into the sixties..........................the nuclear war we seemed to have evaded, against the odds, was happening to us anyway, as radiation leaked into the rivers and the air, and Joan Baez sang "What have they done to the rain?"

This was the dark Plutonian half of the era, when a star cult began...... ......There was a star-cult because we needed a star-cult, and a star- cult alone would do. We were born into a tremendous heat and a prophecy. We knew that we were going to be something different because the world had become absurd. The passion we felt went beyond anything we could feel the passion for, so we transformed each other into angels and messengers, and we listened to the inter-stellar debris.........................

When the heavens cried out for their "stars above" and tens of thousands of jukeboxes and radios wailed variants of the word "love", didn't we understand that our whole civilization was praying for the return of the gods, the return of those powers within us that had brought us into being?

Yes, it is love which brings us here and love which gives us life.

Yes, we stand, every man and every woman, within the stars. Who else has survived the incredible galactic and atomic violence to be here for a day of song?

Bobby Darin called his "Dream Lover" from a faraway world; a zodiac figure, like Paul Anka's Venus...Frankie Laine "gambled for love in the moonlight", Elvis went to Heartbreak Hotel, as remote as the house of Cepheus. There he dreamed of "a warmer sun" in a world long past his own brief life. The melodies and the dances were otherworldly and exotic......

The baseball cards changed to tarot cards, and they fell like meteors across an older sky. "Do you believe in magic?" the Lovin' Spoonful asked at a cusp of changing times. The Beatles visited India, and they returned with a cosmic instrument. Jimi Hendrix arrived with his songs of the outer Solar System.....other visionaries flocked to the deserts to watch the ancient ceremonies of the Native Americans...........So the new tribes gathered at Woodstock. It was no costume party. The stars were coming to claim their own, as they had with the Sufis and Cherokees for millennia. If the magic was in the music, the music was in us.

When the astral prophecy of the sixties made it to Broadway with the nude dancers of Hair, the message to the stars could not have been clearer: "You twinkle above us, we twinkle below" and in 1980, in a movie called Fame, thirty years after the beginning of the cult, the chorus sang "Someday we'll all be stars". The magicians and astral priests promised likewise...........By the late sixties the star music had disintegrated into acid rock, atomic residue, and things were to get crazier....."

I wonder, was it Neptune's transit through in Scorpio, from the mid-1950s on, that kick-started the star-cult Dr.Grossinger describes? Since that time Neptune has traversed Sagittarius, Capricorn and Aquarius, during those times descendants of the original star-cultists have carried on the tradition in broadly the same way. Now, Neptune is transiting the first Water sign since Scorpio: dreamy Pisces. This transit could bring a far more fertile decade music-wise.

Will some new version of star-cult emerge? One fact that could play into it, loosening up the creaky, cranky muscles of the music scene and bringing in some sweeter, gentler dreaminess: legalisation of marijuana in some states. Colorado has done it, with maybe other states following, in time. Nuclear weapons still threaten, the environment is in even greater, darker danger now. I say we do need another star-cult - star-cult part 2!

Music Festivals, Richard Grossinger, Star-Cults

It's that time of year again - time of the music festivals....Glastonbury coming up in the UK, Bonnaroo already underway, in the USA, in Tennessee...with countless others, great and small, on the calendars for coming weeks.

A couple of years ago, around this time, I quoted from a favourite book: Richard Grossinger's The Night Sky - a chapter where the author ponders upon what he calls a "star cult".

I didn't know Dr. Grossinger's date of birth, but later on stumbled across his newly opened website complete with bio and birth date. I'd noted that Dr. Grossinger's writing style had much in common with Carl Sagan's (of whom I'm also a fan), and I later posted as follows:

Born in New York City on 3 November 1944.

I was right about Scorpio then! I'd sensed a similarity in writing style to that of the late Carl Sagan who had Sun/Mercury/Venus/Jupiter in Scorpio at 16, 3, 14 & 6 degrees respectively. Dr. Grossinger has Sun Mars and Mercury at 11, 14 and 19 degrees of Scorpio.

Dr Grossinger's natal Moon would have been in Gemini (sign of the communictor) whatever time of day or night he was born .

So, licking my index finger, I mark up a point for myself in the air. Like the A-Team: "I love it when a plan comes together!"

Back to the book, and star-cults!

In the penultimate chapter of The Night Sky Dr.Grossinger wanders into the realm of pop culture, the chapter's title: "The Pop Star Cult of the Fifties and Sixties". What he describes was also the start of a culture of youth which, before that point in history hadn't existed. He's also talking about early Baby Boomers. He writes about growing up with the legacy of World War 2:the atom bomb. Being a War Baby myself I understand where he's coming from. He describes the development of what he calls a star-cult.

Some excerpts:

"The sirens warned us of another holocaust for which the atom bomb was the emblem. For all the times they accidentally went off, we still survived into the sixties..........................the nuclear war we seemed to have evaded, against the odds, was happening to us anyway, as radiation leaked into the rivers and the air, and Joan Baez sang "What have they done to the rain?"

This was the dark Plutonian half of the era, when a star cult began...... ......There was a star-cult because we needed a star-cult, and a star- cult alone would do. We were born into a tremendous heat and a prophecy. We knew that we were going to be something different because the world had become absurd. The passion we felt went beyond anything we could feel the passion for, so we transformed each other into angels and messengers, and we listened to the inter-stellar debris.........................

When the heavens cried out for their "stars above" and tens of thousands of jukeboxes and radios wailed variants of the word "love", didn't we understand that our whole civilization was praying for the return of the gods, the return of those powers within us that had brought us into being?

Yes, it is love which brings us here and love which gives us life.

Yes, we stand, every man and every woman, within the stars. Who else has survived the incredible galactic and atomic violence to be here for a day of song?

Bobby Darin called his "Dream Lover" from a faraway world; a zodiac figure, like Paul Anka's Venus...Frankie Laine "gambled for love in the moonlight", Elvis went to Heartbreak Hotel, as remote as the house of Cepheus. There he dreamed of "a warmer sun" in a world long past his own brief life. The melodies and the dances were otherworldly and exotic......

The baseball cards changed to tarot cards, and they fell like meteors across an older sky. "Do you believe in magic?" the Lovin' Spoonful asked at a cusp of changing times. The Beatles visited India, and they returned with a cosmic instrument. Jimi Hendrix arrived with his songs of the outer Solar System.....other visionaries flocked to the deserts to watch the ancient ceremonies of the Native Americans...........So the new tribes gathered at Woodstock. It was no costume party. The stars were coming to claim their own, as they had with the Sufis and Cherokees for millennia. If the magic was in the music, the music was in us.

When the astral prophecy of the sixties made it to Broadway with the nude dancers of Hair, the messge to the stars could not have been clearer: "You twinkle above us, we twinkle below" and in 1980, in a movie called Fame, thirty years after the beginning of the cult, the chorus sang "Someday we'll all be stars". The magicians and astral priests promised likewise...........By the late sixties the star music had disintegrated into acid rock, atomic residue, and things were to get crazier....."

Time is ripe for a new version of star-cult, more appropriate to the the 21st century.

Today's festivals are but leftovers of that old star-cult. Aren't we ready yet for something new yet?

It could well have been Neptune's reign in Scorpio, from mid-1950s on, that kick-started the star-cult Dr. Grossinger wrote about. Neptune's transit through Airy Aquarius was too intellectually-oriented to spawn its own version of star-cult. Next year Neptune will establish a transit of its own domain : Watery, dreamy Pisces. That's when I'd expect a creative new version of some form of star-cult to enter the scene. The "old guard" will still be with us for a while, of course - but watch what else happens.....

All four archived posts mentioning Richard Grossinger can be easily accessed via the Label Cloud in my sidebar - click on Richard Grossinger, listed under "R" because my Label Cloud didn't ever take indexing lessons.

Richard Grossinger now has a blog: Reality Sandwich where there are all kinds of goodies to sample.

Wish granted ~ Richard Grossinger ~ Words of Wisdom

A wish I once made, in passing, was granted the other day. In a June post from 2009 I wrote:

I'd love to know Dr Grossinger's birth date, but the internet, so far, has given up only that he was born in 1944 and in New York City. I feel sure he must have some Scorpio magic threading through his natal chart - or Pisces, perhaps.

The writer in question: Dr. Richard Grossinger who has been mentioned in three archived posts - my wish appeared in the second of these:

The Night Sky
Star Cult of the '50s and '60s
Scorpio to 2012 via William Lonsdale.

Seeking inspiration t'other day I picked up Dr Grossinger's The Night Sky once again, with a view to finding something for a new "Astrologers' Words of Wisdom" post....even though Dr Grossinger isn't a practicing astrologer. He certainly has studied the subject though, and its history, and in depth. I was struck once again by the writer's beautiful style, which I'd admired before. Wondering whether he has written anything recently I Googled for information.

Lo and behold ! - Dr Richard Grossinger now has a website. What's more, his birth date appears in the biography section:

"Welcome to my website. It was officially launched on March 18, 2010."

Born in New York City on 3 November 1944.

I was right about Scorpio then! I'd sensed a similarity in writing style to that of the late Carl Sagan who had Sun/Mercury/Venus/Jupiter in Scorpio at 16, 3, 14 & 6 degrees respectively. Dr. Grossinger has Sun Mars and Mercury at 11, 14 and 19 degrees of Scorpio.

Dr Grossinger's natal Moon would have been in Gemini (sign of the communictor) whatever time of day or night he was born .

So, licking my index finger, I mark up a point for myself in the air. Like the A-Team: "I love it when a plan comes together!"



A few more of Dr. Grossinger's words of wisdom, from The Night Sky:

Astrology represents a synchronicity between the ancient calendars of the farming communities of the Near East and a theory of cosmic or celestial influence. From our point of view, it may look like two systems, and it may well have been two systems at various times, even originally, but in practice astrology treats the two systems as one. As long as the heavens are divine and the planets are destiny-bearing gods, the units and "houses" they measure are identical to the archetypes they sow.

The measurement of time does not require a theory of celestial influence. Calendars became astronomical tools during the Stone Age quite separate from any system of astral cycles and rhythms.

But astrology maintains the measurement of time as sacred, or, in present-day parlance, psychic and archetypal, and it assumes that measurement as a basic harmonic linking microcosm and macrocosm. As civilization moved out of liturgical and ceremonial space into days, months and years that were purely political and scientific, the sacred sense of time was occultated.

The theory of celestial influence DOES require calendars and ephemerides, for they are the mathematical representation of the wholeness and interrelatedness of our cosmos. Without them the "idea" of celestial influence can be honored, but there is no rigorous method for recording its degrees and variations. So astrology evolves as the statement of the synchronous relationship of all events in creation and the means of predicting and understanding fragments and cycles by their relationship to the whole. The stars as the projective background of the creation, stand for the functional unity..................................

In calling astrology a "science", we do not mean that it is a science in the same sense that chemistry and physics are. It is a science in the old etymological sense of "a system of knowledge".......Modern physics might take issue with the cause-and-effect postulates behind the measurements, but it could not challenge the basic algebra of chart-making and planetary relationships.

(And the author's beautiful last words in the section on Astrology)

Astrology is our rune on the hollow surface of infinity, or we are the shadow play of astrology upon the dream of cosmic night.

A list of all Dr Grossinger's books can be found HERE, including his latest:
2013 - Raising the Earth to the Next Vibration
Gotta get me one of those!

"STAR-CULT" of the '50s and '60s ~ A new one in the wings?

About a year ago I posted a couple of snippets from a book I'd just bought, "The Night Sky" by anthropologist Dr. Richard Grossinger. (Here's the relevant post).
I've continued to read the book, random-fashion, whenever at a loose end. I'm always impressed by Dr Grossinger's writing style. He reminds me a little of Carl Sagan, whose book "Cosmos" I can similarly pick up and become engrossed from any random page. Both writers have, at times, what I can only describe as a magical turn of phrase. Dr. Grossinger has a much kinder approach to astrology though, as I pointed out in my earlier post.


I'd love to know Dr Grossinger's birth date, but the internet so far has given up only that he was born in 1944 and in New York City. I feel sure he must have some Scorpio magic threading through his natal chart - or Pisces, perhaps.

In the penultimate chapter of "The Night Sky" Dr.Grossinger wanders into the realm of pop culture, the chapter's title: "The Pop Star Cult of the Fifties and Sixties".
What he describes was also the start of a culture of youth which, before that point in history hadn't existed. He's also talking about early Baby Boomers. He writes about growing up with the legacy of World War 2:the atom bomb. Being a War Baby myself I understand where he's coming from. He describes the development of what he calls a star-cult.

Some excerpts:

"The sirens warned us of another holocaust for which the atom bomb was the emblem. For all the times they accidentally went off, we still survived into the sixties..........................the nuclear war we seemed to have evaded, against the odds, was happening to us anyway, as radiation leaked into the rivers and the air, and Joan Baez sang "What have they done to the rain?"

This was the dark Plutonian half of the era, when a star cult began...... ......There was a star-cult because we needed a star-cult, and a star- cult alone would do. We were born into a tremendous heat and a prophecy. We knew that we were going to be something different because the world had become absurd. The passion we felt went beyond anything we could feel the passion for, so we transformed each other into angels and messengers, and we listened to the inter-stellar debris.........................

When the heavens cried out for their "stars above" and tens of thousands of jukeboxes and radios wailed variants of the word "love", didn't we understand that our whole civilization was praying for the return of the gods, the return of those powers within us that had brought us into being?

Yes, it is love which brings us here and love which gives us life.

Yes, we stand, every man and every woman, within the stars. Who else has survived the incredible galactic and atomic violence to be here for a day of song?

Bobby Darin called his "Dream Lover" from a faraway world; a zodiac figure, like Paul Anka's Venus...Frankie Laine "gambled for love in the moonlight", Elvis went to Heartbreak Hotel, as remote as the house of Cepheus. There he dreamed of "a warmer sun" in a world long past his own brief life. The melodies and the dances were otherworldly and exotic......

The baseball cards changed to tarot cards, and they fell like meteors across an older sky. "Do you believe in magic?" the Lovin' Spoonful asked at a cusp of changing times. The Beatles visited India, and they returned with a cosmic instrument. Jimi Hendrix arrived with his songs of the outer Solar System.....other visionaries flocked to the deserts to watch the ancient ceremonies of the Native Americans...........So the new tribes gathered at Woodstock. It was no costume party. The stars were coming to claim their own, as they had with the Sufis and Cherokees for millennia. If the magic was in the music, the music was in us.

When the astral prophecy of the sixties made it to Broadway with the nude dancers of Hair, the messge to the stars could not have been clearer: "You twinkle above us, we twinkle below" and in 1980, in a movie called Fame, thirty years after the beginning of the cult, the chorus sang "Someday we'll all be stars". The magicians and astral priests promised likewise...........By the late sixties the star music had disintegrated into acid rock, atomic residue, and things were to get crazier....."

I wonder if it's time, yet, for a new star-cult, one more appropriate to the digital age? Nuclear weapons still threaten, the environment is still in grave danger, now more than ever.

Annual music festivals survive, Glastonbury festival in the UK is still going strong. The husband's grandson was at Bonnaroo in Tennessee at the weekend. Woodstock celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. These festivals are but leftovers of that old star-cult Dr. Grossinger writes about. Aren't we ready yet for something new - something slightly different?

I like to think that it was Neptune's reign in Scorpio, from the mid-1950s on, that kick-started the star-cult Dr. Grossinger is recalling. Neptune's in Airy Aquarius now - too intellectual for its own star-cult. In 2013 though Neptune will enter its own domain of Watery dreamy Pisces. That's when I'd expect a new version of star-cult to burst upon the scene, different in many ways from the old one, but retaining some common factors.