Telepathy ~ Mary Craig Sinclair ~ Mental Radio

On our recent trip, in a junky antique store, I found a copy of one of the volumes from an old Time Life set: Mysteries of the Unknown - the volume on Psychic Powers. I couldn't resist it, marked up at a couple of dollars.

In chapter one, Beyond the Five Senses there's a section on Mary Craig Sinclair, second wife of novelist, muckraker and socialist Upton Sinclair.

Mary Craig believed she had telepathic powers, and was of the opinion that such powers could also be cultivated by others. She recommended a method of training involving intense concentration allied with relaxation. Upton Sinclair's book Mental Radio documents experiments in telepathy he carried out with his wife and presents illustrations of a few of the many sketches she had attempted to telepathically read from his mind. The Time Life volume I have contains 5 examples of those illustrations. Upton Sinclair's original sketches along with his wife's telepathically received versions are shown. The couple claimed, over time, a success rate far beyond what might have been expected by chance.

I do not wish to infringe copyright. A note at the end of the volume states that "brief passages may be quoted for reviews". I will hope that using a scan of two of the 5 sets of sketches can be classed as a quotation for review, explanation, discussion under the Fair Use guidelines.















































I thought it'd be interesting to look at Mary Craig Sinclair's natal chart. She was born on 12 February 1882 in Greenwood, Mississippi. No time of birth is available so a 12 noon chart must suffice. Rising sign will not be as shown, nor will degree of Moon, though Moon would have been in Sagittarius.




Sun and Venus in Aquarius, sign of mental acuity, with communications planet Mercury nextdoor in intuitive Pisces. As I wrote in a post about Sun Aquarius astrologers recently, when Aquarius planets are "assisted" by planet(s) in a Water sign, the mental acuity might take a turn towards astrology; equally, I guess, to other mysterious subjects such as telepathy.

Mary Craig's Mercury is in helpful sextile aspect to down to Earth Saturn and Neptune (ruler of Pisces) in Earthy Taurus.
Uranus in Virgo makes an harmonious trine aspect to Jupiter in Taurus. There's quite a strong Earthy feel to the chart, which could indicate that her mental acuity and intuition from Pisces Mercury is being "Earthed", as against remaining uninvestigated, unaddressed. Observers can consider, and possibly attempt to emulate Mary Craig's telepathic ability. She was keen to share information on how this might be done - again trying to "bring it down to Earth" as it were.

Upton Sinclair's chart, by the way, can be viewed at Astrodatabank HERE. He had a concentration of planets (Sun/Mercury/Venus/Mars/Uranus) in Virgo the sign ruled by Mercury the communications planet. His North node of Moon is in Aquarius.

Muckrakers & Their Astrology

Once upon a time, around the first decade of the 20th century, the USA had a group of writers upon whom the then president, Theodore Roosevelt, bestowed the name "Muckrakers", a term borrowed from literature (John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress). The president could, it seems, see both advantage and disadvantage to the work of these dedicated writers who sought to expose growing social injustice in their country, as it began to flourish and become ever more industrialised.

"Now, it is very necessary that we should not flinch from seeing what is vile and debasing. There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the muck rake; and there are times and places where this service is the most needed of all the services that can be performed. But the man who never does anything else, who never thinks or speaks or writes, save of his feats with the muck rake, speedily becomes, not a help but one of the most potent forces for evil.... The effort to make financial or political profit out of the destruction of character can only result in calamity."– Theodore Roosevelt, "The Man with the Muck Rake" speech, 14 April 1906

Wikipedia:

.....these journalists, through their research and constant exposure of the wrongdoing by officials in American public life, gave fuel to protests that led to investigations and later on reform of not only Corporate America but the American Government. The Muckrakers’ journalistic efforts helped reform and regulate Wall Street and aspects of big businesses. The muckrakers also shed light on an array of social issues, such as the issues with urban housing and horrible living conditions in highly populated cities, medical patents, child labor laws, child prostitution, and even women’s rights.

A few examples:

Upton Sinclair lived among Chicago stockyard workers for several weeks researching his novel The Jungle. He aimed to expose dangerous working conditions in the meatpacking houses. Americans, though, seemed more concerned with the disgusting revelations about how meat was processed than by the conditions under which their fellow-countrymen were forced to work. "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach," Sinclair wrote. The Pure Food and Drugs Act was a direct result of his efforts.

Samuel Hopkins Adams revealed fraudulent claims and endorsements of patent medicines in America. His articles revealed many false claims that pharmaceutical companies and other manufactures made as to the potency of their medicines, drugs and tonics. His work forced a crackdown on a number of other patents and fraudulent schemes of medicinal companies during that time.

Ray Stannard Baker investigated coal mine conditions, a coal strike, and the situation of non-striking workers (or scabs). Many of the non-striking workers had no special training or knowledge in mining, since they were simply farmers looking for work. His investigative work portrayed the dangerous conditions in which these people worked in the mines, and the dangers they faced by union members who did not want them to work.


Ida M. Tarbell is best known for a series of articles which later became a two volume work on John D. Rockefeller and his oil interests: The History of the Standard Oil Company, published 1904. The exposé resulted in federal action and eventually in the breakup of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey under the 1911 Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

Lincoln Steffens' aim was to expose the pattern of corruption in local and national government, and the real villains, the supposedly respectable, honest businessmen whose bribes and greed fueled the whole system.

John Spargo a transplanted Briton exposed childhood poverty in his book The Bitter Cry of the Children (1906).

Nellie Bly went undercover in a mental institution to report on the reprehensible conditions inmates lived in. Her work sparked some long-needed reforms. In another instance she got herself arrested for theft to reveal the deplorable treatment of female prisoners.

Jacob Riis, a transpalanted Dane used his own photography to illustrate his writing and to indict the slums and tenements of New York. He visited stench-ridden tenements on hot summer nights to experience them at their worst. this work was documented in his book How the Other Half Lives.

Henry Demerest Lloyd's Wealth against Commonwealth & Story of a Great Monopoly, were exposés of corruption related to the railroads and Standard Oil.

Each of those writers deserves their own post (and may well get it in due course!) There were others, too many for a brief blog-post. For now, I'd like to discover whether there were any common factors in the natal charts of this particular group of Muckrakers.

The charts shown below are set for 12 noon. They will not show accurate rising signs or Moon degrees but will be sufficient to show general layout of natal planets. I've copied them in groups which show a particular pattern. (Click on images to enlarge.)

First group of 5: I'll call these the Aries/Taurus Group. These writers had clusters of personal planets close to Pluto (which represents things hidden from view, secrets, the underworld and deep transformation).









Second group of 2: The Aquarius Group. These have Sun and one or two other personal planets in Aquarius, sign which represents social conscience, forward thinking, and the humanitarian - least surprising of the lot, I'd say. Both have some Aries (the initiator and fighter) input too.




Two others: Ida Tarbell with Sun and Mercury in Scorpio (ruled by Pluto and symbolising secrets, deep incisive mental faculties). Scorpio planets lay in opposition to their ruler and Jupiter, which must have surely added to that Pluto/Scorpio dynamic.

Upton Sinclair is a bit of an odd-man-out in this line-up (there's always one!). He had 5 planets in Virgo, one of the writer's signs, ruled by Mercury. He also had Sun/Mars harmoniously trining Pluto in Taurus though - which I reckon qualifies him to join this club.

"We muckraked, not because we hated our world, but because we loved it. We were not hopeless, we were not cynical, we were not bitter."– Ray Stannard Baker.

In the 21st century's second decade, would that we could identify a comparable group of writers, unattached to corporate patrons and without ulterior motives.