Customer Reviews

Astrology the Divine Science

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Every comprehensive astrology book has its own approach, and "Astrology, The Divine Science" focuses a great deal on the signs. Just the section about the ten planets in each of the signs takes up over two hundred pages. Then there is a section titled "The Grammar of the Zodiac", which features excellent explanations of opposing signs (Cancer versus Capricorn), or squares (Virgo versus Gemini), and so on. In this book, there is much more emphasis on the signs than on the planets, and that is precisely its strength.

This book should be a standard reference work for any serious astrologer, but unfortunately it's not really available. My hardcover edition was published by Arcane Publications of York Harbor, Maine in 1971. I bought it sometime in the Seventies and it's seen a lot of use, as the worn cover and duct-taped spine attests to. Unfortunately, "Arcane Publications" is an appropriate name for a publishing house that no longer exists. After Arcane went out of business, the book was apparently picked up by "Able Trust" (a name I couldn't even find on Google) who published a hard cover edition in 1978. Now it's out of print, although when I last checked there were 38 used copies available on Amazon, and the title somehow still had a sales rank of #360,459.

I mention these things, because the extent to which so many excellent astrology books are vanishing is a bit scary and depressing. There are many reasons for this, I'm sure, and one is the disappearance of many small "new age" book stores that carried a large selection of astrology titles, along with the failure of the chain bookstores --who contributed to the smaller sellers going out of business-- to take up the slack. Oh, they'll offer to order a book for you, assuming it's still in print, but if I wanted to order a book, I'd do it online. I go to a bookstore to be able to actually browse through a book and hold it in my hands. Not keeping books in stock is a strategy that will slowly make the chain bookstores themselves obsolete.

I was recently in a Barnes and Noble store and the astrology "selection" was shameful. It consisted of three four-foot shelves, and the top shelf was entirely devoted to Sidney Omarr's Sun Sign material. The second shelf had a number of coffee table type books, such as those by Julia Parker. (And not to be appear snobbish, her heavily illustrated "The Compleat Astrologer" was one of my favorite books when I bought it in 1971-72.) And on the third shelf there were actually some serious astrology books by contemporary astrologers with the recognizable names, but it was a very tiny, random selection.

It used to be that when an author published a book, it was distributed and perhaps promoted, or perhaps not, but at least it was out there in the marketplace for readers to buy. Publishing is ruled by Jupiter, Sagittarius, and the 9th house. When Pluto recently passed through Sagittarius in the late Nineties and much of the past decade, this is when the explosive growth of the internet and the digital revolution made such an impact. Many things that used to be in a physical form became electronic. Let's face it, this is the future, and a massive transformation in the publishing field was inevitable. There is no point in trying to resist the onrush of technological change, but it's important to sometimes stop, look around, and see where it has left us.

Google Books has an electronic copy of "Astrology, the Divine Science", which was digitized on Oct 20, 2008. But you can't buy or read it online, presumably because of copyright restrictions. You can read three of my four books on Google, although no one ever does. This is not "publication". It's storage--as in a corner of the sub basement of the library, which is not open to the public and rarely does anyone request a book be sent up. The book may be listed in the "card catalog", but there are millions of other titles listed as well, and who has the time or patience to do more than a brief search through the first ten or so.

Marcia Moore, one of the authors of "The Divine Science", was a physically beautiful, intelligent, and spiritual woman who mysteriously died in 1979, and co-author Mark Douglas would be 83 if he is alive today. Their outstanding work and contribution to the field is slowly being forgotten, but that's the way it goes.

I have been a Professional Astrologer for almost 40 years and I have this in First Edition and have used it everyday of my life. With this one book you can learn more than you will ever need to know about this traffic-in-the-sky philosopy.

FLR
Phoenix

This book is primary to any astrology library. Understandable and organized, it is one of the best books on astrology that I own.

good seller - but I'd still like to find a better copy of this book. The copy I received had a few underlines in it, which is annoying.