Self help before it got so slick, originally published in 1949 as Plan With the Planets. Celebrity astrologer Edward Lyndoe gives some BS straight talk in the introduction, promising that this book isn't for those seeking "empty flattery" or "amusing half-truths." Indeed, this volume is for those brave searchers who seek only the highest universal truths, such as ... their "special foods?" Yes, it turns out that "Capricorns are in greater need of meat diets than any other group!" Locations are covered as well: "It must be taken, too, that the capitals of the Indian states now incorporated as Hindustan have a Capricornian rulership." Lyndoe assures us that no calculations or charting are required on our part. Just read on, and file away the foods, locations, days, colors, and so on associated with your sign! Learn your high and low attributes as well, along with health afflictions common to your sign. Even just an hour of reading will elucidate, Lyndoe promises.
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| The author's portrait by Howard Coster |
Some famous folk are listed by sign, de rigueur for this genre. Stalin was a celebrated Capricorn! Speaking of communism, Lyndoe once analyzed Karl Marx's chart for Prediction magazine, and British socialist Harry Young took some offense at his sloppy science:
What Mr. Lyndoe is completely ignorant of, and what he must do, to write about Marx for intelligent people is get some idea of what it was that Marx was advocating. Significant for the ideas of Marx is not that he was born in the conjunction of Uranus— Neptune, but in the early stages of a new kind of social order—Capitalism.
Incidentally Mr. Lyndoe cannot have it both ways. If the actions of individuals are not their own, but predestined by their "charts" or "stars," what is Mr. Lyndoe complaining about —fraud, hypocrite, spy or not, Marx was merely fulfilling his destiny—he couldn't have been anything else. But the critic makes these actions the grounds for moral strictures and homilies. He complains that "Marxian Communism is the religion which not only glorifies the ends regardless of the means, but glorifies the means themselves. We should not be too sanctimonious about some of the methods used in our part of the globe—but, at least we do not feel disposed to trumpet them abroad as a new morality." What all this has to do with Marx and his stars nobody will ever know!
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| November 1958 issue of Prediction |
For shame, Mr. Lyndoe. The promise of transcendental knowledge crashes against the rocks of history. Marx was a Taurus, by the way.
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| Original title |
A Fawcett Gold Medal Book, 1969 (original pub. 1949)
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