Correspondences 6, no. 1 (2018) 47–75 ISSN: 2053-7158 (Online) Special Issue: Ethnographies of the Esoteric correspondencesjournal.com A Mercury Retrograde Kind of Day Exploring Astrology in Contemporary New Age Spirituality and American Social Life Susannah Crockford E-mail:
[email protected] Abstract Astrology is a feature of everyday conversation and the local spiritual scene in Sedona, Arizona, a small town renowned for its “vortexes”. As part of a variegated new age spirituality, astrology “works” in three main ways that are examined in this article. It is an explanatory model for misfortune; a symbolic system; and a source of epistemic capital. A series of well-known ethnographic studies of African divination are used to contextualise astrology as an American form of divination. Based on almost two years of participant observation fieldwork in Northern Arizona, the ethnographic material presented in this article illuminates the question of why astrology continues to be a relevant and useful practice for Americans, despite its widespread rejection by political and scientific authorities. Keywords Astrology; United States of America; Ethnography; Esotericism; New Age Spirituality; Divination © 2018 Susannah Crockford This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. 48 Crockford / Correspondences 6, no. 1 (2018) 47–75 Introduction: Mercury Retrograde In the summer of 2012 in the Uptown district of Sedona, Arizona, in a small apart- ment with walls lined with bookcases of CDs by the Grateful Dead and other 1960s artists, Jack was holding a tutorial class in Western astrology. Two cats inhabited the room; Buddha, a fifteen-year old with a kidney problem who sat almost motionless casting a disdainful look over the room, and Kama, a very playful kitten who spent the evening jumping around the furniture and disrupting the altar of candles and crystals on the floor.