Baltimore Astrological Society | Lecture and Workshop
Friday April 3, 2020
Lecture: TRASH ASTROLOGY
7-9 pm at Ruscombe Mansion
Popular Astrology (the most famous example being “sun sign” astrology) is often regarded as a flagrant pandering to the masses. Yet its appearance in Almanacs and dream interpretation manuals are responsible for the introduction of Astrology into America and its overall acceptance. This lecture traces the rise of popular Astrology from The Book of Knowledge (a pre-Revolutionary war occult periodical) to civil war publications to Evangeline Adams’s astrology booklets in the 1920s. Along the way we will examine the unique role that women played in the popularization of Astrology here in the United States (both as astrologers and mass market audience) and how Trash Astrology gave the American public its first taste of eastern religions, feminism, and psychology. The point of this lecture is to show that “trash” astrology is more than a necessary evil; it’s the reason why Astrology is still around.
Saturday April 4, 2020
Workshop: MIGHTY APHRODITE: SHE’S NOBODY’S BITCH
Venus rules the law of attraction in a horoscope. Venus is our advertising campaign; the planet responsible for drawing people into our lives. Like a male peacock fanning its tail or a flower opening its petals, Venus asks our prospective admirers, lovers, buyers, and bosses: do you like what you see? Venus doesn’t show us what we want. Venus shows us who’s responding to the signals we are putting out there. Signals that we may or may not be aware of. How many times have we found love when we weren’t looking for it? Pushed away the person that everyone else saw as right, but we didn’t? Or got together with someone who was completely wrong, but we just couldn’t resist? The first part of the workshop will look at Venus in art, culture, and history. This will be done with a PowerPoint presentation. We will look for Venus in romantic comedies and crimes of passion; in the rules of Courtly Love published in the 12th century and in the streaming sirens of Internet Porn. We will then visit the charts of famous Children of Venus like Kim Kardashian and Bernie Madoff, as well as the horoscopes of workshop attendees, in an attempt to understand this planet that brings so much agony and ecstasy and answer how Venus – often portrayed as naked in art and film – actually appears as disguised in our lives.
BASA website: https://basastrology.org
Ruscombe Mansion
4803 Yellowwood Ave, Baltimore, MD 21209
