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Astrology. Hardly to be mentioned in the same breath with the above phenomena is the science of astrology, famed father of astronomy. Whether or not one believes in the influence of stars on human destiny, there is no denying that reputable astrologists go about their work with the precision of a mathematician. In New York State, for example, the practice of astrology has been legalized on a par with medicine and law. And last week in Ohio the State Supreme Court upheld licensed astrologers, but in a rather backhanded way. It grouped astrologers with other fortune-tellers under the definition: "one who pretends to a knowledge of futurity and foretells the events of one's life," and said that the old Ohio law prohibiting these practices without licenses is still valid. The decision was written by bearded Chief Justice Carrington T. Marshall and supported by four of the remaining six justices including famed benchwoman Mrs. Florence E. Allen.
These are four branches of Astrology: Natural, having to do with the efect of the planets on earthly climate, quakes, floods; Mundane, concerning prosperity, plagues, wars; Natal, how the arrangement of the stars at the moment of birth determines a person's character, physique, life work; Horary, concerning the propitiousness of the stars for (or against) playing the market, getting married, leaving town. The last two branches of astrology are most in demand today.
Of all the astrologists, no one is nearer to the stars than Evangeline Adams (Mrs. George E. Jordan Jr.), hardy and cultured Yankee, descendant of the famed Adams family (John, John Quincy, Henry). To her office in Carnegie Hall, Manhattan, have flocked bigwigs and humble folk. She seats them in a chair facing her across her desk, takes out her charts, asks them a few simple questions on dates, and in several minutes tells them what they are and what would be well for them to do. She has been consulted by Mary Garden, Geraldine Farrar, Eva Le Gallienne, the late John Pierpont Morgan, Cardinal James Gibbons,* John Burroughs, Lillian Russell, Tallulah Bankhead, Seymour Cromwell (onetime president of the New York Stock Exchange), many a Wall Street man and Tammany Hall politician, Philip Payne (onetime editor of the New York Daily Mirror, whom Evangeline Adams warned against flying in the ill-fated Old Glory). Senators, high U. S. executives and business potentates, whose names she keeps secret, have sat facing her. Her outstanding predictions include the deaths of King Edward VII and Enrico Caruso, the Windsor Hotel of Manhattan fire (her first big one), the World War, the outcome of both Tunney-Dempsey fights. Because the stars pointed to great publicity, she advised the father of Lois Delander of Joliet, Ill., to send his daughter to the Atlantic City beauty contest. Miss Delander became Miss America.
Against the objections of her family, Evangeline Adams began studying astrology when she was 18. She has read widely in all fields of the occult and in the classics of all ages. Today, in her late fifties, she writes and talks (usually out of the right side of her mouth) with a vigorous punch. In her new book, Astrology: Your Place in the Sun* she says: "The wise man cooperates with the stars, the fool thinks he rules them."