astounding

a detour into astrological necromancy

imagine:

spending over half a century researching, teaching, and publishing astrology

being the dude who popularized the void-of-course moon, back when it wasn’t a Thing (yes, every time you say VOC moon, it’s thanks to him, and you don’t even know his name), and then…

dying in 1995

having your books, research papers, letters packed up, only to be all but untouched for

thirty more years. A full Saturn cycle plus…

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Al H. Morrison would have been 108 this year (think about those solar arcs and the sesquiquintiles – oh, wait! hardly anyone talks about those anymore because while those books have been packed up, the traditional revival has

erased you, Al,

I digress).

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It’s been a month, what a month, since I last had bandwidth to Bound with you.

The estate of Al H. Morrison called CAELi to donate his entire library and personal correspondence. I suddenly found myself flying to Los Alamos, NM to drive a massive Penkse truck filled with nearly 7,000 pounds of paper:

decades upon decades of correspondence.

rare, and not-so-rare, astrology books.

newsletters.

journals.

magazines.

and non-astrology books too.

boxes of literal pulp fiction – sci-fi, to be exact.

even personal effects, like these pictures:

(it’s not lost on me that there’s a Saturn/Neptune conjunction in this event chart, while an impending Saturn/Neptune conjunction looms in the ambient; astrology has a sense of humor like that)

and now all of it sits in wait in CAELi’s basement, to be sorted, refiled, restored to a semblance of utility for future researchers. There’s a hidden book of techniques lingering in individual letters to astrologers around the world. Karen Christino made an attempt to research this material and fish out “The Best of…”

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This is why I am building CAELi; why i wake up in the morning.

reviving the work of our astrological ancestors so we don’t forget how much ground we’ve already covered. so we don’t let one trend occult another.

Maggie Nalbandian always said, in her bookshop Astrology et al. (which turns 50 this year!),

“Let the people decide!”

She sold all the books and saw what moved people and what didn’t. You get to know people through their books. What’s said and unsaid. How many astrologers have always been self-publishers because big firms wouldn’t touch astrology unless it was watered down for the masses. As John Frawley cheekily named his book the real astrology… as if craft astrology is somehow better than the rest. it serves a different purpose…

and Al was no saint! Even Astrodienst makes sure to remind everyone of his abrasive traits. But I know how to deal with ornery New Yorkers. For every ounce of paper here, there’s an ounce of tea…

the BEST thing here, the thing I want you to love when you come to spy on Al’s private notes to friends and frenemies, is to feel all the energy he stored in not throwing things away. And to be thankful for his daughter, Jib, for also not throwing his things away. For thirty years! You can witness so much ephemera of how astrologers used to communicate with each other before the internet saturated everything.

analog AF

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so yeah, I’ve been busy, overwhelmed (moving 7000 lbs of lifework is no joke)… and basically taking the month to digest what’s just been bestowed upon my own lifework. And hopefully what will contribute to your lifework, when you avail yourself of these newly revived resources.

it’s entirely necromantic.

i even found his chalk (ancient, ancestral sea organisms, my favorite living necromancer Dr Al Cummins likes to remind us) that goes with his enormous chalkboard that I haven’t unpacked yet. The donor suggested that it may still have the markings form the last class Al taught before he died. I’m waiting for the right time to video chat with her, so she can watch me unpack it and reveal the surface.

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Now that I’ve rested from the main intensity of the adventure (driving 1600 miles in 39 hours from the winding high desert lanes to the front steps of CAELi nestled in Cascadian canopy… and then unloading…. oh the unloading), now I can resume the Bound Report and let you know that right now, it’s all about stripes, oscillating things, mobiles (think A. Calder), colors that change color (dichroic glass FTW). Turn your head backwards and look, like I’ve been doing, at your ancestors and their works. The typography that looks ‘vintage’ to you – so cool! – was just new to them. Was brand spanking new and fresh and not ‘old’ at all… what are you making now that will look vintage to someone born 80 years from now? 40 even? In a post-Baudrillard world, can anything resist memesis? Standing out by going back?

(Even Gordon White is calling for people to get LiveJournal on their Substacks, make it messier, worse, more like the gold old days of the blogosphere…yes, i am leaving that typo.)

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Thanks for your patience while I retrieved AHM’s library + correspondence from the brink of oblivion. I’ll see you again on Thursday July 10, 2025 at 17:47.

now make something good!

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Cover photo by Joshua Woroniecki on Unsplash.