“Born Under Unlucky Star”: Astrology, Psychiatry, and the Politics of Religious Authenticity

This paper examines an early twentieth-century psychiatric case study as one resource for expanding approaches to esoteric religion. The mental patient was involuntarily institutionalized after an astrologer convinced him that his wife was having an affair. This archival document, circulated within early clinical pastoral education networks, demonstrates how esoteric practitioners were cast not only as “cons” but as sincerely mentally ill. My research thus extends scholarship on the limits of religious freedom by considering spaces beyond the courtroom. I look to mental hospitals as another site in which the veracity of esoteric religion was critically evaluated. This paper critically draws on Theodor Adorno’s analysis of the Los Angeles Times astrology column to juxtapose the “pseudo-rationality” of astrology with historical methods’ empiricist bent. Following Adorno’s critique of modernity’s compulsion to calculate, this paper asks: To what extent can the absurdity of our objects of study trouble the violence of mastery?