Born under the Sun sign of Aquarius, Evangeline Adams (1868–1932) began her life in an ordinary American family at the tail end of the Gilded Age, yet spiralled through her personal orbit of the cosmos to become the ‘Mother of Astrology’.
Evangeline Adams: The Woman Who Put Astrology on the Map
Psycho-astrologer to the rich and famous, and celebrity ‘star’ in her own right, Evangeline Adams was a constellation of a woman—an icon of early print media, pseudoscience, and scandal. In her own words, the Aquarius woman is:
‘Isis Unveiled, pouring forth science, progress, nobility of thought and conduct, the wisdom of the stars, giving freely to others, while she herself is refreshed and renewed by that life-giving stream.’
Evangeline Adams, Astrology: Your Place Among the Stars, 1928
Adams grew up in an era of massive change. Society, fashion, technology, and engineering were all breaking new ground on a weekly basis. In the year of her birth, words such as aeroplane, bicycle, and germ cell were all added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. It really was the dawn of a new age, and for Adams, a new science.
Presiding over a renaissance in the science and art of astrology, Adams appeared on radio shows, organised mail-order horoscopes, and offered personal consultations. Opera singers, actresses, two presidents of the New York stock exchange, and over a million ordinary Americans consulted the stars through Adams on a yearly basis.
Mere months before the Sun set on the nineteenth century, something magical happened that would change everything for Adams, and the butterfly wing of her life brushed the surface of New York.
Prophecies & Predictions of Evangeline Adams
It was St. Patrick’s Day, 1899, and Adams was staying at the upscale Windsor Hotel in Manhattan. After learning of the birthplace and time of the proprietor, Warren F. Leland, she drew up a horoscope for him by hand and predicted disastrous personal circumstances in his very near future. The following day, the Windsor, advertised as the most comfortable and home-like hotel in New York, burnt to ashes in under two hours. Reports detailed the destruction and devastation of fourteen dead, three-score missing, and around $1,000,000 associated money loss. It remains the deadliest hotel fire in New York’s history. If only the hotel owner had heeded Adams’ advice.
Over the next decade, Adams’ career rose to new heights, and in the 1920s she made a powerful prediction:
‘When Uranus next arrives in Gemini—which will be in 1943—this country will be torn by revolution.’
1942, 11 years after Adams’ death, the theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was scouting out the New Mexico location for a new site on which to develop the Manhattan Project: the birth of the nuclear weapon.
Her Big Break: Courtroom Astrology & Scandal
By 1911, New York City had slipped from its Gilded Age into the age of Modernism, a world of abstraction, subjectivity, and science. Fortune telling, a centuries-old practise, was illegal on the streets of the city, classed in the same legal category as loitering, drunk and disorderly behaviour, and prostitution.
Adams was first arrested for her astrological and divinatory practices in 1911, and her case was settled out of court. In 1914, however, when a sting operation was set up, she demanded to be seen by a judge to prove she was anything but a ‘disorderly person’. Her aim was quite simple: to prove the validity of the science and operate without fear of persecution. Astrology itself was on trial.
When presented with an anonymous star chart in court, Adams began her mathematical and mechanical analysis, going into detail about a life cut short from water. The judge could barely keep it together. It was an account almost to the letter of how his son had died—the son whose birth chart he had presented to Adams. The astonished judge declared her a ‘genuine scientist’ and she was released almost immediately. Astrology ruled.
In 1927, the New Yorker ran a piece on ‘The Lady of the Stars’, laughing at the foolish policewoman who had tried to arrest her in 1923, a ridiculous notion for someone as prominent a ‘public institution’ as Evangeline Adams.
Evangeline Adams and the Wall Street Crash
In 1929, the last rays of gilded sunlight beamed over a decade of prosperity. Or so it seemed. Wall Street was rife with amateur speculators taking financial risks and being paid out with huge reward. Many people made millions virtually overnight. It was a game played by folk from all walks of life, and Adams was a guiding light for many of them. She was said to predict the movements of the market so accurately that there was little difference between checking a financial ledger and reading her market analyses.
The predictions were all positive, and almost all were accurate. Some days, stock prices would double in value. It seemed like the good times would never end. But on September 2nd, Adams made the fatal prediction that the Dow Jones ‘could climb to heaven’. Her advice was to invest.
On September 5th, financial expert Roger Babson predicted a ‘terrific crash’ and by October, the market was in freefall, ushering in what became the Great Depression of the 1930s. The hundreds of thousands of people that had followed Adams’ misguided advice lost everything.
Some of her clients, like the financier J. P. Morgan, were safe, but for many ordinary Americans her simple mistake cost them every cent they owned.
The scandal was difficult to weather, and although Adams’ financial advice may have been overstepping her area of expertise, that fatal prediction on September 2nd may not have been so damning. She wasn’t actually wrong, and the following day, the stock market hit its all-time high.
Controversial Ghost-Writing with Aleister Crowley
Adams distilled her astrological teachings into popular books in the later years of her career, bringing her once-exclusive insights to a mass audience, but she didn’t do it alone.
The infamous British occultist Aleister Crowley found himself in New York City strapped for cash. He began ghost-writing for Adams in a somewhat challenging working relationship. Crowley was notorious for his bisexuality, drug use, and participation in ritual sex magic with prostitutes (whose star signs he documented diligently in his diaries—he was particularly fond of Taurus women) as well as anonymous men in New York’s many bathhouses. The more conservative of Adams’ fans would have been scandalised to discover that the respectable and motherly advice they sought was being written by someone referred to by their own mother as ‘The Beast’.
Unsurprisingly, the two fell out before long, and Crowley moved on to New Orleans, a city steeped in a history of voodoo and black magic, leaving Adams to continue her path towards enlightening America and bringing astrology into the mainstream.
The Astrology Books of Evangeline Adams
First published in 1927, Astrology: Your Place in the Sun remains one of the most enduring and essential works on the practical applications of astrology. Adams’ timeless guide to the Sun’s powerful influence over the planets, the signs of the Zodiac, and your unique place in the Universe.
Adams explores how the Sun, Moon, and planets influence our lives as they move through the twelve signs of the Zodiac. First published in 1930, this book remains a cornerstone of modern astrology.
First published in 1931, this book is compiled from Adams’ lessons and writings. Opening the heavens to readers with a clear and engaging exploration of all twelve Zodiac signs, offering insight into how astrology reveals the patterns of our lives.
The Legacy of Evangeline Adams: The Birth of Modern Astrology
Evangeline Adams represents a time when radical change permeated through society and the idea of weather forecasting was as bewildering as the occult arts, where meteorology and mysticism bubbled in the same cauldron of the unknown.
Everyone wants to know about themselves. How can you resist? Learning what the stars, those ephemeral yet oh-so-permanent fixtures of the night sky, have to say about you, your personality, your fate, your dreams, is priceless. Yet, for a mere $10, Adams could give you the secrets of your psyche and your place in the Universe.
Although you can no longer subscribe to Adams’ mail-order horoscopes or listen to her radio show, you can still access her boundless astrological wisdom in the beautiful Wyrd Books editions of her work. Untangle your own solar biology and dive into her timeless musings on the Zodiac in individual books or as a complete collected volume.
Embark on a celestial journey with this timeless collection of Evangeline Adams’ three classic works: Astrology: Your Place in the Sun, Astrology: Your Place Among the Stars, and Astrology for Everyone.
