Word: astral
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Astrology was the machinery of the universe. All the details of the world were wired to the vibrations of the heavens. The membranes of history thrummed to astral music. How cozy that stars and planets should intervene so intimately on earth...
...Russell was made for Aria. The music is Nessun dorma from Puccini's Turandot; the images are the last frenetic dreams of a dying woman. Ancient astral priests dress her for a mysterious ritual: paint on her body, diamonds on the soles of her feet, finally a branding iron pressed to her lips. A rude flash, and we see the scene of a car accident. The jewels are mortal wounds, the priests surgeons, the vision one of hope and fear for the unknown world that follows death. Visually, Russell's sequence is pitched at see above high- see. Emotionally...
...still ( youthful Heywood Floyd and his cybernetic companion, HAL the computer, occurs 51 years further on. As astronomers know, 2061 is the year Halley's comet is next scheduled to enter the inner solar system, providing a sequel of its own. Despite a soft landing on that astral body, the reappearance of the celebrated black monoliths of superintelligence, and references to voicegrams, audiomail and vocards, Clarke's future bears a marked resemblance to the present. Plowing through the void, crew members of the spaceship Universe sit back to enjoy their in-flight film, Gone With the Wind, and Floyd informs...
...five-hour TV extravaganza that was aired earlier this year. Her fifth volume, It's All in the Playing, published last September and a best seller for more than two months, is mainly about the making of the TV version of Volume 3, including conference/seances on how her astral guides feel about being cast to play themselves on television...
...popularity, the New Age is hard to define. It includes a whole cornucopia of beliefs, fads, rituals; some subscribe to some parts, some to others. Only on special occasions, like the highly publicized "harmonic convergence" in August, do believers in I Ching or crystals gather together with believers in astral travel, shamans, Lemurians and tarot readers, for a communal chanting of om, the Hindu invocation that often precedes meditation. Led on by the urgings of Jose Arguelles, a Colorado art historian who claimed that ancient Mayan calendars foretold the end of the world unless the faithful gathered to provide harmony...