the deities of traditional religion, while exacting, were also intimate and merciful, the transcendent powers invoked in astrology are “abstract, unapproachable, and anonymous”—just like the bureaucratic monoliths in which many of Righter’s fans were employed. Thus, if religion had at least preserved the possibility of resistance to injustice, astrology and the occult enjoined an exotic subordination. Thoroughly aligned with the instrumental reason of the state and corporate bureaucracy, the new spirituality assumed a role as “guardian angel of the established order.”
