Astro-Digest, The.
A Magazine of Astrology, "An Age Old Science Presented in a Modern Manner "/ Your Magazine of Astrology.
Know Yourself -- String Along With Alma Crawford Graning / Let the Stars Light Your Way
Other titles: Astro-Digest Magazine
1932—1941
Los Angeles, CA. Publisher: The Church of Divine Science and Philosophy / Astro-Digest Publishing Company. Editor: Mrs. Alma Crawford Graning.
Succeeds: Halgar Succeeded by: Voice of Astrology; Astrology Guide

1/1, March 1932 - 9/5, August 1941. 32 pp., $2.50 a year. A journal of the same name was still being published in 2000. Graning (1903-1962) is a prime example of what Jenn Zahrt has called the "trash astrologers" -- a descriptive rather than a judgmental term for the popularizers and purveyors of astrology for mass audiences in popular magazines. She was certainly popular, giving, as Zahrt notes, her address for this journal simply as "Alma, McAllen, Texas." She was the daughter of Mattie Crawford, a Pentacostalist healer and revivalist after the manner of Aimee Semple McPherson, who, as she wrote in her On Mule Back Thru Central America with the Gospel (1922), had traveled with her daughter and family, Bible in hand and attired in appropriately stylish matching riding outfits, to bring the Gospel to the South. By the early 1930s Alma was specializing in astrology (which she said she had been introduced to at the age of eight), writing several books on the subject and later incorporating it in her own School of Divine Science and Philosophy in Los Angeles. When the federal government shut down John R. Brinkley’s XER/XERA border radio station, where Rose Dawn had starred as the radio astrologer (see the note under Modern Astrology), Alma took up the same position of psychic, counselor and astrologer for his new XEAW in McAllen, Texas. The journal contained "Outlooks" every month for those born under each sign of the zodiac, world predictions ("Tomorrow’s Headlines") for the month, articles of general astrological influence, and extensive advertisements for Graning’s books and those of the "new astrologist" Llewellyn George and others. The journal also prominently offered Graning’s "Monthly Business Service" "designed primarily for the man or woman in business who needs a more detailed and Up-to-the-Minute Horoscope. It covers such things as investments, market advice, best days to buy or sell, best days for personal advancement and success." Apparently Alma also published an astrological" envelope product" under the name Halgar in the late 1930s or early 1940s which may have been some sort of "for women only" astrological guide. This was replaced by The Voice of Astrology, a similar product, which was wildly successful and lasted until the 1950s. By the 1950s Alma was writing a regular column ("Forecast: World of Tomorrow") for Astrology Guide that was notable for having predicted precisely the deaths of Stalin and Queen Mary. UCLA; LOC.

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