1/1, August 1952-current (?)

This was initially a stapled newsletter put out by the Astara Foundation, which was the creation of Robert Galen Chaney, (1913-2006) and Earlyne (Mabel) Cantrell Chaney (1916-1997). The pair could stand as archetypes of the process of amalgamation of every conceivable element of peripheral creed and occult practice of the twentieth century into the pullulating morass of beliefs associated in the popular mind with Southern California: spiritualism, New Thought, New Age, Theosophy, Ballardism, Ascended Masters (Kut-Hu-Mi, Master Jesus the Christ, Master Rama, et al.), ritual and degrees (8 degrees, each with 22 accompanying lessons, passwords, and signs), Lhama Yoga (the Tantric Science of Tibetan Lhama Yoga), healing, breathing practices, self-development, unfolding the Third Eye, etc. (Excluded from the mix were automatic writing and the ouija board, which were regarded as demonic.) Robert Galen was a midwestern medium (mediating "Ram," and practicing billet reading and spirit photography) who had moved upscale to the "Spiritualist Episcopal" ministry, where he was involved in the Spiritualist Episcopal Church in Eaton Rapids, Michigan. See the note under Golden Rays. In 1947 he met Earlyne Candrell at the spiritualist camp at Chesterfield, Indiana, where Robert was on staff. They married in 1947 and then decamped to California where they started the Astara Foundation in 1951.