The Return of the Magi: An Astrological Documentary

An astrologer named Kelly Lee Phipps has been filming a documentary over the past year on astrology called The Return of the Magi. It is sort of a What The Bleep Do We Know-esq documentary with a number of interviews from various astrologers in the field, as well as a running storyline with a narrative which incorporates some of the concepts that are mentioned in the interviews. This is a much needed project since, to the best of my knowledge, nothing like this has been done before on the subject of astrology. Certainly nothing with such a broad scope and a decent production budget.

Kelly has been going around to astrological conferences all year and interviewing various astrologers from different walks of life. The NCGR conference in Baltimore in March, the Blast in Sedona in April, NORWAC in May- Kelly made it to just about every major conference this year with his equipment, and it seemed like he did hundreds of interviews. We kept running into each other at conferences and trying to set up a time to do our interview, but we kept missing each other or running out of time before the conference was over. Eventually he caught me in Seattle right before I gave a lecture at NORWAC in May, and we did a quick little 20 minute interview.

I was pleased to hear that Kelly uploaded a bunch of short clips from all of the interviews that he did this year to his YouTube account today, including one that he took from the interview that he did with me:

It is kind of short, and I was feeling a bit nervous and rushed since the interview took place just minutes before I was about to give my lecture at NORWAC, but it gives you some idea of the types of clips that he plans to incorporate into the full movie. There are other segments of interviews that Kelly did on YouTube with other famous astrologers such as Demetra George, Steven Forrest, Rob Hand, Nick Dagan Best, Moses Siregar, Richard Tarnas, Michael Lutin, and many others.

Earlier this summer Kelly asked me if the Association for Young Astrologers, which I am the president of, would be interested in partnering with him to premiere his movie at the United Astrological Conference (UAC) in May of 2008. We agreed, and then spent the summer working out the logistics of premiering the movie at UAC. At this point everything is set, and the premiere will take place on Sunday May 18th, 2008 at 9:00 PM in Denver at the Adams’ Mark Hotel, towards the end of the conference. Tickets for the event are being sold on the AYA website, and pre-orders are appreciated since it will help us to fund the event.

A couple of weeks ago Kelly released the trailer for the movie on YouTube as well. While the soundtrack is kind of weird, frankly, and there are some other critiques that I have as well, I’m pretty sure that the final product will be a hit at UAC, and the film will do a good job of gathering together a number of different views on astrology. So, it should be quite interesting.

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Update:  The movie bombed at the premier during UAC.  If you haven’t seen it yet, don’t.  I talked a little bit about what happened at the premier in a post-conference article:  Reflections on the United Astrology Conference – UAC 2008