Clow, Barbara Hand (1943-)

Barbara Hand Clow, astrologer, channeler, and New Age entrepreneur, was born in Saginaw, Michigan, on February 14, 1943, the daughter of Eugene A. and Catherine Wallace Hand. She attended the University of Michigan and received her M.A. from the Institute for Culture and Creation in Chicago. In 1974 she married publisher Gerald Cudahy Clow. She also studied astrology and became aligned with the New Age Movement. Her interest excelled in the 1980s when she became the executive vice president of Bear & Company, a prominent New Age publishing house, and began to write out of her own perspectives on various occult topics. Her first astrology book, Eye of the Centaur, appeared in 1986.

During the 1980s, the field of astrology expanded greatly, among the most popular subjects being the study of asteroids and comets. Initial attention to the comet Chiron emerged in the 1970s, and Clow first rose out of obscurity with her study of the comet, published in 1987 as Chiron: Rainbow Between the Inner and Outer Planets. Her volume called attention to the Chiron orbit between the planets known in the ancient world (inner) and those only discovered in the modern age (outer). She followed this effort with her study of astrology and sexuality, Liquid Light of Sex: Mid-Life Crisis and the Planets (1991).

While becoming known as an astrologer, Clow also emerged as a channel, and in 1989 she issued one of the first books containing channeled material reputedly from inhabitants from the Pleiades star cluster, Heart of the Christos: Starseeding from the Pleiades. This volume, along with Barbara Marciniak 's Bringers of the Dawn (1992), would create the emphasis on Pleiadian wisdom that became so prominent in the post-New Age ascension movement of the 1990s. She followed it with The Pleiadian Agenda: A New Cosmology for the Age of Light (1995). She has come to think of herself as a Pleiadian Emissary of Light who is assisting Earth with its transcendence of the dominant restrictive patterns that limit human creativity and awareness. As vice president of Bear & Company, she has been in charge of publishing many of the Pleiadian texts.

Sources:

Clow, Barbara Hand. Chiron: Rainbow Between the Inner and Outer Planets. St. Paul, Minn.: Llewellyn Publications, 1987.

——. Heart of the Christos: Starseeding from the Pleiades. Santa Fe, N.Mex.: Bear & Co., 1989.

——. The Pleiadian Agenda: A New Cosmology for the Age of Light. Santa Fe, N.Mex.: Bear & Co., 1995.