Moore, Marcia (1928-1979)

views updated

Moore, Marcia (1928-1979)

Marcia Moore, an astrologer and metaphysical teacher, was born on May 22, 1928, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the daughter of Robert L. Moore, the founder of the chain of Sheraton Hotels. She attended Radcliffe, where she chose astrology as the subject of her senior thesis. The heart of the work reported on the results of a questionnaire she had sent to the subscribers of a popular astrological periodical. The finished work would later be published under the title Astrology Today—A Socio-Psychological Survey (1960).

Following graduation in 1960, Moore settled into a career as a teacher and writer. After a brief first marriage, in 1966 she married writer Mark Douglas. That same year, they coauthored the first of several books, Diet, Sex, and Yoga. It was followed by additional titles on yoga, reincarnation, and astrology. Increasingly, through the 1970s, Moore became a well-known leader in the astrological world and she was a leading force in integrating it with a reincarnation perspective. Reincarnation was the subject of her work on the faculty for the 1974 convention of the American Federation of Astrologers. She developed a technique called hypersentience that enabled people to recall their previous incarnations, and through the 1970s edited the Hypersentience Bulletin.

Moore and Douglas separated in 1972, and she later married Howard Alltourian, Jr. She was at the height of her career in 1979 when she disappeared. On January 15, Alltourian returned home to find his wife missing. Nothing was heard from her. Two years later a portion of a skull was found that was eventually identified as Moore's, though the exact circumstances of her death are unknown. It was known that during her final years she had been experimenting with a mind-altering drug to expand her consciousness (the subject of her last book) and had also become involved with an obscure occult group, but the role of either in her death is unknown.