The Astrologer 1976

In California, Craig Alexander, Craig Denney, begins life as a carnival hustler who poses as a psychic for the crowd. A palm reading that lands true convinces him he’s genuinely prophetic, and soon a woman joins his act, slyly lifting pockets from audience members as she works the room. The supposed partnership lasts about two years, but she eventually tires of the scam and walks away, leaving Craig to face a growing void. At the same time, his girlfriend, Darrien, Darrien Earle, vanishes without a trace, casting a longer shadow over his ambitions and the way the world starts to see him.

A wealthy couple appears one day, inviting Craig to a picnic in a graveyard and proposing a dangerous opportunity: smuggling diamonds out of Kenya. The lure of easy money pulls him in, and he soon finds himself entangled in a web that stretches across continents. He ends up in a Kenyan prison, where the couple’s influence momentarily frees him, and the trio then moves to bargain with a tribal leader, bribing him to reveal the hidden stash of jewels buried deep in the jungle. The job goes sour when tragedy strikes—the man among the couple is bitten by a cobra and dies. Craig acts decisively, shooting the venomous creature and walking away with the jewels in hand. A new, darker rhythm takes hold as another man offers him a boat in exchange for a woman; Craig accepts, but he later confronts, and shoots, the man once he discovers him exploiting the same woman.

Weeks drift at sea before he reaches Tahiti, where the instinct for danger morphs into a new scheme: selling the jewels at a bar and dipping into a pearl-diving racket to fund his evolving persona as a real “mystic.” The journey back toward legitimacy is swift and chaotic, and he lands once again in California, where his supposed gifts win the attention of the U.S. Navy. He lends his talents to locating a ship that disappeared in the notorious Devil’s Triangle, and as his profile rises, so does the public appetite for his story.

The world’s fascination reaches a fever pitch when a feature film inspired by his life—the melodramatically titled The Astrologer—becomes a global sensation. With money, fame, and a booming practice, Craig’s career seems unstoppable, and his personal life briefly stabilizes when he tracks down Darrien in a hotel; she has drifted into sex work. They marry amid headlines, a glittering symbol of reconciliation, but happiness proves fragile. A later quarrel in a restaurant ignites a fresh crisis when she cheats, and Craig shoots the man who is with her, a brutal marker of how far his life has spiraled from his carnival days.

As the years roll on, the once-charismatic fraudster confronts the consequences of his impulse-driven ascent. An old carnival sidekick returns with a stark verdict that cuts through the glamour: he bluntly reminds Craig that the label he clings to—“astrologer”—is nothing more than a mask for a man who has chosen danger, rather than truth. The line delivered in the heat of that confrontation—“You’re not an astrologer. You’re an asshole.”—lands with the weight of a verdict, sealing the sense that Craig’s legend was built on thrill and illusion rather than insight.

Throughout the tale, the arc of Craig’s journey is painted in bold, cinematic strokes. It tracks his early confidence, the lure of crime, and the uneasy alliance between charisma and deceit. The portrait unfolds against a backdrop that brims with colorful characters, from the solemn throne of a tribal chief, Solomon Mathenge, to the stern authority of a Kenyan prison official, Harvey Hunter, and the grand machinery of the Navy represented by an admiral, Donald Davies. The story blends elements of danger, ambition, and regret, without ever losing the thread of Craig’s personal ascent and its ultimate fragility. The result is a melodramatic voyage that stretches from a California carnival to the Indian Ocean, the tropical shores of Tahiti, and back to a world where myth-making and moral compromise illuminate the price of chasing fame.

“You’re not an astrologer. You’re an asshole.”