Grant, Ernest A.
Grant, Ernest A.
(religion, spiritualism, and occult)Ernest A. Grant, one of the founders of the American Federation of Astrologers, was born on June 4, 1893, in Detroit, Michigan. Around 1906, he moved to the nation’s capital. He initially worked as a stenographer and court reporter for the Norfolk Navy Yard and was later employed by different members of the U.S. Congress and by lobby groups. He worked, for example, for Senator Wallace Humphrey White of Maine, for the Methodist Board of Temperance Promotion and Public Morals, for Senator Theodore Burton of Ohio, for the Securities and Exchange Committee, and so forth.
Grant’s future wife, Catherine, taught him astrology, and soon after their marriage he became an astrologer, lecturer, and teacher. In 1938, he was one of the three incorporators of the American Federation of Astrologers (AFA), one of the oldest astrology organizations in America. He was the AFA’s first president (1938–1941) as well as its first executive secretary (1941–1959). Federation work was centered in his home from 1938 to 1951, when the federation moved to a small building in Library Court, adjacent to the Library of Congress. This building served as its headquarters until the early 1970s, when the AFA moved to Arizona.
Grant and his wife also founded the National Astrological Library, a book publishing organization that was later acquired by the AFA. Despite his heavy organizational involvement, he found time to teach and write about astrology. Grant was an ardent student of political astrology. He researched the astrological history of the United States and, with Ralph Kraum, wrote Astrological Americana. Grant died on March 6, 1968, in Washington, D.C.