Packaging
According to Steve Turner, one of Van Morrison's biographers, Irish painter Cecil McCartney influenced the titling of Astral Weeks. Morrison related how "A friend of mine had drawings in his flat of astral projection. I was at his house when I was working on a song which began, 'If I venture down the slipstream' and that's why I called it 'Astral Weeks'." "It was a painting," McCartney corrects. "There were several paintings in the studio at the time. Van looked at the painting and it suggested astral travelling to him." The album cover photograph of Van Morrison was taken by Joel Brodsky, best known for his "Young Lions" photoshoot with Jim Morrison. The squared circle in the cover photo is described as portraying "the mystic symbol of the union of opposites; the sacred marriage of heaven and earth".
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