Letters of recommendation

For most jobs in industry there are no letters of recommendation. Just references that HR will call or send emails to with generic question with 1-10 ratings. For my current position, I had to list eight (!) people willing to fill out the questionnaires on me. Tough to find eight, but that's how it is. 

For the academic positions, the universities requested between 3-5 references. None were required to send letters. Then, about a week later, my references emailed me saying they've been solicited for the letters from a few of the schools. One of my old advisors (the one I learned most of my knowledge from) told me it's a great thing because I made it past stage 1. Are letters really that big a deal? I've written a decent amount of recommendation letters and they all say roughly the same thing. Should committees really be using these to do further filtering? Was my old co-advisor correct that I've moved up? Does this mean that the schools that didn't solicit my recommendations are not considering me any more?  This is so nerve-abliterating.  Part of this is also that if this doesn't work out, I know I'll be stuck here for another year, not working on things I have a deep passion for.  Ugh.  I'm going to try my darnedest to forget about this and get on with my life. Maybe I'll go shopping. Or hunting. Or better yet, praying. 

Oh gosh, I'm thinking of it again.  I wonder if there's a sale on hair dye to cover up the gray hairs I'm getting...