"You Are a Libra."
Is astrology real? An open thread.
Readers,
I don’t know about you, but there are times when I feel 100% certain astrology is real, and others when I’m not so sure. Now I want to know what you think—and what your experience has been. (There’s a comment button down below.)
In my (almost) 57 years, I’ve been to more than my share of astrologers—good and bad—and read countless horoscopes. Sometimes what I hear or read feels as if it describes me to a T, and applies perfectly to my experience—which makes it especially disappointing when the opposite happens, because it calls all into question all those more reassuring times.
I guess I believe strongly enough in astrology to repeatedly tell people I’m a Libra the same way I might tell them I’m Gen X, or a woman, or a short person, or a writer. “Libra” feels like the same sort of provable fact of who I am—I’m a hopeless romantic; I have a difficult time making choices, weighing every possible option endlessly, etc., etc.
I remember my mother telling me this about myself when I was very young. There were these moments when, in simple declarative statements, she would inform me—a more recently hatched earthling—about the way the world worked. “It’s 1970 now,” she told me on January 1 of that year, three months after I turned 4, then explained how we count the years. “Elbows sometimes get dry, so we put lotion on them,” she said another time when I was small. I learned of my sun sign and and the Zodiac in the same way. “You are a Libra.”
There have been times in recent years when I had to stop paying attention to astrology. I suspected I was bringing to fruition some of the more negative predictions I read.
To test that theory, one October I conducted an experiment with two other Libras. For the entire month, the three of us had to ignore the monthly horoscope from one of the most popular astrologers on the internet, while emailing each other at the end of every day to report on how our days had gone. At the end of the month, we looked back at that astrologer’s predictions, and compared them to what we’d recorded about what had really happened to us. It turned out there was very little overlap.
Despite our findings, I still never fully abandoned astrology. I’ver remained on the fence—like a true Libra!
I guess I’m thinking about this now because it’s almost my birthday, and today Libra season begins. Now I want to know what you think. Is astrology real? In the comments, tell me what you believe, and what has led you to believe it.
-Sari
PS Tonight at 5:30pm I’ll be reading and signing books at Flashlight Books in Walnut Creek, California. If you’re in the area, please come!
PPS Next Tuesday, 9/27 from 6-7:30pm, I’ll be doing a reading/signing at Gloria Delson Contemporary Arts in Downtown LA. If you’re in the area, please come!
PPPS Please enjoy what might as well be the Libra national anthem, from the Streisand/Kristofferson version of A Star is Born—a record I first fell in love with in 1976, at 11. It’s still one of my favorite records.
Okay, so I'm a trained astrologer (as in, I went to school for it for 4 years) which means I have a certain bias around this topic, which I'll be clear about up front. However, I am at best skeptical and at worst horrified by much of the astrology that circulates through popular culture because it's overly simplistic, depends on tropes that are tired and often based in patriarchy and capitalism, and it implies (if not overtly states) that things happen to us *because* of the movements of the stars and planets, which is literally a bunch of bullshit.
So, here's what I really think about astrology in a positive sense. Astrology is language and poetry more than it is science. It is a divinatory tool, so it is a means of interpreting patterns as a means of understanding what's happening in the world, based on the idea that the world is fractal. The same pattern shows up in the veins of a leaf and a river delta. The classic quote from Hermes Trismegestus is "as above, so below"; what is happening in the heavens is simply a mirror or reflection of the patterns of our earthly and internal lives. The planets don't *make* us do anything. No one, no matter how good of a pattern reader they are, can predict the future simply by looking at the movements of the heavens. In fact, the best astrologers, in my opinion, eschew prognostication entirely. Instead, what they're looking for are themes or story lines. How those themes and stories play out for the individual is a mix of soul (which is largely inexplicable) and free will, which is probably more inexplicable than we want to admit, but theoretically is under our control. Though, I don't know about anyone else, I can look back on decisions I made in the past with complete conviction that led to unexpected outcomes that I can say now were both horrible and put me exactly where I needed to be. So, who knows to what extent our conscious actions are entirely under our control?
Anyway, the other trouble with internet astrology is that it's not based on the individual's chart, which is quite complicated, but an overview look at a single aspect of that complicated picture. Usually the Sun sign. Those there's plenty to be found in Sun sign information (I am a Capricorn Sun and am absolutely a Capricorn), those columns can't, by necessity, talk about all the other things happening in an individual chart-- the angles, the Houses, the other planets, etc. Not to mention how the birth chart (the chart for the moment and place of your birth) is constantly in conversation with the changing world. The sign and house placement of the Sun will always have something essential to say about the nature of the individual, but at any given time the Sun may not be the most active aspect of that person's chart in relationship to the world currently, what are called transits.
The only way to use astrology effectively (in my opinion) is develop an ongoing relationship with a really good astrologer who looks at your individual chart over time and helps you begin to learn the language so that you can interpret the complexity of meaning for you in the surface symbols. But even they won't be able to tell you who you are or exactly what is going to happen. Only you can do that.
This is a tricky one. I'm the daughter of a former professional astrologer, and astrology has been difficult to shake. I think I've managed to rid myself of astrology as life predictor, but still struggle to get away from astrology as predictor of someone's personality. To paraphrase a tweet I once saw," if astrology isn't real, why do Aries always act like that?"