What’s your Star Sign?

I’m not saying it’s bad that all those ‘star-sign’ horoscope newspaper and magazine columns ever started becoming a ‘thing’, because until then, even the slightest reference to the wisdom of the ancients had been defunct for centuries.

The feminine triple-aspected Moon had been whipped out of the picture and replaced by the patriarchal Holy Trinity…

and any notions of trusting one’s instincts and of following the symbolic clues of nature were swiftly overwritten by rules in a Book … that most couldn’t read.

Still, apart from a nod back to our roots, those columns did no-one any real favours…

The terms ‘horoscope’ itself still makes me cringe.

It’s a bit of a shame, because the word actually refers to the natal birth chart, and not to what so many think it is… (I don’t know, what do they think it is? Bad entertainment? A prediction or evaluation based entirely on the ‘star-sign’?)

Back in 2018, two years into a very deep dive into the mysteries of the cosmos, I was in Singapore attending a Psychological Astrology intensive training led by Asia’s top western astrologer, the inimitable May Sim.

One morning, whilst waiting on the platform of the MRT subway, a man in his late fifties struck up a conversation, asked what I was doing there in Singapore, and when I answered, seemed to retort in a somewhat scoffing tone, ‘Well, I work in this hospital. We don’t look at the stars’.

At the time, I’d thought his tone to be so clear (we = intelligent, reliable, successful people. You = moron), but now, as I look back on it, I see that this was just an interpretation I’d made based on a belief pattern of my own (that it was better I kept certain parts of myself hidden, because truthfully, I was far, far weirder than even my high-school bullies could even have dared or hoped to imagine…)

Still, even if the man wasn’t being deliberately disdainful, it was clear he felt the two of us were not compatible enough to withstand even one minute’s worth more of conversation. It was at this point that he bid me goodbye, and starting ambling up the platform to wait for the train at (a presumably safer) distance further along of approximately 3.5 metres.

Now. I do speak just a little in jest. (What can I say? I’ve got two planets in trickster Gemini – including jolly grandpa Jupiter – not to mention a boatload  in the 5^th house of play and entertainment… (all in Scorpio, incidentally, which means that – as per the conditions of taboo-annihilating Pluto (Scorpio’s ruler) – as long as it accurately hits the funny bone, then there is nothing in a joke I might consider off-limits).

As we’re all no doubt very, very aware of, though, we’re not in 2018 anymore.

Attitudes to astrology have changed quite considerably since Covid times

as the world of esoteric, mystic and shamanic arts have blown up in so many spheres of influence.

But this isn’t to say that astrology gets its full dues.

Those who are interested in it on some level sometimes ask me things like, ‘but do you believe in it?’ ‘Does it work?’  ‘What can you tell me about Sagittarius/Pisces/Leo (or whatever sun sign they happen to be)?

And then there’s the standard opinion, which goes something like: ‘Well, of course it doesn’t make sense… If there are 7.2 billion people in the world, then how can 600 million all be Libra?’

Now, I would actually tend to agree with these people. Although the question is actually much bigger than ‘how can 1/12^th of the world be Libra?’ It’s more like, ‘how can even ONE person be Libra?

Seriously. My cat is more complex than that.

You may have done the Myers-Briggs test, whereby you get to find out which one of the 16 types you are: ENTJ, INFP..? It’s been labelled ‘so accurate, it’s creepy’.

Except, it’s still not that precise, is it? Back to ‘star-signs’, since when are you a ‘type’?

Take a look at this chart of Donald Trump – which, to the untrained eye, looks just like a circle covered by symbols and mathematically precise geometrical patterns. Once this is decoded, though, it reflects exactly who this guy is.

His Sun is in Gemini, and fortunately, there are millions and millions of Gemini Suns out there who are absolutely nothing like Donald Trump, and this is because they don’t have his birth chart.

Twelve signs..? Hell, no.

This is Donald’s birth chart; Donald’s life.

And each chart, that is effectively a snapshot – of the moment a baby takes its first breath – depicts all the energies that existed in the Universe at that exact moment and from that exact location on the planet. It gives us a 2-D representation of this very limited edition One-Time-Only-Playing-On-The-Big-Screen formation (that’s both you on the micro level and the entire cosmos on the macro).

And the beauty? This galactic dance doesn’t stop at birth. It’s unfolding, morphing, and revealing itself every single moment …

broadcasting to us, its players – 24/7 – on the grand cosmic stage of the Milky Way.

So, I know I just pooh-poohed those magazine horoscopes.

But this form of transmitting news and information?

As a former journalist who was nonetheless always so skeptical of the media, this is one channel I’ll forever recommend tuning into.

Just like our ancestors did.