astrology babygirl
growing up in the cult of the zodiac
Astrology was psychology in my family. Quirks, fears, contradictions - no person’s traits escaped a zodiac reckoning beneath my Centrelink-subsidised roof. If I mentioned a new school friend often enough in my two-person household, my mother would request their birth date to tender her assessment of them. Exact birth time and location a bonus.
I was different from my religious and secular schoolmates. Where others doodled arrows or hearts in their textbook margins, I squiggled the twelve signs’ mysterious, alchemical symbols. I parsed ancient secrets of a misunderstood wisdom. I was initiated.
The outside world’s reaction to my beliefs was often skepticism. Between my home’s tapestry-draped walls, we reasoned in archetypes, while school friends either scoffed at me or dared me to analyse them. My mother and I discussed the temperaments of my crushes, our extended family, world leaders. We rationalised hostile behaviour thusly: ‘A Libra? Hmm. Oh, born late in October. Probably has planets in Scorpio.’
Star signs were our diagnostics. Cause and effect? Secondary factors.
In breathless revelations on humid Gold Coast evenings, my mother would peel back more layers of wisdom for me. Hitler’s traumatic childhood, for example, seemed less important than him being born on the Aries-Taurus cusp, and his strong Mars placement.
In my youth, I came to believe that nothing was untethered to the zodiac, as if it were both a science and a living, breathing gospel.
Many years later, away from the daily influence of my mother’s beliefs, I have accepted that astrology is not ‘real’ apart from the meaning and power people give it.
Despite religion’s abhorrence of it as ‘evil’, the two are more alike than astrology and science. Though it uses vaguely mathematic calculations, Astrology is its own gospel, propped up by confirmation bias.
Whenever I read analyses of myself and people I know, I see such aptitude that sometimes it’s eerie. But there are always loose ends, things that don’t apply. I shrug those parts off with cutthroat carelessness - confirmation bias in action.
The fact is that to believe in astrology- even to give it a little credence - is to believe in magic.
The difficult side to growing up in a home where esoteric beliefs held sway was when my mother used astrology in place of psychology. There were times I brought up grievances, hoping for shifts in the tides of our cycle, only to be told I was simply ruled by my emotions and stuck in the past, because I was a Cancer. She’d lost her temper because of her Aries moon, and her Gemini ascendant often made her unable to temper her speech.
Diagnoses of my neurodivergence or attempts at therapy were moot; why find out what was going on medically, psychologically, when I already knew I had Cancer in the twelfth house and Leo in the first? Of course I hid my crippling self-consciousness and strange habits beneath a social veneer and cool outfits. Any concern could be explained by a planetary placement. It was already written in the stars; why did I need to put a label on it?
There was no real chance at compromise when dealing with immutable qualities that just were as they were. The two of us, opposite but complementary, forced to cohabit. This was how my mother explained our relationship. I did not believe as strongly in personalities being rooted in an empirical truth, given my penchant for people-pleasing, accommodating whomever I found myself around at the time. Maybe I’d learned that from growing up with her, always unsure what was required of me, stretching and weaving and dodging like a vine around a rock. But she was awfully convincing that I was, and always had been, simply the way that I was. Maybe she was right.
Maybe her outlook really had nothing to do with astrology in the end; maybe she was just a Boomer, a remnant of an epoch in which ‘mental healthcare’ was taboo, its remedies flubbed by Freudian fanboys.
My mind remains lined with astrology’s remnants. My formative years are loud with mentions of it. Its twelve characters feel like old friends: fiery Aries, sensual Taurus, jittery Gemini. Caring Cancer, loud Leo, perfectionist Virgo. Chill Libra, sus’ Scorpio, reckless Sag. Sarcastic Capricorn, philosophical Aquarius, dreamy Pisces. Astrology’s apostles.
Is the way I feel about astrology perhaps what religious people feel when they leave their churches? All those years of Bible study, for what? All those prophets and kings memorised, for what?
All that knowledge from my cult of two, stored for nothing - until it returns at certain moments, triggered, reawakened. Begging for me to drag out its patchouli-scented lexicon again.
See, I still find myself longing to ask someone’s birth date when I meet them.
Astrology has proven an obstinate belief to rid myself of. It has an orbit. Its pseudoscience is difficult to disprove, once you’ve learned it.
There have been studies done on astrology, attempts at statistics. None of the studies have proven anything, of course. There is no statistical skew that shows a confluence of any particular zodiac sign with any particular sphere of life.
But they can never prove astrology, I hear my mother’s voice reverberating in my skull as I read the stats. That’s impossible. It’s just a framework, a mysterious gift - the signs are merely archetypes that live within all of us. Plus, you know they’re not considering the whole chart…
People who don’t know astrology have misconceptions about it. They often believe it’s nothing but the sun sign: if you’re born in August, you’re a Leo. That’s all there is to it, no?
Sun signs are only the beginning. One’s astrological chart is a snapshot of the whole sky at one’s moment of birth. It’s a record of which planets were where - in what sign’s twelfth sliver of the heavens? Taurus? Sagittarius? - and what degree of rotation the earth was at.
A person may be ‘a Leo’ sun, but with Libra rising in the east, their Moon in Virgo and their Venus in Cancer, which theoretically modulates their Leonine personality. There are many considerations. Though the sun gives the overall feel of one’s personality, other celestial bodies symbolise specific things. The forces acting upon one’s spheres of life. The sign rising in the east, other’s first impressions. The moon, one’s emotions. Mercury, one’s way of thinking. For a visual reference, here’s Kurt Cobain’s astrology chart. The symbols on the outer wheel are the twelve signs, the little icons in the inner wheel his planets.
What about twins, you might ask? Astrology has an answer for that. Rising signs change every four minutes. Which means each twin’s Imum Coeli (don’t even ask) - their subconscious motivations - could well be different. And astrology accedes that nurture, experience and choices can all influence one’s temperament, too.
There’s more to it all - the twelve houses, the aspects, and other celestial bodies (moons, asteroids) - but I’ll spare you.
I know that whenever I read about my own planetary placements, when I think, ‘shit, that’s me,’ I am allowing coincidence and confirmation bias to sway me.
I believe in science.
But astrology’s spell is hard to break. I can still hear my mother’s voice whispering in my ear sometimes. It’s not a dogma - it’s just a tool. A tool for self understanding.
If it’s not a dogma, then why do people set so much store by their own charts? I wonder to myself. Why should birth time be significant? Why don’t we just read about all the signs and the houses, picking and choosing whatever applies?
I don’t have any answers.
I thought I’d write a different piece when this idea gripped me. A piece about believing in something maligned while growing up, of being brainwashed as a kid and ascending to rational heights as an adult. But, in my research to jog my memory, I found myself dragged back into my awe and reverence for astrology. Right back to the seat of my childhood, powerless to stop it. Poring over people’s charts again, my Scorpio Imum Coeli in full force, that death and darkness at the core of me, that need for transcendence of the humdrum world.
I hate astrology. I hate that I love it with no logical basis to my love. I hate that the Reagans and the Nazis loved it, too.
The symbols and aesthetics of it still entrance me, its mysticism alluring. Even now, sometimes I will read a public figure’s chart ‘just for fun’; ah yes, Trump and Kanye West both bloody Geminis, well, that makes sense. Motormouths, both of them, neither able to shut the fuck up. Kendrick Lamar, also a Gemini; at least he’s using his powers of hot air for good. Britney, Christina, Miley, Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift all freewheeling, shapeshifting Sagittarians, how interesting. Something about centaurs and pop stars?
Occasionally, I’ll read my daily predictions on astro.com (personalised to my entire chart, of course, not just my sun sign.) I feel both silly and excited when I do this.
I find myself longing, at times, for the certainty I used to feel in my youth, when I believed in the wisdom of the stars - even now I’ve learned better. Learning better doesn’t always feel like a comfort.
Is there harm in backsliding? Is there harm in a little makeshift magic?