Celebrity-endorsed apps and knowing memes have given astrology a digital makeover and brought horoscopes back into our lives. But why do we look for answers in the stars? Joanna Fuertes investigates.
There are even live events; Jessica Adams held a conference in Cambridge last month and the Soho House group has its own in-house astrologer, Carolyne Faulkner. All of this is backed up and amplified by a neverending stream of memes.Memes have replaced tabloid horoscopes as digestible astrology for the online age. Hence why everyone who is social media-literate has some grasp of why it must be “Mercury in retrograde” that caused your hard drive to die.
Neither is women seeking forms of spiritual comfort, with research showing that we are far more likely to have an ‘external locus of control’. In other words, we’re more likely to believe we are not in control of our lives; instead, external forces such as luck or fate dictate our future. “For me, astrology holds up a cosmic mirror, it’s a tool for selfknowledge and sense-making,” she says. “I observe lunations, eclipses, retrogrades and key transits and aspects as a process of pattern recognition that helps me to live my life as a conscious practice, with a greater sense of intention and autonomy. What the ancients observed in the skies were really observations about human behaviour – as Coleridge said, ‘He looked at his own soul with a telescope.
However, the dismissal of astrology, alongside adjacent practices such as tarot and crystal healing, as stupid and frivolous has always felt distinctly gendered. We don’t tend to see the same level of contempt for the magical thinking of young men with interests in the paranormal, UFOs and conspiracy theories.
This brings us back to why there seems to be a softening of attitudes towards astrology, despite the lack of scientific evidence. “When astrology is used to reflect on our lives or in a therapeutic manner, it is pretty harmless,” says French. “It’s when you can’t make a decision in your life without consulting astrology first that it becomes a problem. I wouldn’t say, ‘It’s all bad and they’re all charlatans’, because if you use astrology, it’s because you’re seeking advice.