Don’t Get Lost in the Stars
Dating app, Bumble, has recently added a feature to let people discriminate potential dates based on their astrological sun sign. Due to…
How useful is astrology for dating? Can you ever really know someone by the faults in their birth chart?
Dating app, Bumble, has recently added a feature to let people discriminate potential dates based on their astrological sun sign. Due to the return of Western astrology to pop culture, we’re likely to see the signs of the zodiac turn up on many user interface products over the coming years. However, something being popular in the mainstream doesn’t necessarily mean that the something is properly understood. So while users of the dating app are praising their right to block all Geminis, astrologers are criticising the ‘dumbing down’ of their practice. I agree that this astro-filter is a Bad Idea, not just because it reeks of superficiality, but because I personally know the limitations of viewing the world like this.
I used to be really into astrology. Not the mood board on Pinterest or the archetypal meme on Tumblr astrology, but discussing your south node damage astrology. It’s amusing to me that these days you can lead with “I’m a fucking Libra” without being laughed out of the workplace. Amusing because I’m a Water Pig in the Chinese zodiac and I’m just stepping out of my first Saturn return. I’ve gone through it. I used to try to understand people based on their birth chart and not on their actions, which eventually bit me in the youthful arse. I thought I could explain away all that happened as symptoms of character. I thought it showed how empathetic I was — I’m an INFJ, after all. I would pathologize everyone’s behaviour, including my own. I justified my dick moves, I told you why you were a dick. When I held the stars accountable for The Way Things Are and didn’t hold myself or other people accountable for individual actions, I shut down potential conversations around compromise and forgiveness.
In Julie Beck’s piece on millennial love for the pseudo-science, she concludes that “To understand astrology’s appeal is to get comfortable with paradoxes […] It can be meaningful to draw lines in the space between moments of time, or the space between pinpricks of light in the night sky, even if you know deep down they’re really light-years apart, and have no connection at all.” It’s as though astrology’s recent popularity is an extension of the ironic meme of inviting in death (through Tide Pods or Asteroids): that thin line between serious flippancy and flippant seriousness. This is the Age of Aquarius: as astrologer Linda Goodman said of the sign, “[Aquarius has] taken [the rainbow] apart and examined it, piece by piece, color by color, and […] still believes in it.” Wishing on a rainbow is fine as long as you don’t expect your wish to come true. Thoughts and prayers are fine as long as you know that nothing will change without action. I’m an Aquarius, so I understand this dichotomy well. Oh, I’m sure you get it, too, but not as deeply. You see, I’m Special and Unique.
The thing with astrology, and where the criticisms of the Bumble astro-filter come from, is that I’m not just an Aquarius. Sure the sun is my most ‘aspected’ planet, but the next most is Pluto in Scorpio, making me an odd combo of the two signs. An absent-minded vampire? An oxygen tank at the bottom of the sea? An albatross? But what of the oft-cited moon and rising signs? You mean Sagittarius and Leo, respectively? The former, my ever-expanding and contracting waistline and insatiable wanderlust. The latter, why I seem like a boastful showpony. What about this stellium of planets in Capricorn in the fifth house? Is that why I read so slowly? Is that why I think I can learn to master any of the arts? Is that where I get my grit from? Is this why I’m a Ravenclaw? Are you confused? Have you tuned out? While there is a finite amount of data in an astrological birth chart, keeping it all in your head at once is near impossible. Like the multitude of stars, we are multifaceted to the point of a blur. We are just so much, which is why you can say “I’m not a typical Aries” and dismiss the entire methodology. This is why skeptics drag and drop all this into the bin.
Parallel to this astrological banter is the rise of identity politics in how we socialise and fight for human rights, and the more established autoethnography and intersectionality in academia. At best, we position ourselves with a list of social markers to indicate how much authority we have on an opinion and where it could stem from. For example, I’m a white, gay, anxiety-prone, cis-gendered man, who had an agnostic, working-class childhood and got middle-class cultural capital from university, a decent job and subsequent travel. I’m Australian so I got universal health care, too, and a pretty good run without a school shooting. I inherited institutionalised racism towards non-whites, and have had to negotiate a hyper-masculine, sports-obsessed mainstream, while I was anything but. This is the intersection at which I stand, like in the middle of a large dreamcatcher.
At worst, we use these markers dismissively. We say all Virgos are obsessively clean (when really some are obsessively hoarders). We say the other side are all ‘deplorable’, that the opposition is in complete opposition. We seek out failings in others to prove how ‘woke’ we are. You employ the KonMari method? You must be a Virgo. Shouldn’t Virgos have the final say on who they are? Which Virgo has permission to represent them all? We can start believing that the label we’ve pinned to our lapel is the final word, a Get Out of Jail Free card. We can convince ourselves that only other Virgos understand concepts that are really universal (like tidying up). We can stop conversation and cluster to one side of the playing field. We can start victimising ourselves and bullying others. We create pedestals from which we and others inevitably fall, or get ‘milkshake ducked’.
I used to see people as archetypes. As I got deeper into adulthood I had to interact with a wider variety of people, who challenged my preconceptions of culture, religion, sexism and ableism. As I experienced relationships with greater stakes, my interest in astrology waned. To make relationships work you have to listen to the person you love because you love them, not the idea of them. There’s a space in which you have to meet each time you negotiate how entangled you are, where you give them the benefit of the doubt that they love you in return. It doesn’t matter that he’s a Cancer with a Gemini Moon, I can’t preemptively react to a version of him I’ve created in my head. Our relationship shouldn’t work because of well-placed planets, but because we’ve had honest ongoing discussions about what we want out of the relationship. Often what we love about someone is not easily quantifiable. Sometimes after we carefully label an aspect of our love life, we find it stymying or unsatisfying. Yet when we feel lost, we continue to reach for easy explanations, roadmaps to our fate. Naming things can be profoundly beneficial, but Aquarius Age logic dictates that allowing things to remain nameless is equally so: a rose is a rose is a rose, and by any other name would smell as sweet.
I don’t see reaching for guidance in these broad archetypes as a Bad Idea. Getting a greater understanding of who we are is always a part of the human experience. But a reminder every now and again that you really don’t have anyone pegged, including yourself, can’t hurt either. We will never see all the stars in the sky at once. Why limit ourselves further?