Astrology: it’s all about you

In his book The Inner Sky, astrologer Steven Forrest discusses the skewed perception many people have of astrology. ‘To admit, in intelligent company, to being an astrologer has become like admitting you watch soap operas or have a subscription to the National Enquirer‘, he says. Although we’ve come a long way since Forrest’s book was published in 1988, in many circles astrology has yet to shake this association with superstition, cheap showmanship and quackery.

This perception, while by no means universally accepted, affected my ability to consider astrology as a viable life path. At school, the careers I contemplated were all ‘respectable’ – veterinarian, journalist, psychologist and librarian (which is what I eventually became). These and other mainstream occupations were the only options discussed within the school system. And so, while I was passionately interested in astrology, chrystal healing, dream interpretation, aromatherapy and tarot, it never occurred to me to consider any of these as a possible career.

The wonderful Lynn Hayes points to the prevalence of sun sign astrology as one source of astrology’s image problem. Only last week I overheard a comment sparked by the daily horoscope column in the Courier Mail: ‘Don’t you think it’s strange that the exact same thing is going to happen to one twelfth of the population today?’. Of course there is so much more to it than just your sun sign. But many people don’t know that.

Forrest says that another problem is the reliance of some astrologers on on pat traits and rigid stereotypes. He says, ‘one assumption runs like a virus through most astrological writing: people do not change’. And so we take as gospel statements like ‘Taureans are practical’, ‘Virgoans are perfectionists’, ‘Scorpios are sexy’ etc etc.

Like the reliance on sun signs, this is not what astrology is all about. Your future is not predestined. You are not pre-programmed, by your chart or anything else.

I really can’t sum it up any better than Forrest does: ‘Astrology can help us in only three ways. It can vividly portray the happiest life available to us. It can tell us what tools we have available for the job and how best to employ them. And it can warn us in advance about how our lives will look when we are getting off the mark. From that point on, we must affirm that all choices lie in our own hands and that no planet or sign ever preordains a specific fate’.