Why I Hate Astrology: A Love Song for the Eclipse Season

a failed podcast attempt and some words of solidarity for everyone in the throes of it

“Students with their sunscopes” Francis Miller The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

I’m an astrologer, and I’m sick of reading about astrology. I’m sick of hearing about the eclipses and what lessons Saturn and Pluto have in store for me. I’m so fucking over reading for my sun, moon, or rising sign. 

“At the end of the day, it’s just a fever dream.”

To quote my drunk brother on the phone last night, trying to console me, telling me about the ten times he tried to kill himself and how it doesn’t get better but it does get funnier. 

This is an introduction to a failed attempt at a podcast called “Psychedelic Protocols for the Eclipse Season.” The podcast failed because astrology works and maybe don’t try to rush a recording between ellipses, with Mercury in the dragon’s mouth. 

You think you’re in control? The Fates are going to put you in your place by destroying the recording seven times over and breaking everyone’s mic in the process. Brutal. 

Astrology is not a warm hug. It’s not about energy or healing. I mean, it can be but not in the way you’re imagining. Astrology is not about manifesting serenity or abundance. I don’t care who tells you that. They’re wrong. Astrology is about confirming what you already know. Sometimes that’s the past. Sometimes that’s the future. If you’re lucky, it’s the present. 

I take that back. This isn’t about luck. This is about actively foreseeing the bad days, so you can mark them off your calendar to give yourself permission to do fuck all like listen to your brother, who you love dearly, slur nonsense on the phone when you should be working because life is painful. Seriously, blackout these hot days on the calendar. There’s no way you’re sitting with all that symbolism sober. I know better, and I still get lost in the waves of bad astrology. 

Astrology is looking to the sky on the worst of the worst days and seeing your pain mirrored right there. It's the Lord of the Underworld sharing a bed with your natal Venus and the fat Moon above you, to the degree, shining a flashlight on that mess, so all the other gods can get a good look at your crumbling existence. To be clear, this actually isn’t all about me, and, no, that’s not my chart. The point is: astrology will get you. 

When whoever is at the end of all of this has something to say, they use the planets to scream in your bloody face. When your grandmother dies and you pull the Death card. Do you need a louder cue that this is a time for mourning? She’s dead. Stop denying it. It’s cruel — and perfect. 

Also, that rarely happens. Pulling the Death card for someone’s actual death. Usually the tarot has more poetry. Like you’ll pull the Star card (grandmother’s in peace now) or the ten of swords (grandmother was a nasty one and even the heavens are relieved by the crank’s passing). 

Not astrology. Astrology calls it like it is. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of astrologers with literary flair, but astrology is, at its essence, a complicated clock or a mechanism for telling the weather. This is when that happens. It’s all right there, drawn out on your computer screen because no one is pulling their astrological data straight from the sky. 

Every Thursday I have a standing appointment with two people: my therapist and my astrology mentor. On the weeks when I’m in the throes of it, it’s my astrologer who pulls me out by identifying symbols on a screen and drawing out a story that I know in my body. She holds space for me to feel into this particularly difficult scene in a way that’s gorgeously cathartic and life affirming. 

This is why I love and hate astrology: its ability to confirm your pain and invite you to just sit with it, in the shittiest expression of that cliche, “You’re exactly where you need to be.”

(Whoever wants to talk about fate and freewill, reach out to me after the lecture.)

Like Bob Dylan sings, “You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” 

I can’t believe I just quoted Bob Dylan, but it’s true: you don’t need a weatherman and you don’t need to know your zodiac sign to tell if you’re getting hit by this eclipse season. Or any season for that matter. You don’t even need to believe in astrology. It’s all a fever dream, and I’m not going to say it gets better. 

But I will say it will change. That’s the thing about these damn planets, they're always moving about — shuffling, running, crawling, dancing. Just like us. They can’t sit still. This too shall pass. And if you’re having the time of your life? Cute. Now wait until the scene changes. Because it will.

In time, you might learn to have a sense of humor about it. And that is truly the gift of astrology.

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