Canned Astrology
I grew up in Georgia where my primary exposure to pineapple was canned pineapple, plus the occasional "fresh" whole pineapple during the short window in the summer when that was available at some kind of reasonable price. (HA HA HA -- more like half rotted after traveling so far.)
And I was NOT a fan. I was like "Who would WANT to eat this GARBAGE? WHY????"
Then I moved to the West Coast at some point, had access to ACTUAL somewhat fresh pineapple for much of the year at some kind of reasonable price and for a time became a zealous convert to my new religion of eating fresh pineapple. (I assume if you go to Hawaii, where most of it is grown, and eat it there, you would go "WOW. Pineapples on the West Coast are AWFUL compared to this.")
"Popular" astrology is kind of like canned pineapple. It's intended to give access to a wider audience but all it does is give it a bad reputation as the garbage that popular astrology really is.
So rather than being like an enticing, small taste of serious astrology to hook people and help them gradually take an interest and learn more, it's just bad advertising sending the wrong message.
Some forms of popular (Western) astrology and what is wrong with them:
I have seen people make fun of Meyers-Briggs as being "like astrology" because Meyers-Briggs is, similarly, a set of sixteen general personality profiles. Trying to categorize eight billion people into a dozen or so personality profiles is simply not taken seriously by some folks, doubly so when it is based on the somewhat random detail of which month-ish long period you were born in.
This works because there are 365 days in the year and 360 degrees in a circle, therefore the Sun moves roughly one degree each day of the year. If you did it that way, you could not only talk about their Sun Sign, you could talk about the decanate they are born in and the duad they are born in and even do research to profile people for that specific date.
THIS would give them a small taste of what serious astrology is REALLY like instead of watering it down to such ridiculous bullshit that many people who only know "popular" astrology simply cannot take this nonsense seriously.
So astrology most likely began as a form of weather prediction so we could try to feed ourselves adequately more consistently.
I have sympathy for why people still want astrology to assure them "the sun will come out tomorrow..." but most predictive astrology has become such garbage, it only contributes to its bad reputation. A lot of it focuses on telling people about their finances and their love life, plus dire warnings to go hide under a rock and STOP living ENTIRELY under supposedly "bad" influences.
It's devolved into telling people roughly "You totally hold a winning lottery ticket, having not bought one. All you have to do is WAIT for the RIGHT DATE to roll around and your life will miraculously work better."
It's a very disempowering message and is the exact opposite of the attitude that astrology was founded upon.
Astrology was born of a desire to take some kind of control over our lives and not just whine about how we are victims of random events when things went bad, while waiting for "luck" to deliver us from a terrible fate. Now, astrology ACTIVELY ENCOURAGES people to whine about being unlucky and to just WAIT for our luck to TURN rather than FIX THINGS.
A pet peeve of mine is that Mercury goes Retrograde for around 3 weeks, three or four times a year and astrologers ROUTINELY advise people to BUY NOTHING -- especially electronics -- and DO NOTHING and SIGN NO CONTRACTS and START NOTHING under Mercury Retrograde.
First of all, Mercury Retrograde is a great time to GO BACK to something and it's a great time to do RESEARCH, to lay the groundwork for future decisions, to metaphorically or literally clean out your closets and clean up your file system and similar activities.
Second, who in the hell can reasonably put their entire life on hold for THREE WEEKS, FOUR TIMES A YEAR???? That's roughly a QUARTER of the YEAR -- and a LOT more if you follow their oft-given advice to wait until it is PAST the point it was at BEFORE it retrograded before you deem yourself TRULY SAFE TO LIVE AGAIN.
And they are supposed to do this because YOU still believe in astrology as "bad omens," as if you were born a thousand years ago and are not a modern human being or something? Wow.
Mercury Retrograde is not an "ill omen." It's just good for certain activities -- just like rain is not evil, though certainly a big storm is not something you want to be out in. But you don't need to try to completely shut your life down like it is the apocalypse if there are a few clouds and you might get a little rain.
I like to know when any planet goes Retrograde or ends its Retrograde period, turns around and goes Direct again because the three days or so at the beginning and end of a Retrograde period tend to be bumpy. That isn't necessarily terrible, but I like to know "Oh, I'm having silly drama because some planet is changing its apparent direction as seen from Earth."
I like to know when outer planets change signs and some idea of what trends that fosters. I like to know about events like Eclipses provided I am given the exact degree of the event, not just the sign, and I like to know about major aspects and which heavenly bodies are involved in them -- again, provided I get hard numbers for what SIGN AND DEGREE these things will be at.
There are probably some other things that are useful but I am currently enormously frustrated with how hard it can be to track down the DEGREE in question for the event in question while every astrological site I look at natters on endlessly about what this SUPPOSEDLY means for EVERYONE born in a thirty day period under BLAH Sun Sign.
I KNOW my Natal Chart backwards and forwards. It's NOT useful to me if I don't have the DEGREE.
I do NOT like reading utter and complete BULLSHIT that "Based on the BULLSHIT of Sun Sign astrology, I will predict that one TWELFTH of the human population will fall in love this day." or, similarly, "Based on the BULLSHIT of Sun Sign astrology, I will predict that one TWELFTH of the human population will come into money today."
The astrology site I read the most consistently does forecasts for the entire calendar month for each sign and most of the time I read the predictions for my Rising Sign, not my Sun Sign, because the predictions made are based on an assumption that your Sun Sign is ALSO your First House, which is untrue for most people. Therefore, reading the predictions for my Rising Sign is generally less "Oh, give me a FUCKING BREAK" than for my Sun Sign.
What authors of "popular" astrology can do with that last detail, I'm really not sure. A lot of people do not know their Rising Sign, some people will never know because you need an accurate place and TIME of birth and there are more than a dozen house systems to further muddy the waters.
But as stated already on the About page, I really HATE Sun Sign astrology. It may be paying YOUR bills, but it is doing enormous harm to the reputation of astrology. Please STOP.
And I was NOT a fan. I was like "Who would WANT to eat this GARBAGE? WHY????"
Then I moved to the West Coast at some point, had access to ACTUAL somewhat fresh pineapple for much of the year at some kind of reasonable price and for a time became a zealous convert to my new religion of eating fresh pineapple. (I assume if you go to Hawaii, where most of it is grown, and eat it there, you would go "WOW. Pineapples on the West Coast are AWFUL compared to this.")
"Popular" astrology is kind of like canned pineapple. It's intended to give access to a wider audience but all it does is give it a bad reputation as the garbage that popular astrology really is.
So rather than being like an enticing, small taste of serious astrology to hook people and help them gradually take an interest and learn more, it's just bad advertising sending the wrong message.
Some forms of popular (Western) astrology and what is wrong with them:
Sun Sign Astrology
It's a set of twelve personality profiles based on the "month" you were born in, only not because the signs typically change somewhere around the 21st of the month, give or take a day. So it lasts roughly a month, but it doesn't actually correspond to a calendar month, which just helps it look stupid.I have seen people make fun of Meyers-Briggs as being "like astrology" because Meyers-Briggs is, similarly, a set of sixteen general personality profiles. Trying to categorize eight billion people into a dozen or so personality profiles is simply not taken seriously by some folks, doubly so when it is based on the somewhat random detail of which month-ish long period you were born in.
Solution
Start publishing and popularizing charts showing the degree of the sign in question for the date in question.This works because there are 365 days in the year and 360 degrees in a circle, therefore the Sun moves roughly one degree each day of the year. If you did it that way, you could not only talk about their Sun Sign, you could talk about the decanate they are born in and the duad they are born in and even do research to profile people for that specific date.
THIS would give them a small taste of what serious astrology is REALLY like instead of watering it down to such ridiculous bullshit that many people who only know "popular" astrology simply cannot take this nonsense seriously.
Predictive Astrology
Predicting the future is probably the original raison d'etre for the birth of astrology. Back before there was light pollution, at a time when having a good crop yield or a bad crop yield was critical to human welfare locally, people could readily see the phases of the Moon and the constellations in the sky and such and readily begin making associations between weather patterns and astrological/astronomical events without trying to.So astrology most likely began as a form of weather prediction so we could try to feed ourselves adequately more consistently.
the earliest derivatives contract we have recorded was based on astrology...Aristotle clarifies that Thales supposedly predicted the weather by using astrologyThese days, "the economy" is much more complex than that and much more abstract, light pollution prevents many people from clearly seeing the sky and efforts to use astrology to predict the future long ago jumped the shark and began biting astrologers in the butt.
I have sympathy for why people still want astrology to assure them "the sun will come out tomorrow..." but most predictive astrology has become such garbage, it only contributes to its bad reputation. A lot of it focuses on telling people about their finances and their love life, plus dire warnings to go hide under a rock and STOP living ENTIRELY under supposedly "bad" influences.
It's devolved into telling people roughly "You totally hold a winning lottery ticket, having not bought one. All you have to do is WAIT for the RIGHT DATE to roll around and your life will miraculously work better."
It's a very disempowering message and is the exact opposite of the attitude that astrology was founded upon.
Astrology was born of a desire to take some kind of control over our lives and not just whine about how we are victims of random events when things went bad, while waiting for "luck" to deliver us from a terrible fate. Now, astrology ACTIVELY ENCOURAGES people to whine about being unlucky and to just WAIT for our luck to TURN rather than FIX THINGS.
Solution
Predictive astrology needs to be written more neutrally like weather prediction. We predict the weather to know when it will rain and to get in out of the worst of it and to help us PLAN our day. We don't do it to say "Rain is Bad and Sunshine is Good and you should lock yourself away on rainy days, cry in your coffee and wait for the Sunshine to return."A pet peeve of mine is that Mercury goes Retrograde for around 3 weeks, three or four times a year and astrologers ROUTINELY advise people to BUY NOTHING -- especially electronics -- and DO NOTHING and SIGN NO CONTRACTS and START NOTHING under Mercury Retrograde.
First of all, Mercury Retrograde is a great time to GO BACK to something and it's a great time to do RESEARCH, to lay the groundwork for future decisions, to metaphorically or literally clean out your closets and clean up your file system and similar activities.
Second, who in the hell can reasonably put their entire life on hold for THREE WEEKS, FOUR TIMES A YEAR???? That's roughly a QUARTER of the YEAR -- and a LOT more if you follow their oft-given advice to wait until it is PAST the point it was at BEFORE it retrograded before you deem yourself TRULY SAFE TO LIVE AGAIN.
And they are supposed to do this because YOU still believe in astrology as "bad omens," as if you were born a thousand years ago and are not a modern human being or something? Wow.
Mercury Retrograde is not an "ill omen." It's just good for certain activities -- just like rain is not evil, though certainly a big storm is not something you want to be out in. But you don't need to try to completely shut your life down like it is the apocalypse if there are a few clouds and you might get a little rain.
I like to know when any planet goes Retrograde or ends its Retrograde period, turns around and goes Direct again because the three days or so at the beginning and end of a Retrograde period tend to be bumpy. That isn't necessarily terrible, but I like to know "Oh, I'm having silly drama because some planet is changing its apparent direction as seen from Earth."
I like to know when outer planets change signs and some idea of what trends that fosters. I like to know about events like Eclipses provided I am given the exact degree of the event, not just the sign, and I like to know about major aspects and which heavenly bodies are involved in them -- again, provided I get hard numbers for what SIGN AND DEGREE these things will be at.
There are probably some other things that are useful but I am currently enormously frustrated with how hard it can be to track down the DEGREE in question for the event in question while every astrological site I look at natters on endlessly about what this SUPPOSEDLY means for EVERYONE born in a thirty day period under BLAH Sun Sign.
I KNOW my Natal Chart backwards and forwards. It's NOT useful to me if I don't have the DEGREE.
I do NOT like reading utter and complete BULLSHIT that "Based on the BULLSHIT of Sun Sign astrology, I will predict that one TWELFTH of the human population will fall in love this day." or, similarly, "Based on the BULLSHIT of Sun Sign astrology, I will predict that one TWELFTH of the human population will come into money today."
The astrology site I read the most consistently does forecasts for the entire calendar month for each sign and most of the time I read the predictions for my Rising Sign, not my Sun Sign, because the predictions made are based on an assumption that your Sun Sign is ALSO your First House, which is untrue for most people. Therefore, reading the predictions for my Rising Sign is generally less "Oh, give me a FUCKING BREAK" than for my Sun Sign.
What authors of "popular" astrology can do with that last detail, I'm really not sure. A lot of people do not know their Rising Sign, some people will never know because you need an accurate place and TIME of birth and there are more than a dozen house systems to further muddy the waters.
But as stated already on the About page, I really HATE Sun Sign astrology. It may be paying YOUR bills, but it is doing enormous harm to the reputation of astrology. Please STOP.
