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Postcolonial Astrology: Reading the Planets through Capital, Power, and Labor BY ALICE SPARKLY KAT NORTH ATLANTIC, 336 PAGES, $17.95
Does anyone believe in astrology anymore? Is there anyone who still really thinks that our destinies are written in the sky? The answer is probably no. Maybe there's some ancient black-clad Armenian peasant woman consulting an almanac every time she crosses the street-but for everyone else, astrology is a dead science. The vast wheel of the universe is still turning, but nobody beneath it cares.
Supposedly, a lot of people do believe in astrology, more than ever before. Co-Star, an astrology app "powered by AI that merges NASA data with the insight of human astrologers" to "algorithmically generate insights about your personality" has raised $20 million from Silicon Valley venture capitalists. Astrology is hip now. It's queer and diverse and empowering, maybe revolutionary, definitely unavoidable. When a new acquaintance asks me, innocently, as if she's just making conversation, how long it is until my birthday, I know what she really means. She's asking me what I am. I'm a Virgo, I say, Moon in Aquarius, Aquarius rising. When I started dating my current girlfriend, I noticed she had a big astrology book on her table, half-opened to the chapter on our specific compatibility. She's a Leo; our birthdays are quite close together. Virgos and Leos are not, it turns out, very well suited to each other. We're both too rational. The Leo becomes overbearing and tyrannical, the Virgo reserved and pernickety. Somehow, we've made it work. Love defies even the stars.
I sound critical, but then I am a Virgo; it goes with the territory. In fact, though I don't believe in astrology, I do quite like it. At its heart, astrology is a system for turning the chaos of the world into something meaningful. Every society in human history has looked at the night sky and sought out the patterns. Huge cosmic animals, heroes, or the dead: The stars are a permanent storehouse of myth. In A Scheme of Heaven, Alexander Boxer reminds us:
Nearly 10 percent of the night sky... can be accounted for by retelling just one single legend, that of a hero (the constellation Perseus) who slays a monster feared for her...