Why Millennials Prefer Co-Star to Prem Jyotish
Click here to read the story on The Juggernaut, where it was published on Jan 13, 2020.
“Burn it all down and start over,” read the Co-Star notification for Washington D.C.-based Upma K during a workday. “Everything was on fire that day but I laughed it all off when I read that,” said the 27-year-old UX strategist.
Though she had been reading The Cut ’s resident astrologer Madame Clairevoyant’s horoscopes for over five years, she avoided Co-Star when it first launched in October 2017. “Everyone was like, this is regressive,” she said. Her resistance was part of the baggage she had around Indian Vedic astrology, also called Jyotish. Many South Asian millennials have had astrology in their lives since the beginning — they’re not discovering it for the first time. It’s just that astrology has never been as accessible, baggage free, and even cool in the West, as it is today. It’s still a complicated journey for South Asians to accept astrology.
Growing up in an Indian household, K had a personalized horoscope, or a Kundli , prepared for her by her parents. When she made the mistake of telling her American friends at school about it when she was younger, “they used to be shocked and they were like ‘how can you believe in this?’” she told me. “But now Susan Miller posts her monthly horoscopes and everyone goes crazy.”
K says that she now often teases her friends and questions the validity of the horoscopes they share. When she finally downloaded the Co-Star app a few months ago, it was meant to be a joke. But she now checks the app before she starts her day to get a sense of what she might have ahead of her. “I constantly share these screenshots on Twitter and Instagram because often it’s something others can resonate with,” she said. “It’s fun and funny.”
In just a little over two years, Co-Star has amassed over five million registered accounts. In April last year, the company raised $5.2 million in seed funding from the likes of Maveron, Precursor Ventures, Imagination Capital, Female Founders Fund, and Aspect Ventures. Millennial-forward apps that help explain the world via astrology are certainly catching on: Sanctuary is trying to become the Headspace of astrology and Pattern’s accuracy had Channing Tatum freaking out over it.
Astrology isn’t exactly a new phenomenon — Susan Miller has been writing 1,000-word monthly horoscopes for each of the 12 zodiac signs for more than a decade and Co-Star writes about the 2,500-year-old history of astrology.
But the stars have aligned for the $2 billion astrology market in the United States, making it a defining trend of 2019. Miller’s site’s page views are expected to double to over 600 million this year. Buzzfeed ’s astrology inspired makeup video on YouTube has over 3 million views and The Cut ’s video about an astrologer guessing strangers’ zodiac signs has 12 million. An Instagram search for #astrology returns over 4.5 million posts. For some, it’s almost like therapy — your charts might interpret your feelings of the day with eerie accuracy. It can be a framework to share notes, to help you understand yourself and relate to others.
There are many reasons for astrology’s recent rise in the West — millennials, less religious than ever before, are searching for answers to the changes happening around them, answers outside of Judeo-Christian explanations. Miller, whose readership has reached 17 million and is set to double, argues that astrology is now popular because of the internet — no one has to go pick up a book or buy a magazine anymore. Sanctuary astrologer-in residence Aliza Kelly argues that astrology “create[s] some sense of structure and hope and stability”.
While astrology’s rise can be linked to counterculture for most millennials in the West, it’s quite the opposite for Indian millennials. Many have chosen to stay away from Jyotish’s religious connotations, and are wary of even the hip new apps. “The astrologers I saw had a priest-like energy,” K said. “They were consulted before starting a business or for doing a pooja.”
Some have seen Jyotish as a tool that creates fear and paranoia. Vedic astrologers, in most people’s experiences, are orthodox Hindu men who tend to make dramatic predictions on a customary reading of a birth chart. They learn by rote and are often limited in their perspective.
When horoscopes are matched for compatibility before a Hindu wedding, Manglik dosha, which is associated with Mars in a chart, is a common issue that leads to fear-mongering. Some lesser astrologers predict troubled married lives or even the death of one’s spouse. “All of that stuff is overblown,” said Komilla Sutton, 66, a California based-Indian astrologer. But with conservative Indian families, it can be enough to call off a match.
“I find that young people don’t want that stark kind of astrology,” said Sutton. She said that while half of her clients tend to be Indians or of Indian origin, she is surprised by how many were born in the late ’80s or early ’90s. “They want to understand what is happening in their lives,” she said.
Visti Larsen, 38, a Denmark-based Vedic astrologer who started his practice in 2008, explains that the basic questions people ask are still the same as they were 100 or 200 years ago: career, finances, and relationships. However, social media has changed the way people receive and process Jyotish readings.
He shared an example of a young couple for whom local astrologers had written off marital bliss due to a Nadi dosha, which is associated with a couple’s biological children. “They were distraught at the idea of not sharing their lives with each other.” Larsen found that while the placement would impact the couple’s relationship with a potential male child, there was no reason why they wouldn’t live a happy married life.
For others in the American diaspora, the image of astrology was exemplified by that of astrologer Prem Jyotish. He claims to use a combination of astrology and numerology to understand obstacles in one’s love life, family, and work — a compatibility analysis between couples costs $200. He grew popular among the diaspora for his newspaper and television ads. For many, his contact number is still etched in their memories. But for them, he is more a meme than a sage. Most recently, he made an appearance on India’s reality TV show Bigg Boss to make predictions for the contestants.
Jyotish has never been accessible for millennials in the way Western astrology has been, which is why when New Jersey-based Sansthita Pattanaik went through a tough time last year, she turned to Miller’s monthly horoscopes and YouTube astrology videos. “Western astrology seems more accessible. There are more resources through which you can explore it. Vedic astrology feels more restrictive,” the 26-year-old biomedical student said.
Pattanaik told me that whenever she travels to India and sees the astrologers on TV, she feels put off by them. “It would be cool if it was someone approachable,” she says.
Others, like Ajay Mehta, are reimagining astrology to fit their lives. The 27- year-old, based in New York, launched Birthdate Candles last June. As the name suggests, the scented candles are personalized based on your birth date, and each candle comes in an ornate sleeve with your personality, strengths, and weaknesses, based on Western astrology and numerology. “If we wanted to launch these candles in India and had to use Indian astrology, I am not really sure how many changes we would need to make.”
While Mehta too had a Kundli as a child, he only got to explore his astrological profile through Co-Star. “I could now see my rising sign, moon sign, and sun sign,” Mehta said, who started using the app when it launched. “The app is cool, accessible, easy.” In addition to Co-Star, he also uses Sanctuary, Pattern, and follows several Instagram astrologers, including Kelly. It’s part of the job, but it’s also fun.
“I find it really helpful to read horoscopes and it’s fun to think about relationships, social life, family, and calibrate accordingly,” he explained. “I don’t believe everything is predetermined but astrology is a good way to look at yourself and your state of mind.”
But even though astrology is hip now, Mehta points out that its baggage persists. “There are still people who say stuff like ‘how can you believe this?’ and so on. I think what you’re seeing is a section of young people embracing spirituality. It’s a reaction to that rational, cynical way of looking at life.”
The mainstreaming of astrology in the West challenges the colonial baggage around Jyotish and perhaps, that is where things can begin to shift. “Young Indians accepted yoga after they saw it being utilized in a modern context by Western audiences,” said Niravta Thakur, 41, co-founder of the Jyotish app, Cosmic Insights, and a London based meditation teacher. “It’ll be the same with this.”
Astrologically, astrologers say that Saturn and Jupiter will come together in an upcoming transit. That happens only once in 20 years, which means it leads to a generational change in society. What that will mean for astrology, and Jyotish, remains to be seen.
If you enjoyed reading this story, you might be interested in this deep dive into how some astrologers are trying to reinvent Jyotish for 21st century.
