Sun Signs are not to blame for your crappy personality
A word of advice to those about to enter the world of Astrology
No, my friend. You “are” not a Sign. Libra do not make you a lawyer, or an endless romantic. Scorpio — as proud as you are of it — is not to blame for your emotional masochism. Neither is Sagittarius the main cause of your vicious need for freedom.
This creative way to synthesize astrology down to Sun Signs was invented in the 19th century by an astrologer/theosophist called Alan Leo. Shitting all over the wide astrological tradition that preceded him, Alan decided, overnight, to adapt the astrological contents to the solar cult he was a part of.
And so, here we are today.
A moment when it seems nothing bad ever happens to anybody, and no one has any concrete problem to solve. ‘This aspect between Mars and Saturn transiting Aries in the eighth house does not really indicate a death peril, but rather a “deep spiritual transformation”.’ Who can deny that? Who can embrace that? Nobody and everyone. And in case you do die, well, is there a deeper spiritual transformation that going from human to corpse?
So here is the center of the subject. Following the twisted terms of Alan Leo, a lot of modern astrologers feel some pride in affirming that they “don´t give advice”, and some even regard “not giving advice” a sort of “art”.
Ok, it wasn´t really like that. Poor Alan. Truth be told, he was accused of prestidigitation, a very serious crime in victorian England. To avoid jail, he came up with all this stuff about him not predicting real events but rather ‘indicating tendencies’. This made no sense to the astrological tradition, but it was enough to get him off the gallows. Unfortunately, after these events he traveled with his group of crazy solar theosophies to the U.S. (a country that, at the time, was not familiar with astrology) and promoted his deluded, distorted version of the Art.
They did a vert good job; in practically no time, everyone in U.S. was talking and sharing this astrology for dummies, discussing with immense enthusiasm topics similar to: ‘Hey, I am a Scorpio, so that explains that I like occultism, right?’ or ‘Of course you don´t get along with Daisy, she´s a Virgo and you´re Piscis!’
Americans’ fondness for advertising made this astrology to gain more and more popularity at the same time that its contents became more and more distorted and simplified “for the masses”. Eventually, the already fragile creek of wisdom wich was “esoteric astrology” became absorbed by the new age movement, settled in California, and emasculated from any kind of useful or valuable information, other than the emotional placebo everyone knows about now.
In an over-psycho analised occidental culture we are in, no one seems to find weird having to pay a person for hearing us talk about ourselves. And even better if you add some mysterious astrological information in the mix! We spent a couple of hours talking about what we care most in the world — ourselves. We leave the astrologers’ lair feeling special. Relevant. We are a unique event in a grey , unarticulated universe. The only thing that gives some sense to the chaos we´re submerged is each one of us, and our particular vision of things. We´re so interesting! But oh! No one really understands who we really are. How wrong is everyone else! What a wonder I am!
A bit much, don´t you think?
‘Alright then, so, why would I ever consult an astrologer?’, one may ask. A good astrologer is not a psychologist. Or at least, not just a psychologist. An astrologer is a performer, and when it comes to performers, you can choose to listen to Frank Sinatra or William Shatner. It is each person´s opinion to decide wich one should they choose to listen singing “New York, New York”. The song is the same, and yet…!
Luckily, there is a tradition in Astrology that deals with real, more meaningful subjects. It is up to each of us to figure it out.
