Finding Your Footing Pt. 1: “Astrology On the Internet Is a Jumbled Mess”

This being my first long-form piece about astrology, I’ve thought long and hard about what I should write. How do I contribute to a literary tradition as overstuffed, tragically unfiltered and hit-or-miss as Astrology On The Internet? After various misfires (i.e. writing a whole thing and deleting it), I’ve decided to focus on one simple goal. I’d like to try to articulate some of the things I know now that I wish I had encountered early on in my studies of astrology. If you’re reading this, you are probably not a total beginner — you probably know me from twitter, or if I’m really lucky, somebody sent you a link. With that in mind, I will try to make sure there is something useful or at least thought-provoking for everyone, no matter the extent of your astrological knowledge. If you are a beginner, hopefully this series will help you find your footing.

In true Virgo form (the sign of my Rising, Mars, and Venus), I’m going to kick things off with a critique, or at least some critical thinking, directed at the elephant in the room: the internet. But first, a few disclaimers. One, astrology on the internet is exceptionally vast, and I don’t pretend to have investigated every corner of its dissemination. I can only speak from my own experience, and if it feels like I’m generalizing, that’s because I am! Two, I will barely scratch the surface when it comes to the potential downsides of internet astrology. Every day I see dozens of groundless assertions on social media, and it’s impossible to refute all of them. As with all things on the internet, there is a bottomless potential for insane nonsense that I can’t fully address here, so I will deliberately set aside the true lunacy for another time. Three, things have changed pretty dramatically since I first cut my teeth on cafeastrology.com years ago. Now there are podcasts, memes, an exploding twitter subculture, instagram witches, and an unfathomable wealth of resources on Youtube. If I’m being honest, I don’t really know what the kids are up to. However, I think the basic takeaways I’m going to lay out will still be mostly relevant, even if the Pluto in Sagittarius generation is living in a totally different world than us Pluto in Scorpio folks inhabited in the mid-to-late ‘00s.

ASTROLOGY ON THE INTERNET IS A JUMBLED MESS

Let’s say you just bought an astrology book at your local bookstore, an introductory guide. You start to flip through the pages—just kidding! It’s 2020. Your friends are posting weird memes you don’t understand and you feel left out. You’re trying to read about astrology on the internet, but you don’t know where to start. Google directs you to a major astrology website. You navigate your way around the various tacky personalized horoscope up-sells, which set a tone you will struggle to shake: unserious, aesthetically displeasing, seemingly preying on the gullible and the desperate. Those aren’t for you; you are a normal person, you just want to see your chart. Eventually you manage to look it up (for free, in seconds, which is a miracle, let’s be honest). You start reading about yourself. Dissatisfied with this one website, you start googling the individual placements, the planets in signs. What will you find?

First, lists of qualities associated with a certain sign. A collection of traits which may or may ring true. They may not be presented in list form, but that’s still what you’re looking at, a grab-bag of associations, analogies, qualities and habits, tied together by a loose logic. Libra is diplomatic. Aries is impulsive. As for the planets themselves, you’ll probably find references to mythology. You are led to believe that the meanings of the planets were derived from their mythological counterparts, the pantheon of Greek or Roman gods. The reality is considerably more complicated, but that’s a subject for another time. Nonetheless, this is your first glimpse of some sort of structure to the astrological framework, albeit an anthropomorphized and narrative structure. It makes a certain amount of sense. Ah, yes, Mercury is the messenger god, I guess that’s why my bluetooth headphones stop working when Mercury is retrograde! It also kind of makes no sense at all if you think about it too deeply. Jupiter (the planet) is the bringer of wisdom and fortune and wealth. Jupiter (the god), a.k.a. Zeus, is a sociopathic marauding rapist! Wait, what? 

Along the way, you start to notice some weird terminology that doesn’t mean much to you. Often these words are peppered throughout the text as if it’s something the teacher covered in class last week when you were sleeping in. “As a cardinal fire sign, Aries is interested in taking action.” Yes, you tend to take action more easily than some people…but what is a cardinal fire sign? Here’s where it gets tricky. The good news is, if you want to learn what “cardinal” means, you can definitely find out more easily than anybody in the history of humanity leading up to this golden moment. But what do you do with that freedom and power? What about the fixed signs, do you read about those? What about mutable? Do you really know what these terms are referring to? Do you gaze at the totality of it all, have a revelation, a momentary glimpse at how the quadruplicities lock together with the four elements in an entrancing geometrical dance that marvels the mind?! Um, probably not, you’re just trying to learn about your chart, just to see if this astrology stuff makes any sense. When you read about this “cardinal” concept, it sort of just feels like another list, and you probably ignore it as some weird antiquated thing that doesn’t really matter.

So, why is astrology on the internet a jumbled mess? It’s not just that we’re ultra-distracted narcissists, though yeah, sure, that’s a problem. It’s not just that most of us are half-heartedly trying to learn an entire discipline through an extremely narrow window, only the information that applies to ourselves, but yes, that’s a silly way to learn about a whole framework of cosmological awareness. Arguably the biggest, dumbest problem is that, if and when we decide to go back for more, we will probably go looking in a new place. A few weeks (or months) later, we’ll revisit a concept or a planet or a sign, and we’ll go to another source. And the more we do that, the more we lose touch with what astrology really is: a complex symbological system applicable to, well, everything. It’s not just lists of traits, mythological imagery, and some funny terms we half understand.

Consider the simplistic and over-used metaphor of fishing. If you’re really serious about fishing, you will probably develop some opinions about where to go to catch fish. That comes with experience, trial and error, informal conversations among members of the fishing community (that’s a thing, right?). But if you’re just doing it for fun (for instance, if you’re tagging along with your friend), you will probably not pay much attention as the boat drifts through the murky water. It all kind of looks the same. Underneath the surface, there are surely schools of fish swimming around. Throw out your line and maybe you’ll catch something. Or maybe not. You don’t really care that much, you’re ready to give up on fishing the second it gets boring.

The internet is an ocean of information. In that sense, there is no shortage of fish. (This is probably a good time to drop the metaphor.) But when you only research astrology on the internet, a few problems emerge.

1. You don’t know what you don’t know. Aside from the confusing terminology, there’s little indication that astrology is much more than just planets and these mysterious sky-segments called signs. And there’s little indication that there’s more to planets and signs than just lists and mythology. You might encounter the notion that planets “rule” signs, but it’s hard to figure out what that means or why it matters. Ultimately, unless the fundamental building blocks of an astrological system are presented to you in an ordered fashion, it’s extremely difficult to reverse-engineer the system by googling mystery words. Eventually you need guidance. But then you run into another problem…

2. You don’t know what belongs with what, because you don’t know where it came from. Let’s say you are curious enough to dig around, and you start to get a loose understand of the structure that undergirds astrology. You start looking up concepts, instead of just planets. Here’s your new problem: unless you are receiving this knowledge from a single source (unlikely, given the amount of time it takes), in your first attempt you are probably going to construct a somewhat incoherent hodgepodge astrology. You might not realize that it’s a hodgepodge, but that’s because you don’t know what you don’t know, and very few astrology websites are transparent about the source or lineage of their approach. In this phase of your study, you are probably not fully aware that there are various schools of thought within astrology, and certain pieces of one system don’t really belong with the other systems. Even if you did know that, it might only be overwhelming and discouraging.

Sometimes astrologers don’t acknowledge the source of their ideas because they take it for granted that their approach is the modern standard. But if you just learn what seems to be the most common approach to a given concept or placement, you might be totally unaware that there is a rival approach that will appeal more deeply to your sensibilities and your experience. This would be a problem even if you did go to Barnes & Noble all those years ago in paragraph three. How many introductory guides really give a proper context of the lineage of their ideas? Certainly there is value in brevity, but most of the time astrological lore is presented as simplified fact. Taurus is stubborn. It just is. More controversially, Scorpio is ruled by Pluto. Why? Does everybody agree with that? (Hint: no.) Who taught you that, nameless author of an astrology book using the modern rulership scheme? And who taught your teacher? The same problem arises from internet astrology, but it’s even worse, as it’s often accessed and internalized in piecemeal form. If you google “moon in libra” and read the top ten hits, you might be reading interpretations rooted in ten different astrological traditions, none of which are properly labeled as such. And I’m being generous by assuming that these websites are sharing data that is actually rooted in an astrological tradition. Who knows, it’s the internet! (Side note: many astrologers derive the particulars of their “delineations” from experience working with clients. I don’t mean to downplay the value of that experience, though it is more literally subjective than other transmissions of knowledge, in that all the interpretations encircle one subject, this singular astrologer.)

I realize this might sound very nitpicky and perfectionist, and I am a nitpicky perfectionist, so…fair. I’m not saying we all need to become erudite scholars with a complex understanding of Alexander the Great’s legacy of conquest and cultural consolidation just to get a basic sense of our chart or an introduction to astrology. A subject as monumental and intellectually confounding as this needs to be simplified in order to be approached in the first place, and I admire the many thoughtful communicators who make newcomers feel welcome and capable. There is plenty of time to learn more. However, there is something odd which has emerged in the culture of astrology, particularly in the shadow of the ultra-simplified newspaper horoscope era. It’s almost as if the true complexity of astrology has become a secret hiding in plain sight. Where astrology was once a secret art for the wealthy and powerful and politically connected, now it’s incredibly easy to discover and exploit, and yet its true power has mysteriously cloaked itself in a mass illusion of its very nature. Astrology is so much more complex and layered than the cultural context would suggest; it’s so much more interesting and intellectually stimulating.

Unless you are one of those rare personalities who figure out how to navigate this maze without any obvious starting point, the best you can do in this environment is to start hoarding. You hoard data points from the scattered paragraphs your attention span can grapple with, and interesting anecdotes from the mythology, mixing up various competing branches of astrology with your own personal experience and your intuitive impressions of friends and public figures. Maybe you incorporate some more advanced terminology, albeit probably divorced from the larger whole. I know because I did this for years. It’s like I had 12 crates in my closet, one for each sign; every time I caught wind of a pattern, whether through observation or somebody else’s writing, I would throw the pattern in the relevant crate. I’d like to think I would then hold that pattern in my mind and try to test its validity, but more likely I would pull it out at the first available opportunity to demonstrate to an interested person that I, a random guy, knew stuff about astrology. And honestly, it worked well enough and often enough that I kept doing it that way for quite a long time. I didn’t need to really understand astrology, it was just this thing I was irrationally drawn toward, something I could pull out at parties to surprise people with immaculately-conceived insights into their personalities.

The internet made it incredibly easy to skim along the surface for years, learning lots of astrological facts without really learning astrology. Mars in Virgo is restless. Oslo is the capital of Norway. Or maybe I didn’t fully understand that it was even possible to somehow address the thousands of subtle and not-so-subtle contradictions that I was filing away in a secret drawer. In a way, I was at war with myself. I had seen enough striking “coincidences” in my research that I had to admit there was something real and valid about this strange craft. And yet, if I was honest with myself, astrology seemed randomly cobbled together, an intellectual free-for-all. I didn’t know why some stuff seemed to work better than other stuff; I didn’t know why any of it worked at all. So I mostly kept those 12 crates in the closet, and I would only pull them out when I felt reasonably safe, when I knew I was dealing with another crate-keeper. I didn’t realize that there were people out there who were cultivating a much more coherent (and effective) version of astrology, and I could find them and learn from them.

Eventually, I figured it out. I discovered the Astrology Podcast, thanks to a friend, and within minutes I was absorbed in something I didn’t realize I had desperately needed: debate. The episode was exploring a controversial topic — which house rules sex in astrology? Unbeknownst to me, this question gets to the heart of a number of disagreements in the community, such as the “12-letter alphabet” reduction of signs and houses. By the time I finished the episode, I knew I had discovered something significant. There was critical thought (and critique), there was rationale, there were competing intellectual lineages, and there was a guy named Chris who made logical points without needing to credit some personal wellspring of divine inspiration. He talked about it basically the same way a curious and well-reasoned person would talk about other subjects.

Finding your footing in astrology is not an easy task. Once you start to get the lay of the land, you’ll face a number of forks in the road. You’ll need to decide which house system is right for you, which rulership scheme to use, whether you resonate with the modern psychological vision of the birth chart as a map of the psyche, or the traditional approach revealing one’s fate via externalized figures and events. Perhaps you’ll find that your practice works best if you blend highlights from different traditions. Without a doubt, you will need to make some of these decisions before you feel ready to make them, because there is so much material to study, and it takes a long time to fully evaluate any particular concept. And perhaps most frustrating of all, every time you internalize an astrological interpretation, it will be difficult to unlearn, should you ever change your mind, which you will. After all, astrology is a strange and wondrous thing; it is not a universal intuitive knowing that emerges fully formed from the mind with just a little nudge. If that were the case there would not be multiple zodiacs. It requires years of study and practice and experience, and yet, underneath all that technique and acquired confidence, astrology will always require a leap of faith. Even the most experienced astrologer still gets a little thrill when a client validates their interpretation — because even years in, it’s still pretty bonkers that it works. Once you obtain that thrill yourself, it’s hard to walk away from any of the tools that helped you realize it.

Actually comparing the specific variations within the wider field of astrology is beyond the scope of this piece. But before we can start distinguishing these different schools of thought, first we need to acknowledge that they exist, that they can be studied and understood, that their conclusions are not casually interchangeable, and there are tools and resources available. I wish I had realized this a lot earlier, but I suppose it happened when it was meant to happen. For those who are impatient to expand their perspective, I recommend this helpful guide from Jo Gleason. As for me, I’m going to continue articulating the hurdles that delayed my studies and kept me from uncovering the real fruits of astrology, and try to document some of the wisdom I’ve attained now that I’m (more or less) on the other side. And for the many people learning astrology online, I don’t mean to patronize or condescend, nor do I hold the student responsible for the state of the school. There are so many different ways to learn astrology, and all of them can be valid avenues. I applaud anyone who has maneuvered the internet landscape with more grace and know-how than I did. My only hope is that seeing someone directly acknowledge these difficulties and confusions will help you, the reader, to identify blocks in your own process of learning and discovery. And with that understanding, you will hopefully be empowered to find your own pathway to the knowledge you seek.

Conclusions — learn to be selective, find teachers, ask hard questions, suspend judgment, compare sources, argue when it’s worth arguing, and don’t be afraid of books.

- Mercurius George