Michelle Nhung Le

Posted on: 2/10/2021

There’s a consensus among the community of scientists and science-enthusiasts (whom I desperately tried to gain approval from) which frowned upon astrology as a pseudoscience that too often gets wrongly assumed to be scientific. Being the logical scientist-wanna-be that I am, I did the only reasonable thing: get into astrology. Seriously, can you blame me though, since astrology is just that irresistable. It got me hooked up on the mythological stories and hidden elements that need to be deciphered, and boy did I decipher. I was even close to charging a price for a birth chart reading service which became so popular among my friends. Astrology lured me into its miraculous world so appealing to a long-eschewed part of me that still believes in ghosts, fate and unicorns.

Yet, the inevitable was soon imminent. I discovered the other side of Astrology that is not so innocent, or neutral, or harmless of a hobby as it looks like. It’s a vessel through which the existing power structures, the stereotypes, the parchiatral influences manifest and reproduce, in the name of an unproblematic, healing magic.

It’s really important in astrology to distinguish between an archetype and the influence of certain social structures that are added onto it and where it is viewed from. These societal standards also greatly affect the way astrological placements/aspects are assumed to manifest in an individual, in other words, astrology also gives in to the reinforcement stereotypes and the incapability to leave/change the status quo. Why is there a categorization that separates every connotation into ‘feminine and masculine’ or extroverted and introverted energy? I just simply can’t wrap my head around how adamantly astrology reinforces gender roles and deeply-rooted patriarchal beliefs sometimes: the idea of ‘men and women are complementary based on the way they are simply because of their gender’, ‘femininity must mean submissiveness and a more passive approach to life’ and countless other “rules of thumbs”. How much of the descriptions we read in astrology are really the true, neutral form of an ‘archetype’ and how much is it just the way an archetype manifests in its environment? And at this point, shouldn’t we be able to distinguish between a stereotype we internalize growing up in this societal power structure and an inherent archetype in its purest, unbiased form?

I think the best example here is the sign Cancer. I can’t even describe the disgust at the colossal amount of times I’ve come across the idea that ‘they need a family and possibly children to be content and happy’ instead of ‘having secure and stable emotional connections are one of the priorities of a Cancer’? Because blood related family equals secure and stable emotional connections? Because having a family and children is still a necessity, and absolutely not an idea imprinted on people, especially women, to serve a certain purpose and maintain the dominance of a certain social group?

In Astrology, all too often simply boils down to heteronormativity and the idea of a binary gender system and thus also reinforces structural discrimination. Best example is the whole, Venus is characteristically women and Mars is for men. People of modern days look into astrology oftentime for a confirmation of who they are or for someone to tell them who they are. They see astrology as very limited in the ways we can personally integrate it, which is a direct product of an astonishingly narrow-minded foundation of conjectures astrology is built on. Another important detail to notice: the way placements/aspects are described more often than not take on the view of very heteronormative experiences, it is as if there is no true neutral description for how astrology plays out, as well as not enough insight and representation based on the experiences of other social groups. While the idea of masculinity and femininity is changing, in light of the enlightenment that reckons genders a performative social construct, Astrology as a popular practice and paradigm of ideas catering to the evolving taste of people, certainly hasn’t shifted an ounce like it’s supposed to.

Eventually, in this age of Aquarius we’re in, it wouldn’t be so unreasonable of me to ask for a change of status quo, for the reinforcement and perpetuation of dangerous, oppressive and overdue believe systems to be stopped, not just for the sake of Astrology, but also for a more inclusive and acceptant society.

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