Why Horoscopes Aren’t Working (Mine Included)

Scrolling on TikTok. An astrologer pops up, facts in hand, with horoscopes to deliver - "Signs Most Likely to Find Love on April 1st," "What Your Rising Sign Means this Taurus Season," "Virgo Eclipse Season - Check Your Houses to Know What to Expect!"

Some of it rings true, but most of the time it feels less like an in-depth reading, more like the back of a pamphlet being handed out on a street corner.

Why? Are astrologers just bad at what they do? If this is all astrology is, then why bother? How is a vague platitude useful to anyone's life?

The issue:

Astrology is complex. Mass horoscopes are not.

Then why write them at all?

To gain the necessary visibility to get higher quality messages out to a larger audience.

When presented with new information, our first response is to determine its relevance. Without that connection between awareness and relevance, there is no reason to engage. This goes for all information, not just astrology. 1

Mass horoscopes are an attempt at making that connection, while working with limited information about the receiver.

A Short, Speculative History on Mass Horoscopes

Up until very recently, astrologers could not count on anyone knowing anything more than the day they were born on, which determined their sun sign, the sign most commonly used in mass horoscopes.

Since then I have seen growing awareness of ascendants (or "risings") as the prevailing horoscope datapoint, a development dependent on near instant access to birth chart data (thank you, Internet). There are many benefits to using rising signs to making educated-guess horoscopes, but it is still just one data point out of many, and comes with limitatiosn.

Now, even a mildly intrigued person, is liable to have an astrology app on their phone. Social media users may now switch between the two apps when faced with increasingly niche horoscopes and predictions ("Venus in Cancer? Square to Saturn? Well You Better Listen Up..."). This development serves two purposes,

1. To give the horoscope a higher degree of precision, and

2. To educate the listener on the myriad and variety of astrological details which make up their chart.

But individually detailed as they may have become, mass horoscopes are still missing a large part of the picture.

Charts, Charts, Charts, Charts, Charts….

Reading an astrological chart - whether it be of the current positions of the planets, a birth chart, or a synastry composite of two or more charts - is never about picking one, single piece, and declaring it as the only thing that matters. It is a matter of data analysis, across more variables than "proper" science would ever touch (the benefits of scientific inquiry, its appropriate use, and the limitations of falsifiable hypotheses - a topic for another time). 2

I could never tell you what kind of day you're going to have based on a sun sign or rising sign alone.

But I could make a pretty educated guess if I could see everything in your chart, and the chart for that day, and compared the two. That's what transits reports are about and what they will give you that mass horoscopes never can.

Transit Reports: The Better Option

Transit reports are about taking the complex information, evaluating the relationships between every observable, measurable piece, and synthesizing it into something useful. Transit reports combine your chart, with positions of the current planets, track those over a defined amount of time, noting how the celestial bodies interact, and then I do the work of making that into all of that information into something digestible through long-form explanation, journaling prompts, and provocative symbolism.

The process of astrological interpretation is a mixture of symbolic reasoning, lateral thinking, memorization and recall, and experience. It is a teachable skill, that can be developed in most - but just as most would prefer going to see a concert where they can hear the finished result, as opposed to practicing an instrument on their own, most people would rather be told what their chart means than to decipher it themselves.

That's what I've put my effort towards. This is the skillset I have cultivated. This is what my brain is most wired for doing - taking in large amounts of information, drawing connections, and bringing it back down to a tangible context. It's not easy, it's not quick, it's not something I do on a whim.

But Back to Mass Horoscopes…

I still believe there are ways to make mass horoscopes in ways that encourage readers to understand themselves more deeply, to get valuable information out. There are many astrologers I follow personally, from whom I deeply enjoy reading horoscopes from, and find incredibly accurate (and useful).

I am not anti-mass horoscope; I am pro-complexity, pro-nuance, pro-awareness of limitations, and will never fault a mass horoscope for failing to do what it was never given the tools to be. I will do my best to create horoscopes in this way, but eventually you will find yourself with more questions than answers. This is not the fault of any one astrologer. Horoscopes are the equivalent of astrology playing with its hands tied behind its back.

I will still write horoscopes, because the information, imperfect, flawed, lacking, is still valuable, but I wll be transparent about the fact that it would suit my perfection-driven preferences much more to exclusively create beautiful, bespoke, richly detailed astrological transit reports for a select set of intuitively aligned clients.

So let me spoil my not-so-evil scheme now:

I will give you the best information that I can, with virtually no information about you, until eventually one day, you decide enough is enough, get curious, send me the time and place you were born, and allow me to make each every one of you into curious, engaged clients, who graciously allow me to spend my time doing what I enjoy, and giving you the most beneficial astrological roadmaps I can manage in return.

 Sign up for monthly transit reports here.

1 Long-term, slower planet, transits aside - these can be incredibly relevant on personal levels, able to mapped to houses with reasonable accuracy based on rising signs (whole sign vs. Placidus, a conversation for another day, but bring in yet another layer of complexity as they affect the world on grander scales than the so-called "personal planets" (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus) - a topic for another day.

2 Before I get around to writing that piece, please go read "Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth" by Stuart Ritchie so we can have a shared framework before the conversation starts.