The Fault in Their Stars
In a stressful, social media-driven era, young people look for self-help in the zodiac.
When Mia Nhu Tran, 22, was in high school, she downloaded her first astrology app. She wanted to read her “natal chart”: the placement of the sun, the moon and the planets within 12 sections of the sky — the signs of the zodiac — at the moment she was born. Tran wrote in her time, date and place of birth and got a chart reading: Her Sun was positioned in the Capricorn constellation (“I’m a little work obsessed”), her Moon was in Leo (“I’m creative and crave affirmation”), and her “ascending sign” was in Cancer (“just me being a little too nurturing and mom-like”). Mia Nhu Tran felt she finally gained insight into who she was — and began her journey into astrology.
According to a 2018 Pew Research Center poll, almost 30% of Americans believe in astrology, a figure which hasn’t been this high since the ’70s and ’80s, when “The Age of Aquarius” came with a heaping help of the zodiac. In 2020, many people are likely to know the basics of the Zodiac even if they’re not an astrology buff, and over the past decade, astrology has shifted from being a niche interest to a major point of enthusiasm. Google searches for “birth chart” doubled between November of 2013 and November of 2018. And since September of 2017, there’s been a steady increase in people searching “astrological compatibility”.
“It’s mainstream to use horoscopes now,” Tran says. “My IG feed is full of astrology ‘memes’ my friends like and share that relate certain behaviors to your zodiac sign.”
Reading horoscopes might be common but believing in them — isn’t. Contrary to the popular perception of crystal-gazing tarot-reading astrologers, modern zodiac enthusiasts are young people who use social media and apps for insights into their personality, and emotional relief.
Alas, no evidence exists that a zodiac sign actually correlates to personality. Since its beginnings, about 2000 years ago, up until Sir Isaac Newton’s discovery of gravity, astrology (insight into the “future” based on the movement of celestial bodies) was equated with astronomy (the scientific study of those objects). When ancient Babylonians’ observed the sky to make empirical observations of the planetary motions — they imagined them to carry an important message from the gods.
According to NASA, the Babylonians created the zodiac by dividing the constellations into 12 equal parts, “like cutting a pizza into 12 equal slices,” with each constellation representing one “slice” of their 12-month calendar. Later, the ancient Greeks named the 12 star signs of the zodiac familiar to us today, starting with Aries (March 21-April 19), and ending with Pisces (Feb. 19 to March 20).
Nyssa Grazda, 34, is a Los Angeles–based astrological consultant whose in-depth readings of her clients’ birth charts help them achieve “insights into the soul.” Grazda became fascinated with the zodiac in high school, where she considered herself to be the “weird kid,” and gravitated toward sources that would help her develop more self-awareness.
“Astrologers are interested in people,” Grazda says, “but are also self-interested. The culture might tell us that’s narcissistic, but the more you start looking at the way you organically operate, the more agency you have over your life.”
Grazda remembers embarking on her astro-research reading horoscope scrolls that were regularly placed in the grocery store checkout lines. The contemporary experience is vastly different: Magazine zodiac has been replaced by Instagram astrologers, meme accounts, and apps like Co-Star, an artificial intelligence–driven app that provides its users daily horoscopes and lets them compare their birth charts to those of their friends (whether they’re on the app or not).
Anna Wu, a senior at the University of Chicago, says she sometimes uses Co-star to find answers for personal concerns.
“I was really anxious over this boy I liked, and I created a birth chart to see his particular planet placements,” Wu says. As she was looking at his Venus (demonstrates romantic compatibility) and Mars (symbolizes sex life), Wu says she gained a better understanding of him as a potential partner.
A 1982 study by the psychologist Graham Tyson found that people who seek astrology did so in response to stressors in their lives — specifically stress “linked to the individual’s social roles and to his or her relationships,” Tyson wrote. “Under conditions of high stress, the individual is prepared to use astrology as a coping device even though under low-stress conditions he does not believe in it.”
According to a 2018 study by the American Psychological Association, Gen Z is significantly more likely to report their mental health as fair or poor, with 27 percent saying this is the case, compared to millennials (15 percent) and Gen Xers (13 percent). Female Gen Zs are nearly twice as likely as their male peers to report that their mental health is fair or poor (35 percent for female vs. 18 percent for male). Coincidentally or not, a 2018 study by Pew Research Center found that 37 percent of women in the US believed in astrology, compared to just 20 percent of men.
Grazda recalls several of her clients started crying during their charts’ analysis because the idea of someone relating to their problems is “cathartic and healing.”
“There is a profound impact of astrology’s emphasis on an individual in a world that is likely to view you as disposable and view your worth as a product of labor and productivity,” Grazda says. “You are viewed for who you are, not for what you do.”
Ruth Makonnen, a junior at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, doesn’t believe in astrology, but sees it as a baseline for further introspection.
“People find answers not through astrology, but through taking a time to think about it,” Makonnen says. “It initiates a critical analysis of oneself, and as long as people are doing that, who are we to judge their methods?”
Ellington Bland, 22, leads an astrology-based Instagram account with over 2,500 followers. A “Divine Messenger of Love & Light,” his IG bio reads, along with “this account is the portal to my spiritual kingdom.” Bland says that “archetypes” in signs of the zodiac helped him understand other people, and himself, better.
“Looking at my birth chart guided me to reaffirm my identity,” Bland says. “I knew communication was a high-up ability of mine, and the chart showed it. It gave me confidence, and a hug from the Universe that I was meant to do great things.”
But not everyone agrees that astrology is useful — nor benign.
“Pigeonholing people into artificial categories is not how you solve your issues. It’s just another form of discrimination,” says Srdjan Colakovic, a junior at Methodist University in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Andrew Frannoi is a Harvard-educated retired astronomy professor and a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, which seeks to “promote critical investigation, and the use of reason in examining controversial and extraordinary claims.” In his 2012 book “Universe at Your Fingertips,” he says that astrology should be condemned as a form of ignorance.
“Let’s not allow another generation of young people to grow up tied to an ancient fantasy, left over from a time when we huddled by the firelight, afraid of the night,” Frannoi writes.
With its foothold online, zodiac is likely to continue being a self-help method for the “Zoomer” generation.
“Astrology is a language of personal empowerment,” says Grazda. “It’s okay if you don’t believe in it, but make sure to find a language that speaks to you in the same way.”
