- 2026-03-19
- Just writing a quick scrappy thing
- Other relevant pages
Recently I’ve gotten into astrology, and I wanted to create a quick kind of “disclaimer” page on here that I can point to whenever I invoke an astrology concept.
TLDR is that I see astrology as a rich vocabulary for talking about the self and relationships, basically. Internally consistent, known by lots of people, useful for pointing a light on the territory of your self. Also insightful!
Vs, I guess I’m writing against the thing of “oh, it’s bullshit”.
Causal structure and people’s astrology fears
- I don’t think it’s the case that:
- “My mars is in cancer, and that’s why I am xyz”
- It feels more like:
- “I am xyz, and mars in cancer is a useful rich label for that, which resonates a lot, and can be understood by other people (who are into astrology)”
- I think this is where a lot of people get their strong allergy to astrology from. It feels too deterministic, like “oh, you’re saying I am xyz because of the planets, that’s bullshit, and limiting”. Whereas if you see it as “I am this incredibly complicated territory, and fuck knows why I ended up this way, and astrology is a rich toolkit/language for pointing at the territory”, then I think it rules
Other
Why did I get into astrology?
I already had two nice friends who like astrology a lot (James and Catherine, shout out).
Catherine told me some astrology stuff about myself that resonated a lot, but I didn’t have anything in my head to hang the information onto, so it was in one ear and out of the other.
Then I made friend recently (Julie!) who inspired me to learn more about it. I had the insight of “oh shit, this is a language for talking about people, and without the language, I can be much less precise with my thinking”. (She’s also very beautiful and I wanted to connect with her more)
For example, “I like my friend James because he’s warm and funny and charismatic and caring” is great and all, but there’s not much more there. I had the thought that astrology might be a more specialised vocabulary for this stuff.
Also, it’s a kind of schelling point - many people know this language (and, to be frank, many attractive arty women). Like, hey, here’s this language for talking about people, and lots of attractive women know this language really well. Kind of a total no brainer to learn it, right??
So I spent a few days reading about it - I used Gemini deep research with prompts like “can you make me a report covering the basics of what you need to know to get the basics of astrology”. And I made a bunch of flashcards and boom, I now have a working knowledge of the system and can talk to people about it.
What I’ve gained from learning about astrology
I can talk to people more !!!
I’ve connected with two lovely women recently much deeper than I may have done, because of this language
I can understand myself more
- “Omg I have a taurus moon, this feels so resonant”
- “Omg I have a mercury virgo, this feels so resonant”
- Etc
- It feels like it shines light on a territory that was already there (using the “map vs territory” thing). It’s not the case that it’s putting me in a box, it’s more that I’ve been x way for y years and now I have a nice label to help me notice that and talk about it with others
- “Aha, my mars is in cancer, that gives me a really nice label”