DO YOU BELIEVE IN ASTROLOGY
A friend, a good friend, got an astrology reading last year from a fairly prominent poet. The fairly prominent poet is an astrologer as well as a poet. The astrologer (poet) said to our friend in plain language, “On January 10th, 2020, on the weekend of the Full Wolf Moon, the world is going to ‘change.’“ This was relevant information to our friend, good friend, because her birthday fell on this weekend. Our friend sent out an email to a wide circle (of good friends): watch out for this moon, things are going to change. We were invited to join her in watching it happen.
I prepared myself for the change predicted to occur on the weekend of January 10th 2020, the weekend of the Full Wolf Moon. NASA sent out a notice: this full moon would also feature a lunar eclipse, not visible to viewers in most of North and South America. I expected to feel the effects of these celestial events without being able to see them. I believe in astrology to the same degree that I do not believe in it. I am a Scorpio with a Gemini rising and a Sagitarius moon; I’m thankful for having a moon in Sagitarius because this balances out the wildness of my Scorpio and Gemini. I also sort of think astrology is a make-believe system that we use to manage the too much information of the world- it's a cubby of categories we can sort people into to minimize the work of paying attention. But people who are Aries are often pretty self-focused and Virgos are really quite attached to their control over how things are arranged, Scorpios are dramatic and kinky motherfuckers and Capricorns really get shit done and those are things I know to be true or have made true by believing them.
The weekend of my good friend’s birthday passed and I witnessed no drastic change. I saw nothing happen on the second weekend of January 2020 that would change the world completely and affect everyone in it forever. Was I disappointed? I think yes, I had been a little bit excited for something different and I had girded myself to experience it, to stay calm and present through whatever it was and to share the experience with others.
Last week I chatted with my friend, good friend, the Capricorn who had the birthday where nothing appeared to happen, and I remembered the prediction. Today I looked for news from the weekend in which the world was supposed to change. From January 12th’s New York Times: “China Reports First Death From New Virus.” The article (which did not make the front page, stuck somewhere at the back of the international section) reported that on January 10th, 2020 Chinese state media announced the first known death from a new coronavirus. Also on January 10th, the gene sequence of the new coronavirus was located and shared online. I am offering this information here I guess to encourage myself to keep paying attention to things that I barely understand and feel little ability to describe. I'll keep on trying to describe what I'm experiencing as it happens although it feels like a lot of work to accomplish much of anything right now as my brain keeps trying to adapt to what is.