The Internet: Astrology's Tower of Babel
Before the internet, the astrological publishing world offered quality control. No more.
“Is not every civilization bound to decay as it begins to penetrate the masses?”—Michael Rostovtzeff
DID YOU EVER STOP to think about where fortune cookies are created? Picture a fortune cookie factory. Naturally, there’s the cookie-making division and then, too, there’s a crew that writes the fortunes.
Now, imagine a fortune cookie factory calamity.
Let’s say that the fortune scribes become confused and all of the cookie scripture gets blended together, willy-nilly, into streams of nonsense that form an infinitely long strip of paper that stretches from here to Pluto.
That endless ticker tape of gibberish is the equivalent of the massive amount of babble that passes for writing (or talking) on a majority of websites and videos dedicated to astrology. Gigs of bandwidth are gobbled—eyeballs scan and scrape—but very little of relevance is ever composed, ever consumed.
The problem, as related to the internet, is threefold:
• Poorly schooled astrologers with the ability to publish or broadcast their writing (or TikToks) into the chaotic free-for-all of the net.
• The fact that most web-based astrology involves bolstering the low self-esteem of people who have no faith in their ability to sustain an ongoing romantic relationship or forge a path forward with their vocation.
• The search logarithms that drive and dictate how eyeballs move about the internet. Google and other engines reward sites with high click volume by positioning those sites at the top of the search result pages. And those sites are commercial enterprises acclimated to the shrill standards of carnival culture.
Often, while discussing astrology with the once-curious, I’ll discover that he or she was repelled after an encounter with a website that offered doom-tainted character analysis or wooly-minded New Age effluvia that conveyed, well … nothing.
Before the internet, the astrological publishing world offered quality control. A protective shield was maintained by educated writers, editors, and publishers—wise women and men who stood guard against the Barbarians at the gate.
Sure hack crap existed, but always there were intelligent works that claimed a place in the mainstream. I remember, back in the 70s, my mom was a member of the Book of the Month club’s ‘occult’ division, and provocative books by Sydney Omarr, Jess Stearn, and others were regularly touted. This offered the public a mixture of options—from educated to lowbrow—but always quality would rise above the kitsch.
Consider 1968’s publishing juggernaut Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs. There was a book expertly written by a knowledgeable astrologer. And not only was it a perfect storm that caught wind with the just-fresh Uranus-Pluto conjunction (which heralded a renaissance for astrology in the 70s), but the book conveyed insights into Sun sign astrology that had heretofore remained murky and hedged ‘round with bullshit.
Scores of budding astrologers, myself included, were influenced by Goodman’s seamless mix of ancient touchstones with modern psychological insights.
And suddenly, presented intelligently—with wisdom and humor—astrology, for scores of individuals, became a viable and worthwhile pursuit. If not as a career or hobby, but as a new way to reconsider the relationships we navigate.
So astrology touched the culture in a creative, proactive way, and many of the curious took it upon themselves to study the subject in-depth. A new generation of astrologers was born.
Astrological guidance, be it garden variety Sun sign columns or lengthy transcripts that attempt to detail every quivering vibration of how the future might unfold, calls forth a potentially dangerous power dynamic between oracle and oracle seeker.
This dynamic has been abused throughout history, as the seeker’s vulnerability often falls prey to the mendacity and mercenary nature of some ‘oracles’. Of course, this sort of grift is eons-old, but with the ‘all and everywhere-ness’ of the internet, its potential to do greater and more far-reaching damage is unprecedented.
The ridiculous promises made by astrologers are embarrassing. Promises to foretell someone’s life purpose or ‘life path’. Or the meeting with a soul mate. Or worse, what event you committed in a previous life that explains your mode of suffering today? All of this nonsense turns the birth chart into the equivalent of a spinning roulette wheel. And with each spin astrology’s credibility diminishes.
Of course quality works exist and ethical astrologers have a presence online, but they are limited in their reach by the very nature of how the internet is structured and how search results are delivered.
Many sagacious astrologers, some not as tech-savvy as their peers, aren’t interested in mingling within the gurgling stew of ‘social media’. Nor do they wish to generate dumbed-down content to increase their chances for heightened exposure.
Consequently, their business model suffers. Their reach is stunted. Their message goes unheard.
This tech-age darkening of astrology is nothing new. Study the history of astrology and you’ll discover that astrology has suffered (and survived) several Dark Ages. The difference here is the growing omnipresence of the internet and social media and how information (and its distribution) is dictated by the whims of the carnival culture mindset.
When you consider that only five or six corporations control all of the media outlets in the world, we’d best become comfortable with the notion that a bizarre kind of enantiodromia (switching of opposites) has occurred, where now the lowbrow dictates a subject’s visibility to the mob by its like-ability.
Which is another way of saying everything that is mediocre in life becomes the touchstone or standard of what we’ll see, read, and be exposed to. Or not.
The word “mob” is of Victorian coinage, but we might as well resurrect it into internet nomenclature because, really, this is what we’re living with now. “Mob” was a slang version of mobile vulgus: the rabble on the move, and I can’t think of a better phrase to capsulize how the internet functions.
Consequently, astrology, already vulnerable to the gypsy-like dazzle of con-artistry, will suffer and lose its chance to regain a foothold in the public’s imagination, as it did, last time around, in the late 60s. That period in history set off a revival fueled by an organic (remember the Uranus-Pluto conjunction took place in an earth sign, Virgo), pagan-like veneration of nature, the body, and the senses. All qualities missing from everything touted in the dawning metaverse.
I’d hoped that the Uranus Pluto square from several years back—which galvanized much of what was promised during the conjunction in the mid-60s—would ignite a kind of astrological revival. And perhaps this is what astrologers have garnered with the ongoing blend of ancient and modern approaches within their field.
But the public…?
Astrologers have no business telling people how to live their lives—be that conducting their business or managing their interpersonal relationships. And yet this is exactly how many astrologers present their wares online.
Phony claims abuse astrology’s essential function, which is to act as a kind of poetic dialogue that the astrologer arranges so his client might converse with the cosmos via her imagination, dreams, and intuition. My job is to facilitate such an ambiance and offer support for her inquiry.
I like the way social critic and art historian Camille Paglia once defined astrology:
“People who dismiss astrology do so out of either ignorance or rationalism. Rationalists have their place, but their limited assumptions and methods must be kept out of the arts. Interpretation of poem, dream or person requires intuition and divination, not science.”
What a waste that the online milieu has turned a sacred dialogue into the equivalent of a chat session conducted by a bot.
An Oscar Wilde bromide comes to mind:
“Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.”
Love,
So much more in here than a mere comment on astrology in the rabble babble idiocy of nowsville -- you redeem so very much in this world, Mr. Woodruff. Seriously.
As always, you nail the zeitgeist of this very moment. Astrology is never quite understood by the literal-minded. Tell me the future, will I meet a dark stranger, when should I start my novel -- these are earth-bound, questions with earth-bound answers, and out of touch with what's actually -- and profoundly --moving around in the cosmos.
Like all spiritual paths, astrology expressed itself in metaphor. Poetry rather than prose. The arts, dream interpretation, the imagination in all its glorious rises and falls ... the very subjects I always find in your posts -- are part of the starry constellation of astrological inquiry.