Thinking About: Horoscopes 

As a young child I had a bit of a fascination with horoscopes in our daily newspaper. Not only was I intrigued at what being born Aries actually meant but I was more than a little proud of the Arien reputation (which, actually, I hardly match in any respect). So, I’d read my ‘stars’ each day and waited to see how they matched with reality – which, naturally, they hardly ever did. It was good training in scepticism and confirmation bias. Thinking about the subject three incidents came to mind. I’ve mentioned them before (I think) in passing but I thought I’d put them all together here (maybe with some more detail) for new readers. 

The first incident was at work where I was leafing through a free Horoscope Year book I’d plucked off the front of a magazine I’d bought. In those days I was working in the same office as my (now long ex) girlfriend and we were going through a particularly bad patch during a ‘break’ in our relationship. So, reading my book to take my mind off things I was informed by it that this particular day was a good day for Love & Romance. As I’d just had a bloody awful morning with her and was already angry this ‘prediction’ simply made me more so. I made a LOUD “Huh!” sound – so everyone in the office looked in my direction, ripped the book in half along its spine – much to the astonishment of the whole room who knew by then how much I loved books, and threw the offending article – with a resounding “clang” into the waste bin under my desk. If I say so myself, it was QUITE the scene... 

The second incident was sometime later. I’m not sure but I think a few years at least had passed. For some reason I was still interested in Horoscopes and had signed up for a Day School on the subject in a local Adult/Continuing Education Centre. It took place on a Saturday and was reasonably cheap so I thought ‘Why Not?’ The woman running the course was very good and was a professional Horologist, so it was interesting talking to her. Two things struck me – when she asked for a volunteer for her to do a quick and dirty full Horoscope while we toiled at some tasks she’d set us, I put my hand up immediately and was picked. I gave her my details (date & place of birth) and off she went. A few hours later she put up my chart and talked through it for the rest of the class. The most intriguing aspect was that she highlighted my anxiety about large bodies of water and suggested that I’d had a near-drowning experience when younger. I told her, no doubt much to the amazement of the others, that I had indeed nearly drowned as a child on a school trip to the local baths in my pre-teens. The other thing that struck me was when I asked how exactly the planetary influences were supposed to work. She said, with definite points for honesty, that no one knew and they if anyone told us that they did know that they were lying to us. 

The last incident was at work again, many years later. An off-site team we had regular phone & e-mail communication with was relocating to the main site where I worked and Senior Management had the bright idea for an ‘Away Day’ to help with the integration. So, off we went to waste a day in a hotel somewhere. As part of the initial ‘ice-breaker’ everyone had to line up in birthdate order without divulging details of when you were born. In those days our team of around 12 plus at least one member of an associated team consisted, coincidentally, of 6 people all born with 2 weeks of each other. When we lined up like that, we were told we were ‘doing it wrong’ so had to explain the coincidence. This apparently filtered its way up to one of the top managers who came around to pretend to care about us. He mentioned the coincidence and asked what attributes we had in common with half the group being Aries. “None”, I said “Because Astrology is bollocks”. He imitated a beached fish for a few seconds, smiled (or tried to) and left.