Western Astrology

In the last week or so I've seen three different people saying things like "I really like this person but I'm a Leo and they're an Aquarius and so we shouldn't date, right?"

Wrong.

Look, let's assume for a minute that astrology is always correct, right? Even if that happened to be the case there's a lot more to astrology than just whatever your sun sign is. A full birth chart is much more detailed than the single sign that was determined by the month-ish long range of dates you happened to be born in. I mean, I'm an Aquarius, and so is my mother, and so is one of my best friends, and so is an old high school friend... and we are all very different people from each other. So the idea of basing things like relationships off of only a sun sign is perhaps not the best idea.

But let's look a bit deeper. The fact is that western astrology is not the only system of astrology that's out there.  There is also the Chinese system, and all it's variants, there's the Hindu system which shares some qualities with western astrology, but also has a lot of differences, and other systems. The truth is these systems can often conflict with each other. You're an Aries and she's a Virgo and that's a perfect match? Great, but oh wait, you're a tiger and she's a monkey and those are totally incompatible? What do you do then? (I'm making up those examples completely, but you get the idea, right?)

Interestingly, according to western astrology and Chinese astrology, my SO and I are pretty darn incompatible... which explains our twelve year long happy relationship. Although with the small Japanese variant we're compatible. So I guess the Japanese got it right, right? Or maybe that's just an example of why relying on astrology to make major life decisions isn't always the best idea. 

I also tend to think there's a lot of self-fulfilling prophecy with those who rely heavily on astrology. They're convinced they'll never get along with a Leo, and so... they never get along with a Leo. Sometimes I'll see someone saying, wow, good thing Mercury retrograde is over! Is it...? I didn't even know that was a thing that was happening, but apparently it was supposed to be hugely disruptive to my life in some way? Hm...

It's a bit like the old myth that the ER is much more busy during a full moon, ER workers all claim that to be true... but statistically, it's not accurate, that myth has been completely debunked. Still, the myth persists because of similar situations.

This is not at all to say astrology has no ritual or spiritual applications, it certainly can, and if using it in such ways works well for you, well, keep at it. I just think that maybe, you know, maybe making huge life decisions and judging someone entirely from their astrological birth chart is not really the best choice to make.