I'm a Former Astrology Editor. Here's Why I Stopped Obsessing Over the Stars.

When I was born, my grandma had my birth chart done. Along with the traditional circular chart showcasing the placements and transits that were happening overhead at the moment of my birth, the report (which I’m pretty sure came from an old school computer program) also came with a writeup about my life. Among many other things, this report told me that I would be happiest if I lived it alone.

This is not a fun thing to read as a young girl (or a 36-year-old woman). It’s also a line of text that I unwittingly internalized—until I learned to accept astrology as general energetic guidance rather than a sparkly (and at times ominous) prophecy.

The lesson came during a stint editing a website entirely dedicated to astrology, a job I started just months before the astrological boom of 2019. Suddenly, chatter about the stars and planets was everywhere, which made my job pretty fun. My understanding of astrology deepened as I worked with experts in the space, all of whom were actively predicting a riotous year in 2020. I took this with a grain of salt. How bad could it be?

I was aware of notable transits happening daily. I was attuned to the moon. Nearing the end of my Saturn return, I steeled myself for the inevitable shadow period. Eclipses and retrogrades and their shadow periods loomed, too; I was always on the watch. Of course I focused on positive transits as well, eager for benefic planets like Jupiter and Venus to shower goodness down on me. I used various placements to check my horoscope daily, weekly, and monthly, the better to know what was coming.

The trouble was, when I began to pay too much attention to the stars and planets, my life on Earth became an anxiety-ridden one.

If I’m told ahead of time that my day is going to suck, it will probably suck. Struggles with someone close to me? Watch me manifest those out of fear. Likewise, if the stars say my week is destined to be sparkly and abundant, my mind can make that happen.

Astrology, tarot, or any other energetic medium are meant to offer a pathway toward reflection, not prediction. And though astrology can (and has, over and over) predict major events in the collective experience, relying on it as an individual, especially daily, can result in something of a self-fulfilling prophecy—at least for me.

Celestial happenings undoubtedly influence human life. We live on a planet in a solar system—we’re all part of the same stuff. But it affects every one of us differently (because we are all so different!). External energy matters, but individual experience matters, too. A Saturn return won’t look the same for you as it does for me. No transit will tug at us in the same exact way.

That’s sort of the beauty of it: astrology is a tool that helps you understand yourself and your own energy in the context of something greater. More often than not, that can’t be contained in a paragraph that also applies to millions of others.

These days, I practice an ignorance-is-bliss approach to astrology. I welcome moon phases and eclipses with little, relevant rituals, but I cannot (and will not) tell you when the next Mercury retrograde begins. And if all of my tech goes haywire and there are some major communication breakdowns, I can deal with it in the moment. There’s no point stressing for the days and weeks leading up to it.

Since receiving that birth chart from my grandma, I’ve learned to break it down, and have had others (who are far more adept) do the same. There’s a ton of individual energy in there (I’m a triple Aquarius, with Venus in the sign on my ascendant, if you care), but that doesn’t mean I am destined to be alone. I love community and partnership. It just means I need to spend time with myself, and honor that time, to feel the most like me.

It took me longer than I care to admit to fully release the original take and embrace what I know to be true about myself. Astrology is so many things, but on a personal level, it’s open to interpretation. So, if you choose to look to the stars and planets for guidance and insight, I suggest doing so with a mind as open as the Universe itself.