very good pithy articulation of why I got freaked out a decade ago when my then-girlfriend tried to make sense of me using astrology (this is the last tweet in a thread)
Astrology, woo practices, and the discomfort of being typed
17 tweets · December 2021 · 115 likes · 1 retweets · read on Twitter
fwiw I've since come to appreciate that there's a lot of good stuff about almost all woo practices, although they often are overreaching in their explanations because their models are bad astrology tho... can be suitably replaced with: - tarot - enneagram - astronomy
fwiw, I think it's important to be respectful that people have had the experiences they've had
it's just that it's really hard to generalize usefully about those experiences, and it's important not to try to use logic and reasoning *on* your intuitions—they're not built for that
I really like @QiaochuYuan's thread (linked above) and it reminds me of some thoughts I had while reading @Meaningness's "No cosmic meaning" article recently. It has a section "Astrology is rational", which gave me more appreciation for astrology than I'd ever felt before!
Tracking the patterns of the constellations in the night sky was a vital way for ancient humans to know exactly when to go where in order to have successful hunts! 🤯 > Nothing observable during daytime can tell you [when to migrate, within an error margin of only a few days].
However! To @QiaochuYuan's point, I'm pretty sure most people doing astrology these days are mostly NOT looking at the stars! They're not having direct perceptions of anything but decontextualized charts and tables.
If you want charts that will tell you about the world, we have better ones now! Wanna know the weather? We have charts for that. Wanna describe someone's personality? Charts for that too (you might uhh try perceiving them before you assign them a type 😬)
me: "astrologists are all like..." ...but as I've already revealed above, this is partially about just a handful of specific experiences 😅
I guess I really hate being misunderstood. It's fine if someone makes a guess about me as long as they're open to learning, rather than doubling down. ...and I've *personally* found use of astrology strongly correlated with people doubling down.
Maybe that's partially a function of my historical defensiveness to it? Probably part of it. I've tended to be pretty aggressive about telling people to fuck off when they astrologize me, which would tend to prompt anyone to grasp for "no, my experience has legitimacy" ...legit!
If I say "what's your enneagram type?" then I'm gonna model someone very differently if they say "I'm a classic 5" vs if they say "I think it came out as a 5? but it didn't particularly resonate". Just because I resonate so strongly with 7w8, doesn't mean the model fits everyone
But some people use the enneagram as a way to look at their model & not at the person in front of them in all their vibrant complexity. So maybe some people use astrological models in similarly spacious ways? still sus to me, since the core data (eg a birthday) is 100% fixed.
Like it seems the best you could do is say "welp, I guess you're not really much of a Cancer, so I won't think of you as one" but then you're left blank. (Compared to trying on other enneatypes or other frameworks altogether)
Maaaybe people go back and reinterpret the various ascensions in terms of new info? Still seems like wrong direction to me! Looking away from person rather than at them. Best case I can make is creating space for intuition to fill in gaps... something something hemispheres
It's been meaningful to me to come to appreciate ways in which most woo things have merit even if their models don't compile. Energy healing: pay attention to subtle sensations in your or others' bodies. Homeopathy: deep holistic listening (kinda) both: intending to heal helps
I'm still at a loss re astrology. Maybe I still feel too hurt (/misunderstood) by it to forgive it and be curious.