The Loominal Take - Astrology

Astronomers have every reason to side-eye astrologers, and I get it. From their perspective, we’ve borrowed the math and run off into the woods with it, painting myths on the sky. But I don’t think most astrologers hate astronomers back. I think most of us are in love with what they do. Astronomy and astrology weren’t always separate. For most of human history, they were the same practice. The early astrologers were the original astronomers. We’re using the same tools, just in different ways. We both track the mechanics, then astrologers track the metaphors.

Astrology has emerged independently across cultures. Babylonian, Greek, Indian, Chinese, and many others, long before globalization or TikTok horoscopes. That alone should give us pause. When civilizations with no contact developed eerily similar sky-based systems, it revealed something fundamental: humans naturally track cycles. In Hellenistic Egypt, Greek and Babylonian thought fused into what we now call Western astrology, a framework that introduced the Ascendant, twelve houses, and a system modern astrologers continue to expand today.

Astrology isn’t a science. It’s an art. And because it’s an art, it gets messy. It lends itself to vague interpretations and stereotypes. It gets watered down into zodiac memes and weaponized sun sign takes. People are introduced to astrology through bad dating advice or “your week ahead” blurbs, and then believe astrology works like an algorithm that sorts people into types and hands out instructions. That’s not astrology. That’s projection with star stickers on it.

I once heard a story about a woman who grew up thinking she was a Libra. She loved everything about it, had the poster in her room, and felt deeply connected to the traits. Years later her parents admitted they had fudged her birthdate when she was a baby to align with a family celebration. She was actually a Virgo. She felt betrayed, but then read about Virgo traits and realized those fit too. At that moment she decided astrology was nonsense, and I understand why. It can feel like a magic trick, vague enough to always fit. But astrology is a nuanced symbolic language. It does not work like blood types. It is not a sorted hat. Virgo, Libra, and all signs share qualities because archetypes blend and overlap. A chart is not a blueprint, it is a woven pattern, and when you know how to read it, it reveals far more than bullet points on a poster or coffee mug.

This is why skeptics often dismiss astrology. If your only exposure is horoscopes or viral posts declaring certain signs should never date, of course it looks like fluff. But here is what I always say: if you have not studied astrology deeply enough that it made you question the nature of your own reality and free will, and left you crying in the dark for a few days, you do not know enough to form a full opinion. One of astrology’s greatest frustrations is also one of its greatest strengths: it is fluid, symbolic, and not binary. That very flexibility makes it easy to misunderstand, especially for those who want it to be a science or mock it for not being one.

Rick Levine, one of my favorite astrologers, said to me once that people could just as easily have tracked the movements of deer through the forest for the same purpose. All of our ancestors certainly did exactly that, reading the land, watching the animals, listening to the trees. But the stars are different. Everyone can see them. They move in consistent, observable cycles. They offer a map that is not only personal but collective, a pattern visible to every person across time and place. That makes the sky not only poetic, but practical.

When I work with a chart, I’m not delivering cosmic orders. I’m not assigning someone a fate. I’m sitting with a symbolic map of patterns. Some in tension, some in harmony, some still unfolding. And what happens, almost every time, is that people feel seen. Not in a “you’re such a Gemini” kind of way, but in the sense of finally having language for something they’ve always carried. The chart opens them up. It reflects the pattern of their life back to them in a way that helps them step inside it more clearly. It’s not prescriptive. It’s invitational.

That’s where astrology gets powerful, not in prediction or dogma, but in conceptual blending. It gives us a scaffold for asking better questions. It helps us witness ourselves and our cycles, to understand what season we’re in, to navigate change more consciously. It opens up story, context, archetype. And when that happens, it becomes easier to respond rather than react. Not because the stars told us what to do, but because we’ve paused long enough to see what’s really unfolding. And yes, sometimes that does mean looking at a transit and thinking, “Okay. Pluto’s moving through my 10th house. Time to brace for some career transformation.” But it’s not about doom. It’s not a punishment. It’s a pattern. And when I can name it, I can move with it.

Astrology cannot tell you exactly what will happen at 2:13pm on a Tuesday, because that is not how life works. Some astrologers are wildly skilled at narrowing timelines and pointing to specifics, but the deeper value is in working with broader themes, especially the slow-moving planets whose transits shape collective energies over decades. In mundane astrology, we study how those cycles align with politics, climate, economics, and culture. Not because Neptune is pulling puppet strings, but because pattern is real. Motion is real. Cycles, when studied honestly, reveal truths even before we have words for them.

And here’s the thing. We don’t need astrology to cause anything in order for it to matter. I don’t think Mars sends out aggression beams or that Mercury retrograde fries your hard drive. But I also don’t believe we’re separate from the planets. We live in Earth’s atmosphere, inside a soup of radiation, magnetism, and gravity that touches everything. We are literally held inside the breathing rhythm of our solar system. So maybe it’s not that the planets are doing something to us. Maybe we’re just in it with them. Maybe their orbits and our inner lives are both arising from the same unfathomable whole.

That’s why astrology works. Not because it makes things happen, but because it reveals the pattern we’re already in. It doesn’t overwrite reality, it invites us into it. It shows us the living weave of motion and meaning. And yes, it’s interpretive. Yes, it’s symbolic. But that doesn’t make it shallow. It makes it art. It makes it story. And story is one of the oldest tools we’ve ever had for staying alive in the mystery.

One of the biggest issues with astrology in the modern world is that it is often misused by hobbyists or filtered through pop culture in ways that drain it of complexity. Because it is symbolic and flexible, it becomes easy to make it say whatever we want. But that is not the fault of the system. Astrology in the hands of a skilled, educated practitioner is precise, reflective, and alive. It holds contradiction without collapsing. It opens perspective without prescribing outcomes. It is not simple. But it is beautiful.

Personally, I am what they call a soft determinist. I don’t believe in pure free will. I think events build on other events in ways we cannot always track. Across time, across generations, maybe even across lifetimes. I don’t believe in a singular beginning. Not in the Big Bang, not in Genesis. I think existence has always been in motion. Breathing in, breathing out. The expansion and contraction of the universe is, to me, the inhale and exhale of reality itself. Not a timeline. A rhythm.

We could have tracked deer herds or tree growth instead of planets, but we looked up. Because the sky is shared. Because it moves whether we believe in it or not. Because its pattern is clean, visible, traceable, and steady in a way most things aren’t. And because when you’re looking for meaning, it helps to start with what everyone can see. The stars gave us something to agree on. And the symbols we drew there are still speaking, not as commandments but as mirrors. Not as maps to escape the present, but as invitations to be here more fully.