dance as a sort of reality show, full of demanding personalities and shifting alliances. Similar energies, she explains, will be manifest in situations you might (and in my experience, almost certainly will) encounter in the week ahead. Check her out on Twitter (@AnneOrtelee) or listen to her podcast, Anne Ortelee Weekly Weather.
Susan Miller. Her popularity is worldwide, and not just because that she’s a top-notch astrologer, although she is. Her optimism and warmth, her sense of possibility, her deep knowledge of the subject, and her practical view of the world are what distinguish her. She writes long, and her monthly forecasts can be downright uncanny. She also explains the significance of eclipses, delves into retrograde Mercury, offers daily forecasts, produces a yearly wall calendar and an annual book of predictions, and is all over cyberspace. Her followers adore her. Connect with Susan on her website (astrologyzone.com), on Facebook (Susan Miller’s Astrology Zone), on Twitter and Instagram (@Astrologyzone), and via her mobile app, Daily Horoscope Astrology Zone, available for iOs, Windows, and Apple Watch. As with many other apps, there’s a free version and there’s a more substantial one that you pay for. For free, you get daily forecasts, a lengthy monthly forecast for your sign, Sun sign profiles, access to Susan’s tweets, and a nice little calendar describing key astrological events for the next few months. For a fee, you get more. You can’t lose.
Rob Brezsny. His horoscopes, available through freewillastrology.com, are like no others. Instead of talking signs and planets, he describes a scene in a film, quotes a poet, ponders a cultural ritual or a scientific discovery, recounts an anecdote from the biography of a historical figure or an unknown musical genius. And then, as a master of metaphor, he ties it into your life. The stories don’t always resonate. But usually they do, and when that happens, you feel as if a door has just swung open and all you have to do is walk through it and breathe the fresh air. His horoscopes are more than empathetic and descriptive; they’re motivating. Plus, he provides plenty of reading material, including a regularly updated chronicle of good news — imagine that! — from around the globe. I like his brand: Free Will Astrology. That’s exactly the way I see things, and I hope you will too.
Chani Nicholas. Chani is a social justice, mythologically informed, LGBTQ-aware feminist activist whose smart, perceptive astrological work springs from that politically engaged platform. She calls it “astrology for radical, political, critical mystics.” You can follow her on Instagram or Twitter (@chaninicholas) or go to her website (https://chaninicholas.com) to mull over her monthly New Moon horoscopes and guided meditations, admire her well-crafted collages, and purchase workshops, classes, and individual readings. As someone who has been called a goddess, a rock star, and a cult favorite, she has been featured in newspapers and magazines including Vogue, Vanity Fair, Oprah, Out, and Rolling Stone. Her most original offering as an astrologer appears monthly as up-to-date, thematically chosen “horoscopes in the form of playlists,” available through Spotify. It’s not your usual horoscope, but why should it be? Astrology for the 21st century. At last.
Chapter 3
The History of Astrology: 5,000 Years of Cosmic Ups and Downs
IN THIS CHAPTER
In 410 BCE, a Babylonian astrologer cast a horoscope for a child born on April 29th. That chart, the nativity of one “son of Shuma-usur, son of Shumaiddina, a descendant of Deke,” is the oldest natal chart we have. It’s easy to imagine the astrologer speaking reassuring words to the child’s parents (assuming it was they who commissioned this horoscope). He would have seen that the Sun was in Taurus and the Moon in Libra, a peaceful, pleasure-loving combination. Venus in Taurus and Jupiter in Pisces would have delighted him, for both planets were strongly placed in signs they rule: good omens in anyone’s estimation. The chart had its challenges — no chart is without them — but by and large, he might have thought it an agreeable horoscope. Surely the child’s parents would have been glad to hear his assessment — that is, unless they were hoping for a military leader. This chart leans toward the arts.
By the fifth century BCE, when this chart was drawn up, astrology was thriving. In this chapter, I take you through the story of astrology in the western world, its periods of popularity in classical times and the Renaissance, the centuries of censure when it was denigrated and dismissed, and the times when it came roaring back to life, as in our own day.
Looking at Early Astrology
Ancient peoples watched the sky as we do not: with attention. About 34,000 years ago, Stone Age observers recorded the cycle of the Moon on pieces of bone and antler. Some 17,000 years later, their descendants painted the bull of Taurus and the star cluster of the Pleaides — there can be no mistaking those identifications — on the walls of a cave in what is now France. In China, astrological activity dates back to the fifth millennium BCE. The most concentrated astronomical activity in the western world was in Mesopotamia. By 3,000 BCE, Babylonian stargazers had mapped the constellations, determined the length of the lunar month (a little more than twenty-nine and a half days), charted the cycle of Venus, marked the appearance of comets, meteors, rainbows, storms, and cloud formations, and sought correlations between celestial goings-on and events here on Earth. During the second millennium BCE, they recorded their findings on dozens of clay tablets collectively known as the Enuma Anu Enlil, which translates as “When Anu and Enlil” and refers to the sky god Anu and his son Enlil, lord of air and weather. This was not astrology as we know it. It was not personality analysis in any sense. Rather, it was a collection of useful omens. These are typical:
When Jupiter goes out from behind the Moon, there will be hostility in the land.
When the fiery light of Venus illuminates the breast of Scorpio, then rain and floods will ravage the land.
When Mercury is visible in Kislew, there will be robbers in the land.
When Mercury approaches Spica, the crops of the land will prosper, the cattle will be numerous in the fields, the king will grow strong. Sesame and dates will prosper.
These pronouncements were messages from the gods. They were political or weather-related, focused on war and peace, floods and famine. Vague and often portentous, they were heralds of catastrophe or — less often — prosperity. But they were not personal (unless you were the king).
By the middle of the first millennium BCE, Western astronomers and astrologers — there was no difference — had settled upon the zodiac as we know it, whittling it down
