Hello, I am still Kiki, and this is still I don’t believe in astrology, a newsletter for people who believe in astrology.
I've been trying to write in shorter sentences that are easier to get through (I like to think of this newsletter as something you have to "get through"). Someone once told me my writing was easy to read—a compliment that made me so horny I never want to fail it.
I am opening with this admission because this issue is so long, which flies in the face of my express goals. But it’s Virgo season, and if I didn’t spend it disappointing myself and others, I wouldn’t be doing it right. Virgos are perfectionists, so it’s pure Virgo culture to constantly feel your own deficiencies and live in the space between the potential you can imagine and the reality you perceive. It builds character, and Virgos are all about character. (Otherwise they’d just be Capricorns.)
In conversation with myself
Many of you understand the broad strokes of my attitude toward astrology, and that’s because there are only broad strokes. It’s an x and a y axis; I believe and I don’t believe. It’s literally two-dimensional.
Two, such a Geminian number. Yet it’s the third sign of the zodiac. Makes no sense. Wait, I know. I think it’s because Gemini is what happens between two beings in conversation. Gemini is about the conversation itself. So that’s kind of a third thing.
Speaking of talking to oneself, this issue will be a Q&A I did with myself to answer some of the most frequent questions I get about astrology. From me.
Q: Do you really believe in astrology?
A: I hope so, because otherwise this is madness. I think belief isn’t what you think you believe, it’s what you do. To figure it out, you have to reverse engineer your own actions and examine the root causes. I’m very introspective if I’m coming from a place of scientific curiosity. Anyway, I act like astrology is real—I don’t sign contracts when Mercury is in retrograde, I won’t schedule an interview when the moon is void of course—so I guess I believe it’s real. But I don’t think it’s real. How could it be? Those planets don’t care about us, man.
Q: Do you think this is enough of a premise for a newsletter?
A: No, but obviously yes. But no.
Q: What is a rising sign, and why should I read my horoscope for it?
A: That’s two questions, so I’ll do my best. Your rising sign is the sign on the axis of your first house, and if you’re asking what a rising sign is, that’s an even less helpful description, I know. The zodiac is a wheel—a pie, if you prefer—and it’s in a real physical, mathematical location in the sky. It’s divided into 12 slices, and the sign that’s on the westernmost slice (the 9 o’clock position) is your axis of identity, approach to the world, and physical body. That’s you. That’s your rising sign.
To answer the second part of your question, that tells me, the astrologer, how your chart is set up. If you have a Cancer rising, I know that you probably have Leo on the second house, Virgo on the third, Libra on the fourth, and so on. That means I can make a reasonable guess about where a transit is going to affect you—but I can’t tell that based on the sun sign.
Q: Why are some Virgos more like Pisces?
A: You’ve hit on one of my favorite concepts: opposite signs. I don’t even think of people as just their sun signs anymore, I see every sign as being one end of a pole with its opposite sign. Opposite signs are exactly what they sound like: the sign that’s the furthest away from yours on the zodiac wheel. That’s the sign that’s going on during your half birthday. And so many people I meet seem like their opposite signs more than their sun. Why? Because your opposite sign is really the same energy but inverted. They spotlight each other’s deficiencies because they want the same things but approach them in divergent ways.
For example, Virgos and Pisces both desire perfection and sublimation, but Virgos operate in the real world and are organizational geniuses, and Pisces live in worlds we can’t see and are artistic and emotional geniuses. An unrealistic Pisces is going to piss off a Virgo, who doesn’t suffer fools. And a Pisces is not going to understand why the short-sighted Virgo can’t see beyond the details and get to the heart of a situation, which they can size up immediately and with their eyes closed. But every Virgo has some Pisces in them and exists, in my understanding, somewhere on that axis.
In case I haven’t been clear, this is true of all the opposite sign pairs: Aries-Libra, Taurus-Scorpio, Gemini-Sagittarius, Cancer-Capricorn and Leo-Aquarius.
Q: Why are Geminis so often maligned?
A: They’re not. People love us.
Q: What are the houses?
A: These are the sections (pie slices!) of the zodiac wheel that govern different aspects of a life. Everything imaginable (sex, dreams, money, your husband’s nieces, your bank, court decisions, the grandparent that matches your gender, the way you walk, etc.) falls under one of these 12 categories.
Q: Aren’t signs just stereotypes?
A: Kind of. Also who cares? But I’ll humor this. Though each of the 12 signs are quite developed (honestly, I feel like they are characters I’ve lived with my whole life), the truth is, there is no such thing as an Aries or a Pisces or any sign—and not because there’s no such thing as astrology! This isn’t my usual thing. I’m saying that these signs are archetypal (stereotypical, too, I guess) and not fully dimensional humans. Because every human has every sign in their chart somewhere. We are all everything. Even I have Scorpio in me somewhere. The signs are simply investigations into 1/12 of the energy we are always carrying around.
Permission to get a little esoteric?
Q: Go ahead.
A: Astrology reminds me of phenomenology, a school of philosophy that accepts the world as “given” and doesn’t ask questions about existence itself (the Cartesian “I”). It doesn’t matter if this stuff is real, we start with the assumption that it is, and we build from there.
Q: Is that different than religion?
A: It might be better, because most religions don’t acknowledge that!
Q: Are you an astrologer?
A: I am fine with calling myself that as a shorthand, but I really think of myself as a writer whose favorite thing to write about is astrology. And it’s my favorite because it allows me to talk about everything. I can be funny, I can be wise, I can talk about politics, relationships, career, religion, injustice, psychology, etc. Because astrology is just a point of inspiration to create meaning through narrative. We reverse engineered stories from the stars to make sense of life. We caused astrology; it didn’t cause us.
Q: Do you think maybe you believe in astrology because it’s all you have?
A: Sigh, yes. And now I’m crying.
Q: That was great, thank you for joining.
A: Anytime, it was all my idea.
Moon void of course
This is the section where I list off all the dates and times when the moon is void of course. For the uninitiated on this concept (I wish I had touched on this in the Q&A, but I can’t possibly change something that’s entirely within my control), the moon goes void of course before it moves into a different sign (it’s moving all the time—they all are). This is a period where it makes no major aspects to the other planets, and it’s kind of the moon’s retrograde period.
This means: emotions are ripe for misunderstanding, so don’t do anything important or make big decisions. When Mercury goes retrograde, we stall because our heads aren’t right. With the moon, it’s our feelings.
Good things to do during this time include: cleaning, writing, working on anything that is already in motion, finishing old assignments, finishing old arguments (but try not to start new ones in the process!), drafting emails (and not sending them), dancing alone in your room, going to therapy, thinking quietly, etc.
You get it. I’m only doing two weeks out, and I’ll give you the rest of the month next time we meet. It’s overwhelming to do it all at once. All times are Eastern.
9/2: 1:56 a.m. to 4:02 a.m.
9/4: 2:37 a.m. to 8:04 a.m.
9/6: 8:43 a.m. to 9:54 a.m.
9/8: 9:31 a.m. to 10:29 a.m.
9/10: 11:12 a.m. to 11:20 a.m.
9/11-9/12: 6:57 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. (nearly a day)
9/14: 4:54 a.m. to 8:45 p.m.
Paid subscribers are getting September horoscopes soon (today, I have three more signs to write!), so if you want to be one of those people, think about signing up below. It also gives you the chance to schedule private readings with me.
If there’s something you’d like to know more about, comment and I’ll answer it in an upcoming issue. Share this newsletter if you like it and think others would, too!