Markets 
For some reason, the subject of astrology has the ability to make people truly furious. A public blow-up between radio shock jocks Kyle Sandilands and Jackie “O” Henderson recently brought to light just how many people from all walks of life are captivated by their sun, moon and rising signs. And just how many more find it ridiculous.
For those who missed the headlines, Sandilands’ beef with Henderson back in late February focused on her fascination with astrology. He said, live on air, that it made her “almost unworkable” and that she was “off with the fairies”. Henderson walked from the show and in March, Sandilands’ contract was terminated. He sued his former employer and has reached a settlement. Classic Gemini.
So why does astrology spark such a visceral reaction? It’s not like it’s new – the stars and their alignments have been a point of interest from the moment we learnt to look up.
Radio drama aside, astrology is bigger than ever. Particularly with people born between 1997 and 2012. It’s not just analogue any more. It’s social, it’s digital, and it’s profitable. In 2017, trends forecaster WGSN declared “new spirituality is the new norm”. Two years ago, Allied Market Research reported the global astrology market would be worth $US22.8 billion (about $32.5 billion) by 2032. The app space’s market value alone was estimated at $US5.7 billion (about $8.2 billion) in 2026 by the Business Research Company.
The traditions of Vedic, Western, Hellenistic and Chinese astrology have been used for thousands of years by everyday folk as well as some people of influence (both Ronald Reagan and banker J.P. Morgan famously consulted astrologers) to interpret life paths, forecast world events, conceive children and influence career decisions. Maybe Sandilands should have had his chart done after all.
A sceptic might describe the difference between astrology and astronomy as pseudoscience and science. There’s a small amount of crossover. For the purposes of this story, think of an astrological chart as the mapping of a human soul based on the positioning of the sun, moon and planets. Using a person’s geographical location, date and time of birth, an astrologer will determine certain factors of an individual’s personality, potential and life path.
Jules Ferrari is a Western astrologer with more than 1000 charts under her belt. No two readings, in her experience, have ever been the same. “An astrologer,” she says, “is essentially a weaver, who can gather all the disparate parts of yourself and reflect it back to you in a coherent narrative structure.”
Ferrari specialises in “evolutionary astrology” (the growth and evolution of a person’s soul) and psychological astrology, which harnesses elements of the human psyche to identify certain patterns of behaviour. It’s more of a psychological and spiritual blueprint than fortune-telling. “I think what’s so beautiful about it is it’s very poetic, but it’s very practical. And there’s this sense of mystery. I can decode a chart like it’s nobody’s business, but there is this mysterious juice here that can’t be fully known. To me, it’s a very elegant symbolic language, and it’s nerdy as hell.”
Despite Generation Z yearning for that analogue experience, I still find 6.1 million astrology-related videos on TikTok, and more than 204.5K posts with the hashtag #astrologytok. Popular Instagram account @moonomens has 5.8 million followers. Much of the content is bite-sized pop astrology – much like what you might read in the back pages of a magazine near the sudoku.
Co-Star, an AI-generated app, definitely seems geared to a younger audience. It offers the opportunity to add friends and compare birth charts, making it more of a social media experience. It also gives the user a short daily reading along with a breakout list of “Do” (lip gloss, mango chunks and dance sweat were noted on one day for me) and “Don’t” (thrones, soft smiles and costume jewellery).
The phrasing is also kind of mean. One “day at a glance” told me to put romance on hold. “Your pattern of picking partners who take endlessly while giving little has exhausted you. What looks like love is just your fear of abandonment dressed in helpfulness.” Jeez.
Ferrari describes this style of reading as a watered-down version of what should actually be a complex archaeological dig of a person’s inner self. “Things like Co-Star … I mean, that’s just capitalism, you know? As far as I’m aware, never in astrology’s 5000-plus-year history did the village astrologer pull down the chart of the day, interpret it, walk into the village square and pin it up on the noticeboard.”
Keen to compare the digital experience with a human one, I book a natal chart reading with astrologer Grace Tebble. A few days before our meeting I email her the time, date and location of my birth. We sit together for an hour as she takes me through my entire chart.
To my surprise, each alignment reveals new and extremely accurate personal quirks I’d spent countless years and thousands of dollars questioning in actual therapy. I find myself thinking, “I could have had my chart done years ago and saved myself so much time.”
While the reading is packaged in a positive light, it seems, remarkably, to be an incisive analysis. Tebble’s style is practical, with suggested workarounds in regard to navigating certain personality traits. It’s definitely not an alternative to a counsellor or psychologist, but it is an extra tool for the kit. And it’s brought me a little more self-awareness.
Ella Harris, who is 28, recently had her first Vedic astrology reading. Before that, she used Western horoscope apps such as Co-Star and The Pattern for her horoscope. “I feel like every second person I know tells me about astrology,” she says. “But I’d never had a reading.”
While Vedic and Western astrology share the same 12 signs of the zodiac, the former differs in that it is deeply intertwined with Indian spirituality and works with a different sky map. “The moment that you connect with astrology, it suddenly opens up the possibilities in your life,” says Vedic astrologer Mairead Ball.
Compared to her experience using the apps, Harris found the reading “so much more tailored to the specificities of who I am … it explained different times of my life in the past, what had happened, the present and potentially the future. It was just so validating.”
Harris originally found herself interested in astrology because “I feel like everyone was just kind of talking about it, and people were always asking to match on The Pattern app”. She feels her generation and the next are much more in touch, expressive and curious, “whereas I’d say generations before us push things down”. She adds, “Even my friends who aren’t woo-woo still know about astrology … I think people just love hearing about themselves.”
On that point, Richard Saunders, chief investigator at Australian Skeptics, agrees. “Astrology is simply another outlet for people to try and gain meaning,” he says. “People love to talk about and hear about themselves, which works very well for astrology.”
To be a sceptic, says Saunders, “means you don’t accept things on face value. It’s not to be rude or mean to anyone or any belief. You just say, ‘Well, if you’re making this claim, that’s great. Let’s see if it actually bears out.’ ”
Astrology has been on the sceptical radar since the 1970s. So much so, Australian Skeptics has a decades-old offer of a $100,000 prize for any astrologer who can prove their claims are real in a mutually agreed fair test in front of an independent judge. Some have tried, but no one has ever passed even the initial stages of demonstrating their claims actually work, Saunders says.
He describes learning the psychology of a reading as akin to learning magic tricks out of a book. “But people don’t want to know that,” he says. “People want to think that there’s something special about any form of divination. We’re not here to take magic out of anybody’s lives, but we do insist that if people are making money … any consumer has the right to say, ‘Well, does it work?’ ”
The astrologers I speak to remain confident about their practice. “Asking astrology to prove itself in a test is a little like asking a poem to pass a chemistry exam,” Jules Ferrari says. “My clients don’t come to me for proof; they come because the language and the experience of astrology and their own birth chart gives them something deeply personal, potent and practically useful for their lives.”
Astrologers talk about the Saturn return – a period of great upheaval people are said to first experience in their late 20s. Right now, it’s Gen Z’s turn, and they are having a rough ride. The world they’re living in has, in all sorts of ways, reduced their opportunity to learn about themselves organically.
It’s no wonder they’re turning to the business of Big Mood, the name given to anything taking in sweeping, romantic fancies – the drama and aesthetic of Catholicism, the mystique of the tarot and the interstellar mystery map that is astrology. The question of efficacy is important, but perhaps that sense of magic is the foil to a bleak online world where everything is content and nothing is sacred.
Get the best of Good Weekend delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. Sign up for our newsletter.
Read more from Good Weekend:
Read the full article here
