A Little Bit on Astrology
Like many other broke, unemployed, and ready-to-graduate twenty-somethings, I truly believed I’d be able to resist the urge to download TikTok back in the first lockdown of yonder-day, in March 2020.
Obviously, I failed.
By the time the second week of social isolation rolled around, I was desperate for anything that would offer me some respite from the boredom that comes with zero routine and nobody for company but your parents’ over-excitable puppy. I caved and eventually downloaded that dreaded, detestable app.
It has now been a whole year, and my for-you-page has now been through many, many stages. For those of you who miraculously resisted the overwhelming peer-pressure to download the app, your FYP is the home page on which you are shown a feed of videos entirely tailored you based on an alarmingly clever algorithm. I started out with mainly cute videos of dogs, spent a mildly traumatising stint on the alt-side of TikTok, and eventually settled on the British people telling mundane jokes in comforting accents side. But there has been one theme of videos that have dominated my FYP since the very day I downloaded the app, and it is astrology videos.
Now, I am aware that not everybody’s algorithm will send them videos of this sort. However, Tik-Tok’s obsession with the stars seemed to reflect an obsession amongst my real-life friends, family, and acquaintances. Over the past year, I have had friends who would have laughed at a horoscope three years ago say things like ‘everything is a little weird right now’ as ‘Mercury is in retrograde’.
I have had men who would have once steered away from ‘spiritual’ women on dating apps ask me what my moon and rising sign is. Finally, I myself have been well and truly sucked in, enticed by the complexity of my birth chart and the self-reflection that it offers me. Which led me to thinking, what has really caused the recent boom in astrology and why are we all suddenly so fascinated with it?
It turns out that in the lead up to the Coronavirus pandemic, interest in astrology was already on the rise. Meme accounts had begun to find their way onto Instagram and Facebook long before we heard anything about Covid-19. Additionally, multiple news outlets covered the success of astrology apps like Co-Star, The Pattern and Sanctuary way back in late 2019, apps that managed to receive millions of downloads pre-2020 despite their arguably brutal daily horoscopes and analysis of users’ birth charts.
A worldwide pandemic, however, added fuel to an already growing flame.
TikTok – which has experienced an exponential growth unlike any other social media ever created – can easily demonstrate just how popular western astrology has become. By the time summer 2020 rolled around, TikTok had begun to make astrologers into internet celebrities. Just one example would be Maren Altman, who has been described as one of the most serious astrologers on the internet.
This American-based astrologer had been posting her work on YouTube for over five years. However, within months of joining Tik-Tok, her followers were in the millions and her YouTube subscribers were growing almost ten times the rate at which they had been previously. She has now lost much of this growth due to a plagiarism scandal, but her numbers remain very telling. On a similar note, Google Trends shows that searches for the terms ‘astrology’, ‘birth chart’ and ‘sun sign’ hit an unprecedented peak in the summer of 2020.
The growing interest in astrology has also been coupled with a rise in a more general western spiritualism. For instance, the business of crystals and minerals, which are thought to contain a certain concentration of the Earth’s energy and therefore supposedly have a range of healing properties, has experienced an intense boom.
Unlike their precious stone counterparts, Covid-19 failed to put any dent in the sales of crystals and minerals and fuelled the industry into the billions. These stones have been popular among the stars, with celebrities like Adele, Bella Hadid, Victoria Beckham and Kylie Jenner all being open about their crystal use. Likewise, numerous psychics and tarot readers have spoken of a recent spike in business, many customers turning to them for answers on the future of the world and their lives within it. Ultimately, spiritualistic practices that mainly existed in the western world only among diverse, queer or female led spaces have begun to permeate all parts of the internet and mainstream culture.
Perhaps quite obviously, it’s likely the answer for this increased interest lies in the virus itself. Undoubtedly, the pandemic introduced an element of universal uncertainty and risk that had been absent from the secularised west for decades. The lockdowns of the last year have meant that many have experienced some form of social-isolation, simultaneously facing the prospect of unexpected job-loss, financial issues, illness, and even death. In the past, times of collective crises like the one caused by the virus have been known to catalyst an increased involvement in faith and religious practices. In fact, The Independent reported in 2018 that almost 25% of people turn to prayer when faced with a crisis.
However, perhaps what sets this particular crisis apart from any of the past is it has forced most of us to separate from society. The types of community worship that religion tends to rely on became difficult in the earlier stages of the pandemic. Therefore, it seems natural that so many people found a sense of stability in a faith that requires no worship, instead focusing on the self-reflection and individualism that astrology and spiritualistic practices offer.
Afterall, astrology would suggest that there is a pattern to everything, providing believers with an answer for why things are happening and how soon we could expect it all to change.
Couple the virus with TikTok (which is possibly the first social media to throw content at individuals before they have even shown an interest in it) and it becomes fairly obvious why astrology has experienced a ‘renaissance’. Whether newer believers will continue their involvement once life returns to something closer to normality remains to be seen. But for now, whilst new astrology meme accounts pop up every day, and more and more people continue to learn the meaning of phrases like ‘ascendant sign’ and ‘natal chart’, astrology’s rise in popularity shows no sign of slowing down.
Written by Erin Lister
Erin is a recent English graduate, currently living in Manchester and working as a teaching assistant. She's obsessed with all things music, theatre and television and hopes to one day write about them for a living.
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