Astrology is Real: Part 1
The Big 3
Alright ladies and gents, listen up. Today I’m going to tell you a story about what Astrology means to me. Now you might be thinking “Hey, isn’t astrology a pseudoscience built on confirmation bias?” or “you really expect me to believe that there are only twelve types of people? That everyone born the same month is the same?”
Not quite. Stick with me for a moment here and we’ll hold all questions and criticisms until the end. Stick with me, and I’ll take you on a journey.
What is astrology? Astrology is the belief that the positions of the stars and the planets have an effect on our everyday lives. One time this shows up most frequently is in examining when people are born. You might see magazine advice columns predicting someone’s week based on which 30-day span someone was born in. That’s the sun sign, the position of the sun relative to the constellations at the moment you were born. But your sun sign is not your only sign, there’s also the moon sign (where the moon was when you were born) and your ascendant or rising sign (the sign that was rising right above the horizon when you were born)1.
For the rest of this series I will refer to these three, the sun sign, the moon sign, and the rising sign as the Big 3. These can all be found in one’s natal chart, which is a chart showing where all of the planets and signs were on the exact minute you were born.
Let’s take a look at my natal chart and my Big 3. I’ve made this handy diagram to simulate what the sky looked like the exact minute I was born.
What’s going on here? The Sun is in the sign of Aries ♈. The Moon is in the sign of Leo ♌. And the Ascendant is the green line along the horizon, it’s in the sign of Gemini ♊.
These make up my Big 3:
Aries Sun ♈
Leo Moon ♌
Gemini Ascendant ♊
What is the Big 3?
Part of Astrology is the belief that each celestial body (sun, moon, Mars, Venus, etc), plays a different function and is affected differently by whatever sign it is in at the time. For example, the Sun represents ones True Self, the very Source of their being. The moon plays the role of ones emotions or their Ego. The Ascendant plays the role of ones persona, which is the mask they present or how people commonly see them.
These can be some messy and ill-defined concepts to figure out and understand, but the model/metaphor I like best is that of a film projector, as expressed by my pal Daljeet (astrolab21). Your sun/self is the light shining through your soul to pass through the lens of your moon/ego, and it gets projected onto the screen for others to see (your ascendant/persona).
If this doesn’t make total sense, don’t worry about it too much. Just think about it as an interplay of forces inside of you. Each of these forces has its own characteristics, and it is in our best interest to get them to work in harmony.
To help us better understand ourselves, Daljeet gave each of us a custom sheet with our Big 3 signs on them, and a word cloud of adjectives that are common characteristics of each of the signs. Here are mine for Aries Sun, Leo Moon, Gemini Ascendant.
There are lots of words here! Take a moment to look at each one separately, and see if a “vibe” arises out of the soup of adjectives.
Now you might be thinking, hey I see a lot of similarities! I see “independent” in both Aries and Gemini, and “selfish” in both Leo and Aries. Or the scientific mind might want to dissect these and say “look, it’s easy for anyone to look at one of these and find something that applies to them”. And yes, this skepticism is warranted. But personally, I saw these word clouds and I thought “there’s… something about these that speaks to me”. Contrast this to the word cloud for Virgo, which makes me feel nothing.
Sure, you could take the scientific perspective and try to deconstruct it, but we were presented with these word clouds and given a homework assignment:
Look at the words. Do they resonate with you? If so, pick one for each sign that you feel very strongly about. Maybe pick one or two.
Given those words, create or find an image of something that represents each sign, that you feel accurately represents yourself.
He presented us with his example: a stock photo for each of his Big 3.
When given an assignment to play “yes and” with the universe, I thought “why do only one, when I can do many?” So I picked a bunch of words that I liked from each cloud and I let my imagination and my intuition run free. I asked myself: “Which figures in myth or pop culture do these words evoke in me?”
Let’s start with my Aries Sun.
Aries Sun ♈
confident and aggressive!
impatient and combative!
daring and innovative!
I threw together this little collage:
Let’s take a look at this line-up. We’ve got the impatient and combative Ari Gold from Entourage. We’ve got the Viagra Boys with their confident and aggressive sounds. We’ve got Prometheus, who daringly stole fire from the Gods! What an innovator! And we’ve got… uh… a couple other characters. Fun stuff.
Some of you might be saying “hey I know you personally, this doesn’t sound like you at all”. Well hey, this is just one part of me. Let’s keep going.
Leo Moon ♌
Next let’s jump over to my moon, Leo. There might be some overlap with Aries, but overall it’s a totally different vibe.
We’ve got the snobbish and opinionated Ignatius from A Confederacy of Dunces, the greatest book of all time. We’ve got the dramatic and entertaining Kanye West2, the greatest rapper of all time. We’ve got some child enthusiastically showing off what he just created, the greatest K’Nex contraption of all time.3
Gemini Ascendant ♊
And finally we have Gemini. Let’s get this over with, I’m hungry.
We’ve got Bugs Bunny who can put on a dress and become a shapeshifter. We’ve got the Animorphs who live dual lives as shapeshifters. We’ve got Herm—fuck it I’m gonna have Chat-GPT write this paragraph.
In an intricate interplay of character dynamics, the young heroes of the “Animorphs” book series, the enigmatic Don Draper from “Mad Men”, the quick-witted Bugs Bunny, and the mischievous deity Hermes find themselves bound by an unexpected thread of likeness. Just as the Animorphs navigate the complexities of their dual identities and unearth their extraordinary capabilities, Don Draper’s façade conceals layers of depth and complexity that mirror the cunning artifice of Hermes. The ever-resourceful Bugs Bunny embodies a clever adaptability akin to the Animorphs’ morphing abilities, both relying on their ingenuity to navigate their worlds. These seemingly disparate personas find unity in their dual natures, their ability to adapt, and their propensity to challenge conventions, reminding us of the intricate connections that weave through the tapestry of fictional worlds and human imagination.
Damn. I hadn’t even thought of Don Draper’s façade concealing layers of depth. Touché.4
Why do all of this?
Maybe you try this exercise and it doesn’t resonate with you. That’s fine.
Maybe you use a website to calculate your natal chart and you think “Hey, this doesn’t work. Astrology is fake!” This is the wrong response.
What you should be saying is “Well, I guess the Stars and Planets weren’t paying attention to me the exact moment I was born”.
The logical conclusion is not “Astrology is fake”.
The logical conclusion is God Must Love Me More Than You.
I should make a brief note here that the sky is divided into 12 different sections, each ruled by a different season (each season is a different constellation — Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, etc).
But Kanye is a Gemini!!! I don’t care.
Also, I didn’t even put in any of the adjectives. I just asked “Write a paragraph about the similarities between __, __, __ and __.” Notice how Chat-GPT included words from the cloud like dual identities, adaptable, and clever.
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