Astrology & the Writer

[Paul Whybrow]

I was a child at the height of Beatlemania, loving the Fab Four, who my parents approved of while being drawn to The Rolling Stones, who they disliked. That George Harrison was a Pisces, born on 25th February, my birthday, made me wonder about predestination (not that I knew that term)—was I going to become a musician or at least an artist of some kind?

Fifty years later, I have, as a writer. I’ve dabbled in various art forms along the way, including playing guitar, drawing, painting and acting, as well as teaching creative arts to children.

In many ways, I conform to the birth sign Pisces: I’m impressionable, adaptable, artistic, compassionate and self-sacrificing while being melancholic, occasionally fearful and indecisive.

I’m on the fence about astrology’s merits. There’s undeniably something in it, if you only look at the effects it has of unifying and comforting millions of people, in a similar way to religion. I’ve wondered too, about how a pregnant mother’s diet and exercise regime influence a baby’s traits—which would be affected by the time of year.

Dismissed as pseudoscience by some, treated as just a bit of fun by others, some people take astrology seriously. Steven Fry doesn’t like it!



Creative Piscean writers include Dr Seuss, John Steinbeck, David Foster Wallace, Jack Kerouac, Victor Hugo, Douglas Adams, Bret Easton Ellis, Chuck Palahniuk, Henrik Ibsen, W. H. Auden, William Gibson, Ovid, John Updike, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Tom Wolfe, Bernard Cornwell, Wilfred Owen, Anthony Burgess, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Dave Eggers, John Irving, Cyrano de Bergerac, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Anaïs Nin, L. Ron Hubbard, Lawrence Durrell and E.L. James (aargh!).

With one exception, that’s illustrious company.

There’s hope for me yet….

Which writers have the same astrological sign as you?

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Astrology is a branch of history (I am not an astrologer) It is rooted in countless data correlations, rooted in more than 10 000 years of observed events and phenomena in natural and human history. Stephen Fry just hasn't looked into it seriously, clearly.

Time of year is crucial to the story, as you say. Less now here than in previous centuries, length of hours of daylight, the mother's available foods etc, etc etc all likely had a significant effect on a baby's constitution, developed while yet unborn. The spring lamb and the autumn lamb arrive into different prevailing conditions. Consider also which 3 months of the seasonal year were we NOT in the womb during the time of pregnancy.

Writers with the same sign as me, Shakespeare, Macchiavelli, Nabokov.

Literature deal in archetypes, astrology deals in archetypes,and what are those? Enduring observations of the human character and condition.

Find a few famous writers in your own fellow zodiac signs HERE


'

 

[Dan Payne]

Find a few famous writers in your own fellow zodiac signs HERE

Over however many centuries of human history, there will be dozens - nay, hundreds - of fabulous authors from every one of the zodiac signs. Every sign has artists, and engineers, and teachers, and serial killers.

I think astrology is one of those ideas of reinforcement. Like the idea that airplanes are dangerous, we only hear about the minority of cases. Thousands of people fly every day without incident, but every time there's a plane crash we hear about it loud and long. Every zodiac sign has in it millions of humans who don't correspond at all to the traits described by its archetype - but the ones who do match the mould are the ones swanning around marvelling at how all Aries children are ambitious and bold.

Might there be effects of seasons on childhood development, relating to the parents' activity and diet at different times of the year? Sure. But while it's cold in England and people are cuddled up under blankets eating Yorkshire Puds, us antipodeans are out on the farm enjoying our celery sangas. This world is too big, and people too varied, to be usefully categorised by birth sign. And the idea that the arrangement of the stars has any causative effect on... well, anything... I'm with Stephen Fry on that one.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Of course, Dan. All that. It is one heck of a historical and literary resource, whatever else one makes of it all. Jupiter really does hurl 'thunderbolts'. How did the ancients 'know' that so long before before astronomy could demonstrate it? For everything new humanity learns, how much gets forgotten or thrown out with the bathwater.

Newspaper horoscopes are necessarily general and cryptic in the extreme. The sun sign is not supposed to be a portrait of a living person. It is only the archetype associated with their birth date. The zodiac is a symbol system, dealing in archetypes, based on an arithmetic model formalised by astronomer and mathematician Ptolemy, in the 2nd Century. It does not necessarily any longer correlate to the positions of the constellations themselves, although it did once, about three thousand years ago, and the advent of the date range accorded to Libra under Ptolemy's system does still coincide with the equinoxes both sides of the globe.

Astrology rose from the never-ending human need for planning, and to find pattern and meaning, and it is perfectly true that, seek a pattern and you can probably find one. 10 000 years and more of that soft data got compressed into this system, which is a northern hemisphere system at origin. When the Egyptians saw lions coming in from the desert and close to the cities to drink, they knew the drought was at its height and to expect the Nile flood within the next couple of weeks, and the star pattern now known as Leo was overhead that time of year, hence this time slot ended up labelled as Leo.

But, fascinatingly, although there is cultural variation on what this constellation or that constellation represents, the arsenal of astro-symbolism crosses the hemispheres, as with Scorpio for instance, which is mostly below the horizon in the northern hemisphere. We see the head and heart but not the tail. The indigenous people in Australia looked up, and decided entirely independently of other influence so far as we know, that this asterism was a scorpion, the same as the Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, and various peoples of South America.

 

[Patricia D]

Astrology is a branch of history (I am not an astrologer) It is rooted in countless data correlations, rooted in more than 10 000 years of observed events and phenomena in natural and human history. Stephen Fry just hasn't looked into it seriously, clearly.

Time of year is crucial to the story, as you say. Less now here than in previous centuries, length of hours of daylight, the mother's available foods etc, etc etc all likely had a significant effect on a baby's constitution, developed while yet unborn. The spring lamb and the autumn lamb arrive into different prevailing conditions. Consider also which 3 months of the seasonal year were we NOT in the womb during the time of pregnancy.

Writers with the same sign as me, Shakespeare, Macchiavelli, Nabokov.

Literature deal in archetypes, astrology deals in archetypes,and what are those? Enduring observations of the human character and condition.

Find a few famous writers in your own fellow zodiac signs HERE


'

I've begun reading Robert Graves retelling of the Greek Myths, which as you all probably know but I didn't, argues the myths are in fact metaphoric history. The Gods'and demi-gods' magical powers are attributable to magic mushrooms, and the stories embroidered and exaggerated with retelling.

I recognize myself in the description of the Taurus character and consider astrological personalities when creating characters. (Also Myers-Briggs) Taurus writers include William Shakespeare, Harper Lee, Terry Pratchett, and Charlotte Bronte, along with a bunch of far less notable people..

 

[KateESal]

I used to be interested in astrology and an amateur astrologer friend of mine did my birth chart. I put away that chart and forgot about it. Then, ten years later, I happened upon it while sorting through some papers. It was fascinating to note how accurate its predictions had been.

That said, I haven't thought much about astrology in yonks, so was very chuffed to find I share a sun sign with the following writers:

Stephen King
Agatha Christie
Julia Donaldson
Roald Dahl
George RR Martin
Mary Shelley
HG Wells
William Golding
Willy Russell

...among others.

We're all Virgos.

 

[Dan Payne]

I'm not a Virgo but I consider Stephen King to be my spirit animal.