I saw the above photo in my Facebook news feed and had to chuckle. As I am about to celebrate another birthday, I’m thinking about how well my personality matches my astrological sign, Capricorn. According to infoplease.com, Capricorns are cautious, focused, responsible, serious, conventional, reliable, hardworking, and unforgiving. Apparently, at least according to the t-shirt, we are also obnoxious know-it-alls.
When I was growing up in the Seventies, astrology was all the rage. I often read my horoscope either in the daily newspaper or in one of my favorite magazines. I was undeterred by the fact that none of the predictions for me ever came true. And, of course, “What’s your sign?” became a famous, albeit cheesy, pickup line at the bars.
But is there really something to astrology, or is it all nonsense? I do find that many people I know possess the personality traits of their signs. And scholars believe the Three Wisemen were astrologers looking for larger meanings in the stars. And look who they discovered!
The event that has made me take astrology more seriously, however, happened 25 years ago. A friend of mine gave me an astrological reading as a gift. Furnished only with the date and time of my birth, the astrologer made a star chart for me and then read it for me. As the reading started, my skeptical self reasoned that most of what she was saying could apply to just about anyone.
But then she paused and said, “Something very traumatic happened to you at the age of one.” I immediately burst out crying. When I was 13 months old, my mother died. The astrologer reassured me that she saw a long life for me and that I would be there for my daughter, who was just a baby. She also kept saying she saw something about helping foreigners in my future. This made no sense to me until 11 years later when my husband and I went to China to adopt a baby girl. It occurred to me that perhaps this was what the astrologer had seen all those years ago.
I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about my zodiac sign or trying to find out what will happen in my future. And I retain a healthy amount of skepticism about tarot cards, ESP, and other aspects of the occult. Yet as Hamlet tells his friend in William Shakespeare’s famous play, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” After all, we are made of star dust.
What’s your sign?
Because I Said So 