Astrology is the needed "illusion" of control

10th May, 2021: 10 min read

By: Ayushi Agarwal Follow @ayushiagg17 Tweet

I frequently ask people who believe in Astrology the reasons for their belief. I am never able to conjure a good, satisfactory, and logical answer from them. Though they seemed illogical to me, for them, it was the unerring word of some mysterious force keeping a watch on them. If I believe in something, I should be able to reason about my belief. Blind faith is just ignorance. Blind faith is weak and shatters when things don’t go the way we want them to. But many of us today tend to go by our lives on blind faith and incomplete or confusing beliefs.

I may not be a believer in astrology, but I don’t despise it.

Being a believer in science, I had internal conflicts and ego issues before I got comfortable accepting that I don’t have enough knowledge to despise or discredit astrology. I don’t understand it well enough to agree that I don’t believe in astrology. Science is my belief because I know enough about it to believe in it. I can’t say the same for astrology. And there are many other things that I don’t believe in because I don’t know about them. Today, I am ok with accepting this. But I do get curious why others around me tend to blindly follow something they don’t understand, not completely but even partially.

Being Indians, we have been surrounded by astrology in some form or the other. I am pretty sure that this would be the case globally as well. Here in India, astrology and astrologists are believed and trusted more than science and more than any living, non-living being, or even something imaginary on the planet. The roots of astrology in our world date back to the BC’s. The Vedic astrologers of the past were thinkers who were passionate about reading stars and planets, the universe, interlinking and correlating with life, and not blind believers. They would have formed their beliefs based on experiences and not based on some random books, or articles read on the internet.

Again, I am not against believing in astrologists, but what are their credentials? Before putting our fate in their hands, do we take a minute to look into their knowledge? Do we base them on the kind of education they had, or do we tend to see how much others thought their predictions benefitted them? Most of the astrologists that I have come to know in my life, till now, were through recommendations instead of being self-known for their knowledge and their credentials. To me, this is extremely unacceptable.

This is the reason why we see or hear about so many frauds by astrologers. People trust them blindly. They put their fates in their hands without due investigation. Later, they complain and crib, but they fail to understand why it happened to them. It’s appalling to see how deep the frauds in astrology go. Now, why is that? We are all aware of these frauds, but still, many of us choose to ignore them because “maybe” till now, it has not happened personally.

Education has had little impact on these beliefs. I know many educated people who don’t understand astrology but believe in it blindly, maybe because they think it has somehow worked for them. How can you tell? There is no way. A believer will always think that his present is good because he did something an astrologist told him to, instead of giving himself credit for working hard.

🎮

So why do we believe in astrology without understanding it? We want to control our future so much that we tend to believe in anything that gives us the illusion of control.

It gives us a sense that we have control over something that actually is not in our control, our future. We all know in our hearts that the only thing in our control is this moment that we are living in, this second where I am choosing to write this sentence—nothing less, nothing more.

But everyone has always told us that our actions of today would lead to a better future, right? So you study hard today, you will have a brighter future. This is just the economic viewpoint of things. To some extent, it's true, or we are made to believe that it is true. The interpretation should be: how do you want to put the present to use? If studying gives you happiness in the present, do it. As a byproduct, you will make a better present for yourself tomorrow. Twisted, right?

This is the reason why we want to control everything about our future.

👩🏻‍🔧

Being in charge feels much better than feeling helpless.

Believe me; I hate being helpless. But I want to be in charge of things I know I can control, like my own behavior and my own present.

Life and death are beyond anyone’s control. You can choose to stay healthy, but you cannot choose the day or time of your death. Astrology gives you this illusion that if I do so and so task, I will live longer. But do you really believe that?

We all understand that the amount of money we earn is based on how much effort we want to put into our present. It depends on grit, passion, and perseverance. But still, we choose to follow the path of astrology, giving the reins to someone else to tell us what we need to do to increase our wealth and become successful. Someone once told me that an astrologer asked him to interchange the letters in his surname to increase his wealth. Being a believer, he happily did it. But, after a couple of years, he would never give credit to himself for working hard to earn his wealth. For him, it was the surname spelling change that increased his wealth. Astonishing, isn’t it? Maybe something in the stars did play a role, but it has no right to take all the credit.

In our culture, marriage is considered more important than a successful career for a fulfilled and happy life. For marriage, the horoscopes are matched even before the couple has met or talked to each other. Why is that? It is the sense of security, an illusion, that the marriage will be successful with the blessings of the stars and planets. We can’t control the compatibility of a couple. But we still want to be in control of their future life together. So we turn to astrology. We fail to accept that marriage is a gamble. It is risky. It is something that would need a certain amount of continuous effort from both ends. Sometimes it works, and sometimes even after a lot of effort, it just doesn’t. There is never a guarantee, but there is a belief, and yes, many other things can still go wrong. So people try their best to do everything to make the stars and planets happy, so nothing goes wrong. That is all they think they can do. Maybe it is fair? But things still go wrong sometimes. What then? Who is to blame? Astrology?

There is another reason why people believe in astrology blindly. It is because their parents did it, and their parents did it, and so on. So it has been in our ancestry and our culture. I don't blame the culture anymore. This is how it has been, and it will change slowly with the changing mindsets and the next generations to come. No one wants to start from scratch again. There is a sense of security in following the old beliefs, culture, and traditions. It's familiar and a safe territory for people. Change is seen as hostile and dangerous by society because they cannot predict its impact in the long term. What went wrong is that no one dared to question these beliefs. And the one’s who dared were silenced because of the resistance to change. But it may be it is time to question them again so that they don't negatively impact our present. These beliefs create inherent biases that we are not aware of. It’s time to put our beliefs in check.

Question the beliefs, question the astrologers, ask for logic, accept nothing less than this.

An educated astrologer will never lash out at you for asking questions if he/she has something solid to back up his theories.

If you got science to tell me, I am up for it. But don’t take bullshit for an answer to form your beliefs. Remember, you are going to pass down your beliefs to your children. You don’t want to pass down bullshit that you don’t understand, do you?

Something to think about.