The Whole Picture: A Case Against Clickbait Astrology

The Image in Question

I started to see this meme pop up over the last few weeks. Honestly, I don’t like text posts. My Capricorn Venus/Neptune conjunction holds aesthetic as something sacred, and Instagram is an image platform: the challenge is to pair an impactful image with valuable information. In my opinion. However, this particular text post was sent to me by a number of people asking for clarification. I gave it the benefit of the doubt, assuming someone had done some research before posting it and simply tried to emphasize that this is an example of Planet-Sign astrology which paints an incomplete picture at best. You need to look at the aspects, the flow of the chart, the trajectory of the energies involved in order to fully understand the situation. And I maintain this assessment: no matter what popular iOS apps would have us think, you can never examine an event in history (or a person, or a company, etc) by a single planet in a sign. You always need the full horoscope to assess the whole picture.

This meme is the astrological equivalent of the news stories that drive me insane. We’re given soundbites and cherry-picked information in order to evoke the exact emotion an outlet wants us to feel. They understand that most people will take this at face value, accept that published information must be true and not only shape their entire understanding around that single article, but accept the fear, insult, or outrage formulated as their own. In a clickbait economy, you don’t need to be thorough, you need to be impactful. This meme is no different.

Except that it’s wrong.

After seeing a source I previously thought very credible repost this image, I thought I should draw up the charts myself and compare them to the charts of our current situation. I wanted to illustrate the importance of the full picture, especially as it relates to these outer-planetary cycles throughout history. And I found that while some of the information is technically correct, some of it is glaringly false, likely concocted to feed into the fear and uncertainty we feel right now.

Let’s start at the beginning.

“The last time Saturn was in Aquarius was during the Rodney King Riots.”