The Whole Picture: A Case Against Clickbait Astrology

That Astrologer, Fairlie Theta
11 min readFeb 8, 2021
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…

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That Astrologer, Fairlie Theta

Fairlie Theta is a professional astrologer and a lifelong student of esoterica, marrying symbolism, semiotics, and psychology || See more at ThatAstrologer.com