The (Unlikely) Benefits of Reading Your Horoscope
By Julia Valenti
This may be a hot take, but I'll just come out and say it: I do not believe in horoscopes. It’s hard for me to fathom that my personality traits can be ascribed to the position of the sun on the day I was born, or that my sign’s mutable location at the end of a season makes me mellower than the next person. Though this practice may in fact be legitimately rooted in the study of astrology, I can’t help but imagine that the person behind my horoscope is an overworked, novice intern, deciding all of my life advice on a whim.
And yet, I love to read my horoscope, and it has been a daily ritual of mine ever since I was in middle school. The ideas of fortune and fate have a romantic ring to them, and it can be exciting to entertain the notion that parts of your life are celestially destined to occur, or that what you are reading is specifically catered to one’s self. Nonetheless, aside from their entertainment value and possible validity, I think that the practice of reading one’s horoscope can actually be a very important tool in the search for wellness.
One of the major benefits of reading your horoscope lies in its ability to provide a reference point with regard to our lives. When we read horoscopes, we constantly evaluate whether or not our reading speaks to our current situation. Am I at a crossroads in my career? Am I nervous entering into a new relationship? Do I need to establish greater balance in my life? In pausing to evaluate, we may discover that these issues are present, but because of the fast-paced nature of our lives, we were not paying attention to them. If so, your horoscope’s advice may prove helpful to you, and provide you with further insight to your emotions. However, even if the content does not apply, that does not mean that it is no longer valuable. Such readings help us ease into the practice of stopping to reflect upon our own hopes, wishes, and fears in life. If your horoscope does not contain topics that you currently relate to, are they things that you wish that you did? If so, thinking about why such aspects do not currently align with your life can help you make the first steps towards change.
Conversely, an ill-matched horoscope can help one to adopt a more positive mindset. In periods of lulls in life, the promises within horoscopes never fail to provide me with the comfort that things will eventually change. When reading through a horoscope that you don’t necessarily identify with, let it act as a reminder that your situation is not fixed, and that anything can happen in a moment’s notice to transform your life for the better. When released from your current expectations, it then becomes easier to appreciate what is actually going on in your life in the present. I am a firm believer in individual agency, and I think that attributing everything in life to the rulings of one’s star sign can potentially hinder your ability to grow. However, you may find that when you take your horoscope with a grain of salt and look beyond the specifics of what is written, you can take away exactly what you need from them.
