Requiem for Astrology

Astrology is dead. People pretend not to have noticed, but this is in fact a marketing strategy which aims at replacing a little marketable knowledge with a fast-selling global knowledge. A knowledge that can be sold alongside diapers, moisturizers and convenience food – among the many products that many media professionals advertise and live on –, as well as feeding corporations that have ramifications everywhere, even in weapon and drug dealing, not to mention other international giants such as banks, pharmaceutical and oil companies. If an astrologer were invited to appear on any TV show to talk (or pretend to talk) about Astrology, when do you think s/he would have the time to discuss the extremely serious topics of the art of Urania, caught between the many guests and the thousand commercials? Never. Because thanks to a second-rate marketing strategy, in the second half of the twentieth century Astrology had been replaced by horoscopy, and the world has since pretended not to have noticed. In this new scenario, the expert, who might even be a good astrologer – but only at night and in the secret of his room –, performs like a buffoon before his king for no more than ten minutes during which he will cast predictions for no less than the entire humanity, thanks to the easy trick of dividing it into 12 large tribes: the Aries, the Taurus, the Gemini, the Cancer... This trick will be performed to the benefit of a tamed audience in a triumph of special effects, mellow music and a long string of commercials ranging, as I have said, from locally produced corned beef to lipstick and telecommunication providers. In order to give some credibility to an operation that clearly has none, the aforementioned TV show will also host a renown physic or scientist who will dutiful warn the audience that they are listening to a heap of nonsense. No worries, no one will pay attention to him anyway because the producers will have picked a nice-looking scientist who will agree to speak for no more than a couple of minutes. Hence, the deplorable circus of praising nothingness that usually takes place shortly before New Year’s day will repeat itself over the years except for slight changes in every Country and on every network, so that its substance will always be the same anywhere around the world...