Do the stars hold the key in the fight against oppression?

Thousands of years ago, our ancestors looked to the skies, and overwhelmed by the vast expanse above them, they looked for meaning in the unknown. It’s still one of the most important questions for many of us, where do I belong? Looking towards the infinite universe, the birthplace of moons, stars and planets, astrology was born. In a world where so much was unknown, people took comfort in finding ways to understand their place amongst the chaos.

Over time, these belief systems have been replaced by scientific knowledge. People all over the world can look up to the sky at night, knowing the light they are seeing has travelled thousands of years to reach our planet. But, much like our own moon, there is a dark side of this knowledge which needs to be explored.

The C word. Colonisation.

Racial injustice is embedded into our society, it has formed the bedrock of our institutions and for too long they have been allowed to thrive without acknowledging their colonial past. Imperial College London is a world leader in scientific research, currently producing invaluable research into COVID-19, and until last week, their motto was “Scientia imperii decus et tutamen”. It translates as “Scientific knowledge, the crowning glory and the safeguard of the empire”. Unpacked, the motto symbolises the destruction of countless societies through colonisation in the name of science, through the justification that scientific knowledge held by white people is superior to other knowledge systems. Imperial College are now addressing this. They have removed the motto, but there is still much to be done.

It is of little wonder then, given the financial and political instabilities across the world, that more and more millennials are looking for ways to understand their sense of self in a world that is dominated by capitalism, where the needs of large corporations outweigh those of the individual. Astrology provides this. It is no longer merely a series of horoscopes at the back of a magazine. “It’s not about who you should marry,” said Bianca Remer, a charity worker living in London. “It’s about imagining a world beyond the current one we have.”

Millennials have been given tools that bridge the divide between the spiritual and technological worlds. In 2017, Co-Star was launched. A mobile app which allows people to create their own natal chart – a map of the objects in our solar system in relation to the constellations of the zodiac at the time of their birth – by simply entering the time and place of their birth. Over 5 million users are connecting with each other and see how their charts interact.

Bianca refuses to hide her passion in something which sits outside of standard scientific knowledge, despite facing frequent constant criticism, “that lack of acceptance that someone else's spirituality or beliefs may be different to yours like, that really feels like it's rooted in white supremacy to me,” she said.

For Anastasia Kokori, a public engagement officer at UCL with a background in astronomy and planetary science, there is something dangerous about trying to explain spirituality with science. “It’s like trying to measure God,” she said. “As humans we have a spiritual part inside us, we are not robots, we have this interesting part inside us. But it's very dangerous if we want to connect it with something in a scientific way. This cannot be measured.”

Much as astrology has become more accessible due to technology, so has astronomy. Users can point their phone at the sky and receive highly accurate information about the planets they are looking at. One such app is Stellarium, which I used to view the sky on the night of my birth. I found that every single planet appeared in a different place to what my natal chart from Co-Star told me. The Sun wasn’t passing through Scorpio, it was passing through Libra.

Dr Angelos Tsiaras, a researcher at UCL explained the scientific reasons for this. From simple things such as the zodiac constellations being different sizes, to more complex movements such as gradual changes in the tilt of Earth axis. But more than that, there are also so many unknowns in the universe, it’s a massive multi-object system, the complexities of which science still doesn’t fully understand. “As a scientist, you need to understand, first of all, that we have no idea if this is actually how things work,” he said. Science is about building and testing ideas using a system created by us to describe nature.

Moving forward, we need to continue to break down the colonial ideology that science is the only valuable system of knowledge. This would allow astrology to use the more accurate placements of the planets. Scientific knowledge should not be a privilege, it should be accessible by all. “I would definitely be interested in seeing an update. Like if we know things have moved. We should probably be updating our tools, right?” said Bianca.

In a world where scientific knowledge is still valued over other knowledge systems, astrology is a political statement. For those who do not believe this, I leave with a quote from the loud and outspoken British rock band, Skunk Anansie: “Yes it’s fucking political. Everything’s political.”