A screenshot from the Sanctuary app. Photo: by Preeti Kinha; Photos: Getty Images, Sanctuary Astrology On February 21, my power emoji was a penguin. Ross Clark, the co-founder and CEO of the new astrology start-up Sanctuary had just entered the details of my birth date into its tidy little app and right away he let me know that I share a birthday with Britney Spears.
The business opportunity, of course, requires actual demand, arising from something like an actual need. Astrology can claim that. For the godless, or the spiritually unaffiliated, it offers assurance of larger forces; astrology can make you a part of something big, while sweetly taking destiny out of your hands — bigger forces are at work, and those forces are benevolent, which can be of comfort to someone living a secular life.
Which all makes it hard to see the phenomenon as anything like an outburst of new religiosity — it’s more like playful, even quasi-ironic, self-cultivation “me time.” Clark’s own North Carolinian, church-going mother announced at Christmas that she had begun training to become an energy healer. Photo: sanctuarywrld/Instagram Astrology, of course, has carried on, in spite of its classification as a “pseudo-science,” and its reputation as the domain of mystics and kooks. Its position as a part of popular Western culture began in 1930 when an astrologer named R.H. Naylor was hired by Britain’s Sunday Express newspaper to make astrological predictions on the birth of Princess Margaret.
And horoscopes are obvious phone candy: Who wouldn’t want something anodyne to tap on waiting for the subway? Especially if it feels personal or optimistic.
& people still ask...”why are you so fascinated with astrology” lol
Promoting stupid time- and money-wasting garbage to your readers, that's the Cut.