Astrology in the media

Astrology on the radio and in the press is a format of its own, with constraints of its own. Knowing them explains almost everything about it — including the part of it that irritates practitioners.

The constraint that explains everything

An audience has no birth times. That removes the ascendant and the houses, more than half the chart, and it makes the Moon useless, because it changes sign every two and a half days.

What is left is the Sun. Not because it says the most, but because it is the only quantity that can be worked out from a date alone. Everything else follows from that.

What the format forces

• Twelve groups, each with an eighth of the population — drawn widely enough that any statement fits most of them.
• Brevity. Two sentences allow no derivation; what is left is the assertion.
• Irrefutability. A statement that holds for millions cannot be wrong — and for that reason says nothing.

This is no reproach to the people who do it. It is the description of a format, and within it nothing else can be done.

What separates good media astrology from bad

There is a difference, and it does not lie in the technique — there it is not possible — but in honesty:

• Is it said that what is at issue is the sun sign, and what cannot be done with it?
• Is fear avoided? An announced danger that is supposed to affect millions of people is the opposite of a service.
• Is nothing claimed about health, the law or money?
• Is entertainment distinguished from consultation?

The side effect

For astrology as a craft the format has a price: the public takes the smallest slice of it for astrology itself. Anyone who says they do not believe in astrology almost always means the newspaper column — and is right about that, only not about the matter they have in mind.

What the technique actually demands and actually yields is set out under the personal chart; how a serious consultation is recognised, under serious consultation.