What a prediction does to you

Predictions are argued over as though they were nothing but claims about the future: either they come true or they do not. Yet something else happens at the moment you hear one. From then on the sentence is in the world, and you are someone who knows it. So it does not merely describe your situation – it belongs to it.

Sentences that come true because they were spoken

The sociologist Robert K. Merton described this pattern in 1948 and gave it the name still in use today: the self-fulfilling prophecy. His example was a bank. A rumour claims that it can no longer pay out. The rumour is false, but enough people believe it, withdraw their money, and by evening the bank is finished. The announcement was untrue when it was made, and true by the time anyone checked.

With a horoscope text the same thing works more quietly. Anyone who reads that the autumn will be hard goes into it differently: more watchful, thinner-skinned, quicker to record an ordinary friction as confirmation. By December a hard autumn is there on the books, and no one can say how much of it the sentence brought along.

And sentences that come out false because they were spoken

The reverse case is rarely mentioned and is the more interesting of the two. A warning that works makes itself unnecessary. Anyone who reads that money could become an issue in the spring goes through the accounts that same evening and cancels two contracts they stopped needing long ago – and in April, what was announced is exactly what does not happen.

This is awkward for anyone who wants to assess predictions. An announcement somebody has already acted on cannot be judged cleanly afterwards. If it comes true, the notice was of no use. If it does not come true, that may be down to the warning, or it may be that there was never anything in it. From the outside the two look alike.

A very old predicament

The problem is not new. In Mesopotamia, where the oldest surviving collections of omens come from, those texts carried rituals of their own for warding it off: a sign counted there as a message that could be answered, not as a verdict there was no appeal against.

Greek legend knows the opposite direction. Laius learns from the oracle that his son will kill him and does everything to prevent it – and it is precisely those steps that carry the story to its destination. So an announcement can be a tool or a trap; which of the two it turns out to be is settled not by the sky but by the handling of the sentence.

When a sentence starts to steer you

• You pass it on before you have checked where it comes from.
• You put off a decision not because of the matter itself but because of the period.
• You find the announcement again in incidents you would otherwise not have noticed.
• You feel relieved, because something other than you is now in charge.

None of these signs proves anything on its own. Together they tell you that the text is already at work on you – a good moment to put it aside.

When two people read the same sentence

Merton's bank works only because many people hear the same rumour. On a small scale the same thing happens. If two people who live together have both read that this month will bring friction, then the friction is no longer between the two of them alone: it has been announced, it has a name, and both are waiting for it. The first sharp tone at the breakfast table is then recorded not as a bad morning but as evidence.

The antidote costs nothing. Tell each other that you have read the same text. An expectation that is spoken about has a much harder time of it than one that runs along unsaid.

Your own log

If you are interested in what such texts do to you, keep a small notebook – not a list of hits, that would be a different question. Note the date, the period announced and the sentence itself. And then, and this is the real point, in the weeks that follow: what you did that you would not have done without that sentence.

After a year you are holding something no astrologer can give you: a list of your own reactions. A harmless practice ground for it is the free weekly horoscope – short texts, short periods, quick feedback.