I was recently watching an interesting YouTube video by astrologer Patricia Collins. Every month, she gives a reading that can mostly be described as noting the general positions of the planets and how they impact trends happening in our public sphere. Her specific focus tends to be large scale, so she’s often referencing the U.S. overall, other countries, or major public figures whose decisions control much of our reality due to their authority. The algorithm has a funny way of dropping these kinds of videos into your feed, as I don’t normally watch any content related to astrology, tarot, or similar occult subjects. Still, I found her analysis interesting! Why?
In the video, she talks about the idea of time occurring in two overlapping dimensions of reality. There is the illusory general linear time that we all interpret as “history”. Even though it really only exists as an ever-present “now”, we interpret them as global events, political movements, as well as cultural, social, and economic trends, as we experience them collectively. Then there is the personal time, more readily personally perceived as the ever-present “now” that you are experiencing at this exact moment. What does this have to do with astrology? According to Ms. Collins, astrology, while not predictive, impacts both of these realities but at different registers. On the individual level, you could describe it like an energetic weather system operating for the personal time that you experience, regardless of what is happening externally. That external, overlapping time also has its own, but more influential weather system.
We each have a birth chart, which is essentially a snapshot of the position of planets and other relevant celestial bodies in the solar system the moment we are born. The chart frames the personal time relative to the larger time in which it emerged. Every birth chart is fixed but the solar system is not. Much of what we understand that “weather” to be is framed in astrological terms as interpreting the patterns inherent to the relationships between the movements and positioning of these planets and ourselves. Filtered through the immutable aspects of our chart, it produces subtle and, to some, noticeable shifts in how we experience the here and now. It’s essentially about understanding the dance between our personal and the outer present reality.
During Ceylon’s early years, I remember a session with our data and analytics advisor, where we went through a deep dive on customer information, trying to understand the link between external marketing touch points (email, social, word-of-mouth, etc.) and actual purchases to improve efficiency for the brand’s allocated spend. Ceylon was primarily self-funded and even after a few years attracted very little investment, so combing through each and every data point within the business was absolutely critical for survival and eventual growth.
After about an hour of talking through our latest analysis and insights, the advisor pulled up a very complex-looking application, featuring countless rows of data and graphs with colorful angles all over the place. It also had an index of odd but familiar symbols. She then asked what the company’s birth date and time was. The information was available the company’s stamped or e-signed date and time on its Articles of Incorporation. I find it so interesting is that the people you’d least expect, at least from a conventional perspective, to use astrology as a framing tool: data-driven, high-level quants, deeply locked-in to mathematical models and statistical systems, are the ones who often leverage it the most in their work and personal lives. It does employ a lot of mathematical and quantitative thinking. On the other hand, it relies a lot on intuitive, pattern-driven, qualitative thinking, which causes many people to feel that it is very unscientific and highly subjective.
People who seem very grounded in this portion of reality (the seen, the identifiable, and the codifiable) are among those whom I know to be the most into astrology and ready to embrace its learnings and interpretations. There are many examples of relatively successful business leaders who turn to astrology and other occult practices as a framing tool for decision-making. J.P. Morgan was very involved in astrology and there’s a great exhibition currently on view at the Morgan Library that goes quite deep into the way he practiced. However, this is still mostly seen as a niche strategy.
Many of you remember that for a year or so we did a Ceylon monthly tarot pull by my close friend and personal spiritual advisor, Ellen Bowles. Astrology and tarot are very similar and often reference one another both in practice and meaning by using associated overlapping patterns and symbolism to surface ways of understanding and interpreting the human experience. Tarot is particularly interesting in its own regard because it uses a set frame (the card) as an interpretation and reflection tool, giving the reader a mirror to examine and interrogate their own reality. The cards never tell you exactly what happened, what is happening, or what will happen. They simply act as a beautifully distorted mirror in which you find yourself as the subject in something closer to a personal puzzle or riddle. We originally thought of the idea of the pull as that reflection tool for the brand’s “community”.
Community in the consumer brand space had by then already become a sort of cliche, partly because as responsible consumers, many of us had realized that we needed to push back on the idea that there could be such a thing authentically emerging from a brand. It was hard to take seriously the premise that it could have any real meaning in our lives outside of commercial transactions. It was all just marketing, which many people believe should not be the primary driving force of any particular community, even when it’s fun.
So, was introducing mysticism into Ceylon’s marketing problematic? In our deeply precarious and uncertain post-modern world, the absorption or commodification of spiritual practice is par for the course. We certainly don’t have to look very far for more extreme examples or outcomes of profiteering from such activities. We also shouldn’t be surprised when it takes a darker turn. But what if there was another way to look at it? Is it possible that something we originally believed was just a marketing tactic was actually something much weirder?
If capitalism is a belief system with a set framework of attitudes, patterns, practices, and observances to which most if not all of us subscribe, allowing it to shape our reality for better or worse, then we could make the case that, from a system perspective, it shares a lot of similarities with mysticism and the occult. It isn’t inherently true and it requires us all to believe in its power over us. In this system, we even have strange abilities like the capacity to give life to an idea, which is forming a business. Thinking back to both Ms. Collins’ descriptions as well as my advisor’s strategic suggestions, it would make sense that creating a business also actually results in the creation of a new individual “now”, existing in its own time, within the context of the general present time just like the rest of us. It’s a creation or birth that has quite mystical implications. That’s why it can have a chart.
Does that mean that exploring the company’s astrological placements and transits or engaging in tarot readings were really an acknowledgement and observation of the brand’s specific “here and now” or individual reality within the context of our shared, general reality? Was sharing that experience outwardly some kind of attempt at pointing towards this strange “other”, whom none of us could quite make sense of? Were we publicly trying to understand this thing that ultimately had a life of its own? I have many more questions that veer into the absurd and somewhat creepy, but I think this is a good place to stop.
What do you think?
Links
Want to get into reading tarot for yourself? I find that Biddy is probably the most accessible.
Astrodienst is useful for making all sorts of charts and graphs for who (or what) needs it.
Are these essays boring? Do they make little sense? Am I intellectually clout chasing? 🙂
I don’t think I mentioned a single thing I’m working on in this month’s issue. Sorry! I’ll fix it with the September issue. 😣
See you next month.
Patrick