THE SUNDAY SOOTHSAYERS
By KENNETH RICHMOND
THE ancient and curious art of astrology is one thing ; the flood of sham predictions from " your stars," now being let loose upon a credulous public, is another. Its absurdity becomes obvious if you look at more than one of the Sunday papets that devote their space to these vaticinations, and observe not only how vague, but how various, are the promises and warnings held out to everyone born on a given day of the month. Not that single predictions fail of a certain self-contained element of variety. One practitioner, in his weekly section of Brief Birthday Indications, leads off hope- fully and in heavy type with the following words for those born on the date of the paper's appearance : " In practically every respect a settled time which offers little difficulty. But you must expect some fairly drastic changes." This really overstrains the art of prophesying to cover all contingencies. Settled times with drastic changes in them are too uncommon for this to be a likely shot.
A comparison of the prophetic articles in half a dozen papers, issued on the same Sunday, shows contradictions enough to cure anyone in his or her senses of paying the least attention to them ; we will look at one or two examples presently. But human beings are not quite in their senses when they turn an indulgent eye upon anyone who professes to tell them something from an occult source about themselves. After all, we think, there maybe something in it ; and we put up with any amount of rubbish for some chance scrap that chimes in with our hopes or fears. This, at any rate, when it turns up, is quite wonderful. And after all, your stars have been considered for many centuries to be a source of mysterious wisdom. It is worth while to observe just how much " your stars " have to do with it, when it comes to these published pronouncements upon your personal destiny.
A horoscope, set up according to the rules, is an accurate chart of the planetary pattern, in relation to the position of your birthplace at the exact time of birth. Its construction calls for a little elementary mathematics, and its interpretation, according to the rules, requires much balancing and blending of different factors. The correspondence of the result with the person's actual life and character is a question of fact and opinion that need not concern us here ; many people who have made a disinterested study of the art consider that there is a great deal in it. The point that concerns the pretensions of our Sunday soothsayers is that a horoscope cast according to the rules requires knowledge of the person's time and place of birth, and, of all things, knowledge of the year in which the birth occurred. Without this, there is no possibility of making any kind of horoscope whatever. The one and only thing that you know about the heavens at the time of a person's birth, when you only know his birthday, is the approximate position of the sun in the Zodiac—since our calendar is so arranged as to accord, on an average, with this position. You have no idea whether the sun was rising or etting, or of anything else about it that astrologers like to know ; you can't draw a chart at all, and if you could you would have no idea where to put the moon and planets. Our Sunday experts, who profess to be astrologers, take account of " your stars " to the extent of the one solitary fact which is ready-made for them—the sun's approximate position on your birthday ; then, so far as any method can be discerned in their predictions, they appear to read the planets for that day as forming a kind of " birthday map," with no possible reference to the actual horoscope of yourself or of anyone in the world. This produces results of a varie- gated kind, as we shall see in a moment, and provides as good a way as any other of turning over the rubbish-heap and selecting chance scraps to set down as predictions ; but it has no more to do with the rules of natal astrology than with the man in the moon.
Let us take pot-luck among these birthday predictions and see what kind of ground they cover between them. Glancing over a collection of cuttings from one Sunday's output, my eye is caught by the cross-heading, " Thrills for You." It refers to the Thursday following the day of publica- tion, and the promise runs : " If you have this date for a birthdate you can look forward to a year of thrills and excite- ment." This is jolly for anyone, having that birthday, who likes excitements, so long as he (or she) does not pick up the next paper, and read, under the heading " This Year and You," the flattening forecast : " Thursday. Not very eventful, but initiative will assist. Little business alteration either way. Fresh pastures, however, prove uninteresting. Speculation or investment inadvisable. Little material pro- gress in love affairs or arrangements. Make no domestic alterations. Health fair, but nerve tonic assists." If anyone can reconcile this difference of opinion, it ought to be our friend who predicted the settled time with drastic changes ; let us try him for that Thursday : " Critical twelvemonth ahead." We might fit both the thrills and the nerve tonic into this. The next authority on this birthday predicts, " Not a bad year on the whole . . . The tendency will be to slack a little too much, to play a little too much and to spend a little too much." Combining these pronouncements, people who have their birthday on this date may expect a year of some- what tense and relaxed quality. If this is not very satisfying, they must follow the advice of yet another prophet to the Thursday-born, and " Curb impatience, which can very easily lead you astray this year."
If the soothsayers are not very consistent in dealing with those born on a particular day of the month, let us try them out on the people born in the month after midsummer, with Sun in Cancer. The planets for the week of publication will affect these people, they are assured, in the following interesting or uninteresting ways. They, or something (the authority does not provide a subject or a verb for his sentence), will be " Happier, more hopeful, and reliable." However, according to the next forecast, " It will be difficult for you to escape boredom this week." This may be appropriate for punters on the Stock Exchange, for a third prophet says, " Don't undertake any risky speculations this week—they won't turn out well." The promised state of happy and hopeful reliability (whether of self or circumstance) seems to have its pitfalls—" It is very easy to take the wrong turning now, if you stray from the beaten path," says another croaker. Yet the prophet of boredom advises : " Beat up people and things likely to amuse and interest you." The upshot of this mixed counsel is, perhaps, to be found in the firm conclusion of our authority on settled times with drastic changes in them : " Bother with friends perhaps, something of that order, but little else to cause you to turn a hair." Believe it or not, these are the first random instances that my eye encountered as I dipped into a set of cuttings from one Sunday's papers. I then searched for pronouncements that made any kind of sense with one another, and found none. I had been told that this pseudo-astrological ramp was becoming a public scandal, but I had not dreamed of anything so blatantly silly as the reality. Is it not time for public credulity to turn its attention to something a little more credible ?
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