As humans, we love to put our faith into anything but ourselves. We let religion tell us there’s an afterlife, Citymapper tell us it’s 47 minutes to Hackney Wick, and Morgan Freeman tell us there’s a soothing resolve waiting at the end of Shawshank Redemption.
But there is one faith moving amongst us that feels more deeply romantic than the rest - a faith that humans breathe in from the stars as they turn their heads up hungrily in search of answers. Horoscopes have been relegated to the back pages of TV guides and websites emblazoned with flashing advertising banners but its magic whispers through the words of the thin paper, caressing our cheek. To look up at the night’s sky and imagine a set of invisible pathways signalling and interacting - weaving together a destiny for us - defies the logic of an age where any fact can be ratified with a 10 second google search.
To believe our futures, our fortunes, our personalities are woven amongst a set of burnt-out planets - moving us through the world like dodgems with their electric rods running along the ceiling - is gloriously strange, defiant and dreamy. How wonderful to believe that we are moving along threads that are slowly unravelling across time until we reach an end that someone had foreseen all along. To rifle furtively through lost magazines pages, searching the stars for meaning is the act of a lost romantic, searching for a way home.
In a world full of shouty self-help gurus telling us that we must actualise our destinies from within, excavating the caves of our being to find our ‘truth’ and our ‘calling’, pushing us to improve every minute of every damn day, I’d like to say - long live the faithfully lost, long live the hopeful horoscope readers. Stay lost, stay dreamy and keep staring up at those stars.
Written and illustrated by Jess Bird
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