Heather Freeman: Most mornings, I drink my cup of coffee and look through the local news on my phone. And there it is – the horoscopes. I scroll down to mine -- Sagittarius. It says, ‘Try to overcome the urge to act before you think.’ (That sounds right.) I also read three or four of family and friends.

The cosmic web that astrology is based upon is intricate.

There's a complex set of relationships between the planets and the twelve zodiacal signs -- such as Virgo, Libra, and Scorpio. There's also houses – 12 divisions of the sky – representing different spheres of human life, and several mathematical points like the ascendant and lunar nodes.

Most Americans only know their Sun sign — the zodiacal sign the Sun was in when they were born. But this is actually just one type of astrology -- and the version you see in the newspaper is often called modern astrology.

While many Americans just flip to their daily horoscope -- a prediction of the day based on their Sun sign -- astrology gets used by magical practitioners in many different ways. Some practitioners use traditional astrology to answer questions -- this is horary astrology. Others use it to find the most auspicious times for big events -- electional astrology.

And that’s what I’m going to do today. Now that I'm done skimming the daily horoscopes, I get my second cup of coffee.

I open up an astrological software called Urania on my computer. Urania shows me the current astrological chart for Charlotte, North Carolina, and I begin to scroll forward in time, watching the planet Mercury as it moves around the circle representing the heavens. The planet Mercury oversees many things, including technology and travel, so I want to make a talisman for my old car to keep it running reliably. (Oil changes only go so far.)

I'm using Urania -- a modern, digital tool -- in combination with a 16th-century astrological text to perform traditional, electional astrology. If I can find a good time to make this talisman -- when the planets are all aligned just right -- it's called an election.

Horoscopes and talismans, modern and traditional -- all of this is astrology.

Why is it that so many of us know our Sun signs, even if we don't believe in astrology? And why do so many newspapers, even the digital ones, feature horoscopes?

Welcome back to Magic in the United States. I'm Heather Freeman.

From the idly curious to magical practitioners, from therapists to creative writers, many people use astrology in different ways. In today's episode, The Stars Ascending, we'll learn about the history of astrological practices and beliefs in the United States, and how we got from planting crops by the lunar phases, to including your Sun sign in your dating profile, to astrological magic.

We'll be right back.

[BREAK]

Heather: Welcome back to magic in the United States. I'm Heather Freeman.

Look up at the stars. Most of us can spot a couple of constellations, like the Big Dipper. Some of us can even see the zodiacal signs like Taurus, the bull.

Most every culture in the world has constellations and names for planets and the brightest stars. And many cultures also use the stars to predict the future, or find auspicious timing for events –  from the Mayans, to the Aztecs, to the Han Dynasty.

Many of the constellations and planets we know today in Western astrology got their names roughly 4,000 years ago in Mesopotamia. Back then, astrology was mostly used to predict the weather, which was important for agriculture. This astrology spread to India, which is now known as Vedic astrology. Then, about 2,000 years ago, those Mesopotamian astrological ideas traveled to Greece and formed the bedrock of Western astrology. This astrology is the great-grandfather of your newspaper horoscope.

Western astrology continued to evolve over the medieval, Renaissance, and early modern periods. It was regarded as both a natural science and at times a magical practice. And it was so commonplace that European settlers brought Western astrology with them to North America.

Nicholas Campion: When English speakers began to colonize North America, astrology for many people is an accepted part of their everyday life.

Heather: Dr. Nicholas Campion is an Associate Professor of Cosmology and Culture at the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David.

Nicholas Campion: It's taken for granted that the positions of the planets have some significance for human life.

Heather: This colonial American astrology had practical uses. One was horary astrology, where you asked a question and then the chart was interpreted to find an answer.

Nicholas Campion: So you'd go to an astrologer and the astrologer could say yes, no, or perhaps. So, the kinds of questions we've got records of from back then are people going to say, “Is the child mine?” So a man's wife had had a child, the man suspects there's another father. “Will I find my lost money?” You know people didn't have banks, they buried their money somewhere and forgot where it was. “Will the ship arrive?” People are traveling by ship, nobody knows until a ship actually arrives in port where it is or if it sunk or not on the way.

Heather: The other primary use of astrology was agricultural. Both folklore and known science dictated the best times for tilling, planting, and harvesting. For example, winter is the best time to prune fruit trees when they're dormant. And folklore says this is even better during the waning moon, as it's losing light.

Through astronomical observation, it was possible to reliably predict the position of different planets, the length of a day and night, and phases of the moon. So almanacs emerged, which contained this important astronomical and astrological data.

Nicholas Campion: So an almanac was a printed pamphlet, and they contained information about the year ahead, the calendar, the phases of the Moon, and sometimes predictions based on the Moon, the Sun, and the other planets. Everybody knew when a new moon was and a full moon was and whether it was important to plant your crops at the full moon or sow your seeds at the new moon. This was part of familiar everyday life.

Heather: But by the early 1700s, astrology was in steep decline, facing two major opponents in North America: Christian conservatism and scientific rationalism.

Now, astrology had faced hostility from Christianity for centuries. Church leaders didn't approve of the idea of changing God's plan through divination by the stars. Then, with the invention of the telescope in 1608, our knowledge of the solar system expanded quickly. Ongoing scientific innovations in astronomy revealed entirely new planets, like Uranus and Neptune. And this shook astrology's foundational principles.

Despite these challenges, there were still a few astrology enthusiasts into the 1700s -- but they tended to lay low.

Nicholas Campion: We've had the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, the American Revolution -- you know, the world has moved on. Astrologers were regarded as slightly ridiculous, and so it had to overcome, not only scientific skepticism, but ridicule.

Heather: So most practitioners stayed in the closet.

Then in the late 1800s, astrology was primarily reintroduced and modernized through the works of a remarkable spiritual seeker. This seeker was Helena Blavatsky, a Russian aristocrat born in 1831, who traveled widely across the Russian empire in her youth. Although it's hard to separate truth from myth, Blavatsky later said that she also traveled across Europe, the Mediterranean, and Asia for many years and met mystics who deeply impressed her.

As a seeker Helena was influenced by spiritualism and spiritism, and also by Eastern religions, in particular Buddhism and Hinduism. Helena Blavatsky re-mixed all of these religious ideas together. She also had some criticism of these practices.

Michael York: Blavatsky came along and she felt that the spirits that spiritualists were communicating with were low-level spirits and were tricksters.

Heather: Dr. Michael York is a retired Professor of Cultural Astronomy and Astrology from the Sophia Center.

Blavatsky thought we should be aiming higher than these low, terrestrial spirits that the spiritists and spiritualists communicated with. Much higher, in fact -- to the stars.

At the beginning of this episode, I described the idea that the planet Mercury oversees technology and travel. Similarly, the planet Venus rules love, while Mars rules war. The astrological belief that the planets oversee different spheres of human life had largely died out by the end of the 1600s[1]. Blavatsky was familiar with these ideas and described these planetary influences as ‘rays.’

Michael York: Basically there are seven rays that influence, temperament, society, events, and so forth. And these rays were ultimately linked to the seven planets.

Heather: Blavatsky was also remixing Eastern concepts of karma and reincarnation. If these planetary rays influenced human actions, and these actions influenced our karma, then these rays also impacted reincarnation. And this remixing of planetary influences, karma, and reincarnation became the foundation of today's modern, personalized astrology.

Blavatsky came to the United States in 1873 and continued to develop her ideas. She also met kindred spirits in New York City. And remember how some astrologers continued to practice, but kept a low profile? Well, Blavatsky also attracted some of these astrologers, and in 1875 they co-founded a new religious movement – The Theosophical Society.

And it’s thanks to Blavatsky and these astrological members of the Theosophical Society that astrology was brought back to popular awareness at the turn of the 20th-century.

Here’s Nicholas Campion.

Nicholas Campion: Theosophy literally means ‘God wisdom’, and they were big fans of Indian religion and philosophy. And so what the Theosophists took from India was the idea that the universe is basically spiritual and that human lives are run by karma and reincarnation.

Heather: According to early Theosophists, human lives were influenced by these planetary rays, so an astrological birth chart could tell you a great deal about a person's past lives, as well as their present spiritual potential.

Michael York.

Michael York: So one looks at a chart and tries to figure out what was one's past life, what karma are you having to fulfill, what are the benefits that one has in this life, because of something you did well in a previous life -- that all kind of plays into it.

Heather: This modern astrology -- as understood by Helena and the early Theosophists – focused on the individual person's experience. So as Theosophy spread, so did this remixed, very personalized, astrology.

Sometime in the 1910s astrology columns first began to appear in newspapers where you could find your own personal Sun sign and read your own personal prediction for the week ahead. These horoscopes sold newspapers, and they quickly caught on.

Nicholas Campion: Particularly in the 1930s and 40s, what it does is give astrology a new popular language. If you live in a big, huge universe where you personally are a tiny dot, astrology makes you the center of your own personal universe.

Michael York: It was really newspaper horoscopes that were probably the most influential and instrumental in popularizing astrology. Many, many people don't believe in astrology, but they still read their horoscopes. It's just something that one does.

Heather: Another idea that the Theosophical Society embedded in popular culture was called ‘New Age.’ For theosophists, the universe was pure spirit, but the earth had solidified into pure matter. Astrology could help everyone become more spiritual again.

Nicholas Campion: The Theosophists said, okay, we've got to rediscover the spiritual. So then, they developed the idea of the new spiritual age.

Heather: By the 1960s and 70s astrology wasn't just your horoscope in the newspaper – it was part of the larger counterculture movement: the New Age.

Michael York: So, New Age comes about basically through a merger between Theosophy and its Eastern ideas and its incorporation of astrology and mental positivity.

I mean, I was very much part of the whole San Francisco hippie phenomenon. And what was fascinating then, you would often exchange your astrological sign with someone you were meeting before you even asked their name. It was the lingua franca of the day.

Heather: And by the 1980s, 1-800-Call lines got in the game.

Nicholas Campion: So you could phone up to get your reading for the day or usually the week. And from about 1987, these were huge businesses for about five years, and this produced a huge promotion of astrology.

Heather: And as we’ll see later, astrology continues to spread through new media over the decades.

Over this period, astrology was also psychologized. It became a tool for understanding your own inner mind, rather than a tool for telling your future.

So, on one hand, the mid-20th century was a boom time for modern astrology. On the other hand, traditional astrology as a magical practice was often overshadowed by its pop culture appeal.

After the break, we'll hear more about the backlash against modern astrology, the resurgence of traditional astrology in the 1990s, and we'll meet two technologists who are forging the latest astrology tools for the digital age.

We'll be right back.

 [BREAK]

Heather: This is Magic in the United States. I'm Heather Freeman.

By the mid-20th century, modern astrology was embedded in American culture, mostly thanks to newspaper horoscopes.

But what happened to traditional astrology with its magical talismans and planetary elections? It actually never went away completely.

As we've learned in other episodes. Folk practices that were viewed as magical by outsiders were often underground.  Many American folk practices like Pennsylvania Dutch Powwow, Root Work, Hoodoo, and Conjure, also use astrological magic. Then in the 1960s, new religious movements – like modern pagan witchcraft – included astrology as part of their magical practices.

But the traditional astrology found in these folk practices and new religious movements weren't part of mainstream modern astrology. And both of these astrological practices were still trapped between religious conservativism on one hand, and scientific materialism on the other. 

Nicholas Campion again.

Nicholas Campion: The Christians believe that astrology is dangerous because it can lure people into the clutches of evil and the demons, and the materialist scientific skeptics think it conflicts with science. And so they see the survival of astrology as dangerous, because it's a antique superstition which has somehow survived, and it conflicts with the rest of the modern world.

Heather: Despite all this, many Americans knew their sun sign, could open up a newspaper, and enjoy their daily horoscope.

But what they believed varied a lot. Horoscopes could be seen as literal predictions of the future, poetic words to contemplate, or just something to laugh about. It was -- and still is -- very individual.

So by the 1990s, for most Americans, astrology just meant your newspaper horoscope. Most Americans probably had no idea that you could use astrology to make magical talismans or find lost objects.

And then in 1993, traditional astrology made a big comeback, thanks to Project Hindsight.

Nicholas Campion: This was the collaboration of three very interesting men who became known as the Three Roberts.

Robert Schmidt had a background in modern astrology and in the use of computers in astrology and he developed a fascination for Hellenistic astrology, and he teamed up with Robert Zoller who had a great fascination for medieval European astrology, and Robert Hand, who had a very huge reputation as a modern, psychological astrologer and also a promoter of computer programs in astrology.

So three of them got together, and this Project Hindsight had this great period of publication and translation, mainly of classical texts, but also medieval Jewish texts and Arabic texts. And that permanently introduced the Hellenistic and Classical and Medieval astrology into the modern astrology of the anglophone, English speaking world.

Heather: While the Hellenistic texts tended to focus on natal charts, the medieval and Renaissance texts reintroduced astrological magic to anglophone readers. This magic ranged from planning events, to answering questions, to making magical talismans.

Project Hindsight led to a revolution where some practitioners switched over entirely to traditional practices, while other astrologers remixed modern and traditional methods.

And this astrological revolution coincided with the digital revolution.

Many astrologers today use software to quickly craft natal charts – the graphical representation of the heavens at the time of your birth. And two of these contemporary astrologers are Jake Zukowski and Tres Henry. They founded the company Cosmic Plumbing.  Jake is the UX/UI Designer of their astrological software Cosmic, and his husband Tres is Cosmic's software engineer. Jake and Tres are designing their software to serve both modern and traditional astrologers.

Here's Tres.

Tres Henry: So we have a whole new group of modern practitioners who are crossing the wires between traditional astrology, modern astrology, and adapting it to a wide variety of practices. We're not just talking about doing natal astrology, we're talking about doing electional astrology, and horary, and how do we make software that really makes that accessible for as many people as possible?

Heather: Jake and Tres aren't just technologists, they're also astrologers themselves. But they think about astrology and use it in very different ways, and this is reflected in their different religious upbringings.

Tres grew up in a religiously tolerant household, but it wasn't a big part of his childhood. He was interested in stage magic as a kid and got his first Tarot deck when he was sixteen. After that, he was hooked on magic. And remember those 1-800-NUMBERS from the late 1980s and early nineties?

Tres Henry: By the time I was eighteen years old, I worked for Northwest Nevada Telco in Reno, Nevada which did, you know, pay-by-minute telephone Tarot. So this was one of two times in my life that I made my living off of Tarot. And we also did overflow for the Psychic Friends Network, which was interesting -- you'd get a little light on your phone and you had to change your intro to be like, you know, ‘Hello, Psychic Friends Network.’

Heather: But his other passion was digital technology. And as he built a career in software engineering, Tres's magical seeking fell by the sidelines for many years.

Meanwhile, Jake Zukowski had a very different religious upbringing.

Jake Zukowski: So I grew up in a relatively strict Catholic household where faith was something you practiced really by the book: there's attending Mass, following rituals, sitting quietly in pews while listening to priests tell you about the Good Book.

Heather: Jake wasn't exactly a seeker, but even as a kid, this passive form of worship didn't fit him.

Jake Zukowski: My Catholicism really was around connecting deeply with the Virgin Mary and meditating on mysteries while doing circuits of a rosary. And this made me, personally, feel much more fulfilled and gave me a personal connection with the Divine that was really on my own terms.

Heather: Jake and Tres were in their twenties when they met. They were both working in technology and both material rationalists – that is, they didn't really spend much time considering spiritual matters.

It was much later -- a decade into their relationship -- when a series of events led Tres back to magic. When Tres became a seeker again, Jake had to carve space for his husband's spiritual beliefs within their relationship. He managed to find ways to be supportive, while maintaining his own secular beliefs.

Heather: Fast forward another decade, and Tres approached Jake about making astrology software together: Cosmic.

Cosmic will allow users to quickly cast and compare astrological charts. But they'll also be able to scrub through time to find an election -- much like I did at the opening with Urania, Tres Henry's first astrology software.

This started out as an intellectual exercise for Jake. Astrology is very mathy and systematic, and incredibly complex. For a UX/UI designer like Jake, it was either a dream – or a challenging nightmare.

But Jake discovered something else in the process.

Jake Zukowski: Tres and I had a conversation around how we can make beautifully designed astrology tools. But when I started digging into the voluminous materials of traditional astrology, it really did open my eyes to the possibility that astrology could have a place in my life as well.

So astrology has helped me feel like life isn't just happening to me, but that I'm able to engage with the universe in a more active and intentional way. And so I'm very thankful that Tres brought this back up because diving deeper into these practices really solidified this shift for me, turning what I once saw as a curiosity into an essential life tool for personal growth, for connection, and for understanding.

Heather: Today Jake has found an active and engaged spirituality, in part, through astrology.

Jake Zukowski: We've been doing the astrological practice for thousands of years, much like Catholicism, and that tradition really connected me to the things I liked about Catholicism.

So the way I would define myself today, I would identify as a seeker who's drawing from traditional and mystical practices, mostly interested in staying connected to the universe and understanding my place in it.

Astrology, to me, is a symphony. It is scientific in its precision. It is artistic in its requirement for intuition and interpretation. And it's magical because it's undeniably enchanting.

Heather: Although Tres was once a material rationalist, today he identifies as a sorcerer. Both of these experiences have shaped how he views astrology.

Tres Henry: You might think like, well, how could the position of planets or the position of celestial bodies possibly have any direct influence on what people do in their daily lives? There are many, many ways that the position of the bodies in the sky have a direct impact on our lives.

Jake and I live in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, and we have access to a beach on the Puget Sound, And we love walking our dog on the beach. We have to look at a tide chart because there are times when there is no beach because the water is all the way up to the cliff line. And that is more likely to happen during a full or new moon. This is a very simple, mundane example. But I think instead of viewing astrology as a cause-and-effect relationship it's maybe more helpful to see it as a reflection of interconnected cycles and patterns.

Everything is intertwined in this beautiful way. And by observing what's happening around us, we can gain deeper insight into that interconnectedness, we don't think that our watches or our clocks control time. But they do help us sync up with life cycles, like knowing when to go to work or when to pick up the kids from daycare. Similarly, astrology can help us align with the natural rhythms of the world. For example, when the sun enters Aries, we are experiencing the spring equinox. Libra brings the autumnal equinox. Just by looking at the Sun in the chart, you're tuning into these cycles, and it helps you to reconnect with a natural pattern that's guided humanity for centuries.

Heather: Whatever you believe about the stars and planets above and their role in our interconnected lives on earth, there's awe in gazing up at the heavens.

So the next time you have a clear night, take a little breather. Go outside. Look up. And give yourself a minute to just gaze at the stars.

…

Next week on Magic in the United States, we'll look at how the invention of an age demographic and a media and marketing fascination with the beauty of youth, co-conspired to create the teen witch. And we'll also learn how much we don't know about young adults and contemporary witchcraft.

Would you like to leave us a comment or thought on one of our episodes? Give us a ring 9 8 0 2 7 7 4 4 0 2. Or leave us a message or voicemail at magicintheunitedstates@gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you.

Magic in the United States was written and hosted by me, Heather Freeman. The show is produced by Amber Walker and edited by Lucy Perkins. Our associate producer is Noor Gill, and the show is mixed by Jennie Cataldo. Fact-checking by Dania Sulemon. The executive producer for PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzalez. The show's music is from APM music and Epidemic sound. And our project manager is Edwin Ochoa.

Thanks to series advisors, Helen Berger, Daniel Boaz, Yvonne Chireau, Chas Clifton, Abel Gomez, Daniel Harms, Corey Hutchison, Sean McCloud, Sabina Magliocco, Thorn Mooney, and Meg Whalen. Thanks to guests Nicholas Campion, Tres Henry, Michael York, and Jake Zukowski.  This production was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Wherever you are in the United States, the East, the West, the North, or the South, remember that magic is everywhere.

I'm Heather Freeman and I'll see you at the crossroads.