Daily Mail - 01.08.2019

(Jacob Rumans) #1
Page 54 Daily Mail, Thursday, August 1, 2019

54 femailMAGAZINE


Success in the stars: Career
women Anna Butterworth
(top) and Alicia Kite

by Radhika


Sanghani
Y

ou have rising Virgo, so it
makes sense that your CV
is simple and monochrome
with a clean font,’ astrologer
Francesca oddie tells me
authoritatively, scanning my CV.
‘But you have your career line in Gemini,
which means you’re very versatile. So you
need to stress that more. It says you’re a
journalist and author, but it also needs to
say you do TV appearances and mentoring
and that you’re fluent in Spanish. Don’t be
afraid to highlight your successes.’
It’s fairly common for ambitious young
professionals like me to seek extra help in
putting together an appealing CV. But, until
recently, I’d never have dreamed of turning
to an astrologer for this sort of advice.
Nonetheless, here I am, having an expert in
star signs tell me how to boost my career. I
have to say, her suggestions feel spot on.
using my birth chart — a map showing
where all the planets and stars were at the
exact moment you were born — she is help-
ing me understand how to get ahead in my
career, starting with the way I write my CV.
‘Rising Virgo’ means that I’m intelligent
and matter-of-fact — your ‘rising sign’ is the
planetary influence that was on the eastern
horizon during your birth. Having my mid-
heaven, or ‘career line’, in Gemini (like
oprah, apparently) means it’s my mission
in life to do as many things as possible.
This type of service is part of a surprising
renaissance of belief in astrology. often
derided as pseudo-science or simply light
entertainment, the practice has attracted
the attention of growing numbers of
professional women who use it to make
serious decisions — from which interviewee
to hire, to whether they’re in the
right career at all.
I never imagined I would be
a convert. As a down-to-earth
journalist (and a Taurus, the
stubborn, practical star sign), I
was sceptical of anything not
strictly scientific. It was beyond
me how balls of gas more than
100 million miles away could
influence our behaviour.
But, last year, after noticing
astrology cropping up all over
social media, I decided to give
it a shot and booked a £190, 90-
minute reading with Francesca.
At 34, with her love of stylish
maxi dresses and heels — and
her handy astrology iPad app
that creates birth charts from
the exact date, location and
time of a client’s birth — she is
nothing like the mystic with a
crystal ball I’d been dreading.
What’s more, I was shocked as
she used the stars to describe
perfectly my contradictory per-
sonality, from my craving for
stability to my love of travel.
By the time she mentioned my
weakness for artistic men, I was
officially convinced.
Today, a Google search for
‘astrology’ brings up more than
163 million results, while the
number of times people have
searched for ‘star sign’ has
almost doubled in five years.

A


PPS such as The
Pattern, which pro-
vide users with free,
personalised read-
ings and allow them to check
their compatibility with friends
and partners, are so popular
the servers crash every time the
likes of actor Channing Tatum
mention them on social media.
Meanwhile, dating apps such
as Match.com and Hinge ask
users to state their star sign,
and Bumble even allows sub-
scribers to search for their next
date via their star sign.
While looking for a compatible
star sign in romance isn’t new,
astrology has even started to be
used in a work context.
Astrologers such as Francesca,
who regularly runs career work-
shops and CV readings at places
like trendy members’ club Soho
House, are noticing more clients
using astrology to climb the

career ladder. ‘People can really
see their personalities and lives
reflected in astrology so it’s being
taken to the next level now,’ says
Francesca, whose no-nonsense
book, Astrology IRL (meaning
‘In Real Life’), promises you can
‘manage your friends, house-
mates and boss by their signs’.
‘You can use astrology with
your personal or corporate
branding,’ she adds, ‘in terms of
working with what you under-
stand the energy of the sign to
be. So, if you’re Sagittarius or
Leo, I’d say use bright colours
on your branding, to express
your vibrant character.
‘What I do is use people’s
charts to help them identify
their key skills, then look at
how they can transmit them to
other people, whether it’s via a
CV, website or social media.’
It might seem strange to mix
mysticism and professional life,
but women including Alicia
Kite, an image consultant and
fashion academy owner, credit
their success to the stars.
Alicia, 56, a mother of two
married to a sales director in
Nottingham, has believed in
astrology since she was 11, when
a fortune-teller predicted she’d
work in the fashion industry.
A decade later, she was run-
ning a chain of fashion shops
turning over millions. Since
then, she’s read her horoscope
in the Mail’s Cainer column and
often has focused readings to
help make career decisions.
‘Astrology is a way of finding
out more about who you are,’
explains Alicia. ‘It’s made me
realise my strengths — and my
weaknesses. As a Capricorn, I’m
hard-working, with a classic,
timeless style, but the
Moon was in the fire
sign Aries when I
was born, which
means I’m bet-
ter at working
on my own.’
one of her
most power-
ful readings
came three
years ago —
when Alicia
was unsure
on whether to
carry on working
with a friend on
their online styling
business or go back to
working freelance and focus
on training fashion stylists.
‘As I got older, I kept thinking:
“I’ve been doing this for so long,
should I be looking for some-
thing else?”
‘But my reading restored my
confidence. It talked about how
I’m strong, with self-belief, and
love helping people — and that I
work better alone.
‘It inspired me to go back to
doing just that and continue
with my academy, which is
continually growing. Everything
I’ve learned from my stars has
got me to where I am today.’
Alicia says that astrology has
shown her she is prone to taking
things too personally, whether
during conversations at home
with her family or with friends.
‘Now I realise I’m too emotional,
so, if that happens, I handle it
better. You can’t change yourself,
but you can change how you
react, and astrology helps me be
much more aware of my flaws.
‘It’s also helped me to accept
that I love glamour, so I no longer
feel guilty about splashing out on
nice things for special occasions.
It’s part of who I am.’
Devotees such as Alicia swear

by the science of astrology,
arguing that it has its roots in
astronomy and is linked to
quantum physics.
one theory even says the
movement of atomic particles
explains why the energy of dis-
tant planets can influence us.
Scientists, however, firmly
stress that it cannot be proven
and lacks the critical
evaluation required of
scientific theories.
But astrology
does have its
own logic, dat-
ing from the
Babylonians
some 2,400
years ago
and based
on where the
Sun, Moon
and planets
were at the
time of your
birth. Horoscopes
— your ‘star sign’
— look only at the
position of the Sun,
while serious astrologers use
complex charts to study
the positions of the planets at
your birth and their current
transits to explore the present
and the future.
During my CV reading with
Francesca, which takes place in
my London flat, she tells me the
zodiac is divided into 12 ‘houses’
— each one signifying something
different in a person’s life.
The tenth house represents
your life’s work. Looking at my
birth chart, she says that I have
Jupiter in my tenth house, which
is considered very fortunate.
Right now, Jupiter is transiting
into my fourth house, represent-
ing home life, which suggests
that a lot of my career progress
is happening while I’m at home.
She’s right — as a freelancer,
I’m constantly working from
my sofa. ‘You’re still expanding,’
she reassures me. ‘Even if it feels
like you’re not.’
When I tell her about my latest
projects — scriptwriting and
finishing a third novel — she’s
not surprised: ‘You have uranus
and Neptune together. uranus
is about unpredictability and
change, while Neptune is TV

Firm


believers


One in five women say
that they believe in
astrology, compared
with one in ten men,
according to a survey
by BMG Research

Success inthestars: Career

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Pictures: PAUL TONGE / MIKE LAWN

Beauty for the bride


... and her mum, too


WHETHER you’re the blush-
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And Birchbox offers a
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your special look (birchbox.
co.uk/the-wedding-shop). Pictures: JULIA SAVCHENKO / ESTEE LAUDER
Free download pdf