Financial Times Europe - 09.11.2019 - 10.11.2019

4 ★ FT Weekend 9 November/10 November 2019

A

ngel Eyedealism is a New

York institution: a per-

formance artistwho has

been giving astrological

readings for more than 20

years. It is Tuesday afternoon, and I am

sitting in the living room of her studio

apartment, which smells like incense

and is covered in scarves. She’s wearing

a long purple robe and pink fuzzy slip-

pers, and I have just paid her $350 in

cash to read my birth chart over the

course of three-and-a-half hours.

I was lucky Eyedealism could fit me in

at short notice, because in recent years

her business has exploded — she can

barely keep up with bookings. When I

visited, she was considering a request

from the trendy W Hotel in Times

Square to be their in-house astrologer,

and she may accept it — but not until

Mercury is out of retrograde.

Eyedealism is an old-school practi-

tioner eaping the benefits of a newr

wave of interest in her art. The ancient

practice of astrology, invented by the

Babylonians nearly 4,000 years ago, has

received a millennial facelift and a mas-

sive, tech-enabled boost. For the first

time since the 1970s, young people are

talking aboutsun, moon and rising signs

in polite company, and market demand

seems, well, astronomical (Americans

alone are spending upwards of $2.2bn

annually on “mystical services”).

Apps have popped up to both feed

and meet the demand, the most notable

being Co-Star, which has just over 6.5m

users, an average user age of 24, and

more than $6m in venture funding — all

within the past two years. Meme Insta-

gram and Twitter accounts such as

@notallgeminis and @trashbag_astrol-

ogy have appeared, accruing hundreds

of thousands of followers each and

bringing the language and symbolism of

the cosmos to a new crowd. According

to the Pew Research Center, about a

third ofAmericans aged 18 to 29 believe

in astrology. All this raises an obvious

question. It’s 2019. How did an

unproven pseudoscience win over a

new generation?

Two days before my reading with Eye-

dealism, I meet Rebecca Gordon in her

chic, chandeliered, celestially white

SoHo living room. Dressed for a yoga

class in all-black athleisure, Gordon is

the astrologer I’d send a sceptic to.

While Eyedealism does corporate par-

ties, Gordon does corporate retreats.

Like Eyedealism, Gordon is profiting

from the recent boom, working with

companies from Soho House to Chanel,

teaching online courses, writing books,

doing TV appearances and charging for

private readings.

invested. “The early growth and engage-

ment were really impressive,” she says,

“Even in its early days, Co-Star was

quickly becomingthebrand around

astrology. It’s allowing people to ask the

right questions, think about different

aspects oflife in a more in-depth way,

then use thosesnippets to have deeper

and more meaningful conversations.”

Most professional astrologersI spoke

to had little patience for the question of

whether astrology is real. Enthusiasts

describe it as a tool to help people dis-

cuss their lives and relationships, and

find its scientific credibility entirely

besides the point. Here they have some-

thing in common with Carl Jung,

founder of analytical psychology, who

believed that astrology’s correlations to

reality were coincidental, but consid-

ered it the “psychology of antiquity”, one

of the oldestways of categorising people

into timeless archetypes. To him, astrol-

ogy offered a useful shorthand for us to

communicate our tendencies.

Astrology has experienced revivals

before. Not so long ago, every newspa-

per, regardless of quality, would publish

a daily horoscope. The tradition was

born out of a wildly successful column

published in the Sunday Express in

1930, attempting a new angle on the

birth of Princess Margaret (RH Naylor,

who wrote it, astutely predicted she

would lead “an eventful life”). In the

1960s and 1970s, a New Age resurgence

of astrological interest ushered us into

the “Age of Aquarius”, and even the

Playboy Club employed an in-house

astrologer. In the mid-1980s, US presi-

dent Ronald Reagan bolstered it again

when it was revealed that he and his wife

Nancy consulted a White House astrolo-

ger before important events.

Humans have always looked for order

in the chaos of daily life, but they may

search more urgently at moments of

social and political instability. Accord-

ing to the American Psychological Asso-

ciation, 62 per cent of Americans say the

current political climate is a source of

stress. With governments in flux, a cli-

mate crisis sparking international pro-

tests, brewing trade wars and rising stu-

dent debt, it’s no surprise that people

are looking for reassurance.

There are other social currents at

work, too. According to Pew, 27 per cent

of Americans now think of themselves

as spiritual but not religious, up 8 per

cent in five years. Astrology may be a

form of spirituality that works for us

now: unlike religion, there’s no moral

code or sin, and it can be a convenient

way to explain one’s shortcomings —

“sorry, but I’m a Scorpio!”. “Astrology

takes judgment and blame away,” says

John Marchesella, president of the New

York chapter of the National Council for

Geocosmic Research and an astrologer

for 43 years. “It certainly believes in

both fate and free will, but it’s bigger

than just being screwed up because of

what your parents did.”

Marchesella is sceptical about the

benefits of online astrology. There is“

nothing that can compare with an in-

person reading, so long as you’re dealing

with a professional. No computer pro-

gram, no website, no Wikipedia, no goo-

gling. Because in person you’re getting

more of a counselling experience, a

human experience. Along with the

information you’re getting some com-

passion, sympathy and validation.”

Only time will tell if tech can success-

fully scale up this ancient practice, and

whether the current wave of interest

will build or subside. For now, you could

always ask an astrologer — to them, the

answer islikely in the stars.

Additional reporting by Madeleine Pollard

Lilah Raptopoulos is the FT’s US head of

audience engagement and co-hosts the FT

podcast Culture Call

I

n Beijing, not far from the stadiums

that hosted the 2008 Olympics,

there is a Chinese Ethnic Culture

Park. It showcases model homes

displaying the customs of China’s

56 government-recognised ethnic

groups. I visited it once with a Chinese

friend in her mid-twenties, an anthro-

pology PhD student who talked me

through her research.

She was writing about the colonial

construction of beauty, and how

accounts of aboriginal arts as “primi-

tive” or “ugly” tell us more about the

prejudices of foreign observers than

anything inherent to the art itself. Her

fluent analyses of oppression and the

white gaze made me think she would

feel at home in a seminar at the School of

Oriental and African Studies in London,

deconstructing received wisdom among

critical-minded peers.

Then we turned a corner to the exhibi-

tion showing houses built in the Uighur

style. I remarked on the injustice, given

that members of China’s Muslim minor-

ityare being forced into mass detention

camps in Xinjiang. “Yes,” she responded,

“but Islam is really inherently violent.”

Among China’s next generation, a

complex of values is emerging that

many in the west would deem incom-

patible: sexually liberal,illiberal on

race and religion, and politically

nationalist or even authoritarian.In the

imagination of under-25s, romantic sto-

rylines from American soap operas sit

alongside social-media rants on the

dangers of Islam, as well as state propa-

ganda defending the political status

quo. It seems fitting, then, that manyin

this age bracket say they are more con-

fused than their elders as to the mean-

ing of “left” and “right”.

There is much polling to suggest that

on same-sex marriage andLGBTQ

rights, China’s under-25s embrace

diversity vastly more than their elders.

In a 2017 poll by Tencent News, 32 per

cent of under-18s agreed with thestate-

ment that “Gender doesn’t matter so

long as two people like each other”,

compared to 10 per cent of those aged

between 27 and 37.

Work by Renmin University’s

National Survey Research Center, which

runs China’s most comprehensive pub-

licly available social attitudes surveys,

also suggests a liberalisation of views on

sexuality. “What two people consent to

doing sexually is their free choice,

regardless of marital status” scored 51

per cent in favour among under-25s,

compared to 43 per cent among those

aged between 25 and 35.Attitudes to

gender equality and women as leaders

have similarly opened up.

Yet the same polling suggests political

attitudes towards China and its govern-

ment are not changing in the same

western-liberal direction. The next gen-

eration are much prouder than their

elders to be Chinese. A question probing

support for individual human rights

over a government’s right to rule is

emblematic: 35 per cent of under-25s

were against individual rights,

compared to 27 per cent of those aged

between 25 and 35. A recent study of

elite students at China’s Zhejiang Univer-

sity found one-third of respondents had

relatively strong nationalist sentiment.

Opinion polling in China on politics

needs to be taken with a pinch of salt,

since citizens are drilled into not reveal-

ing anti-government sentiments in pub-

lic. Still, it is surprising to see such a pro-

Party shift in generational attitudes.

How did this happen? It’s relatively

easy for Chinese teenagers to access any

number of pop songs or TV shows from

the US that display liberal social atti-

tudes. But it’s much rarer to find media

that challenge racist ideas and more dif-

ficult still to come across discussions of

alternative political systems.

There has been an increasing flow of

Chinese students abroad, but they

remain an elite minority within the

country. Some may even become more

nationalistic when abroad, as they are

exposed for the first time to other racial

and nationality-based cliques.

At the same time, the president of the

US, the country traditionally seen by

Chinese as the beacon of liberal democ-

racy, is alienating Chinese people

within US borders and at home. The

Communist party uses external threats

to justify its rule as China’s protector,

and the US has turned itself into a con-

venient foil. When Donald Trump

reportedly suggests that most Chinese

students in the US are spies, and his

supporters let that slide, one can see

“us versus them” thinking on both

sides of the Pacific.In the wake of the

arrest of Huawei’s chief financial

officer in Vancouver, many otherwise

liberal-minded millennial friends

remarked to me that it just went to

show there was no rule of law in

the west.

A generational opening-up of views

about sexuality and the family means

that Chinese youth who happen to be

queer are more likely to find accept-

ance among their peers. So far, this

abandonment of traditional sexual

norms has not come with a big shift in

views on race orpolitics.Like all ideolo-

gies, it has its internal tensions. But

China’s next generation might, for now,

be comfortable with them.

Yuan Yang is an FT Beijing correspondent

For China’s young, freedom has its limits

Liberal on gender and sexuality but authoritarian when it comes to politics, under-25s in the country are confounding the categories of the west.Yuan Yangexamines the data

“Social media has given astrologers

who actually do the work a natural PR

committee,” she tells me with a smile.

“These meme people are providing

access points for people who wouldn’t

normally be into it. I’m all for the

democratisation of astrology.”

Gordon believes that young people’s

attraction to astrology parallels the gen-

erational rise in anxiety and technology

addiction. According to Deloitte’s 2019

global millennial survey, there has been

a marked deterioration of optimism

among millennials and Gen Z, and a

growth in both macroeconomic and

daily anxieties. Sixty per cent of

respondents said they’d be happier if

they spent less time on social media.

According to Gordon, astrology gives

us a connection that humans used to

hold more deeply, to the Earth and the

sky. “We have lost ritual and rites of pas-

sage that all ancient cultures had,” she

says. “Like eclipses, solstices, times

where you can honour the Earth. As we

destroy the Earth and cut off or deny our

relationship with the sky, we become

more secluded from each other, and dis-

connected. Astrology reconnects us to

the natural cycles that we’ve grown

apart from.”

That said, much of today’s astrology

lives online and in apps. Co-Star is cur-

rently the app to beat, the one growing

organically over post-work drinks

across the US. Both mystical and mod-

ern, it makes much of its use of artificial

intelligence and Nasa planetary data,

which is fed into a proprietary algo-

rithm. The algorithm then takes pieces

of horoscopes written by in-house

astrologers and poets (presumably

experts in writing viral content), and

slices and dices them into personalised

updates. There are compatibility

reports with friends, and tweetable

push notifications (“Try to function

without social approval”). It’s minimal-

ist, genderless, slick and of-the-

moment. It’s also free, unless you want

to test your compatibility with someone

who won’t download the app. That costs

$2.99 per input and is the only way, so

far, that Co-Star makes money.

Co-Star may be leading the charge,

but there is fierce competition for the

market. Sanctuary, which has raised

$1.5m in funding and describes itself as

the “Uber for astrological readings”,

offers 15-minute monthly texting ses-

sions with an astrologer for $25 a month.

Vice’s Astro Guide, which charges $5.99

a month, emphasises the fact that its

horoscopes are written by experienced

astrologers. “There’s so much news in

the world every day,” their senior horo-

scope writer, astrologer Annabel Gat,

told me in an unsubtle dig at Co-Star. “I

would never want my own horoscope to

come out of some prewritten crank.”

All these apps draw on the same fun-

damental formula: they match where

the planets were at the exact time, date

and location of your birth to pin down

your astrological persona, and overlay

them with where the planets are today

and in the year ahead to make predic-

tions. It seems almost inevitable that

something so ultimately mathematical

could be built into an algorithm and

pumped through an app. But the prod-

uct, though popular, is far from perfect.

Co-Starsometimes dishes out striking

truths, but at other times reads like a

collection of sentences that mean noth-

ing at all. Astro Guide tells me to wear a

crisp white shirt to celebrate a profes-

sional recognition that never comes. My

15 minutes with Sanctuary’sastrologer

is pleasant but extremely vague, more

live-chat customer support than a

meaningful glimpse into my psyche.

For Banu Guler, chief executive of Co-

Star, astrology apps are only secondarily

about astrology; they exist instead as na

antidote to the toxicity of social media

and as a way for people to communi-

cate. “We thought there was this oppor-

tunity to make a product based on astrol-

ogy that actually brought people closer

together,” she tells me over the phone.

“Every week there’s new research that

says there’s a direct correlation between

hours spent on Instagram and incidents

of teen suicide... Everyone’s looking

for tools that give them a way to have

these conversations.”

Anarghya Vardhana, a partner at

Maveron, a venture capital firm that led

Co-Star’s $5m seed round, thinks niche,

single-purpose platformssuch as Co-

Star will thrive as social platforms like

Facebook and Instagram get unwieldy

in size and purpose. I ask her why she

‘We have lost ritual

and rites of passage...

Astrology reconnects

us to the natural

cycles that we’ve

grown apart from’

Young Chinese people embrace sexual diversity more than their elders— Getty

Illustration by Cat O’Neil

Below: astrologer Angel

Eyedealism; Banu Guler,

chief executive of

astrology app Co-Star

Nikki Johnson; Bridget Badore

NextGen

The age of

Aquarius

• again

How did astrology come to

bewitch a new generation?

ByLilah Raptopoulos

NOVEMBER 9 2019 Section:Weekend Time: 11/20197/ - 18:33 User:andrew.higton Page Name:WKD4, Part,Page,Edition:WKD, 4, 1