askchapo

OP, this might seem kinda harsh; and I don't know you so I don't intend to attack you personally; but I feel the need to go off a bit and tell you how this and some of your comments below all comes across. Because

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In short:
JUST like a Capricorn

Astrology is for uneducated morons.

we need to stop men from being allowed to post on here until we figure out what's going on

I agree with you 100% All mysticism of any type should be criticised. Like Marx said, one of our tasks is "ruthless criticism of all that exists". Unironic belief in astrology or witchcraft (heavy emphasis on the unironic part so that people don't misconstrue me) should be opposed by any leftist.

Realistically speaking, who fucking cares?

A whole lot of people spilling ink about astrology, "pseudoscience" and "mysticism" in here that don't seem to know anything about it or its relation to the patriarchal, racial and class contradictions. And a whole lot of people that don't seem directly concerned with most of those things themselves but feel it's important to share their opinions on something they're not informed about and not concerned about.

For the record i don't care for astrology at all, I don't like the (extremely, extremely rare) people who take it 100% seriously, but it's still one of those things that's kinda fun sometimes. But i don't care, and i have no trust in people who are worried about "feminists hurting their own movement by doing things wrong" when they're not a part of that movement.

I don't understand why there are so many people who consider themselves "Marxist gamers", but at the same time are distracted by video games.

The origin of gaming is working class, and as a working class movement, it is materialist. I don't know if they at least know what dialectical materialism is, since they don't see such an abysmal contradiction between gaming (fantasy) and marxism (materialism).

They remind me of the liberal “gamer” Jason Schreier.

And the same with some anarchists.

What do you think about it?

I wouldn't necessarily say it's a feminism thing. I think it's a millenial/zoomer thing more than anything. It's sad seeing BS like that get normalized, like, how are we accepting people saying "yes, I actually believe that the positions of given stars and planets affect people's personality and my future"? That's 100% against materialism and against the scientific method.

By "how are we accepting" I don't mean "let's oppress these people", just I think we should collectively adopt the same reaction to it, as if an adult told us about the tooth fairy coming.

Anti-patriarchal aspects of witchcraft, as others have eloquently stated here already. Also on some level it's a chicken/egg thing as some point, as girl power culture (I'm sure there's a term for that) embraces certain hobbies and interests. For every girl that seems to embrace dangerous woo-woo shit, there's thirty more that just wanna have fun.

I may have my biases as a former Wiccan, though.

Grow up

god forbid women get distracted by anything

So what, how dare women have a hobby or interest right?

Humans and mysticism is pretty much a fact of life you can't separate the two. Most people will have their own personal set of rituals that don't have any basis in material reality but are done anyway for comfort and trying to feel some level of control in a chaotic world. I don't really see the importance of focusing on one specific kind of mysticism and correlating it to feminism it doesn't really make any sense to me. The fact that some people like astrology doesn't prevent or interfere with feminism they're not contradictory.

An aggressive dislike of it is more of a red flag to me tbh. I have my own silly little rituals I do to make me feel better. If I believe an item I have gives me good luck and I take it with me when I go outside am I now not a marxist because i hold contradictory beliefs between political ideology and the concept of luck? I don't think so

I think Philosophy Tube has a video about witchcraft and Marxism which explains the connection.

Should be similar to tarot.

One reason women, in particular, flock to it is because it's already a woman centered space. Witchcraft is anti-patriarchy and anti-hegemony, so Marxists would find that aspect appealing.

This isn't necessarily related to the feminism part of your question, but I've read some about modern day Daoist divination practices in China that are essentially like tarot cards. One book (The Souls of China by Ian Johnson) had an interesting perspective because some of the priests said there wasn't any magic involved and they weren't literally predicting the future. At least in that context, people have specific questions they want answered, and they have answers that they want. The divination only provides yes/no answers.

Someone asking if they're going to be successful some day isn't helped in any way by saying "nah sorry you'll be poor forever" nor are they helped by saying "yea you'll be a hollywood star" and having their ego inflated, but what they're looking for is some sort of comfort that their life won't always be miserable or meaningless.

So the priest guides them through their questions like a conversation and tries to give them the comfort they're looking for in the least harmful way possible. The yarrow root (or tarot cards, or whatever) are just the vehicle to have that conversation. You can say maybe that person should just go to a therapist, and maybe they should, but essentially the priest is trying to help people work through whatever issue it is they're having so they can come to some sort of resolution. And that's a role that existed before the contemporary therapist.

The idea is then that the 'prediction' part is just that person resolving to act in a way that would make it true. So if they ask if they'll be successful, the priest guides them to some sort of action they can do to work toward that goal.

I can see people wanting to use stuff like new age astrology and tarot and all that kind of stuff in a similar way, but the difference is that unfortunately, the person conducting those ceremonies may not have those good intentions in mind or any sort of philosophical, cultural, or ethical training to guide people to beneficial actions. They're not a community figure invested in the lives of the people talking to them, but a fortune teller with a building in the middle of town just advertising their services to random people for profit.

EDIT: As to how I feel about it, I obviously don't believe in it but I try not to bash it too much unless that person uses it as an excuse to be discriminatory or justify their bad decisions. Especially in more ingrained cultural contexts like the above, but even for the 'fairies and tarot' folks.

Asstrology

I just see it as a way some people of all genders try to fill the space left by religion. It doesn't necessarily have to be coded as an activity exclusive to one gender. I know plenty of guys into stuff like that. I've heard others describe this phenomenon as a way to question the accuracy of outcomes predicted by the secularization thesis.

Regardless, I still am diplomatic with people who like that stuff, despite me not believing in it. I don't want to come off the same way the New Atheists did when discussing religion. That sort of militant attitude can be off-putting when trying to make the case for socialism.

I'd say the best way to discourage taking such practices too seriously, I'd suggest deconstructing such practices by reading about it's history. Understanding the history of a topic helps one realize the fallible and changing nature of a supposedly unchanging process for discerning truth. I use the same approach with religion

im way more concerned with people glazing the woke pope and liberation theology as proto communism than I am somebody doing a birth chart, idk.

i think shunting off non rational belief into a category of "bullshit not worth exploring or interrogating" is kind of, i dunno, itself ignorant? you can at least take the approach of people who study these matters academically, and separate your ego and emotional responses from the equation and seek to actually, not just approximating marx fourth hand, actually try to understand the phenomenon before jumping to this kind of shit.

astrology fits this category for me - it's not remotely productive for anyone to silo yourselves off from understanding for a lack of "getting it" - you're not omniscient, there's shit you don't know. Human tendencies towards these phenomena, whether imaginal or real, and you already know what you think about that, are not something to just go "lol i dont get it fuck all that noise" because you wanna actually reach people and find common cause with them, you refusing and even being hostile to this shit is gonna lose people who might, despite your assumptions, be radically useful.

Astrology is for fun, I truly don't think it's any deeper than that

i call myself a marxist and a communist because i agree with marx's analysis and critique of capitalism, and other marxist and adjacent theorists critiques of imperialism and advocacy for democratic centralism. i largely agree with historical materialism as a means of analysis, but i'm just not sold on strict ontological or epistemological materialism, in the sense of eliminativist physicalist realism. i have yet to be convinced out of epistemological nihilism and metaphysical/ontological agnosticism. obviously any specific beliefs like astrology or solipsistic idealism without any empirical evidence or epistemological basis are probably BS, but it would be foolish to assume we know basically everything about reality imo.

This thread has so many ridiculous takes. Also I keep laughing at just how much of an obvious foreshadowing the title of this post was "Feminism and Astrology".

Like that feels like it comes straight out of reddit lmao.

Having been close friends with someone who's way into astrology, I think there's a number of factors here.

Firstly, in a world that is clearly 'going wrong', with ever increasing economic precarity, political polarization, and visible worsening of climate change, the idea of a system than can give you any level of prediction for your personal future is a huge comfort. Marxism, despite being a scientific discipline that makes very accurate long-term predictions of social development, has no (or very little) power on the individual level, so some people may cling to this other system that gives them a sense of preparedness for their personal life. And while I agree that truly understanding and internalizing a dialectical-materialist perspective means both an end to being able to believe in things like astrology, and a kind of inner peace in the face of the inevitable dialectical unfolding of the material world, most people (who are still valuable allies) never actually reach that level of understanding.

Secondly, as people are increasingly alienated and atomized, it provides access to a large social space of overwhelmingly non-straight-white-cis-male people, immediately gives you a tribe with specific traits and icons to identify with, has (at the very least, the aesthetic of) a deep history going back to antiquity and has a lot of specific in-jokes that can quickly bring someone into the fold. My friend is constantly posting memes about the supposed characteristics of various different star signs, sub-categories of those star signs, interactions between different star signs, etc. etc. It's an endless source of, for want of a better word, content, which you can enjoy both as part of the space as a whole and from within your specific niche. You can see something and say "Yes, I am like that! They know me so well!", or "Ah, you got me! I do that too!", or "Oh, those [star sign]! That's exactly how they are!", all of which binds you into a social fabric and identity that rarely exists elsewhere.

And thirdly, through the supposed 'compatibility' of different star signs, it gives people a guide to who they should try to form a relationship with. Statistically, by far the number one danger to women is their male romantic partners, both in terms of physical violence but also in terms of the possibility of psychic distress. Will he dump me? Will he cheat on me? Will he leave me to do all the house work? He seems like a good guy now, but is he just tricking me until he thinks I'm stuck with him? Does he secretly listen to Andrew Tate? Will he start doing that a year into our relationship and suddenly completely change? There's no way to know these things, and under patriarchal capitalism men are under constant social pressure to gain these behaviors and traits. So a system that claims to give even the slightest insight into who you can trust to be a good partner offers a huge psychological comfort.