People often ask me if newspaper horoscopes are real or fake. One out of three people in the US regularly reads their horoscope or has had a consultation with an astrologer. But for something so popular, astrology is still highly misunderstood. And most of the insiders in the industry, who actually WRITE newspaper horoscopes, keep mum about what is really going on.

Heck, many of the astrologers whose daily horoscopes still appear in newspapers and magazines are dead, yet their names are still attached to their columns. Sydney Omar, Joyce Jillson, and Athena Starwoman are three popular astrology columnists who have passed away, yet their columns still appear in various publications. Usually, their columns are simply taken over by a ghostwriter - who is likely to have been writing them all along. Do you really think Sydney Omar was writing twelve 300 page astrology guides, one for each of the signs, every year (you may have seen those books on the bookshelves in Barnes and Noble or Borders.) Keep in mind he was also supposed to have been writing daily horoscope columns at the same time - 30 or more per month. Heck, if he had a staff of twenty working for him, I don't think anybody would blame him.

I can vouch for the fact that writing daily astrology columns is a lot of work. During the dot.com boom I was writing daily, weekly, and monthly columns for a huge group of publications, both online and in magazines. For over two years I was writing over 120 columns a month. I did NOT have a staff of 20, and it was an almost insurmountable amount of work.

Given that horoscope writing is often handed down to an underling or someone who has no experience with astrology, people have every reason to be skeptical about the accuracy of horoscopes. But most people find them amusing and keep reading on anyway.

The Truth About Daily Horoscopes

I think part of the reason why reading a horoscope is so fun is that, at their best, astrology columns (of the type syndicated in most newspapers) can act as a "synchronicity" - reflecting back the intentions and energies you're focused on at the moment.

At their worst, they are a nasty pile of doom and gloom, a form of quasi-soothsaying (without the "sooth", which is an old term for the word "truth!")

I feel qualified to critique the astrology world, ya see, because I'm a self-syndicated astrology columnist myself.  My sassy Lipstick Mystic Stars™ horoscopes run in a lot of city papers across North America, including Philadelphia Weekly, Access Atlanta, and Core Weekly of Madison, Wisconsin. I also write a weekly romantic astrology column called Romance Planet for The Chicago Tribune's Redeye.

How did a nice girl like me end up writing astrology columns for a living? Well, I've been an astrology student for ages. I was the type of kid who knew the astrology sign of every other student in school and has kept track of the astrology information on every person she's ever known, just about. So a part of my brain has always been focused on developing pattern recognition skills "live time," analyzing behavioral trends week to week and cross-checking them against what is happening with the planets.

But astrology is just one tool that can help you understand the spiritual energies that affect us. I've never considered astrology to be all that important in the larger context of spiritual development. I will admit that I'm continually fascinated by how we all respond to energy, and the electromagnetic effects stirred up by the planets really DO seem to impact upon global trends, emotional ups and downs, and other personal trends. 

But there is a real danger in getting too addicted to astrology as an explanation for everything. I firmly believe that we are spiritually sovereign beings, and it's up to us how we respond to the energies that affect us. No astrological trend has to be negative, even those squares and oppositions most astrologers get so worked up about. It's a matter of energy management and learning to optimize what you're doing for maximum flow.

What It's Like Writing A Newspaper Horoscope Column

When I made the switch from working full-time in my own psychic counselling practice to making a living as a freelance writer, it was natural to seek writing gigs where I could use knowledge I'd spent years accumulating. And, although I wrote for free as a columnist for scads of holistic mags and spiritual publications, astrology writing paid the "big bucks."  Well, more bucks than other things, anyway.

I purposefully set out to create a sassy, contemporary column of the type not normally seen in today's arts weeklies.  Rob Brezny does a great job with his feel-good, hippie Free Will Astrology Column (believe me, I'm a long-time admirer.)  But other than his material, most of what is out there is boring, dull, and definitely "your grandmother's horoscopes."

I wanted to be the first astrologer to incorporate pop cultural news into daily trends analysis. So now I'll make a parallel, say, between some ludicrous thing surfacing in the news about Britney Spears, something that has everybody obsessed in that tribal, "lock-step," brainwashed way that most people absorb celebrity gossip, and craft an analogy about what you might be going through in a given week in relation to that news trend. If you're having a doofy "KFed" moment (falling into the delusional belief that you're "all that" just because you're married to Britney, like her hubby Kevin Federline,) I'm going to call you on it in a horoscope.

My material is purposefully edgy and snarky, sort of a cross between Jon Stewart's The Daily Show and an inverted Rob Brezny.

Writing horoscopes is a bizarre, bizarre thing. Imagine having to do justice to complicated energy trends that the planets are stirring up in, say, 60 - 95 words. By its very nature, it's impossible to do. I do sit down and carefully examine the astrological trends for a given week. After that I sort of set that aside, let those patterns percolate through my brain, and then use them as a takeoff point to write whatever Spirit inspires me to do in the moment. At the very least, I hope to write stuff that makes people laugh. And, if there is any secondary wisdom that the reader can take home about energy trends in their lives, that's cool, too.  But you can't really expect to convey too much depth within the confines of a newspaper column.

So I cover the more complex stuff here on my website or in other publications that allow me to write longer pieces about the more spiritual aspects of a given week or month. It's Your Life is a high end glossy mag that is carried in spas and gyms around the country; this is one place that allows me to do more in depth trends analysis pieces highlighting trends from more of a metaphysical perspective.

Sometimes, those synchronicities can really happen, and what an astrologer has written transcends the limitations of the medium and zaps you with some good vibes. That's what I keep aiming for, anyway! So stay tuned to this space for more of my periodic astro-updates.

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