Starry eyed

Astrology for dummies

By Jerry Fraser

I think I was in high school when I read Sun Signs, by Linda Goodman, which would have meant the 1960s, but it may have been a year or two later.

In any case, the book enjoyed phenomenal success, and Americans so embittered by Vietnam and race riots that they had elected Richard Nixon their president became the apostles of the age of Aquarius.

It wasn't enough that people who mere months before hadn't known their own sign could now tell you yours at the mere mention of your birthday. Indeed, they now assumed they knew all there was to know about you -- and for that matter, about everyone else.

"Fewer people are born in Aries than in any other sign," the mother of a friend, an otherwise intelligent and thoughtful woman, once told me gravely. "And frankly, it's a very good thing."

Of course, none of her children were Aries, and fortunately for me, neither was I.

On the other hand, being a Sagittarius hasn't always been the answer. I once spent several quality hours with a hippie chick who found men, or boys, born under the sign of the archer irresistible. But when I popped the question -- "Your van or mine?" -- my world came crashing down.

"Are you gay?" she asked.

"Not likely," I said.

"Too bad," she said. "Fags are in. See you later."

All of this is by way of saying, decades later, that I am amused by people who make time each day to study their horoscopes, and by characters like the Cosmic Muffin, and by newspapers like the Phoenix, with its "Moon Signs" column.

(What is the point of moon signs? Are they a sop to the counterculture?)

Resistance is futile. Man has always strived to see what fate had in store, with about the same luck I had with hippie chicks.

Students of ancient history will recall the oracle at Delphi. Here priests interpreted the strange utterances of the woman Pythia, believing she spoke for the god Apollo. In one instance, the priests told Croesus that if he invaded the kingdom of Cappadocia, in Asia Minor, he would bring ruin to an empire. Emboldened, he marched. But his legions were smeared, and the empire Croesus brought ruin to was his own.

More recent patrons of fortunetellers have not fared much better, among them an aunt forever vexed by her husband's behavior.

She was always visiting one seer or another, regaling each with tales of her husband's faults, which included a prodigious thirst for cheap whiskey and a two-carton-a-week Pall Mall habit.

The fortunetellers, who used Tarot cards and palm lines to divine the future, assured her that uncle's time was drawing nigh, given his regrettable addictions. "Do visit again," they solemnly advised, the inference being, "and we'll set a date." (It's not hard to predict the future of fortunetellers who don't tell their clients what they want to hear.)

Sadly, the aunt awoke one morning with a pain in her back and was dead in a matter of minutes. Uncle sold out and moved to Florida, where accompanied by his cigarettes, whiskey, and another woman, he lived out his golden years.

I have never been tempted to go seek the advice of a fortuneteller, although my wife swears hers predicted we would go to Florida in the fall of 1991.

Imagine that.

I did, however, consent to have an astrological chart done by a California schoolteacher who was the stepdaughter of a friend. The consultation took place in Ogunquit over a dozen or so rum and Cokes in a restaurant known, depending on the condition you were when you left, as the Old Cove Steak House, the Night Tripper, or the Crisco Disco.

Charting, as I am sure the avant garde readers of the Phoenix know, goes far beyond the breadth of horoscopes, because the astrologer knows the latitude and longitude of your birth and the precise time at which you were born. This is then superimposed on a representation of the universe that extends, in my case, from Mount Sinai Hospital in New York to globular clusters light years away, and just like that your life is a fait accompli.

Well, not quite accompli. It seems I have Pluto in the second house, which indicates "a driving ambition to make money." (That must explain why I chose the fishing business, and then left to write for newspapers.)

For that matter, you can rest assured that my "highly developed maternal instincts" and longing to excel at cooking and other "domestic chores" have yet to flower; nor has my predilection for older women with "material assets" -- although I would be willing to nurture that one along.

Lastly, I am told that although I have "strong sex drives and a tendency to be kinky" (let's keep that between us), I often require "verbal stimulation."

Is that the same as phone sex? n

Jerry Fraser can be reached at cavu@cybertours.com.