There are some things, practices, beliefs and rather pitiful notions of nationalist or ethnic pride – all of which fit neatly under a chapeau of conspiracy theories – that will be the downfall of society. The one that comes to mind early is the “cure” for Covid-19 that Madagascar put forward, and, because Madagascar is an African country, we were told it had to be taken seriously, that it would work, and any attempts at scientific testing were part of an anti-African conspiracy.

Another is the view that prayer would stop the virus from spreading, and heal those already infected. I should confess I have followed only the Abrahamic religions, most especially the Christians and the Muslims. Let me, once again, put my head above the parapet, and say that both the above should probably be considered as rubbish; that is, until scientific tests have proven that the Old Testament, the Quran or a traditional African potion, can, actually, eradicate the virus, and cure the ill. 

As if that is not confusing enough, enter the astrologers, the Deepak Chopra followers, and Rumi’s true believers (as if poetry has ever achieved anything)… These folk have been lurking in the background, but poke them with a stick and they will respond with the most dramatic lexical legerdemain, which usually loses me when they talk about something rising, or something else is in the house of something else… It does my head in. Their greatest feat is post-hoc (ergo propter hoc) reasoning.

I had a conversation with an astrologer recently, who very confidently explained the causes or celestial states of affairs that gave rise to the Covid-19 pandemic in South Africa. Without missing a beat she went on to explain the start of the First World War and… Whoa! I had to stop her. I happen to know what Gavrilo Princip did on 28 June 1914; that was the spark that started the First World War.

Astrologers know things because they’ve already happened

The astrologist I spoke to (I will withhold her name but I do have a recording of the discussion if anyone is interested) explained that astrology is a “powerful tool that we can use for healing, for transformation in our own lives, and it can also be a key that can unlock a greater spiritual connection to the universe”. Then she explained how each individual’s “sun sign” is positioned by the time we were born in relation (“along the ecliptic”) to where the sun was at a particular time. She described the sun as “a big clock up in the sky which registers the minute of the exact positions of the planets and everything… the moment we take our first breath. And each planet represents different types of energy that combine, compete and conspire to make us the person that we are.” 

The planets, she explained, are the actors in the play that make us what we are, or who we are. Just like the nature vs nurture debate is rendered obsolete, because Uranus has an itch. Before we reach for the PE-Shark Liver Oil-Cocoa Butter suppository, there are “houses” which deal with activities around us. Now it gets really complicated (convoluted?)

Well, said I, pretending to know something about astronomy (not astrology), Pluto was downgraded from planetary status by the International Astronomical Union in 2006. That must have upped the shit-housery among astrologers, I said. She ignored me, but I wanted to know if astrologers had a view on the Covid-19 pandemic. She was happy to provide an explanation. I immediately regretted asking the question. And so began the wilful obscurantism I usually associate with postmodernists.

“What actually happened this year, we had two planets that formed a conjunction, and the planets were Saturn and Pluto. A conjunction is when important energies are very close together, this happened already in January, but it’s going to be with us for three years…. This first year will probably be the worst. Then we will still feel the effects of it for another two years. This conjunction, it’s a power operating. It can be harmonious… it depends on which planets are involved. In layman’s terms, these two very powerful planets will be sending frequencies to Earth. To facilitate changes to help us evolve.”

How often does this happen, I asked?

“This happens every 30-33 years… um… can even go up to 40 years… The last time it happened, we had quite a lot of important things. In 1914 we had the start of the First World War, then in January 1518 [something to do with Martin Luther]… that also started the reformation. We had it in 1947… the Cold War began; the International Monetary Fund was formed; India and Pakistan became independent; the CIA was established, and in 1982 there was a stock market crash [Kuwait’s unofficial Souk Al-Manakh stock market crash]… it’s major stuff we’re talking about it’s not small things,” she averred.

So how does all of this (clearly post-hoc reasoning) help us understand the impact of Covid-19 on South Africa, today?

For that, she says, we have to go back to “the energy of the two planets…” Saturn is the keeper of the records. “Saturn is our teacher. We have to follow what it has come to teach us. No matter how unpleasant the transit is at the time, it represents what we really want in our lives, and it’s helping us to get it… it brings about manifestations, and the losses that it brings about… are things that we don’t need. We think we need it, but we don’t need it.”

It is really difficult to grab hold and make sense of all the things the astrologer said. We can pick at some of the facts; the IMF was created at Bretton Woods in 1945, and not 1947, as she averred. But it’s the science, or the lack thereof, that is bad. I can be really obnoxious and say that astronomers really pick on the planets in our solar system when, the last time I looked at these things, in November last year, there were at least 200 billion galaxies with at least 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that’s 10 to the power of 24) planets in our universe – at least the one that is visible to us. 

Also, a conjunction between, say, Uranus and Neptune may happen once every 170, or so, years. Maybe the astrologer was talking about some other places or planets. The science stuff is exciting, and some of the best scientists have debunked the scientific basis of astrology, but it is probably too cumbersome for a daily news platform.

What is significant is the astrologist’s suggestion that Saturn is the keeper of the records, and we have to follow what it has come to teach us. No matter how unpleasant the transit is at the time, it represents what we really want in our lives, and it’s helping us to get it… it brings about manifestations, and the losses that it brings about… are things that we don’t need. We think we need it, but we don’t need it.

I am going out on a limb here and suggesting that Saturn is full of it. We don’t need or want the Covid-19 pandemic. We can do without the losses; we really don’t need it. Astrologers, like Deepak Chopra, have achieved little more than create a cult around themselves, and made a few pennies along the way. Chopra, with his diamond-encrusted spectacles has probably made a lot of pennies from his scheme. 

For now, it is probably better that we turn to actual science to find a vaccine, instead of lighting incense and humming spirituals. DM