May 2024: Horoscopes for Moderns
Elvis Has Left the Building
You’re reading WOODRUFF. I cover the convergence of pop culture, psychology, and astrology. Join my entourage of subscribers—you’ve been missed.
I’VE WRITTEN SUN SIGN horoscopes for hundreds of years. My first column appeared in 1974 when I was still in high school, and I assisted the editors of Educational Astrology’s monthly journal. Llewellyn George had started the organization sometime in the 1940s, his attempt to create something with the same gravitas as the East Coast’s AFA. The pub staff thought it was novel to have a teen on board and eventually convinced me to deliver Sun sign presentations at their monthly dinners held in a hotel ballroom in LA. I was sort of like the Tom Thumb of the SoCal astro community.
My technique is different from how most Sun sign columns are created. Based on the solar chart, the usual method places the Sun on the ascendant, and the astrologer reads the transits through the solar houses. I know some astrologers, like Michael Lutin, swear by this approach, but for me, it never jibed with what became, over time, the divinatory style I’d created.
How did that style work? Well, I’d focus solely on the transits for the month, with my focus on the Sun sign. IOW: What planet made what aspect to the solar point in the chart? I also used ‘cuttings’ or ‘bibliomancy’ (the term is derived from the Greek words ‘biblio,’ meaning book, and ‘manteia,’ meaning divination.) Also, the Tarot. Also, whatever sort of reveries or dream vestiges from the night before were still active in my day. Those latter techniques were for inspiration, and their content often did not make it into the Sun sign forecast. They put me in a particular state of mind for composing the columns.
Last month, I decided that May would be my final month of Sun sign scribing. Why? I’m no longer interested in preparing them; that’s the short answer. Everything in life has its cycle, and blah blah. One of the ‘problems’ for Moon in Scorpio people (me) is that their measures have moved beyond the point of no return when they are done with something. They run or burn things down into the ground. I’ve been like this my entire life. To revisit a fallow subject would be like attempting to uncook a steak.
The good news: I want to explore other modes of astro-divination that are more unfettered and unique. These will involve numbers and Zodiac signs (and maybe the Tarot), but not in the old-school way. And there will be a lot of bibliomancy because, well, if you toured my house, it’s like living in a metropolis library. And I have to do something with all of those books.
I hope this doesn’t disappoint too many of you. I know some regular subscribers bailed when I stopped doing the quarterly Tarot draws a year ago. Fair enough. However, (unintended titillation) I am considering bringing the one-card draws back in a different, more ‘live’ form, perhaps using a streaming video set-up or just inviting 50 or 60 of you into my home for a sleepover while discussing further signs of the End of Western civilization. We’ll see. 😭😂
Kulture Klatch
TWO FAWNS IN MY DRIVEWAY THIS WEEK:
WHAT I’M WATCHING THIS WEEK: I love Swedish director/writer Ruben Östlund’s projects. His Triangle of Sadness was unlike anything I’d seen in cinema last year. And so I decided to revisit his 2014 psychological black comedy Force Majeure. It is the story of a Swedish family on a luxury ski trip (he likes putting his characters in extravagant vacation settings). A bizarre semi-catastrophe precipitates the family’s emotional collapse before they reestablish their bonds after two other near-disasters. The lesson here is that freakish disruptions are good for the soul. You must trust Östlund’s elongated takes; otherwise, your old manner of watching movies will balk, and you’ll miss the wild kick amidst the meandering pace.
WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK: Reporter/podcaster Kara Swisher’s Burn Book: A Tech Love Story. Goddamn, there are so many good excerpts about tech-bro hideousness. I got deep satisfaction reveling in her pillories. If you thought Elon Musk was a puerile megalomaniac, wait until you get Swisher’s psychoanalytic take. And I couldn’t agree more that Mark Zuckerberg is “one of the most carelessly dangerous men in the history of technology who didn’t even know it.”
WHAT I’M LISTENING TO THIS WEEK: I’ve added about 42 new tracks to my 2024 Spotify playlist Titanica. Follow along here and set playback to ‘shuffle.’