Nurture and protect your boundaries today. Try to have realistic expectations. Shut off your phone for as long as you can. This is just some of the friendly – and occasionally terrifying – advice that the astrology app Co-Star has given me over the past week, via its daily “Your Day At A Glance” push notifications.
If you haven’t downloaded Co-Star yourself, you’ve probably seen the screenshots on your Instagram Stories. In fact, the app, launched in 2017, has become so popular that it received another $5 million (£3.9 million) boost in investment last April, proof that horoscopes are big business.
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“We’re taking [astrology] into the digital age,” Co-Star’s CEO and co-founder Banu Guler tells Miss Vogue, just a week after we launched our own Horoscopes. The app uses AI technology to generate a “hyper-personalised” daily astrological reading, based on your exact date, time and place of birth. “We create a map of the entire solar system at the moment you were born, using NASA data,” Guler explains. The app then translates that into an easily digestible horoscope, designed to replicate the way a friend would give you advice. “We try to make the voice of the brand reflect how we talk to each other in real life,” says the Co-Star CEO. “[It’s] something really authentic.”
That approach has also seen the rise of horoscopes in China, Japan and India. Chinese astrology sensation Qiqi (she has over 12 million followers on social media), notes that “Zhouyi, the traditional Chinese way of fate prediction, is really difficult to learn. Western horoscopes are more entertaining. People are interested in the stories behind them.” Although most of her followers consider horoscopes to be light-hearted fun, others feel these insights can really inform their day. “They realise it is actually quite precise and useful for guiding their life,” she says. In the West, astrologers like Susan Miller have considerable following too; her celebrity fans include the likes of Pharrell Williams and Alexa Chung.
Guler puts the popularity of her app – predominantly among 20-something, city-living women – down to people wanting to understand themselves, and those around them, on a deeper level (Co-Star allows you to see how compatible your astrological readings are with your friends and co-workers on any given day, too.) “Astrology gives you this really rich picture of not only who you are, but also who other people are, and how you interact in all these different spheres of life.”
Read more: What Your Zodiac Sign Says About How You Like to Have Sex
Dating is one of these spheres. Last December, the matchmaking app Bumble launched a tool allowing users to filter potential dates by star sign. “It's the most popular feature that we've launched, ever,” says Louise Troen, Bumble’s vice-president of international marketing and communications. “It’s the most commonly used filter in every single market. I think it's because people are looking for deeper connections and astrology lends itself to that.”
Troen believes star signs are a “shorthand” for personality types. “It's a really easy way to say ‘These are the kinds of things I'm like as a person,’” she explains. “Compatibility comes down to personality traits and astrology plays into understanding personality traits.”
Former model Juliana McCarthy turned to astrology precisely for that reason, and she’s now written a book on the subject, The Stars Within You: A Modern Guide to Astrology. “I had all these complexities, but they were described by my astrological chart exactly,” she says, explaining that she is a Virgo sun, Virgo rising and Aquarius moon. “My basic personality is shy and affectionate; Virgo traits. But then my more emotional self, or the self that shows up in my personal relationships, is this really rebellious Aquarian type.”
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How seriously do people take their horoscopes? “It's not like [people say] ‘I'm a true believer.’ I feel [there’s] this attitude of ‘This is useful information for me,’” McCarthy responds. “It just resonates so much that they stop questioning it.” She adds that millennials are more likely to see the value of horoscopes. “I call them [the] Harry Potter generation,” she says. “They're comfortable with the mystical; they don't need reconditioning the way that older generations do.”
At a time of tremendous political upheaval, it is no surprise so many of us are turning to astrology. “Through astrology [people can] not only make sense of what's happening in the collective, but make sense of what our purpose is in this whole mess,” McCarthy says, pointing to the move away from organised religion. “It's really important that humans have spirituality.”
One thing is certain: horoscopes will continue to stand the test of time, the world over. “Astrology has been around for 2,500 years because it's a really material tool to check in with yourself, build stronger relationships and make sense of chaos,” says Guler. “All of those things are incredibly important."
