I READ MY horoscope every day. Wait, it gets worse! I know my astrological profile, and those of all my friends. I believe my tendency towards obsessive hygenie and nagginess comes from having Mars and Venus in Virgo. I find myself thinking horrible thoughts like, "Yes, well, perfectly understandable as his ascendant is in Cancer!" and think my moon in Pisces makes me somewhat psychic. It's all very embarassing.

The late, great Douglas Adams, who passed away bounding on a treadmill in California several years ago- a very classy way to take your ticket out, I feel- once said that he wrote this passage as the only possible way to get his friends to stop mocking him for reading his horoscope every morning. It's brilliant and, to my mind, the ultimate answer to astrology (and to life, the universe, and everything):

From Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams, p.19:

"I know astrology isn't a science," said Gail. "Of
course it isn't. It's just an arbitrary set of rules like chess or
tennis or - what's that strange thing you British play?"

"Er, cricket? Self-loathing?"

"Parliamentary democracy. The rules just kind of got there. They don't make any kind of sense except in terms of themselves. But when you start to exercise those rules, all sorts of processes start to happen and you start to find out all sorts of stuff about people. In astrology the rules happen to be about stars and planets, but they could be about ducks and drakes for all the difference it would make. It's just a way of thinking about a problem which lets the shape of that problem begin to emerge. The more rules, the tinier the rules, the more arbitrary they are, the better. It's like throwing a handful of fine graphite dust on a piece of paper to see where the hidden indentations are. It lets you see the words that were written on the piece of paper above it that's now been taken away and hidden. The graphite's not important. It's just the means of revealing their indentations. So you see, astrology's nothing to do with astronomy. It's just got to do with people thinking about people."

If you are now curious about your own chart, I recommend the excellent Astro.com, which has the added benefit of being quite free. Go to 'Free Horoscopes' at the top and then 'Personal Portrait'. You will, at the very least, be entertained. I like to add in my friends for comparison and of course you must share your findings here!