(2 of 2)
Astrology retains its odd seductive powers, like the light from a dead star. Human nature loves the inside track. The American character alternates between Ahab and Starbuck -- the grandiose obsessive and the commonsense skeptic. Astrology plays to the Ahab. It offers a seeing of the unseen, and hears pitches of significance that the ear cannot detect. An elaborate counterworld whispers its order into the human mess.
Today the crystals of the New Age glisten. Alien life-forms taxi in upon the mystic Nazca landing strips of the Andes. The stones at Stonehenge are the cuff links of the gods. Ronald Reagan is an Aquarian, and by the astrological rules, we are in for 2,000 more years of that age.
Saul Bellow once wrote that everyone needs memories. They keep "the wolf of insignificance from the door." Sometimes astrology is better than memory at defeating the wolves of the meaningless. The zodiac rains down portents. The fillings of astrology's teeth pick up radio stations from Mars, with their Gypsy music.
It is hard to tune in to the odd little frequency in the Reagans that beams in the astrological. Or difficult to know how to respond to it -- if it requires response. Astrology is harmless, it is an entertainment. Whatever its former glories, it seems now a five-and-dime glimpse of the cosmos. Still, astrology has a certain sidelong, irrational prestige. Life is more interesting when the horoscope arouses the mind for a moment with a promise or a warning, when it seems that a universal order is at work and that one can manipulate fate by reading the signs. Of course, as the astronomer Carl Sagan points out, in a reduction to absurdity, the gravitational pull of the obstetrician would have far greater influence at a child's birth than the tug of a distant planet. Still, one hungers for the mystic connection, the enveloping weave of synchronicities.
The Christian, who believes in divine providence, is bound to reject the idea that the motions of stars and planets govern human affairs. The Fundamentalist wonders what such a muscular Christian as Reagan is up to when he entertains the false gods of ancient Babylon.
But perhaps Reagan's astrology is merely the metaphysical equivalent of his jelly beans.