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"She used classifications for personal shorthand on how she thinks about people." I do not know how your friend did it exactly, but my main experience with peo

"She used classifications for personal shorthand on how she thinks about people." I do not know how your friend did it exactly, but my main experience with people who are into astrology is different - they get told by the astrological models/dogma on how to think of people and combination of people. "I cannot be with this person, he is a lion and I am [whatever]" "Why are you together, your signs do not match each other" In other words, they "help" by simplifying things. Avoiding thinking to make decisions. But in my experience that always hurt them in the long run. And it probably destroyed many relationships as people went with the simple astrological explanation, instead of a real analysis what went wrong. Or rather, it often went wrong, because of negative self fullfulling prophecy.

blue1 5y ago
Years ago I studied astrology quite a lot. I've never been too interested in the divinatory side, and the pop-level generalizations such as those you cited are not even worth commenting. Instead I, like the OP's friend, think it's a rather interesting and deep system of symbols and archetypes. A set of lenses, if you want. Sometimes, looking at the reality through a certain lens yields interesting insights.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  "Sometimes, looking at the reality through a certain lens yields interesting insights. " I surely agree to that. But your lenses can also give you a distorted, faulty view of reality. And many people go with that, because it looks nicer.
- splistud 5y ago
NikolaNovak 5y ago
Oh I agree, that's been vast majority of my experience too. That's why I was surprised when I paid attention and realized my friend would meet somebody and observe and classify them as a "taurus with a bit of gemini" (or whatever) regardless if what their actual birth sign is. It transformed it into a observational classification system! To her, calling somebody Capricorn is like somebody else observing "this person looks like INTJ" or "Intuitive on disc model" or whatever. It was fascinating :)
- CRConrad 5y ago
  So what you're saying is basically that astrology kind of works, but it works best if you don't know exactly when (and where) people are born... Heh.

blue1 5y ago

Years ago I studied astrology quite a lot. I've never been too interested in the divinatory side, and the pop-level generalizations such as those you cited are not even worth commenting. Instead I, like the OP's friend, think it's a rather interesting and deep system of symbols and archetypes. A set of lenses, if you want. Sometimes, looking at the reality through a certain lens yields interesting insights.

hutzlibu 5y ago
"Sometimes, looking at the reality through a certain lens yields interesting insights. " I surely agree to that. But your lenses can also give you a distorted, faulty view of reality. And many people go with that, because it looks nicer.
splistud 5y ago

NikolaNovak 5y ago

Oh I agree, that's been vast majority of my experience too. That's why I was surprised when I paid attention and realized my friend would meet somebody and observe and classify them as a "taurus with a bit of gemini" (or whatever) regardless if what their actual birth sign is. It transformed it into a observational classification system! To her, calling somebody Capricorn is like somebody else observing "this person looks like INTJ" or "Intuitive on disc model" or whatever. It was fascinating :)

CRConrad 5y ago
So what you're saying is basically that astrology kind of works, but it works best if you don't know exactly when (and where) people are born... Heh.