Shakespeare Was Right About The Stars

Despite the premonitions of a birth chart and star sign calendar, your personality is a clay mould that you shape every day by your thoughts, emotions and actions

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My mom gave birth to me at 17 on 1st October 1998 at 2:38 AM. According to Astrosofa.com, this means I’m a zodiac sign Libra with a Leo Ascendant and a moon sign of Aquarius. I have no idea what any of this means.

My approach to Astrology is the same as my regard for anything that I have no passion for: don’t yuck anyone’s yum. It’s not a poetic philosophy, but our world is laden with cruelty, judgements and harsh realities. Any belief that makes life a little more bearable for someone without hurting anyone else gets a pass in my book. That said, I’m a cynic. Astrology is simultaneously so vague as to be meaningless and so general as to be all-encompassing. It’s maddening. I’ve found a home in another cynic: William Shakespeare.

As a former English Literature student, I’ve spent an excessive amount of time combing through Shakespeare’s writing, analyzing even the finest detail to find some hidden metapurpose. The 16th-century playwright and poet’s body of work frequently juxtaposed the competing motifs of determinism and individual liberty. His sonnets and plays…