The world’s greatest threat: Cancer. Not the disease, the zodiac sign. Their mood swings give me whiplash, and their need to tear up over every little inconvenience makes it hard to have an actual conversation with them. 

If you’re an offended Cancer reading this, go cry about it. And if you’re adamant that zodiac signs are a myth, (a) you’re probably a hard-headed fire sign and (b) you may be surprised to learn that I was just like you. Over quarantine, I saw one TikTok on astrology that sent me down a rabbit-hole that I’m still trying to climb my way out of. I figured out the rest of my astrology chart and spent hours analyzing it, trying to find truth in something I initially thought was a joke. And guess what? My chart was almost spot on. 

I’m eager to please, like my Libra Venus says, I’m straight-to-the-point, a trait connected to my Scorpio Mercury and I have trouble letting things go, thanks to my Cancer moon. I was a little creeped out since my chart described me so well, but my curiosity compelled me to analyze my friends and family’s charts. So I did. After interrogating people for the time, date and place of their births, I let them look over their placements while I sat back with a smirk. Every single time they found a ring of truth in their chart, and every single time I would say “I told you so,” (this know-it-all trait I blame on my Capricorn rising). 

I often see people label teenage girls who buy into astrology as gullible, but keep in mind this belief is way older than you. Astrology is the study of the movements of the sun and stars, as well as how they influence human affairs. This practice dates back to the Babylonians in ancient Mesopotamia around 1500 BC. Later, during the Hellinistic period, Greeks combined the Babylonians’ beliefs with Egyptian tradition to create horoscopic astrology. Even ancient Chinese and Indian cultures created their own form of the zodiacs. See? Your weekly horoscopes actually have centuries worth of history.