Mercury in retro-gayde

It was finally time.

I took a deep breath and prepared myself.

“Mom, listen. I know you might have suspected this already, but I need to tell you something. It’s been put off for too long.” I started.

She nodded.

“Mom, I’m… an astrologer.”

So began the conversation in which I came out as into astrology. Oh, you thought I was going to say gay? No, my mom has known that for years, and so does anyone who spends more than five minutes with me. But both are part of why I have been so excited for Barnard Student Life’s Queer Astrology event on Monday.

The event was originally scheduled to occur over a month ago, but was postponed due to snow. Then, the new date was postponed again to a second snow day. Considering the fact that I had been planning on meeting my soulmate at this event, I couldn’t help but wonder whether it just wasn’t written in the stars, so to speak. But Mother Nature is probably queer, right? I was sure it was just because she knew that bringing a bunch of queer people together to talk about astrology would just be too powerful.

Anyway, the event did finally happen! And it was everything I could have imagined. It included pin-making with cutouts of different astrological signs (I came home with a sweet crab pin), coloring pages with designs of symbols associated with the different signs, and food!

Eve Kausch, Barnard ‘18, a Student Life employee, and mastermind behind Queer Astrology, introduced the event. We all went around, introduced ourselves – zodiac signs included, of course – and talked about the significance we feel astrology has in the queer community.

The rest of the event was largely informal discussions about queerness and trying to understand our charts. As a Cancer sun, Aquarius moon, and Scorpio rising, I was really hoping to find a Virgo or another Cancer to fall madly in love with, but no worries. Jansel Murad, Barnard ‘18, was there with a massive level of astrology knowledge and reading people’s charts. She told me that I have a very queer chart, so getting confirmation of that was super validating. I didn’t find my soulmate, but I did spend time with some people I’m friends with despite our lack of compatibility.

Overall, the event was just a nice chance to be with other queer folks and have a space to discuss our mutual interests. “I’m appreciative of the casual, fun space that these meetups can be for queer people to come and talk about things they have in common like astrology,” said Eve, who planned the event. “I think this is less a really serious event about astrology. For my friend group, all of the queer people are obsessed with the astrology and it’s like, why is that?”

We didn’t come to any conclusions on the answer to this question – but it was good to spend time with people who shared these interests. And, because Admitted Students Weekend was just finishing up, there was even a prospective student there who was hopefully convinced to come here by how gay it is. Thank you to Student Life, and to whoever or whatever controls the weather for finally letting this happen.