i am the token anti-astrology person in my queer friend circles. i have the benefit of being a pretty good counterexample. i went to school with a person who was born 6 minutes after me, in neighboring rooms of the same wing of the same hospital. our star charts are basically identical, but our personalities, goals, temperaments, etc are nothing alike. growing up, this was just a fun coincidence our parents would joke about at school functions, but once i encountered people who genuinely did believe that a person's star charts have a predictive quality, it became really useful information.

but regardless of whether astrology is real or not, i think belief in it can do real harm, in the same way that many unjustified beliefs can. i grew up in an oppressive evangelical conservative christian environment, so i have a lot of nuanced and complex feelings about this kind of magical thinking, which is endemic to that environment albeit in a different form. several people i know who escaped from those same circles ended up getting into astrology, tarot, and other supposed forms of divination, and i have observed a lot of the same unhealthy behaviors around them as were present in the people i knew in the church, as well as people who are into this stuff who were never in the church. in the church, i saw people break off promising, healthy relationships because they didn't want to be "unequally yoked" (the religious jargon term in these circles for being in a relationship with someone who does not share your belief system) and end up lonely and hurting for years as a result. similarly i've seen my astrology friends break off relationships due to supposedly incompatible star signs, to the same effect. i've seen people be pressured by church leaders into making drastic life decisions, often abandoning talents, hobbies, or life goals because "nothing should be more important to you than god", and i've seen people make similarly drastic life-altering decisions on the basis of a palm reading, a tarot spread, or a dire horoscope.

i think the best argument for this kind of thing, and a defense i've heard raised by many people who do engage with these beliefs and practices (including my own partner), is that it can act as a kind of sounding board to help amplify and untangle one's own thoughts and feelings on a subject. this is something i can sympathize with to a degree. i am the kind of person who is easily paralyzed when i have to make a choice among several competing options. for a while, i used to carry a die with me so i could break through these feelings of indecision by just picking a choice at random. however, as i used this method, i noticed that there were times where i would roll the die, and then be unhappy at the result - a sign that i really did have an opinion, but one that i wasn't able to understand or acknowledge until i saw the die select a different option for me. if someone is engaging with astrology or other forms of magical thinking on this level - as a tool for greater self-knowledge, in which the real lived experience of the self overrides any notions of supposed authority of the unjustified belief - then i think it can be useful. the problem is in the way that the concept of "spiritual authority" is used to control human behavior - that absolutely does real harm, regardless of if the authority in question is a church elder, an astrologer, a cartomancer, a book, etc.