Philippa Mansor
Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney, Sydney, Australia

Popular Culture Astrology in the 21st Century: From Cyberspace to Outer Space

This paper explores the cultural contexts of astrology through analysis of the uneven social effects of today’s access to information and communication in cyberspace. The longstanding divide between intrafield virtuoustic (professional serious) astrology practices, and astrology produced for non-specialist mass audiences might today be bridged through projects like Wikipedia and astrology-specific internet sites. Higher-quality astrology information becomes increasingly accessible to significantly extended audiences, at the same time as today’s mass media is also radically extended through cyberspace. Of the myriad effects of these developments, one has been that new media and popular culture associations between astrology and astronomy are re-emphasised. Multiple formal and informal reiterations of astrology and astronomy tend to portray them as gendered (astronomy = male/astrology = female) inter-connected myth-caricatures, that circulate as ‘mega-spectacle.’ These inter-connections have been demonstrated through two recent ‘astronomy’ multi-media events. One, the 2009 re-enactment of the 1969 Moon landing, and the other, the cultural reception of the International Astronomical Union’s 2006 decision to demote Pluto from ‘planet’ to ‘dwarf planet’ status. Popular culture iterations of both play out across the same themes, of exploration, discovery and conquest into the realms of the heretofore unknown.

Philippa Mansor is a postgraduate student at the Centre for Cultural Research at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. Her dissertation investigates the cultural contexts of astrology today to illuminate the new intrafield emphasis on traditional approaches to practice. Other research interests include inter-cultural relations and the social impacts of various forms of globalisation.