ABSTRACT
The horoscope column is a familiar part of most modern newspapers, and has been so for half a century. Its popularity is huge, if difficult to quantify: the best we can say is that somewhere between 25 per cent and 70 per cent of the adult population of most western countries read horoscope columns, although with varying frequencies (Campion 2004, chapter 11). According to the opinion pollsters, Gallup (1979, p.185), ‘Attesting to the popularity of astrology in the United States today is the fact that astrology columns are carried by 1,200 of the nation’s 1,750 daily newspapers’. The horoscope column is considered an essential feature of most modern media aimed at a mass audience and I have been told by a number of editors that the first freelance contributor to be hired for the launch of a new women’s magazine is the astrologer. The journalist and religious commentator Anne Atkins stated in 1999 that, in her opinion, the horoscope column is the most popular piece in any newspaper, with the agony aunt coming a close second (Atkins 1999). Even if this latter claim is an exaggeration, every single magazine aimed at women and teenage girls in the UK carries a horoscope column. The ‘tabloid’ newspapers, the Daily Mail, Daily Express, Daily Mirror, Daily Star and Sun all carry daily horoscopes. The greatest space devoted to any astrologer is given to Jonathan Cainer currently with the Daily Mail; in the 1990s Cainer was allocated an unprecedented whole page in the Daily Mirror to publish his column and its associated features. On Sunday the publication of horoscopes extends from the tabloids to the upmarket ‘broadsheets’ including the Sunday Times, Independent on Sunday, Sunday Telegraph and Observer. The last three papers, though, have an uneasy relationship with astrology, either giving it minimal space and promotion (Independent on Sunday), running a spoof column to compete with the genuine one (Telegraph) or periodically cancelling their column (Observer). They also tend to publish sceptical pieces, contemptuous of popular interest in astrology (for example, Lawson 1996). At the level of mass popular culture represented by the tabloid newspapers and women’s magazines, though, sun-sign astrology is considered an essential ingredient.
