Astrology is story-telling. The symbols in a birth chart are the raw data that allow me to start shaping a story. And I’m not the only writer who’s been drawn to this ancient art – but how can we use astrology as writers?

First we can look at our natal charts to try to figure what sort of writing that works with our astrological wiring.

JK Rowling

The most famous writer known to have used astrology is probably JK Rowling. It seems like she didn’t just dabble in it. Recently a handwritten and illustrated natal chart that she’s drawn up for a couple she met during an antenatal class came up for sale. According to the vendor of high end collectibles that sold the document for $20 000 “Rowling displays a strong knowledge of astrology, referencing texts such as the influential 15th century French work The Kalendar and Compost of Shepherds“.

She is known for writing the mega successful Harry Potter-series and then becoming a hate figure because of her combative views on trans issues.

But what does her birth chart tell us about Rowling as a writer?

Like many people who write she has several planets in Virgo, a sign that’s ruled by the messenger Mercury. Virgo placements can create an active and precise mind. Virgo can also be pedantic and overthink things and several planets in that sign could create a writer known for their intricate plots – and/or a writer who struggles with perfectionism and writer’s block. For Rowling the former seems to be more on point, she famously plots out all her books on a complicated and detailed grid pattern.

She has an influential Neptune in Scorpio in the 9th house of publishing. Here is someone who can dive into the undercurrents of society, the urges and drives of the collective consciousness and then shape what she’s picked up into stories that connect with something in the zeitgeist, stories that are published and read.

With Harry Potter she connected with a long tradition of story-telling and children’s fiction in the UK – fantasy, boarding schools and a brave orphan standing up to the forces of darkness.

Her Sun in Leo in the 6th house is able to pour a lot of energy into her work. It wants to shine, but it also wants to be of service. There is a sort of moralising tone to Harry Potter – be kind, stand up to bullies etc.

Finally Jupiter, the planet of blessings, is in the sign of the writer – Gemini – in her 4th house. Stories and story telling about home and family are part of her strengths as a writer.

The main thing that pops out to me when I look at her chart is a powerful and interesting pattern. She has a so called T-square, a dynamic and sometimes challenging aspect, between stern Saturn and the wounded healer Chiron in her first house, her Jupiter and her many planets in Virgo in the 7th house of relationships and her inner nature the Moon in the potentially tricky 8th house.

For a writer this could mean that she will be naturally good at stories about wounded heroes who set out to complete a quest that is hard and will challenge them, through this they are confronted with questions and learnings around home and family and also their relationships. But with that Moon in the 8th there is almost an obsessive quality to it, a compulsive need to exorcise demons – real or imaginary.

And perhaps that also describes the writer herself.

Eleanor Catton

This is an author who has been open about using astrology in her writing. Eleanor Catton, a young writer from New Zealand, took the literary world by storm with her second novel The Luminaries, which won the Booker prize in 2013 when she was just 28 years – making her the youngest author so far to win the prize.

The book is over 800 pages long and follows the stories of twelve men in 1860s New Zealand. These twelve men all represent the twelve signs of the zodiac. Catton also tracked the planets during the year when the novel is set and used that to inform the plot – quite a clever way to use astrology as a writer.

She has said that she became slightly obsessed with astrology when writing the novel.

Her take on it?

I like to think of the zodiac as having a lot in common with the Greek pantheon: less of a thing to be believed in, and more of a repository of cultural knowledge and history that is archetypal, and mythic, and responsive to close study.

Eleanor Catton interviewed by The Age.

So what does her birth chart tell us about what kind of story-teller she is?

There are planets and angles in Virgo, Gemini and Libra. Signs that rule communication and the arts. She has a conjunction between her Sun, her self, and Mercury, her mind, in Libra in the first house. It’s connected to her inner self, the Moon, and Jupiter in strong-willed Aquarius in the fifth house of creativity and creative projects. She also has Venus and Mars in the 12th house of the subconscious in meticulous Virgo.

The placement that really stands out to me is her Chiron, our core wound but also a point that can stand for healing, right on top of her Midheaven – the highest point in the sky when she was born, signifying our career or our status in the world.

What sort of stories would an author with this particular birth chart create?

They would be beautiful and deeply informed by the author herself. They would be different, unusual and with a strong sense of right and wrong, they might help the reader see the world through a different lens by showing them unusual and fascinating characters. Finally they would probably be ambitious works, dealing with topics like home, politics and the author’s country of birth (here I’m looking at her Neptune in Capricorn in the 4th, which is connected to her Mars and Venus).

But what does that Chiron mean? Perhaps that fame will be difficult for the author, that it could cause her some feelings of anxiety or insecurity, but that she – through being her beautiful Libra self – can help promote harmony, balance and empathy through her writing.

Olga Tokarczuk

What a birth chart and what a writer. Polish writer and Nobel prize winner Olga Tokarczuk’s powerful book Drive your plow over the bones of the dead has a protagonist that uses astrology. The book itself deals with themes around the destruction of nature and how we treat each other – and in that other she includes both humans and animals as equals.

Tokarczuk is also a clinical psychologist and an activist. When she was interviewed about why she created a protagonist who uses astrology she put it like this:

 I don’t know what it’s like here in the United States, but in Poland, astrology is a pseudoscience worthy of ridicule and contempt. The intellectual establishment neither values nor is interested in it. It’s considered to be the delusion of old women or hysterical girls; it’s part of the newspaper culture. Because I was creating a character who was supposed to be a bit rebellious, even as an older person, I gave her the astrology to annoy all those who treat astrology as something silly and frivolous. 

Olga Tokarczuk interviewed at the Brooklyn Library.

She then described how her own attitude to astrology is that it’s an old science, or art, “that foreshadowed psychology, perhaps even some kind of sociological way or thinking”.

So what does astrology tell us about her?

Most of her chart is concentrated in one corner – creating a forceful personality in whose life certain themes will crop up again and again. She has a stellium, several planets in one sign, in Aquarius – the sign of the maverick, the genius, the free-thinker and the activist. A part of that stellium is a Sun/Venus conjunction. There are also planets in Pieces and Capricorn on either side. Her Aquarius placements are squaring a Moon/Neptune conjunction in fixed, perceptive, deep-diving Scorpio in the 3d house of the writer. Phew!

So writing will be activism and there is a sense that she as a writer wants to be of service, she works hard to try to change the world for the better – and she has very strong views on how to do it. Partly because her life and her character have given her challenging, but important and formative, experiences around the human psyche and the human soul. She knows what is going on underneath the surface. In a different time she could perhaps have been a healer or a shaman. What she knows isn’t always comfortable and she’s willing to be confrontational, to shake people up.

She also has Pluto on her Ascendant, the lens through which her personality and chart is projected into the world. Pluto is in the 12th house of the unconscious and it’s in Virgo – the sign of the writer, the doctor and the nanny.

I’ve only read Drive your plow, but after having written this I think I’m going reach for her back catalogue.

Tips for writers who want to use astrology

Astrology and writing go together quite naturally. Astrology can inform a plot or create characters, a technique that has been used successfully by both JK Rowling and Eleanor Catton.

It’s also possible to look to the birth chart to identify our strengths as writers and figure out how to make the best use of our talents and skills. Olga Tokarczuk’s activism and hard won knowledge of the human psyche and the archetypal forces playing out in the world are all part of why she’s had such an impact as an author. Those talents stand out clearly to anyone who look at her birth chart.

But this is just scratching the surface of how writers can use astrology. As a writer it’s a topic I want to keep coming back to.