Why travellers are turning to the zodiac for vacation planning

Josh Rubin has a good life with his husband, Evan Orensten. They’ve been together for 27 years. They live in Beacon, New York, with their Sealyham terrier, Rory. Their work with the consulting and media company they founded, Cool Hunting, takes them all over the world.

Lately they have been considering starting a new chapter, possibly outside the US. They have a shortlist of potential destinations, including Paris, Berlin and Mexico City. But they want to be sure this move allows them to thrive for years to come. So they tried something new to help make their decision: astrocartography.

“It’s a way to explore who you are in a deeper, more meaningful way,” says Rubin, 52, who first heard about it from a friend. “It’s so timely, because Evan and I have had an ongoing conversation about where we want to grow old.”


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Astrocartography claims to work by examining the position of planets at the moment of your birth to determine places in the world conducive for achieving your goals. It’s inspired by math and astronomy but at odds with modern science, organized religion and skeptics who scoff at the idea that a planet’s movements might affect anyone’s life plans. Still, it has become increasingly popular among educated and affluent entrepreneurs, finance workers and even corporations.

“Most of my clients are corporate,” says Berlin-based astrologer Clarisse Monahan, who left a job in finance and her doctoral studies in 2019 to enter the field. By 2020, she had been hired as the resident astrologer of Soho House. It’s not a far stretch from her previous life, she says.

“Astrocartography is like finance: You’re mitigating risk,” she says. “If someone’s planning a move, that’s such a huge thing to do. I give them options and show them what a certain place is going to be like.”

Some 30% of American adults consult horoscopes, tarot cards or fortune tellers, according to the Pew Research Center. A wide spectrum exists among that group, from those who glance at daily horoscopes to those who pay hundreds of dollars per hour for regular private consultations. Absolute belief is beside the point for many, who use it as entertainment or escapism. Others tap in for a sense of structure around certain tasks, like buying real estate or planning vacations.

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“Most of us also have a lot of decision fatigue, so anything that can simplify, streamline, guide and even legitimize or justify our decision-making processes can be attractive,” says Michelle Pfeffer, a historian at the University of Oxford who is writing a book about how astrology fell out of favor with intellectual culture in the 16th century.

Astrology apps are worth an estimated $3 billion, a value expected to triple over the next five years, according to an independent study developed by Allied Market Research. The app Co-Star reports 30 million registered users worldwide, with the US its leading market. Monahan launched Maphrodite, a proprietary astrocartography app, in 2025.

Millennials and Gen Zers are pushing the growth, especially women: Almost 45% of women age 18 to 49 say they believe in astrology, while 20% of men age 18 to 49 say the same, according to Pew.

“A deep-seated belief in the occult, including at least a partial acceptance of what their horoscope predicts, coexists with millennials’ technological advantage over previous generations,” co-authors Samriddhi Chauhan and Eswara Prasad wrote in the Allied report.

While it used to be taboo to admit that you look to the skies for guidance, more people than ever are open to it, according to astrologers, therapists and academics. They chalk it up to chaotic times; to political and economic uncertainty hampering long-term planning; and to travel feeling unpredictable and growing expensive. For these users, even if the planets don’t provide answers that would satisfy everyone, they provide something: direction.

“The world system that has prevailed in the past has considerably deteriorated,” says Jane Greer, a New York-based marriage and family therapist. Many of her high-net-worth clients use astrology as a tool for planning business deals, investments, real estate transactions and even medical procedures. “Being able to maintain focus and plan goals and know they can follow through with this project, or make that move, all of that is very calming.”

A different kind of forecast
Astrocartographers don’t claim to be psychics. They don’t try to contact other spiritual beings or seek access to parallel worlds. They say their work is more like giving a weather report, relaying anticipated conditions of a specific place and time based on your natal chart, or a snapshot of the planets’ positions on the day and location of your birth.

Lauren Alexander is the co-founder and designer of LNA Clothing, and co-founder of Sistine Spritz, a low-alcohol beverage. Since 2020 she has worked with astrologer Rosie Cutter. Earlier this year, based on Cutter’s guidance, Alexander and her twin, Ashley Glasson, LNA’s brand director and the founder of 199X Fragrances, decided to move a longtime annual birthday trip away from Tulum, Mexico, to better align with their charts.

“She has this rare ability to be both deeply intuitive and incredibly practical, which makes her guidance uniquely powerful,” says Alexander, who is based in Los Angeles. “I don’t make any big decisions without checking in on the celestial climate with her first.”

Want to start a new business? An astrologer may tell you to launch it when the influence of Mercury or Jupiter is strong, since those planets are associated with information and transactions, expansion and abundance. Looking for love? They could suggest moving to a city that tracks under Venus, which can represent beauty and desire. It’s not about seeing the future, per se. It’s about reading the environment. The underlying belief is that, like the moon affects the tides, the positions of objects in the sky have real effects on the natural world.

“In the old days, it was used to predict the weather,” says Cutter, who records more than 1,000 sessions a year advising clients from Fortune 500 executives to Dua Lipa. “Literally, ‘Hey, when this constellation shows up, there’s often flooding.’”

Astrology can be traced back thousands of years, to the civilizations living in what is now modern-day Iraq, according to Paul Thagard, a cognitive scientist who specializes in the philosophy of science and medicine. Greeks like Plato and Aristotle elevated the practice to serious study in the fourth century BCE; the Romans and Arabs embraced it soon after and disseminated it across their territories.

In the biblical book of Matthew, stars provided wise men from the east with an alert about the impending Messiah. Scientific figures from Ptolemy to Johannes Kepler integrated it into their studies. Early farmer’s almanacs included lunar and solar charts to help with agricultural planning, according to the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, which in 2024 had an exhibit on the connection between astrology, politics and abolition during the Civil War years in the US.

India and China can count millennia of unbroken lineage of systems like Vedic astrology and BaZi. Many top colleges in India offer degrees in astrology, while millions of people use it for everything from arranging furniture to setting a wedding date. Chinese billionaire Li Ka-Shing notably consulted with Choi Pak-lai, the late Chinese almanac expert.

But until recently astrology in the West flitted intermittently through the popular consciousness, with notable highlights like Nancy and Ronald Reagan’s oft-derided relationship with astrologer Joan Quigley, and John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s various astrological forays. The industry is projected to grow from $15 billion in 2025 to $27 billion by 2035, according to Market Research Future. Searches for the term “astrocartography lines” have risen 250% in the past year, according to Google Trends.

“I started to see it rise during Covid, when everyone was locked down,” says Monahan in Berlin. “People were trying to think, ‘Where could I go if I don’t have to stay tethered to my desktop or to my mortgage?’”

It can even become a form of therapy, since tailored consultations offer bespoke guidance and the space to reflect. During my 90-minute, $620 session with Cutter, it felt like I was talking to a coach, a clairvoyant and a big sister rolled into one.

“Berlin is an unusually lucky place for you,” she says about the one major city in Germany I’ve never visited. “Here you are happy to take risks. You are able to move in a male-dominated world. It’s a really good location for starting new business ventures.”

Some in the corporate sector are eager to capitalize on the growth. Royal Caribbean offers Cosmic Cruises that help travelers select destinations based on their birth charts to enhance love, luck or adventure. In 2024, Delta Air Lines published destination lists from a resident astrologer. Astrology retreats in Switzerland and Mexico offer individualized readings; the Kilolani Spa at Grand Wailea offers an astrology program inspired by the Hawaiian lunar calendar.

Impossible to prove wrong
Skeptics abound, of course. Astrology was popular in the Roman Republic, with notables like Julius Caesar having their horoscopes cast, but plenty of prominent figures at the time opposed it too, according to Thagard, who is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

“The real problem with astrology is that it is not falsifiable: Astrologers can not make predictions which if unfulfilled would lead them to give up their theory,” he wrote in Why Astrology Is a Pseudoscience in 1978, noting that it’s important to note the difference in order to overcome “public neglect of genuine science.”

Paul Byrne, an associate professor of earth, environmental and planetary sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, agrees. While celestial objects have played a major role in marking time throughout human history, he says, there is no scientific proof that the arrangement of planets influences anything on Earth beyond gravitational pull.

“It’s not folly to pay attention to the position of the planets if you’re a spacecraft trajectory planner,” he says. “But otherwise, I find it useful only for pointing out which bright stars in the night sky are actually planets.”

Much of the corporate interest may indeed be spurred by potential profits more than professions of faith, says Pfeffer.

“My sense is that the reason why the corporate sector is drawing on astrology is more market-driven,” she says. “There may well be many young people at the helm of startups who take astrology seriously, but I would be surprised if true belief amongst corporate management was the only or main driver of this new shift.”

Representatives from Royal Caribbean and Delta didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment. A spokesperson for Soho House declined to comment.

Astrocartography users tend to shrug off the limitations of science in plumbing the depths of their practice. Cutter says that using birth lines for travel works best when you have specific goals or an intention behind it. I asked if she ever had to give bad news to clients who had already made travel plans. There’s no positive or negative, she says. It depends on your perspective: An impending snowfall can be a boon to a ski resort but a challenge or even dangerous for a novice skier.

“If I have a less than pleasant line [over a planned destination], I’m still going to go on vacation at that place,” she says, but with more awareness of potential delays or problems. “So while I’m there, I’m going to be really nice to authorities.”

By the way, there’s a city even more auspicious for me than Berlin, Cutter says. On my chart, Venus is ascending straight through Tokyo. “You literally become more attractive there,” she says. “It’d be a great place to get work done, if you ever want.”

I’m planning a return trip. Why not?

Back in New York, after consultations with a few astrologers, Rubin and Orensten determined that Marseille, France, complements both of their charts. They plan to explore the seaside city later this year.

“It’s hard to take time to set roots in a new place,” Rubin says, “but this is an opportunity to cross-check what hits for both of us as a place where we could really thrive.”