By: Kyla Dowling, Humour Editor and Local Astrology Bitch
It started with the new moon in Cancer.
TikTok astrologers, who are obviously very trustworthy because they say words like “exalted” and “decan,” said that whatever Cancer placements I had in my astrological chart would tell me what I need to focus on during the new moon. I pulled up my chart on cafeastrology.com — one of my favourite websites, second only to the one true God that is Google Docs — and began reading.
I had one Cancer placement. Only one. Thank god. My North Node was in Cancer, and your North Node is your destiny or, like, who you’re meant to be or something. Basically, if your South Node is Miley Cyrus, your North Node is Hannah Montana. That makes sense, right?
It was decided. On this new moon, I would evolve into my true self — like a Pokémon but less nerdy. I put jars of water outside with a sigil that looked weirdly like Pac-Man on the lids. I put crystals in every crevice in my room. I bathed in the moonlight and howled at the night sky. I turned my phone on Do Not Disturb and spent two hours trying to get my phone to send “shut the fuck up” whenever anyone messaged me on any platform. That’s self-care, baby.
Mere hours later, I had ascended. I was one with the moon, the Earth, and the guy blasting Cardi B and revving his engine as he drove down my street. Thanks to the Lush bath bomb I bought called Intergalactic Mermaid Angel Sex Birth Death, my skin was glittery like I was Alice Cullen. (You thought I’d say Edward, huh? I’m insulted that you think I don’t give off Alice vibes. I modelled my entire personality after hers for three years of my life.)
It was only when I checked my phone that I realized something was horribly wrong. I had hundreds of notifications from Facebook Messenger, of all things.
For a moment I thought it was my Great-Aunt accidentally sending me the same “Which Minion are you?” quiz over and over again, but that was only one message— that my phone had responded to with “shut the fuck up.” Yeah, family dinner on Sunday is gonna be fun.
The other messages? They were all from my group-chat for ECON 101, a course I only took so random men would stop mansplaining the stock market to me. (It didn’t work, but that was kind of my fault — I should really stop asking why we don’t just print more money when obviously no one is going to consider my genius suggestion.) The texts my classmates were sending made no sense to me: “Question 3 was really easy,” “The short essay killed me inside,” and “Wait, y’all got a numerical value for question 5? I thought the answer was capitalism.”
It took me a moment to scroll. Their conversation interspersed with my automated pleas for them to shut up, and then I realized: our midterm had been tonight. I had missed the test that was worth 40% of my grade.
I felt sick. I felt horrified. And then, I felt outraged. How dare this professor schedule an exam the night of an important astrological event? They probably had their sun in the 5th house — so self-centered. Immediately, I began typing out an email, beginning only with “Hi” because the professor didn’t deserve to have their name acknowledged by me.
Hi,
It has come to my attention that I missed the midterm tonight. As someone with a Cancer North Node and a fourth house moon, I was busy celebrating and honouring the new moon in Cancer. Yeah, new moons last for a few days, but every TikTok astrologer worth their Himalayan salt lamp knows that the first day of a new moon is totally the most important. Also, Mercury just moved into Cancer, which says that though communication is poor you should be empathetic towards me, especially because my natal Mercury is in retrograde, even though it’s my chart ruler . . .
