also my aesthetic tastes re: witchy shit are so arbitrary
like why do I think tarot cards and tea leaves are cool* but astrology (even ironic and/or recreational astrology) sets my teeth on edge?
*the medium appeals to me. Divination is a stupid concept.
Obviously I don’t know the specifics of your personal taste, but I think this is a relatively common configuration, and I think it mostly has to do with class and cultural cues.
In modern America, tarot cards and tea leaves scan as “oddball witchy shit.” They don’t exactly represent the heights of arcane esoterica, but…y’know, anyone who’s into them is probably at least a little bit offbeat and a little bit interesting. Tarot is the domain of the weird kids in high school.
Astrology is dead-on lowbrow mainstream. Every newspaper will tell you your horoscope. Rando idiot sleazeballs in bars will want to talk to you about your sign. Anyone with any pretensions to style or class is going to have bad associations with it.
(Also, uh, Homestuck, which doesn’t really help at this point.)
…this has long been a colossal pet peeve of mine, because astrology is the most ancient and complicated and intellectual of the commonly-known occult disciplines, putting together a star chart is hard and requires actual knowledge, and it’s all gotten a major prestige downgrade due to trashy popularizations.