MILLENNIAL DIARY
LAST Wednesday, women and girls across the country burned candles, performed manifesting rituals, moonbathed, charged crystals, wrote down their dreams, indulged in a spot of tarot with the girls, or simply opened the window and looked up. They are not certifiable — they are simply millennials.
You see, last Wednesday saw three lunar events coincide for the first time in 35 years. The supermoon was also a blue moon (the second full moon in a month) and a blood moon (a moon which occurs during a lunar eclipse). Some years ago, this would have been interesting only to inveterate nerds and drunks stumbling home from the pub, looking up and wondering whether they were tripping absolute balls.
In 2018, however, this was not niche information, but common knowledge among the millennial women of the web. For the first time since the 1970s, astrology is back. And it’s one meme that is refusing to die.
Totally normal people are going in for healing crystals, gongs and tarot. Traffic for horoscopes online has increased exponentially. Moon tattoos are the tribal tattoos of the 1990s. Millennials are into the zodiac.
It seems that as the Church loses its pull with a younger generation, we are cherry-picking from different belief systems to create our own fluid bespoke spirituality: it might be a bit of Hindu yoga with moon phases and a good helping of Catholic guilt.
Astrology provides a means of enacting millennials’ favourite hobby: thinking about themselves. We tend not to see it as a science like astrophysics or chemistry or contouring, but as a framework to talk about ourselves and understand our lives.
It doesn’t hurt to understand that there is a bigger picture, and that you are not (literally) the centre of the universe — the zodiac works in cycles and horoscopes are comforting in telling you: “This won’t last forever. Something new will happen.”
It may be a circuitous route, but we arrive at something true and valuable. It kind of has the fluffy bits of religion, but no one’s going to go to war over it.
People asking my star sign used to send me into a fiery rage, as if they’d asked about homeopathy or LinkedIn. But not anymore. I may not know when my Taurus is in the ninth house, but I like to keep half an eye on the moon and see what it’s up to; it’s good for your soul when you live in a city.
So if this new-new-age thinking makes us put down our phones and go outside and look upwards to the stars — how bad? That’s an end in itself. AND the stars aligned for Ireland’s own royal wedding last week — I am of course talking about Vogue Williams and Spencer Matthews, who got engaged on the stage after watching The Lion King. Apparently, it was to recall the first BLESS: Vogue and Spencer trip they took together, many moons ago in March 2017: not a safari in the Serengeti, but a weekend in Disneyland. Everyone is thrilled, and not at all concerned that these adult babies should be allowed to marry. Hakuna Matata.
Ireland has taken it very personally, as it is wont to do with its own. Typical comments on the Instagram engagement announcements include, “Can’t beat a good ol’ Irish girl, eh Vogue?”
We seem to believe that erstwhile love rat Spencer’s problem was English women: what he needed for reformation was a nice Irish girl. The announcement transmuted a load of millennials into their grannies with a tight-lipped smug smile and a “There you go, now.”
Vogue’s engagement is our victory, just as her not being invited to Pippa Middleton’s wedding (Spencer was best man) was an affront to our entire country.
Naturally, we hope that she doesn’t invite her future sort-of-sister-in-law to hers. Take that, England. We’re also half wondering whether marrying the brother of the husband of the sister of the wife of Harry’s brother will snag her an invite to Meghan st ra va ganza in May. It really would be great for Ireland.
I have a soft spot for Vogue. For some reason she doesn’t make me want to throw my phone into a wall, like her Irish influencer peers. Perhaps I don’t resent her hot bod because it seems she is forever at the gym torturing herself. Perhaps it’s because she categorically DGAF about being taller than her man in photos. I respect her high heels.
Perhaps it was the elegance with which she separated from Brian McFadden, mostly refusing to bad-mouth him in public. It was a decision that persuaded us all that she may have had grounds for bad-mouthing. Genius. It seems we were all kind of rooting for her. Just a year ago, she talked about how she felt the breakdown of her marriage to McFadden had dashed her hopes for marriage and children, “and I’m like, ‘What do I do now?’”
Vogue was every woman who’s come out of a longterm relationship to hear the (however irrational) alarm bells of their biological clock sounding like a death knell, ushering in a lifetime of dry decrepitude. Her rising from the ashes of spin ste ry hopelessness reassured us all that we have time. She is the patronus of the single 31-year-old everywhere.
Sure, it would have been great for her to discover self-actualisation outside of traditional female roles, as an independent single woman — but you can’t argue with a lovely white dress, can you?
It’s all about Vogue. The couple know that the Instagram announcement sets the tone for the entire relationship — and theirs featured just Vogue’s face, her shiny shiny hair and one f **k-off diamond ring. Spencer was nowhere to be seen, which is just as well, because his puffed-up head would have ruined it for everyone.
Could this set an intriguing precedent? I’m thinking media interviews — without Spencer, VIP engagement photo spreads — without Spencer, hell, an entire wedding with Spencer nowhere to be seen. It really would be great for Ireland.
‘I have a soft spot for Vogue. She doesn’t make me want to throw my phone into a wall — like her Irish influencer peers’