Malta’s cosmic boom: why astrology is the island’s newest coping mechanism

Astrology’s appeal in uncertain times – why Malta is looking to the stars again
By Hot Malta staff

Valletta’s Republic Street after 9 p.m. feels like a village that forgot to sleep. Past the closed pharmacies and neon pastizzerias, a narrow staircase between two souvenir shops leads to a softly lit studio smelling of frankincense and printer toner. Inside, twelve Maltese twenty-somethings hunch over birth charts projected on the wall, comparing Saturn returns like trading cards.

“Mela, you’ve got Mars in Cancer too?” a girl in cargo trousers exclaims. “No wonder we both cried during the Nadur Carnival fireworks.”

Welcome to “Cosmic Tuesdays”, a weekly meet-up that has quietly tripled in size since 2020. Organiser Kim Azzopardi, 29, a University of Malta psychology graduate, insists it’s not a cult, “just a support group with ephemeris tables”. Yet the phenomenon is impossible to ignore: astrology is booming on the islands, and the reason, locals say, is the same force that keeps the price of diesel and rabbit meat in daily conversation – uncertainty.

From TikTok to the village band club
Google Trends data shows Maltese searches for “horoscope” and “birth chart” hit an all-time high during the first COVID lockdown and never retreated. Bookstores are expanding their mind-body-spirit shelves; the Agenda bookshop in Sliema reports a 70 % increase in astrology titles since 2021. Even traditional lottery kiosks now stock pocket-sized moon-phase calendars next to the usual Super 5 tickets.

Father Joseph Borg, rector of the Valletta Jesuit church, chuckles when asked whether he’s losing parishioners to Pluto. “People have always sought signs,” he says. “In the 70s they queued for the Għaqda tal-Madonna ta’ Fatima prophecies; today they download Co-Star. The hunger is identical.”

Astrologers themselves trace the revival to two local shocks: the 2017 murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia and the pandemic. “After Daphne, young Maltese realised the island wasn’t as safe as our mothers told us,” says Claire Caruana, 34, who swapped a gaming-company HR job to read charts full-time. “Then COVID closed Paceville and cancelled village festas. We lost our collective coping valve. Astrology gave the vocabulary back: Mercury retrograde explained the Wi-Fi, the ferry delays, the general ħamallu mood.”

Economics of the eclipse
Today Claire earns more from 90-minute Zoom consultations (€65 a pop) than she ever did issuing payslips. She joins at least 15 other professional astrologers openly advertising in Malta; a decade ago you could count them on one hand. The island’s first “AstroFest” sold out the Phoenicia Hotel’s ballroom last March; tickets ranged from €25 for a beginner’s lecture to €180 for a private stargazing dinner on the hotel’s rooftop, complete with astronomer-guided telescopes and a vegan mezze matched to each zodiac element.

Tourism operators are orbiting the trend. Eco-cruise company Seasail Malta now offers “Sunset & Saturn” catamaran rides timed to major planetary aspects; 80 % of August slots are booked by German and French visitors. AirBnB Experiences lists Gozo full-moon yoga in both English and Maltese, a linguistic nod that would have been unthinkable when yoga itself was branded “New Age” on the islands barely ten years ago.

Community under constellations
Back in Valletta, Kim Azzopardi closes the weekly session with a simple ritual: everyone writes a worry on rice paper, drops it into a glass bowl of water and watches the ink bleed. “It’s not magic,” she says. “It’s witnessing. In Malta everyone knows your business before you do. Here, anonymity is precious, yet paradoxically we bond faster because we’re all confessing to the same cosmic jury.”

Participants agree. “Church youth groups preached at us; here we laugh at ourselves,” says 24-year-old Miguel Zahra from Żabbar. “My nanna still lights a candle for me every Santa Marija, but she’s happy I found somewhere to belong.”

Academic Dr Maria Pace, who lectures sociology at UoM, warns against dismissing the trend as mere escapism. “In small societies identity is rigid: you’re a Labour or PN family, a band club saint, a festa firework type. Astrology offers a portable identity that travels beyond the village. That’s powerful when traditional structures feel unstable.”

The future, retrograde or direct?
Not everyone is thrilled. Earlier this year the Malta Competition and Consumer Affairs Authority issued a gentle reminder that astrologers must label services “for entertainment purposes” if they lack recognised psychological credentials. The Malta Astronomical Society sighs at social-media posts confusing zodiac signs with actual constellations. Yet even they admit attendance at public telescope nights has doubled, “because people want selfies with the real Saturn, not just the memes”.

As the studio empties, Kim sweeps soggy paper into the bin. “We’re not trying to replace doctors, priests or politicians,” she insists. “We’re just giving the sky back to the people who stare at it while waiting for the late 3am bus from Paceville.” In an island nation perpetually caught between continents, budgets and bishops, perhaps that is revolution enough – one horoscope column, one birth-chart meme, one communal full-moon swim at Għar Lapsi at a time.