The stars are right: Astrologers find favour on YouTube, social media amid turmoil in Pakistan

This article was originally published in Rest of World, which covers technology’s impact outside the West.

The Kashana-e-Zanjani is a white villa that sits along an ancient trading route in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi, set back behind a black gate and barbed wire. It is owned by the Zanjani family, who claim descent from 11th-century saints but gained their current renown in the 1940s by publishing the country’s first magazine devoted to the occult sciences. The villa’s occupant is the astrologer Syed Muhammad Ali Zanjani.

Zanjani, 40, is a stout man who wears a large lapis ring. He keeps his salt-and-pepper beard neatly trimmed and has the mark of devotion on his forehead – a darkened callus gained from praying extensively in prostration. When Rest of World visited on a Friday afternoon in May, he was seated at a hardwood desk in the middle of the large prayer hall in the villa’s basement. A laptop rested before him, loaded with software that generates birth charts in intricate detail. As Zanjani prepared to go live on YouTube, Nauman Malik, his senior producer, sat off to one side, wearing an earring and vaping. In another corner, an assistant fielded call-ins for the upcoming show via WhatsApp. “Final posture, sir,”...

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