A Long Ramble Through the Stars
Human reaching towards milky way in sky with shining light
I wrote this blog post for anyone wondering about my journey with astrology, and to ground my astrological point of view in the rich landscape of experience.
In my process, I have benefited greatly from reading about other people's journeys. For me, the more information the better. Reading many practitioners' bios in my 20s helped me accept that each path is different and that my own was good enough.
I hope this article instills greater trust in yourself and helps you be a pathfinder, paving the way for others to follow. Should it fall short of that, I hope it proves entertaining and informative.
My journey with astrology started where it probably started for many astrologers–a deep, almost obsessive passion for the night sky.
As a child, I prayed to the moon, finding great solace in her presence and in watching her cycles. That love spread to the whole night sky, which I stuck on the wall of my childhood bedroom with glow-in-the-dark stickers and paint (they’re still there), and painted on rocks and drew on notebooks.
I’ve always been the kind of person who is a sucker for celestial anything. When Zodiac jewelry started to be popular, what a great day. I would buy anything with stars or moons or planets. It feels important to note that most of the celestially themed clothing, house goods, and jewelry I bought myself was from before I was an official astrologer. The tattoos too. I was just that obsessed. I am that obsessed. Now it feels a bit on the nose, to be an astrologer covered in stars. But it started for me with the stars. I’ll never stop covering myself in them.
All I want is a life where I can watch the night sky every day. All I want is to talk the the stars.
As a teenager, I started a business making nature-themed jewelry, with a lot of constellations. I made the jewelry because nature was so exquisitely beautiful, that I had to co-create with it. I was entranced– In love. I still am. This is why I am an animist, and approach astrology from the perspective that consciousness is not limited to humans, and pervades the material world (albeit in a variety of forms).
My journey to astrology also started with my love of mythology and fairy tales. My book and fantasy-loving parents contributed here. It also helped that I wasn’t allowed to watch TV, and my media consumption was strictly regulated, except for books. We had thousands of books at home and spent lots of time at libraries.
Despite some difficulties with reading early on, I quickly discovered I loved long, immersive stories, and mythology books were often the thickest books in children's libraries, which is how I found them. I had a special interest in Greek, Arthurian, and Celtic mythology, which has since branched to an exploration of whatever mythological traditions I can get my hands on. I have dozens of mythology reference books, thick tombs with stories from all over the world.
My journey to astrology also includes my love of Carl Jung, which began in middle school during my introduction to the MBTI, and my general tendency to find the roots of things.
The MBTI is a beautiful thing, but I think it's only really useful and true when used in Jung's original context.
The MBTI is often used like sun sign astrology, supporting egoic identity-based systems that say- this is who you are, so this is the job you should do (barf).
Jungian typology says we are all working to be more of ourselves, and when we are more ourselves, we are a unique expression of the same pattern of wholeness found in the whole universe. Your Myers-Briggs type tells you where you begin the journey, but ideally, we all end in the same place- with a balanced use of the 4 primary expressions of psyche (intuition, sensing, thinking, feeling). Rant over.
I got my first astrology books from my older sister when I was 15 (who I worshipped at that age). I was raised with a deep distrust of the occult by my Christian parents (which honestly I am grateful for, it taught me to seek boundaries when I descended into magical traditions), but a lot of exposure to fantasy and magic. I began to help all my friends find their big three (Sun, Moon, and Rising sign), and would help anyone who was interested create and navigate their astrological charts, mostly with the help of Astro.com.
In college, I would create performances for myself and others integrating planetary rituals.
When I began to learn about herbalism at 23, my understanding of lunar and solar cycles deepened, as there are so many connections to plant magic, plant healing, and planetary cycles.
In my training as a ritualist and animist practitioner, I learned more about following planetary cycles. Orienting myself and others to these cycles was very healing.
In my study of James Hillman's Archetypal Psychology, which I became obsessed with around 24, I finally got a container for connecting with the gods that made sense to me. He sees our symptoms as invitations to be in relationship with different archetypal figures, sourcing from Jung's quote that the gods are in our diseases. Our symptoms, our pathologies, are invitations to engage with the living world, with the sacred and strange and wild in ourselves and others.
As a person with lifelong chronic illness, who’d faced a lot of judgment (and social and medical punishment) because of mental illness (which I now know was trauma combined with a very sensitive, neurodivergent brain and nervous system), I craved explanations of “illness” that brought us deeper into relationality, instead of using labels and medication to control our wild beautiful bodies and minds. Hillman's work became the lens through which I see the world.
The Gods, as represented by the planets, are parts of life craving to be expressed in us, and connected to.
Despite my love of astrology, I still resisted using it professionally, because I found the mainstream narratives about astrology so debilitatingly boring.
Even Jungian and Evolutionary astrology, which I adore, didn’t feel expansive enough to me. Reading a horoscope, even one based on my whole chart, or going to an astrologer, even one steeped in spirituality I vibe with, didn’t match the feeling I got when I talked to the Sun, danced under the Moon, or told the stories of the planets. Nothing matched that complex richness. I also hated (and still hate) the identity politics of astrology, the stultifying proclamation that because this was happening in the sky, this was happening to you, or because you have so and so placement, you have these select characteristics.
Boring.
In 2015, during an energy healing, I was told I was being called to do animist energy healing work and began to say yes to anyone who asked me for energy healing. My business came out of that commitment to say yes, because eventually, people insisted on paying me.
I still felt very lost. I didn’t WANT to do energy healing professionally.
In 2017, after 7 years of training as a ritualist, and one year of my master's program in somatics and depth psychology, during an intensive multi-day ritual, I was struggling with life direction. I asked my guides if I should pursue being an astrologer, and they told me that to be an astrologer I just needed to communicate with the planets, learn their stories, and make art from it.
I was already doing that, but I SUPER leaned in after that, and the Celestial Allies deck was developed, a deck I am currently working on (though mostly finished) and hope to publish in 2025 or 2026, maybe sooner.
I also began to use what I knew about astrology with clients, helping them navigate their lives using celestial guidance, without doing full chart readings.
I was working patiently to build my business as an animist energy healer and somatic coach, but everything I touched seemed to fall apart. I thought I was listening to my guides, who had made it clear two years before that I was called to spiritual work, I still wanted to be a somatic psychologist though, deep down.
I did what I thought the guides wanted.
Which is such an adorable rookie mistake. The guides don’t care about our participation in capitalism or ego games, though they do care about our dreams, desires, and needs.
The guides, more than anything, if they are actually helpful, well, loving guides, want you to listen to yourself. They want you to honor your body, your idiosyncrasies, and to live life fully, mistakes and all.
They told me to trust myself, and trust them, and let go of what others thought.
So I did what I thought they wanted. I worked hard to be a healer.
And my life fell apart. Because I was treating the guides like a narcissistic god I need to please to survive, instead of co-creating with the universe and my guides/gods, through honoring the divine within my own desires and needs.
For example, the two-year somatic training I was in literally had a cou two weeks in and stopped.
The car I bought was totaled (through no fault of my own) within 3 months of purchase, and probably only about 10 hours of driving it (It had been in storage after purchase). I got bad whiplash and a debilitating concussion that destroyed my academic career…which was the best thing that could have happened.
So I quit graduate school, the day before my oral comprehensive exam (which was going to be a presentation on our pathological relationship to pathology, and symptoms as the entrance to soul), because everything in me was saying NOOOO, not this, even though my ego thought that program was what was best for me.
Welcome to the Daimon, the wisdom in us that says no to things we think we want, otherwise known as Uranus. Thanks, buddy.
Uranus, the planet of Astrology (and chaos, surprises, and Daimonic guidance) was conjunct my rising sign at the time. This is a common transit for people to experience initiations into the world of astrology, and especially to step into it in a professional, or socially visible way.
I was liberated (Ur) into work and a social identity (Asc) that allowed me to express my genius/Daimon (Ur). At the time though, I mostly felt like a mad failure.
I quit graduate school and focused on the only thing I have ever truly wanted, which is to be a professional writer of non-fiction and novels.
But I was still building my business, as a day job. Things continued to disintegrate when Covid started, and the very good business plan I developed so attentively became impossible to enact. I was going to rent an in person space and see clients, and do craft shows, and sell my animist healing tools.
LOL.
At that point, I was reading astrology like it was my job, especially the work of Jungians like Liz Greene, Howard Saportas, and Stephen Arroyo, as well as Stephen Forrest's Evolutionary Astrology. Despite the limits of these conversations, all I wanted was to talk about the Gods in our symptoms, and it was the closest I could get to that conversation happening in a contemporary way. I began to consider taking a course on reading charts, a skill I didn’t have. I could tell you what it meant to have Jupiter in Leo, but not if you had it.
That's when I found Archetypal Astrology, the predominant astrological tradition I practice.
Archetypal Astrology is descended from Jung and Hillman's archetypal psychology, and influenced deeply by the humanist psychology movement.
Created by Richard Tarnas, through his research in Cosmos and Psyche, it focuses predominantly on the planets in relationship to each other (aspects), and less on the planets in the zodiac and houses (their location) in the way most other astrological traditions do. It assumes prediction can only be archetypal, and is based on the rigorous research Tarnas has done, into the way outer planetary cycles influence the world soul (world events), clearly demarcating patterns in history, and the people who are born under these aspects, and then influence culture. I will talk more about archetypal astrology in another article or video. This is already too long, and this is supposed to be about me, y’all. ME. 😜
And I realized that the path I was being asked to was broader than practicing a set of specific tools. It was a call to spiritual work generally. Whatever form it took had to be what made me feel most connected and alive.
WHAT A HUGE, TERRIFYING RELIEF.
I took the intro course with Trust Psyche (check them out if you want to take classes yourself! They also offer readings!), and have been completely hooked ever since.
It’s kind of hard to explain how amazing it was for me. It felt like everything I had every been obsessed with–- Jung, Mythology, stars, Animism, James Hillman’s Archetypal Psychology, personality typing, trauma, esoteric spirituality, transformation, Nature, eco-spirituality, activism, embodiment, healing, art, the night sky, etc etc, now had a container to be held in, where they could connect. Like instead of 70 fragmented journeys, I saw how all the different interests and journeys were actually cohesively connected.
At first, I just offered readings to friends and family, and integrated astrological information more deeply into healing sessions, then in 2021 I officially began to offer readings to new and returning clients.
I tried to keep teaching and practicing the animist healing tools I was taught. But a very unfortunate experience with a beloved colleague showed me the ways that how we approach healing in this culture, is always fraught.
That healing traditions extracted from place, soul, and tradition cannot change but can only perpetuate the unconsciousness, the sorcery of this moment, white colonial patriarchal body hating supremacists systems.
That reclamation of our souls and connection the Gods happens when we celebrate and create meaningful connections with our symptoms— When we seek the Gods in them, not diagnose and extract them. They just come back as the shadow, parts of the self unlived and clamoring for expression. When we can’t express all of ourselves, the parts that are unconscious rule our lives, and we think its outside experiences. Above and below. Within and without. We are boxing with shadows. We could be dancing with them. The very methods I was using was perpetuating issues, not transforming them. I don’t mean that healing has no value, or importance. It does. I will continue to encourage clients to seek healings, and may offer them again some day. As of Summer 2024, I only offer sessions within astrological containers, though I will still teach animist tools. The reasons for that decision belong to a different, upcoming Blog Post.
Astrology allows me to guide people to do the things that 10 years of healing work showed me were the most essential, for folks to heal, and achieve their goals of spiritual clarity, creative fulfillment, and healthy relational ecosystems.
It teaches people they are right just as they are
It teaches people how to honor their own sacred timing
It shows people the process they are in, how to get the most out of it, and let go of what isn’t working for them
It, like animist energy healing, and any form of Shadow Work, allows people to reconnect to lost parts of the self and helps them understand what the integration process of that returned piece of self might look like
My approach to archetypal astrology is unique, as I combine it with my background, perspectives, birth chart, and tools. I believe that the planets are living consciousnesses that we can communicate with, just like we can communicate with trees or bacteria, initially by going into altered states, and eventually by simply listening, for our bodies and souls are intertwined with the body and soul of the world.
I believe everything you need to know from your chart you can also learn from meditating and communicating with the planets…but that path can be slow and there are many pitfalls. Like any healing, it needs to be done in relationality. With the ancestors, living earth, and other humans. Hence the deep helpfulness of official astrological readings.
I believe that astrology can help us to accept the actual invitations life gives us-–the invitation to live fully, to experience many facets of life, and to honor our bodies and intuition deeply.
So, though I have technically not been offering astrology for that long, you can see, that this journey has taken me quite a long time. I may add more to this post in the future, but that was a long ramble.
The point of my business though isn’t the astrology… that's just the boat that gets us where we are going. Where we are going is what matters.
We are headed to agency, self-love, open-heartedness, and a willingness to say yes to life, our bodies, relationships, and our souls.
We are headed to world views that allow for our complexity, multifacetedness, and that of the world
We are headed to a life of meaning, where the dark days are as important as the light, where absence matters as much as fullness, and where we release the sorcery of our death-hating culture and learn to live.
We are headed to wholeness and releasing perfection.
We are headed to a relationship with our bodies, our environments, and the living cosmos.
Astrology is the boat that holds it all together. But it's just a boat. It’s the right boat for me.
May we all find boats that can hold together our immense interweaving complexity.
Blessed be