Welcome back to two real witches.
Hello, and blessed be I'm Oak and I'm Danny.
And we're just a couple practicing wishes seeking
initiation into a Gardenarian tradition of work.
Every Full Moon and New Moon, we're discussing things we're
learning and researching, Sharing magical discourse and
hold space for other witches to do the same.
We're two real witches shooting the shit and nerding out on
magical topics. So if you're into the occult,
the esoteric, or the otherworldly, come hang out with
us in the liminal space of sound.
In today's episode, Oaks going to be skimming the surface of
astrology with her Astro 101 Part 2 of the conversation.
So dial in your telescope and let's go universe divining.
Yeah, so in today's episode I'm going to be covering the last
two topics of my astrology 101 discourse.
I don't know so aspects of water.
So here we're going to be talking about our my personal
history and how I've connected with astrology, and then also
talk about just history in general.
And the things that I've picked up that are notable and we will
also be addressing some Earth aspects.
In that portion, we're going to be talking about some thought
leaders and books and apps and resources.
We'll also share some ways of thinking about astrology.
So I'll refer to that as a philosophy and then also just
kind of talk about some of the challenges as we start to
integrate this information into our daily lives, into our social
circles and beyond. All right, but before we dive
in, what you up to? What are you up to?
What's going on with you? Tell me about learning
workshops, books, all your ear updates.
Yes, Well, I honestly have again been trying to minimize the
amount of new information as we've had some major projects
happening in our lives, our lives collectively, Danny, in my
life. And so I've honestly been taking
just kind of like a trip down memory lane, rereading a lot of
my old notes, my old reference material on, like, workshops.
And whenever I read a book, I also take a lot of notes.
And so I've been kind of rereading and organizing some of
my old notes. Yeah, I'm just learning from my
past self, right? There's that.
Saying that. If you could just, like,
remember 50% of what you learned, you'd know like twice
as much as what you know. Which I think is amazing, right?
You forget like more than you would ever be able to remember
and know. So yeah, so I'm just kind of
refreshing some of my past learnings.
And honestly, it's like very surprising about how many things
I have forgotten. So yeah, yeah, yeah.
How about you? I can like, read a beginner's
book and you're like, yeah, shoot, I didn't even store that
in my mind the first time I read that.
I missed that completely the first time.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Yeah, I think that's interesting even We're gonna talk about
astrology and Eliza Kelly. Is a thought leader I'll kind of
talk about. And she says this, which I'm
sure she got from someone else. But the information will make
sense when you're supposed to learn it.
And until then, it often just like literally falls on deaf
ears where you can't even absorb the yeah, you can't absorb the
concept until you're ready to hear it.
So very much that. How about you?
What are you learning? What are you doing well here at
Danny's Book Countdown? I love this, by the way.
Book countdown. No pressure at all.
I would never do this to myself. That level of accountability is
serious. Well, fantastic.
Let me be accountable. We have made zero progress, 00
percent. And by zero, I mean we were at
20 books last time, the last time we were here in the Sound
Other together. I love that.
That was accidental rhyming. And we're still at 20 books.
I have made maybe 5 pages of progress.
Not cuz the book isn't fantastic just because life is chaotic
right now, but next episode guys, we're gonna be done. 19.
I just know it. I just know it.
You're still working on the Michael Colby the Herb book.
Okay. Yeah, yeah.
Which again, I think, you know, I could gobble it up and like,
get through it really quickly. But I also like how much of that
would I get from it then? So I'm really just trying to
take my time to, like, marinate on some of those ideas.
And like, why did he choose to write a whole chapter on this
and how does this connect with what?
Like, why is this of such big importance to him?
So just taking my time through it, but then I'm also doing kind
of what you're doing, but I'm just taking old notes that I
wrote down things that we've had to like take down where we
needed to like write the future or ritual things and rewriting
those as a means of 1, like committing it to memory.
I'm not a rote memorization person.
It has to be personalized to me. And so I'm just taking the time
to like make it aesthetically pleasing and like calligraphy it
out and kind of nice pretty mountain pin and all.
Of that. Just trying to like, yeah, I'm
just trying to get fancy with it, you know what I'm saying?
Just trying to make a Book of Shadows.
That is enviable by all. Okay.
So like actual calligraphy. This is the skill set you have.
Of course it is. Of course it is.
Yeah. Well, it's one I'm getting
better at, right? So I love, like the, you know,
the notebook pages when you're in like kindergarten, you had to
like trace a Yeah, I have that. But for calligraphy and for what
are those pins called? The name always goes like brush
pins. I have those and it is so
cathartic to my soul. I like brace a word with them
it. Yeah, so I'm trying to do that,
but like in real life and in practical application.
I think the whole like process of taking notes, like how you
approach information, how you record information legitimately,
that has to be one of our episodes in maybe Season 2,
because for me it's such a big part of my magical process and
and progress and I think every. Thought leader of which that I
know, like actually does magic and like does ritual and works
with the coven. Yeah, yeah.
Not just like aesthetics, but yeah, they all, you know, have
the same kind of passion towards journaling and note taking.
And so it's a big thing. It's a big undertaking.
Let's get get into the feelings part, the the waters.
What's flowing through your life, Danny?
So I think I was just talking with you.
I just, I literally just got off a work phone call where I, like,
resisted the urge to cuss everyone out because we've had
like a major deadline set back again.
And it's just one of those things where, like, it seems to
me fully in people's control to not have this happen.
And it just does. Yeah.
So that's what's going on in in my life as I'm just like this
work thing has become such a hassle because I don't have a
dead like, I just don't have a closure date.
And so it's becoming like an ongoing thing that causes other
problems. And I'm just like, I don't get
it. I don't.
I could be a construction worker.
I'm convinced I could also be an engineer because we built 2
rooms in our building with no doors.
Apparently, like I have all the confidence in the world of like
white men for no reason. Love it.
You're like outside looking in.
I know all the problems inside looking out.
Maybe not so many, but yeah, right.
Yeah, yeah. So you're extending Grace is
what I'm hearing so much. It's on the outside, like on the
inside fuming, but on the inside I'm like okay.
Well, what could we do in the meantime?
How could this be advantageous to us?
Love that? Yeah.
Well, I know you've got a lot
going on. Yes, I just want to preface this
by saying Venus isn't retrograde and if that means something to
you, great Venus being maybe of relationships of how we like to
experience pleasure of aesthetics of.
Maybe like small amounts of monetary gain and comforts.
Creature comforts. Yeah, so that's in retrograde.
So all of that is like being reexamined and up in the air.
And I am very feeling that I finally lost the Pandemic.
I was playing a Pandemic game. I had not contracted COVID the
entire time because I was actually somebody who masked for
three years straight, didn't go into any indoor space without a
mask on until. Really.
Recently. Yeah.
Like maybe two months ago was when I was like, OK, we're going
to go eat indoors for the first time in three years.
Yep. And that's how I got COVID.
You're going strong. I.
Know I'm so that was an impressive streak.
I gotta say, especially especially in Florida I.
Mean. Yeah, that's what everybody kept
saying to me. They're like in Florida, you did
great. You you actually won.
So and on the top of the scoreboard.
Right. And then of course I had to get
sick. Like right before I'm going on
vacation, which seems to be a theme for me.
It's like my body's like, wait. We're gonna slow down.
OK, Well, we're gonna shut it down.
But yeah, so yeah, I just realized like every vacation you
go on, like the week of and or day of.
Yes. Yeah, it's crazy.
I maybe need to just start taking spontaneous vacations
where my body doesn't know it's coming.
I don't know what's happening, but yeah, so just finished up a
big old move with my dad and so that was stressful AF.
Zero out of 10 would not recommend, but I'm getting to
that point in my life where I have a 80 year old dependent and
that's new for me. So it's certainly not as
demanding as having a child. But I'm reminded every day why I
chose to not have children because the experience of having
a dependent is so consuming. And so, bless you, Danny, for
for being a mother. Because I should not, you should
have just done it the way people from the South traditionally do
it, which is where you have the kids so young that you enter
like a nursing facility together, right.
Because at the point that my mom will, like, need assistance, I
will also need assistance, right, Because there's literally
only 17 years between us. She was a young mom.
And so I can't even help you move because I also just had hip
surgery. Maybe you'll get like a BOGO
BOGO hip surgery and share a room.
Yeah, Yeah. And I'm sure there's like a
family discount if you're like in the nursing home with your
parents. I think it's I think.
It probably yes, yes. Let's with that fun time
conversation let's transition into what are you treating
yourself to and or I think we've just actually transitioned all
Earth updates to be like what did you buy, what are you
spending on. So I think we're just tired of
talking about our feelings and challenges.
We just did that, yes. And our only time Yes is I
bought book binding materials to and we'll talk about it in the
fire updates but to like make a book of Shadows like from
scratch like to to bind book myself, you know to to learn
that skill that is not useful in today's site.
And then I bought a new piece of wood to I'm going to redo the
handle to my file mate. So I'm actually going to remove
the blade from the handle I currently have and then redo the
blade. And that little piece, that
little block of wood, it's like, I don't know, maybe it's like 4
inches by like 8 inches ridiculously expensive.
I mean, granted, I did get it in black, but come on, it says I
really was like I should have just gone out to the tree and
asked like, can I take a four inch by 8 inch little block?
You know, I'll, I'll make the space I left into a bird feeder
for birds. You know that will be my gift,
Yeah. OK, well, I think, I think that
will probably be a project that we'll continue to get updates on
because I assume it's not gonna be like a one day thing.
Listen, I really had all of the confidence in the world that I
was like, I'm gonna get done by this weekend.
And then I looked at it for a little bit longer and I was
like, I'm gonna get it done within the next year for sure.
That's good. No, that's good that you, you
revise your timeline to be realistic.
I appreciate that, but what about you?
I hear you have made a fantastic purchase that I need to know
more about. Yes, well, your girl likes a
thrift store. I'm a big thrifter and I found a
telescope that retails for twice as much on Amazon, so I
definitely had to scoop it up and it's this big heavy.
Clunky thing that's completely unrealistic.
And I also have an app on my phone that shows me the
placement of all planets in this great detail.
And I was like, no, I want to see a little Sprite, right?
Yeah. So theme here is going back to
basics and learning skills that are actually not useful in
modern society. That's the right what we're
doing. Yeah, I.
I was. I was tracking that as well.
I'm like. So we're going to learn how to
make fire from scratch and we're going to mill our own grain.
And no, no thank you. But yeah, so telescope.
All right. So finally, let me okay.
I just want to say that you are being so ambitious with this
Book of Shadows. It is possible that people don't
know this about the Gardenarian tradition, but once initiated,
you have to hand copy. Hundreds and, I don't know,
probably thousands, maybe 1002 thousand pages.
You have to copy this by hand, and Miss Danny here is going to
attempt to do it in a very pretty fancy way.
And I'm advising against this because I don't want her to be
let down, but I also don't want to poo poo.
No, no, I want to support you. But I also want to say if this
ends up being not sustainable, that's okay.
Because generally when you copy for our listeners, when you copy
the Book of Shadows, that's passed down through a tradition,
which is certainly one of the benefits of tradition.
Usually it's like you put it on a piece of paper and you put
that in a laminate sheet and you put it in three ring binder and
that just breaks the heart of every like.
Came up pension in the world. I can't.
I cannot do it. I thought about it.
I thought long and hard, but I was like all these people have
committed giant binders with rings and you can do it too.
And then I bought one. And then I took it to work and
gave it to someone. Do it.
Yeah, no, I get it. I get it.
I mean, I had this bubble burst for me.
Probably like. Two years into really being
committed to the kind of like a Wicca path and you know,
pursuing traditional outer courts.
And so I knew that was coming. So for me I was like, yeah, no,
you do laminate sheets and that's how you live your life.
But I support you taking the very, very, very High Road of
trying to you know recreate your aesthetics and and I support
you. But it is a lot.
Yeah. Yeah, I because every page has
to be like copied ugly, right? Because I'm just, I'm just being
messy. And then I go back and I put it
on a tea stained paper. You know, we want, we want to
make it look old, but not really old.
And then calligraphy out the title.
Yeah. And then do it all nice and
pretty, but still legible, right?
We want to make sure it's all still readable to the general
person. And it's not going to be
something I need, like a magnifying glass to look at.
And then I have to seal every page so that it's it.
No, it's an adventure and it's it's going to be a while, but
that's OK because I got time. I got time.
OK, all right. I support you.
I am afraid for you. But it's for you.
Yeah. So my 3 ring binders, great.
Loving that. Do you know how expensive big
fucking binders are? Like $30.00 for a three ring
binder. That is over 2 inches.
It's crazy. Like if you get once you get
past two inches, you're like paying $1,000,000.
So yeah, that's what mine's going to look like for me.
I'm taking my little telescope to the beach on my vacation,
which is kind of a staycation, but I'm going, you know.
To the beach, which is not so far from us.
And of course I'm going to paddle board and spend time in
nature. But yeah, we'll we'll see if my
if I got totally ripped off at the thrift store or not.
We'll see. All right.
Well, let's jump into our topic. Before we get into the water
aspects and the earth aspects. I just want to do some follow up
from last episode because we had some outstanding.
Information that we needed to tie up loose ends around.
I didn't have answers for you had questions which were great.
So I'm going to give you some some answers to this question.
Number one, we said we're going to put charts in the show notes.
Turns out Spotify said no you won't because there's not enough
room. So that didn't happen.
So instead, we are going to post all of the beautiful charts that
are I I'm. 90% sure are very accurate.
And if they're not, then maybe putting them on social, I'll get
fact checked, which would be even better.
So we'll put those on our social account, which is 2 real
witches, and we'll then link our social in the show notes.
So then you can just follow the link to our post.
So that's number one. Number two, we have.
You hear that? You hear that, COVID, right?
I I did hear that, that clearing out of that illness.
So the second thing question that we had was with the degrees
of each sign in the Zodiac. How do the degrees progress from
1 to 30 for the 12 signs? And the answer is clockwise.
Going from smaller to larger, literally the way a clock goes
from 1:00 to 2:00 to 3:00, so clockwise from 1 to 30 within
each sign, making a total of 360 because that's a circle.
And that is how that works. And that was a great question
and I'm glad I could get clarity on that.
The signs, you know if we keep the signs stable, the planets do
move counterclockwise through the Zodiac, whereas the degrees
are the opposite where they're going from 1 to 30 clockwise.
So little bit of movement there And if yeah, I'll just leave it
that the last point of clarification was a what seems
like a simple question which which should have a simple
answer and that's just not how astrology works and.
Apparently not. I'm looking at these next two
paragraphs and I'm like. I thought the question was just
what degree? Yeah.
Does it stop becoming. I have a really.
Yeah. So if you most every beginner
level explanation of aspects recalling for everyone I'm gonna
have to keep clearing my throat. I'm really sorry that's okay.
So I'm just gonna do what's that?
That is your that is what you win from having won the game of
COVID in Florida is thank you. Thank you.
We now cherish those coughs. That's what it is.
Yeah. That's a late stage cough.
I'll have you don't. But there's no pride here.
Okay. So the question so we're talking
about aspects. Aspects are the relationship
between 2 heavenly bodies such as planets, asteroids and
luminaries, right. So often we would talk about it,
aspects being, let's say Mars and how it's related to the sun.
And depending on the angle in a chart, we could say it's square
or trine, or if it's very close and it's conjunct or it's an
opposition because it's on the opposite side of the pie, right.
So all of those terms, the question is so certainly square
being 90 degrees, but what if it's 91 degrees, right or what
if it's 89 degrees? Like does that still make it a
square? Like what's the range of
acceptability to still call something square?
And so you know every article out there will say roughly and
roughly is not a number y'all and it's not a good answer.
So, so I had to go beyond that answer and I would say if I for
most of you who are not anal retentive like I am 2 degrees, 3
degrees, like let's draw a line at four, I don't know, less than
five would be a few. The more exact the aspect, the
more influence that aspect is represented of course, right?
If it's like 90 degrees right on the nose, then everything that's
associated with a square aspect would be totally true.
If it's slightly off, then that energy is less.
But the reason I cannot give you the reason that there's not a
good answer out there is because once you get beyond a few
degrees, there's actually other what could be referred to as
minor aspects that that thing probably now falls into.
So when we were discussing aspects in the previous episode,
we essentially only approached the first, second and third
degree of influence. We did not talk about which are
often referred to as a major aspects.
We did not refer to the minor aspects, which is 4th and 5th
degree of influence. I hate to say major and minor
because it makes it sound like one's more important, but it
literally is like one is more impactful than the other.
The first being the most impactful, the 5th being the
least impactful. And so I'm sure that everybody
knows this ancient scientist philosopher, Ptolemy, right with
the PTO, the silent P So Ptolemaic Ptolemy was very
influential in astrology like still to this day, 1st century
AD, that kind of timeline. And he very much coined these
aspects of conjunct, sextile square, trying opposition.
And those are the major aspects, right.
However, Kepler, this is Johannes Kepler, then wrote
another book that is called the Harmonist Mundi, where he's
actually describing other aspects that give us those, you
know, 4th and 5th layer of aspects.
And there's a whole complicated answer around the ratios
relating to geometry relating to music and how those angles are
calculated. I'm just gonna reverse myself
out of this conversation and say that Ptolemy is responsible for
identifying our major aspects of influence.
And there are other aspects that Kepler outlined which are often
referred to as the minor aspects which have you know less of an
impact but still very much a relationship.
And generally it's not Unless you become very versed at other
influences of aspects, 2 to 3 degrees should be safe.
Anything beyond that you might actually be falling into another
aspect outlined by Kepler, is that is that succinct the.
Answer is we don't know. That's the answer is there is
not a defined definition. Of like 2 to 3, three to four,
four to five. So there could be a definition
that would be appropriate for each major aspect, but that
would change between aspects because once you get over a
certain degree with a major aspect, you start to go into
minor aspects, but those are not consistent.
It's not consistently saying after 4 degrees you're actually
in a secondary aspect. So it would be there is an exact
answer, but that answer is unique for each aspect.
Yeah, for each aspect so trying may have a different degree of
acceptability or exactness than squares or oppositions, right?
So each of them will have a different answer, so that's why.
And you know every article out there, they say, roughly.
Roughly. They were like, we don't want to
have this conversation. That's right.
And I don't open this door. And I tried to and I was like,
no, no, no, no, no. Let's close that back up, shall
we? So, yeah, roughly.
Sounds like Astrology 301. That sounds like that might be
the next, next conversation. All right.
Yeah, Yeah. Yes.
So that's, you know, started off real fun there.
OK, So let's go into something that's more interesting to me,
which is. I need to know all about how
little Oak saw the world. In the universe and said, you
know what I'd really like to do math and planets.
That's what I need to know how that happened.
Well, slowly, I'll tell you, there's that that country saying
that the best way to boil a frog is slowly, right?
Because they're cold blooded and you turn up the temperature
incrementally, then they don't jump out of the pot.
Well, I am very much that frog, OK?
So when you go through my histories, not to be I don't
know, so self-centered, but just to give you an example of how I
don't know, my path to astrology certainly wasn't a straight one.
And I also only recently have accepted the the challenge and I
think a lot of people, you know, as you have kind of shared that
it's something of interest to you.
But it's also like really intimidating.
And once you start to try to, you know, stick your toe in,
you're like, oh shit, that is far too hot.
Like we're not. I'm not trying to bite off 20
years worth of study and and that's understandable.
So I just want to share my path because maybe it will make
others brave enough to jump in. Maybe.
I mean, you know, I'm 40, so I think maybe some people would
say, oh, you can't start studying such a complicated
thing. You know, you have to start when
you're young. Maybe that would be some kind of
paradigm that people have around the idea of so astrology.
Or maybe it's like, oh, well, if you you have to be really into
it to be able to jump in. And I don't think that's the
case. I think you actually get more
interested in astrology the more you get into it, because it
starts to reveal itself more and more so at any rate.
So for me, I think the the starting point to astrology was
actually astronomy. I was born in the early 80s,
which means in the 90s I was, you know, just a kid who was
curious about the world and how everything moved and and worked.
And NASA was actually fully funded by the US government and
what? Yeah.
And we were sending people to outer space regularly.
I I mean, what was it? Discover.
Discover Discovery exploded with a school teacher inside of it,
that shuttle and I was a kid in a class with a school teacher
when that happened. So it was all very visceral.
Yeah. So that was, I think you.
No, no. I mean, I also watched OJ in
school. That car chase.
You got to watch the car chase. I love it for you.
Yeah. Were you still?
Were you in school at the time of 911?
OK, fun story. I was in hair school.
And so you still got to watch. I was like, what an unusual
education that you had. Yeah, we were just essentially
told everything's fucked and nothing is gonna be okay.
So it goes correctly, Yeah, or as planned.
Or. So go drink out of the hose and
make sure you use that metal fork on that Teflon and you'll
be fine. But yeah, so, so growing up,
NASA and space was everywhere. I actually even went to Space
Camp quote UN quote, for like low income kids that was in my
my area and sponsored and I went to Space camp for like 2 weeks
and it was amazing. We went to Cape Canaveral,
right, Because I grew up in in Florida.
And so it was amazing. There was, I learned so many
things. Like I felt like such an insider
being like nine years old, knowing that there was no sound
in space. And so every time Star Trek
would come on and you know the the ships wouldn't zoom by with
the sound, I'd be like liars, you know?
I felt very cool knowing that information.
I. Can like see a little you being
like, well, actually, oh, yes. Oh, I will actually lead a lot.
Yeah. I mean and you know, at that
point in time we were discovering so much about like
black holes and how stars were born and just scifi, you know,
was very much everywhere as well, right.
So that whole there was just this perfect place where people,
it's not surprising to me that there are a lot of astrologers
that are in my generation because we were just kind of
force fed like love for the stars and love for the planets
and love for space exploration. After that, I would say the
first time I can actually remember caring about astrology,
not just astronomy, is I have these really vivid memories of
being in a grocery store line. You know, grocery shopping with
your parents is so fun. And there's at the checkout
counter, they would be these little pastel like rolled
scrolls that kind of like cigarettes must like individual
little ones. And you could purchase them.
They're like a dollar and you would open them up and they
would have like that month's sun sign, astrology.
Horoscope in it. Yeah.
And I I think I could like kind of understand the words.
But, you know, I had no idea. But I just felt very cool having
this inside information, you know, my childhood was was
tremendously intense. And so the idea of having some
kind of control. That let down tremendous.
The intense I, you know I don't. I don't see it as a bad thing.
I think most people would be sad for a little Oak, but for me it
was. Obviously I love my childhood
because it gave me my story and all the good stuff.
So yeah, the idea of being able to have insights into maybe what
was coming was like this way of having control over the
situation and feeling like I could create a sense of safety
if I knew what was coming. So those little pastel scrolls,
I don't know if do you did you ever see those things?
You remember them? I did see those, yeah.
No, I totally did. And so.
But when you said that I first, second, I was like, what?
Remember though, And then you, you dug that memory out from
like, the center of my brain, and I was like.
Well, that was a thing. Is that still a thing?
I don't know, but I remember those I've looked.
I cannot find them. I should Google it.
I don't know why I've been. Using Go to the dollar store.
Listen, they have all the things from our childhood.
Have you been? Oh, really?
OK. Yes, they might have them there.
They'll be very exciting. So then I think the next, you
know, at that point like I was into astrology, it was something
that was around, it was like you know, in Cosmo and in magazines
and and it was only Sun sign. And so you know, having Sun and
Sagittarius like Sagittarians are supposed to be all about
travel. And for me, I was like no, I
don't want to travel. I don't need more chaos in my
life. Like that sounds terrible.
Travel has only been a bad thing for me when we've had to move
from place to place. So I very much was like okay,
this isn't accurate. So therefore it must not be
real. And then I started to understand
that people would say, like, oh, that's just like self help.
That's like woo Woo. And it was very discounted.
And so I think I put it aside for most of my life.
It was really only like 7 years ago that I understood that the
sudden sign portion of astrology was literally just the smallest
possible part of like the smallest.
Yeah. And it was super reductive.
And honestly, I I think I probably came across it on
Pinterest if I had to be totally prank.
Which is how you know that it's legit.
Oh, so yeah, yeah, I was like, what is a rising sign?
What? You have a moon sign.
So that was, I mean, again, this is definitely, I'm in my 30s at
this point, and I learned this. And around that same time, I had
started to study with another WICCAN group.
And there was a person who, you know, was taking on the endeavor
of learning astrology. And you know, the way he spoke
about it was crazy, intimidating to the point in which I said
that's so interesting to me. I'm, I had this, you know,
revelation that there's more than the sunshine.
I was super interested. And then the more he talked
about it, the more I was like, Oh yeah, no, no.
Being new to the occult in general and having just this
whole cornucopia of topics to dive into, from herbal remedies
and and all of those kinds of things to like crystals to
there's so much to cover within the world of Western occultism
that the idea of diving into astrology was like low on the on
the priority list for me. And I had a healthy respect for
it. So.
And I would say that the other thing is that I didn't have my
birth time. My mom passed away when I was
15. Literally the hospital where I
was born is was torn down like 15 years ago and doesn't even
exist anymore. So I couldn't even call them to
get my birth time. So nobody knew when I was born.
I only recently, so this was December of 2021, said Okay
That's enough. I need my long form birth
certificate that I know has my time of birth on it.
I drove to Jacksonville from where I live and went to IKEA
because we don't have one of this and got my long form birth
certificate and it was great. And I think that's kind of, I
think that probably marks my serious interest in astrology
because at that point I could actually start understanding
some of my own placements. So yes, so that's kind of like
my history and that's where I kind of started and dove in.
And so it's only really been like a year and a half of me
trying to nerd out on the topics.
Our outer court has currently three people in it, and we are
each encouraged to pick a form of divination.
And we also want to complement each other's interest.
And there's some value and not having overlapping interest
because we can bring something that new like we're doing right
now, like you did with full of magic.
So having astrology be something I was interested in being at a
place with my occult studies where I feel like I have pretty
good coverage and every other area that I'm interested in.
Like I was finally willing to say, okay, I'm going to be the
astrology gal. And like I said, that's why I'm
so hesitant to even say, like, I'm a baby astrologer because
I'm just so reverent towards the depth of the topic and, you
know, still very new to the study of it.
But yeah, that's me love. That yeah, I love.
I love a little you in line at the store.
A little pastel thing and I can like picture your mom being
like, yeah, whatever. Get the thing and then later
being like you know what And that's why she's weird is cuz
yeah. Oh yeah, my mom became a.
Store. Yeah.
My mom became a born again Christian and was like, yeah,
that didn't happen later, No. Yeah.
I made some mistakes, yeah, but at that point she was open to
it. So, OK, nothing about me.
I want to dive into the big topic, the 27,000 year topic of
astrological history. As I understand it, and as I was
able to find it, my dog's having a dream.
Oh, did you hear that? I love that he's, he's barking
at someone in his dream. So yeah, 27,000 years ready.
Okay. So ready to be.
My lungs are not ready. But we're going to do this okay.
So history is tricky because where do you start?
Usually if we can, as we've discussed in the past, history
generally begins with artifacts, right.
That's how we can kind of define the beginning of something And
so of course. There are artifacts that are
carbon dated to be 25,000 years before common era that were that
were found and this if we define astrology as the observation of
celestial bodies over time to then find correlation to the
things happening on earth, then we could say 25,000 BCE would be
our starting point. Were there things practiced
before then? I'm sure.
Do we have proof of it? No.
Right. And by proof I mean evidence,
not proof. So theories, the current
theories that we have in place are that timeline.
So starting from there, astrology that had the purpose
of and analyzing individuals really only became popular
recently, right. This whole like needle astrology
obsession. Before that astrology had very
had a really important place in electional and that kind of
horrary. How were you gonna say it, Horry
Cory. Yeah, so nasty, Cory.
So. Nasty, but yeah, so there's
astrology that where you look to the stars to say, hey, what's
gonna happen? What's the best time to do
something, Where are the favorable conditions?
And Alexander of Macedonia was very keen to use this kind of
technology. So there's definite proof of him
leveraging this kind of information as he set out to
conquer the world. The Cross Pollenization of
Egyptian, the Greek cultures, the Persian cultures, the
Chaldean cultures, all kind of were working together in that
time period because there was lots of trade lines.
There was also this whole worldwide conqueror that was
kind of in some way consolidating information and we
would see the earliest Zodiac found in Egypt, and this dates
to the 1st century BCE, and this is called the Dendira Zodiac.
So that's. DE Yeah, DENDER Zodiac.
And so that's 1st century. What's particularly important
with this horoscopic astrology is the Greek and Roman
astrologer, Grecian, Roman Greco, Roman astrologer Ptolemy.
We already talked about who is living in Alexandria during this
kind of like Roman, Egyptian period of time.
And he was really paramount in creating this kind of like
personcentered approach to astrology which really kind of
launched the development of really a ton of different
techniques for interpreting chart Hellenistic model was
prevalent during this time period and that model
incorporates both concepts from the Babylonian practices and the
Egyptian astrology. The the issues of course is that
there's so many details that are lost over time between you know
things being buried and you know Christianity coming in and all
these kinds of things. So let let's let's Fast forward
there. So after Alexander the Great's
death, Christianity rose in popularity and Christianity has
some very clear opposing ideas to divination in general and
also specifically astrology and how we'll talk about that more
in the earth ideas. But this is in general conflicts
with God's will, right? So the relics from this time we
see, you know we it kind of goes cold in the Western world around
the 7th century then but around the same time in the Muslim and
then later Persian communities in the East, it started to have
a kind of resurgence of popularity.
And they began to translate the ancient Greek text on the topic
and started adding, you know new observations about the planets
and new theories. The Christian Crusades around
the 11th century actually led to Persian archaeology,
astrological text to actually return to Europe.
So, and this is then being translated back in being
translated from Arabic to Latin. So there's there's this really
interesting connection where we're looking at Chaldean
cultures and Egyptian cultures and Babylonian people who are,
you know, creating these ideas. And then it's flowing into
Greece and then it flows back into Eastern cultures and
there's some, you know, technologies that are lost in
that time period. But just this flow back and
forth of popularity of astrology is really interesting and it
really it's you know, Christianity and the Crusades
that we have to thank for that back and forth kind of process.
With the return of the text in Europe, right there was now a
rise of what is referred to as medieval astrology.
So this is Renaissance period, 1600s.
We see a thought leader like William Lily, so William and
then Lilly Lily and this person really helped to kind of add to
the knowledge through experimentation.
However, this after this kind of medieval astrology started to
develop, the Age of Enlightenment came in and so the
idea of scientific thought really conflicted with a lot of
astrological theories, right. So again it became less popular
and so there's this again, this rise and fall and rise and fall
of popularity of astrology. We also then had this new theory
in place that the sun did not revolve around the Earth, but
rather the other way around. Right.
So where the sun was the center of the solar system and the
Earth revolved around it. And so, you know, that
potentially maybe debunked some of the ideas and made it less
popular. Around the same time, you know,
many other divinatory practices became outlawed and astrology of
course fell into that scope. So we see the, you know, Age of
Enlightenment. Both have scientific thought
kind of contrasts astrology and then it just literally became
illegal. And so that led to the practice
going underground. We see the popularity of
astrology and Western culture kind of pop up again in the
1800s. And so this is probably where
most people would be familiar with astrology's history.
I I assume everybody kind of knew that there was a lot of
like Babylonian, Grecian, Roman, Chaldean influence.
Did you know, like, I feel like that's commonly known.
Is that something that you had ideas around?
Yeah, I mean, I think I knew that lots of different cultures
studied astrology. I don't know that I realized
that it was kind of just past and forth.
I've always had the question like, how did people arrive at
these similar conclusions if they didn't?
Interact. But it sounds like they did
interact, just maybe not all at the same time period.
So someone passed to someone who interacted with somebody else at
a later point in time. Yeah.
And I mean, and across Europe, there was a lot of, you know,
the current events could be observed by different cultures.
And so a lot of astrology had developed from the observation
of like mundane astrology, right when countries go to war, when
conquerors, you know, go out and try to take over other
countries. And so I think while we think of
these cultures as being separate, like they're observing
and interacting and trade routes and all that good stuff.
So, and yeah, I think it's, it is really interesting just the
how the influence that religions had, especially monotheistic
religions had on the popularity of astrology and how that kind
of led to the decline and something's being lost and now
something's being gained. So yeah, very, very interesting
narrative to follow and quite confusing.
OK, so but in the 1800s you have heard of spiritualism, right?
So it's this movement from the 1800s that really made
astrology, brought it back to America and to English speaking
countries. And it allowed for the
decriminalization of divination, right?
Because people like, yeah, people were like, no, I have
money, I'm white, and I want to have my tarot cards read.
So you got to get rid of that law.
I don't like that law anymore. Right.
But also like, how are we, how are we determining?
Like, I just don't know how you could be found guilty, I guess
if they found, yeah, your things, I don't know.
I just. I'm like, if someone was just
looking up at the stars and they're like, yeah, so that's
where cancer is today. Well, I.
Think this means Yeah, no, that's really interesting.
So, you know, you're aware of the witchcraft laws being
decriminalized in Europe in the 1950s, which then led to
Gardner, the founder of our tradition, being able to come
forward and in the public life. The reason that witchcraft
actually was decriminalized is because you couldn't actually
persecute anybody under these laws because it was too
ridiculous. So they actually replaced the
witchcraft laws with fortune telling laws.
And so it's illegal. It was illegal, and a lot of
states it still is. It's illegal to charge people
for divination unless you create clarity that it's for
entertainment purposes only, right?
Very Miss Leo. Like, you have to say that this
is just for funzies and don't make any choices in your life
about it. Yeah, and that still exists.
So I think it's interesting that the thing that made witchcraft
legal was so that they could persecute fortune tellers,
right? Interesting, because I feel like
the lottery is based a lot and divination and like the picking
of the numbers, divining what are gonna be the winning
numbers. And we certainly have not ever
outlawed that. You know, that's just called
guessing. No guessing is OK.
You can guess. You just can't say that you're
confident in your guesses based on information because that
would be right. Right.
Yeah. Yeah.
So, I mean, we still see a lot of these kind of remnants of the
laws in states like Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North
Carolina. They still have codes that
require all spiritual advisors to have this kind of disclaimer
that it's for entertainment purposes.
In the 1930s, we see in the Western world the first time we
start to see the kind of horoscope being published in the
newspaper and the 1st. And this is in England, The
first time we saw an actual astrological birth chart be
presented was after the birth of Princess Margaret in 1930.
And so this really led to the kind of interest in printed
newspapers, weekly newspapers to host astrology.
People rarely were, you know, would have the means to have
their birth chart calculated. So the only thing that we could
really point to that would be easy enough for anybody to
understand would be sun Signs. And it made everything really
accessible, but it also, of course, watered it down.
But then that's how Sun Signs became popular, because the need
to make it accessible to the masses through printed
publications, like weekly news publications, which I think is
fascinating, yeah. Because I've always well, the
first time I read like the attributes for cancer, I was
like, I don't know who she is, but she isn't Me, yes.
I don't know who what an overly emotional person.
I don't get it. And it's funny because in the
first time I was aware there were moon and rising signs.
That's when I was like, Oh no, I didn't have those people.
I don't know who who she. And then and then I realized
like some of those aspects are picked up here.
The the maternal, the motherly ones.
OK, got it. But really, I identified a lot
more with my moon and rising sign, and that's when I was
like. Well, there's a lot more here
than just this sunshine piece. Same, more same.
But it's just so interesting. Like, how did we end up not
using the more often accurate feeling astrology to identify
people's personalities like Rising and Moon?
It's because people had to make money in the printing press.
So in the probably in the 20th century, this is when we started
to see this kind of psychological science work their
way into astrological systems. So around the kind of 20th
century turn of century, Eastern spiritual thought was starting
to gain traction, like in the US, but also in the West in
general. So new books like I have no idea
how to pronounce this person's last name, but I'm going to say
Rudyard, Dane Rudyard, They had a publication called The
Astrology of Personality, and this was the first time that we
actually started to see psychology be mixed with
astrology. It's crazy to think that it was
that early on, right? In the 19th, it says 1936 that
we saw that blend of psychology and astrology and it's like
stuck ever since. But before that we literally
didn't see that connection. It was more about predicting
like the mundane and electional and all those other types of
astrology. Macro level astrology versus
like micro level astrology or more like give me an answer.
So when we first started you talked about how astrology is
not like other forms of divination where you have a
question, you do a thing and you get an answer and it is like
that, right? That is very much the whole idea
of mundane astrology. Well, no, mundane astrology is
actually horror horror. Mundane astrology is actually
feels like a terrible named because it's more significant
than that. It's actually talking about
those social, political like larger theme macro stuff.
Yeah, the macro stuff, which I think is so funny because it's
like mundane makes it feel like it's minimizing its impact, but
that's important. But anyway, I didn't name it.
They didn't ask me if they would have, they would have got a
better name. But but yeah, so I mean, you
know, astrology can very much be used to.
I'm sorry, my doggo is being very protective.
Protecting you from invaders. He's.
Doing his job? Really.
Why? I'm gonna.
I'm gonna just take a beat and put him outside my room.
I'm sorry. Here's here's the real us.
Here's the real witches. Come on.
And now she can't hear me. This is me saying she's just
great, right? Isn't she so good?
I like the research part. She's the one to do this later
and laughs. OK, I couldn't hear anything cuz
I have headphones. So what?
Have you said no? I totally wasn't even saying
anything. So, but yeah, so just back to
this idea of like, no. Like, very much astrology can be
used to get a yes or no answer, or it can be used to say, here's
the influences to consider, just like any other form of
astrology. Is it far more complicated?
Oh, hell yeah. But it can provide that same
level of clarity once you're, you know, deep enough into the
information. OK, so astrology with psychology
started to show up in that 1936. In the 1960s, it just blew up,
right? The rise of modern astrology in
the West was a big point of interest for all those hippies,
right? So we had a lot of of new
astrologers come into the space. That really built off of
Rudyard's ideas of psychology and astrology in the connection.
And this really was the perfect environment for these things to
flourish because of the interest in, you know, spiritual
development and meditation and all of those other kind of
Eastern ideas. And I think that's a really
interesting connection. Whenever Eastern philosophies,
religion practices come into light, we often see astrology
come with that, right? In the 1900s.
I'm sorry, 1800s, we started to see that same kind of thing
where spiritualism came in and spiritualism was connected with
some kind of Eastern thoughts and it became more palatable.
So in the 19. So that's the 1960s.
There's something that really was important that happened in
the 1970s, which is the use of the asteroids in astrology in a
popular way, right? So there's like Juno and Vista
and Cirrus. All of these kinds of asteroids
were discovered in maybe like the early 1800s to maybe 1845.
And when these asteroids became were discovered, they were
actually started to they were named after goddesses rather
than gods, right. All of the quote UN quote
planets that we think of and the larger sense other than Earth
and Venus are masculine. And so to offset that, and this
was the rise of, you know, feminist movement.
Dmitri George had this publication that came out in
1986 called Asteroid Goddesses, which was kind of rolling up all
of these ideas that had started to be developed in the 1970s.
Eleanor Bach is really kind of maybe identified with the first
person that had asteroids in their ephemeris.
The ephemeris is like the paper version of transits.
So it calculates where a planet would be, you know, before they
had apps. And she had that ephemeris
published in 1973. So Dimitri George is a big
figure in astrology, especially like in the feminist kind of
aspects of astrology in 1986. So there have been obviously a
lot of interest that has kind of retained over the years.
In the 1990s it was huge, right? In the 1980s maybe astrology
became part of this kind of like new age quote UN quote movement
that had things like meditations and crystals and just this whole
kind of like witchy, but they wouldn't call it witchy, they
call it new new age or very woo woo, right.
In the 1990s that self help or practical psychology became
popular and really in the 2000s is when we saw astrology kind of
drop off in interest. But maybe it was in the, you
know, 2006. Some people point to that being
the turning point where Cosmos and Psyche was published.
And this is, you know, we talked about that previously where the
academic point of view of mundane astrology was kind of
pointed to. But I think it probably more
importantly was the Internet's ability to give resources and to
make. All of these kind of like
ancient texts more available to astrologers that really was just
the gasoline on the fire. I mean astrology has I don't
know, I I couldn't even quantify the growth in such a short
period of time because of because of the Internet.
But it is just more than gasoline on fire.
I don't know. It's it's hydrogen to fire and
how it has grown, the technologies and and
conversations and communities and that leads us to kind of
where we are right now. So yeah, we just went 25,000
years. And didn't age 25 minutes.
Yeah, I feel aged, but that's okay.
Hopefully the listeners do not. So, so do you think so in the
70s and 1970s when we had like this rise of?
Amenity. We started adding asteroids in
there. Like do you think the whole
world experienced astrology that way or is that like purely an
American onset like I'm thinking about, like in collective
cultures where maybe there isn't as much emphasis on the
individual? Like did they experience
astrology in the same way that like Americans experience
astrology? Or is it more of that mundane
astrology and less focus on like individual astrology.
Well I think the feminist movement in the US was very US
centric but it of course you know you know especially United
Kingdom and the US have often very similar histories in terms
of social ideas and norms. But I have no idea like the how
what the non American viewpoint is from that kind of like 1960s
and beyond and even kind of spiritualism wasn't.
I mean was certainly something that was you know popular in you
know English speaking European countries that I know of.
But yeah, I haven't researched too much like what other
countries, especially like non-english speaking countries,
how they experienced history. And so to be, yeah, I think it's
a great call out that I'm really addressing history from my
American point of view and only acknowledging those kinds of
meaningful changes. But there's so much.
Obviously I mean 25,000 years worth of history.
I just lost over a huge portion of information and maybe that
does need to be pointed out. I just, I'm so curious, you
know, because we, I feel like Americans experience.
A lot of astrology on that individual level, especially
once we started like publishing horoscopes and like, it's all
like about you and your sign and your Natal chart.
And I'm like, is that is that still the truth?
Cuz I find that one like Eastern things come Western.
Yep. We like, individualize the fuck
out of them. What happens?
Does that go back or or does it? They're just like, Oh no, the
Westerns, they do their own thing.
We're still gonna look at things holistically.
Well, I yeah, I mean, I think that in general, like, quote UN
quote, astrologers have always been interested beyond
individual influences interpretations.
But you have to have an access point and if you are going to
promote a astrology, you have to do it from hey, here's about
you, here's about your love life and your health and you know,
your money. Like you have to make it that
way for it to be popular. So the last thing I'll say just
about the developments over time, I think one big one was
telescopes, right? I just wanted telescopes.
So this is so relevant. But you know, telescopes were
really created maybe the first time we would see this is in the
Netherlands and the 1608 was the number that I found.
And then we also had a ton of Around that same time, lots of
other makers came out. And because of this, we actually
didn't discover Uranus until 1781.
Isn't that crazy? Yeah.
And that wasn't worth. Obviously it wasn't worth.
It wasn't with that same telescope that was created in
the 1600s. It was with a more progressed
and more advanced Herschel telescope.
Neptune was officially discovered in 1846.
Of course, around the same time there were some other people who
also predicted it, meaning like they could see the influence of
the planetary body on stars. And so they said, hey, we think
it's out there. But it wasn't officially
discovered until that 1846 number Pluto was discovered
again, 1930. Now we all think now of Pluto
being a dwarf planet, but yeah, still planet.
But again, you know, both both Neptune and Pluto both had these
kind of people who came before the official discovery date
saying, hey, we can see that there are gravitational pulls
and abnormalities that point to the idea that there is a planet
in this space. Yeah, 1930 Pluto.
No, it's crazy. Crazy, right?
So that that talks about more of the like when they talk about
like the original ruler of something and they're not
acknowledging like Neptune and Pluto and Uranus.
Yeah, right. Yeah, like Hellenic astrology
didn't have any, clearly, right. Didn't have any of these planets
when that was created. And so yeah, there's tons of
information that they could see and and could observe and
created associations before these discovered planets.
And so when these planets were discovered, so interesting to
think about, like what was the thought process that made Pluto
be the planet of transitions and change?
And you know, like who decided that and how did we figure that
out? I'm not sure.
And that's a whole another deep dive that you could take if you
wanted to. That's the 201, so I don't know.
201 Astrology class, I feel like that's like 401, you know the
idea of like how did associations, how did they, how
were they created And I doubt that there's even great
documentation that points to 1 clear answer, you know.
So OK, I think we did good. We went over build it all, the
history of both me and of astrology as it appears to an
American. So we're gonna transition now
into Earth. Topics.
Ready. Challenges, challenges,
integrations, yeah. Challenges.
I don't even know how you're going to, like, succinctly cover
this. I'm not going to succinctly do
it, but I'll try to do it. I'm going to 1st kind of talk
about some ways of thinking about astrology or ways I'm
thinking about astrology and that I've observed other people
thinking about it. And then we'll get into kind of
some of these more tactical or problematic kind of questions
that we should answer. But the first thing I want to
say is, like in our culture, astrology has been woefully
oversimplified, right? And the reason it's been
oversimplified is because we have to make it palatable for
people to understand. And we already talked about that
Publication in the newspaper is kind of where we first started
to see that, and that took off. And so it kind of continued,
right? Even to this day.
We have astrology being published on magazine apps and
all over the place, and it still talks about sun sign, which to
me is like, are we still there? We're still gonna talk about sun
signs. Okay.
All right. Well, we're still there, All
right. But for me, I can also see the
silver lining in that because it's been kind of
oversimplified, I can talk about astrology around people that
would otherwise be totally kind of like freaked out If I were to
talk about other forms of divination like ruins or terror
or pendulums or scribe, right, all these other things, they'd
be like, that's witchcraft. But when I talk about astrology,
it's like, oh, you're just being kind of funny and woo woo, which
is so interesting. I think the reason that it that
it is so acceptable is because it has had such a long
documented history and because who's answering the questions
when you're talking about astrology?
Where are the messages coming from?
When we're talking about astrology, we're saying, well,
these planetary bodies are having this influence and so
therefore it's not like a dead ancestor or a God or elemental
anything. To yourself because you're not
like using these kind of woo woo energies and you're just talking
about these things we can all observe, then it's more
acceptable, which I just think is like literally.
During like scientific, like, I feel like when people understand
there's more than just a sudden sign and then you talk about
like where the plant like then it it feels like there's
legitimacy to it because it feels like there's a extensive
study and things like that. When we talk about Tara, they're
just like. They're just looking at some
cards and guessing some shit, you know what I mean?
So it brings a level of, like, legitimacy that I think people
are really interested in, but also don't find accessible in
the sense that they don't know how to read a Natal chart, like,
off the bat. And it's the same thing with
tarot cards. But we don't feel that way.
When you get an astrology reading, yeah, I mean, you just
put like a number associated with something and all of a
sudden it becomes like, smart and valid, right?
Like. You're Sagittarius and 15
degrees, and they're like, that's geometry.
That's legitimate. I learned that.
Yeah, isn't that so funny? So funny.
I mean, I literally will go into leadership meetings and say, OK
guys, listen, Venus is in retrograde, so let's be nice to
each other. Let's point out what we love
about each other. Like, I can literally say that
And even the Christians in the room are like, okay, Yeah, let's
talk about that. You know, it's it's so
interesting to me how palatable astrology is in our culture
right now. So I think that the it's
important for us to talk about how you can think about
astrology working. And this is so misunderstood,
right? I'll talk about later on how
maybe people with opposing viewpoints view astrology versus
like how I view astrology. So I think there is a, I think a
beautiful point of entry for someone for a new person is this
author and astrologer name called.
I think it's so funny when people say called instead of
named. It's what I'm calling them, but
I don't know what they want to be named.
Yeah, right. So Elisa Kelly will put some
show notes here, has this has this book that she recently
published called This Is Your Destiny.
I discovered Elisa. She was like People magazine.
She's the astrologer for People magazine.
She's just really funny. Very millennial and you know
just like total Instagram influencer person, but also has
like you know just has the accurate information and it's
not inaccurate. So for me it was very palatable.
The way that she talks about kind of her understanding of
astrology is the idea that it astrology is like as you're
looking at a clock, you know that that clock is not dictating
the time, but is rather reflecting what time it is.
And so when the hand of the minute and the hour gets to noon
o'clock midday, it just happens to be that the sun is overhead
at that same time, right? That is, the clock is reflecting
what is happening. The clock is not making the sun
go over your head that it just happens to be what is correlated
to that time, not causated, right?
And so this idea of correlation and causation is massively
important to any critical thinker.
I think this is like something where we could prevent 80% of
misinformation. Again, that's a really funny
statement because I couldn't quantify that.
So it is misinformation, right? So but an estimation.
But I think, yeah, so many things I hear that our fallacies
are created because people are using causation versus
correlation and I'll point to this in another article here.
But so when we're talking about, you know, planets and planetary
transits and you know the Zodiac and and how systems, we're
really just looking at the cosmos as a clock that is
pointing to a certain time. And what we know is during that
time these things tend to happen and there's just this
correlation between reality and what's being reflected above.
So I think that clock on the wall kind of analogy works
really well for me. And it helps me explain this
easily to people because the clock doesn't make time.
It literally is just reflecting at the time.
And so it could be that you eat lunch.
It could be that you don't eat lunch at noon, right?
Lots of people don't. And so this you have free will.
Fate is not determined. The stars like Mars isn't making
you do anything. It just happens to be the case
that when Mars is in Virgo, you tend to be pretty productive at
work or at least have a lot of movement happening or
challenges. Yeah, I don't know.
Do you? Does that resonate with you?
No, it I think it really does because it I think when people
can relate things in their own life and be like, oh, that seems
out there, but then you relate it to something that, like they
actually do and they're like, oh, maybe I need to rethink all
of my thoughts on this thing, you know what I mean?
And it's like it's very much I think the same thing with
Christianity when people are like, oh, well, that belief
system's so wild. And I'm like we literally
believe in a sky daddy who made the rules and made people
imperfect and then holds people accountable.
For the rules that they made when they made the people
imperfect, like, do we see how that sounds kind of wild too, if
you weren't part of that belief system.
And so it's it's, I think it's interesting when we point to
something that, like, everybody can reference like a clock and
we're like, yeah, so you're already doing this thing.
You just don't realize you're doing it and you're like, oh,
crap, right? No, you're right.
Yeah, I mean that. Yeah, again, So I think that
could be one way of thinking about it.
I think all astrologers will say that astrology and the
interpretation of astrology is literally just giving you a map
of potential realities, right. So when we talk about a Natal
chart, we talk about, hey, here are some potential personality
traits or life trajectories that could be influenced.
And the different ways that those things tend to manifest
are often really interesting to astrologers, right?
When you go to an astrologer and you have your chart read and
they ask you things like, have you ever experienced this?
And your answer to that is so interesting to astrologers
because how that manifests in your life is so different than
how that manifests for someone else.
And they're still kind of in the same direction, but just in a
completely different route. So it's certainly not
perscriptive, nor is it causation.
It's more correlation and potential, right?
OK, So last thing I'm going to say about kind of philosophies
is that I don't know and I don't know if they should go here or
somewhere else. But there is so much overlap
between Hermetic belief systems and theories and Hermeticism,
which Ptolemy was also you know influential in and astrology
right. So some things around like as
above, so below the principle of correspondence is the the
principle of rhythm. All of these things are, you
know, if you're going to get into astrology, it's probably
also worth diving into some hermetic principles and seeing
how that plays out in astrology. I'll just put that kind of like
little snippet there and let people play with it if they want
to. You're like and here's a
potential rabbit hole for you. Yeah.
And thank you. OK, so I do want to talk about
how you can use astrology and integrate it into your life and
where to start and all that good stuff.
But before I get into that, I would be remiss to not address
the elephant in the room in our modern popular society in the
US, which is Christianity's connection?
Relationship with astrology, right?
And I am very sensitive to create any kind of polarized
planes around Christianity because Christians are as
diverse as any, you know, witchy person out there, right.
And so there is a book that they, maybe some of them point
to, some of them don't, right. Some some Christians don't even
take the Old Testament. So there's a lot of dissonance
in what quote UN quote Christians, which is a useless
umbrella term, really all you know.
Really big umbrella. Like it's it's like such a use.
It's so big that like the rain would blow in sideways.
It's it has no purpose. Like Christians, maybe the only
thing that connects them is they acknowledge Jesus.
They acknowledge heaven and hell.
They so a lot of them don't acknowledge the devil you know
so like. And now all of them, they
believe in a one true God. But there's also like Catholic
part that's like holy goat, There's a Trinity.
Trinity, Yeah, The whole thing going on.
Yeah, yeah. So I mean to try to say that
like, oh, here's what Christians believe and they're wrong and
that, you know, like that's not helpful, nor is it capturing.
Like, I have a lot of Christian friends like that know that I
practice witchcraft. And we talk about the
differences between monotheistic religions and polytheistic
religions and have really productive discourse around
those things with no problem. You know, like there is no, I
think it's really important when we're out interacting with any
religious person that we have tacked and we have, we really
ask people what do they believe and why rather than have
assumptions around what Christianity means, right.
So just to put that out there. So I'm going to have all of the
reverence and sensitivity here when I'm addressing the
challenges that Christians could have and maybe should have with
astrology based in some of references.
So I have two websites here, just cursory research.
One is. Christianpure.com So Christian
word pure like pure.com and christianity.com.
So I'll put these links and so people can check it out.
And both of these sites are, you know, big front.
When you search it, it comes up right away.
And they're just really big sites with tons of website
traffic. And so there's two things that I
think were useful to understand. One article that I'm referencing
here, which is what Christians should know about the study of
astrology, is that number that the primary thing here is that
it literally says in the Bible that divination is not good, nor
does God approve of divination. I just want to read this like
quote here and I want to read this quote because I think it's
going to point out how they are misunderstanding.
This particular author is misunderstanding how astrologers
even think about astrology and then is using that to discount
and contrast the value or maybe how why astrology isn't OK.
So this person says astrology is a belief and corresponding study
and analysis that one's personality and destiny are
governed by astronomical phenomena at the same at the
time of their birth and then throughout their life.
So in other words, this is what continuing in other words, your
fate, your fortune and your entire life is to a very great
extent determined by the sun, moon, stars and planet.
The underlying principle is that positions of those heavenly
bodies have the power to influence not only your persona
and behavior, but to impact your daily, weekly, and monthly
events of your life. Okay, what do you hear that is a
problem with that statement? Causation, not correlation.
That's what I'm hearing, yeah. Yeah.
And if that was how astrology worked or how most astrologers
thought about it, I could understand the challenge that
you have with that. There are, yeah.
Like if you think that. It's it's directly converse to
the beliefs then, like, sure, yeah, yeah.
Because you're like, no, no, no. The sun doesn't tell me what to
do. God tells me what to do and
God's will and God has my, you know, has my future laid out for
me and and everything's part of his plan, right.
Or some Christians. Believe their friend.
You know the free will piece of that, like, well, if the sun,
moon, stars, planets determine all of this, then what do I have
free will? Is that a real thing that you
know? Yeah.
So if that is your interpretation of astrology,
sure, that's, you know, then Christian should not
participate. But that isn't how I understand
astrology. So there's that.
The second part, the second reference here with the
Christian pure.com. This is a really interesting
article and I actually want to kind of dive deeper into some of
its citations. This article has a ton of
biblical references that literally says that you cannot
believe in astrology because there are many things that point
to the stars. Jesus's birth.
How did the wise men get to the Manger?
They followed Star. Yeah, yeah, okay.
But then in other aspects, and This is why I think this article
is so interesting. In other tellings, there was a
king who had divination via astrology and the interpretation
and predictions were incorrect. And that was proof in the Bible
that astrology was nonsense, right?
So this is some story about a failed astrologer.
I don't know. And what's fail failure.
I don't know, but. And now he damned everyone else
to be soothsayers. Because that's right, was not
great at it. Fantastic.
And so in this article, essentially what they're saying
the Bible is saying on the topic is that you can use stars to
track time. You're good there.
You're not sinning. But if you use it to anticipate
or to guess what's gonna happen next, divination, then it's bad.
Thumbs down. So.
They're like no, as above, so below.
No, no, no, no, no, no. That's amazing.
Yeah. But yeah, I think it's actually
worth. It's really.
I mean, for me it's important to try to understand where other
people come from and to not assume that I know what they
believe or what their source text is.
And so I would really encourage people, if you are, if you have
Christians in your life and you believe in astrology and you
want to have some footing to have actual conversation and
engage in, in understanding, like check these things out and
see what they're saying. And, you know, you can see some
of the fallacies that are being used here.
But also it, I think, creates a lot of empathy and it would help
you have a productive conversation if you can say,
hey, that thing that you think is not actually how that how we
think about it or how I think about it.
So what if you thought about like this, Do you still have a
problem with it? Right.
So maybe they do, but I think it's worth clarifying, okay,
enough about Christians moving on.
And it's not just Christians, right?
There's a lot of other faiths that are monotheistic that have
issue with astrology. Okay.
So let's kind of wrap up with how could we use astrology in
our daily life. Well, #1 Natal astrology is used
to understand yourself better. There's ways of analyzing
yourself that are just naturally built into astrology.
Whether or not you say you know what, no, I am not those things
that are associated with my cancer sign, my cancer sun sign,
or you say yeah I am those things.
The fact that you ask yourself the question, am I an emotional
person has a shit ton of value, right?
The fact that you asked yourself that question is a way of better
understanding yourself and having some self analysis and
self reflection. So I would say the value for
astrology in people's lives. And if I was talking to someone
who is anti astrology I would literally just say what if this
was a vehicle for me to ask myself questions about how I see
myself, right? What did that have inherent
value? And I think it would.
There is so Natal astrology definitely a great way to use
astrology in your daily life to think about those things.
However, it is a place of privilege to know what time
you're born, Right. Like, I didn't know until I was,
I don't know. What was that, 3839, maybe?
Yeah, 39, No. Yeah, 39 what time I was born,
Right. Because, you know, my mother
died when I was young. My father, you know, I don't
even know if he was there, but like, nobody knew what time I
was born. And so I had to take a trip to a
place where they were storing information.
I had to pay money. I had to take time off of work
potentially to do those things. And so that's privileged.
If you don't know if there's no way for you to recover your
birth time, for instance, if you were born and then adopted
without records, then there is a process that you can go through
which is this kind of like birth time rectification is the
process. There is another thought leader
who nobody's ever going to listen to this that would then
relate this message back to this person.
But Chris Brennan is brilliant, brilliant person is like one.
Was the president of, like this very prestigious astrological
organization and maybe if he hears me say this, I'll never be
able to get a certification with certization.
Again, I don't know. But bless his heart, he's so
smart and he is the driest speaker I've ever heard in my
whole life. Just it is a burden and a curse
to be so brilliant. I think it's it's a requirement
that if you are at that level of brilliance that you're
incapable. Of bringing other people to your
level of brilliance because you simply can't get the following.
I'm I'm convinced that it's a requirement.
It's how the the world balances its energies.
It's like you have to I I would highly recommend anybody who's
passionate about astrology and wants to dive into it to at some
point take on this person's podcast.
It's a huge podcast, it has a shit ton of followers.
It's like and it's really meaningful and it covers amazing
topics and have amazing guests. Chris Brennan love him this.
Is the 4 hour long ones? Uh, huh.
Yes. Yeah.
And there's like no opening music.
There's no segments. There's no like.
Right to the point here and we're.
Gonna do it in four hours and the way that he interacts with
his guest, it just cracks me up. I just highly recommend it.
But it's not gonna be entertaining.
It's gonna be informational and that's okay.
But yeah, so as a I just wanna give you an example here of the
way that people approach rectification.
So he has a quote on the topic where my approach to
rectification is to identify some of the main themes and
events that have occurred in a person's life and then attempt
to match those facts with a chart that falls within the
available time frame on the person's, you know, date of
birth. So it's really important to know
the time of date because we need to know exactly where the moon
was. We need to know exactly what
constellation was on the horizon, right?
We need to know these really important times.
And so instead of working from the point of information to the
output, he's working from the output going back in.
He's saying, OK, well, if, yeah, if you had your son in or not
son because you know, your son because based on your time.
But you know, so we're asking questions about like, what's
your relationship with your mother?
What's your relationship with your father?
What are major life events that have happened?
How would you describe your personality?
So by kind of working from the output, we can then kind of
determine the input through this process of rectification.
Is it 100% accurate? No.
But it can certainly give you. There's nothing to, yeah,
confuse like, you know what I mean?
Like, what is there to obfuscate it?
If you don't have that data, you might as well be like, all
right, well, let's, let's work backwards, you know?
Yeah, Yeah. So that's what that kind of
rectification is. It's very expensive.
I'll say that because it's quite labor intensive because somebody
actually has to really know a lot about you to make a very
good guess, okay. So that's just kind of like
Natal chart in your daily life. What are some other ways that
you can use astrology in your daily life?
Well, divination, right. We talked about electional
astrology, which will tell you kind of when you should do
something. Relational astrology could tell
you like the dynamics of, you know, what your relationship
with your child might be like or your partner.
And then we have our favorite word in the whole world
horrorary astrology could give you.
Listen to our podcasts so they can laugh at the number of
they're gonna. It's gonna be a drinking game.
It will be. I literally was having the same
thought. I hope they're drinking water.
They will be so hydrated. It'll be great.
But yeah, so there's like just literally using it as
divination. That would be another way.
And in order to do this, it is very useful to have a astrology
app and to find daily transits, moon transits, whatever you're
focusing on at that time. I will say that I have what do I
have. I have time passages.
Yes, I have time passages and I have the paid for version of
time passages, which allows me to store multiple people's
charts and then compare them to my own.
Or it allows me to see kind of like what their placements are.
And it's a really interesting place to start from to, like I
think you commented, I showed you like how many people's
information I have in my. Why do you have a database of
every human you've ever met? Oh, it's so funny too, because
I'm not actually good enough at astrology to be able to tell
them anything about it. I just go, like, tell me your
time and enter your information. I go interesting and then move
on. It's very, I'm like, I can't
tell anything about it, but I want to be able to reference it
when I can. Just know.
That there are people out there who like want your information
not to scam you, but just so they can like put you as like
Maria at the bus stop. Then compare your chart and Oak
is one of those people. Yeah, I have my boss, I have my
coworkers, I have my friends, partners, my gosh, all over the
place. But yeah, I think being able to
store a lot of people's information and then reference
it, like for instance, one of my coworkers, she's, she just sold
her house. She broke ground on
construction. And to see what her placements
and what her, what's transiting her 4th house right now is like
foundations and home is so interesting to me.
So being able to kind of like prove some of these connections
to myself in real time by almost observing people's lives and
seeing how that release to their chart has been a really fun
experiment that I can use on a daily basis.
The last thing I would say is astrology boards would be a fun
way to use astrology in your daily life because you can take
your little cute magnetic planet and put it in a different house
and like a different system and that would be a fun way to do
it. I will say that and I guess this
also falls into my you know, where should you start place,
but there is a great resource that has, you know, these.
This team has clearly put a lot of time and effort into it, and
it's called the Channing App CHANI everybody knows about.
Yeah, good. Yeah, it is so good.
And so I these are the two thought leaders that I would say
that people should start with that are very approachable and
talk in like very modern terms and very relatable.
So Elisa Kelly, this is your destiny and use your astrology
to manifest your best life. That is a easy peasy book.
I mean it's like I devoured it and I'm not a fast reader
because it's very, you know, just story based.
Almost like talking about her life and her experience like 230
pages or something. That's a great book.
Alisa Kelly. I'll link her social And then
the other person is this Channing Nicholas.
So you were born for this. Astrology for Radical Self
Acceptance is a New York Times bestseller, if that tells you
anything about the popularity of astrology right now.
And so this is going to kind of help you understand the three
foundational keys of the sun, the moon and the ascendant or
rising and the ruler of those things.
And again, does it in a really approachable way.
But Jenny has this beautiful, like super cool, beautiful like
graphic design app and she has weekly readings that you can get
on Spotify or if you wanted to get your weekly rising sign,
because that's actually the kind of horoscopes you should listen
to that have more relation. Your rising sign will also tell
you some house systems things, right, Because we know where
your rising sign is. We know where your first house
is and therefore your other houses.
So if you pay, I don't know what the amount is, maybe like $5 a
month. And then she also has like
specials. I think like right now she has
through like Venus Retrograde. They're running like a free 30
day thing. But that's a yeah, it's a really
great app that has not only transits and, you know, chart
generators, but it also has things like meditations and
journal prompts and like, here's some ideas of what to put on an
altar if you wanted to, like create a altar for the season.
It's it's pretty witchy. And so that may not be.
I mean, if somebody's listening to our fucking podcast and
clearly they're witchy, so you. Got lost.
You got all the way to this point and then you're like,
fuck, I wasn't supposed to be here.
You aren't listening. Yes Okay.
So I don't have to like talk to the masses.
So it's witchy. It's great.
It's actually not very witchy at all to me.
It's like more self help but but yeah so Channing app.
I would definitely recommend that the other place I would
start. So I have three things so get a
thought leader that you're gonna follow them right.
The other one is to get, you know the chart.
Get your own chart or get a chart, someone you know really
intimately, right? If you can't get your own chart,
then great, just like start from your partner's chart or start
from your child's chart or your mom's chart, right?
Something that you know really, really closely and that will
kind of give you a starting place As you start to learn
things and think about the different house systems, you
have to have something to base it in.
The last thing I would say is to pick a topic.
Pick one topic. What are some topics we went
through? House systems, planet
placements, major aspects. We went through the
constellation. Yeah, like what does Sagittarius
mean? Right?
So pick any one topic and keep going with that until you feel
comfortable. And some of the best ways to
explore one topic is through thinking about it from pop
culture, like Slip. If you're into pop culture, I
guess if you're into like, not pop culture, I don't know.
Whatever you're into, like historical figures throughout
time or I don't know, famous composers.
Like whatever you nerd out about.
Like for me, it's valuable to know the placement of 1
celebrity and to compare their personalities because they're,
you know, they're projecting an archetype.
That's what celebrities do. They're they don't present as
dynamic because that's not what they're doing.
They're playing a role. So they purposefully will look
to be emotional, or they're spiritual, or they're greedy, or
they're combative. And so when you have this
oversimplification of a human, it makes it easy to explore that
topic and to understand. Like, oh, someone's I'm
forgetting right now, I'll have to Google it.
But like what? I think there's a lot of like
Leo placements in the Kardashians.
Not, yeah, exactly right. That would make a.
That would make a lot of sense to me.
Yeah, yeah, yes. But like knowing you know what
you know about some topic and then connecting it to again, a
very narrowed, boundary positioned topic is really the
place to start. Get somebody to follow, pick one
thing at a time and make sure you have access to a chart of a
person that you know very well, ideally yourself or someone
very, very close. That's where I that's where I
started and that's where I think you should start.
But I could be wrong, I don't know.
Maybe you should start with the minor aspects and just Oh my
God, I like quintiles selescence, like there's so many
syllables. Quints.
I watched a Disney movie about quints Once Upon a time.
I think they had five babies. If I I'm just trying to remember
what Quint. Is yes.
Yeah, yeah, we know. Often mom had eight babies.
But do we know? This is this is how I relate to
all those things. When they're like 6 tuplets, I'm
like. One little lady who has six,
wasn't it six? Yeah, yeah, that was funny.
Yeah. So.
Well, that's it. I am so relieved you did it.
You. Did the damn thing.
You did it. I only was able to do it because
you supported me. Danny.
Okay okay. That's all.
People listening to this podcast are gonna be like, this is
really just a medium for them to tell each other that they like
each other. Yeah, that's what this thank you
so much for allowing me to have this exercise and articulating
what I think that I know and also identifying some holes in
my understanding. Well, normally I would exit this
and say, hey guys, it's been great talking to you and here's
what we're gonna do next time. But I have some news.
Our next episode. Our next episode is going to be
a finale episode of season one. Yeah, not a final episode of our
podcast. A finale episode of the season.
Yeah. And we're going to relive some
experiences and we're going to maybe give some announcements,
maybe talk about what we're going to do in Season 2.
I mean, it can get a little wild in here, but I don't have a lot
of details to see it for you because we haven't decided
anything at any rate. Awesome.
Well, Cliffhanger. No cliffhangers.
Yeah. Awesome.
Well, I look forward to next time, Danny.
Yeah. All right.
Well, everybody as always, which is blessed be be well, we'll
talk to you next time. Bye.