Ancient Astrology
on the origin of seeing stars
Once upon a time…
I was just a girl, standing under fluorescent lights in the massive warehouse store that is Costco, when a big red book jumped out at me from the table.
It was covered in golden suns and stars. My fingers ran across it like they were remembering something old and familiar, or more like, they wanted to remember.
My mom, despite no former curiosity about astrology, bought me the book (The Secret Language of Relationships) and the blue one sitting next to it (The Secret Language of Birthdays).
I took them home and flipped through them with glee. I instantly felt seen and understood by the words inside, and as a child, I turned to those books again and again. But as I got older, I stopped opening the books. I thought astrology was all a bunch of hooey—entertainment, fun, but not really real.
Then, in my late twenties, I saw a therapist who was into astrology. She pulled my birth chart, and as she looked at the lines and glyphs on the page, she was able to read them like a foreign language. I knew right then and there: I want to to be able to do that.
In the years that followed, I learned. I learned the language of astrology, and I found truth in it. I didn’t really care whether it was rooted in something “real” or not. It spoke to me. It helped me.
Then…something happened. Something wholly unexpected.
I started dreaming about stars.
Literally, in my sleep, I would dream about dates and planetary alignments that would prove to be true. I would dream about planetary bodies I’d never even heard of before but that I would soon discover were very, very real.
I started seeing stars in everything.
In random numbers and images throughout the day that seemed to glow in my direction, calling me to look towards the sky. Every time, I discovered that the numbers/images were associated with an asteroid that just happened to be in a significant astronomical position (i.e., a conjunction).
It often felt as though the stars themselves were reaching out to alert me to their location or perhaps something else—some big, loving force—was whispering to me, alerting me to something happening out in space.
Like the other day, when I noticed the number 19 on the tops of all of the to-go containers from my family’s typical Sunday morning breakfast spot. The number jumped out at me, but I didn’t take the time to look it up. Then, that evening, I kept rolling the number 19 during a dice game with my husband. The perennial skeptic, he was even statistically shocked by just how many 19s I was rolling and felt the need to point it out. A moment later, after a series of lucky rolls for us both, he deemed the game “the game of good fortune.” At this point, I burst out laughing because Asteroid 19 is named Fortuna! After the Roman goddess of good fortune. So…pressed by synchronicity, I finally looked up asteroid 19, and as luck—or something—would have it, at that very moment, the asteroid Fortuna was positioned at the exact same spot in the sky where the sun was when I was born.
I won’t share more here about the many ways that I experience this intuitive connection to astrology because I demonstrate it plenty in The Magic Guide, and if you’ve ever read or listened to the story, you know. But my point is:
I experience an innate, intuitive connection to the movement of matter in our solar system that cannot be explained and cannot be easily taught.
The astrology I practice now is not what I found in those early books or in any book.
It was taught to me and is constantly being taught to be by something mysterious, and when I find myself wondering about this kind of astrology that I practice and why it’s so different than most of what’s out there today, I simply hear the words: Ancient Astrology.
This style of astrology is ancient.
And I wonder if that’s true. I wonder if by ancient, the message is referencing Ancient Babylon, where astrology is first thought to have developed. I google, “history of astrology babylon” and read that “Babylonian astrology developed within the context of divination.”
In other words, in ancient times, astrology was not some psychological exploration of archetypes nor was it the regurgitation of memorized understandings of planets and angles. It was about a connection with something divine, and while my understanding of divinity may differ from the people of Ancient Babylon, my experience of astrology feels closer to this: a practice of experiencing some divine connection, of divining information through the astronomical information mysteriously moving through me.
For in my experience, astrology is not a language rooted in defined meanings (e.g., a conjunction means X, Jupiter means Y), but rather, it is a language rooted in communion with something larger than oneself.
It is a practice of communing with the cosmos—not just through the mind, but through the heart.
Ever since that first dream—pointing me towards something out in space—my experience of astrology has completely changed. The foundational language I was taught from human teachers and books has slowly faded away and has been replaced by an expansive, intuitive cosmic conversation, and with this, I think, my young self’s subconscious wish is finally coming true. I am remembering.
Over time, my memory—like a portal to the past—has opened more and more.
The cosmic conversation now flows all the time, and the positions of various asteroids (often ones I’ve never even heard of) are revealed to me almost every day. I share many of these stories (though not nearly all) in The Magic Guide.
For the longest time, I’ve tried to hide my experience of astrology by approaching it from the perspective of science and analysis, and while I think there is a place for that, at this point—after this many years of communion—I don’t even really care all that much about the science. I don’t need it to explain my experiences. All I need to do is listen and trust and stand strong in the wisdom moving through me which tells me (without solid evidence but clear understanding) that this is ancient. This is powerful. This is real, and I am grateful to have this gift and to be able to share it with you.
Thank you for being here. Thank you for reading.