Once upon a time…
I was just a girl, standing under fluorescent lights in the massive warehouse store that is Costco. That’s when a big red book jumped out at me. It seemed to leap from the hundreds of books stacked atop a plastic table until all I could see was it — covered in golden suns and stars.
My fingers ran across the book 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. Then, 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 the 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 only to wake in the morning and learn that they were 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 and images were associated with an asteroid that just happened to be in a significant astronomical position at that very moment in time (i.e., a conjunction).
It often felt like the stars themselves were trying to alert me to their location or perhaps something else — some big, loving force — was whispering to me, drawing my attention to something happening out in space.
For example: One Sunday, I noticed the number 19 on the tops of all of the to-go containers from my family’s favorite 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 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 coincidence, 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 place in the sky where the sun was when I was born.
I won’t share more here about the many ways that I experience an intuitive connection with astrology because I demonstrate it plenty in The Magic Guide, but my point is:
Something magical is happening with the stars. Something that western astrology, as its commonly practiced, only begins to capture.
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 me by something mysterious, and when I find myself wondering about this kind of intuitive astrology 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 when I hear that, I wonder if by “ancient” this message is referencing Ancient Babylon, where astrology is first thought to have developed.
I googled “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 a divine connection and of receiving information through the astronomical alignments that mysteriously reveal themselves to 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.
Astrology 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 been replaced with 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.
But this great cosmic conversation with the stars started simply. It started with learning to speak their language. A language that has been transcribed through maps and glyphs, and so, I created this guide to teach you that language in the way I’ve come to understand it.
But mostly, I created this so you may participate in this ancient practice of communion in the way that only you can. Because your connection is not mine, it is yours.
