I felt like digging through the archives and pulling out this interview with CJ Wright (aka Auntie Moon) on the subject of combining astrology with numerology. I greatly enjoyed talking with CJ. I hope you enjoy the podcast.
Click on the link above to hear the interview.
Another interesting topic, although not very astrological. I recently had an Ayurvedic consultation for a puzzling physical condition and wanted to share more about it. Ayruvedic medicine is a traditional medicine practice from India and is often used as a form of complementary medicine in the West for cancer patients and other people with chronic conditions. If you’ve ever heard of doshas or looked into Deepak Chopra’s writings, you’ve undoubtedly run across references to Ayurvedic principles.
My guest for this podcast is a recent graduate of an esteemed medical training program in India, and she talks about the ideas and practices behind this ancient wisdom. A great introduction to a fascinating topic. Click here to listen.
Earthquakes in Japan! Nuclear crisis! Revolution in Egypt! War in Libya! Capture of Osama bin Laden! Shootout in Tucson! Union protests in Wisconsin! Flooding Mississippi!
The past several months have seen more than their share of big news events. What is going on?
In this week’s podcast, we tackle some of the astrological symbolism behind world news today.
Some of the topics addressed include:
Can astrology predict earthquakes?
Why 2011 might be more rocky than the so-called doomsday year of 2012
Global structural reform
What does the Uranus square Pluto configuration mean to you?
Egypt, Libya & the Middle East
Union-busting in Wisconsin
The symbolism of the Japanese nuclear crisis
and more….
The guest is Scott Wolfram, an evolutionary astrologer and relocation specialist.
We’re living in interesting times. Learn a little bit more about them.
I get asked about past lives a lot. Clients or potential clients often say to me things like “Do you do past lives too?” or “I want to know if this person I am having troubles with was linked to me in past life,” or they want to know what their karma is and so on.
I’m not an expert in past lives. I know, as most mainstream astrologers do, that the south node is often considered to be an indicator of a person’s roles in past lives. But truthfully, I do most of my work with a person’s current life. I have more than enough (way more than enough sometimes) information to work with about a person’s current life. Plus, most of the people I know have their hands full with one life at a time, let alone delving into other ones!
But that doesn’t mean we aren’t all curious about past lives. Most of us are. I’ve had past life regression sessions a few times and I’ve even conducted a few. Since so many people have asked me to present more information on past lives, I decided to address them in a podcast as requested. I interviewed an expert in past life regression, a Board certified hypotherapist and member of the International Board for Regression Therapy, Marilyn Redmond.
Marilyn uses past life regression for therapeutic purposes, to help people uncover phobias, understand their psychological problems, and even fix practical situations in their own lives regarding health and relationships and so on. She talks about what happens in past life regression session and what kinds of lives she uncovers. If you’ve ever curious about what happens during past life regression, listen here.
The latest podcast is up. It features Atala Toy, president of Crystal Life Technologies. This company has a website that is a gem gazers dream. It has tons of items to browse and lots of information on the properties of various crystals, stones, and other tools. Even if you’re not in the mood to buy right now, it’s a wonderful place to window shop and learn about various natural healing technologies.
During the podcast, Atala covers a lot of information on crystals and how they work, how to choose stones for your needs, information on chakras and other fun stuff.
In honor of Neptune in Pisces, I’m posting a podcast on dreams and dream interpretation. We have an odd combination of influences in the coming era. One, Neptune in Pisces, is the ‘sleep, perchance to dream’ influence that opens up the collective consciousness to a greater understanding of the subconscious mind (a hot topic in scientific research these days, by the way). The other influence, Uranus in Aries, is the ‘wake-up call’ influence.
One use of that combination of energies is to take what’s learned from exploration of the subconscious and translate it into effective action on the conscious plane. Understanding your dreams can be a great way to learn from the subconscious, as I know from personal experience. I have used dreams in my own life to significant effect.
My guest on the podcast is Michele Avanti. She’s an astrologer, author, and also the creator of an accredited university course on dream interpretation, one that she taught for 16 years. She’ll give a handy explanation of how you can interpret your own dreams.
You can find out more about Michele at her websites: www.talesoftamoor.com and astrologyandmore.blogspot.com. Here’s a link to her Facebook page as well. Enjoy!
In honor of my Venus transit, I’m posting a couple of podcasts and something that Venus just loves: jewelry and pretty things. This week’s podcast has a fascinating interview with Alicia Katz of wearyouruniverse.com who is a former astronomer turned astrology fan. That doesn’t happen too often! She makes astrologically correct jewelry. You can get an actual representation of your birth chart in the form of a necklace or bracelet. She also designs and sells a number of other astrology-themed baubles and adornments. Some of them can be used to up your manifestation mojo in a desired area.
Next week, we delve into Vedic gemology. Vedic astrology has a long tradition of using jewelry and gemstones to correct problems in a birth chart, enhance luck, overcome difficulties or bring about desired results. Our guest is a Vedic astrologer specializing in Vedic gemology, Alan Schoenfeld of vedicharmony.com. A former jeweler, he talks about the ins and outs of choosing Vedic gemstones, how to use them, how they relate to the colors of the spectrum and other fascinating stuff.
Gotta love the pretty rocks!
Ever wondered what those moon’s node thingies are doing in your chart? Or maybe you know a little bit about them but don’t know how to use them in transits or how to interpret aspects to them in your natal chart.
This week’s podcast has an interview with a woman who’s done years of research into the function and uses of the moon’s nodes in astrology, including checking the differences between the mean nodes and the true nodes. Her name is Donna Van Toen, and she’s even written a book on the nodes. She teaches many classes, including classes online and runs an astrology conference called State of the Art (SOTA). In 2011, it will be held in Niagra Falls, NY October 27-30 and will feature many international speakers.
You can take a look at www.donnavantoen.com for information on last year’s (SOTA) conference. Recordings of last year’s sessions are available. Contact Donna at dvantoen@rogers.com or through Facebook for more information. She’ll be happy to give you info, although be warned she gets a lot of requests, so it may take awhile–but she will respond to every one.
p.s. I found Donna through Donna Cunningham’s blog, one you should check out if you’re interested in learning more about astrology.
I also had a great time with Todd Bates on the Haunted Voices Radio Network the other night. We talked astrology for almost 2 hours and took questions. You can listen to it here: Haunted Voices Radio Network. My part begins about 20 minutes into the show. You can also check out the network and donate at hvrnc.com. Good stuff, please support them.
I said in this week’s podcast that the post-Christmas week would be pretty crazy and boy is it, at least for anyone traveling in the Northeast US. In fact, people all over the world have been stuck, stranded, inconvenienced and trapped by weather lately. Floods in Australia, chaos at Russian airports. Not to mention many parts of the US blizzardized and the western US soaked and mudslided. An amazing number of people have been affected.
I’m blaming Jupiter conjunct Uranus, not to mention eclipses and Mercury Rx adding to the general confusion. You may know that Jupiter is a patron planet of travel, but did you know that he is also associated with the weather?
Now that he’s hugging Uranus in a tight embrace into January 2010, he’s expressing himself in a number of weather related ways. Pisces is a water sign so he’s enlarging the general disruption (Uranus) that precipitation can bring. In Pisces, Jupiter also loves chaos, and I suppose travel chaos would be a specialty for him. Uranus is the crazy planet, and with Jupiter at his side, it’s just really crazy. True to Jupiter form, the wackiness hasn’t really been lethal, but it sure has been forcing people to slow down when they weren’t expecting to.
Knowing that this would be a week when we’d be forced to slow down, like it or not, this week’s podcast is all about The Art of Slowing Down. My guest, Edward Yu, wrote a book on that very topic and he describes a phenomenon wherein learning can be instantaneous when we slow down enough. Pretty darn intriguing. And very Jupiter/Uranus–because they’re all about insight and instantaneous learning–even if they have to disrupt our patterns to make it possible.
This week’s podcast features an interview with Hazel Dixon-Cooper (www.hazeldixoncooper.com), author of the very popular “Rotten Day” series of astrology books. In her books, Hazel takes a humorous look at the ‘rotten’ qualities of the sun signs in various settings. The first book, Born on a Rotten Day, was such a success that it spawned three more books and landed Hazel a job as the Bedside Astrologer columnist for Cosmpolitan magazine. She’s now the daily horoscope astrologer for cosmpolitan.com.
In the interview, Hazel talks about her most recent book, the timely Work on a Rotten Day. Hazel also gives us insight into what goes into those daily horoscopes you read in newspapers, magazines, or online. She gives some great advice on what it takes to succeed in your job or avocation as well as giving us her insights into the current retrograde/eclipse formation we have going on right now.
PLUS! Hazel generously offered to give away a free copy of Work on a Rotten Day to one lucky listener. Listen to the end of the podcast to find out the super-simple way to enter.
Hazel was a lot of fun to talk to; I hope you all enjoy this podcast. Click here to listen. It’s also available on iTunes.
Mercury is going retrograde soon (on the 10th of December) and in honor, I did an interview with Erin Sullivan. Erin literally wrote the book on retrogrades (Retrograde Planets: Traversing the Inner Landscape). She has a ton to say about retrogrades in all their manifestations: in the birth chart and in transit. You can hear the interview here. You can also access that podcast and all the other ones via iTunes now. We’ve also done some recent interesting shows on topics like Feldenkrais and bodywork, Tarot, the Law of Attraction and more. You can see the archive of shows here.
You can also learn more about Erin Sullivan at her website. She’s an astrologer with tremendous experience and credentials, and she does individual consultations as well as being an author. Feel free to contact her through her website if you would like a consultation.
Upcoming we have podcasts with Zane Stein (aka Mr. Chiron) and Jeff Harmon on horary astrology.
I also want to thank local magazine LA Confidential for mentioning me in their ‘not to be missed’ category. Here’s the link to their story.
Have a happy Thanksgiving everyone!
I really enjoyed doing the most recent podcast because it gave me a chance to get a reading with the most accurate Tarot reader I’ve ever experienced. Her name is Tory Valach of Red Rose Tarot. The show itself talks a little bit about the correspondence of astrological and Tarot symbolism, choosing a deck, getting started, a philosophy of Tarot and more. Tory also gives me a little mini-reading so you can hear how it works. I know lots of people who are interested in astrology are also interested in Tarot, so enjoy!
It’s Mars in Scorpio time and in honor, this week’s podcast is on acupuncture and astrology. Mars in Scorpio is the placement mostly closely correlated with acupuncture in my unscientific experience. If you’ve thought about trying acupuncture, this transit (through October 27, 2010) is a good time. Mars is sharp objects such as acupuncture needles and Scorpio is healing or regeneration.
I found the conversation with acupuncturist Fernando Escobar to be fascinating, even though I’ve already had acupuncture treatments in the past. I had no idea just how Scorpionic the treatment is in terms of its ability to get at past traumas for deep healing. I also found out that Traditional Chinese Medicine isn’t all that traditional, and that classical approaches to acupuncture are more holistic. I was also surprised at how much training is required and by the wide range of things acupuncture can be used to treat.
There’s also a segment at the end that talks about whether or not you’re a good astrological candidate for acupuncture.
This week’s podcast contains a live, off-the-cuff chart reading for an individual whose chart I had never seen before. She got a free reading in exchange for allowing it to be recorded for the show. Listening to a consultation is a great way for people who have never had one to get a feel for what it’s like (it’s not fortune-telling!). It’s also a great way for students and enthusiasts to get more information about how a chart operates in real life as opposed to the abstractions presented in cookbooks.
In many cases, I have time to prepare by meditating on the chart before the reading, but in this case it was spontaneous and is presented warts and all. It was edited slightly for time and to delete some personally identifying details. There are always things that could have been done differently or followed up on more thoroughly, but time is always a factor and at 1 hour we couldn’t go into everything in detail. I’ve never given a consultation yet that I thought was perfect!
With that said, below are some of the things we touched on. If the astrospeak at first goes over your head, scroll down a bit for some interesting manifestations explained in plain English.
Her main concern in the natal chart at the moment was a cardinal T-square between Pluto in Libra, Mars in Aries, and Moon in Cancer. All 3 placements fell within the Gauquelin sectors, so this is quite a planetary tussle within her natal chart. Her ‘phase of life’ is Mars in Aries. (For an explanation of phase of life and how to calculate it, refer to the podcast and the previous one on Vedic astrology.) Her Mars in Aries placement is conjunct the Descendant on the 6th house side. In her life it seems to correlate, as expected, with work, health, and relationship matters. Her natal Mars is activated by solar arc direction but not by transit or secondary progression. She spontaneously mentioned a number of Mars issues, including concerns about her health, her relationships, her tendency to initiate and not follow through, as well as feelings of excessive heat.
There are a lot of approaches we could have taken to her Mars concerns, but we focused on the dynamics of the conversation between Pluto, Mars and the Moon.
We also talked about her natal Neptune in Sagittarius in the 3rd house (Placidus houses), which is in a trine to her natal Mars. We briefly mentioned Chiron conjunct her sun in Taurus in the 7th house, her Jupiter in Leo in the 10th house, and her Saturn in Virgo in the 11th house.
Interesting manifestations of the planets: (some of these are mentioned in the podcast, some came out in later conversation).
Neptune in Sagittarius in the 3rd house: Neptune is often related to music or artistic leanings in a chart, and that seems to be the case for the client. A cookbook interpretation of Neptune in Sagittarius in the 3rd might be something like overseas relatives or artistic siblings. This client is the first I’ve come across, however, to use Neptune in the 3rd to make up an imaginary (Neptune) language (3rd house). She also prefers to sing (Neptune) in a foreign (Sagittarius) language (third house).
Mars in Aries in the 6th house: Particular forms of exercise (6th house) make her feel militant (Mars, Aries). She specifically relates this to her father, who was trained as a military (Mars) physician (6th house).
Moon in Cancer in the 9th house conjunct MC: The client expressed an attraction to jobs that involve serving food (Cancer), nurturing people (Moon), and serving them within a certain philosophy (9th house). She is going to school (9th house) to study Ayurvedic nutrition (Cancer). She finds it difficult to finish (Mars square Moon). Her mother (Moon) was an educational (9th house) prodigy (graduated medical school at an early age) known for her cooking (Cancer). Her mother can be extremely critical at times (Moon square Mars and Pluto). Her mother’s accomplishments act as a shadow looming over her (moon conjunct MC). She is taking steps toward public visibility (moon conjunct MC) but has many hesitations (moon squared by Mars and Pluto).
These are the kinds of specific manifestations of the symbolic language of astrology that cookbooks with their limited space cannot really address. This is why it is good to study real chart and look at how resourceful charts can be in expressing their energies in a given environment.
In this particular case, we could follow up by focusing more specifically on relationships and how to negotiate the charts dual drives for independence via Mars and Aries and relationship via sun in the 7th and Pluto in Libra conjunct the Ascendant. We could also delve more deeply and more practically in terms of exercises to deal with the blocking action her Mars feels from the Pluto influence and that her moon feels from both Mars and Pluto. During our initial session, she already began to identify some of the real life circumstances and thoughts that her Pluto represents. As with anyone, Pluto can be an asset or a real problem.
As with all people, the astrology of her chart simply provides a language for expressing, clarifying and analyzing what’s really going on in her life and what she experiences on a daily basis. These circumstances, feelings, and experiences could also be expressed and analyzed using other types of terminology. The value of astrology is partly that by externalizing the competing desires and feelings as planetary symbols a person can look at them objectively and start to figure out how to make choices about how tot handle them. Astrology also offers something few other disciplines do: information about timing. It can a guide a person as to when the ‘right’ time to deal with certain inner conflicts or impulses might be and when it’s okay to just wait for things to unfold. At the moment, the time is ripe for this individual to develop tools to deal with all 3 elements of the t-square.
