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The Four Questions in Narrative Astrology

As an astrologer, I attempt to tell validating stories, but my stories will not entirely resonate with you. They aren’t meant to. The stories I tell are my stories. They come from my mind and reflect the world I want to see. But you can take my stories and change them and make them your own. Using astrology to change our personal narratives is the practice behind Narrative Astrology.

I would like to introduce you to one of the tools of Narrative Astrology: the Four Questions.

You know it’s time to use the Four Questions when you hear something that makes you feel emotional dissonance. For me, emotional dissonance is something I feel in my body. It’s like the churning in my belly when I smell food that isn’t quite right. Or the vertigo of going down the first hill of a rollercoaster. Emotional dissonance is like the squeaky sound the brakes on your car make when they’re wearing out. It’s a warning that the story you’re hearing is unstable, and something needs to change.

Maybe there’s something wrong with the story. There are times when you need to make like Thomas Jefferson and tear pages out of a sacred text, but sometimes the thing that needs to change is you. Sometimes, a story holds up a mirror and shows you something about yourself that needs care and attention, or maybe there’s a story you’ve been carrying around that has blocked in ways you don’t need to be.

When you’re emotionally fraught, the lesson in the emotional dissonance you’re feeling can become lost like your reflection in the ripples in a pond. The Four Questions help you to calm the ripples, so you can see yourself more clearly.

Question 1: How does this story make me feel?

We begin by going within. We are experiencing emotional dissonance. We know that stories run on drama, so the first step is to cut the emotional gas line and deprive the story of fuel. Emotionally disconnecting ourselves from the story is necessary to get enough distance to really understand it, but it’s important to recognize that this also kills the story.

Stories are living, breathing things. Killing a story to understand it has the same problems as killing a frog so you can dissect it. You might be able to understand the structure of the frog’s veins, but you’ll never get to the heart of what a frog is when it’s dead.

With a story, though, we cannot know it at all without detaching ourselves emotionally. We must disconnect to observe.

The problem: Stories are like parasites. They cannot exist without a host. They cannot exist without a brain to think about them, a heart and nervous system to be activated by them. They are the emotional ride they take us on.

So, we can’t just get cold and turn off our emotions when examining a story. The story disappears without them. The trick is to be in our feelings and observe them with as much clarity as possible, at the same time.

You may find that it helps to describe what is going on in your heart or in your body with words: My cheeks feel hot. My fingers feel numb. My lower back hurts. I feel angry. Eventually, you will feel yourself getting quiet or wandering away from your feelings about the story. You’ll find yourself saying things like: I smell my neighbor’s delicious curry. I see a child walk by the house with a red umbrella. You will feel peaceful and centered. (If you don’t find yourself wandering off like this, stop the exercise and try again later.)

When you feel peaceful, centered, clear-eyed, and safe, you have heard what the story needs you to say, and it’s time to move on to the next question.

Question 2: What does this story say about me and the world I live in?

In Question 2, we shift from observing our reaction to the story to analyzing the story itself. Our goal in Question 2 is to understand the story in its ecosystem. Stories cannot exist on their own. They need people to tell them, and they need to be in relationship with other stories. The alliances and conflicts between stories bind them together into political theories, philosophies, world views, and, ultimately, the collection of all these things that is the zeitgeist.

When we look critically at a story, we ask ourselves: What role does this story play in its ecosystem? What feeds it? What threatens it? What does it contribute? What is it keeping alive? What does it threaten?

You will likely find Question 2 easier and harder if you have a liberal arts degree. If your degree taught you critical thinking, you should be able to recognize cognitive distortions and fallacies in the things you read, which will help you disconnect from attempts to hijack your emotions and understand the biases and weaknesses in arguments. But you may have also gotten very good at labeling and categorizing things you read.That use of the Other must be a reference to de Beauvior, which means she must be a feminist with a romantic attachment to existentialism. It is easy for categorization to become a sophisticated form of disengagement. When something has been labeled, it’s easy to think that our work is done, and we don’t have to think about it anymore.

We don’t want to get emotionally entangled in the web of stories while we are working with the Four Questions, but we do want to go beyond labeling. Labeling is useful only if we are considering the implications of the label itself. What are we really saying when we talk about “feminism with a romantic attachment to existentialism.” What does that philosophy assume about the way the world works? The way it should work? What is that philosophy trying to accomplish? Do you agree with those assumptions? Do you also desire the world the story desires?

In some ways, going with the simplest reading makes things easier. A question like, “I think this person thinks that people like me are assholes” (and the questions that naturally follow, such as “Why?”) can be a rich and informative place to start.

Question 3: How can I make this story better?

Once you understand what the story is trying to do, you can start to think about whether or not you want the story to succeed.

In Question 3, we begin the process of revision: What changes can I make to this story to make it support a world I want to live in?

We aren’t talking about reality here. We aren’t trying to be pragmatic. Question 3 is all about desire. It’s about the world as you wish it was, so feel free to follow fiction in the direction of the absurd.

You know that you have finished with Question 3 when you feel hope.

Question 4: How can I make the good story true?

In Question 3, we put on our idealist hats.

In Question 4, we get to that pragmatism I asked you to put aside in Question 3.

You start asking yourself what needs to change in yourself and in the world if that revised story you’ve created is going to be able to exist.

It’s really easy to walk away when you reach Question 4, especially if you followed my advice and allowed yourself to get absurd. But Question 4 isn’t about becoming the emperor of everything and bending the world to your will. It’s about finding the next practical thing you can do to support the world you want to see. Probably something small, like finally putting that candy wrapper on your desk in the trash.

A version of this article appears in my ebook the Leo Risings Guide to World Domination.

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Narrative Astrology Is a Summoning Spell for Stories

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to eavesdrop on a group of horary astrologers. They were arguing about which of the signs rules juniper trees. As people do when they’re arguing about something only fifteen or so people in the world care about, the conversation got really emotionally heated. It was a good thing there were no weapons around because they were ready to go to war over juniper trees. As far as I could tell, they never agreed on an answer to the question, but I’ll never really know. I eventually got bored and wandered off.

I remember that conversation, though, because it changed the way that I see astrology. I realized that astrology isn’t a weird occult discipline that talks about stars. It is actually a box that contains every single thing in the universe.

And it always has. The Mesopotamians had 12 signs and 7 planets. We have a whole system of houses and thousands of named asteroids. Yet, the Mesopotamians weren’t forced to say less with astrology just because they had fewer symbols. Astrology’s “box of stuff” has always been as big as the sky. We’ve just divided it into a greater number of compartments, and each of those compartments is, itself, as big as the sky.

How is that possible? It is because each astrological symbol is a branching tree of associations.

(It’s a box and a tree? Yes, I know. Stay with me.)

Each symbol branch starts with abstraction. It divides and divides, getting more and more specific until there are paths leading to every entry in every person’s collection of specific experiences that are associated with that symbol. Each person’s association sets are created over a lifetime, and there are billions of people creating those association sets alive right now.

So, how do you know what you’re seeing when you look at an astrological symbol? When you see Mercury, are you seeing a messenger god or a metal that is liquid at room temperature?

The truth is, you’re seeing everything. You just don’t know exactly which face of Mercury is going to appear in your place at your particular moment.

The rest of the chart can help you narrow things down. If Mercury is in Pisces, for example, you’re probably not looking at a database. But you can’t look at a symbol and narrow it down to one thing. I might look at Mercury and see a god, and you might see a metal. In astrology land, we are both right.

Astrology is a subjective discipline. We keep the little circle at the middle of the chart to remind us that this is where we stand: at the center of everything. The reader of the chart is reading with a particular set of eyes, in a particular place, at a particular place in time. The reader’s subjective particularity makes the world. It determines what will come out of the box when we reach into a chart and pull out Mercury.

And this is where the stories come from. Each astrological symbol is a branching tree of associations. Each branch gets more and more particular, mapping a lifetime of stories about specific experiences that we have with each associated thing.

You can’t spend your life reading astrology cookbooks or lists of delineations and claim to understand it. Experience is where the real wisdom of astrology lives. That’s why astrologers look at our watches when we witness a disaster. We are mapping a story that we have personally experienced onto a chart. It is through the stories of our lived experiences that we truly understand how the symbols dance with each other.

I don’t know what sign rules juniper trees, but I can share my experience of juniper with you by telling stories.

I can tell you about the time I went to Central Oregon and found a park that was covered with juniper trees. Until that day, I thought I knew about juniper trees, but I had only ever experienced juniper trees in pieces. I had only ever eaten juniper berries and burned juniper wood to cleanse and heat a house.

Maybe you’ve never experienced juniper trees at all, but I can share some of my experiential knowledge of juniper trees by telling you a story about how hot and dry it was under the juniper trees that day in the park and how thirsty I was and how my mouth filled with saliva when I took a juniper berry off a tree and chewed it and how it magically made me feel more calm and subdued even though I was standing in a place that I couldn’t survive in for long without lots of technology.

Even if I say nothing about it, that experience in the park hums through my words every time I talk about juniper trees, even when I’m sharing the book-knowledge that juniper trees have become an invasive species in the high desert, drinking all the water. My stories about juniper trees taste like juniper berry mulled wine and juniper berry tea. They’re filled with how good a juniper wood fire smells.

Narrative astrology is a summoning spell for stories. And the only thing stopping me from summoning stories about juniper trees from a chart is that I don’t know what box to look for them in.

This essay is from my Narrative Astrology course Storytelling With Astrological Symbols.

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Neptune in Aries and the 9th House: A Guide for Leo Risings

Since 2011, we have been living in a world of dreams.

Neptune in Pisces has filled our minds with visions of utopias. With Uranus, planet of innovators and revolutionaries, in earthy Taurus, most of our dreams were simple. Real, healthy food. A safe and stable home. Enough time to make art or music or quietly work on a favorite hobby. A lifestyle that is closer to nature, less busy, more agrarian, that includes animals.  

We have repeatedly encountered situations that have nudged us to get clear about what we value and what we really want. The pandemic forced many employers to experiment with remote work, allowing parents to spend more time with their children, liberating unhappy city workers from urban centers of power, and forcing everyone to get back to the basics, as we struggled to find staples like eggs and bread.

With Neptune in Pisces, collectively, we’ve been getting more spiritual—as we’ve seen from the meteoric rise of astrology—and we have become impatient with the limitations of the known world.

That’s just the way the world is isn’t good enough anymore.

What is Pisces like for people with Leo ascendants?

As Leo risings, we have been having a somewhat different experience of Neptune in Pisces than everyone else. For us, the dreaming of Pisces has been happening in our 8th House of Death.

Some of us have had literal brushes with death. Our connection to the other side has revealed psychic or mediumship powers we didn’t know existed. Our ability to believe in a purely materialist world has been shaken, and we have wrestled with the question of what it means for there to be something in the human soul that survives death.

But our journey with death has been metaphorical, too. We have been given a clearer vision of what in our lives (and in society) has outlived its purpose.

In the final days of Neptune in Pisces, it is time to identify the undead we are here to banish when Neptune goes into Aries. What zombies and vampires need to be slain? What ghosts need to be gently guided toward the light?

The signs of Neptune and Pluto in your natal chart can help you figure out where your battles are.

Leo: Flattery - We are expected to bow to tyrants. This should not be.

Virgo: Martyrdom - We are expected to make real sacrifices for the comfort or convenience of others. This should not be.

Libra: Selfishness - We are expected to sacrifice our relationships with the people we love most for our individual ambitions. This should not be.

Scorpio: Generational trauma - We are expected to neglect our psychological healing and pass our wounds on to the next generation. This should not be. 

Sagittarius: Fundamentalism - We are expected to pick an ideological side and make enemies of people who don’t perfectly conform to our beliefs. This should not be.

Capricorn: Corruption - We are expected to turn a blind eye to systemic oppression and the tyranny of the dead over the living. This should not be.

Aquarius: Dissociation - We are expected to lose ourselves in an algorithmically-generated nightmare, heads-down, lost in a screen, disconnected from our bodies and hearts and the people around us. This should not be.

It’s time to learn to wield your anger.

If I’ve done my job, you are feeling amped up reading the list of things we have to fight when Neptune goes into Aries. Maybe, you’re feeling a little angry. I’m sorry if that’s uncomfortable for you, but I would like you to embrace your anger and learn how to wield it.

While Neptune is in Aries, he is wearing the mask of the spiritual warrior, and we are being called to step into that role with Neptune and fight.

Fighting requires emotional energy. Anger, properly applied, is that energy. When Neptune is in Aries, learning to channel your anger with intention will be your most valuable spiritual practice.

This is an extremely sharp shift from the last fifteen years. When Neptune is in Pisces, our spiritual teachers teach peace, universal love, and understanding. When Neptune is in Aries, our spiritual teachers carry swords and teach us how to use them with the precision of surgeons.

This article is an excerpt from Leo Risings Guide to World Domination.

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Neptune Conjunct the North Node: The Magic of Abundance

We are presented with a paradox.

On the one hand, we live in a universe of abundance. We are loved, and we are cared for, and we have everything that we need to thrive. 

At the same time, our communities are struggling. Here in the United States, we have a housing shortage and food shortage and not enough medical care. The streets are full of sick and starving people, and the prices of everyday things are rising at a staggering rate. 

Somehow, both the abundance and lack are true, and we are being challenged to reconcile that fact. The solution is not to just announce, “We have abundance,” and call it a day. We need magic that can make abundance out of lack.

Like stone soup. Have you heard that old folktale?

The Story: Stone Soup

Once a stranger came to town and asked the villagers for some food. 

“We’re all hungry,” the villagers said. “There is nothing to eat anywhere. We don’t have anything to share with you.”

“It’s good I came, then,” the stranger said. “I have a magic rock that will make enough soup for everyone. All I need is a big pot, some water, and a fire.”

The villagers brought out a pot, filled it with water, and set it over a fire. The stranger took the stone out of their pocket, kissed it, and threw it into the pot. 

The pot of stone soup bubbled and boiled, and the villagers gathered around and muttered hungrily. 

“When is it going to be ready?” they asked. 

“It’s coming along nicely,” the stranger said. “Can someone bring me a ladle, so I can taste it?” 

One of the villagers brought a ladle, and the stranger dipped the ladle into the pot and took a small sip.

“Delicious!” the stranger said. “You know what would really make this soup better, though, is a potato. It’s a shame you don’t have any.”

“I have a potato!” the mayor said. She ran to her house and came back with a somewhat wrinkly potato.

“This will do nicely,” the stranger said. 

After requisitioning a cutting board and knife, the stranger chopped the potato and threw it into the pot. 

More time went by, and the villagers pressed in closer around the pot and muttered hungrily. The stranger tasted the soup and sighed with pleasure. 

“This really is an amazing soup,” the stranger said, “but it really would be so much better if it had some onion in it. It’s a shame you don’t have any.” 

“I have an onion,” the potter said. 

He ran back to the house and came back with an onion. It had a big green sprout sticking out of the top, but the stranger accepted it as if it was the most beautiful onion in the world. Then they chopped it and threw it in the pot. 

Over the course of the afternoon, the soup grew as the villagers found a few carrots, a bay leaf, a handful of dried thyme stems, a bulb of fennel, a few leaves of parsley, a pig’s ear, a crust of bread, and a scrawny (but deeply flavorful) old hen. Everything went into the pot of stone soup. 

Finally, as evening came, the villagers couldn’t stand that delicious smell without eating any longer, and they ran to their houses for mugs and bowls. 

“Ah, yes, the most important ingredient,” the stranger said, “hunger,” and they filled the mugs and bowls with stone soup. The villagers ate every drop of that soup until there was nothing left in the pot but a slimy old rock. The stranger wiped the slime from the magic stone with their shirt and dropped it in their pocket. They walked off into the woods with a full belly, whistling.

No one in the village went to bed hungry, even though that morning no one in the village had enough to feed themselves, thanks to the stranger’s miraculous stone soup. 

The Mystery of Abundance in Stone Soup

When I was a child, I heard the story of Stone Soup at Thanksgiving. I was told that the villagers really did have enough to feed the stranger, but they were suspicious and greedy and hid their abundance because they didn’t want to share. 

What if the truth is more complicated? What if none of the villagers were lying? What if they didn’t have enough to make a meal for themselves that night? What if the mayor really did have nothing to feed her family with but a potato? What if the potter had nothing but an onion? What if there was a family with sixteen children and nothing but a three pound hen? 

Calorically, the list of ingredients that went into stone soup isn’t enough to feed a village, but there is a magic in soup. With a few scraps of food waste, you can fill an empty belly. 

Neptune Conjunct the North Node: Finding Abundance

The north node and Neptune in Pisces tell us that the path forward for us is to embrace the magic that dances around the impossibility of abundance. We are like the stranger walking into the village surrounded by a fog of unknowing. They didn’t actually know what the villagers had, but they had the courage to stop approaching the problem at a rational level. In sinking into the heart of their desire, they were able to find abundance. 

“There isn’t enough to eat… but I’m really hungry for a potato… and there it is.” 

Gemini Planets square the North Node in Pisces: Wait just a second…

As I am writing this, the north node of the moon has met up with Neptune in Pisces and is square (by sign) Jupiter and the moon in Gemini. 

Sometimes, it is enough to trust in the abundance of the universe and follow your desire. When planets in Gemini are square planets in Pisces, we don’t have it that easy. There are real problems. There are unavoidable facts we cannot avoid. We have to look at the data. We can’t just magic them away. Any solutions we come up with have to work in the real world. 

In the story of Stone Soup, the stranger was able to make soup out of a potato and a carrot and an onion, but they couldn’t just wish it into being out of thin air. 

In the real world, we know that soup has the ability to fill empty bellies in a magical way, more than would be suggested from the pure calorie count. We can get by on that for a while. That is the magical tension between Gemini and Pisces. Pisces brings magic that transcends the possibilities in Gemini’s data, but this is a dynamic tension that can’t last. The stranger has to move on. The soup trick can work for a night, not a hundred nights.  

Sometimes, though, all we need is one night where the answer to the paradox is in the magic of community and soup. There are moments when, if we bring together what we have even though it isn’t much, we are able to create something that is so much more than the sum of its parts. 

All we need is someone with the courage to admit that they are hungry and a community with the courage to show up with honesty and hope.

If you have Neptune conjunct the north node in your natal chart, you are living out this story. 

Put more accurately, you are trying to make this story come true. You are carrying this vendetta because you experienced a time when this story was definitely not true. 

Maybe there was a time in your childhood or a past life when the magic failed. Maybe you were the stranger who showed up hungry, and no one answered the door. Maybe, you were one of the villagers, and a stranger ran off with the only food you had after promising to magic it into a feast and share with everyone. 

These experiences make you inclined to believe that the story of Stone Soup isn’t possible. There is no magic in the world. 2+2 will never = 5. 

But stories like this will present themselves to you over and over and over, trying to help you rebuild your faith in magic again.

You have Neptune conjunct the north node if you were born near these dates…

February 6, 2025 - Pisces (28 degrees)

May 4, 2008 - Aquarius (24 degrees)

October 9, 1991 - Capricorn (14 degrees)

December 21, 1974 - Sagittarius (10 degrees)

February 4, 1958 - Scorpio (4 degrees)

July 8, 1941 - Virgo (25 degrees)

October 3, 1924 - Leo (21 degrees)

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A Tarot Reading for 2025

For the last few years, I have been enjoying John Beckett’s year ahead divinations, but it’s only this year that I’ve had the presence of mind to look at his predictions for the previous year to see how accurate his read was for me. I wouldn’t be writing about this if I had anything bad to say about his reading. (I try to avoid criticizing people in public whenever possible.) There were delightfully a few places where his reading was accurate for me in a way that shows the humor of the wyrd. If you’re a polytheist who is interested in a thoughtful take on the current moment, I recommend checking out his reading for 2025.

That said, John is careful to say that his reading will be most relevant to people in his inner circle, and I am an outer planet in his orbit. Because John’s reading wasn’t specifically for me and my people, I thought it might be interesting to brazenly copy him and do a tarot reading for the local stars in my galaxy.

Like John’s, my reading will be most relevant to you if you are close to me. My family and I already discussed it and decided that it’s exactly what we needed to hear. If you are a friend, client, or member of the Narrative Astrology Lab, it is likely that there is something in here for you, too. If you’re none of those things, I think that you are most likely to get something out of this reading if you have been concerned about the state of the world (especially if you use the word “collapse”) and tend to need help balancing anxiety and/or pessimism.

This post is long because I talk about my divination philosophy and walk you through my process. If you just want to know what the cards said, skip to the last section (“Bringing It All Together”).

How I Read Tarot

I am a professional astrologer, not a professional Tarot reader, even though I have been reading Tarot longer than I’ve been studying astrology. Tarot has always been a personal practice for me, a thing I do to help me keep my head on straight.

When I read tarot for myself, I am trying to see around my blindspots. I almost always read with a copy of 78 Degrees of Wisdom by Rachel Pollack close at hand. Rachel was my first tarot teacher, and her voice through the pages of 78 Degrees has talked me down from more than one metaphorical cliff. Consulting her book when I read allows me to continue to benefit from her wisdom, even though she is gone. I have been reading like this for over a decade, and 78 Degrees never fails to show me ways that my biases and assumptions are tripping me up.

For this reading, I read the cards once on my own without consulting 78 Degrees. (If you’re reading this, I don’t think it’s too arrogant to assume you might want my opinion on things.) Then, I read the sections in 78 degrees for each of the cards, looking for ways that Rachel’s perspective balances my own. Then, I synthesized these two approaches into a new interpretation of the spread.

I used a traditional RWS deck. In most areas of my life, I’m a heretic, but I have a deep emotional attachment to my very first deck, which happened to be RWS.

The spread I used was the “work cycle” spread from 78 Degrees. It is Rachel’s adaptation of the Celtic Cross. I like it because it works well with my divinatory philosophy. When I read, I don’t want to know what will happen. I want to know what will happen if we continue down this road, and I want directions to the nearest exit if I don’t like where we’re going.

The Celtic Cross often implies a plan of action, but I like my advice direct and to the point, and there are three cards in the "work cycle" that are just for advice.

My Interpretation of the Reading

Like the Celtic Cross, the work cycle spread begins with a cross. In this reading, the Empress was crossed by the Page of Pentacles. I read this as saying that 2025 is about abundance and pleasure supported by a beginner’s mind approach to life. A willingness to learn and the eagerness of a student will be an asset this year, but beware of mistakes that come from inexperience.

What lead us here? The 8 of cups. We left (and may continue to leave) a situation that was no longer working for us. This card showed up in John’s reading for 2024. The agency in this card feels important to me. We don’t always have choices in life, but it is appropriate to focus on the ways that we are where we are because of the choices we made. Where have we chosen to walk away?

Our contribution to the current situation is the 6 of wands. We admitted defeat. If we are are going to be in a position to benefit from the Empress’s abundance in our current situation, it’s because we didn’t try to force something that wasn’t working. We up and left.

If we continue on in the same direction, the road leads to the Page of Swords and 10 of Cups reversed. It was difficult for me to not interpret those cards together as an unhappy result, so I was motivated to know how to avoid that potential future.

The advice cards said:

1. Look at the state of the world and strategize (2 of wands).

2. Control what you can, namely yourself (see also the serenity prayer) (The Chariot).

3. Avoid ostentatious displays of wealth on the eve of the French Revolution (4 of wands reversed). “Don’t fiddle while Rome burns” was another way I read this card. (The second interpretation is more personally relevant to me, in case anyone is wondering if I have any hidden emerald mines anywhere. (I don’t.))

Overall, my interpretation was pretty grim. Even the work cards seemed oriented toward keeping your head down and reading the room, so I was eager to see how Rachel’s read of these cards might provide an alternate perspective.

Insight From 78 Degrees of Wisdom

Rachel says that the Page of Pentacles is a student who studies for the joy of the work itself. Reading this shifted my interpretation of the cross slightly. The focus of this year is on pleasure, and that pleasure is supported by the joy we take in our work.

(I am taking a year-long course with George Kao called Joyful Productivity. I've been enjoying it so far, and this read of the Page and the Empress made me wonder if I'm going to get more out of the course than I expect.)

Rachel’s interpretation of the 6 of Wands reversed was sharply different than mine. She says that the card isn’t about defeat. It’s about defeatism, the belief that defeat is inevitable in a way that makes defeat a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'm inclined to accept Rachel's interpretation of this card because I already know that defeatism is one of my worst biases (when it comes to myself. I tend to be an obnoxious cheerleader for everyone else.)

Rachel says that a bad outcome often comes from the “your contribution to this situation” part of a reading. In this case, I think that my initial interpretation of the 6 of Wands as defeat may have lead to the negative outcome I read. My initial grim interpretation will be accurate, if I give into defeatism, in other words.

Rachel begins her section on the Page of Swords by saying that it is lighter than the other swords card, which made me read with more attention. She says that the problem with the page is their detachment and aloofness. They feel like they are above it all while presenting a defensiveness that alienates people in advance. That sounds like a pretty good, if preventable, recipe for conflict.

And the unhappiness I saw in the 10 of Cups? Rachel says, while it can point to unhappiness, it’s more likely that there is a secret or unconventional happiness available that we’re just not able to see. Her interpretation of the work cards further supports this conclusion. She says that the 2 of Wands shows someone like Alexander, depressed because they’ve conquered the world and don’t know what to do with themselves. It reminds me of a cautionary tale someone told me recently about a friend who couldn’t get herself to stop working, even though she and her husband had more than enough money to retire. Her addiction to work didn’t come from the fact that it brought her joy but because she had become unable to imagine doing anything else with her time. Like Alexander, a life without struggle terrified her.

For the Chariot card, Rachel talks about the ability to work with contradictions. This reminded me of work that I’ve been doing a lot lately with dialectics. (I talked about this in my lecture on Libra in the Narrative Astrology Lab a few months ago.) The work of the Chariot is learning to balance two opposing truths or values. The Empress and the Page of Pentacles balancing pleasure and work and the way that they weave in and out of each other.

Rachel’s interpretation of the 4 of Wands was the icing on the cake. Happiness so strong that even a reversal can’t…well…reverse it. The work here is cultivating the belief that, if you can’t see good in the world, it’s because your eyes have failed, not the world.

Bringing It All Together

I don’t think it would be responsible to dismiss the possibility of difficulty this year. There has been too much speculation from too many corners, and too many people are smiling at the possibility of conflict before Saturn and Neptune have even reached Aries. But because of the current state of things, I don’t think adding any more swords to the mix is useful.

The thing that I take away from this reading is that no matter what state the world is in, this is a year for joy. We are leaving an old world behind. There are things that we are leaving that we liked very much, and we’re not so sure about the direction we’re going in, but no one has to convince us that there are things that need to change.

It's important to focus on our agency in this situation. What are we choosing to leave? What are we turning toward?

It would be a mistake to wallow in defeatism or to decide that the story we are in no longer needs our contribution. There is joy to be had if only we will join in.

Where we are going, we will need the page’s strategic thinking, the 2 of Wands’ ability to read the room, and the Chariot’s ability to be self-aware and self-controlled. But hard work and discipline must be balanced. No matter how dire the situation, we mustn’t work so hard (even joyfully) that we don’t know how to take a break… or don’t know what to do with ourselves when a break is needed.

This is a year for rediscovering pleasure. How else will we build a world that we actually want to live in?

If you would like to talk more in depth about what is coming up for you this year, I offer astrology readings. Let’s talk about your astrology of 2025 over a cup of tea.

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Pluto in Aquarius: Too Big to Fail, Too Inhumane to Succeed

The last time Pluto was in Aquarius was the French Revolution. I took a class on the revolution in college and heard this heartbreaking story: The peasants were on the side of the monarchy for a long, long time, even though they had the most to lose.

They said, “If only the king knew what was happening, he would fix it.”

They had no idea the king didn’t know or care about them. They were still living in a feudal mindset, believing that loyalty went both ways, long after the world moved on.

I was reminded of this story a few years later when I went to visit family in Pittsburgh. They took me to a seminary that had set up shop next to an old factory. The school wanted to build classrooms in the old, crumbling building next door, but the city refused.

“If only the steel company knew what happened to our town after they left, they would come back and fix it,” they said.

They remembered the days when big corporations invested in the local community, building housing for workers, an excellent medical system, and a university. So, the building sat empty, waiting for the companies to return like England waiting for Arthur and the French peasants waiting for the ear of the king.

Pluto in Aquarius shows us the structures that are too big to fail but too inhumane to succeed. Last time, the story ended with the birth of empires. This time, we are watching the last vestiges of empires collapse.

When I moved from Boston to Berkeley in 2009, my friends and family teased me. “What is the matter with you,” they said, “You’re moving three thousand miles to go to Cambridge West?”

Since most of my critics were academics, and I was in graduate school, all they could see were two university towns. They had never lived in the West, and they were operating on the assumption that culture could be stretchy enough to reach across a continent, and the land a community lives on has absolutely nothing to do with a people’s way of life.

I quickly learned that there are enormous differences between Boston (“Cambridge East”) and Berkeley (“Cambridge West.”) One spends half the year blanketed in snow and ice, and the other can count on temperatures that hover around 68 degrees most of the year. One was built unmoving granite scraped clean by glaciers. The other was built on an active fault line that cuts through the school’s stadium. One could rely on precipitation roughly every three days. The other cycled between seasons of heavy rain and drought.

Each of these areas of difference had a profound impact on the collective personality of these places. It showed up in their relationship with tradition and innovation, their introversion and extroversion, the rate of change and speed of daily life.

But the most surprising thing about living in a state that prides itself on having a GDP bigger than most countries was how much I felt like I was living in an outpost of the empire.

I first became aware of this frontier feeling during my first wildfire season. The ecosystem in Western North America has evolved to require regular fire cleanses. There are plants that can’t reproduce without it, and the animals and people who thrive here have adjusted to the idea that everything can go up in smoke at a moment’s notice.

Once upon a time, the indigenous people worked with the land’s need for wildfires. They lived lightly. Setting small, contained fires periodically was part of their practice of cultivating the land.

Settlers couldn’t see fire as anything but a tragedy. For generations, it was official government policy to keep fires from happening, so wildfire fuel accumulated in the undergrowth, waiting for a stray spark to set the landscape ablaze.

As a person who spent the first 25 years of my life on the East Coast (before it, too, I am told, started catching on fire) it was stunning to me that wildfire season exists at all, never mind regularly occurring wildfires that cover thousands of acres. A thousand acres is an unspeakably large piece of land to me. A wildfire that size is pretty close to my inner Evangelical’s definition of Hell.

Living through wildfire season isn’t easy. Even if you’re lucky enough to be out of the range of the fires, the air is unbreathable for months at a time. People huddle inside, hiding from the smoke and scorching heat with the windows closed—mostly, in Western Oregon, without air conditioning—while each of a hundred fires devours an area the size of a New England state.

At first, I assumed that a wildfire season that bad must have been an anomaly.

“Have you heard about the fires?” I asked my friends back East.

“No,” they said. “There’s been nothing about it on the news.”

Fire season dragged on. Nothing was reported. I described what it was like, and no one I knew on the East Coast believed me. I watched a town in Central Oregon with the only supermarket for a hundred miles burst into flames. It was barely even mentioned in the Portland news.

I shared my dismay with my local friends, and they chuckled at me.

This is when I learned that the fierce independence of the West comes from the knowledge that, if you’re in trouble, it’s unlikely that anyone will come to help you. The people in charge are far away in capitals you’ll never see and have no idea you or your problems exist. The wildfire season I was observing wasn’t especially notable, and despite the weak bleating of our US Senators, swearing that they were trying to get disaster relief funds from Washington, no one was holding their smoke-filled breath about it.

There was a time when it was expected that an essay like this would be the beginning of a call to expand the circle of our compassion, but one of the lessons I have noted from Pluto’s brief time in Aquarius is that disaster porn can be a form of dissociation. It is easier to hide from your own pain—and the pain of your immediate neighbors—when you can convince yourself that you are doing something helpful by tweeting about a disaster on the other side of the world.

Astrologers disagree about whether or not Aquarius is about community. Some make a connection between Aquarius and the 11th house and talk about aquarians as the original community organizers. Others look at Saturn’s traditional rulership of Aquarius and say that aquarians like to be left alone. Many astrologers hide behind the quip that Aquarius loves humanity and hates people, usually turning away from the horrifying implications of what that really means.

Like I usually do, I am, once again, coming down on everyone’s side. As an Aquarius moon, I say Aquarians are communities organizers, and we like to be left alone, and we have the horrible love of participating in committees that make decisions for abstract populations filled with people we will never know.

I believe that we will see all those faces of Aquarius while Pluto is traveling through that sign, but Pluto is fundamentally a problem-solving planet, so the focus will be on the dilemma of living in systems that are simultaneously too big to fail and too inhumane to succeed.

The answer, I think, will be to remember our most ancient ancestors, the rodent-sized mammals who scratched out a living in the age of the dinosaurs and survived the comet: The easiest way to survive the apocalypse is to carry your own heat and be small and insignificant enough to hide a small city of your people in the cracks.

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Astrology is subjective… and that’s why I love it

Everything we say about astrology is a story. Every interpretation is an artifact of a moment in time, created by a person who is a creature of that moment. Every astrologer is a person like you and me with wisdom and wounds, talents and flaws. And that’s the way it’s always been, even back to the beginning when the astrologer priests of Mesopotamia looked to the sky whenever something went wrong searching for patterns.

The subjectivity of astrology is inescapable. This idea is fundamental to the astrology I practice.

If astrology is always filtered through the lens of someone’s perceptions, I believe we should always be questioning it:

Is that assertion true? 

Does this interpretation of that symbol resonate for people who have that symbol in their natal charts?

Was that transit prediction accurate? Did the thing predicted actually happen? 

What are the assumptions and blindspots of this particular astrologer or astrological school?

Does this interpretation even make sense, or is the language too vague to mean anything at all?

These are hard, critical questions, but one of my most persistent biases is a natural skepticism. I believe that astrological forecasts that claim to predict concrete events (or how everyone will feel) are suspect. There are an infinite number of ways astrological symbols can express themselves, so there is an inescapable rolling of the dice that happens when predictions are made. Concrete predictions are rarely accurate. 

For the same reason, I’m suspicious of astrologers who claim to be able to tell someone else who they are. As an astrologer, I believe my job in astrology readings is to use the symbols to ask good, open-ended questions that help us both understand you better.

Overall, I try to keep an open mind, but these are hills I will die on. Still, when I play the critic, I try to do it with the humble awareness that I am also a storytelling creature of my time. Skepticism is, itself, a story with the same limitations and challenges as the stories it criticizes, and it’s dangerous.

Criticism is a destructive tool. It tears stories and ideas apart. I know this first hand because my journey with astrology began with the destruction of a narrative that I had built my life on. I know how it feels to have the metaphysical ground ripped out from under you.

Today, I believe the astrological weather is wild the way the physical weather is wild. A hurricane doesn’t destroy a house because it is part of some grand plan. It doesn’t secretly have the best interests of the owners of the house at heart, and it isn’t following the orders of a perfect, all-powerful God. 

The storm just is and acts according to its nature. The hurricane spins, howls, and blows and it will continue to spin, howl, and blow until something makes it stop. 

I believe the planets are symbols that represent similarly wild forces. We talk about the planets as if they choose to act according to their nature because it’s easier for us to understand, but their actions are their nature. They do what they are. 

Mars divides. Venus unites. Saturn contracts. Jupiter expands. The sun illuminates. Mercury communicates. The moon waxes and wanes. 

This is the nature of the planets, but we have our own natures, too. We don’t have to like everything the planets do. We don’t have to like what they represent. They may (or may not) be more powerful than us, but we don’t have to just go along with the program. 

If the planets are wild, we don’t have to take transits personally. In fact, we probably shouldn’t. Your Saturn transit may hurt, but, like a hurricane, it isn’t really about you. Even if your story about that transit is all about you.

I didn’t always believe in the wildness of things. I was raised to believe in an all-powerful God who carved the oceans with his hands like a child digging holes at the beach. In that worldview, everything was personal. Each experience was dictated personally by that god to you, for your benefit, even if it didn’t feel like it at the time.

It takes a long time for a foundational belief like that to unravel. I had dreams in my early days as an astrologer in which I was a character looking over the shoulder of the author of my story. I wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone at the time, but I hoped that astrology would allow me to translate the author’s language. If only I was fluent enough, I hoped to see the grand design. Maybe then, I could negotiate with God.

I never really lost that hope. Not really. What changed is that I no longer expect to find justice in the weather. I don’t know everything. I don’t need to know everything. The storm that is bad for the tree that falls gives life to the sapling struggling in its shadow. I don’t need to decide if the storm was right. And I’m glad. I no longer carry that weight around with me. I no longer have to dig to find the ultimate, positive meaning in everything that happens. I can just be with the hard things, or sit with someone who’s having a hard time, and let it be hard.

Ultimately, this is what seeing the world through the lens of stories does: It allows the tree, the sapling, you and me, ancient Mesopotamian astronomer priests, and the gods to have their own stories. Stories as wild as a hurricane or as comforting as a nest. Or both, at the same time, depending on who you are and who is telling the story. 

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What Does Scorpio Feel Like?

I’m currently working on a series of lectures for the Narrative Astrology Lab called “Voices of the Signs.” I’m interested in the signs as archetypes or spirits, beings with their own will, who possess us like Aphrodite walking before Helen in The Iliad.

Each lecture in the series focuses on one of the astrological signs, asking questions like: What does the energy of the sign feel like? What does it want? What is it trying to inspire us to do?

Because I’m taking a spiritual approach to the signs, I begin each lecture with an evocation. My intent is to invite the sign into the space, but, so far, I have found that the sign is there when we arrive, waiting for us to begin. By the time I’m ready to give a lecture, I have spent a week or two preparing, communing with the sign on my own, and it is as if the sign has cabin fever from being cooped up with me and is impatient to meet the rest of the lab.

While I was preparing the lecture on Scorpio, I had a particularly vivid experience of the sign. I stopped what I was doing and pulled out a notebook to record the experience.

This is what happened:

I had a suspicion that working on the Scorpio talk would put me in a scorpionic headspace, but I didn’t expect it to be like this.

First, I avoided preparing the talk at all. I usually give myself two weeks to work on these talks, and I “accidentally” gave myself a week.*

Now that I’m actually in it, I am simultaneously depressed and looking at my depression from the outside with this cold quipping:

“You’re listening to Radiohead? Really? This really is the end of all things, isn’t it? And now you’re putting your notifications on mute, so no one can get through to you with affection. AirPods in. Pen out. Self-pity activated. Do you even want to be happy? And now we’re pulling out the ephemeris and looking for a planet to blame. Hasn’t Saturn been your punching bag for long enough?”

Thoughts like these go on.

While I listen to the Scorpio playlist I’m building on Spotify, I feel myself fall into the depression completely. I embrace it instead of running from it, and it is amazing how different it feels embracing it this way. I feel more alive, not less alive. Everything is dark and beautiful, sad and intensely passionate. I feel like an iceberg has fallen into the ocean of my heart and is melting.

I was reading about Scorpio in The Inner Sky [by Steven Forrest], and I am really interested in the part about desire. Really opening up to the reality of death is supposed to help you pinpoint what you really desire.

“If you had six months to live,” he asks. “What would you do?”

The thought of knowing what I really want is appealing to me, so I am spending some time meditating on the question. At first, I was really focused on using that question to find an object of desire. What do I want? Who do I want? What do I want to do?

In The Book of Water, Steven says that when you don’t know what you want, and you are in a scorpionic space, you feel this inexplicable pressure, and that’s exactly what happened when I tried to find the object of my desire. I had no idea what I wanted, but I could feel the shape of it trying to swim up to the surface of my consciousness.

I reached out to embrace the answer, but nothing came. Nothing. At first, I was certain that this was more avoidance. Then, I realized that what I really wanted wasn’t to have or to do anything. There was no object of my desire. All I wanted was to feel.

I want to feel this much emotional intensity. The dark, beautiful, sad passion. Right now.

I have been musing on the idea of desire without an object ever since this experience. Is the feeling of desire without an object part of the experience of pure Scorpio? Is Scorpio found in the dark, delicious passion of desire when there is an object of our desire? Or is the fact that there was no object of desire present an essential part of Scorpio’s nature?

Put another way, is Scorpio itself raw desire, desire without an object? Are the stories that we tell about what we want really just sophisticated attempts to avoid the idea that it’s a feeling we’re after, and the object of our desire itself isn’t really the point?

I know that these questions are scorpionic in nature, but I don’t know how to answer them.

Somehow, I think that’s the point.

*Unconscious avoidance behaviors are a classic response to Scorpio.

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Living With a Progressed Virgo Ascendant: Confident Competence

There are some astrologers who believe that the signs represent the evolution of the human soul. Aries is the first and least evolved of the signs, and Pisces represents the pinnacle of spiritual evolution. I don't believe that's true, and I'm sure that the fact that I have three major placements in Aries has absolutely nothing to do with it.

I do believe, however, that we can sometimes experience the progression from one sign to another as a leveling up. Especially when we're using techniques like secondary progressions.

My ascendant is in the early degrees of Leo, which means that I was relatively old when my progressed ascendant moved into Virgo.

For the first 30+ years of my life, confidence came to me relatively easily. If I didn't know how to do something, I pretended that I did, and it usually worked out rather well. If it didn't work out, I was pretty good at laughing at myself, brushing myself off, and continuing on my way.

I was able to get away with this because I primarily identified as an entertainer. Creativity was key and the consequences for making mistakes were low. As long as I got an interesting story out of whatever I was doing, I could consider it a success.

By the time I reached my thirties, I became dissatisfied with playing around. I wanted to be taken seriously. Everywhere I went, I felt like I was being treated like a child. In astrological terms, the way I moved through the world (ascendant) needed to move from my first house Leo to my second house Virgo. I needed to show the world my competence, not just my confidence.

In my mind, real astrologers did astrology readings. I had been studying astrology for years, so I hung out my shingle and offered astrology readings on my website.

My first reading request was from a stranger who found my page on Google. She was twice my age and wanted me to tell her if she should get a divorce. I was immediately overwhelmed. Thinking the problem was that I wasn't experienced enough to give that kind of advice, I returned her money and told her I wasn't up to the task.

I retreated to safer ground and started offering to do written past life readings on Tumblr. This felt safer for my Leo ascendant because Tumblr was a playful environment where no one expected to be taken seriously. With past life astrology, I could lean on my fiction writing background to tell stories.

The Tumblr playground served me well for a while. I became more confident in my competence, and past life readings continue to be one of my most popular offerings.

By the time I was ready to offer consultations again, I had better boundaries. I understood my role and knew that insisting on it was an important part of being a competent professional astrologer. I became comfortable with the idea that my job is not to tell my clients what to do. It's to walk beside them on their journey and help them read the map.

I started working with clients who knew and respected my role, and I learned that emotionally mature adults don't come to astrologers asking to be told what to do. It was a sign of competence to expect my clients to take responsibility for their own choices.

My first attempt to become a professional astrologer was a decade ago. Since then, I have helped many of my clients through difficult life transitions. I've learned that I am happiest and most successful when I approach my work as a dance between my Leo ascendant and my Virgo progressed ascendant.

I need confidence, and I need competence, and I need confidence in my own competence.

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Astrology for the Present

I was a grad student in my mid-20s when I discovered Come on All You Ghosts by Matthew Zapruder. I was in Berkeley in the winter in the rain, and this jaunty little book of poetry with its black cover, handwritten chalk font, and sunny strip of bright pink was the perfect mix of rawness and twee optimism for that moment in my life. 

The title poem is about death–as you would expect–but it is also about a light up skull keychain, David Foster Wallace, and depression. It fades out in the end into something like a rallying cry:

“If a nation 

can fall asleep

it can wake up not

exactly angry but a little dizzy

with pleasant hunger.”

Collectively in the US, we have been talking about “joy” a lot lately, like we talked about “hope” and “change” in 2008. Come on All You Ghosts is not about joy. Zapruder isn’t afraid to say that “the sea seems more / than a little angry.” But there is a hope to this work that I’ve been hungry for, and it doesn’t make me feel like my mouth is stuffed full of rock candy.

It reminds me of something I heard author and marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson ask on the radio recently: “What if we get it right? What if we are getting it right right now?” 

Right now.

For the last couple months, I’ve been doing a daily horoscope column on Threads and Instagram for people with Leo ascendants. I was talking with a colleague recently about horoscope writing, and she said that she can’t do daily horoscopes every day. She has to batch them all at once over a weekend.

It’s the opposite for me. I need to wake up in the morning and feel into the energy of the moment. When I try to predict how things will feel, I get into my head too much. I get too theoretical and lose track of my heart. 

I envy the astrologers who are able to calmly stand in front of a chart and talk about the weather like a meteorologist inside a news studio. Often, I feel like a weather reporter standing on the beach in front of a hurricane, talking about the rain. 

Astrology tends to attract people who are future-oriented. We believe that if we can just prepare thoroughly enough for what’s coming, we’ll know the right thing to do and say at all times. It creates this dynamic where we are always living five steps ahead. Always aspiring, always improving, never arrived. Stuck in the idealism of an impossible future, frustrated whenever we’re forced to deal with life as-is. 

What if the hope–or even the joy–we need isn’t waiting for us in a future that never becomes the present? What if this is the moment we can step into, not perfection, but “books made of blue sky” or “terrible marvels?”

I don’t think it’s an accident that mythology and folklore is full of warnings for people who consult oracles. It isn’t because we’re helpless, bound by fates we can’t control. It’s because no amount of work in the present can control the future. This is the only moment we can touch.

If we live in the present, we won’t get it right. We will find ourselves staring in open-mouthed confusion, utterly unprepared. But that is why we’re here, to dance with the moment instead of marking out the perfect choreography of all the things we will do… tomorrow. 

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Astrology at the End of the World

The Vikings are coming. You have five minutes to grab something and possibly escape with your life. What do you take? If I was a monk at Lindisfarne, the answer would have been a book. A thousand years later, my answer would be the same.

There is a shelf of books in my library that I call the “doomscrolling books.” It is full of books of cultural criticism that tell stories about civilization collapse, environmental catastrophe, and the fall of empires. There are only a few books on the shelf that I’ve read cover to cover. I’ve read pieces of most of the rest. 

The “doomscrolling books” are there for those moments when I’m in a dark place in my mind, and I can’t resist the urge to wallow. Reading a doomy dead tree edition feels slightly more virtuous than scrolling the news, so I grab a book that calls to me, scan the table of contents, and flip to a chapter that speaks to my fears. 

Doomscrolling on my phone drains me, but I put down the “doomscrolling books” feeling less tired and more clear-eyed. I’m sure this has something to do with the fact that reading a book requires me to focus and read paragraphs instead of flipping through click-bait headlines that lack nuance. But it also helps that many of the books on the doomscrolling shelf are old.

Reading old cultural criticism is kind of silly, like reading decades old newspapers, but I find it helps me to step out of the blindspots and biases of the present moment. I’m able to compare where they thought we were going and where we have actually gotten. The arguments that are accurate become more accurate with time, and the silly predictions are easy to laugh off as misguided fortune telling-–an attitude that helps me keep humble as an astrologer and gives me perspective when I read predictions published by authors today. 

What comes after the American empire?

Recently, I was reading The Twilight of American Culture by historian and social critic Morris Berman. The book was published back at the turn of the millennium, but, aside from the references to OJ Simpson and the death of Princess Di, his arguments have held up well and are painfully familiar.

Berman points to the decline of literacy, the growth of social inequality, and widespread cynicism as evidence that things aren’t right. He bemoans the technological toys and media-hyped scandals that are lulling us to sleep. The book is 25 years-old, written before the advent of cable news, social media, and algorithmically created filter bubbles. Critiques like his have only gotten louder and more mainstream since then. 

The cynicism that Berman complains about, in particular, has gotten much worse. Most of the apocalyptic visions of the present are incapable of imagining a future post-collapse. While Berman believes that the American empire is crumbling, he argues that this isn’t the end of history. 

We are heading, Berman says, into a new Middle Ages.

We are doing so with the ability to prepare ourselves in a way that the people of the early Middle Ages could not. We have the benefit of looking back to the fall of Rome. We can see the mistakes they made that plunged the intellectual culture of Europe into darkness for centuries, and we can act purposefully to preserve the ideas of the past, so our descendants can find them when they’re ready. 

I was born with Neptune in Capricorn, and I relish the idea of combing through the dusty attics of history, uncovering things that have been lost, and giving them new life, but there is more than hope for the archivist in Berman’s argument. His connection to the Middle Ages allows us to look back, not only for mistakes, but to find motives. 

Why did the Roman Empire give way to the Dark Ages? Were the people alive at the time trying to accomplish something? Are we in a similar place today?

What can we learn from the collapse of Rome?

There is rarely a single, nuclear moment when a civilization collapses. There is a decline, a period when people stop building anew and, instead, repair and recycle the things that have already been built. It is as if the people of that civilization have gotten tired and no longer have the energy or the will to continue to improve on the work of their ancestors. Their focus shifts to conservation, keeping what we have instead of falling into decline.

In The Passion of the Western Mind, Richard Tarnas argues that the Middle Ages began because there were serious emotional needs that were being unmet by the Roman Empire. As early as the Hellenistic period, people complained about how overwhelming it was to live in a massive, rootless culture. They longed for simpler days when people were deeply connected to the land and their families, when every small population center had its own personal relationship with the local gods instead of the distant and untouchable universal deities like Isis. 

Life in an empire is brain and no heart. It needs to be. Empires are built for the management of resources, not as a home for people. It is essential for the function of the empire for people to be able to go wherever their labor is needed. For centuries, citizens of the empire were functionally homeless. After generations of alienation, they longed to feel like they belonged somewhere again. 

Life in the Middle Ages revolved around the Church. Medieval people latched onto the Church because it provided meaning and comfort in a world in which both were lacking. After centuries of rootlessness, alienation, and emotional coldness, is it any wonder that people flocked to the monasteries and convents that embraced them with open arms and said, “You will never have to leave your home ever again?”

Fundamentally, the shift from the Roman Empire to the Dark Ages happened because people became so starved for meaning and connection that they were willing to give up all of the treasures of the empire to get it.

They reacted against the extremes of the empire and shifted to the opposite extremes. Where the empire valued wealth, they valued poverty. Where the empire valued mobility, they built castles of stone. Where the empire valued enormous, impersonal bureaucracies, they organized themselves into feudal hierarchies built on relationships between individual people. Where the empire valued diversity, they valued a single creed. Where the empire valued that which could be measured and engineered and articulated in words, they valued romantic poetry and the language of the heart.

Literacy was not lost during the Middle Ages, as is popularly believed. The culture merely shifted to a different kind of literacy. People of the Middle Ages were able to read stories in the stained glass windows of a church they had never visited with as much fluency as a 21st century professor picking up a book.

Berman says of it, “this was more of a 'Jungian' world than a world of cognitive understanding. The apprehension of the world, in other words, rested on myth and magic, and the prevalent mind-set was one of symbols, analogies, and images."

In a world that had been torn apart by war and conquest for centuries, the deep hunger for connection filled the people of the Middle Ages so completely, they immersed themselves in symbolic literacy that allowed them to think in webs instead of lines. 

Where is hope at the end of the empire?

The idea that we are living at the end of the American empire is comforting to me. As a poet and astrologer, I feel alienated from the technocratic world that values nothing but measurements and data. As a Taurus, I resent being forced to move from place to place on an impersonal employer’s whim. I hate that to the people in power, I am only a number, and I have a deep craving for connection with the land and the people who live on it. 

As such, I find Berman’s assertion that we are moving toward a new medieval period fundamentally hopeful, but I am wary of reactionary movements that want to drag us too far to the opposite extreme. 

While it is true that the Middle Ages were oriented toward meeting needs that had gone unmet for far too long, there were still many problems. During the Middle Ages the rise of symbolic thinking happened within the context of a culture that was lost in mass movements. People went to church and disappeared as individuals. Knowledge of math, engineering, and philosophy was lost. Intellectuals lost the ability to reason in a clear and logical way.

I want to have the best of both worlds. I love symbolic art, and I love books. I want herbal remedies and penicillin. I want local quirkiness and universal standards of measurements. I want to feel connected with others, and I want to be treated as an individual. I want to live in a world where feelings are valid, and one that values critical thought.

If we are going to have any hope of having it both ways, we must learn from the mistakes of the past. Berman argues that the loss of individuality was part of the great downfall of the intellectual life of the Middle Ages. The life of the mind requires introspection. Without the ability to understand yourself, your biases, and your motivations, you are unable to critically engage with the ideas of others. 

How can astrology help us toward a better future?

Critical thinking is the best defense we have against powerful charismatics who emotionally manipulate the masses into burning down libraries.  We need a life of the mind that is critical, even as we are remembering the power of symbolic languages. 

Astrology could be a trailblazer in the building of a new symbolic literacy. Astrology is a language of symbols. In learning the symbolic language of astrology, we begin to return to something like the web of meaning of the Middle Ages. 

Just because astrology is symbol-based, however, doesn’t mean it can’t be critical.

Narrative Astrology has critical thinking at its core.

In my astrology courses, I don’t feed you astrological dogma. I teach you astrological techniques from many different perspectives, and I give you a framework for putting together a framework of your own. 

At the end of every lesson, invite you to see the material through the lens of your natal chart so that you can relate to what you’re learning… and challenge it. 

I believe that a good astrology education should constantly ask the student, “How does this make you feel? Where are you in all of this? Does this story about who you are match the facts of your life?”

In astrology, the natal chart is a tool we use to access our inner worlds, and the individual must be at the center. The symbolic language takes us, not out of ourselves, but deeper in. This is not self-centered. It is necessary work. 

The world is breaking. So many of us feel it. We are alienated from each other and from the ground beneath our feet, but we cannot find connection outside us until we find connection with ourselves. By making peace with ourselves and repairing the webs of connection in the inner world, we can begin repairing the outer world. If we don’t allow ourselves to get emotionally manipulated and pulled to extremes, we might restore the lost symbolic literacy that thrived in the Middle Ages and preserve the individualism that allows us to think critically. 

Perhaps, astrology can help us find a balance between the language of the head and the heart, and in that balance we can travel more hopefully into the dark.

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The Most Helpful Sign for Personal Growth

Over the last few years, astrology has been gaining in popularity. As humanity learns to recognize and celebrate human differences, we are realizing that advice that works for one person won't work for someone else. Naturally, we are drawn to astrology’s highly personalized view of the self that helps you navigate the life you are actually living. 

Astrology’s individualized approach can help you level up your personal growth. It helps you develop an accurate model of your strengths and weaknesses, and that self-awareness helps you to zero in on the practices that will be most effective. 

All of the signs can help you grow, but one sign is a particularly useful guide in your personal growth journey. That sign is Virgo. 

Virgo is the sign of the analyst. It has a special talent for seeing your potential and making a plan to meet it. Virgo has a reputation for being critical, but that critical thinking ability is vital. Without the ability to see how things fail to meet the ideal, Virgo loses the ability to put them right again. 

Like everything else in astrology, your relationship with Virgo is unique, so let’s look at how Virgo can help you on your personal growth journey.

Personal Growth For Your Sign

If you know it, read for your rising sign, but your sun works, too. 

Aries - Your ability to act out of pure instinct is a superpower. You are actually at your best when you don’t think too hard before you act. The problem is, to do this effectively you need really solid habits. If you aren't thinking about everything you do, you're just going to go with the default, and you want to make sure that your personal default settings are really solid. The path of personal growth for you is developing daily habits that make sure that you act according to your values without having to think too hard about it.

Taurus - You are here to get as much enjoyment out of life as possible, but it's not about cheap thrills. The best pleasures feel good today, the day after, and 20 years from now. When you are happiest, you are following the path of the epicurean. Looking critically at your pleasures, ask yourself, "Does this truly make me happy?" 

Gemini - You came into this world with a mouth that moves faster than your brain, but your real super power is the ability to get away with it. Not everyone can talk pure nonsense and make it sound genius, but you can get there with a little bit of effort. Getting better at running your mouth is not the growing edge for you, though. It is getting in touch with your deepest motivations. Why do you feel the need to do those verbal gymnastics in the first place? What parts of yourself are you trying to conceal behind a fog of words? 

Cancer - Feeling is easy. Putting feelings into words is hard, but your personal growth journey is about learning how to communicate the river of pure feeling that runs through your heart. Why? Because we need your emotional intelligence. It is a service to others when you articulate your inner world.    

Leo - The lion is the king of the jungle, but your personal development journey isn’t about learning to strut your stuff. It harkens back to an older way of understanding kingship, one in which the king earned the right to rule because of his generosity. In order to be generous, you need to have impeccable money management skills.

Virgo - I doubt it surprises you at all that personal growth is an important part of what you’re here to do. What kind of personal growth? Frankly, that’s up to you. But if you’re tempted to say, “Then I will improve everything,” I urge you to think more strategically. It is better to polish one or two skills really well than spread yourself too thin and accomplish nothing.

Libra - You have a special talent for bringing two opposing ideas into balance, and so you attract those types of conundrums to you. And here is another one. Relationships are at the core of what you are here to do. And yet, spiritual development is the area of greatest growth for you, and that kind of work requires deep solitude. Reconciling that conundrum is the work of a lifetime. 

Scorpio - When I want to hear the pure, unvarnished truth without any sugar coating, I seek out a Scorpio. Your superpower is the ability to accept the difficult truth without flinching or denial. The downside of your superpower is that it makes it difficult to plan for the future. Having goals requires you to admit that you aren’t where you want to be. You are a genius at that. However, it also requires you to have faith in a future that can be better, and that doesn’t come as easily for you. The personal growth journey you are on is learning to see potential and walk with hope, without losing your vital edge. 

Sagittarius - When I think of Sagittarius, the first thing that comes to mind is a mountaintop mystic looking down on the world and pondering the meaning of life. Unfortunately, you can’t live on the mountain forever. Eventually, you have to take everything you’ve learned and craft it into a mission, a gift to the world that reflects your personal philosophy. In other words, your personal growth journey is all about getting better and better at practicing what you preach. 

Capricorn - Next to the definition of “discipline” in the dictionary there is a picture of a Capricorn. Once you set your mind on a goal, you are the expert of climbing whatever mountains are necessary to get there. The trouble is… not every challenge can be faced with sheer force of will. There are people out there who know how to meet those challenges more effectively, and learning from their wisdom requires breaking the routine of constant achievement and going back to school. Personal development for you means embracing being the eternal student.

Aquarius - If you ruled the world, we would all live in utopia. You know this. At some level, I think we all know it. But, as of this writing, you do not rule the world. That means that you need to be very clear about your sphere of influence. What can you control? What can’t you control? And focus on the things that are within your control. Learning serenity within your sphere of influence is at the center of your personal growth journey.

Pisces - If I had to make a list of words that least describes you, “critical” would probably be in the top ten. Your friends, though? You attract critics to you like a magnet! The reason for this is that your inner critic is part of your shadow. And the critics in your life are here to carry your shadow for you until you are strong enough to carry it for yourself. 

Going Deeper

Learning about how Virgo shows up in your sign is a good guide for how to begin on your personal growth journey, but astrology has so much more to teach you about crafting a routine that works for you. 

Virgo’s relationship with your sign tells you the types of activities that will help you grow. Planets in Virgo (and their relationships with the other planets in your chart) describe the parts of your life–like your relationships or motivation–that benefit from a personal growth mindset. 

To learn more about your Virgo planets and the basics of interpreting your birth chart, check out my free ebook Listening to Star Song.

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Leo and the Lonely Child

We all participate in all of the archetypes. Your astrology may emphasize some archetypes more than others, but you have every sign and every planet somewhere in your natal chart. They are there for you to access in the moments when you need to put on an unfamiliar archetype like a cloak. 

Maybe you’re normally gentle and kind, but when your child is in danger, you step up and become the Warrior. Maybe you’re literal and blunt until you find yourself awed by a beautiful sunset, and, for a few moments, you have the mind of the Poet. You have been the Child, the Student, the Lover, the Witness. If you live a long, full life, you will be the Elder, too. 

Why is Leo the Child archetype?

Becoming a mom has taught me a lot about Leo and the Child archetype. My daughter doesn’t have any planets in Leo, but she is full of Leo energy. She loves to perform. When we applaud, she shines like a star. She loves clapping so much, she randomly drops what she’s doing periodically to initiate a clapping break. Whenever we pass the photo collage in the hall, she asks to stop and point at all the people she knows. And she points at herself the most.  Mostly, we see Leo the Child in her, but she has moments of quiet dignity when she reminds me that Leo is the King and the Child simultaneously, and it’s not because putting on airs is childish.

Children are associated with the Leo archetype because Leo is the part of us that needs to be seen and recognized by the people we care about. Children cannot thrive without attention. Psychological studies have demonstrated that children need attention as much as they need food. Neglected infants get sick. They develop poorly. They could even die.  

The Still-face experiment established that even a few moments with a parent who is present but doesn’t engage is profoundly distressing to infants. The child tries to get attention. If that doesn’t change their parent’s behavior, they cry. If the parent doesn’t respond to crying, the child tries to escape. If escape isn’t possible, the child withdraws into themselves. If a parents’ neglect becomes habitual, the child’s withdrawal becomes habitual, too. 

For a long time, we didn’t know about the importance of attention for children. Children were expected to be seen but not heard. Making an infant “cry it out” when they needed attention at night was supposed to teach them resilience. We’ve come a long way in our understanding of human development, and it is becoming popularly understood that neglect is abuse.

It’s one thing to acknowledge that a child needs attention to thrive, but adults are expected to outgrow the need for attention. It’s acceptable to talk about having an inner child as long as that means embracing playfulness and creativity, but adults are pressured to behave as if expressions of love from the people around us don’t matter to us.

Leo is a silent rebuke of this narrative. It is controversial because it constantly reminds us that human beings are not solitary creatures. We need each other. We need the physical presence of others around us because our ancestors found safety in numbers, but we have social needs that are just as important as our physical needs. We need love and attention from our community to thrive. 

The Sun Is a Lonely Star

“Community” doesn’t come up often in conversations about Leo. Leo is ruled by the sun, and so descriptions of Leo tend to revolve around solar metaphors. 

The sun is our star, the center of the solar system. Its light is the source of all life. Its gravity holds all the planets and comets and asteroids in its orbit. It rules alone at the center of everything. 

Because of these stories we tell about the sun, Leo is commonly seen as needing to be in the center of things. Leo needs to rule–or believe that it rules. It is endlessly self-referential, unable to cooperate with others. The people in Leo’s orbit are so small, Leo is barely able to perceive them at all. 

There are people like this. Otherwise, these myths about Leo wouldn’t survive, but that kind of behavior isn’t what Leo is. It isn’t even the whole story of what the sun is. Since the discovery of Sedna in 2003, the scientific consensus has shifted, and we’ve learned the sun may have something to do with community after all. 

The Discovery of Sedna and the Sun’s Missing Family

Around the turn of the 21st century, astronomer Mike Brown was convinced that there were planets beyond Pluto. This was a heretical belief for an astronomer to have at the time. Scientists had looked at all the possible places where planets could exist according to the current working theories at the time, but he suspected there was something they were missing. 

He started looking in impossible places, and it was in one of those impossible places that he found the dwarf planet Sedna in 2003. 

Confronted with the existence of an impossible planet, the scientific community came together to rewrite their models to make Sedna’s existence possible. In the end, they concluded that Sedna could only exist if the sun hadn’t always been alone. 

The best theory we have for Sedna’s existence is that the solar system was formed in the sun’s infancy. In those days, the sun was part of a nursery of stars who danced with each other. Over time, the sun’s family drifted apart, but Sedna was close to the other stars in the nursery. She still flies out into space–halfway to the next star!--pulled by the gravity of the sun’s lost family. 

Today, the sun stands alone, surrounded by acolytes but alone without peers. Because of its position, we projected stories of kingship onto it. We assumed that it stood alone because its power had pushed all its rivals away. It never occurred to us that the sun could be lonely. 

What if the sun is a neglected child, shining in the dark alone. What if Sedna is the sun’s emissary, searching for the sun’s missing siblings? 

Leo Is Always Looking For Friends

The discipline of astrology is a celebration of the subjective. The empty circle in the center of your birth chart is waiting for you to step into it. When an astrologer reads your chart, they are stepping into the circle with you, helping you see more clearly how reality looks from your unique perspective. 

For as long as humanity can remember, we have used the sky as a mirror. We told stories about the stars that were really stories about ourselves. But astrology is not a human-centered monologue. The universe is alive, and the sky talks back to us. The stars and planets reveal themselves in unexpected ways, showing us our assumptions and biases, expanding our understanding of ourselves and others. 

As a narrative astrologer, I believe it’s an important part of my job to celebrate the subjectivity of astrology. When I write about astrology, I am not presenting the absolute objective truth. I am merely describing the world as I see it. Every astrologer is doing the same. 

Because I write this way, I have attracted a lot of clients with birth charts that are similar to mine. I have a Leo ascendant, so I spend a lot of time talking with Leos. What I have learned from my work with Leos is that the people who live on a stage blinded by their own brilliance either aren’t that common or they don’t have much use for astrology. I rarely meet egotistical, self-confident Leos who have no use for anyone but themselves. 

It is much more common for people with strong Leo placements to feel like lonely children, left alone in their crib to cry in the dark. They may shine. They may be natural performers, but those qualities are the least of their concern. What they want more than anything is to belong in a constellation of stars, to dance and play with the others forever. 

This is the reason why it is so important for Leo to find the others, to not waste time on people who don’t appreciate them. It isn’t because of some ill-conceived need for worship. It is because the need for the others who love us is real. Without friends, the sun is a lonely child, abandoned and alone with no reason to shine.

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Leo Rising in Astrology: Wearing the Mask of the King

One of the problems with archetypes is that they tend to get lost in time without anyone realizing it. You think that you know what the Warrior is until you realize that the image that immediately comes to mind is a dude carrying a sword, and the only place you’re going to meet that warrior is in a fantasy movie or SCA.

Another archetype that hasn’t updated well to the modern world is the King. There are very few actual kings in the world, and heads of state can get along quite well without channeling the King archetype. In fact, since the 18th century, channeling the King archetype has been increasingly a liability for leaders.

With no one alive today personifying the King in a healthy way, the archetype of the King has gotten lost in costume dramas that forget what kingship is more with each passing year.

One of Leo’s archetypes is the King, and the loss of the King archetype creates a problem for people who have a strong Leo in their birth charts. Astrologers used to hope for a strong Leo in their monarchs. Today, hoping for leaders with a strong Leo is just as laughable as hoping for a strong king. Stereotypically, Leo is seen as pompous, self-aggrandizing, attention-seeking, people-pleasing, and insecure. That is not what the King is, and it is not what Leo is supposed to be.

The King is due for a rebranding (preferably, a gender-neutral one!), but getting rid of what the King represents entirely would be a loss for everyone. Fortunately, there are clues to what the King should be buried like fossils in the birth chart and in ancient texts from the age of kings.

In this essay, I am focusing on the Leo ascendant and its relationship with the earth signs. (Another name for the King is the “earthly ruler,” after all.) But if you have other Leo placements, stick with me. What I have to say still applies to you.

Does a “good king” really exist?

In modern times, we usually think of a king as someone who takes. The king wears the finest clothes, has unspeakable wealth, and eats the finest cuts of meat. When there isn’t enough for everyone, the rest of the kingdom suffers to support the king’s extravagance because an extravagant king is a sign of a prosperous country, even if everyone else is living in squalor.

While it’s true that kings have always lived in luxury, simply being the person with the most stuff didn’t make someone a king in the age of kings. In medieval Northern European societies, a common epithet for the king was the “ring-giver” because the king’s generosity earned the devotion of his followers. It was dragons, not kings, who hoarded wealth. Good kings gave it away. Generosity was a sign of power, and it was also a virtue.

The connection between generosity and kingly esteem was not exclusively a European value. Lewis Hyde finds similar patterns in people groups all over the world. It seems that it is a common human truth that power isn’t found in how much you have but in how much you give away.

So, if we are going to look for the King in Leo. We need to start by looking for generosity.

A good king uses their wealth to serve.

When you think about kings and wealth, you probably think of fancy clothes, a heavy banquet table, and all kinds of status symbols designed to remind everyone that the king is wealthy.

That might be what it means to be influential today, but that’s not the picture astrology paints of how a king uses their wealth well.

If you have Leo rising, you have Virgo in the second house. Virgo’s virtue is the pursuit of perfection. In the second house, this means that Virgo’s drive to do better and better is directed toward money. Virgo is also the sign of the servant, which means that someone with Virgo in the second house uses that drive to perfect their relationship with money to serve others.

If you have the ascendant in Leo, you are constantly perfecting your relationship with your resources because you can’t be generous if you have nothing to give. In societies where kingship was connected with gift-giving, no one wanted a poor king. It was the king’s obligation to get very good at acquiring wealth so that he could give that wealth away. If the king prospered, the people prospered.

For someone with Leo rising/Virgo in the second house, embodying this aspect of the King doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to learn to become rich. You could become a philanthropist, but you also embody this virtue when you learn to live on less, so you can afford to be of service. Maybe, you spend less time working, so you can afford to volunteer at a nursing home. Or, maybe, you dedicate a lot of time and energy to perfecting a skill that is then used in service to the community.

A good king isn’t just a pretty face with a lot of servants.

If you have a Leo ascendant, you have Capricorn in the sixth house. Steven Forrest says in The Inner Sky that Capricorn is “the marriage of one’s nature and one’s public identity.” There are some similarities to the sixth house and Virgo, so once again we come to the idea of service.

Traditionally, the sixth house tells you something about your servants. In popular models of kingship, the King is a charismatic figurehead leader who needs a boring but practical prime minister behind the scenes to deal with the unglamorous paperwork and number crunching.

In modern times, most of us don’t have servants, and the sixth house is the House of Day Jobs. This means that the sixth house tells us something about the day job of the King.

In the modern view of the sixth house, it is the job of the day job of the King to do the work of the Prime Minister. No handing the job off to a schmuck who does all the work while you get the glory. A person who wants to have a healthy Leo ascendant needs to develop the Capricorn-ish ability to make the trains run on time, and they need to use this ability in service to the community.

A good king creates safety and security for the community.

If you have a Leo ascendant, you have Taurus in the tenth house. The tenth house is called the House of Career traditionally. Since most of us think of our sixth house day jobs as our careers, the difference between the tenth house and the sixth house needs some explaining.

The sixth house is what you do to be of service. It’s often the thing people pay you money for.

The tenth house is the thing you feel called to do, the role you feel called to play in the community, the archetype you should represent to people who don’t know you well.

Often, your 10th house role is unpaid. You might might really strongly identify with your political party but not work in politics, or you might be a musician who needs to sell life insurance to pay the rent.

For someone with Leo rising and Taurus in the tenth house, their role is tied to Taurean things. Taurus is associated with the second house in modern astrology, which returns us to the idea of money. Taurus is not just about accumulating resources, however. Taurus is about developing inner security. Outer security can contribute to a sense of inner security, but we can all name people who have a lot of material resources and are deeply insecure.

This means that for someone embodying the King with Leo rising, the thing they are called to embody for the community is a sense of security. Once again, we return to the king as ‘ring-giver,” but there is more to it than that. The King’s role in the community is to represent safety, to develop inner security and then lead others in developing that security for themselves.

There were dim embers of this dying flame still burning in the early days of the French Revolution. Despite the decadence at court, the peasants in the countryside had a deep faith in the king. They believed that the famines and high taxes were caused by the king’s greedy advisors.

“If only the king knew about this,” they said. “He would fix everything.”

The idea of the King gave the peasants such a deep sense of security that they were willing to ignore real poverty for years before they revolted.

Is it possible to have a healthy Leo ascendant in a world that doesn’t like kings?

The picture I’ve painted of the King couldn’t be further from the stereotypes that surround Leo. The King is generous. Leo is a spendthrift. The King’s security is contagious. Leo is deeply insecure. The King serves. Leo is served.

How did this happen? Because the fall of the King archetype became the fall of Leo. When it was no longer possible to imagine a king that is a benefit to society, it became difficult to imagine a healthy expression of Leo, too, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Look at a chart with Leo rising, and you’ll see that the earth signs create a triangle with the base at the bottom of the chart, parallel the horizon. The triangle is the most solid, secure shape. Service is the foundation of the Leo rising triangle (i.e. 2nd house Virgo and 6th house Capricorn). That foundation creates the strength necessary for that deep sense of security to rise to the heights in the Taurus 10th house.

Service isn’t just about clocking hours. It comes from the deep knowledge that you have something to give.

We are living in a moment when believing that you have something to give is the height of arrogance. People who win awards are expected to say, “Well, it wasn’t really me that did this. It was really all of these other people.” This is supposed to make up for centuries of the rich and powerful getting the credit for the work of armies of invisible peasants, but vague modesty doesn’t really solve the abuse of power problem, and it creates a terrible situation for Leo.

It is often said that narcissists (one of the potential shadow faces of Leo) feel insecure because they feel like Nobody, and they need the constant reflection of themselves from other people to reassure them that they exist. (This is called narcissistic supply.) Leo falls into pit of feeling like Nobody when it thinks it has nothing to give.

A healthy Leo finds the foundation of their identity in generosity and service. They feel like themselves when they’re giving things away. The more valuable their gifts, the more valuable they feel. When a Leo is pressured to believe that having something to give is the height of arrogance, they they don’t become humble. They fall into narcissism.

Practical Advice Living Well with a Leo Ascendant

There’s a saying in the evolutionary astrology circles that the cure for a dysfunctional sign is in the sign that comes after it in the zodiac wheel and the sign opposite it. For Leo, that’s Virgo and Aquarius. From Virgo, Leo learns how to serve. From Aquarius, Leo learns how to be itself without carrying what anyone else thinks.

But what does that mean practically?

1. Engage in acts of service. Perfect your ability to be service and really shine it up into something valuable. Virgo doesn’t just need to feel helpful. It needs to be helpful. Virgo’s grounded, pragmatic earth energy helps Leo tell the difference between the two.

2. Be proud of being generous. Encouraging Leo to feel pride might sound like encouraging narcissism, but it isn’t. Narcissistic supply “reassures” Leo that they’re valuable in vague ways, but it doesn’t actually give the sense of self-worth the Leo is seeking. That is why they are always hungry for validation. Narcissistic supply is a cheap substitute for the legitimate and worthy satisfaction that comes from being generous and creating security for others, which is the core of the Leo identity. The “pride” of narcissism is like living on Cheetos for Leo. The cure is the genuine pride of knowing you’re being of service.

3. Find a grateful community. The pride that comes from legitimately being of service is a vitamin that Leo needs. In a normally functioning society, gratitude is the natural reward for giving. Gratitude holds up a mirror and shows a genuinely positive image of the person who gives, encouraging them to continue doing good work. When society enforces false modesty, acts of generosity and service become invisible, along with the person who did them. The falsely humble picture Leo sees reflected back to them is a like that saps their sense of self-worth. It creates the sense that “no matter what I give, it isn’t enough,” and the desperately starving Leo turns to narcissistic snack food to get their needs met.

4. Celebrate your own generosity. Some people have a practice of writing down all of the things they’re grateful for every day. Someone with a lot of Leo in their chart would benefit from turning that practice on its head. Every night, celebrate genuine acts of generosity. Make a list of the things you did to help other people, the ways in which you were of service, the way you made people’s lives better for being around. You will know this exercise is working because you will feel like a plant in the sun, as if you can live on the glow you get thinking about the way you’ve made people’s lives better.

The feeling of satisfaction in genuine service is as far from narcissism as Earth is from the sun.

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Cancer in the 12th House: Cruise Control

There is a logic to the order of the signs. Each sign is an answer to the excesses of the previous one. If you live fully embodied and engaged with the energy of the moment, every time a planet changes signs, it should come as a relief. 

You know what this way of living feels like if you eat seasonally. You wait all year for the brief* moment when strawberries are in season. Then you want to do nothing more than to stuff your face with fruit. But once you've done that, you’re sick of strawberries and ready to eat something else.

Every sign change is like this, but the transition from Gemini season to Cancer season is one of the least subtle transitions. Gemini is highly energetic, highly social, and highly verbal. It is chaotic and scattered and excited. Cancer is slow, introverted, and speaks the language of the heart. It is connected, deep, and desperate for peace and quiet.

You can see, I think, why one leads into the other. After the excitement of Gemini, you need a rest and some time to digest your experiences. You need time to figure out what you feel about things. 

I am writing this at the end of Gemini season. I am still in the flurry of intellectual energy, but I can see Cancer coming like a stop sign at the end of a highway. I still have energy, but my body is telling me that I need to downshift and slow down soon, or I am going to crash.

In the northern hemisphere,** the end of Gemini season is the end of spring. Spring is commonly associated with rain showers, flowers, baby bunnies, and the first tender greens. On the surface, these symbols seem gentle, calm, and relaxing. That might be true during Taurus season, but Taurus season is a brief (and necessary) reprieve between Aries and Gemini, the two most urgently kinetic signs of the zodiac.

Aries and Gemini are both fundamentally about growth. Aries is the newborn emerging from the birth canal and taking their first breath, the seedling cracking through the seed shell and pushing through the soil. Aries is the primal fight for the right to exist. Gemini is toddler time. It is the moment when an infant realizes that there is more to life than sleeping and eating. (The young child realizes that there is more to life than Taurus.) The weight of everything there is to learn descends on the tiny creature along with the intense energy needed to take on--quite literally--the intellectual challenge of a lifetime.

Aries and Gemini have a lot of energy because they need a lot of energy. Used properly, Aries and Gemini are capable of taking us from non-existence to being launched into life. 

One of the consistent patterns in the order of the signs is that seasons of rest follow seasons of work. Spring is a highly active season. The summer that follows is a season of rest.

This is the reason why we people go on vacation in the summer and winter. Spring and fall are filled with such hard work. We need a rest, and in the agricultural cycle, summer and winter are naturally periods of waiting when we live on the work we did during the spring and the fall. Spring is the season of planting and caring for tender plants and new hopes. In the summer, we tend and mow and wait to see what there will be to harvest. Autumn is the season of harvest. In the winter, we live on what has been grown. 

Cancer is the gateway to summer, and your experience of Cancer does a lot to shape your experience of the summer months. 

I have Cancer in the 12th house, the house of self-undoing. I have a difficult relationship with Cancer. You may have gotten a hint of this earlier when I described the transition from Gemini season to Cancer season as a high-speed car crash.

The 12th house isn’t an easy place to be at the best of times, but I have Mars and the moon closely trine in air signs. My Mars is in Gemini, and my moon is in Aquarius. Together, they love to spend Gemini season putting aside emotions and getting high on the airy intellectualism of the moment. Talking to everyone. Learning everything. Doing everything. 

In Gemini season, everything feels possible. Even perpetual motion.

But like Jo ONeill said recently, “the 12th house is the later that you have been saving your emotions for.” 

As someone who has the 12th house in watery Cancer, the realization that I can't just sail through the (seemingly) clear, pure air of the mind forever hits me like a tsunami every year when the sun leaves Gemini. I crash at the end of June and spend July picking up the pieces.

One of the things astrology is meant to do is make the unconscious conscious, and I am determined to use what I know about the relationship between Gemini and Cancer to do Cancer season differently this year. If summer is the time when we step back and allow what we’ve planted to grow, I can see Gemini season as the on-ramp to the highway. It is a rush season necessary to get up to highway speed before I shift into cruise control for the summer.

This new way of seeing Cancer season crystallized for me after I stumbled on a quote by astrologer Jaír Griffin. He said, “You don’t grow plants. It’s impossible to make anything grow, no matter how hard you try. You just give it the conditions to thrive, and it’ll bloom on its own. The same goes for you.”

So much of my resistance to cruising patiently through Cancer season comes from a misguided attempt to control things. In the agricultural year, Cancer is the season when plants really start to take off, but they aren’t producing fruit yet. If you judge a plant’s productivity by how it’s doing during Cancer season, you’ll rip up a beautiful garden that could have fed you through the winter. 

This is what self-undoing looks like for someone with Cancer in the 12th house, it’s a lack of faith in your ability to create an environment conducive to growth, to nurture things until they can thrive on their own.

With this in mind, I’m determined that this year will be different. My focus during Cancer season will be on tending the things I’ve planted, encouraging them to grow by making sure they have an environment in which they can thrive, surrendering to the work I’ve already done, and gathering my strength for the harvest rush in the fall. 

*The growing season for strawberries is short… If you don't live in a place like California.

**Astrology inescapably uses the seasons of the northern hemisphere as a metaphor. If you’re in the southern hemisphere, I see you… and ask you to go along with the metaphor even though it doesn’t match your seasonal calendar.

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Saturn-Neptune Conjunction: Let's Do Real Magic

There's a scene in the television miniseries Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell that makes me cry every time I watch it. The York Society of Magicians has challenged Mr. Norrell to prove that he is capable of doing practical Magic (aka casting spells). He offers to perform some magic, but in exchange he wants the magicians of the society to swear that they will stop claiming to be magicians if he succeeds. 

All of the magicians sign the contract except for Mr. Segundus. He gives a short, pitiful speech like a mouse caught in the rain. "Magic is my life, Sir. What will I do when it is taken from me?"

Lately, when I look at the magical scene, I feel a lot of despair. Magic is everywhere, and magic is nowhere. The marketplace is full of snake oil salesmen selling bottles of greed. I am so disgusted that I spend more time than I should looking up at the sky and trying to figure out which planet is most likely to come in like a storm and sweep it all away. 

Like Mr. Segundus, magic is my life, but in my better moments, I am certain that I would give it all up if it meant that the sacred things were no longer profaned like this.

I'm not the only one who smells change in the wind. In quiet corners, astrologers whisper about the upcoming Saturn-Neptune conjunction. 

"This is when astrology will stop being popular. Tarot decks will be left to collect dust in attics. The New Atheists will rise again, and materialism will reign supreme."

Predictive astrology isn’t my jam, but there’s something to the theory that Saturn and Neptune coming together will be the death of magic.

Saturn is all about getting back to brass tacks. It’s all about the real. The provable. When Missouri decided to be the Show-Me State, they were channeling Saturn. One of the expressions of Saturn is materialism because material reality will hit you over the head whether you believe in it or not. Gravity doesn’t care if you like it. It’s stronger than you, and it’s going to do its thing. 

When Saturn hits Neptune, the planet of magic and spirituality, it’s possible that Saturn will obliterate the magical landscape. The charlatans and frauds will be revealed for what they are. People will become disillusioned, and the zeitgeist will wake up from magic like a bad dream. 

If there is nothing to what we do, that is how the story will play out. We will look back at this time the way we look back at the “what’s your sign, baby” 1970s. Magic will return to the fringe corners of the metaphysical section, and many brokenhearted people who bet on the magic bubble will have to find something else to do.

That isn’t the only way the story can go. As I write this, a pair of ravens has started screaming at me through the window. (This is a thing that happens to me when I’m writing something good.) It’s possible that they’re just doing raven things, but there’s a story in which the ravens aren’t just criticizing the temperature of the water in the bird bath. I love the more magical story, and I have seen enough evidence for it that I have bet my career on the belief that magic permeates the material, that rational and mundane explanations aren’t all there is. I believe this so strongly that, like Mr. Segundus, magic is my life, Sir. It gives me hope that magic won’t be completely swept away in the Saturn-Neptune tide, that another story can play out, a magical story that bears some interesting similarities to Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell begins in a magical dark age. As far as anyone knows, no magic has been done in England since the Raven King disappeared 300 years ago. Then Gilbert Norrell inherits a fortune and dedicates his life to making practical magic respectable again. When the magicians of the York Society challenge Mr. Norrell to display his power, he has been studying magical books for decades, trying to understand how magic is done, so he can do it himself 

(spoiler alert) 

He succeeds. He performs feats of magic that are so extraordinary, the gentleman magicians of the York Society look pitiful in comparison. When the truth comes out, no one is able to mistake Mr. Norrell’s magic for the scams of the charlatans selling false prophecies and fake spells on the street corners in yellow curtained tents.

(This isn’t a classist story. There is a vagabond magician who is legit. In the end, he is given the respect he deserves because he is able to prove that he knows his shit.)

I don’t think it’s an accident that the Saturn-Neptune conjunction happens at the end of Saturn’s time in Pisces. Saturn in Pisces is all about taking the things that we wish were true and making them real. Astrologer Austin Coppock has pointed out that Saturn in Pisces times have traditionally been times when fantasy stories with worlds rich enough to live in have been created. 

You can’t open a portal and step into Middle Earth, but I’ve seen stories like The Lord of the Rings work real magic. There was a period in my life when I was deeply depressed, and the only thing keeping me going was my extended edition of The Lord of the Rings DVDs. I was in college, and I would finish my classwork for the day, and I would turn on the movies and knit on the couch until my husband came home from work. When I got to the end of the trilogy, I would take out the last DVD and start the first one all over again.

From the outside, I’m sure my life looked deeply sad. (I was deeply sad.) But I am convinced that The Lord of the Rings is the only reason I was able to plow through that time and get a degree. Without that degree, I couldn’t have gotten into the MFA program that introduced me to Rachel Pollack and her books on tarot. Tarot led me to therapy, and that was when I became aware that I had spent most of the previous decade on a slow walk into a life in which depression isn’t running the show.

Saturn in Pisces is a time for creating stories of enchantment. We need them more than ever to slow-walk ourselves out of Dark Ages. 

In short, this is a moment for doing real magic. 

If we rise to the challenge, I believe that we don’t have to be afraid of the Saturn-Neptune conjunction cleaning house in the magical world. When Saturn shows us the real thing, the knock-offs always look pitiful in comparison. Then, we will all breathe a sigh of relief as the frauds and scenesters are swept away in the tide, and we’ll live happily ever after. The end.

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Weaving Together Firdaria and Progressed Moon Phases

Learning astrological techniques is fun, but the magic really happens when you start to put different techniques together to answer big questions about your life. When you learn how to synthesize, astrology becomes like baking. An egg, a cup of flour, some sugar, and a leavening agent or two aren’t much to talk about on their own. Together, they make a cake. 

Recently, I was experimenting with Firdaria and progressed moon phases. Both techniques allow you to divide your life into chapters, and I was curious to see if looking at them side-by-side would illuminate anything for me. 

I created a chart with a chronological timeline in one column, the Firdaria chapters in another column, and my progressed moon phases in a third column. When the chart was put together, I was shocked by how clearly the dialog between them revealed a pattern in my life that I had been unable to see any other way. 

All my life, I’ve been fascinated by binaries. I’m shy saying this because binaries are controversial–and rightfully so. Binaries have traditionally been used to perpetuate stereotypes and lock people into identities and roles that don’t suit them. 

My society has been learning a lot in recent years about the damage the abuse of binaries has done. We are exploring ways of being that are between the extremes of binary or off spectrum line between them entirely. I think that path of exploration is exciting. 

At the same time, I love the contrast of opposites. I love the pleasant way my head hurts when I encounter a contradiction. I love stark contrasts and tension. I love dialectics. I love thesis, antithesis, synthesis. I love playing with these ideas while loving and respecting the ways that ideas and people don’t fit in neat little opposing boxes. 

Until now, I haven’t been able to find anything in my chart that explains my love of opposites. The closest I’ve been able to get to an explanation is my lonely IC in Libra. 

Libra is the sign of the autumn equinox. It is one of the seasons two signs where light and darkness balance on the knife-edge of equality. While Aries (Libra’s opposite) is balance tipping in the direction of light, Libra is the balance tipping in the direction of darkness. It is this relationship between light and dark that gives Libra and Aries their meaning.

It is at night that humans, as diurnal creatures, are most at risk. We are strongly visual creatures, and when our vision fails, we need others to help us navigate the world. This need for the other is the reason Libra is so strongly associated with relationships and compromise. Aries can roll over everything in its path. It is strong and getting stronger. it can charge ahead without considering other points of view or compromising its clarity of vision. When Aries encounters a contradiction, it picks a side and hits the other side with a stick. Libra has to stop and resolve it, and the resolution frequently involves compromises. 

While I’ve been coming around to the idea that the IC is vastly underrated lately, having the IC in Libra didn’t feel like enough to explain my love of opposites. For Libra, resolving tension is the necessary step on the way to peace. Peace is the ultimate goal. I like the heat of negotiation too much for my love of opposites to come from Libra.

When I saw my Firdaria chapters and my progressed lunations together, though, my love of opposites made sense because I was able to see that my love of binaries isn’t just a philosophical oddity. In the story of my life, as told when these two techniques are brought into dialog, the tension of opposites is one of the main themes. 

Firdaria is a very simple system. There are only two ways of dividing up a life. You are either on the moon path or the sun path. Whichever path you’re on determines your lesson plan in life. The progressed moon cycle introduces chaos into the system (as the moon always does), and it is in the moon’s chaos that creates the space for interesting things to happen. In my case, there is a clear relationship of opposites between the progressed lunations I am scheduled to experience and the lesson plan of my Firdaria.

The first time I experienced a progressed New Moon was at the end of my sun chapter. The lesson of the sun chapter is learning how to shine. Just as I was (metaphorically) preparing for my final exam in shining, I entered a dark night of the soul. I experienced depression for the first time, and I learned how to create a convincing smile through tears. 

In my 20s, I experienced my first Full Moon. My progressed moon was in Sagittarius while I was experiencing my Mercury chapter in Firdaria. Sagittarius is ruled by Jupiter. In traditional astrology, Mercury is debilitated there. The reason for this is because Jupiter and Mercury are opposites. Jupiter is the planet of wisdom, and Mercury is the planet of intelligence. 

If you’ve ever played Dungeons and Dragons, you know that wisdom and intelligence are two different ability scores. A person can have the intelligence to launch a rocket without the wisdom of knowing when and where to launch it. While you can be smart and wise at the same time, it is rare, and intelligence and wisdom usually come up with opposing answers to the same question.

Fundamental tensions between my Firdaria chapters and my progressed moon phases are scheduled to happen for the rest of my life. Right now, I’m going through a New Moon in Gemini during my moon chapter, and I’m learning why the heart and the mind have classically been seen as opposed in European philosophy. 

If I live long enough, I will explore the tension between expansion and contraction (Capricorn Full Moon during a Jupiter chapter), threat vs. safety (Cancer New Moon during a Mars chapter), and the individual and the group (Full Moon in Aquarius during a sun chapter).

With my love of opposites, the lesson plan that is created by this mixing of progressed moon phases and Firdaria seems custom-made for me. I don’t believe that we signed up for everything that happens to us in this life. I’ve seen too many horrible things to believe that is true, but the elegance of this system and how it plays so neatly with my love of opposites is the closest I’ve come to a real challenge to that belief. 

After I charted out the relationship between my progressed moon phases and my Firdaria chapters, I wondered if my results are an oddity of my personal astrology. I shared my findings with the members of the Narrative Astrology Lab on Discord and showed them how to replicate what I had done. 

So far, I’ve only had the opportunity to look at a few examples, but I haven’t seen an example of the progressed moon phase and Firdaria working together as clearly and consistently as they do in my chart. 

I doubt that I’m the only one with a pattern like this, though. So, if you chart out your progressed moon phases and Firdaria, let me know what you find. 

Interested in the experiment but need help looking for patterns? Let’s have tea and chat about it.

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