For the uninitiated, Dr. Ali A. Olomi is a historian, astrologer, and translator. His Patreon, where he shares history and translations, among breakdowns of astrological and magic techniques, has attracted a near cult-like following.

And for good reason: he possesses a rare talent for making the obscure approachable. His unparalleled ability to bring World Astrology into the world as a lens to understand the current moment makes his work accessible to a variety of audiences.

This is why I asked him to give the LA Astro Fest Pre-Talk at the on Tuesday, June 23rd. It’s also why we’re offering streaming tickets for this event. From experienced Astrologers to those simply trying to make sense of the world, Dr. Olomi’s upcoming talk, “Once and Future Stars: The Astrology of Today and Tomorrow,” promises something for everyone.

get your tickets

In the following interview with Dr. Olomi, we delve into not only World Astrology—but also some of the bigger issues facing astrologers practicing today.

Vivi Henriette: In our last interview at PRS, you stated that ‘World astrology is the most effective lens for explaining the present,’ going on to say it ‘allows you to center the ordinary person in a way that doesn’t erase them,’ and citing ‘Mars in Taurus’ as an example of “harm to laborers.”

First, I loved that interview and have spent a lot of time thinking about it.

Do you think we’ll ever reach a point in the US when astrologers are taken as seriously as economists or political scientists? And do you think that’s even necessary?

Dr Ali A Olomi: I also loved that interview. It was such an enjoyable chat thanks to yourself and the wonderful panelists.

I think more and more people are finding insight, wisdom, and guidance outside of the traditional institutions which have failed to live up to this moment, or even contributed to it. I don’t think astrologers will replace economists any day soon, but I do think people are opening up to the idea that expertise can be found in other traditions, in other ways of knowing, and astrology is among them. There will always be those who discard it, but I can attest to a genuine tonal shift among the professionals I interact with.

Vh: I’ve reached a point in my astrological studies where I feel I need to step back from technique and immerse myself in the history of the world – (a move that I believe would greatly serve both me and a lot of my colleagues). Knowing I’m asking a history professor, and perhaps sacrificing some objectivity, how important is studying history to being a good astrologer?

AAO: I’m definitely biased, but I do think history is one of, if not, the most important academic discipline currently. Not just for studying the past, but how the past is constructed in the present, how evidence is gathered, and interpreted is an essential skill especially for astrologers. Both historians and astrologers are interpreters of time. The historian interprets the past to understand the present. The astrologer interprets the past (either in a nativity or at the world level) to understand the present *and* to predict the future. The two studies are deeply related. The more you study history, the better your astrology.

Vh: There seems to be this pervasive idea in Astro Land that if we go back far enough, we’ll find the source texts that get us closer to some astrological Truth.

As someone who is neither a translator nor a scholar, my first thought is that something sounds off here. History, it seems to me, is a record of people being in conversation with each other — processing and building on ideas. Not one group of people simply being the custodians of another group’s ideas.

Am I onto something? How do you see your role as a translator?

AAO: Right on the money! Astrology is a collaboration between people and cultures across regions and across time. One of the things that stood out to me when reading the primary sources is how much astrologers were in conversation not only with their contemporaries, but with their colleagues of centuries past. When you read Abu Ma’shar’s Greater Introduction he’s speaking to the astrologers of his day, addressing their debates and providing his opinion, but he’s also in conversation with the Greeks, Egyptians, Indians, and Babylonians before him. Astrology is a collaboration. It is less a singular truth and more a collective wisdom.

Vh: In an era of ubiquitous prediction markets like Kalshi—”the prediction market for trading the future”—where anyone can bet on anything from a basketball game to a potential war, astrologers publicly gloating about their predictions feels particularly icky.

As someone who spends a lot of time making astrological predictions – and I truly appreciate that you mostly do it behind the closed doors of your Patreon, where it always feels in service to astrology – I have to ask: Do you think, in this age of prediction, we as astrologers must approach our craft with a new set of decorum?

AAO: 100%! Prediction is an important part of astrology, but its commodification for profit and spectacle cheapens the legacy, tradition, and wisdom. I find it rather gross when astrologers rush to “astrologize” a tragedy like a murder. It offers no insight--they didn’t even predict anything! It also offers no comfort. It becomes a type of capitalistic vampirism. As a person who applies world astrology to things like war, genocide, climate collapse etc, I try to center insight, compassion, and humanity in what I do. I see prediction as a way to bring us closer together, to identify how our struggles are shared, and what we can do as a community to face the future. Accuracy matters, but so does accountability. I always strive to go back and emphasize what I missed, how I could do better, and always recenter the conversation about the impact on real people and how we can build solidarity. My approach may not be for everyone, but I hope collectively we can build real ethical standards around prediction at the world level.

Vh: So much online astrological discourse mimics sensationalist journalism—symbols disconnected from the sky and earth in service of feelings and opinions. Following astrology feels like The New York Times sending me ‘breaking news’ emails five times a day. At some point nothing feels real.

Is this relatable?

AAO: So much so. I’ve been doing historical astrology for a long time, but am still a relative newbie to the online astrology community precisely for this reason. I think the structures are built around the attention economy--a struggle for headlines, to be the first, to be sensationalist, to even scandalize. This leaves us disconnected from the natural world and its signs. We are living in strange times when bringing things back to the local--just like Astro Salon does--is exactly what the doctor ordered. We don’t need hot takes, we need thoughtful takes! We don’t need influencers, we need community leaders. I think astrology has a bright future ahead if it can avoid the pitfall of modern techno-capitalism.

Vh: How do you see the role of the astrologer in society? Historically? Currently? Ideally?

AAO: I see the role of astrologers as unchanged from centuries past: as counselors who interpret the stars to provide guidance, wisdom, and a sense of bearing in an unsteady world.

ABOUT DR OLOMI

Dr. Ali A Olomi is a professor of history of the Middle East and Islam at Loyola Marymount University and an Affiliated Scholar at the Rutgers Center of Security, Race, and Rights. He is host of the Head on History podcast. He works on medieval and modern Muslim thought at the intersection of religion, science, and empire with a focus on the histories of astrology and the occult sciences.

ABOUT VIVI

Vivi Henriette is an LA-based astrologer and tarot reader known for her collaborative approach to divination, weaving storytelling and mythology to help clients explore their personal narratives. She hosts the monthly Los Angeles Astro Salon at the Philosophical Research Society, the podcast TALKTALKTALK, and is organizer of LA Astro Fest.

Four days. A constellation of astrologers and storytellers.

Come see some of the most exciting voices in astrology this day in age. The 2nd Annual LA Astro Fest is a full festival experience spanning conversation, movement, performance, and the kind of connection you only find when astro people gather IRL.

Featuring Ali A. Olomi, Blair Bogin, Cameron Allen, Evan Nathaniel Grim, Gemini Brett, Marval Rex, Michelle Tea, Naha Armády, Rachel Lang, Sri Sita Dass, Vivi Henriette, Planets, Planets, Planets & more!

Congrats for reading this far! Use code VIVIAOTZ for 10% off all weekend events. Still can’t swing it? Reach out to me at vivi@vivihenriette.com to explore sliding scale and payment plans

Join us in Los Angeles!

If you’re looking for a group of likeminded astro seekers, Club Astro is your place!

We meet weekly to explore the sky in real time and make sense of what is unfolding in our lives and in the collective. This is your chance to ask me questions about your chart, share stories, and connect with a cohort of fellow astrologers.

Club Astro members also get exclusive perks:

• Discounted astrological readings & mentorship

• Secret invites

• Discounted tickets to the Los Angeles Astro Salon and the LA Astro Fest.

Our next gathering is Thursday, July 1st, at 7pm EDT / 4pm PDT.

Further Reading

Earlier this week I found myself captured by a clickbaity anti-astrology piece. I won’t bother mentioning it, or go into too many details, because quite frankly it was lazy reporting that suffered from the same cultural insensitivity it accused astrology of, but it did make a point worth sitting with: that astrology is limiting and unjust.

From this person’s perspective, astrology is a system for determining and profiling people’s personalities, moods, and destiny.

Now, while this may not be my working definition of astrology, nor yours, for anyone who’s ever found themselves obsessed with their sun sign horoscope, that’s a pretty accurate summary.

The example this author cited was a coworker tearing down their potential partner because he was a Gemini, a theme so pervasive in pop culture that it’s the title of one of astro’s greatest meme accounts, Not All Geminis.

But, I can hear you screaming into your computer, that’s not real astrology! We all know sun sign astrology is garbage! But do we? Ok. You know what else is garbage? Chani, the educated astrology app, telling me that “June is the luckiest, most abundant month of the year” because of Jupiter and Venus in Cancer.

Try telling that to someone who woke up after that benefic kiss with pink eye (me) or a black eye (my colleague) or is now spending tons of money on costly surgery for their dog’s goopy eye (another colleague). Try telling that to someone who is facing an emotional breakdown or who recently lost a loved one. (Fun fact: when the sky gets pretty, people start dying. My mother died as Venus crossed my ascendant. It can be beautiful, but that’s subjective. Anyway, look around. Take stock.)

You know who got lucky on this transit? Elon Musk. While big astrology was busy telling us which signs are going to find love this year, that fucker was just anointed the world’s first trillionaire. And you know who’s going to suffer because of it. All of us.

Back to the 9th House

It was only days after reading this takedown that I heard Chris Brennan point out a historical pattern: Saturn-Neptune conjunctions in Aries consistently herald new waves of astrology skeptics.

And I was relieved.

Maybe this will be the push that clears out all the garbage astrology, the punch in the gut that awakens people to the damage of compulsively checking their astrology each day, sometimes multiple times a day, refreshing their feeds for the latest cosmic news that promises to deliver the goodies or end their suffering.

Selfishly, the part of me that wrestles with maintaining a public persona as an astrologer was finally given permission to just stop and accept the fact that no matter how popular our profession becomes, it will always be an outsider’s discipline.

Astrology does, after all, inhabit the 9th house of the zodiac, a cadent place, fallen from the angle of popularity and profitability, a part of life where one’s studies and hard work aren’t promised public accolades.

I will audaciously argue that astrology has grown bloated. Not only is the skepticism expected, but, as astrologers, it is our duty to be skeptical of the voices that do more harm than good.

Perhaps we are going into a period of decline. One where we can gestate and hone our craft outside of the public’s glare.

Astrology has always gone in and out of favor, but you can’t erase the study of time. You can’t erase the human desire to struggle with what it means to be human. While I wholeheartedly believe astrology is for everyone, maybe it’s just not for everyone, and that’s ok.

All things come in waves, and as the wave of astrology falls into the shore, maybe that’s our cue to return to the darkness, where we’ll continue to light candles and debate beneath the stars for a few hundred or thousand more years. To take our time with the big issues, so that we can surface every now and then to share a few well-formed thoughts that will, hopefully, provide some wisdom.

Now Come to My Astro Fest. LOL

It’s not lost on me that my sun is at zero degrees Aries, the point of the Saturn/Neptune conjunction, or, as I shall now see it, the mark of the skeptic.

Nor is it lost on me that I’m both welcoming the public downfall of astrology and giving my time, energy, and resources to organize a public astrology festival.

My skepticism, you see, is a form of devotion. I am devoted to creating ninth house spaces for astrologers to share wisdom and struggle and debate over ideas, big and small.

All the ad copy’s below, but I’ll leave you with this: if you’re in Los Angeles and you really truly, deep in your heart, want to attend LA Astro Fest, but can’t swing the ticket price, reach out to me personally. While we’ve priced tickets to sustain the event, I don’t want cost to be a barrier for anyone who could gain from the experience.

And if you can afford a ticket, please do so. Your support is helping someone else struggle in the dark.

About The Fest

Four days. A constellation of astrologers and storytellers.

Come see some of the most exciting voices in astrology this day in age. The 2nd Annual LA Astro Fest is a full festival experience spanning conversation, movement, performance, and the kind of connection you only find when astro people gather IRL.

Featuring Ali A. Olomi, Blair Bogin, Cameron Allen, Evan Nathaniel Grim, Gemini Brett, Marval Rex, Michelle Tea, Naha Armády, Rachel Lang, Sri Sita Dass, Vivi Henriette, Planets, Planets, Planets & more!

Get Your Tickets

If you’re looking for a group of likeminded astro seekers, Club Astro is your place!

We meet weekly to explore the sky in real time and make sense of what is unfolding in our lives and in the collective. This is your chance to ask me questions about your chart, share stories, and connect with a cohort of fellow astrologers.

Club Astro members also get exclusive perks:

• Discounted astrological readings & mentorship

• Secret invites

• Discounted tickets to the Los Angeles Astro Salon and the LA Astro Fest.

Our next gathering is Thursday, June 18th, at 7pm EDT / 4pm PDT.

Further Reading

Before Los Angeles, I was an astrologer in Detroit—a city not exactly known for its astrology scene.

For years, my most meaningful conversations happened over screens or when I left the state for a conference. As a result, I don’t take for granted the opportunity to connect with my people in person. I also recognize this is a real privilege many cannot afford due to geography, health restrictions, or other reasons.

Perhaps this is why, soon after moving to Los Angeles, I started the first LA Astro Fest in 2025—the same year James Jude Tarot launched the Los Angeles Festival of Tarot.

As someone who’s in the middle of organizing my second Astro Fest, I know how much time, energy, and resources go into making these gatherings happen—especially in a trash economy!

Cutting to the chase: I’m incredibly proud of my friend for once again bringing some of the most celebrated tarot readers and thinkers to Los Angeles for the 2nd Los Angeles Festival of Tarot. I’m also thrilled to be reading this Saturday, June 6th, alongside an incredible roster, including the absurdly brilliant Christopher Marmolejo, author of Red Tarot: A Decolonial Guide to Divinatory Literacy.

Thanks to James’ hard work, we in Los Angeles get to study with occult icon and author, Laetitia Barbier, without having to travel to New York or Paris—among a wildly expansive and exciting lineup of speakers, readers, and panelists.

If you’re in Los Angeles and even vaguely into tarot, don’t sleep on this chance to find your people.

Vivi Henriette: Why do people love tarot? What is it about looking at tiny images on paper that people find so compelling? Is it comfort? Curiosity?

James Jude: People really connect with Tarot because it is a multiverse. You can carry the totality of human experience in your back pocket. It is both a lens through which we can see the scope of possibility and a mirror that reflects back to us the shadow of truth. I think when we consider possibility, we more often embrace hope, and when we encounter shadows, it can be frightening - but multiversal possibility holds despair as well as hope, just as the shadow can give us relief from too much exposure. The Tarot paths are limitless, for all practical purposes, and we all walk some version of these paths throughout our lives. Who doesn’t want to have the ability to lay out a path with purpose, reflection and consideration ... this is one of the most powerful things we can do with the cards.

Vh: Were you one of those kids who grew up around tarot? Do you remember when you encountered your first deck?

JJ: I love hearing people talk about going into a bookshop at 12 or 14 years old and discovering their first yellow box of RWS Tarot cards! That wasn’t me, though. I knew about Tarot at that age and saw advertisements for cards and Tarot books in the backs of comic books - next to ads for sea monkeys and x-ray vision glasses! For me, candle magic is the earliest thing I can remember exploring. I checked a children’s book on candle magic out from my elementary school library when I was in first or second grade. I spent years practicing spellcasting. It wasn’t until I was just out of college that I got my first Tarot deck: the William Blake Tarot.

Vh: You and I both created festivals in Los Angeles in 2025—you, the Festival of Tarot and me, the LA Astro Fest. What do you make of that? Do you think there’s a growing desire for in-person gatherings?

JJ: What do I make of that? We’re both crazy, LOL. I often think if I had pulled cards about it first, I would never have done this. But like The Fool, it was a path embarked on a whim and with a great deal of ignorance about what is involved to pull something like this off. It was Laetitia Barbier who suggested it to me, like a mischievous gothic imp whispering in my ear, “James, you should get some Tarot people together to have a talk at PRS one night and throw a party afterward - Tarot people like to have a good time!” And I was like, “Ok, why not?” I love that you and I both started these dual festival suns, rotating around each other and gathering momentum. You are my festival Gemini twin!

Vh: In addition to hosting the Los Angeles Festival of Tarot, you teach and give readings at TarotArts in South Pasadena. For the initiated, Tarot Arts is a tarot shop with offerings so vast and well curated it feels like an art gallery.

JJ: TarotArts in South Pasadena is a queer-owned, independent, family business. The proprietors, Phillip Gibson and William Toro, are passionate about Tarot and the divinatory arts. They love art and artists, and seekers and writers and creators ... they don’t just stock decks from the big publishers, they support independent deck makers as part of their core mission. They were an online business for 8 years before opening the brick and mortar location 3 years ago ... they’re committed to the cards, for sure. One of the things they wanted to do with a physical shop is to have open display copies of all the decks and big tables on the shop floor so you can browse, surround yourself with stacks of decks and take your time to explore them sincerely before committing to a deck without ever seeing all the cards, touching them, feeling into them. I owe a great deal to both Phillip and William for believing in me and bringing me in house as a reader, teacher and event programmer.

Vh: Additionally, you personally have a massive tarot collection.

JJ: I do have a massive Tarot collection. I didn’t intend it to be that way at first, I was just making up for lost Tarot time, I think - consuming all the information and perspectives I could get my hands on. These days, I’m much more discerning in my acquisitions and I’m far more engaged with exploring and collecting historical decks. But there are also so many incredible artists making decks today, with a constantly refreshed perspective, it’s hard to hold back. But I also just don’t have the space.

Vh: All of that is a set-up to ask, what is your favorite deck right now and why?

JJ: Oh, that was. set up?! LOL. I have a really hard time with favorites, because there’s never just one. But right now, I’d have to say it’s the Thomson-Leng Tarot. I have an affinity for promotional and advertising decks, and it’s a 1935 promotional deck from the UK. Full 78-card RWS clone with many very odd twists. My friend Krys Swordstone wrote about it in the first issue of The Discombobulator last year. It’s a very difficult deck to find an original in good condition. Mine was gifted to me by a very sweet, dear friend just last night!

Vh: From a historical perspective, is there an obscure piece of tarot history you’d like to share?

JJ: Obscure Tarot history ... hm, maybe that T: The New Tarot for the Aquarian Age by John Cooke and Rosalind Sharpe (Sausalito, CA. 1969.) is an entirely channeled deck, delivered through a Ouija board and automatic writing by an entity known as The One. It’s a whole system, perhaps the first Tarot with a twist! Is that obscure?

Vh: Getting back to the Los Angeles Festival of Tarot, what was the initial inspiration for the festival and has that vision evolved between years?

JJ: Yea, the inspiration was that gothic French imp whispering “Tarot party” in my ear, LOL. And yes, it has evolved greatly since last year, expanding to include rituals, tea ceremonies, Tarot games, a Tarot shadow puppet performance that will blow your mind, live music.

We’ve partnered with The Rebis to publish a Festival zine.

We have a greatly expanded esoteric market with Witchy Ways, all in addition to the signature panel conversation, talks, workshops and original Tarot art and rare cards exhibition which is now happening not only at PRS but at TarotArts, too.

Oh yea, and parties!

Vh: What can people expect from the festival? What part are you most excited about?

JJ: I am excited by everything! I can’t pick one thing. It’s all very cool. So, just like when reading the cards, expect the unexpected ... be open to surprises and embrace the unknown ... go to everything you can, there are offerings for everyone. If you just want to have a good time, you can do that - have fun. If you want to be a student and embrace learning, you can do that. If you’re like me and knowledge-seeking IS having fun, then I’d call you an adept, and you’re in the right place.

get your tickets

use code TAROTFEST15 at checkout for a 15% discount

LATER THIS MONTH….

LEARN ASTROLOGY! MAKE FRIENDS!

If you’re looking for a group of likeminded astro seekers, Club Astro is your place!

We meet weekly to explore the sky in real time and make sense of what is unfolding in our lives and in the collective. This is your chance to ask me questions about your chart, share stories, and connect with a cohort of fellow astrologers.

Club Astro members also get exclusive perks:

• Discounted astrological readings & mentorship

• Secret invites

• Discounted tickets to the Los Angeles Astro Salon and the LA Astro Fest.

Our next gathering is Thursday, June 18th, at 7pm EDT / 4pm PDT.

“Omen is a latin word meaning warning, and so the idea behind omen divination is that one is talking to the gods and goddesses, not to find out what will happen, but to find out what might happen. If you are looking at what might happen, it presupposes that you can change it, a point that is worth emphasizing.”

- Nicholas Campion

from Astrology, History and Apocalypse

When I first discovered these words by Nicolas Campion, I was elated! He was giving voice to something I struggled to articulate: We tell the future, so we can prepare for it.

After a week of riding high on this inspiration, the gloom of current times settled right back in. How does one prepare for the future when everything feels so fated?

I love astrology, and I have been blessed with access to some exceptionally talented astrologers. Yet, when I look out over the vast terrain of Astro Land, there are two types who dominate the landscape.

Let’s call them the daily news guy and the breaking news guy.

Here I’m using the term “guy” in a non-gendered way, as in: My guy, your future takes are bringing me down. To be clear, I have been both of these guys at different times in my astrological career. And that does not make me—nor them—any less annoying.

Daily News Guy

As the name implies, the daily news guy is obsessed with giving a daily breakdown of the astro weather—what one should and shouldn’t do, what many dangers lie ahead. At some point in history, this type of obsessive skytalk wasn’t possible. Now, thanks to myriad technological innovations—astro software, social media—it’s possible, and, I will argue, useless.

As the astrologer Collin Bedell has pointed out across platforms, we are living in an age of prediction. Unless you’re that one guy with a flip phone and a cabin in the woods, most of us are inundated with algorithms telling us what to do, where to shop, what to eat, when to see the doctor, etc. It’s a lot.

The last thing I want is an astrologer bossing me around, threatening me to seize the moment because if I don’t take advantage of this very auspicious window of time I won’t get the chance again for another 287 years. And, at that point, I’ll be dead.

Breaking News Guy

Then there’s the breaking news guy. This guy loves nothing more than to take the mic to brag about his predictive skills. In case you weren’t paying attention, he predicted the war in Iran down to the minute — as well as the following oil crisis, food shortage, the hantavirus, and every other world event that’s responsible for mass death and suffering.

No matter that what he’s discussing is actual breaking news and people’s actual lives are being destroyed, this is what we call astrology good. By the end of the podcast, one is so thoroughly wound up in a weighted blanket of fear that it’s impossible to focus on what to have for lunch — let alone how to change the world.

This guy poses a whole new set of questions, but I’ll start here:

In an age of prediction markets, where anyone can gamble, at any time of day, from anywhere in the world, on anything from oil prices to war to whether or not Trevor Noah will say the word “potato” on live television, is it any different when an astrologer takes the public stage to cast predictions?

The slogan of Kalshi, one of the most popular of these platforms, is: “Predict the future with Kalshi.”

Which brings up new questions: What is the responsibility of fortune tellers? How has it evolved over astrologers’ multi-thousand-year history?

Saved at the Last Minute

The totality of these musings had started to erode my confidence in astrology and my grappling with my role as an astrologer. As I was mining my expansive sources of knowledge for information or clues on this journey, I re-listened to my interview with Dr. Ali A. Olomi at the Philosophical Research Society and found myself transfixed by his words:

“World astrology is the most effective lens for explaining the present, far more than economics, far more than political science. No shade to the political scientists in the room. It’s a crap major, sorry.

Besides history, and I’m obviously biased, astrology is really the only genuine way of explaining why the world looks the way that it does in a genuinely robust way. It allows and accounts for not only political change, but it allows you to center the ordinary person in a way that doesn’t erase them.

Whereas in political science, you enumerate. So you create a study and everyone becomes a number within that study. But when an astrologer looks at Mars in Taurus, and he sees harm to laborers. That’s not a number. He’s able to move in, or he or she or they, are able to move in to the ground level in a way that a lot of lenses of analysis don’t allow you to do.”

My takeaway: There are many ways to tell the future. What astrology offers is the opportunity to see ourselves in that future.

I’m going to sit with this one for a while…

LA Astro Fest Pre-Fest ft Dr Ali A Olomi

Dr. Ali A. Olomi is returning to the on Tuesday, June 23rd, for LA Astro Fest Pre-Fest, where he will be presenting “Once and Future Stars: The Astrology of Today and Tomorrow.”

Tickets for our in-person event are available now. Keep an eye out for the announcement of online tickets!

Secure Your Spot

If you’re looking for a group of likeminded astro seekers, Club Astro is your place!

We meet weekly to explore the sky in real time and make sense of what is unfolding in our lives and in the collective. This is your chance to ask me questions about your chart, share stories, and connect with a cohort of fellow astrologers.

Club Astro members also get exclusive perks:

• Discounted astrological readings & mentorship

• Secret invites

• Discounted tickets to the Los Angeles Astro Salon and the LA Astro Fest.

Our next gathering is Thursday, June 4th, at 7pm EDT / 4pm PDT.

Unlock Club Astro. Subscribe for instant access to monthly office hours, member discounts, secret invites, and more.

For anyone in Los Angeles who moves in occult or occult-adjacent circles, the name 22 Teachings is certainly familiar. It’s the School of Hermetic Science and Magical Arts, founded by Naha Armády.

While I have personally only attended a handful of gatherings, the school has been an integral part of my LA experience. One of my very first memories after moving to California is standing in my friend’s kitchen in Tujunga, awkwardly performing the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram into a computer screen. My dear friend, who I’m pretty sure cares very little for magic, thought this would be a fun activity. I didn’t have fun because I never have fun. I did, however, find the experience moving—and the teacher captivating.

After I started organizing the monthly Los Angeles Astro Salon, it seemed that every other person I encountered had a connection to 22 Teachings—they had either taken a class or were actively enrolled in the school. Everyone who studied with Naha spoke about her in the highest regard. These were people I admired, with unique magical practices and voices, all of whom cited Naha as being hugely influential.

When I reached out to her for an interview, I was nervous. This is someone who, by way of her disciples, I had come to admire. To my surprise, she was unreasonably gracious, inviting me into her home for conversation.

Naha is more kind and brilliant than the vast reputation that precedes her.

Listen to the full TALKTALKTALK

Which is why I’m all sorts of excited to share that she is a speaker at the upcoming LA Astro Fest, happening June 23rd-28th in Los Angeles, along with a roster of my favorite astrologers and storytellers including Blair Bogin of Planets, Planets, Planets, Michelle Tea, Gemini Brett & more!

Tickets are now on sale for this intimate gathering, and if you’ve read this far, lucky you! Use code VIVIAOTZ for a 10% discount on all LA Astro Fest tickets – even VIP.

VIP tickets grant you access to the entire festival, plus the pre-fest event at PRS with Dr. Ali A. Olomi, and the kickoff party featuring Planets, Planets, Planets. On top of all that, your VIP ticket includes a year’s membership to my monthly program, Club Astro, giving you weekly office hours with me, a mini-reading, and a host of other perks and discounts!

Below is an excerpt from my podcast recording with Naha. We talk about a lot of things but, mostly, this is a conversation about what it means to be a magician.

(The following interview has been edited and condensed.)

Vivi Henriette: What drew you to Prague, and why do you keep going back?

Naha Armády: There’s an old Jewish cemetery there, and in the Jewish cemetery is the gravestone of Rabbi Loew, or Rabbi Lev in Czech. He was the one who the origin story of the Golem originates from. Creating a figure out of clay, breathing life into it. It’s the origin of the Frankenstein story. But the legend is that Rabbi Loew created the Golem to protect Prague. So the original synagogue is still there. The cemetery with his gravestone is still there. And people have different opinions on the legend — that’s the thing about legends, right? How much of it is historical, how much of it is fictional.

To be able to go there and stand before that gravestone and have that experience took everything that I was learning and made it evocative and made it real and just planted a seed that has had me going back to Prague ever since. The last trip, that was my fourth time there, and that’s when I took my students. So 40 of us went, and we traveled throughout the Czech countryside and we went to some castles, into the forest. Long story long, Prague is the most magical city.

Vh: How did that first experience shape your teaching style?

NA: I really try to convey reverence for the mysteries. A lot of times these trips turn into these kinds of tourist selfie moments. I was like, come on you guys, let’s elevate the opportunity to actually have a spiritual experience here. When you’re reverent, you’re also operating in your own self-respect. It’s not like you’re just bowing before something else. You are showing up as your best self as well. I think that’s one of the biggest things that I try to convey through my teachings.

Vh: When did you first know magic was real?

NA: Finding magic finally gave me the answers to the questions I wasn’t asking. At this point, nothing doesn’t qualify as magic. Nothing is chance. Nothing is luck. Nothing is just accidental coincidence. But I didn’t start seriously studying magic until I was in my Saturn return. That would’ve been when I finally had that word to give it.

Vh: Why does your school have prerequisites?

NA: There’s two reasons why I have prerequisites, and it doesn’t really have to do with the students, funny enough. It has to do with the work, and it has to do with making my life easier as a teacher. If I know that everybody in the class has already done a certain level of training, then I don’t have to hold hands. We can just jump right in. And then the other part of it is reverence for the work itself. I’m working with a particular tradition that is an initiatory tradition, so by having prerequisites it is a way of honoring the mysteries — there are some hoops to jump through before everything is just given to you.

Vh: Do your students have a responsibility to use their wisdom for a greater world purpose?

NA: Focus on your immediate community. Focus on the people that are right around you. Don’t worry so much about the world. Be wary of the “we” because the “we” can actually be very exclusionary. And be wary of anyone who says this is the one true way. The best thing I can do is work upon myself and those people that I’m literally interacting with, like the guy at the coffee shop. Those are the little ways that we make the world more conscientious, more present, more self-aware.

“Wherever you go, the light is the light.”

If you’re looking for a group of likeminded astro seekers, Club Astro is your place!

We meet weekly to explore the sky in real time and make sense of what is unfolding in our lives and in the collective. This is your chance to ask me questions about your chart, share stories, and connect with a cohort of fellow astrologers.

Club Astro members also get exclusive perks:

• Discounted astrological readings & mentorship

• Secret invites

• Discounted tickets to the Los Angeles Astro Salon and the LA Astro Fest.

Our next gathering is Thursday, May 28th, at 7pm EDT / 4pm PDT.

About Naha

Naha Armády resides in Los Angeles where she has been a reader, healer and teacher for 16 years. She is the founder and head of faculty of 22 Teachings School of Hermetic Science and Magical Arts, where she teaches alongside her mentor of over 20 years, William Kiesel of Ouroboros Press. In addition, she serves as officiant of the Arboretum Mysticum, an occult Lodge in the Western Mystery Tradition since 2017. As both a scholar of Hermetic Qabalah and a practitioner of ceremonial magic, Naha has established an extensive curriculum and teaches students around the world.

About Vivi

Vivi Henriette is an LA-based astrologer and tarot reader whose practice centers on storytelling, mythology, and collaborative divination. She creates a space for clients to reclaim their personal narratives through the lens of ancient archetypes. Vivi produces LA Astro Fest, hosts the Los Angeles Astro Salon, and is the creator of the podcast TalkTalkTalk. You can find her weekly writing on ritual and meaning right here on ART of the ZODIAC.

Further Reading

Hello Loves,

I’m going to tell you the story of how a group of clowns changed my life.

For the uninitiated, Planets, Planets, Planets is an alt-comedy clown troupe led by astrologer Blair Bogin, with a simple concept: to perform the chart of the moment.

Blair Bogin is a dedicated astrologer with a robust personal practice, and her work has become a fertile ground for a new kind of astrology. Among her students, Martha Fearnley and Camirin Farmer stand out—already seasoned performers, they've emerged as formidable astrologers in their own right. While you needn't be an astrologer to enjoy a Planets show, the astrological integrity of their work is never an afterthought; it is the heartbeat of every performance.

Perhaps Planets is better described as a modern-day Orphic rite or a “spectator astrodrama.” For context, Astrodrama is a therapeutic practice where participants act out personal natal placements to process trauma or family dynamics. With Planets, the troupe does the acting, and the audience is transformed in the process.

This, I’m certain, is why theater was created in the first place: as cathartic ritual. Feelings and emotions too big for one person are enacted on stage and collectively processed for a shared release.

The Personal Breakdown

Anyone with Aries or Libra placements will vividly recall the eclipse season of April 2024. That was when I saw Planets, Planets, Planets for the first time at the Philosophical Research Society (PRS), my face still splotchy from stress hives that looked like a sunburn.

I was a mess. Four months earlier, I had relocated from Detroit to LA. Ever since the move, I had been waking in the middle of the night with panic attacks—the kind that jolted me into consciousness, gasping for air as if I’d just been shot. I was doing “all the right things”—therapy, acupuncture, energy medicine, doctor visits, yet I remained weighed down by a volatile mix of depression and anxiety that I just couldn’t shake.

My new life in LA had begun as an attempt to escape an abusive relationship and a last-ditch effort to jumpstart a career that had hit constant dead ends in Detroit. The astrology reflected the chaos: my Sun, Midheaven (MC) and IC were all being eclipsed. If this were a client’s chart, I would have assured them that it was completely normal to feel like everything was crumbling—a necessary breakdown before the breakthrough.

But in my own life, I couldn’t get past the “everything feels terrible” part.

Enter the Clowns

Eight months prior to seeing Planets PRS, I had spent a week at an Astrodrama retreat in the South of France. Alongside Jason Holley and an intimate cohort of astrologers, we co-habited, co-dreamed, and processed our traumas by acting out our charts for eight intense days. It was a profoundly psychedelic experience, for which I was completely sober.

Suffice it to say, the concept of “acting out” the sky wasn’t new to me. Yet, I had no idea what to expect from a Planets performance. I’ll skip the play-by-play, because outside of the story I’m about to share, the only other detail that remains burned into my memory is Camirin Farmer’s portrayal of Saturn. Their monologue was so bone-chillingly convincing, I would have sworn they were channeling the Lord of Discipline himself.

The Moment of Catharsis

The night was April 18th, 2024—ten days after a Solar Eclipse at 19 degrees Aries, the exact point of my Midheaven. In astrological terms, the “roof” of my life was being blown off.

The performance ended with the Sun undergoing a literal ego death on stage. For the first time in months, I had a container for my own experience. I started to cry—the sort of guttural, nonstop tears that come after something inside you has died, and the water follows to wash away the corpse

It was a the turning point.

Looking back at that moment of catharsis, I can divide my life into a distinct before and after. It also marked a change in the way I see and practice astrology. Planets had captured the very thing I had been chasing with ritual for years: an embodied, creative, and deeply personal astrological practice.

Seeing Planets gave me permission to explore all the ways I could make astrology my own.

Five months after that fated night, I hosted the very first Los Angeles Astro Salon at PRS with Martha Fearnley as my guest. One year later, on April 25th, 2025, the Planets joined me to kick off the inaugural LA Astro Fest, the event that has come to define my work and the community I’ve found in this city.

LA ASTRO FEST 2026: THE CLOWNS RETURN

Planets, Planets, Planets are returning to kick off The 2nd Annual LA Astro Fest on Friday, June 26th!

This year’s festival is a three-day immersion into the magic of the sky, featuring world-class astrologers, storytellers, and the return of the clowns.

• When: June 23rd, 26th-28th

• Where: The Philosophical Research Society, The Pacific Opera Project

• Early Bird Pricing until May 11th!

  Secure Your Spot

The Club Astro Experience

If you’re looking for a group of likeminded astro seekers, Club Astro is your place!

We meet twice each month to explore the sky in real time and make sense of what is unfolding in our lives and in the collective. This is your chance to ask me questions about your chart, share stories, and connect with a cohort of fellow astrologers.

Club Astro members also get exclusive perks:

• Discounted astrological readings & mentorship

• Secret invites

• Discounted tickets to the Los Angeles Astro Salon and the LA Astro Fest.

Our next gathering is Thursday, May 7th, at 7pm EDT / 4pm PDT.

Further Reading

I hear a lot of astrologers looking at this new moon and talking of overwhelm, frustration, fatigue—even I have said that this burnout is real.

But what if that’s the point? What if we’re being prodded into action because things have gotten so bad, so out of control, so destructive that our very lives are at stake?

This isn’t an alarm; it’s a warning bell. The calls for help won’t stop sounding, no matter how many times we press snooze.

The Battle for Middle-earth

I just watched the Lord of the Rings (LOTR) trilogy for the first time, and it changed the way I will forever conceptualize the sign of Aries.

Before you protest—Do we really need more war analogies?—I hear you.

I hate how tech monsters like Peter Thiel and Palmer Luckey have tried to ruin Tolkien for everyone else. They’ve co-opted these beloved fantasies, naming their dystopian businesses—Palantir Technologies, Mithril Capital, and Anduril Industries—and perverting the idea of “fighting for the West.” What they’re doing, essentially, is using Tolkien as an excuse to exploit the world and make a few white men rich.

Do they not get that the Ring is a symbol for unchecked power that turns men into soulless zombies? Clearly, they lack the critical thinking skills needed to understand metaphor.

Anyway, hear me out.

The Aries Journey

The sign of Aries is divided into three ten-degree portions, or decans. While Aries is ruled by Mars, each of these smaller territories has its own ruler.

Today’s new moon is happening in the last decan of Aries. Hold onto that. It will make sense by the end of this.

Aries 1: The Thrust

Approximately 60% of the LOTR movies are people engaging in battle. Each of these struggles starts with a lot of nervousness and commences with one person shooting the first arrow before it’s GAME ON.

This is the Mars decan of Aries. You see the battle ahead, wondering if there’s still time to retreat back to your cutie hobbit hole, but before you have time to think about it, you’re thrust into action.

It’s too late. The fight starts as soon as we step into the battlefield of Aries.

Aries 2: Flowstate

This is the endless series of battle montages.

The Sun decan of Aries is where we see past the reality of oliphaunts and orcs coming at us from all directions to remember why we are fighting in the first place.

If the Mars decan is about mustering the courage to step into battle, the Sun’s decan is all about finding the energy to sustain your lifeforce—to make it through one more battle because Frodo and the future of Middle-earth are depending on you.

Aries 3: Bittersweet Victory

This is the bittersweet moment where you’ve won the battle but have to contend with the casualties on the battlefield—the fallen King Théoden of Rohan and the grief of the shield-maiden Éowyn.

In this decan ruled by Venus, one’s heart is simultaneously contending with victory and the loss of everything that’s been sacrificed for the win.

New Moon Moment

Here we are in the third decan of Aries. This new moon finds many of us tired, depleted. If you’re reading this, you’re still standing. Maybe you’ve won the battle, but there’s a whole war ahead.

Now, I realize the dangers of using war metaphors: there are many people in the middle of a literal battlefield right now, and I don’t want to make light of their situation. And again, I don’t want to create more fodder for loser tech bros to fetishize war.

At the same time, we’re all in the middle of a war: for the planet, for our humanity, and in a million other ways that are personal to you and your life.

This new moon isn’t bringing up anything new. The fight’s been happening whether or not we choose to take action.

And this quiet part of the new moon—this is the bittersweet moment where we’re forced to contend with the reality of everything we’re up against, and the losses of everything we’ve sacrificed.

Join The Astro Community

If you’re looking for a container to support this process of reflection and reset, Club Astro is where we do this work together.

We meet twice each month to explore the sky in real time and make sense of what is unfolding in our lives and in the collective.

Our next gathering is Thursday, April 23rd, at 7pm EDT / 4pm PDT.

If you are craving a rhythm of study, reflection, and conversation during this cycle, I would love to see you there.

Further Reading

“During one meal at Du-par’s, a diner where they had regularly met, Lynch flipped over a place mat and drew a map to help solidify the hazy contours of their magical town: which is, Frost says, what led to the show’s name. ‘As we talked through all the elements, we started to place where they were on a map as he sketched them,’ says Frost. ‘We didn’t have a name for the town, but we had these two mountains, White Tail and Blue Pine, on either side. And I said, ‘Well, why don’t we call it Twin Peaks?’ It hit us on the head like a two-by-four. We said, ‘Yeah, that works.’’ For both writers, the town was becoming real. ‘We knew where everything was, and it helped us decide what mood each place had, and what could happen there,’ said Lynch. ‘Then the characters just introduced themselves to us and walked into the story.’” (Scott Meslow, A Place Both Wonderful and Strange)

Twin Peaks, the unlikely child of TV veteran Mark Frost and film director David Lynch, made its debut on April 8th, 1990. It arrived under a Libra Full Moon, with the dragon’s nodes sprawling across the terrain of Leo and Aquarius.

I’m currently writing under the decimating light of another Libra Full Moon. The nodes will soon make their way back into Leo and Aquarius, having already kicked off the first eclipse in this new cycle’s territory. Astrology has a talent for bringing us back to the stories we need to hear: returning us to the hazy contours of our own maps.

More and more these days, I lean on my craft not to predict the future, but to investigate the past in service of the present. What voices, long silenced, wish to speak again, demanding to be heard.

Return to the Red Room

Less than a year ago, moved by my friend William Holloway’s interview with Mark Frost’s astrologer, Bill Herbst, I was inspired to sit down and watch all three seasons of Twin Peaks—and, of course, the movie, Fire Walk With Me.

I’m not alone in this obsession. In the wake of David Lynch’s death, screenings of Twin Peaks have popped up all over Los Angeles and beyond. According to the sky, this resurgence is right on time. But what lessons do these stories hold for us now?

A New Myth for Americana

A few weeks ago, I invited my dear friend, mentor, and astrologer-magician Micki Pellerano of Time Lord TV back on my podcast to discuss the astrology of Twin Peaks and explore the show’s current resurgence.

Or, perhaps more accurately, why this show has held its place in pop culture’s imagination for well over 30 years.

His response? This is the mythology we need:

“Harry Potter is a new myth, but it conforms to an old model: the orphan child who needs to be redirected to his magical birthright. Same with Game of Thrones: the bastard son, the exiled queen, the dynasty command over dragons. These are all mythological themes with which we’re familiar. But Twin Peaks is new in a way. It put forth into the public conversation a spiritual dimension: a whole new way of looking at alternate dimensions and this pantheon of good and evil beings that inhabit these realms. There are wormholes and enigmas around which these other dimensions weave in and out of mortal reality in our own time and place. There are purgatory waiting rooms, secret codes, the significance of owls, and the mystery of Major Briggs and the Log Lady. It does a masterful job of weaving these bizarre landscapes into mundane, normal Americana—and also indigenous. There’s nothing quite like Twin Peaks as far as a mythological model.”

Listen To The Conversation

Join The Astro Community

Club Astro is where we celebrate our shared language of astrology. Twice a month we gather for Office Hours to explore the current sky, look at our personal birth charts, and make sense of the terrain as it unfolds.

Our next office hours are Thursday, April 23rd, at 7pm EDT / 4pm PDT.

To join simply drop your email below and become a paid subcriber to this Substack!

Further Learning

I’m writing this from a hotel room, seventeen floors above the chaos of Midtown Manhattan. I should be finishing edits on my Twin Peaks podcast episode with Micki Pellerano Instead, I’m thinking about an old Joe Rogan interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Before I lose you with two names that may elicit strong feelings, stick with me.

I only heard about the interview by catching a Threads post by an astrologer I admire. He had listened to the podcast and concluded that he wants to debate Mr. Tyson. I hunted down the interview expecting something greatly upsetting. Instead: nothing. Joe Rogan’s personality is naturally offensive to some (including myself), but that’s not the conversation we’re having.

On the contrary, I enjoyed the recording. I thought Mr. Tyson offered insights on a variety of topics. Astrology took up maybe fifteen minutes of a three-hour conversation.

What I can’t stop thinking about is why it bothers me when astrologers want to go head-to-head with scientists. Typically, the conversation starts by attempting to discredit material science (as in, “what do they know?”), and then concludes with the idea that these skeptics “don’t understand astrology.”

It’s the same binary thinking used against us to defend astrology: “you’re wrong, we’re right.”

This essay isn’t a critique of this particular astrologer’s comments. I have no idea what he might argue in his hypothetical debate. His post simply resonated with a growing internal feeling. Similarly, this isn’t a defense of astrology itself. Its lineage is far too ancient and vast to require my protection.

Instead, Mr. Tyson’s critiques, alongside one astrologer’s reaction to them, have prompted me to delve deeper into my personal motivations for studying this art.

Beyond the Binary

In this interview, Mr Tyson begins his critique of astrology in familiar ways. He highlights the shortcomings of horoscopes, the “absurdity” of Mercury retrograde sending people into a tizzy, and the discussion of why our bodies aren’t affected by the moon’s tides.

None of it’s original. But let’s face it: astrology doesn’t have the best PR campaign.

Whatever your take on the state of astrology, none of us can deny that the world has changed drastically since astronomy and astrology diverged. At one point, people consulted astrological charts for questions like, “Am I pregnant?” or “Will there be war?” We now have pregnancy tests and robust predictive models for almost everything.

Similarly, medicine—a branch of science once entwined with astrology—has seen immense advances in the past few hundred years, replacing decumbiture charts with diagnostic tools. While there is plenty of corruption in the industry, it’s a fact that many people live long and healthy lives without ever consulting the sky.

This isn’t to say they should live their lives without looking to the sky.

I’m not arguing that astrology isn’t a useful tool for prediction, or that medical astrologers don’t help their clients. (I personally consult a medical astrologer who’s also a medical practitioner.) What I am saying is this: if your worldview is binary—good/bad, yes/no, pass/fail—I can see why astrology might not make sense to you.

While I may disagree with Mr. Tyson, I acknowledge he’s a smart person who has devoted his life to studying the Universe’s laws. To say he could teach me a thing or two is an understatement. Furthermore, I acknowledge that some of his criticisms are valid: astrology is harmful when used to avoid accountability. The stars did not “make” you do it.

But is it our job to convert people? What if astrology just isn’t for everyone?

The Gift of the “Why”

As an astrophysicist, Mr Tyson comes from a field of science that can tell us a lot about how the universe works. What it cannot tell us is why the Universe works. And that’s where astrology comes in.

In my own life, astrology has proven invaluable for navigating mental and physical health. It has allowed me to foresee challenging periods in my life and those of my clients, helped me understand history through time cycles, and even once assisted in finding a missing necklace!

Yet, these results represent only one part of the story.

Each time we pause to interpret the sky's symbols, we grapple with what it means to be human. From a materialist perspective, the full moon may exert no physical effect on me. Yet, when I gaze skyward, see something of the world reflected in that fattening moon, I am engaging in a search for truth beyond quantification

A Hermetic Perspective

The astrologer has a way of framing this that’s been rattling around in my head. He suggests that astrology isn’t pseudo-scientific; instead, modern science is “pseudo-Hermetic.”

In Hermetic tradition, reality is a trinity. Caton explains, “the source of the physical world is Spiritual and there are three parts of anything physical: the material aspect or body, the animating force or soul, and the spirit or consciousness.” Yet, about four hundred years ago, Gary continues, “Science turned its back on soul and spirit,” insisting that only the material aspect of our world is real.

When we consider the progress of the material world in the last four centuries, science demonstrates immense success. However, in the realms of Soul and Spirit, its insights are profoundly limited. Psychology has attempted to reintroduce the Soul, but Spirit largely remains an unaddressed mystery.

What if our work isn’t about proving science wrong? What if astrology is a study for the initiates who are willing to look at the whole of reality?

Perhaps the most powerful thing we can do is express gratitude for receiving the call. We do that by devoting our lives to the nuances of this powerful art, rather than begging for the approval of those who have spent four hundred years learning how to see only a third of the sky.

Join The Astro Community

Club Astro is the container where we study the sky together in real time. Twice a month we gather for Office Hours to explore the current astrology, look at charts from the group, and make sense of the terrain as it unfolds. It’s less about prediction and more about practice: a place where questions are welcomed and the sky becomes a shared language.

The next office hours are Thursday, April 9th, at 7pm EDT / 4pm PDT.

To join simply drop your email below and become a paid subcriber to this Substack!

Further Learning

The most Aries thing I ever heard came from an acquaintance with an Aries sun who recounted this wild tale:

His cousin had recently moved into his house – the one he took out a mortgage for, mind you. (Seriously, keep that in mind.) Both of them have notoriously bad tempers, and one day they went at it. Over what? I honestly can’t recall, and I’m not sure he remembers either.

The argument escalated to the point where she locked herself in her room. His response? He stormed outside, poured gasoline on her AC window unit, and SET HIS OWN HOUSE ON FIRE.

After a moment of pure, fiery Aries passion, the gravity of the situation hit him, and he managed to put out the blaze. However, it was too late: his cousin’s boyfriend had already called the cops. They arrived quickly and arrested our fiery protagonist.

During the six months he spent in jail, his cousin and her boyfriend continued to live in his house, rent-free. When he was finally released, he genuinely couldn’t understand why she was still upset with him. His take? “You fight. You make up. What’s the big deal?”

Classic Aries: quick to anger, even quicker to forget.

Now, while I don’t anticipate any of you burning down houses (intentionally, at least!), I do want to remind everyone to take a few deep breaths. With Saturn (the ultimate buzzkill authority) currently in Aries, there might be extra harsh consequences for impulsive actions this season. You’ve been warned.

Thank you for your patience waiting for this very late newsletter, by the way! I was in Mexico City celebrating the spring equinox and my Aries birthday, blissfully away from my devices.

With that, I have two exciting events coming up — one in NYC and another in Los Angeles. Keep reading for the good details!

Yours,
Vivi

Los Angeles Astro Salon: Alchemical Astrology!

This month’s Los Angeles Astro Salon is for everyone interested in bringing some magic into their astrological practice!

I’m thrilled to be joined by William Kiesel of Ouroboros Press and 22 Teachings. William will delve into the heart of astrology, the Sun and Moon, through a fascinating alchemical lens.

• Where: The Philosophical Research Society, 3910 Los Feliz Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90027

• When: Tuesday, March 31st, 7 PM PDT

  Secure Your Spot

ART of the ZODIAC is Coming to Brooklyn!

I’m heading to NYC next week for some exciting pop-ups!

Astrology & Henna Evening with Lisa!
Join my dear friend Lisa and me for an evening celebrating two of my favorite things: astrology and henna!

• When: Thursday, April 2nd, 7pm-9pm

• Where: Cafe Calaca, 505 Franklin Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11238

• Format: Stop by for a quick reading and some henna!

• Cost: $65 for henna and tarot (walk-ins welcome!)

Intimate Astrology Readings at Spooksvilla!
Looking for a more personal session? I’ll be popping up at Spooksvilla in the East Village for astrology readings.

• When: Thursday, April 2nd, from 12-5 PM

• Where: Spooksvilla + Friends, 309 East 9th Street New York, NY 10003

• Appointment: I also have some availability for readings on Friday and Saturday. Reach out to set up a private appointment!

Book a 15-Minute Reading

Book a 30-Minute Reading

Join the Astro-Community!

Spaces are now open for Club Astro, my monthly membership. Enjoy perks like discounted tickets to the LA Astro Salon and LA Astro Fest, plus access to twice-monthly open calls. Bring your birth chart, ask personal questions, and connect with fellow seekers.

The next Office Hours are Thursday, April 9th, at 7pm EDT / 4 pm, PDT.

To join, simply become a paid subscriber for $18 a month. If you’re craving ongoing insights and community, I’d love to see you there.

Further Reading

As I write, the Moon closes into newness in its conjunction with the Pisces Sun. In just a few days, Mercury will make its direct station. This is a final declaration in this same watery territory, amplified by the ravenous dragon’s head.

A voice that began as a whisper is turning to a scream: ghosts begging for our attention.

I’ve spent a lot of time writing about Mercury’s retrograde cycle over the past few weeks, but the part I’ve failed to mention is the hauntings—the visiting spirits from past lives, arriving in dreams and in waking life.

Yesterday, out of the nowhere-blue of social media, a friend of my father’s reached out. My father had a Scorpio Sun. He was a man who carried a lot of pain and secrets, but who found joy near the end life in his retirement job driving a truck for PlayStation. On the road, he befriended a group of young gamers. They spent their off-hours trading inside jokes and exploring the local food scene in every new city.

That short period of time was the happiest I’d ever seen him, so hearing from one of these friends felt like a blessing. It was a punctuation mark on weeks of ceaseless dreaming about my father. Though he’s been gone twelve years, his voice only grows louder.

Usually, in my dreams, he’s, well—haunting me. He’s either just out of reach or chasing after me. It’s never pleasant. Until last night, when we finally caught up. In my dream I was back in the doctor’s office, receiving his cancer diagnosis, and for the first time, I was able to sit with the bigness of that pain and the depth of his loss without running away.

Upon waking, I did what any astrologer would do: I began to connect the dots.

The 6-Year Echo: Discovering the Whole of Your Story

If you listened to my most recent podcast with , you’d know that Mercury retrogrades occur in elemental cycles. Right now, we’re wrapping up a Mercury retrograde in Pisces, part of a watery cycle that will last through 2027.

Every six years, these cycles repeat. This means you can use Mercury’s frequent underworld journeys to tell a larger story over time, both individually and collectively.

Going into this retrograde, I knew the last Mercury retrograde in Pisces was March 2020, just before the world shut down for COVID. For me, that time marked the beginning of an insomnia and anxiety spiral that eventually landed me in therapy, working through my CPTSD and— surprise!—my father issues. It was the moment I realized how hardcore I had dissociated after his death.

But when I woke up this morning, I had a hunch that Mercury was trying to tell me something even deeper. I was correct.

It turns out the water cycle preceding the one in 2020 coincided exactly with the duration of my father’s sickness and eventual death in late 2013. The ghosts aren’t just visiting; they are following a map.

Mercury as Psychopomp: Carrying Us Home

Mercury is the Roman relative of the Greek god Hermes. He is the trickster, the philosopher, and the psychopomp. He is the one known for escorting souls into the Underworld, and for the unique ability to enter and exit it of his own accord.

Much like the lunar nodes, Mercury’s retrogrades move against the zodiacal grain. In the moment, each cycle can feel chaotic. Gary Caton describes these periods as the “churning of an ocean” where all the gunk comes to the surface, blinding us in the storm. Yet this, Gary reminds us, is “where the life is.” It’s messy, but it’s how we transform.

Twelve years after my father’s death, and after countless trips to the Underworld and back, I’m finally making peace with him. I’m learning that the “haunting” isn’t a threat. It’s an invitation to finish the conversation.

Whatever stories are being churned up for you, whatever ghosts are tugging at your sleeves or your dreams, I hope Mercury helps you find the clarity to finally wish them goodnight.

Take a breath. The water is clearing.

Find Your Story

Curious to explore your personal retrograde story? I have a few reading spots left for April. Club Astro Members: Scroll down for your discount code to book at the $175 supporter rate.

Book A Reading

Join the Astro-Community!

Spaces are now open for Club Astro, my monthly membership. Enjoy perks like discounted tickets to the LA Astro Salon and LA Astro Fest, plus access to twice-monthly open calls. Bring your birth chart, ask personal questions, and connect with fellow seekers.

The next Office Hours are Thursday, March 26th, at 7pm EDT / 4 pm, PDT.

To join, simply become a paid subscriber for $18 a month. If you’re craving ongoing insights and community, I’d love to see you there.

Further Learning

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is an alchemist, skywatcher, and a leading intellectual force behind reshaping our collective understanding of the Mercury retrograde cycle. His groundbreaking book, Mercury Element Year, dives deep into this phenomenon.

Three to four times a year, Mercury appears to move backward in the sky. This is when magazine writers and meme creators go wild with travel advisories and tales of impending catastrophe. But here’s what’s really happening: Mercury is transitioning from an evening star to a morning star, ushering in a profound period of reflection, release, and regeneration.

In Mercury Element Year, Gary reveals how this cycle is part of a larger elemental pattern of retrogrades. These retrogrades occur in elemental clusters, with Mercury — much like the lunar nodes — gradually moving against the zodiacal grain over time. For one to two years, all retrogrades happen within a single element (fire, water, air, or earth) before transitioning to the next.

For instance, as I write this in March 2026, we are experiencing watery retrogrades, soon to transition into airy ones. In six to seven years from now, Mercury will have retrograded through all four elements. And over a 20-year span, Mercury will touch every decan of the Zodiac, alchemically transforming each and every one of us in the process.

It’s super powerful stuff.

The following interview is an excerpt from my conversation with Gary where we get into Mercury’s elemental year along with prophetic dreams, the time he stumbled into Project Hindsight and a lot of other goodness.

To say I learned a lot is an understatement; I hope Gary joins me for another chat soon!

Listen to the Full Podcast Now

On Prophetic Dreams

Vivi Henriette: You have this story about finding astrology through a dream about a Sun–Venus conjunction. Can we talk about that?

Gary P Caton: That moment probably remains the defining moment of my life. I had been through a very hard time—I see it now through the lens of alchemy as the middle stage of a transformation, where I had been through a dark night of the soul. That dream was like the white light at the end of the tunnel. I was just lying on my back in a field of green grass, and I realized I could look right at the sun. It was like this living being. And in the heart of the sun was the Venus glyph. I knew it was coming from someplace I trusted. So I got an ephemeris, looked up the positions of Venus and the Sun on that day—and they were conjunct.

Vh: So you started studying from there?

GPC: Yeah. I stayed up with that ephemeris by candlelight—literally, because I was living in a house with no electricity. I was the guy who was supposed to fix the house. So at night I had a candle and I’m flipping through the pages trying to make sense of it. I began journaling my experiences while watching the transits. I did that for a couple of years—just letting life teach me astrology.

On Wandering

Vh: You just come along these monks on the road and you’re like, “Yeah, I’ll join you.” And then from there someone’s like, “There’s some astrology down the street” —

GPC: Totally. That’s exactly what it was like. And that’s the way I lived my life at that time. I was absolutely peregrino.

Have you ever noticed how that term “peregrine” — in Spain, they call the people walking the Camino de Santiago “peregrino.” You’re a wanderer. You’re a pilgrim.

Vh: I never knew that. Everyone just thinks it’s the worst a planet can be. But there’s a sense of being really dependent on others, really vulnerable — which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

GPC: Yeah, but you’re also the most free. When you’re peregrine, you do what you want. You don’t have that duty toward the ruler. And that’s how I lived my life at that time. I was absolutely peregrino.

On Working With Mercury Retrograde

Vh: Learning that Mercury retrograde is an astrological period I can work with—that it’s a place where I can find magic and meaning—changed my entire outlook. It went from something passive to something I can collaborate with to have richness in my life.

GPC: That’s been a mission of mine. I was hearing stuff in the pop media that made me ashamed—not because astrology is bad or wrong, but because the fruits of my sacred science were turning rotten. There had to be a better way. My friend Laurie Naughtin said she reads my work to remember that astrology is a path toward awakening and transformation—not just a weather forecast.

Vh: How would you explain what’s going on during Mercury retrograde, both astronomically and symbolically?

GPC: If you watch ocean documentaries, most of the ocean is basically a desert. It’s where different currents come together—the warm and the cold—that force the water down and stir up nutrients from the bottom. That’s basically what’s happening in a retrograde: this stirring.

There are four astronomical realities shifting all at once—direct versus retrograde motion, above and below the ecliptic, the transition from evening sky to morning sky, and from superior to inferior conjunction. That’s why there’s this profound churning of reality. It can be very difficult. I get why people might want to hide from that. But that’s where the life is—where all the stuff is churning around. It’s messy and chaotic, but that’s life. And that’s how we transform.

Vh: What guidance do you give people for dealing with Mercury retrograde—these churning periods?

GPC: Understand that it’s a process, and there is a map. In the Rosarium Philosophorum, they say, “When the matter becomes black, rejoice—for this is the beginning of the work.” Breakdown precedes breakthrough. That’s just the way it works. Don’t freak out. Don’t even necessarily avoid it. It’s worth it to wrestle with these tides, with this churning—because that’s where transformation occurs. That’s where the future enters your life.

Join the Astro-Community!

Spaces are now open for Club Astro, my monthly membership. Enjoy perks like discounted tickets to the LA Astro Salon and LA Astro Fest, plus access to twice-monthly open calls. Bring your birth chart, ask personal questions, and connect with fellow seekers.

The next Office Hours are Thursday, March 26th, at 4 PM PT.

To join, simply become a paid subscriber for $18 a month. If you’re craving ongoing insights and community, I’d love to see you there.

About Gary

Gary P. Caton is a transdisciplinary Hermetic practitioner integrating diverse traditions, art forms and practices gathered over a full Saturn cycle, after being initiated as an astrologer by a magnificent Dream in 1993. Gary has published in many prominent journals and magazines since 2002, and is author of the Hermetica Triptycha book series on Mercury. Gary is also an accomplished counselor, teacher, podcaster, and photographer.

His book, Hermetica Triptycha: Elemental Ephemerides (1925-2050), is available at Rubedo Press.

For more insights and updates, follow right here on Substack! Listen to him on the Hermetic Astrology Podcast.

About Vivi

Vivi Henriette is an LA-based astrologer and tarot reader whose practice centers on storytelling, mythology, and collaborative divination. She creates a space for clients to reclaim their personal narratives through the lens of ancient archetypes. Vivi produces LA Astro Fest, hosts the Los Angeles Astro Salon, and is the creator of the podcast TalkTalkTalk. You can find her weekly writing on ritual and meaning right here on ART of the ZODIAC.

Further Learning

Hello Loves,

I’m having a crisis of prediction.

As an astrologer, I’ve often shied away from talking about future transits. It was a reaction to “fear-culture” and my own worry that someone might use my writing as a curse against themselves, the idea that the sky looks rough, therefore I’m going to have a bad day.

At the same time, astrology is a tool meant to guide us. It shows us the upcoming terrain so we can prepare for what we’d like to happen, or, more practically, to reduce the damage. We do this in our individual lives and in our communities.

This was highlighted recently by a participant in my “Astrology For Tarot Readers” container. Already a gifted reader, she is learning astrology to better guide her clients. This newsletter, and all future ones, is dedicated to her.

Below is a snapshot of the current sky, the upcoming terrain, and a few ways to join the conversation.

Do you like this new format? Do you hate it? Respond to this email or share a comment below. Your feedback is welcome, spicy, but not cruel, please.

Jupiter Direct in Cancer: The Great Blessing (Now!)

At long last, Jupiter has stationed direct in Cancer, the sign of its exaltation. This is a delight for everyone waiting on “big blessings,” but you know what? Being alive is the greatest blessing of all. And here you are!

Good things happen under “bad” astrology all the time. But please, don’t expect one planet to solve all your problems with quick miracle fixes when the rest of the sky is busted.

Mercury Retrograde: The Bad Trip (Now - March 20th)

Have you ever had an experience on psychedelics so intense and terrifying that it took you six months to get over the residual anxiety? I have. I also have natal Mercury in Pisces, so I speak with a certain authority when I say that this Mercury Retrograde in Pisces has been a “bad trip” for most of us.

While we’ve passed the turning point in Mercury’s cycle, Cazimi! Hooray! This final stretch is extra intense. This is where the belligerent drunks and fire-breathing dragons come out.

Be on the lookout for unhinged aggression and delusional anger. If that’s you, go for a run around the block or scream into a pillow. Whoever says “bad trips” don’t exist is an idiot; sometimes we have to face the dark stuff to let it go.

The good news? The psychic and emotional gunk being stirred up by this wrecking crew in Pisces is the last bit of an excavation that started over two and a half years ago.

New Moon in Pisces: Narrative Shifts (March 18th)

Finally, a moment of collective integration. The Moon dies and renews in Pisces, marking the beginning of a collection of new stories set to hatch six months from now under the Pisces Full Moon.

Blast Off Into Aries: Rest Up Now (March 20th)

Hermes, the heavenly messenger, stations direct just as the Sun moves into fiery Aries, ushering in the birth of a zodiacal new year.

If you, like me, have been overwhelmed by vibrant dreams and heavy insomnia this retrograde season, hearing the “alarm” is about to sound isn’t exactly what you want to hear. But here we are. Try to get some rest while you can. There is no snooze button in the sky. While this shift into Aries might bring clarity, it isn’t guaranteed to bring rationality, and it definitely won’t bring “chill.”

Our task is to temper the fire and to take care of each other.

Office Hours

Looking for support on your astro journey? Club Astro is where we do this work together.

We meet twice each month to explore the sky in real time and make sense of what’s unfolding in our lives and in the collective.

Our next gathering is Thursday, March 26 at 7pm EDT / 4pm PDT, over ZOOM.

To join, simply become a paid subscriber ($18 a month).

Los Angeles Astro Salon

This month’s in-person Los Angeles Astro Salon is for everyone who has ever looked to the sky in awe. Whether you’re a seasoned astrologer or simply astro-curious, this month’s salon is a celebration of the cosmos.

Join your host Vivi Henriette and very special guest William Kiesel, of Ouroboros Press, as they embark on a journey into the alchemical heart of astrology.

When: March 31, 2026

Where: Philosophical Research Society 3910 Los Feliz Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90027

Time: 7:00pm PDT

Get Your Tickets

“The future is a concept. The past is a memory. But the present is where the entire universe is happening.”

—

The most powerful magic is mastery over one’s mind.

That was one of the many takeaways from a recent lunch with William Kiesel of Ouroboros Press. He wasn’t talking about New Age optimism or the power of positive thought. He meant something much more disciplined.

The ability to fully inhabit the present moment. To distinguish between feeling, emotion, and intellect, so that one can make clear decisions about what to do next.

From that place, and this is my extrapolation, one can begin to shape the future.

In other words, yes, manifesting is real. But it begins with clarity.

The Sky Right Now

On February 25, Mercury stationed retrograde and began its descent toward the Underworld.

Much of the sky is speaking of release right now. Mercury retrograde and eclipse season are both powerful agents of transformation. They bring shifting plot-lines, changes in fortune, and, sometimes, literal endings.

Individually and collectively, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by grief and despair. And honestly, that response makes sense. The world is a lot to sit with.

But what happens when we stop to ask, “What stories am I telling myself?” And “Which of them are actually mine?”

Are we feeding our fears with sorrow, making an already difficult situation feel even more overwhelming?

Mercury Reset

On Saturday, March 7, Mercury enters the heart of the Sun. Astrologers call this moment a cazimi.

In mythic terms, Mercury passes through the solar fire. Its impurities burn away as it prepares to emerge again as the morning star.

We can treat this moment the same way.

A reset.

A chance to release the burdens and narratives that were never ours to carry in the first place.

This is astrology as collaboration.

The sky presents the rhythm. We decide how to respond.

An Invitation to Ritual

On Saturday morning, I will sit before my small travel altar. A candle. Some incense. A small offering of water.

Then I will write.

Pen to paper, not a screen. I will keep writing until the stories empty themselves out of my body. If I’m lucky, there will be a few deep sobs and perhaps even a guttural scream.

This is the turning point.

The old stories dissolve. New ones are born from conscious desire.

If you’re reading this, I invite you to do the same.

Reflection, Insight, Action

Every Mercury retrograde follows a similar arc.

Mercury begins visible in the evening sky, descending toward darkness. After its cazimi, it slowly returns as a morning star.

It’s a three-part meditation.

Reflection.

Insight.

Action.

The period between Mercury’s cazimi on March 7 and its station direct on March 20 offers a powerful window for dreaming forward.

Not frantic planning. Vision.

What do you want your life to look like next?

What are you ready to invite in?

“The Universe wants to play.”

—

If we listen closely, Mercury retrograde invites us to slow down, explore the depths of our own minds, and return with renewed clarity.

On March 20, Mercury stations direct in Pisces at the same moment that the Sun follows the Moon, Venus, and Saturn into Aries, ushering in both spring and the zodiacal new year.

By then, we will be rested. Clearer. Ready to meet the present moment.

Club Astro

If you’re looking for a container to support this process of reflection and reset, Club Astro is where we do this work together.

We meet twice each month to explore the sky in real time and make sense of what is unfolding in our lives and in the collective.

Our next gathering is Thursday, March 12 at 5 PM PT.

If you are craving a rhythm of study, reflection, and conversation during this cycle, I would love to see you there.

To join, simply become a paid subscriber ($18 a month).

Office Hours are a dedicated space for members to bring their charts, ask questions, and find clarity with a small cohort of seekers.

Members also enjoy access to workshops, discounts on in-person events (including the monthly Los Angeles Astro Salon and LA Astro Fest), and a consistent rhythm of conversation that extends beyond any single transit.

Further Study

Hello Loves,

I’m excited to share a new TalkTalkTalk with you!

This episode is brought to you courtesy of the great churning of the Milky Ocean and the unexpected delights—yes, delights!—of the eclipse portal. It’s always, or so it seems, during the dragon’s season that I’m drawn to one of my very first astrologer teachers, .

Early in my studies, I had the good fortune to travel to Mexico with Brett and a small cohort of fellow seekers to study the sky and absorb story, myth, and song from Brett and a few other brilliant teachers.

If you’ve ever had the opportunity to learn from Brett, you know he’s a master storyteller, and that every conversation with him turns into a journey.

This conversation is no different.

In this TalkTalkTalk, we get into the Saturn-Neptune conjunction, dreams, eclipse-lore, and journey to a lot of other places I can’t recall right now—because we were that in the moment.

It’s an honor to share my teacher with you.

Xo Vivi

Listen to the full Podcast

The following conversation is a selection of highlights from my podcast conversation with Gemini Brett.

On Dreams and the Saturn-Neptune Conjunction

Vivi Henriette: I’ve been having the craziest dreams lately.

Gemini Brett: You should be. We’re in the eclipse season right now, but the big news—one of the big stories of the year—is that this Saturn-Neptune conjunction is finally upon us. I’ve been tuning into that in every way I can. It feels like a new opportunity to explore the form of the formlessness. Saturn conjunct Neptune feels like this opportunity to understand the rules of the vision space. You know, Neptune is dream, vision, spirit, non-physical. And Saturn is form, structure, body, matter, reality. So to see them together, it feels like this new opportunity to build the form of our dreams.

Vivi Henriette: Can I offer you something I’ve been thinking about? I was thinking about Saturn as a spacecraft. When it reenters the earth, it’s subjected to so much heat and pressure that if the container isn’t strong enough, it’ll disintegrate. Thinking about Saturn in Aries that way—as a test to your shell.

Gemini Brett: So Saturn is the ceramic nose cap of the space shuttle. That’s a really cool and intriguing way to see it. And then this question of whether Saturn can handle the fire is an interesting one as well. I think you’re touching on something really profound about what it means to give form to the ethereal.

On Bridging Traditional and Modern Astrology

Vivi Henriette: You mentioned the dissolving—the Neptune word—of this rift between the traditional and the modern. In one way of seeing things, modern astrology is just an evolution. Since the Babylonian era, astrology has been constantly evolving itself. That’s how we get anywhere.

Gemini Brett: But so much of it was forgotten. The ceramic shuttle cone that can’t survive the reentry flame—so much of this was burned at the stake. A successful campaign to destroy astrology to the point where people forgot how long the year was.

his is really what the Hellenistic Revival was about, right? And so when that came back, a lot of the language changed, a lot of the terms changed. The Tropical Zodiac was reborn. One of my prayers is that this Saturn-Neptune conjunction might build bridges between those inclined towards traditional astrology and those towards the modern. I think this conjunction will likely begin a renaissance—more of an integration of the old and the new. It’s time to remember what was forgotten and see how it harmonizes with what has evolved.

Vivi Henriette: So much of what you taught me sky-wise really shaped my fundamental understanding of astrology. I’ll never forget—the twelfth house is where the sun rises. We always say it’s this crazy, difficult house, but it’s also that place where you’re sitting alone with your thoughts in the morning. You can’t see the forest for the trees.

Gemini Brett: For me, one of the gifts of modern astrology was that it was born in this psychological time—the Jungian archetypal dream space. Our craft is not just some language of symbols and rules. As I like to say, it’s the poetic breath of nature. So it can’t go away. But it did have, in a sense, to be dreamed anew. In the modern, archetypal approach, each sign is a book—these beautiful poetic dreamscape streams on the psychology of each sign. I feel like that’s actually a great gift of modern astrology. But we can’t forget the astronomy and the physical reality that grounds it all.

On the Astronomy of the Zero Aries Point

Vivi Henriette: We’ve been out in space in Pisces. We’ve done the whole twelve zodiac signs already, and here we are to begin again. We’re back in vulnerable Aries. There’s a sense of a return.

Gemini Brett: The Zero Aries Point, the Pisces-Aries cusp, is due east of the center of the Earth. Not of LA or New York—those are different things. Due east of the Earth’s center, which is where we measure planets and the signs from. That place we’re all connected, and therefore it works like a global ascendant. East is the place of new beginnings. And here we have Saturn coming to this place of beginnings every twenty-nine and a half years. Neptune getting there every 165 years. But for them to be together there—it’s been thousands of years since that happened. This is truly a rare and potent beginning.

Vivi Henriette: And that’s happening in the eclipse portal. We shouldn’t ignore that, right? The intensity of this conjunction is amplified by the eclipses.

Gemini Brett: Right. Ours is a study of wheels within wheels. The eclipse itself is so interesting because we have this truth of moon and sun appearing to be the same size in our sky—even though the moon is 400 times smaller than the sun by diameter, but 400 times closer to earth. We get these images of the alchemical marriage, which I think is so beautiful and important. It’s a moment of profound cosmic alignment and potent symbolism, reminding us of the union of opposites.

On Singing the Sun and the Twelfth House

Vivi Henriette: Thinking about something like Mercury retrograde—people are losing their minds, but it’s a phase change. It’s really beautiful. So much of what we have in astrology, if we can take it back to the astronomy, starts to have such a bigness to it. It moves beyond just a predictive chart and becomes a living, breathing experience.

Gemini Brett: I had an experience once on Haleakalā—the House of the Sun—in Maui. In Hawaii, they have a chant. They’ll sing to the sun at sunrise, and it starts when the light’s coming, before you can see the sun. They won’t finish until you can see the entire sun disk above the ground. It’s so powerful to experience. It’s also this kind of Saturn-Neptune thing—so much dream and vision and power in the chant, but it’s also tradition. It’s an old form. It’s the structured container for the boundless, sacred experience.

Vivi Henriette: I love that image. The blend of ancient ritual with a profound astronomical event.

Gemini Brett: I was up there one night and the sun rose, and I was like—oh yeah, that’s why ‘hidden things.’ Because the sun rises to illuminate the earth, but when he does, he hides the stars. By day, there’s only one star in your sky. It completely transforms the celestial landscape, showing us how perspective dictates what is revealed and what is concealed. It gives a whole new dimension to the “hiddenness” of the twelfth house.

On the Leo-Aquarius Axis

Vivi Henriette: Could you share what the Aquarius-Leo axis looks like? Thinking about it as two sides of one whole, can we talk about the differences—and what brings them into unity?

Gemini Brett: Aries is the spark that starts the fire—and that could rage out of control. But Leo’s here to fix the fire. You can’t have the beach party all night long, which Leo definitely wants. So we fix that flame, we feed it slowly, and that flame is you and me. It’s taking the fire from the heavens as Prometheus did and putting it in the hearth—really feeling that roaring flame and sharing it through our own radiance. Leo understands that personal warmth and expressive power are meant to be shared, not just consumed.

Vivi Henriette: And on the other side? What does that Aquarian energy bring to this axis?

Gemini Brett: Aquarius is the child of Libra. Libra is relational context, equality—and what does equality birth? Equanimity. In this adventure towards equality between you and me, we realize we should have equality for everyone. And Aquarius can blossom in that.

So when Leo is expressing that individual radiance, Aquarius provides the framework for that radiance to benefit the collective. But the true celebrity of Leo isn’t the one telling us to be like them—it’s the one reminding us it’s okay to be like me, because they’re not afraid to step into their own personal power. They inspire others to find their unique light.

On Dreaming and the Collective

Vivi Henriette: Where does the individual stand in the collective? Oftentimes when I’m dreaming, I feel like I’m connecting to something much greater than myself. I think part of the way a lot of us are reckoning with ‘Who am I? Where do I fall in this collective? Do I bring my heart to it?’ is through dreams —I think there’s a lot of work being done in the dream world.

Gemini Brett: Having that remembrance in the dream world that you’re connecting to something larger than you—whatever we want to call that—hopefully will be a reminder that that’s what the waking world is too. There are many dreaming traditions that say the waking space is the dream. When you dream at night, you’re remembering what you really are. Then you wake up and fall prey to this dream life of cars and things. It’s a profound shift in perspective, seeing our waking reality as a different kind of dream, with its own illusions and lessons.

Vivi Henriette: This is maybe too much of a confessional, but my dreams can be so vivid and intense. Sometimes I’m forced to look at things that are necessary that I don’t want to, and sometimes I’m afraid to fall asleep.

Gemini Brett: Here’s a Saturn-Neptune thing: it’s okay to make some boundaries around that. But we want to be careful not to say no to the magic, because it might be like dispelling Santa and you can never go back. You can state: ‘Tonight, my dream domain is allowed to go from here to there, and that’s it. Tonight I will not fly. Tonight I’m not okay with dreaming about the death and pain—and I will do that another time.’ I think it’s an important time for us to reclaim the power of: I get to make the rules for me. We have more agency over our inner worlds than we often realize.

On the Oasis: Having the Courage to Dream Again

Vivi Henriette: For people who have planets at early degrees of the cardinal signs, Saturn is going to come through first and then Neptune. What does that feel like?

Gemini Brett: The vision I received drumming about this was—you’re all alone, dying of thirst in the desert. These are gonna be your last steps. But just in that final decision that it’s time to lay down, you see that shimmer on the horizon. There’s an oasis. The question is, will you be courageous enough to take a sip? Because so many of us feel we’ve gained some kind of wisdom—our experience has taught us that’s not an oasis at all. It’s a mirage. Why should I just drink more sand? This conjunction offers a potential renewal, but it requires faith to step into it.

Vivi Henriette: That’s so powerful. What does that look like in practice, when you’re sitting with someone?

Gemini Brett: So many times in sessions, somebody will profess their wisdom around love—they’ve gotten smart, they’ve gotten wise, and love is just a place of use and abuse. And I’m like, ‘What did love used to be?’ And they’ll tell me about this beautiful dream. Getting past the statements of our scar tissue and back to the original vision—the times before we were burned—that feels like an opportunity for this conjunction to be a new beginning. Where we’re reminded that it’s okay to dream, but we don’t get attached to the dream. It’s okay to have a wish. Saturn provides the structure to hold the dream, and Neptune offers the vision.

Vivi Henriette: The beauty of Saturn is that it can protect us. It’s what yokes us, reminds us to wake up, brings us back to grounded reality. But sometimes we become too invested in that scar tissue—like, reality is too much, I’m cutting myself off from the dream world. But Neptune coming to a Saturn that’s getting broken down in the fires of Aries—it can allow us to, as you say, take that sip. It’s a chance for our hardened containers to soften and receive new inspiration.

Gemini Brett: Yeah. And by the way, I just can’t get over how you describe your dreams as vivid and your name is Vivi. It’s a beautiful synchronicity.

On Personal Agency and Stepping Into Power

Vivi Henriette: I was thinking about the eclipses and what it means that we’re transitioning into Leo-Aquarius. We have this reminder of both the call to connection and the power of individuality that is this Saturn-Neptune moment, and at the same time the south node moving into Leo. It feels like another conversation between hive-mind thinking and remembering the power of the individual.

Gemini Brett: I asked a question in class once: if Aquarius is power to the people, then who would keep us from stepping into that power? I was thinking we would open up into all the conspiracy rabbit holes. But instead, three people at once said, ‘Oh, we ourselves would.’ Because we’re afraid to step into our own personal power, or we’ve been programmed to be afraid of that. If I don’t think I have agency in my own life, then I’m begging. If I don’t think I can find my way to the river, then I need somebody to lead me there—or follow the herd. It’s a profound realization that the greatest barrier to collective empowerment might be individual disempowerment.

Join the Astro-Community!

Spaces are now open for Club Astro, my monthly membership. Enjoy perks like discounted tickets to the LA Astro Salon and LA Astro Fest, plus access to twice-monthly open calls. Bring your birth chart, ask personal questions, and connect with fellow seekers.

The next Office Hours are Thursday, March 12th, at 5 PM PT.

To join, simply become a paid subscriber for $18 a month. If you’re craving ongoing insights and community, I’d love to see you there.

About Gemini

Gemini Brett is a leader in the movement to re-nature astrology by integrating our two-dimensional charts with the infinite living sky. He is a world-renowned astronomy-for-astrologers authority, shamanic StarryTeller, and inspiring educator. Brett’s terrestrial translations of the celestial conversation, expressed through the ancient arts of sacred geometry, musical harmony, embodied astronomy, and number magic, activate seasoned sages as much as they initiate students new to the cosmic curriculum. Brett is the president of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of NCGR and the winner of the 2020 OPA Orion Award for Outstanding Contribution to Astrology.

Find Brett, his School of Earthstrology, and the Constellations Community at: ⁠http://GeminiBrett.com⁠Learn more about his

Song of the Soul project with Erik Deutsch at: ⁠http://ChartSong.Com⁠

Join him and Ana Zahara each month for their monthly moon circle: ⁠https://www.anazaharia.com/events⁠

About Vivi

Vivi Henriette is an LA-based astrologer and tarot reader whose practice centers on storytelling, mythology, and collaborative divination. She creates a space for clients to reclaim their personal narratives through the lens of ancient archetypes. Vivi produces ⁠LA Astro Fest⁠, hosts the Los Angeles Astro Salon, and is the creator of the podcast ⁠TalkTalkTalk⁠.

FURTHER LEARNING

Hello Loves,

There are moments on my astrology path where I suddenly think I’m a crazy person, that the astro world is a cult, and I ask myself, “How did I even get here?”

My latest reckoning began with a Neil deGrasse Tyson rabbit hole. I went in trying to sharpen my astronomy skills and came out wondering: “What’s the point of astrology? What’s the point of any of this?”

I’m not the first to point out that science can be its own religion—and it can be a real bummer.

This isn’t anti-science rhetoric; it’s simply a plea for meaning. One can easily go mad seeing connections in everything, yet I choose to believe in a world infused with significance.

As I sat down to prepare notes for my upcoming course, Astrology for Tarot Readers, the same question kept resurfacing: “Why any of this?”

After a long internal debate, I landed somewhere steady. Astrology is scaffolding. It’s the structure upon which we hang our stories. It’s more than that, of course. But as a tool for meaning-making, it’s extraordinarily powerful. Whether or not it’s “true” is beside the point. Storytelling is a fundamental human need.

I learned this the hard way.

In my early years as an astrologer working in a psychic shop, I looked at tarot readers the way some astronomers look at astrologers: as phonies. My people memorized cycles and historical patterns to glimpse the future. These hacks shuffled a deck and suddenly had answers?

I was quickly humbled.

Clients would look at my computer screen and ask, “Where’re the pictures?” Yes, they actually asked for pictures. I was giving them planets; they wanted cards.

And that was how I started reading tarot.

Early humans looked to the sky, saw images, and told stories. Astrology was born from that instinct. It was never purely mathematical. It was symbolic. Narrative. Image-driven.

In the late nineteenth century, during astrology’s revival in the West, members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn created a rigorous table of correspondences linking tarot and astrology. MacGregor Mathers anchored the Minor Arcana to the 36 decans of the zodiac, tying the cards to ancient segments of the sky already rich with sacred imagery.

Without venturing too far into historical terrain beyond my expertise, here’s my working thesis: Tarot is a gift to astrology. Like the discovery of the outer planets or the influence of depth psychology, it has expanded the dimensions of our craft.

When astrology becomes too abstract, tarot restores the image.

Astrology for Tarot Readers

Over the next six weeks, I’ll be exploring this intersection in my course, Astrology for Tarot Readers.

We’ll move through the building blocks of astrology—planets, signs, and houses—and map them onto the tarot in real time. Together, we’ll move beyond correspondence into the space of storytelling and lived experience to find our own symbolic fluency.

If you’re new to astrology, you’ll leave with a solid foundation. If you’re a seasoned practitioner, expect to leave with new allies and new language for your practice.

Class begins this Sunday, March 1, at 11 AM PT and is offered through Laetitia Cartomancy.

ENROLL HERE

Eclipse Special: One-on-One Readings

As the eclipse season unfolds, I’m offering a small number of focused eclipse readings at a reduced rate.

Eclipses tend to accelerate the narrative. They illuminate fault lines and bring conversations that have been simmering into the open. In these sessions, we’ll look at the house axis being activated in your chart and trace the deeper storyline that wants your attention now.

If you’re standing at a threshold, this is a powerful time to gain clarity.

BOOK YOUR ECLIPSE READING HERE

Club Astro

If you prefer to study the sky in community, Club Astro remains my favorite container. We meet twice a month to make sense of the terrain together. This is a dedicated space to bring your charts, ask questions, and find clarity alongside a small cohort of seekers.

Members also receive access to workshops, discounts on in-person events, and a steady rhythm of conversation that continues beyond any single transit.

The next Office Hours are Thursday, March 12th, at 5 PM PT. To join, simply become a paid subscriber ($18 a month). If you’re craving continuity rather than one-off insights, I’d love to see you there.

FURTHER READING

Greetings Loves,

On this day in 1989—February 24th, at 11:30 AM—Agent Dale Cooper first stepped into the fictional yet hauntingly real town of Twin Peaks. (I know this because it was the first news I received upon waking this morning via William Holloway.)

If you aren’t familiar with the show, stay with me for a moment. The timing here is more than just a cinematic milestone.

“This must be where pies go when they die.” — Dale Cooper

Thinking about Dale’s entrance gives me chills. I have the privilege (and the burden) of knowing how the story unravels. But as an astrologer, I also know that in that moment, Dale stood in the space between eclipses—inside the portal of the dragon’s lair.

Just as we do today.

The windows between eclipses are times of great reveals and narrative shifts—especially with a Mercury Retrograde soon in the mix! We see it in the headlines and, for some of us, in the massive uprooting of our own lives. Our collective and individual stories are shifting.

Upcoming Astro Support

Join me for Office Hours this Thursday, February 26th, at 5 PM. These bi-monthly Zoom sessions offer a dedicated space to bring your charts, ask questions, and make sense of the current terrain alongside a small cohort of seekers.

To join us, simply become a paid subscriber to this Substack (starting at $18/month). Your Club Astro membership includes:

• Bi-monthly Office Hours (Zoom)

• Secret invites and discounted readings/workshops

• A $10 discount code for my in-person Astro Salons

  Unlock Club Astro. Subscribe for instant access to monthly office hours, member discounts, secret invites, and more.

Mapping the Story

If you’d like one-on-one guidance navigating this season’s terrain, I’m offering a limited number of specially priced readings where we can map out your personal eclipse story together.

Secure Your Reading

Tonight in Los Angeles

I look forward to seeing many of you tonight at the Philosophical Research Society for the Los Angeles Astro Salon. I’ll be joined by Vedic Astrologer Chris van der Walt to discuss the Planetary Ages of Maturation.

A Note on Accessibility: If you want to attend Office Hours or the Salon but truly can’t afford the expense right now, drop me a line. I’ll make sure you have a spot.

Questions? Thoughts? Feedback? Send me a note. I’m here for all of it.

Yours,

Vivi

Further Listening

“The nodes are wormholes into these parallel existences. There’s the capacity for holiness and renunciation with Ketu, but also for depravity with Rahu.”

— Micki Pellerano, Time Lord TV

Hello Loves,

As eclipse season shifts from the Virgo/Pisces axis into Leo and Aquarius, I wanted to share something special.

The above audio clip is an unreleased selection from my TalkTalkTalk with Micki Pellerano on the Lunar Nodes.

For my astro-newbies, eclipses always follow the Nodes of the Moon. In this conversation, you will hear the North Node referred to as Rahu, the head of the dragon, and the South Node as Ketu, the tail.

These names come from the Vedic tradition and the myth of the churning of the Milky Ocean, where a dragon is severed in two. The head and the tail remain eternally hungry, forever chasing the Sun and Moon. It is why eclipses are sometimes called dragon holes, portals where we convene with the severed dragon.

The nodes move counter to the rest of the zodiac, completing a full cycle every 18.5 years. Their rhythm is strange, recursive, and deeply mythic.

Which brings us to Twin Peaks.

The cult classic premiered on April 8, 1990, while the nodes were in Leo and Aquarius. Twenty-seven years later, exactly one and a half nodal cycles later, Twin Peaks: The Return debuted after nearly three decades of silence.

Now, as the eclipses shift back into this exact region of the sky, the show is resurfacing in the public imagination, with screenings popping up across Los Angeles.

The dragon’s head turns back toward Leo and Aquarius.

So I have to ask—

What is returning now?
What unfinished story is resurfacing?

Explore Your Eclipse Story

If you are feeling the heat of this shift, I am offering a limited number of discounted eclipse readings.

Eclipses activate a specific house axis in your chart. They tend to coincide with fated meetings, abrupt endings, course corrections, and revelations that refuse to stay buried. They expose the storyline that has been quietly developing beneath the surface.

In a focused session, we will look at where Leo and Aquarius fall in your chart, what themes are being stirred, and how this current eclipse season connects to past turning points in your life. The goal is not prediction for prediction’s sake, but clarity about the narrative that is unfolding.

These spots are limited and offered at a reduced rate for the season.

Book Your Reading

Are You in Los Angeles?

Our next LA Astro Salon is coming up, and this eclipse cycle will be part of the terrain we explore together in real time.

We gather not just to forecast, but to contextualize. To tell stories. To make sense of what is surfacing under these dragon skies.

Club Astro members receive a $10 discount code for the Astro Salon. Your membership is meant to extend beyond Zoom, offering tangible perks for showing up in person and deepening your engagement with the community.

Get Your Tickets

Astro members, you can find your discount code in your inbox.

Not in LA?

Join from anywhere in the world for Office Hours: an intimate, community-driven space to discuss the current sky, explore your questions, and share practices. These conversational gatherings are a direct way to connect with me and fellow curious minds as we build knowledge and community together.

Office Hours are held online twice a month and are exclusive to Club Astro members.

The next session is today, Thursday, February 26th, at 5pm PT.

How to join: A paid subscription to ART of the ZODIAC grants you full access to Club Astro and all its perks, including office hours, discounted readings, and secret invites.

Further Reading:

Hello Loves,

If this newsletter looks different, it’s because I’m slowly transitioning from Mailchimp to Substack. Other than cosmetic differences, this shouldn’t mean any changes for you.

With that out of the way, I’m going to skip the announcements and get straight to the good parts: the new podcast episode!

Last week I sat down with astrologer Chris van der Walt to discuss a Vedic technique called the Ages of Maturation. If you’re new to astrology, this is a tool you can hit the ground running with. And for advanced practitioners, it will add new layers of depth to your readings.

The concept is simple: every planet has a specific year in which it matures. Starting the year before that age, the planet begins to bloom, marking a period where its full expression comes into play.

For example, Venus matures at age 25. For someone with a prominent 10th-house Venus, we’d expect that energy to make itself heard in the public sector of their life between the ages of 24 and 25. Think: job promotions, career shifts, or significant changes in reputation.

Similarly, once a planet reaches maturation, we can expect full mastery over its themes. This is why we often say Saturn becomes easier after its maturation at age 36.

So elegant! So powerful!

During our conversation, Chris and I go over each of the planets, their themes, and their year of maturation, sharing stories from our own lives.

I’m sharing an excerpt from that conversation below, along with a list of ages, so you can walk through your own timeline and see how the planets show up for you.

If you’d like one-on-one guidance, I’m offering a limited number of specially priced readings where we can map out your planetary story together.

Book Your Reading

Are you in Los Angeles? Chris is my guest for the upcoming Los Angeles Astro Salon at the Philosophical Research Society on Tuesday, February 24th. We’ll be exploring the Years of Maturation along with a few other accessible techniques, then opening up the room for your stories.

Can’t make it in person? No problem! We’ll be recording the session.

Listen to the Full Podcast

The following excerpts have been edited and condensed from the original interview.

Jupiter at 16: The Heretic’s Award

Chris: Jupiter’s associated with reproduction — most people hit reproductive maturity around 16. It also rules philosophical understanding, higher wisdom, and your moral framework. I was brought up Catholic, going to a Jesuit college. Up until that point I’d been really wrestling with my faith. That year I decided I was an atheist. But at the end of the year, I was given the religious award for my class. I have Jupiter on my Aquarius ascendant — it’s my 11th Lord, and the 11th is the house of awards. I was quite embarrassed to get that award. Aquarius is associated with heretics and outsiders.

Sun at 21: The Father and the Self

Chris: The sun is the manifestation of how the divine wants to express itself in your life. It’s also the king of the chart — where we start to feel ambition for what we want to create, what legacy we want to leave. I have Ketu conjunct my sun in Cancer in the sixth house — the house of divorce. When I was 21, my parents were going through a divorce. My father actually came to me and asked whether he should leave my mother, because he said he had no friends to talk to. Part of my sun maturation was losing a lot of respect for my father. Your karma expresses itself through the personalities of your parents, and there’s not much you can do about that.

Moon at 24: Where You Feel at Home

Chris: Moon is how we create intimacy, how receptive we are to others, and how things grow in our life. It’s also very much about where we feel at home. I grew up in South Africa and left when I was five or six. At 24, I went back to Cape Town and was completely overwhelmed by this feeling of being home — realizing that part of me had been missing it the whole time, and I had just learned how to turn that off. That’s very much a Moon-Ketu experience, because moon is also where you feel at home.

Venus at 25: Worth and Disruption

Chris: Venus is how we value things — and ourselves. An afflicted Venus tends toward low self-worth, which is why people get into destructive relationships. I was living a very strict spiritual life and was celibate. I have Venus in the sixth house conjunct Ketu — the sixth is the house of celibacy, and Ketu takes things away. I was working in London at a meditation center, completely oblivious that someone there had developed a crush on me. My guru asked me to attend meditations in Oxford for a few months instead — so every Wednesday and Sunday I was spending three hours round-trip on a train. Venus is my ninth lord. It expressed all the weird things about my Venus.

Mars at 28: Swimming to France

Chris: Mars is the warrior — how we fight for things, protect what we have, develop skills. It’s also courage. I have Mars in Aries in the third house. That year I swam from England to France. It was the scariest thing I could think of doing. I trained for six months. The swim itself took 13 hours and 21 minutes. Most days in Dover I couldn’t even see France — just an endless ocean. When I achieved it, it radically changed the way I thought about my will and my ability to endure things. Before that I always thought I wasn’t very disciplined. Mars tells you what you need; the moon tells you what you need, and Mars goes out and gets it.

Mercury at 32: Peak Competence

Chris: Mercury is how we communicate, evaluate the pros and cons, and manage our time. You can think of it as a kind of executive function. The Mercury maturation is where you reach peak competence with Mercury. It tends to be subtle unless you have a very prominent placement. It’s sandwiched between two heavy events — the Saturn return and the Saturn maturation — and Mercury isn’t a loud planet. Most clients I’ve spoken to don’t have an amazing Mercury story. It’s more like a litmus test on your competence.

Saturn at 36: The Full Backpack

Chris: Saturn matures at 36, and it’s usually a non-trivial event. Until you turn 36, you haven’t had to pick up the full backpack of your heavy karma. Saturn gives by taking things away. That year I left my spiritual community after 13 or 14 years. My guru had passed, I’d ended up in a relationship, there was a pregnancy that miscarried, and then someone I’d confided in used that to have me exiled from the meditation center. Saturn is in my fifth house, aspecting the 11th — community — and my ascendant. I basically started my life over at 36. Jung said you’re not really an adult until 36, and when I first heard about this technique, I thought: that’s interesting that he tweaked to that.

Rahu at 42: Into the Jungle

Chris: Rahu represents unfulfilled desire, craving, the feeling of incompetence in a house we need to develop. Whatever security we’ve built around the Ketu placement can start to feel like a prison, or it can collapse — and we’re forced out into the jungle. My Rahu is in Capricorn. I had been living monastically for years, never thinking about money. Then suddenly I was married, running a tech company, thinking about having children. I had to step up my Capricorn game and start getting a grip on the material side of my life — starting way behind, because I’d spent decades prioritizing inner state over outer conditions. Rahu is an innovator. The key is accepting that you’re going to make mistakes in that house; that’s not failure, it’s the process.

Ketu at 48: The Conscious Return

Chris: Ketu is the subtlest maturation. It’s not characterized by outer events — it’s an inner realignment. As a child, you create a security paradigm unconsciously, trying to make yourself as small a target as possible. When you return to Ketu at 48, you’re doing it consciously. For me it was during COVID lockdown in Sydney. Every day I was walking on the beach, listening to mantra, and I just started feeling this incredible peace — an acceptance of everything. Part of that was accepting that having roots in a physical place maybe wasn’t on the cards for me. Home is internal. The Ketu maturation is about accepting your imperfections and recognizing that life is already perfect — just not in the way you expected.

Did you enjoy this conversation? Do you wanna talk talk talk about it with other astrologers?

Join me for Office Hours: an intimate, community-driven space to discuss the current sky, explore your questions, and share practices. These conversational gatherings are a direct way to connect with me and fellow curious minds as we build knowledge and community together.

Office Hours are held online twice a month and are exclusive to Club Astro members.

The next session is today, Thursday, February 26th, at 5pm PT.

How to join: A paid subscription to ART of the ZODIAC grants you full access to Club Astro and all its perks, including office hours, discounted readings, and secret invites.

About Chris

Chris Van de Walt is an LA-based Vedic astrologer and his approach focuses on understanding the unique karmas expressed in each client’s chart, how these patterns manifest in their lives and then collaborates with them to support their growth and fulfilment. He has studied with astrologers Ernst Wilhelm, Ryan Kurczak and Freedom Cole and has been longtime practitioner of meditation under the guidance of his Guru, Sri Chinmoy.

Visit his Website, Core Astrology.

About Vivi

Vivi Henriette is an LA-based astrologer and tarot reader whose practice centers on storytelling, mythology, and collaborative divination. She creates a space for clients to reclaim their personal narratives through the lens of ancient archetypes. Vivi produces⁠LA Astro Fest,⁠ hosts the Los Angeles Astro Salon, and creator of the podcast⁠TALK TALK TALK⁠. You can find her weekly writing on ritual and meaning at her Substack,⁠ART of the ZODIAC⁠.

Further Reading

I don’t want to keep talking about myself or my dead parents, but Saturn is crossing my Sun at zero degrees Aries, so all this fuss about the Saturn-Neptune conjunction feels extra personal.

While I’m won’t get into the weeds of what this transit means for my specific chart, I will offer a personal narrative that contains a universal lesson.

My father died during my Saturn return in Scorpio after an unexpected and far too short bout with cancer. It was, as you might imagine, a dark and melancholy period. The aftermath of his death was as complicated as our relationship. I found myself grieving the loss of a man who had once been my primary caretaker, but who was also extremely psychologically abusive.

The bright side, if there is ever truly a bright side, was that his death brought me closer to my mother.

She was a woman who left when I was ten. Her vices and our collective pain had prevented us from ever fulling knowing each other, despite her taking every opportunity to remind me, “We’re the only family we have left.”

Honestly, I thought she would live forever. Not because her lifestyle suggested it, but despite it. I come from a long line of heavy drinkers who all lived well into old age because, I am convinced, the alcohol eventually pickled their bodies.

Her death was shocking and astrologically perfect. She passed as Venus crossed my descendant and the Lord of Time stepped in to make his final square to my Moon, the sky’s symbol for body and mother.

In the span of Saturn’s watery trine, the two people who cared for me the most and caused me the most pain have died. The two people who made me have left this world.

If we’re lucky to live long enough, all of us will experience the death of those we love, even if that love is thorny. Biological parents, caretakers, mentors, partners—friends who supported and uplifted.

Eventually, Saturn comes for all of them. Including ourselves.

Astrologers often speak of Saturn as responsibility, burden, gravity. And yet it’s also Saturn’s sickle that clears the field. The cosmic composter, if you will.

When I look back at early memories of me and my parents, it’s haunting to realize I’m the last survivor. Sitting with those impressions now, I find I’m no longer angry at them or myself. The old traumas have faded into ghosts I can finally bid farewell to.

In the two and a half years since Saturn entered Pisces, I have done a great deal of sitting with my feelings. I have made peace with my inheritance.

The last time I saw my mother, she was surprisingly open. She shared stories of my mémé’s childhood in Paris and sent me home with old photographs, including one of her as a teenager. I placed it on my bookshelf when I returned to Los Angeles.

That visit, like every visit over the past two years, ended with her telling me to “make a list of the things you want to take out of here when I die.” She was leaving her house, which had been her mother’s house, to her husband’s nephew because “it’s obvious you’re not moving back to Detroit.”

“Don’t worry,” she threatened, “I’m not dying soon. I have at least 20 years left.”

“In that case, could I have this piggy bank?” It was one of two pieces of pottery she made in a high school ceramics class. The beginning and end of her art career, as far as I know.

“No,” she quickly retorted. “I like it too. You can have it when I’m dead.”

Blast Off

When a spacecraft reenters the atmosphere, it’s subjected to enormous pressure and heat. If not properly fortified, it breaks apart during the descent.

With Saturn’s move into Aries, the fiery beginning of the zodiac, we are asked to undergo a similar passage. The last droplets of Pisces evaporate. What was watery becomes combustible.

For me, this marks the beginning of a phase where I’m truly going at it alone, walking for the first time without the two people who ushered me into this world.

Whether or not you’ve lost your parents, we’re all leaving stories behind. Structures are being tested. We’re being called into courage and independence.

When my mother died, I took the ceramic piggy bank from her house. I wrapped it in piles of clothes and buried in my suitcase for the trip back to California.

When I opened it in Los Angeles, I found it had cracked clean in half during the journey.

And I celebrated the blessing.

The old breaks so that the new can be born.

Looking to explore your own Saturn in Aries story?

Join me for Office Hours: an intimate, community-driven space to discuss the current sky, explore your questions, and share practices. These conversational gatherings are a direct way to connect with me and fellow curious minds as we build knowledge and community together.

Office Hours are held online twice a month and are exclusive to Club Astro members.

The next session is today, Thursday, February 26th, at 5pm PT.

How to join:
A paid subscription to ART of the ZODIAC grants you full access to Club Astro and all its perks, including office hours, discounted readings, and secret invites.

FURTHER READING