What I learned in my first three months as a full-time astrologer.

Pictured: The aforementioned baby on fire.

Writing this blog makes me feel like I’m sitting in a confessional booth, and I’m a frazzled model in America’s Next Top Model, ready to spill her guts. The past three months have been incredibly transformative, and I have felt my frontal lobe slowly solidify itself inside my skull. It itches in there. Processing your growth mentally while simultaneously trying to experience that same growth physically, feels like being a Sim character and then suddenly gaining consciousness on a random Tuesday afternoon. Like, why is my baby on fire? Did I set my baby on fire? Oh my god, have I always set babies on fire? You get what I mean. Just a whole bunch of realizations, and reflections of your own personal behaviour, as if you were watching it from a third person perspective.

I started taking on clients formally mid August of this year, right as I turned 23. In astrology, 23 is a pretty big year to turn. It’s the mark of your 12th house profection year, one that can be riddled with a lot of loss, isolation, and grief (blog on profections coming soon!). 23 is the year you say a lot of your big goodbyes. You officially say goodbye to girlhood (pain). You say goodbye to your university years, the friends you made during that time, your college neighborhood and your sleuth of first shitty apartments (let’s go Vancouver!). 23 is the year of transitions, of death before the rebirth. It’s the year of the Hermit. That’s where I find myself currently, hiding out in my mom’s house, without most of my friends, staying in one room, studying. But, it’s not all terrible considering that being alone in a room for most of the year allows for plenty of important, individual work to be done, which is exactly what I’ve been up to. 

Becoming a full time astrologer, and reading charts as a job, is different to reading charts for fun at parties, which involves friends who just want to know what their rising sign means. Real astrology work is no joke, it’s real emotional labour, which although I knew I would encounter, still caught me by surprise. Although I’m not a professional therapist or a psychologist by any means, I can’t help but compare astrological work to that of emotional healers. A natal birth chart can show you a variety of difficult lived experiences, and unrecognized patterns of behaviour that can ring true, and there is a specific way one needs to interact with them, as a way to safe keep the emotional state of the client. It’s a lot of responsibility to uphold. 

Here is what I learned in the past three months:

Showing compassion, is at times, more important than predictive work. 

Sometimes, us astrologers, can get caught up with the thrill of predictive work, of putting 2 and 2 together, and waiting to see if it comes to life exactly as one said. Predictive work is exciting! The feeling of identifying patterns correctly, so much so that the outcome can be divined, is like being on drugs (not that I’d know what that feels like lol). But, at the end of the day, through the experience of seeing clients formally, I’ve come to the realization that being a vessel for empathy is more important than predicting things correctly. Prediction is a very selfish thing. It makes us, astrologers, feel validated in our technical skills, but none of that matters if it wasn’t what the client had asked for, especially if the prediction takes on a more serious note. No one should be made to feel like they’re not in control of their own destiny, because they were told something irresponsible by a working professional in their field. Especially if that person isn’t aware of the flexible philosophical arguments surrounding fate and free will. Using astrology selfishly can really scare someone, and cause them to panic about their futures, which I worry about. I recommend people in general to seek an astrologer who really knows the philosophical implications of astrology, and is able to reassure the client about what fate, and free will really consist of. This is why I double down on the ethics and moral responsibility surrounding predictive work. 

People want to feel seen. They want to feel validated.

This leads me to my second point: People just want to feel seen. They want to be at the receiving end of empathy, not just sympathy, like sitting in the trenches together, side by side. A client once told me after our appointment, that a consultation with me had done far more for them than traditional Western therapy ever had. This is because Western therapy, can at times, focus too much on the proactive component of therapy. The assumption that something is broken that needs to be fixed, and something needs to be done about it. Sometimes, people feel more anxious when faced with the incoming doom of having to change, that it gets in the way of truly being understood. Astrology allows for deep understanding to occur, and it also allows it to be just that. No more, no less. Again, I’m not a professional doctor or therapist, so I can’t provide direct advice on how to change your life, but I can suggest a perspective as to why you could’ve experienced certain repeating difficulties through an astrological analysis, and letting that be it. The change occurs only if the client feels called to enact it, which releases a lot of pressure of “fixing what is broken.” What if nothing is actually broken, but possibly just misaligned? Misunderstood? Ignored? 

Also, this is not a dig on Western therapy. Therapy is an incredibly important practice that helps a lot of people. It’s just different to astrology, because well, astrology is astrology, and therapy is therapy. Therapy isn’t any worse or any better than astrology, it’s just different, and for a completely different purpose. They’re different tools of self introspection. I don’t claim them to be the same. Shout out to Jungian psychologists though, many who include astrological work in their therapy practice, which is awesome. 

A brand new perspective can get you far. Very far. 

You can’t always change your circumstances, but you can always change your perspective about them. This is where astrology can really shine. Events in our lives have a specific time and place, and sometimes we may ask for things too early before they’re meant to appear, and materialize. Sometimes it isn’t just about getting that one thing, but also experiencing events before then, as a way to learn how to keep them in your life, long term. This is the lesson of Saturn: patience. The lesson of Jupiter: the big picture. The lesson of Venus: self compassion. So, it’s actually a good thing to be rejected early on in the progression of your life. You’re not here just to experience events, but to find meaning behind them. And we can do that by finding the right perspective to help us understand why things occurred at the time they did, as a way to better live with ourselves. Which leads us to acceptance. 

Predictive work is less about being right, and more about acceptance. 

This is very much Wheel of Fortune vibes. Life runs on a rhythm of patterns, of ebbing and flowing, of up and down, right and left, yes and no. Being a mortal means being a victim to the passage of time, meaning that we can’t always live at the peak of our existence, and that be the only thing we experience forever. We wouldn’t be able to recognize success without knowing failure first. Being a mortal means being on a Hero’s Journey of self discovery, and then self acceptance, which comes with its ups and downs, of success and failure. For me, this is where predictive work is able to do much of the heavy lifting, emotionally. Predictive work allows one to line up their ducks during opportune moments when the Wheel of Fortune magically lifts on an upwards trend, and knowing when to hunker down in moments of tumultuous fall. Predictive work allows one to be synchronized to the rhythm of life, which means more to me than being right. This is where understanding and acceptance meet in recognition. 

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It’s been a tiring three months. I’ve discovered so much about myself personally, not just in terms of my personal, emotional limits, but also what it takes to truly empathize with someone you’ve never met before. I feel like I’ve grown into my skills as an astrologer, and have never felt this capable, and confident in my ability to provide help to others. Moving into 2024, I hope to continue seeing more clients, while also expanding my creative endeavours to more than just client work. Regardless, I want to thank all the beautiful faces that came to see me this year! My books will stayed closed until the beginning of 2024. Just gotta go hit the books again real quick, but, I’ll brb.