Friends, welcome to the 14th edition of the "Tracking Your Wyrd" course.
In this letter, I want to ever so briefly nod my head to the connection between your astrological chart and your wyrd.
I say “ever so briefly” because this topic deserves far more time and emphasis, in my humble (but very opinionated!) opinion. Really, we could have spent all 16 weeks writing love letters to the planets and their arrangements in our charts and how they point to our wyrd.
I’m no astrological savant, but I’m smart enough to know some. I recorded this video with my favorite evolutionary astrologer, Dr. Joey Paynter, who shares about some aspects of the genius that she looks for when reading someone’s chart—she uses my chart as an example, so you can see how some of what I’ve been sharing with you about my own wyrd is right there in my peculiar planetary placements (and we all have peculiar planetary placements).
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Jungian astrologer Alice O. Howell wrote, “To the astrologer, or at least what I can the analytical astrologer, the natal chart virtually represents a living map to the kingdom of heaven that lies within.” In other words, your chart is a map to your individuation journey, containing all of your major themes, and reflecting your innate genius. I know that many of you reading this are already big believers in astrology and know your charts well. Others of you are probably skeptical. I was certainly a skeptic about astrology from an early age, as many of us are who grow up reading the generic two line newspaper horoscopes in the newspaper which give astrology a horrible name. When I was in junior high, I took great pleasure in writing fake horoscopes for our school newspaper, prognosticating dire straits in the stars week after week to some of my classmates who I didn’t like that much (!). |
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All that changed when I was in my early 20s. A new friend gifted me with a chart reading. For nearly an hour, I listened to a complete stranger’s voice on a cassette tape lay out my life, including my gifts and my struggles, with piercing insight. I was astounded, dumbfounded really. It rocked my world, to say the least.
I returned to astrology when I was a student at Pacifica in my 30s, and I took a class with Richard Tarnas, who is a leading figure in archetypal astrology. Jungians in general have a long history of being interested in astrology; Jung himself drew up charts for his clients and used them as an adjunct to his therapy. 
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Now I don’t know how astrology works. I don’t know the science—I don’t know why Venus moves a certain direction and I move with her, or she moves me. I don’t know if anyone does. My rational brain has given up that question entirely. I trust that someday our science will catch up to our astrology and we will know how it works.
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Alice O. Howell writes, “Both psychology and astrology are, first and foremost, lessons in wonder and in awe of how much we do not know and may never know." This is how I like to approach it as well. That settles well with me. I don’t want to kill the wonder and awe by over-thinking astrology. All I know right now is the readings I’ve had with the couple of astrologers I turn to every few years have been more insightful about my psyche than hours of therapy.
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When I let go of literalism and rationalism about the mechanics of astrology, I turn to imagination and connect our star chart with the myth of Er. Remember in the myth that the Wyrd Sisters sew our fate into the fabric of our being, before we are marched through the throne of Necessity. I like to imagine this—what if this cloth, this clothing we come into life with, is our astrological chart, this beautiful mandala quilt that covers us? I like to imagine this—when the myth says we go to sleep at night by the river of Unmindfulness and then, after a thunderstorm and earthquake, “they were driven upwards in all manner of ways to their birth, like stars shooting,” what if we are a star among stars among planets in an interdependent galaxy, and our peculiar star map holds clues to our place in the galaxy, holds clues even to what has been em-placed inside us before our birth?
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Joey makes a fascinating connection that we each have a ruler of our chart, and that ruler is our daimon, is our genius, is our wyrd, and I like to imagine that we can turn to our charts to deepen our relationship with our wyrd, with “this little light of mine” that shines through us.
If you know your chart well, this week you might want to reexamine it in light of everything you’ve been uncovering and discovering about your wyrd through the past three months—where do you see your wyrd reflected there? Joey talks about “the signature” of our chart—what are some of your chart’s signature strengths, and how do they connect with your wyrd, with your particular and peculiar gifts and talents?
If you know your chart well, this week you might want to reexamine it in light of everything you’ve been uncovering and discovering about your wyrd through the past three months—where do you see your wyrd reflected there? Joey talks about “the signature” of our chart—what are some of your chart’s signature strengths, and how do they connect with your wyrd, with your particular and peculiar gifts and talents?
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If you haven’t had a reading in a while, or maybe never at all, I really can’t recommend it enough, especially with someone like Joey, who speaks the language of depth psychology and mythology. Any good archetypal astrologist will do this—what Joey adds to the mix as an evolutionary astrologer is a belief that past life influences, including our relationships with our ancestors, live in the chart as well, and we’re here to grow, to evolve, into this life and let go of the last. This too fits with the myth of Er, which says that we choose our lot in this life based upon our past life experiences, which we remember in the Underworld until that damn plain of Forgetfulness and river of Unmindfulness! So we’re all in this life still shaking off remnants of our past lives and coming into the full expression of our genius in this life. |
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In our video, Joey and I didn’t discuss what she’s shared with me about my past life as reflected in my chart, nor did we discuss ancestral influences and their connection with our genius. If you’re interested in this topic, I cover it in much more depth in my course Deep Vocation. You can click here to receive a notification about when I’ll offer that course again. Let me just say that what she has shared with me about my wounding in a past life makes a lot of sense, and gave me yet another window into my wyrd in this life.
If you’re interested in a reading with Joey, you can click here to visit her website to learn more. If you email her directly at [email protected] and tell her you heard about her readings through my wyrd course, she’ll offer you 10% off your first reading. I don’t get a referral fee, but I do get great pleasure in hearing about the eerie connections my students and participants in my programs make between their charts and whatever topic is at hand, be it my courses in memoir or longing or vocation or this wyrd little course de jour.
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With love,
From that little wyrd girl |
If you’re interested in a more in-depth study of how to bring your wyrd and your genius into more congruence in your vocational life, consider my course Deep Vocation: Restoring Your Soul’s Purpose, Power, and Pleasure. Click here to learn more.