When I first got into astrology back in the mid-90s, I was in a bad way emotionally. I was intensely shy, felt trapped and depressed, unloved and unlovable. The future was a big anxious question mark. One day, a college friend offered to do an astrology reading for me. Although a naturally sceptical person, I said yes.
My friend wasn’t much of an astrologer, and the books she had were the worst of those harsh, doomsday fatalistic ones. The reading left me feeling even worse than I had before. A few months later this “friend” broke off our friendship. The reason? She didn’t think she could be close to someone whose moon was in as poor a shape as mine was.
If that was the end of astrology in my life, could you blame me?
But it wasn’t.
As bad as the reading was, and as a bad of a friend this would-be astrologer turned out to be, it woke up something inside of me. I’m not even sure why, but it did.
I started reading every book on astrology I could find, the good and the bad and the somewhere in between. The more I learned, the deeper I could see myself reflected in my chart: my sadness and inhibitions yes, but also my gifts and strengths I had formerly been blind to.
Astrology became my guide in the dark.
If the position of the planets and stars at the moment I was born could say so much about me, maybe I wasn’t as alone as I felt. I sensed a light inside myself, still faint but definitely there, the light which connects all things.
That light is inside you right now.
Although I still greatly value Western astrology in both its modern and traditional forms – you can find out what techniques I’ve learned and practiced and who I’ve studied with here – I’ve fallen in love with Jyotish in the Shri Achyutānanda Das lineage which I’ve been learning at the Science of Light Jyotish (Vedic astrology) and the PJC program.
This lineage has wonderful remediation techniques that allow people to work directly with the challenges in their charts and actively become the best version of themselves in a much deeper way than I’ve seen in Western systems.
I passed the challenging Year 1 practicum last fall and completed Year 2 in the fall of 2023.
I am also very dedicated to the traditional Western astrology technique of astrological magic in the tradition of the Picatrix and make talismanic jewelery I plan to start selling soon, so stay tuned. Horary astrology, a divinatory branch of traditional Western astrology, is another love that I integrate into my natal chart readings when relevant.
For updates on what I’m up to and articles about various types of astrology, please subscribe to my newsletter.
You can find my fiction writing here, which I publish under the name Rebeccah von Schlieffen.
