[MUSIC]
Hi everyone, I'm Kai Dickens and welcome to the talk tracks brought to you weekly by TT Media.
In this series, we explore the threads that weave together our understanding of reality. Science, spirituality, consciousness, and even unexplained phenomena. Because every era has ideas once dismissed as impossible until someone was willing to investigate them seriously. And on this show, we do just that.
“If you want to see our incredible guest in person, we have a video version of this episode on the To Let The Detapes YouTube page.”
Today we're talking to Channing Nicholas, the New York Times' best-selling author of You Are Born For This. Astrology for radical self-acceptance.
She's also the world-renowned astrologer behind the Channing app, and she also served as the resident astrologer for Oprah Daily.
It's going to be a fascinating conversation around something I know very little about, which is astrology. It's roots, and how it can best serve and inform us today. So Channing, welcome to the talk tracks. It's great to have you here. Introduce yourself who you are, what you do. My name is Channing Nicholas. I am a professional astrologer.
I have a tech company. We have an app called the Channing app, regretfully named my own name. And it is an astrology app that provides people with weekly readings, and there's meditations, and there's a whole explanation about your chart, and my main goal with it all with our business, and with everything we do, is to help people access the potential of their creative power.
“And I think that we give people the blueprint of their potential and the palm of their hands.”
And I want you to take that and go be of service in the world, because I think that when we know what our gifts are, it's like a little bit of a shortcut to being of service. Yeah, because we need to be embedded in our purpose, because that embeds us and our joy, and in our development, and in an appropriate struggle, like the struggle that is meant for us.
And when we're engaged in that, I think we feel alive, and I believe that that is always connected
to being of service. So I want to give you insight into your being, but I don't want you to stop at naval gaysing. I hope that that swiftly moves you. Yeah, taking part in creating the world that we desperately need to create together. Love that. Yeah. And so a lot of our listeners are like really scientific, and going to this kind of science. Everything skeptically, and some people are like
skeptic, bought in super-woven. Yeah. We have, and I say that all both sides with love. Yeah.
“And I love trying to meet them both. So I think for the most basic, like from the most basic point”
of view, can you just define the different, what is astrology and how is different from astronomy? Well, they used to be the same thing, right? Like historically, when you look at the longest running scientific document, it was, it's a series of Canadian-formed tablets that are documenting the movement of the planets. And that was someone watching the sky and watching the planets, and also taking note if anything happened on earth when that thing in the sky happened.
And so in the beginning, astronomy was astrology. They were not separate. I'm fine that they're separate now. They're also not separate to me. So I have no qualms with people, not quote unquote believing in astrology. I don't think we should all believe the same thing, I think that is a cult. I think that's true. Yes, cults in the world, especially in this country. And I think believing, not believing, using, not using,
whatever your thing is, I just want you to move speedily towards it. But it is a pattern recognition system. And that 700-year document is the beginning of writing that down. Of course, astrology and a kind of cosmology, it has existed way. It predates that massively. We can look at the drawings in the caves of Lasso and France. And they were drawing bowls and they were drawing what we think are probably the palaties, the stars rising up over the eastern horizon around the spring
equinox, most likely, because that would have been a signal to them that life was coming back and that things were going to start to grow in the way that they only do in spring and summer. So all of our origin stories, since the beginning of time, come out of our relationship with the earth
The sky.
living world around it, including the sky. You had to. You had to know when the sun was going to
“be bright and when it was going to be minimal, because your food source depended on it. So if you”
look at the major religious festivals and holidays of all religions, all major religions, they will happen around the sources and the equinoxes. Definitely that, they'll happen around the full moon or the new moon around the sources and the equinoxes, or they're within. I mean these constellations rose and fell in a certain pattern year after year, after year, after year. And then we realized that people who menstruated, menstruated in the same time period as the lunar cycle.
Like that's just something we emerged into. And so there's really good reason to think that
the moon and the menstruation cycle taught us math. We're counting. The sun will teach us math. The sun will teach us rhythms. The moon will teach us math. The moon will teach us rhythms. Of course, we know like the moon affects the tides. And there's also that for people who lived along the shore line of any place in the world. And so the idea of a culture being separate from the sky. Take astrology out of it. But the idea of a culture being separate from the sky
and separate from the earth and separate from the ways in which those things are in conversation
is to me a purely settler colonialist framework to not think that we would be in relation with
everything in the living world around us is that one of the great losses of settler colonialism absolutely. You know, and this is that's my rant. I love it. Well, you brought up something interesting. Because I was talking to my producer Selina about how even the most skeptical person around astrology can understand the moon affects you. Right. That's the most it affects the water and everything.
“You can go we can go down that path. Sorry. I was going to say, but then I think the next”
branches, okay, it's not too far. We'll leave done a big, every astral body could affect us in some way if the moon is. But then it's like, how do you start dividing it into sunsines? And like what people I think most think of around astrology, right? It's like, I'm a tourist. Okay. So let's let's unpack some of what you just said. We're all in this unified experience. Like we're all connected. Everything is connected. We are all a part of each other. And yeah, that includes space and
earth and all of it. Right. So there is that. I'm not disqualifying that. But that's not how I look at astrology. I look at astrology as a reflection. So I don't think the planets are doing something to me. I think that there's a pattern that unfolds in the sky. And that is a reflection of living inside of an intelligent universe that is speaking to itself. I'm a part of it. You're a part of it. We're all part of it. And you can say that's ridiculous and superstitious or whatever.
Yeah. But again, astrology comes out of for me at least. It comes out of this idea of we're living inside of a conscious body that is alive. Yeah. And it is trying to be in conversation. Again, with us, but it's with itself. Mm-hmm. Like we're all part of an intelligent system.
“And again, I think like patriarchy and colonialism is just trying to strip us of that and to”
deduce it. Yeah. And I know that scientists will listen to me and scoff at me. And that's also fine. Yeah. But I also think the deeper you go into a scientific journey, the more in awe, you're going to be of how everything operates. Well, this is such, it leads me into a question that is a lot of times that the telepathy tips we talk about the paradigm. Yeah. So we live in. And there have been many paradigms. Yeah. And that in order for something like telepathy to be true, it can't work in
our current materialist paradigm. It can't. So what a lot of scientists are called post-materialist scientists. And they've started like even new academies to look at each other's work and improve each other's work. And you know, beyond this new frontier, they talk about, well, the new paradigm we can move into will be that consciousness is fundamental. It's not the thing, you know, created by your brain and then it dies when you're brain dying. It is the baseline. And if it's the
baseline, then it can do things that even physics can't account for. Right. And so that's a paradigm
In which these things are possible.
about something a bigger paradigm for it to be informing us and in conversation with us. Like,
“what is a paradigm in which we have to be in. Yeah. I work within a very structured”
astrological paradigm where there's correlations between everything. So there's correlations between and planet and metals and gemstones and colors and the day of the week that it belongs to and in the hour of a specific day and places in your home or in the world and occupations and mannerisms and also temperaments in the body and physical conditions. And so to me, like, I can look around this room and be like, oh, Venus. Oh, Jupiter. Oh, you know, and like, pick things
out in terms of the color and the shapes and the textures and the qualities of things. And so
I'm operating inside of a paradigm where there's, it's kind of like a prism of like each planet has like all of these ways that it iterates down into and manifests itself on the physical plane. And so that when it does something, then I'm looking for that correlation. So cool. It's really wonderful and very helpful to look at astrology in retrospect because either the thing happened or didn't either the astrology works or it doesn't. Yeah. And so if an astrologer from 1200 years ago
can say and speak to the specifics of this moment just because of what the planets are doing. What does that say? Wow. Does that mean anything to you? And if it doesn't, great. It means something to me. That has there been a lot of research like on old astrologers that might have people looked back and been like, wow, this man or woman was absolutely correct
“around XYZ. I mean, yeah, that's what we do. Okay. That's definitely our job. So like,”
but looking back into like, like, who are some of the famed astrologers? Oh, my god, do you want me to give you a list? I mean, yeah, kind. I'm just so curious because at something, I don't think people realized was like kind of an art form, right? A gift to people like read these and bring it down. It takes a lot of intelligence, right? And observation and probably time and dedication to like constant patterns and understanding them. Yeah. And just like anything, there's going to be
people who are probably great at that. It's natural for them. Yeah. And then others who aren't. And then looking back at history, there's going to be superstars. Well, yes. And it's kind of like looking at the authors of any ancient text. Yeah. You're like, is this a conglomeration of people? Is this some people say it's like a divine, you know, like, offering that it's from a kind of, you know, more like mythic figure in a way. And then there are the texts that survive because
certain cultures were able to preserve them and hide them depending on who was conquering who. So to remember, I'm coming from what we call Western astrology, but it's really from, you know, the land we would call like Iraq, Iran, Egypt, like, we're looking at ancient stuff. And in the ancient times, when you would take over a certain population, when you would conquer them,
the first thing they would do is go for the astrology. They will end all the knowledge systems that they
have. So when you conquer a certain town or city or peoples, you're like, where your books, where your scholars, what do you know? And so we're left cobbling together as system, but we have like a good amount of documents and there's still a lot to be translated.
“Yeah. Like, I think most people don't understand that a lot of astrologers,”
especially that go into these kind of volts are mythologists, their historians, their cosmologists, their interpreting, their translating, they know ancient languages in order to translate this stuff. Like, it's not the horoscope that you read in the magazine. That's a gateway into what astrology really is. And then there's, you know, modern astrology, which is a whole other different thing. And so it's got this really rich, deep historic tapestry, which I think is interesting
whether you believe in astrology or not, whether you think it works or not. Yeah. Because it is part of astronomy. I mean, it is part of the medical, our understanding of medicine is, as its origins or astrological. Oh, so. Well, the planets rule different parts of the body. And so in the most ancient schools, the oldest schools, like say in southern Europe, that top
Medicine, we're teaching it astrologically.
qualities to each one. There's different humor. There's different ways in which the planet will
“manifest and like, you'll have this ailment because, oh yeah, well, this is happening.”
There's a whole practice of medical astrology. And it has ancient roots. It's not something, it's not new age. None of this stuff I'm talking about, or I practice as new age at all. Well, I'm just so glad that you're adding this texture and richness. Because I do think people think astrology and they think of a poor scope. Yeah. That's it. And not this rich, deep history. No. And I'm curious because you talked about your practice. And what are some of the, like, maybe
ancient practices? How do they differ? Like, what are the ones that have survived today, in which is the one that you lean on or come to collaboration of ones you lean on? Well, there's, you know, a long standing evolution of it and then shifts in terms of how people used it. And then there's like this really short period of time where it kind of like explodes into this really detailed, really like, high functioning full complete system. And that's where we're like,
who wrote that? Who did that? How they get there? That's the glitch. And there's, you know, like, legends about who did it? How, how it came to be. There's not a lot of proof to, you know, back things up. But we have this system from a kind of seemingly like a conglomeration of all those things coming together. I love a good legend. You remember any of the legends or like, what the tenants of the legend were? Some people say it's this person or this deity or this spirit, um, Hermes Trismagistus.
But that means like three of something Hermes is another word for Mercury. It's the scribe. It's the, so there's like, there's people point, like ancient astrologers will point to that person,
“deity, man. I don't know. And say that that's what it's from. But there's no like ability to”
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in Greece. Was that a more Hellenistic? Well, a lot of what we refer to obviously all of the planets are given. There are Greco-Roman kind of glaze, but there's deeper roots to all of that. So the zodiac, the ways in which we see it now, has been, again, put through different iterations.
The Egyptians had, the ancient Egyptians had that full system of decams.
Yeah. Okay. So when did modern astrology, and I say this knowing that I might be qualifying it wrong, but what we now understand to be looking at its chart and here's your sun sign. Like why did the sun sign become such a big deal that everyone knows? This is the access point. Okay. So what does that's the gateway drug? Okay. Because you know pretty much, you know the day you're born, right? So it's the lowest common denominator. It's the easiest access point.
“But before that, astrologers mostly were like your rising sign was who you were, and what does that mean?”
Well, when you're born, we look at the sign, we look at the place that you're born in, like the exact location, and then we look to the eastern horizon, and we see the exact piece of sky that was coming up over it. Because the rising is the ascension. So that is the, that is the marker of life. And the western horizon is where things go down. So that's the marker of death. When the sun rises up over the eastern horizon at Daybreak, the many ancient cultures thought,
especially the Egyptians thought the sun was being reborn. And so that's, and then all the planets, all the stars, everything comes up over the eastern horizon. So that's the point of like coming from the underworld to the upper worlds, right? And so when you're born, we look to that point of sky, because that is the marker of your life. Interesting. That's you saying this is me at this specific moment in this specific location. The sun is in the same sign for 30 days, right? That marker
changes every moment, every minute or two. It's shifting, right? And every depending on what sign we're talking about, but every hour to every couple hours, it changes sign. And so that's really
“hard to know. Yeah. Where you're born, what time you're born, you know, did you get the marker of that?”
Yeah. What's really easy to know? It's like basically what day you were born. Mm-hmm. Right?
So sun sign. And then we always have to match astrology with technology, and to know the times in
which it will have a burst. And so we have around the time of the printing press, and astrologer namely, Alan Leo, but there was a group of them being like, oh, well, if I wrote a horse goat for, I think the king, the queen, some royal. And then there's astrologers that are like, oh, well, if we give everybody their own personal reading, because that was so popular, we give them their own personal reading. We'll just tell them about their sun sign, and then everyone can experience this.
Mm-hmm. And so it was really the creation of a whole kind of new thing. And the printing press then proliferated that interesting. So if we think of like social media over the last 15 years, giving astrology a massive boost, it's the same as back then when those sun sign horoscopes. It's just a different iteration of it. Yeah. And it is a much wider spread kind of situation. So where tell me if these are valid or not, and I just want to really reach the whole audience.
Yeah. So when you think of like, I'm a tourist. Yeah. And, you know, that comes with certain characteristics, right? You're very loyal, you're dependable, you're dependent on your planet. I am. I mean, but like, she's like, no, me. But where does that come from? These like ideas that your personality traits are influenced by your sun sign, that's modern. It's modern, like what would the ancient astrologers think about that? The ancient astrologers didn't care
about your personality. They wanted to know if you're going to live or die. Yeah. They wanted to know if your brother was going to steal your inheritance. They wanted to know if Hyena's were going to come and eat you in the night. Like, it was totally like, they were like, girl, I don't care about your personality. Yeah. It was all about your lot in life. Yeah. It was about your fate. That's so interesting. So there's, you know, there's astrologies being
used for a lot of different things, but it was never about your personality. So this came up way later.
Like, when we're, that's like the last hundred, fifty years, hundred, hundred, hundred,
“fifty years, this, you know, you're just saying, because that's what people I think think of.”
Like, the average person now. Well, you know, we're way more narcissistic now. Yeah. Right. Totally. And capitalism, capitalism demands that we be so, that we be hyper fixated on our individualism. Yep. And all of our personality traits. Now we can optimize it all. Yeah. So that it can siphon everything it can from us. Yeah. Yeah. And look, it's not that understanding your personality via astrology. Isn't deep, couldn't be deeply healing. I think
it is. It was for me. Like, when someone read my chart for the first time, I was like,
I am like that.
ill put together because of that. But you're just telling me that I am that. And so that is a
“way to self-acceptance, I think. Yeah. Based on what you just said, it can be extremely healing”
to know that your, your destiny is written in the stars. But it can also be terrifying because can you, can you have agency to change it? Couple of things. The chart is a snapshot of the sky, the moment you were first born, the, the moment you're like pronounced here. But in a way, the chart also keeps moving. Right. So it's not a stuck stagnant thing. There's, you can think of it like a living organism as you unfold so too does your chart, as you grow so too does your chart.
That's all you, babe. Like, yeah, you know, like no one can do that growth for you. No one's going to make the choices for you. There's that. Interesting. Yeah. And then there's also, you know,
the ancient astrologers were always like, you do this in context. Like, you don't pretend that
if you're giving a reading to someone who is living in a certain set of conditions that they're
“not in those conditions, don't pretend like the systems we're living with then don't impact us.”
You give a reading to somebody in context. Yeah. And that is explicitly set by a lot of ancient astrologers. So they even thought that, you know, it's not like everyone's starting from the same place. Yeah. When you first stumbled into astrology, well, how did that happen? And what were your views on it and how have they changed? Oh, I mean, I was 12, so. Wow. Well, I hope my views have changed a lot. But you were really young when you first, like, had an interest in it. Yeah. Well,
not an interest. I had a reading. It's okay. Not just. Yeah. So you're walking into the reading. You just were like, I didn't know what the hell it was. Yeah. I had a reading. And I really, it really changed my life. Wow. Yeah. If you go back and look at that original chart, like, have you cleaned any information from it? Like, does that chart still overlap? That's my chart. It's just your chart. Like they were right. I mean, it's hard to get a chart wrong. No, I mean, it's my chart.
It's okay. It's like that's a curtain. Yeah. That's my chart. Okay. Got it. Yeah. It's a literal just writing. It's what's not writing. But it's the planet. It's just what it is. Yeah. So I've had a
million different astrologers, you know, give me a different reading. But they're all basically
saying the same thing. The different way of looking at the chart. But yeah. That's where the
“planet was. If you want to get their chart read and they don't remember the exact minute they”
were born. Yeah. Does that? Is that like really going to throw it off or if you're like within the hour? Does it? A minute can change things. Really? Oh, yeah. Yeah. But you work with what you've got. So if there's no, if you can't contact the hospital, if they didn't keep the records, if there's nobody in your family that remembers anything, if you're adopted, if you were born in a place where, you know, it was just like not even thought up to remember. A lot of my Persian friends have
been like, I can be at a different calendar. So it doesn't even like translate my dad thinks it's this day this day. And it's, I, so there's, you know, a lot of people don't know. Right. And that's what makes the barrier to entry really great. So astrology is not a fair system. Yeah. Because it doesn't care if you don't know. Yeah. But there's astrologers that do something called rectification. And they'll go through your entire life and they'll look at all of the major moments
of your life and they'll deduce what time you were born. That's cool. Yeah. Wow. It's like reverse
engineering. Yeah. Yeah. So for someone who's never seen a chart, can you explain what's on it
and like what houses are and, you know, what, what does everything signify? The planets and all that stuff. It's a snapshot of this guy. So it tells you where everything was when you were born. So every planet, every planetary body that we take into consideration and exactly where the earth and sky met. Then there's just a lot of astrologers arguing about how to chop up the sky after that. And there's like a million different house systems, which is
figuring out where everything goes. But everything is there. And then you look at like everything's in a sign. Every planet or planetary point is in a sign. And there's no right or wrong way to do it. There's just different paradigms to work in. There's different practices. The practice I use is something called whole sign houses, which sees the sign as the house itself. It's way closer to what Indian or joy-touch or Vedic astrology uses.
Houses are domains of life. So there's 12 houses. There's 12 signs. There's seven traditional planetary bodies. And then there's things that we've added on like the modern planets. And then there's the nodes. The places where eclipse has happened. There's minor planets like
Cyran.
Yeah. There's also calculations that came through like Islamic traditions, that are calculations of the sun, moon, and the ascendant. And those will give you things like the part of fortune, or sorry, the lot of fortune, or the lot of spirit, or the lot of marriage, or the lot of doom and gloom and kidding. But like there's these mathematical equations that will calculate kind of any specific thing you want. The lot of love of all of it. And so those
are used for timing techniques. And those are used for understanding like when something will unfold.
Houses. There's 12 houses. The first house is the self because it's related to the eastern
horizon. And so it's talks about the moment you came into this world. And so it's the only part
“of the chart that's you. That's why the rising sign is so potent. It tells us the moment that”
your soul arrived in body as separate from the body that gave it birth. And so they're like, okay, now I'm here on my own. Then every other house in the chart is dealing with an aspect of your life. So the second house is about money assets resources, third house has communications, siblings, extended family, fourth houses, endings, and history, and roots, and lineage. And it goes on and not children, and then work, and illness, and partnerships, and marriage, and death,
and inheritance, and resources, other people's resources, and then religion, and travel, and
career, and friends, and communities, and sorrow, and self-induing, and loss, and longing. And so anything that you want to look at in life is held within those 12 spaces. Okay. And so if you
“ask me a question, I'm going to go into that realm of the chart and see, is there any planets there?”
If not, there's a planet that governs that part, and then I'm going to look for it, and I'm going to see what it's telling me. Where is it? What planet is it? What sign is it in? What is it talking to? What qualities is it telling me? Is this a successful thing? Is this a hard thing for the person? What does that mean? Is there a one plant when you see the plant? Oh, it's not good. Do they have different really? Yeah, there's I come from an astrological tradition where it's like,
that's not good. Yeah. There are bad things. I come from a tradition that's like, that is hard. That will fuck you up. This is great. That will help you a lot. Yeah. And so I think it's really helpful to have that distinguishing factor. Yeah. I like cold, hard facts. I do too. I would rather know, like this bad planets in this house. Well, this is, it's not even bad planet. It's like all planets are in all of our houses. And there is going to be one planet in particular that's
rough for everyone. Which one? Well, if you're born at night, it's going to be Saturn. If you're born in the daytime, it's going to be Mars. It doesn't mean that the other one can't give you a hard
time. Yeah. But that will be the one, like every chart, that's the first thing I look at.
And then there's also one planet that's going to be especially good for you. And so that is also going to tell you a lot. If you're born in the night, it's going to be Venus. If you're born in the day, it's going to be Jupiter. Okay. And so right away, I'm clocking, where are those? Where are Mars and Saturn? Where is Venus and Jupiter? What's the ascendant? Where is the ascendant ruler? Where is the sun and moon? And ascendant ruler is the like, is the planet that
rules the sign that is rising up over the eastern horizon when you're born? That's the planet
“that is steering the direction of your life. And then at, you know, I'm kind of like, that's what I'll”
glean like it just like immediately. And it also doesn't mean that if you have like a really good set up, that it will be good for you. I spiritually speaking, or psychologically speaking, you can see people waste a lot of good luck. You can see people also not have to like evolve or stretch themselves, or again, you're kind of like looking at a type of privilege, right? Like, oh, this just comes easy to you. You don't even know how hard most people struggle with this thing. It just is a gift
for you. Yeah, it's fascinating. How is technology? I mean, now you can, you can still go to a astrologist and have your chart read, which has to be a very meaningful intimate experience at imagine, hopefully. Hopefully. But it seems like you could obviously put in all the stuff into an app. I mean, and is that just as effective, you might not get all the interpretation. But it's different, you know, an app, you know, like we made our app so that you could have a tool to be more empowered
When you're engaged with astrology.
But I'm going over how the movements of the planets are impacting you week to week in a general kind of way. And what an astrologer is going to do is it's going to, they're going to give you their interpretation of it. But once you leave that reading, you're going to forget like 80% of why they said what they said, right? There's the experience of it that's healing and really
“important. But if you want to actually use it as a tool, it's really good to have somewhere to go”
to be like, "Wait, where is my moon?" And what does that mean again? Yeah. And so the app is just there to be like, "Oh, it means this." And then it also tells you about this. And by the way, this thing is also happening. Yeah. Is there a place where you find like if someone wants to have a great, you know, meeting with an astrologer where you can find kind of vetted astrologers or people okay? So it's really like you just have to word a mouth. Word a mouth. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, I'm sure they're, they're, they're, they're could be. I mean, you know, I'm sure people will comment below. If there is. Right. Yes. Do you comment below. But I think maybe Chris Brennan has a list. He might have a list. The astrology podcast might have a list on their website. What if someone wants to learn or train? I mean, it's just like anything. I can learn and train places. And they will have like an education that you go through just like,
yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you can study with my teacher, Dimitra George and take her
different levels and work your way through her incredible books. Or you can, you can take Chris Brennan's
course. They're awesome. Copic has a course. Like there's a lot of really incredible astrologers that do like these full courses that you can go through all their different levels, some other different classes. Yeah. So what's happening right now, astrologically? Like this year.
“I mean, the world seems like a dumpster fire. I think to a lot of us. Yeah.”
Can we glean anything from the charts? Well, do you want to hear what this astrologer said as well? I was gonna love that. Yeah. There's one from 1200 years ago and there's one from 400 years ago. Okay. I've read this on the event I did for Mamdoni because he was elected on one of the best days of the year in 2025. Well, because it was Jupiter and the sun coming together and Jupiter just entered cancer. Jupiter and cancer is a special condition. It's like a once in
12 year blessing. And so it was a seed, a beginning of something that pretended to me, something very fortuitous and generative and abundant. Yeah. And so when I was looking into the astrology and of the year before he was elected, I found this, again, the astrologer and the the scholar Ali A. Alome. He translates and so he translated this text from an astrologer called Abu Mashaar. He's a famous ninth century Persian academic and astrologer. And this is his translation.
It indicates a time where there is an emergence of a powerful and commanding leader. This is a moment
that demonstrates the growing power of the local. That is Jupiter and cancer and this is why. Jupiter is the planet of the greater benefit, but in cancer, cancer is a sign that's ruled by the moon. The moon is our local planet, terry body. The moon is close to us. Yeah. Everything else is really far away. The moon is right there. And so anything that the moon governs, anything in cancer, what we want to focus on is what is right here. How can we nurture and nourish
and care for what is right around us? It's interesting because you really have to be up on current events to try to interpret all this. Right? It should hope so. If you're an astrologer, you're talking about time. So if you don't know what's going on in the world, I don't know what you're talking about. Right. Yeah. I mean, you really have to be zoned in. I hope so. I mean, that is not
“right. You know, it's a choice. You can either be like, what are we living in? How do we get here?”
Right. What are they ancient saying about it? What did they live through? Right. This is not the
first time we've done this. No. But we knew that nothing was going to remain business as usual
as of 2025. So 2025, Pluto change signs, Saturn change signs, Uranus change signs, and Neptune change signs. They went in and out of their new signs. But that's a huge thing to happen because some of those planets take about 20 years, some take 15, some take seven, some take three to change signs. Those things happening all at the same time is like, oh, whatever we were doing before, it's done as of 2025 and we were living in a new reality and it gets entrenched in 26.
The new reality does. Yeah. Oh, no. But the Jupiter part of it reminds us
That it's up to us.
place we have to lean all the way into and that is where everything changes. Yeah. The last time Pluto is in Aquarius was the Haitian Revolution, the French Revolution, and the American Revolution.
Really? And the Industrial Revolution. Robots. If you haven't seen France in the news a million times
over. Yeah. But it's also like an ether rich kind of vibe. Yeah. And so what are we living in? We're living in oligarchs trying to consume everything, trying to speed us into realms of disaster so that they can buy up more chaos is good for them. So they're trying to, you know. And so again, it's time for the masses to remember the leverage that we have. Okay. So that's Pluto. Okay. The left.
“That's how I need a draw. Yeah. The last time Neptune was in areas was a civil war. So we have”
revolutionary period, civil war here. And then the last time Uranus was in Gemini, also during the civil war. But it's has an 84-year cycle. So the last time Uranus was in Gemini,
it was World War II. Was the creation of NATO? Was the creation of a new world order?
And then, add to that the last time that Neptune and Saturn made a conjunction was during the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was another time of re-drying the lines. And these two made a conjunction in late February, seven days before Trump started bombing Iran. Well, every time that Uranus has been in Gemini, this country has been involved in a war. And so soon as Uranus went back into Gemini, I was like, "Here we are." Wow. Everything is at play right now. Yeah. The world is reordering
itself. Wow. We don't have to stay here, though. Right. We are either going to band together and find solidarity in it, or be taken out by it. And that part is our choice. Yeah. This is the
landscape. This is maybe you want to call it part of our fate. What if we don't have to live
through a war? Right. What if we could just get to reconstruction? Right. And protect it. Yeah. And shift this narrative because we know where it goes. Right.
“Is there anything about astrology that still has you just like in a state of wonderment or mystery?”
I mean, yes, all of the time. I mean, it's constantly in awe of like, wow, that's happening. And this is what's happening in the sky. We'd all be like, "Can you believe it?" It's happened on the day that we said, and it is the mark of it. And but that must be what keeps people in conversation with it. Right. Because it's adding up. Like if it didn't, you'd walk away. Right. Exactly. So is there anything like, you know, that I haven't covered that you want to
touch on or anything that maybe we need to talk about it. And you really want to like spark the interests and someone else? Well, I guess my invitation, if you're curious about astrology and about your chart, is that I want you to think about it as a map of your soul's journey in this lifetime. And that if you experiment with going in the direction that your chart says to go in,
“how do you feel? What happens? What opens up? And I say that because that's what happened to me.”
Like I got a reading when I was 12 years old. And I was, you know, enthralled with astrology. And I learned about it. And I gave readings of my 20s. And then it was kind of overwhelming for me. And I left it. And I came back to it in my 30s. And then I started to really take it seriously. And I sort of to study with my teacher, to meet her George. And she, when she gave me a reading, she was like, Oh, well, of course, you would do this. And of course, you would also write,
do you want to write? And I was like, well, I do, but I can't write. Like I'm not smart enough to write. And she was like, well, okay, whatever. You can, you can dwell in yourself, don't want to, but it's in your chart. Yeah. And that gave me permission to write and writing changed my life. That's so cool. Because you know what I think about, you said something about the chart just recently. And it made me think about, you know, especially in the new age,
you were all, it's like, oh, you're living in flow, you're living in flow. And when you're in flow, everything works for you. It's like the whole world unfolds as it should for you. It feels like that at least. But feels like if you kind of remove it. Yeah. But if you're moving and flow with your chart, and you know what it is and kind of what your obstacles might be and what you're called to do, or what your strengths are, it might be like a tip off to how to live and flow and kind of
find your your way. That's what gave me access to success. That's what, that's how I connected with
People.
to this whole other life. Like there's, there's me before I started writing horse scopes. And then
“there's me after. And it's a specific demarcation in my life. Yeah, I didn't make any money for a”
long time. Every year is when I struggled and it was hard and whatever. But it was when I started doing that, it changed everything. Yeah. And now you're a New York Times bestselling author. You know, like that is in my chart. Yeah. It is. But I didn't give myself permission to do it for a long time. If someone, if she could have said that to me 10 years earlier, maybe, you know, everything would have been different. But I didn't think I was smart enough, or I didn't think I was good enough to write.
I put it on this really high pedestal. And I kept myself from it for a long time. And then once I started doing it, it did. And then I met my wife and then everything changed. Yeah. It was literally a 180 for me. Yeah. That's so wild. So wild. If someone wants to have like a deep dive and start to learn about this and figure out what, which, maybe branch they want to study,
“are there any books that you could recommend? Yeah. I mean, my book is a, is an entry point. My”
book is called, uh, you were born for this. The astrology of radical self acceptance. It is a really good like primer on like an introduction to your chart and what it means and how to
rethink things. Then there's like super hefty astrology books that are incredible and well worth
the time it takes to get through them and just loaded with so much astrological data. Dimitra George has two books, volume one and volume two about traditional astrology that are exceptional and they are like an incredible standard like bearer of traditional astrology. Chris Brennan has an incredible book as well that is like an encyclopedia of everything. Nicholas Campion wrote the history of astrology, volume one and volume two, which takes you through. It's not about how to be an
astrologer or how to do astrology, but it is an incredible compilation of astrology through the like the like different epochs of time and tells you about like the deep history of it and how it kind of came to be. What do you think would change if people spent more time looking at their charts and understanding their charts? I don't know. They have no idea. Just not something that you're like on a crusade to be like, oh my god, I don't know. Please, no. I'm like good, don't like
astrology. You know what I mean? Like there's a certain point to which it's popularity makes things weird. Right. It's like me this. It's a mystery tradition in some ways. Like there's some very, there's some very hard and fast rules that I love and go by and then there's this point at
“which you're like, I don't know. I think it's good if we're not all doing this thing. It's because”
it's also like really good astrological times and you don't want everyone to do the same thing on the same time. Like where I want, you know, I want people obviously to know about my app and
the things that we're doing and I think it's really helpful and then I always have to feel like,
this is just for us though. This is like a secret thing that we're all doing together. Like maybe I feel very like, do not perceive me about it. Let's end on this question said, what do you think a healthy relationship with astrology looks like? Requestion. I think a healthy relationship with astrology looks like forgetting about it. You know, and then remembering it, and then being with it really obsessively for a little while and then not. There's times where
I'm looking at my own app all the time and reading my own horoscope and being like, oh my god, that's so true. And then there's times where I just forget all about it. I mean, I'm never fully
forgetting about it because it's my work. So I'm always having, but I'm forgetting about how it is
for me personally. And I'm looking at how it is landing in the world. So I am always thinking about how it's going on around me or what it's meaning from what's happening around me and how it's like being lived out by us collectively. That's always just, I'm always so gobsmacked by that. But for me personally, I like to forget about my own personal strategy. Just go live my life. I love that you read your own app though. Does that you read any other astrologers or
consult with another astrologer, everyone? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I have, I have an astrology reading from a friend of mine who I love. Because do me a short stop, she fired me. She would, you know, like, I would keep going to her until the end of time, but she stopped giving personal readings. So, and I go to other astrologers, any like, I, there's astrologers are so fascinating and
Everyone has like a slightly, they're all, we're all like working in like a d...
or we're like, oh, I just picked this timing thing up again. Yeah. There's so many tools out there
“that you can't actually use them all at the same time. And so like, I'll go get a reading from my”
astrologer and she'll be like, oh, yeah, I'm back into this thing and I'll be like, oh, fascinating,
like, give me the read on that. Yeah. And it will always give you like this phenomenal little
take on the moment and what's happening and love that. And then I'll like remember it for a while, and then I'll forget about it again. And all, maybe see my notes a couple months later and be like, oh, yeah, that did happen. Yes. There's no such thing in believing astrology or believing
“in astrology, either works as a tool or it doesn't. So, which is it? Right. Right. To me, I think”
the evidence is clear, but if it doesn't work for you, great, go find a tool that does. Right.
Yeah. That's my feelings. Right. Yeah. Well, very awesome to have you here. Thank you for your time. Thank you so much. That's a great education. I think our listeners are going to love it. Great. That's it for this episode of The Talk Tracks. But new episodes will be released every Wednesday. So stay tuned. As we work to unravel all the threads, even the veiled ones that knit together
“are reality. And please remember to stay kind, stay curious, and that being a true skeptic”
requires an open mind. To dive in deeper, subscribe to our backstage pass by visiting our website with it. You'll unlock access to bonus content like telepathy tests, ask me anything interviews with myself and guests. You'll be able to enjoy the podcast ad free, connect with other members on our telepathy tribe discord, and here and see exclusive content from the telepathy tapes vault. Visit our website at the telepathytapes.com for more info on how to
subscribe to our backstage pass. Thank you to my amazing collaborators, producers, Katherine Ellis,
and Selena Kennedy, technical directing audio mix and finishing by Jeremy Cole, opening and closing music by Elizabeth P.W. and original logo and cover art by Ben Condor Design. I'm Kai Dickens, your executive producer, writer, and host.
