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Human Equals Paradox

Astrology Can't Tell You What To Do

Ep. 18

This will be a spicy take for some folks, but it's true. People tell you what to do - but when they are basing that on their interpretation of astrology (or tarot or human design or anything else), THAT IS THEIR INTERPRETATION.


It is NOT "astrology" telling you you'll never have a happy relationship, or that it's your karma to be a mother, or that your chronic health issues are punishment for past-life mistakes.


I wish I was making this up, but these horrifying examples are things I've heard from clients.


I know a lot of people will want to fight me on this, but astrology CANNOT tell you things like that. People have been told that it does, but believe me, after 42 years of watching it in action, if it could really provide those hard-coded "answers" we would know by now.


(Personal pet peeve - karma is not even from the same cultural lineage as western astrology and has no connection to western astrological practice whatsoever. People have imported it - inaccurately and inappropriately - from Buddhist and Hindu beliefs they didn't really understand in the first place.)


The way western astrology is used is part of a bigger "spiritual" framework that encourages people to outsource their own agency and authority to people with ostensible "spiritual" credentials who claim to know who you really are and what is really true for you.


There are countless people out there who have read a couple of astrology books or watched some stuff on TikTok and are confidently charging vulnerable people hundreds of dollars to tell them things like "your chart shows that your karma is to never have a happy relationship in this lifetime because you were bad in the previous one".


The problem here is not astrology. It's PEOPLE. And more than that, it's this entire faux-"spiritual" worldview that is wildly destructive and insulting.


Many of the people pronouncing these "truths" to their clients really are trying to help - they believe what they're saying is true, because they were told it was true by whoever they learned it from, and they genuinely care about their clients.


That doesn't excuse or offset the extraordinary damage they do to people with these attitudes, which I have spent 20+ years cleaning up after with person after person.

If you hear something that is ostensibly from astrology that makes you feel anxious, powerless, self-critical, hopeless, despairing, confused, ashamed, or terrified, THE PROBLEM IS NOT ASTROLOGY. (The problem is also not you.)


It's the person presenting that information, however well-meaning.


This of course doesn't mean astrology, handled with integrity and compassion, doesn't get into some painful and difficult territory - I do that in most of my client sessions and a lot of my teaching.


And, when I go there with people, we can honestly face the difficult or painful stuff in ways that leave them feeling MORE agency, clarity, self-trust, compassion, and possibility.


A huge part of that is because I know astrology cannot tell them what to do, and neither can I.

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