Once I was an astrologer

A story of careers, callings and change

It’s true, I once was an astrologer, mapping the cycles of planetary movements across the skies on to the birth charts of my friends and clients. When I started my astrological practice at the age of 24, I had already been a music teacher, a town planner and a bookseller. I was a young and restless soul but working with the movements of the heavens settled and absorbed me in a way nothing else had.

Photo by Farzad Mohsenvand on Unsplash

It all started in Melbourne when I was 21. I had left Aotearoa New Zealand with my friend Lyndsey. We had been flatmates in Auckland when we were both 18, before she had taken off to study trumpet in Melbourne. Now I joined her, having no plan other than exploring life beyond my homeland, which felt stiflingly small and conservative at the time.

I had worked for a year at the Auckland City Council as a town planner which put me off the profession for life, despite my newly minted Bachelor of Town Planning. Lyndsey meantime was about to finish her degree and was looking for direction. Clearly, we needed guidance! We plumped for an astrology reading because we were born only 3 days apart. Was this what made us feel so connected , we wondered, even though we had quite different personalities? And if astrology worked, why was there such a difference, when surely our charts would be so similar?

I can see us now sitting at the table in our sparsely furnished flat with the astrologer, a kind and intelligent woman who introduced the intricacies of our birth charts to us. Although most of our planets, symbolising different aspects of ourselves, were not far apart, there were crucial differences, she explained. The most obvious was that I was an earthy Sagittarian with my Virgo Moon and Taurus ascendant, while Lyndsey was an airy Sagittarian having both her Moon and Ascendent in Libra. We were intrigued. It was true, Lyndsay was adventurous, sociable and idealistic, while I was cautious, shy and questioning. There were now a lot more questions to ask.

When I moved to London later that year, I immediately enrolled in an Astrology course. My teacher, as fate would have it, was also a Jungian psychotherapist, so along with the basics of drawing up and interpreting a chart, I was introduced to symbolic language, archetypes, and myths. I lapped it up, feeling like I had come home. And then, when I landed a job in an alternative bookshop in Camden Town running the astrology section, I felt like I was in heaven (for a short while at least, but that is another story!).

Everything seemed to flow for me with astrology. I practiced on my housemates’ charts, taught my first course to curious friends, and then started up an astrology practice with minimal effort. A few years later, I met Lindsay River, an astrologer who had been commissioned to write a book on feminist astrology for The Women’s Press by my now dear friend

Stephanie Dowrick

. Lindsay had become overwhelmed after her years of research. Would I help her to shape and finish it, she asked? Of course! In 1987, we proudly launched The Knot of Time: Astrology and Female Experience at the London Feminist Book Fair. It is, I am told, still something of a classic in the astrology world today.

But I myself am no longer in that world. Early on in my career, I remember meeting an older woman who had been a successful astrologer for many years before stepping away from it all. I was very curious about this, I could not imagine ever losing my passion for reading patterns and cycles, interpreting symbols, attending to the stories of others’ lives. Until I did just that.

My leave taking from astrology was triggered by burnout and illness, after nearly fifteen years of practice. My health crisis left me with no energy for doling out the explanations and reassurances that my clients so often sought from me, typically arriving on the doorstep in the midst of loss and crisis. I knew astrology, when done well, could help people accept and orientate themselves to work through the ups and downs of their lives. But I had run out steam for sitting in this place, exploring life’s complexities through a cosmological overview. And I was tired of fielding requests for predictions, an area of astrology which I had no interest in.

Instead, I was drawn to working with dreams, running groups and then writing books about dream work. It was a space where both I and those I worked with could develop the patience to sit in the mess of life, not seeking a big overview, but learning to explore, and be guided by, images and feelings thrown up by the unconscious.

Reading people’s astrology charts never really came back after that time, although I did incorporate astrological perspectives into workshops on mythic themes that I ran for some years. By this time, I had become a Jungian psychotherapist working with dreams and sandplay. While I felt grateful to have a background in astrology’s symbolic language and belief in a universe where every living thing is intimately connected, my focus had shifted irrevocably from what was above to what was below. For another fifteen years I swam in the seas of depth psychology, listening to people’s stories and dreams, trusting that psyche would find its way towards healing when given sufficient time, attention and support.

But then, of course, I got restless again. This time it wasn’t cosmos or psyche calling me, it was Mother Earth. Always a nature lover, I had become more and more aware that our planet was starting to cook under a blanket of greenhouse gases, and that the actions Governments needed to take weren’t happening. After writing and speaking about this from a psychological perspective, I had one of the most impactful dreams of my life (as I wrote about here). Within a few years, I closed my psychotherapy practice and started my PhD exploring the psychological terrain of engaging with the climate crisis.

Now instead of mapping the stars or the unconscious, I was mapping an unknown world of living through climate and ecological crisis. After leading a year long research discussion group, I drew up this map charting the major themes of our discussions, as well as of the dreams that participants shared within those discussions.

Happily, the research group found that sharing our feelings, dilemmas and questions about how to best engage with the climate and ecological crisis, left us feeling more mature, resilient and able to act. Strengthened by this knowledge, I embarked on a career in the newly evolving field of climate psychology, writing, speaking, and facilitating groups to support healthy, creative and sustained action.

But then, you guessed it, as the fifteen years mark started to loom, restlessness set in. Perhaps by now this fifteen-year cycle is programmed into me, or perhaps it’s that Saturn cycle. Oddly enough its only now that I realise how regularly spaced my vocational restlessness is, and that I am, once more ready to shed my skin, not really knowing what will come next.

One clue came last year came when I started having recurring dreams about doing astrology. Something I was not expecting! Although I felt no desire to return to this past of mine, I knew enough by now to take notice of my dreams. So, after yet one more dream, I opened up my old ephemeris and started chatting more regularly to my dear astrologer friend Lindel Barker-Revell about the movement of the planets, and the cycles of change we are seeing here on Earth.

Reflecting on this now, I think it’s not so much the specifics of the planets’ movements that called me, as a return to a cosmological viewpoint. One which embraces what Western culture calls “the metaphysical”. A worldview which dances with and celebrates the cycles, relationships and communications that modernity denies and crushes.

Working in the climate field heightens the focus on socio-political systems shaped by worldviews steeped in human exceptionalism, hierarchy, consumerism and mechanisms of control. I was passionate about my work and loved the interactions, but over time, I can see now that my world was becoming more claustrophobic , even although I was busy holding a global perspective.

Now, I feel, its time for me to take a good step back from systems grounded in denial and self-destruction through their harmful and false categorisations, and their many shutting outs. I need the bigger picture, the wider picture and the deeper picture. I always have. My various careers I see now, have been feeling out different parts of the elephant: the cosmos, the psyche, the Earth, all the while seeking how to live in good relationship with what modernity exiles: the sacred dance of life.

At 67, I have the privilege of being through with career. But not with calling. The call to create, and to tend and attend rings loud and clear. To my local community garden and permaculture Food Forest in need of regular care; to conversations and actions that cultivate connections and kindness; to blank pages inviting culturally subversive stories; to truth telling about destructions and massacres in the human and more than human worlds; to learning from First Nations cultures and teachings about the protection and celebration of Mother Earth; to honouring the cycles, patterns, and rhythms which move all.

And what about you, I wonder? What calls you? What cycle is alive in your life right now? How do you hold your threads between career and calling? I would love to hear some of your stories in the comments.