Fariha Róisín: Astrology Is a Life-Long Relationship
Protecting her people has always been Fariha Róisín’s priority. Today, the novelist and poet tells us more about her new nonfiction book Who Is Wellness For?, how white supremacy corrupts wellness spaces, and the value of practices like astrology for understanding ourselves. Michelle Tea shares her journey of studying astrology along with a zodiac-based tarot spread for getting a big picture look at our lives in the current moment.
Fariha Róisín: You know, when you don't have language or yourself, you're kind of you remain a mystery to who you are sometimes. Just knowing that I was born on a full moon, just knowing that I was born on a lunar eclipse like those things are so important for me to like engage with as a human. And I don't even know half the things I want to know.
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Michelle Tea: Hello and welcome to Your Magic. I’m Michelle Tea, and today I am talking with author Fariha Roisin, whose new book, Who is Wellness For? Drops this week, and asks important questions about the accessibility of appropriated wellness traditions to the people of color whose cultures they originated in. We’re going to talk about astrology’s origin in Muslim culture, our gendered world, white supremacy and more. After that, I’m going to share with you a simple zodiac-based tarot spread that gives a ton of information. Stay with us.
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Michelle Tea: Whenever I think back to try to understand how I first learned of astrology, I think about my grandmother. Like me, she was an Aquarius, and I liked knowing we were the same in some mysterious way that I didn’t really understand. The mysticism of it gave me a dreamy and excited feeling, like when I’d overhear my Nana talking about strange dreams she had, or the significance of certain numbers. Once I was eavesdropping on her gabbing to some friends at her job working the cash register at a department store in downtown Chelsea, Massachusetts, where we lived. She was talking about how the Church was against green carnations, but she was interested. I was already in Catholic school, and wanted very much to be a good Christian and go to Heaven to hang out with Jesus when I died, so if the Church thought a particular flower was evil, I needed to know about it. I’d never seen a green carnation, but maybe it being an enemy of God was the reason why.
“Why are green carnations bad?” I interrupted my grandmother, and she and her friend burst out laughing.
“Reincarnation,” she corrected me, and explained the concept of returning to life again and again. Weighed against a blissful eternity in paradise, lounging on clouds and having every good thing I ever wanted (my version of Heaven), it didn’t seem so great, but it was my first inkling that there were thoughts and theories about the afterlife other than what I was being fed by the nuns.
In my house, Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs was one of the few books on the bookshelf, stuffed there amongst the Stephen King and Jackie Susann. It was consulted often. The way I was Aquarius like my Nana – sort of weird, maybe from outer space? – I learned my mom and sister were both Scorpios – tough and kind of scary. My Papa was a Sagittarius, which was why he liked to take us on long road trips to Florida each summer. My absent father was a Leo, proud and arrogant and shallow, but my mom’s new husband was an Aries, a daredevil who loved to ride the scariest rides at the carnival, each red-hot chili and take us sledding after snowstorms.
Astrology has always been a way to enhance my understanding of people. It’s not everything, of course; countless phenomena influence who we turn out to be – family trauma, place in the birth order, the culture and time we were born into, our class status, I could go on. But amongst all of them, astrology seems at least as important as the most crucial of influences. To me, astrology can help explain and predict how you might respond to childhood trauma, to the repressiveness of your native culture, to the limitations of your class status. And as we move deeper into an astrological renaissance that feels like less of a trend than a deep embrace of ancient wisdom, it’s increasingly frustrating to me to see astrology left out of psychology, or biography, or spirituality.
Once I had a roommate who was nothing but earth stelliums. She fancied herself a scientist, a mathematician, and she had no use for astrology save for something to lampoon. After tolerating weeks of gentle ribbing, I realized it would be impossible for us to cohabitate happily if she kept on giving me shit about the zodiac. I told her I didn’t care if she believed in it or not, but I did, and could she stop making fun of it all the time. She did. We became very good friends, and the longer we hung out together, I noticed something amazing happen. After spending the night with a new group of friends, my roommate turned to me and observed, “That girl seemed like such a Gemini, do you know when her birthday is?” The girl in question was indeed a Gemini, and I held back from jumping all over my newly astrologically converted roommate with a bunch of smug I-Told-You-So’s. But what happened is not that unusual: when people decide to open their mind and simply start paying attention to astrology, the information piles up, and it rings true. It doesn’t matter that we can’t fully account for why it works, all we know is what the ancients know - it does. With life on earth being so often such a confusing mess of chaos and mystery, I’ll take every tool for understanding my fellow humans that is available to me. And astrology is one of the best.
Here’s Fariha.
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Michelle Tea: Thank you so much for being a guest on Your Magic.
Fariha Róisín: Thank you for having me.
Michelle Tea: Congratulations on all your books. And really congratulations on who's wellness this for the I'm reading it right now. I do want to talk about a little because it resonates so, so hugely with, you know, this podcast and our listeners and stuff. So what was the impetus behind sitting down to write it?
Fariha Róisín: So I've been in the wellness spaces for so long, like basically two decades now. So since I was a teenager, my sister was very involved in sort of what we called new age things back then. And like, you know, I was like learning about Reiki and I was learning about auras and I was learning about witchcraft and learning about I was reading like everything from Marian Wilkinson to like Martha Beck when I was 12. You know, like I had such an access to these things. It was a very, very natural decision on my end as both a thinker and a writer, but also somebody who exists on this plane, on this planet, and someone who is quite porous and I think naturally esoteric. It didn't feel like a jump for me to question. Also like I'm South Asian and I think a lot of South Asians silently have been observing kind of this for a really long time. And when you're young and you know, I grew up in Australia, I didn't really have to think about white supremacy. Like I was computing. I was realizing, I was experiencing it. You just thought that that was the world. The world was just unjust and it was just like it was just extractive. And I had a really radical Marxist father who was very, very into post-colonial politics. So I understood young, like, the kind of realities that existed. And it was not until I really became a writer that I was like, “Oh, I can actually really do something about this”. Because I was in organizing when I was a kid in Australia, I was organizing a lot. I started, I joined Amnesty and Oxfam when I was 12 and I was just doing like campaigning for them.
Michelle Tea: You sound like the coolest 12 year old that ever lived.
Fariha Róisín: It's really strange because, like, I didn't know that, you know, like, I feel that way about myself now, like, but I still have the same style. I still have the same taste. I'm such a punk and, like, really cared about the planet and the world. And, you know, like when I was 16, I went to the Villawood Detention Centers in Sydney and like I really understood that there was a plight that I wanted to inject myself into being a spokesperson or a guiding light and force for people that had been overlooked or uncared for. People that were like me – queer people, Muslims, South Asians, like I'm all of that. And that's like, those are all my identities and they're all equally mine. So like, I need to protect mine. What is mine? What are the people that nobody cares about? And like that's I think really the genesis of my work in general. Like I, I literally have always been this person, you know, before writing I was going to be a human rights lawyer and that was just not possible for my temperament. And so writing became the gateway for me to find a way to speak about the things I really cared about. And I think poetry and the novel were just because they were already there. I needed to get them out. But Who Is Wellness For? is really my first. It feels like the first real honest book of where I'm at right now processing what I'm processing.
Michelle Tea: It seems like it's the kind of thing that people are talking about privately, but there hasn't been a big thing. And so I really feel like the time is so ripe for your book.
Fariha Róisín: It's happening a rupture. I feel it on a very big scale. So like it's it's definitely like I think more and more people, as you said, like there's a there's all of these private conversations that we have among one another, you know, in secret. But I felt this really with the book, I want to fight it. I really want to fight white men. I'm really here to be like, “Yeah, let's go”. Like, this is there is, the book is so heavy with facts and so heavy with research because I knew I was getting at so many people that would challenge me. So I want all of the information in there and for me to be so resource that if anyone asks me, I have an answer for something because the ways in which colonization has seeped into and white supremacy have seeped into every aspect of being in connection is so. Apparent and obvious, and it has to be plucked out for us to move forward as a society.
Michelle Tea: I was so impressed in your book about how when you're talking about your own life and yourself and your understanding of yourself, you include astrology as casually and like with as much importance as you, you know, claim any other, you know, thing that might be influencing your personality from like your upbringing or anything. How what's your history with astrology? Like, how did how did you come to have such, like a strong and casual understanding of it?
Fariha Róisín: I started learning astrology 14 years ago through this Muslim astrologer who my sister introduced me to. She read she was the first person I ever got my entire chart read by. And it was so confronting to be like seen so deeply by somebody and like all of the layers of oneself. I mean, at 18 I had I knew myself intimately, but there was a lot about my contradictions I didn't understand or like didn't want to face. And, you know, when you don't have language or yourself, you're kind of you remain a mystery to who you are sometimes. You know, something as simple as, like, I'm a Cancer moon and I'm a Capricorn and Sun, so I have Moon-Sun opposition. And what that means is a personality like I mean, just knowing that I was born on a full moon, just knowing that I was born on a lunar eclipse, like those things are so important for me to like engage with as a human. And I don't even know half the things I want to know, you know, like it's I've only, I've been studying astrology for 14 years and not even diligently, but my comprehension of it is still so new. Like, there's still so much that I don't know. And is this entire archive of thousands of years of people documenting, conversing and to me, what was really cool, I talk about this in the book, it's like there is an entire 800-year period where the Muslim world was really at the pinnacle of astrological research and thought, and that so much of our astrological knowledge comes from their interpretation of Greek and Hellenistic societies and astrology, like they were the ones that kind of brought it into the to the West. And knowing that, knowing that my lineage had a play in that understanding that my people were incredibly intelligent. And to them, astrology was as important as medicine, you know? You know, like it was common and known that not only that the rulers, the Muslim rulers, the kings, but the but the the the doctors, the medical doctors. You could be a physician and a poet. That's where the Renaissance man idea comes from. It comes from the Muslims. And so like it, it is because there were poets and there were physicians and there were astrologers and they were astronomers, and they were doing all of it. And all of it was important because they saw astrology as a science and a science that was necessary to understand human ways, but also just like the planet planetary, how we connect as a society, you know. It's funny. Like they had this theory. A lot of Muslim astrologers have the theory that cancer risings make really good rulers and like they had ideas like that, like they, they, they were like, you know, overrule or has a Cancer rising and ascendant in cancer as well as a margin Scorpio on the left house. That means that they'll have like this like really well-rounded perspective of both war and like emotion of the people. So they were thinking about all of these things and like placements and the, the importance of certain placements and like the kind of like, you know, chronic and also like medieval, like layered interpretations of like humanity. It's just so cool and so rich and so vibrant. So astrology is like it's like my entire praxis of the planet. I ask everyone about their charts. I like want to talk about astrology all the time. My life doesn't exist outside of the realm of astrology, and I've been made fun of by a lot of people I know. Like I've had a really close friend once tell me that he's very surprised that someone as smart as me would be interested in astrology. This is many years ago, but it stayed with me. But it's just I don't even understand why people don't get how not only dismissive, condescending and patriarchal that shit is.
Michelle Tea: Yeah. And like, why isn't it that like, oh, this incredibly intelligent person believes so strongly in astrology? There's clearly something to it. Like, that's the equation that should be reached.
Fariha Róisín: But the silencing of women and what we think of as the feminine, which I talk about in the book as well, like we have feminized things and even though gender is bullshit, it's like we still live in a gendered world and we still operate in gendered ways with one another, even in queerness. Like there is so much eruption of just like these of misogyny, of patriarchy, of like all of this ingrained stuff that we haven't dealt with yet.
Michelle Tea: I just feel like there's so much there's so much people who don't believe in astrology or have that very strong, anti energy towards it often don't even know astrology. I've never really spent any time real-time thinking about it or learning about it. I'm somebody who has in the past, you know, written horoscopes and it's just stupid. They were terrible. There's no really good way to write a brief horoscope that spans a month and all of the things that happen in the sky in a month in three lines for a magazine. You know what I mean? It's just it was like, oh, wow, this is why people don't believe in astrology, because they read these things and it doesn't resonate with them because how could it? I have so many questions about astrology for you. I wanna know what aspect of astrology are you, like, really obsessed with right now or that you're geeking out on right now? Is there something you’re particularly excited to learn about?
Fariha Róisín: The way that I learned astrology, which I, it has been really fun and that's why it feels like an endless journey is just I read my own chart like again and again and again and again and again. And I just, I'm like, okay, what is that? You know? And the more I learn about it, it things just clarify. So like I'm always rereading my chart. And I think going step by step has really helped me because there's so much and because there's like, yeah, like the aspects and the asteroids and the, you know, the trines and the, it's just the adds. It's another language, it's another universe. It's a whole other point of reference. And it's. It is overwhelming, but I think that to anyone who wants to learn about it, just go step by step in it. It's and also be open to the fact that this is sort of a lifelong relationship.
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Michelle Tea: Well I would love to read your tarot cards. I have this stack of this Thoth deck here that I work with.
Fariha Róisín: I have that deck! Yay!
Michelle Tea: Oh cool cool! Do you read with it primarily. Do you have other decks too?
Fariha Róisín: Every morning I read with that deck, I read the rider-waite and I read with my medicine cards. Yeah. So I'm excited.
Michelle Tea: Well, what what's on your mind?
Fariha Róisín: I would love to know what my next couple months look like.
Michelle Tea: Okay. Yeah. Let's do like, do you want to do, like, through the summer?
Fariha Róisín: Yeah. Through the end of summer. Yeah.
Michelle Tea: Okay. Yeah. So will do. Okay. I'm going to shuffle right now. Do a little shuffle from May, which is upon us. Okay. So now sI’m huffling for June, which is, you know, certainly a big month for you to have your book come out. So June. We'll do July. Okay. And then I'm going to do a little shuffle for August. All right. So May is the six of Swords – Science, the Knight of Swords and the three of cups abundance. Oh, my goodness. That's really great. Gosh, lots of, like, just clarity. Like, good perspective, good analysis. Like, this is such a reassuring card, you know? I mean, you know, knowing what you do about astrology and about this particular deck and the way that the swords often show us, like where we're clouded and where we're not seeing things very clearly, where we're projecting or our perspective is is not aligned with reality. This card is like, no, it is. It's all of those things are cool not projecting aligned with reality like using logic, you know, for your best advantage. And then little Knight of Swords being like, okay, well, what are you going to do with this vision? You know, where are we going to take it? Where do you want to take it? And then a totally different element coming in with the emotions with this three of cups, which is such a lovely Cancer card of just feeling, feeling love and feeling support and getting to share that.
June, to see what has come up for June. Wow. Okay. So this is the Book Month. You have the first card here. Is this nine of swords, right? Oh, my God. Is this just, like, anxiety? Like, and just like, oh, fuck. Like, you know, the security card I often think of the Cruelty card is just like an anxiety card. Maybe it's because in the in the Rider-Waite deck, it's the person, you know, sitting up in bed holding their head. And I mean, that's when I get when I get my anxiety, it's always in bed, right, where I'm just laying there and my mind is eating itself. So this is you know, and it's but this is very interesting. You also have the Empress Card and the Art card here.
Fariha Róisín: Interesting.
Michelle Tea: Okay. Right. So, I mean, the Empress Card is really it makes you think a lot of things. I mean, it's gorgeous, obviously, and it's about creativity. And it's like, you know, you created this beautiful work of this book that you're bringing out into the world. And now it's your job to sort of nurture it and be of service to it. The way that, you know, the Empress is sort of like this cosmic mom, the ideal, the ideal cosmic mom that, you know, we've mostly never had. Just wanting to support you and nurture you the way that you're going to be there for your book. Right? So it feels like a very nice, you know, major arcana to get during an important month like that, you know, and I know, you know, you've written so much about your relationship with your mom and how fraught that is. And I'm wondering also if that if there's anything like I don't know what it's like for you to, you know, to write a book that is so so, you know, it's so heavily researched and it's so, you know, there's so much theory and philosophy in it, but it's also there's a lot of memoir in it and you're talking so vulnerably, very memoir. Yeah. So I'm wondering if there's any sort of if you're anticipating.
Fariha Róisín: Yeah. I've been going through this huge legal process because as you know, like I talk about being a child sexual abuse survivor. So it's like I've had to face a lot of legal pushback and them trying to censor me. So like it's been a really hard last couple of months. I'm not surprised the Knight of Swords is there absolutely because it's just hard to put something out like that. A lot of people don't want to see it, you know?
Michelle Tea: Yeah, it's I think it scares a lot of people, you know. So I'm glad that you were able to push through it and get the book that you wanted. And it looks like there's just some, some like residual, you know, it's like it's hard. It's hard. And you're going to be feeling the way that, you know, it's beautiful and like, really like an act of love, not just to yourself but to other people that you did do that, you know, with the Empress Card. But you're also going to be feeling the very kind of human, normal fears around it. Your final card for June, though, is also the Art card. So I feel like you're really like, this is so good. You know, it's like, I love that the art card is a sad card because it really has all that that sort of Jupiter like goodness, bringing good fortune like you did the work, you created the art, you know, I don't know. You know, there's an aspect of this around partnerships. I don't know if there's anybody in your life that that you feel like you'll be getting closer to in June or that was part of this that you'll be celebrating alongside. I feel that often it's not necessarily that it really just is about creativity and about like the relationship that creativity can kind of make you have with yourself, you know? So I just think, yeah, these, these two are bigger than this. Yeah. Not to downplay, not to downplay the swords cards, but, you know, to major arcana is so, so great.
Fariha Róisín: What's the Art card in the Rider-Waite deck?
Michelle Tea: It's Temperance, which has such a different energy, right? It is sort of about that middle path of moderation. And so, you know, sometimes when I'm reading the writer way I'm sorry, when I'm reading the Thoth deck, I do just throw in a little ghost of the Rider-Waite. And so, you know, if I if I were to do that with this, I would say that also, like, you know, June is bound to be a hectic month for you to have this big thing coming out. And it's going to make a big splash and it's going to be so intensely personal and then so public to also, like, do what you can to kind of. Temper the bigger like try to like bring the highs and the lows into some sort of middle path that you can manage, right?
Fariha Róisín: Mm hmm.
Michelle Tea: And now for July. It looks like there's still a little bit more of that that hauntingness in July. You have the seven the seven of disks, which I think this is such an interesting card. I actually just learned a lot about this card from reading I'm Chani Nicholas's app because she had been writing about this recently because, you know, in the Rider-Waite deck, this is not a bad card. It is the card of the person who is, you know, working on their garden or on their farm and is taking a moment to think. And so I'm like, why was Crowley so dark minded all the time? Like, why did he take that card and make it this, you know, really doom and gloomy looking card? And according to Chani, she was talking about how, you know, because the earth wants to grow. Right. And as a Capricorn, you probably really relate to this the way Capricorn always wants to be climbing. Right? There's going to something's always in process. And so when there is a pause, it can become a little weird vacuum for fear to grow in. It can just in that pause, fear can grow. So, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if there's just a moment for you in July where I don't know if you're having anxiety around the book, if there's just like a moment where, like, everything's actually fine, but there's a pause. And in that pause, there's some anxiety.
What's possibly the Antidote for that is the Knight of Cups, your cancer feeding the Cancer parts of yourself, because, you know, it's the Capricorn that's going to be feeling the seven of disks. Like, you know, it's like, oh, but I wanted, you know, I wanted to ascend higher, faster, you know, like in that Capricorn way. But the Knight of Cups with the Cancer, it's like, just go where the love is, go where the love is in your life. Go where the people who love you are. Yes, you know, give yourself love like you did a huge undertaking. This book is a huge undertaking in so many different ways and you just got to love yourself for it and just love the book and be of service to the book and Ace of Swords also. So there's going to be a new way of thinking about it. Now that it's out in the world, it'll be a new way of thinking about yourself as a writer thinker, you know, a person with the sort of raise and profile that this book will bring to you. So that's that's going to be something to process as well. And we'll certainly have like highs and lows with it. And then let's see what August holds for you. Nice. I like this. I like this. So by August you got the Magician card.
Fariha Róisín: I was waiting for that one.
Michelle Tea: Me too. You know, for me, it's like he's going to wait for everything to move into Leo. You know what I mean? It's like, let it just go to let it move into Leo. And it's, it's going to be like you'll be called to shine, right? And all of those all of those things that you're worried about in July where you're like, ahem, you know, it's like, August is going to see so much movement, so much manifestation, and you move from the Ace of Swords to the Ace of Wands, right? Which is that fire that Leo, that was really great. Like, you know, I don't know, being called to perform, being called to express and then look at you also have Queen of Disks, which is that beautiful, self-actualized Capricorn sitting on your pineapple with your pet goat, looking over your beautiful land, like knowing, you know, really being able to own and appreciate, you know, what you've done.
Fariha Róisín: Wow. That's amazing.
Michelle Tea: Yeah. August is going to be awesome for you. August is. I wonder if July is a little bit of like it's almost like, you know, you put so much work into something and then it comes out to the world and then there's a little sag, you know, there's like a little bit of almost like, “Okay, well, I did that and now what?” But like, come, you know, you'll get over that come August. Oh, my God. There's going to be so much for you to do and so many different ways for you to engage.
Fariha Róisín: That's amazing.
Michelle Tea: Yeah. Cool.
Fariha Róisín: Oh, thank you so much. I'm so grateful.
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Michelle Tea: So, this astrological tarot spread is so simple, some of you probably already do it, having seen examples in other media, or maybe even sussing out the possibility on your own. As every house of the zodiac governs a different aspect of our lives, pulling a card for each can give us an informative map of how we’re doing at any given time. I think this is an especially good reading for birthdays and new year celebrations, but it truly is good for any time you need a deeper check-in. Here we go:
Your first card is the First House, ruled by Aries and the planet Mars. This is you – your core personality, how you’re seeing yourself, how you’re feeling.
Card number two is the Second House, where Taurus lives, Venus’ summer home. It represents your home, and the living that occurs within your domicile.
Card Three is Third House / Gemini territory, where Mercury likes to party. It rules communication, writing, gossip, and technology.
Card Four will illuminate your Fourth House of Family. This is a lot of family-of-origin vibes, for better and for worse, and if you have children they will pop up here. It does also rule chosen family. It’s associated with Cancer, and the Moon.
The Fifth House is the Leo house of play, creativity, romance, sex and dating, how you attract and magnetize. It is associated with the Sun.
The Sixth House rules Virgo and also Mercury. It rules how we care for our body, and also discrimination in a brioad sense - what we do and do not allow in and around us, and the boundaries, strategies and order that keeps things near or far from our corruptible selves.
The Seventh House is Libra and Venus, and rules close partnerships – romantic relationships and marriage, yes, but also deep friendships, collaborators, business partners.
The Eight House is heavy duty Scorpio and Pluto vibes. Here we seek the unseen and hidden – the mysteries of sex and death, deep psychology, mysticism and the occult. This is where we harbor our own secrets, and poke at the skeletons in other people’s closets. The deepest emotions – ones we’d rather not admit to having – live here.
The 9th House is cheery and optimistic Sag’s domain, as well as gift-giving Jupiter. It rules the places we expand our knowledge - higher education, travel, meaningful adventure. It also govers philosophy and the fine line between philosophies and spiritual beliefs. Hungry for justice, it also shows what you’ll fight for.
The 10th House is cold, calculated Capricorn’s domain, and the big bad planet Saturn. It’s your career house, where and how you are able to advance yourself through this material world.
The 11th House is the house of community. The groups that you see yourself among, that you look to serve or participate in live here, as does your larger attitudes towards humanity and liberty.
Finally, the 12th house, Pisces and Neptune, rule endings, dissolution, the temporary nature of our temporal world. It’s the house of letting go, and is also spiritual, creative and mysterious. It holds fantasy and illusion, imagination.
You might want to end with a final card that sort of pulls all the information together. It’s a lot to synthesize! Obviously, houses and signs you have a particular affinity for might hit you harder than houses that aren’t too operative in your chart, but still, pay attention to them – like you might not have any Taurus in your chart, or an empty second house, but you still have someplace you lay your head at night, and may need extra help connecting to the realm of ‘home’ with rough second house. This reading can help us better understand the parts of life our natal charts have left us feeling ambivalent about or unskilled at. It also helps you understand more about astrology, even as you’re learning more about the tarot. Enjoy!
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Michelle Tea: We hope you enjoyed this episode, and that it has inspired you to think a bit more about astrology - how it does or doesn’t impact your life, how you might open yourself a bit more to it, how it could be yet another tool in your interpersonal tool box. Of course, there is no substitute for seeing a professional astrologer and having your chart or transits read, so do utilize the services of those in your community practicing this ancient, enduring art.
Your Magic is Ben Cooley, me Michelle Tea, Molly Elizalde, Tony Gannon, and Vera Blossom. We got production support from Kirsten Osei-Bonsu. And our original theme music is by John Kimbrough.