Why I had to change my relationship with astrology – Jessica Shepherd

Recently, I met Susan G. Dressed in your fancy dress and fancy slippa (local-speak, what you think of as flip-flops) to attend the Komen Pink Ball, a fancy gala for Komen breast cancer research.

As I listened to an honorary survivor tell her story, I felt my heart expand. I understand what it feels like to go through a traumatic, life-changing, terrifying experience.

I then thought, in that moment of reflection, about astrology.

Why astrology?, I asked myself.

A part of me wanted to give something to this woman; Something optimistic, helpful. This was astrology for me for a long time. I offered it in this capacity as a way to make a meaningful sense of life to others; A tried and true way to get a person through difficult life paths and cycles, it explains things when nothing else could.

More deeply, astrology was my personal rock – it held me back when no one else did. When life had no meaning, at least astrology did. Oh, it’s eclipse season, I remembered, or I had a Pluto, or Saturn, transit. Yes, that explains things! until it didn’t.

I remember an astrologer friend once said “everything can be astrological…” This is not an unusual sentiment; Overall we can be an evangelist, or an obsessive, herd. I knew what he meant; I could understand the astrology behind everything and still do. Everything!

I still get it when I hear other people loving astrology, who see astrology as the only way to understand life and themselves. As a cosmologist, you probably can’t get closer to the spirit than this. “Astrology is the alphabet of God,” said Steven Forrest.

What happened to me + astrology is probably what happens in a lifelong relationship where one of us is changing too fast. At a certain point, he began to show his limits.

Things changed for me, and in a way I had never anticipated or thought possible. Suddenly, I was pushed into a world of energy; I was feeling things that I didn’t know how to process or hold. Where did this come into play in my natal chart? in my transit?, I asked for the chart. I got nothing. Did not understand anything. When I looked at my chart for answers, everything blurred together in God’s alphabet soup

After decades of practice, during this time of life when I looked at the chart I could no longer see anything personally or practically helpful. Of course I could see at least one signature of “what” was happening: I was revisiting all the trauma, wounds, and injuries I’d ever had my sensibility since the beginning of time. Transiting Pluto was opposing my chart ruler Venus. My lifelong relationship with my gentle, kind and sensitive spirit-nature (Venus in Cancer) was starting from that planet in the Hell Zone.

Did astrological wisdom help me get through a day without feeling at the speedway of the Indy 500? Did it help me deeply navigate my changing relationships with each person in my life, specifically, and on a case by case basis? Did astrology help me get back into my energy body when I was in someone else’s feelings, energies, versus my own body? Does it point to where I got stuck in the old conditioning, and tell me how to free it so I can be free again? Can astrology help me recognize when an external or conditioned energy hijacked my perception, causing me pain? Did astrology give me the practical tools I needed to find my power again? Could this answer where, exactly, all this new learning was going? No, no, no and no…

Often, when the chart does not correctly interpret life, astrologers say: it is not the fault of astrology, it is the interpretation or the interpreter.

…but sometimes astrology is not the right tool for the job. As an astrologer, I too, had a tendency to think of this particular instrument as a wonderfully multi-purpose and miraculous one – anything that could or could have been done.

Right now, Jyotish and I are old, well, guys. It would be really sad to be without it- as I learned, when, during this past Mercury retrograde, I felt like my twenty+ years of charts had disappeared. It felt like a death (I’ve since fixed them)! Last winter I went through a very difficult set of months, and knowing Saturn (boundary) was crossing my Jupiter (extension), and that it would pass, helped a lot. I also enjoy exploring mythology and using astrology psychologically—my favorite.

Divine time, inner work, creatively, for psychological awareness… I imagine I’ll never No Use astrology in some form or the other.

Hearing that this woman attempted to express her personal hell with cancer, I felt all her compassion and my desire to help. If she came to me for astrological consultation, I thought, what can I offer? Will astrology be able and helpful to answer the practical and emotional rigors of daily and often minute-by-minute, traumatic and life-changing event?

Maybe not.

Still, sometimes “this X event is happening through you, and for this period of time” is useful information.

I still enjoy giving astrology to people who find it helpful; In fact, I noticed that my most “popular” writings are astrological.

Yet as with any relationship with an old friend, I understand where it’s best, and where it isn’t. It has strengths and weaknesses.

We’ve gone through a few things, Me + Astrology, and our relationship had to change.

Astrology is now one of my tools; I no longer consider astrology my everything. In doing so, I have given myself more permission: To be all no answer. To be in the unknown, to be with another. To discover and be in my feelings, in my compassionate heart… and my other gifts. When astrology doesn’t “work”: When astrology comes across as too patchy and dry, frivolous, or over-simplified; When the search is too personal, and experience disregards understanding, logic, or even words… these things always will be.