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Thank you so much for joining along.
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This is an introductory episode to the Planetary Update podcast.
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If this is your first time ever listening, good job with starting here.
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I really implore everybody to start with this introductory episode just because everybody's understanding of astrology is a little bit different.
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And the way that even everybody who knows astrology and explains it is going to be a little bit different.
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Astrology is like a song.
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Everyone's going to sing it a little bit differently.
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Maybe some people are going to use a guitar, maybe some people are going to show up the drums in the background, but you should still be able to recognize the song.
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So I just wanted to give in this episode a little bit of an explanation of like not only the basics of astrology, but more so where I'm coming from with my viewpoint of astrology.
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Because I think there's a lot of different ways that people can look at astrology or think about it, or they might have a lot of preconceived notions.
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One of the biggest preconceived notions that I want you to forget while you're listening to my podcast and when I'm talking about astrology is this idea that the planets, the stars, the signs, whatever it is, has power or control or rules us.
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So, like if I say, okay, it's a full moon in Aries, then that is going to control how we're feeling.
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Or if I say, oh, you know, you're born as a Libra, so that means that that's what made you be a people pleaser.
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I don't believe astrology or the planets or anything has power over us.
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I believe that astrology is a reflection of what's happening down here.
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I don't think it causes it.
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I think it's a correlation thing.
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Um, which leads me to my next point, which is that I'm coming to astrology from a place of wanting to deconstruct it and specifically wanting to deconstruct the Western astrology from the patriarchy, because I think even this idea or sentiment that like the planet's rule, how we feel, is an inherently patriarchal way of looking at it because it's not about dominance.
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It's not about me causing this and me forcing the planets forcing you to be, you know, somebody who's X, Y, and Z.
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It's a reflection.
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I think it's a mirror, it's a tool, it's something that can help us.
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So I just want to say that.
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I'm probably gonna say that multiple times throughout the podcast, but especially early along, because I don't like this idea that, and I think it's something that puts a lot of people off, this idea that the planets rule us, that they're the ones that, you know, predetermine everything.
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I just think it's a mirror.
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It's just a tool, it's something that's interesting, it's a reflection.
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So that's my viewpoint of it.
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Um, and as I mentioned before about the Western astrology, there's two major forms of astrology.
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There is tropic Western and there is Vedic and or Eastern astrology, Western and Eastern astrology.
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The main difference is the type of calculations and the math they use, which leads me to my next point, which is that anytime anyone tries to tell you that astrology is not math and science, they're lying.
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Sure, you can say that it is, you know, us trying to make interpretations and translate things, and maybe that's where the water gets a little muddied, blah, blah, blah.
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At the end of the day, though, the very basis of astrology, of any form of astrology, is math and science in numbers, because I can tell you what where the moon is going to be, where the sun is going to be in five days, five years, 50 years, 500 years.
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So long as I have the calculations, I can do it.
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So Western and Eastern astrology use just a little bit of different calculations.
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It's really not anything that crazy.
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I believe that Western astrology still comes to the same consensus and still end up at the same place, still arrive at the same destination, just using a little bit of a different um format.
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So, Western astrology, in an essence, Western astrology doesn't account for the Earth's axis and the earth's tilt.
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Eastern astrology does.
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Western astrology is very sun-focused.
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That's why you, if you're in the United States of America listening and you say, I'm a Libra, I'm an Aries, I'm a Gemini, that's your sun sign.
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Western astrology is very sun sign focused.
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It's very ego-focused, very individualistic, which is all more quote unquote Western culture.
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But it's really important to me that we also understand that where we get Western astrology from is not from the white man.
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It's from the Babylonians and the way in which they calculated astrology.
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Um, so I just want to throw that back out there.
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But it is all Western astrology in and of itself has been entirely co-opted and is incredibly um westernized.
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Whereas Eastern astrology, which is incredibly popular in India um and other countries as well.
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And even if you think about like there's the Chinese zodiac, there's different versions of um astrology and all of these things.
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But to me, we all arrive at the exact same truth.
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So I want to just say that.
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But with Eastern astrology, it's more so focused on your rising sign and your moon sign.
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If you're even remotely interested in astrology, which I'm assuming you are if you're still here, you have probably heard these three terms at least: your sun sign, your rising sign, your moon sign, especially in like pop culture astrology.
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Um, like growing up, all I ever heard about was my sun sign.
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I didn't really know much about astrology, which I'll get into my own personal history in just a second.
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But then I started hearing about rising, moon, your Venus, your Mars, all of the things.
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Um, so it's interesting to me because where Western astrology is very ego-focused, sun-focused, individualistic, Eastern astrology tends to be more about your rising and your moon, more about your karma, your familial history, what's happening on like a more collective sense.
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Um, once again, I think that both of these calculations arrive us to the same truth.
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And I believe personally that astrology, whether we're talking about Western or Vedic, whether we're talking about the planets, whether we're talking about the constellations, or they're talking about the houses in the physical chart, the astrological chart, we're talking about the same 12 energies over and over again.
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This is my very firm belief.
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It's something that I've arrived to, not by myself, but you know, other people agree.
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But it is something that is kind of my stakehold in astrology, is that it's not so much about this planet, that, but it's about the same 12 energies, which brings me to where I wanted to come next, which is how I got here as somebody who's sitting here talking to you, thinking that they know it all about astrology.
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So my background with astrology um is probably very similar to most of yours.
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I didn't really know that much about astrology growing up.
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It was just in the pop culture, oh, you know, I'm a Libra.
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So that's why I keep saying Libra.
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Um, you're a Libra, this, that, whatever.
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And then they would read me the description of Libra.
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Oh, you know, you're a peacekeeper, you're a people person, you're very graceful, all the things.
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And I remember kind of thinking, well, I think people kind of see me that way, and I do want to be seen that way, but just feel like that's not really me.
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Like I uh my sun sign, and I think a lot of people will feel this way, and they should, because I think reducing astrology down to horoscopes and your sun sign is really, really, really limiting.
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And as a result, probably not going to make you feel very understood or make you feel like you're reflected in your astrological chart if you're just looking at your sun sign.
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Because I know for me, when I was looking at just Libra, I was like, well, this is, you know, maybe me and partially me, but uh there's a lot more.
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It's a lot deeper.
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Um, so that was my understanding of astrology for almost all of growing up.
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And then, coincidentally, in 2020 of all years, while I was on a podcast of all things, somebody brought up um co-star, and we looked up everybody's charts, and then all of a sudden somebody was telling me, Okay, you're a Libra sun, but you're in Aries Rising, but you're in Gemini Moon, but you're a Leo, Venus, and Mars and a Virgo Mercury.
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And I was thinking, well, what the fuck does that all mean?
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Um, I had no idea what they meant.
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And I just kind of was like, okay, you know, 2020 me.
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I thought it was interesting.
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I love to do self-reflection because being a Libra with a Gemini moon, the idea, my idea and sense of self is forever a theme for me in a way that it is for like more than most people.
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Like, who am I?
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What am I doing here?
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Like, yeah, how am I presenting versus who am I really?
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Of course, we all have those questions.
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Genuinely, I feel like I'm somebody who struggles to have a sense of self, not so much as I've arrived to the age of 30, but especially growing up, I was like, well, I don't understand who I am.
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So I'm always drawn to self-reflective things like astrology, where it tells me, okay, because you're an Aries rising, you're um really brash.
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Well, maybe that's true, maybe that's not.
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But either way, I'm gonna have to reflect on that.
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So I enjoy any sort of platform or modem where like I can reflect.
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And that's what astrology was.
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So I took that, I took COSAR and I thought, this is interesting.
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And I kind of sat with it for a little while and I got more and more interested in it.
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And I felt actually, especially when somebody described my Gemini moon, um, I felt very understood.
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And this is another part of this that I really want, as you're listening along, if you're not an astrology person, or maybe you are, please memorize just you don't have to memorize your birth chart.
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That's not what I'm saying.
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Just your sun, moon rising, just memorize the three signs that those are in.
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So sun, moon, rising.
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So I'm, you know, Libra, Aries, Gemini.
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I want you to just remember the name of the three signs in your big three, especially if you're somebody who's not a big astrology person as you listen along, because it will help you understand and help you learn the signs because you'll think about yourself and think about different things.
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So I implore you to do that because that's what happened with me.
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And then I just kind of kept, you know, thinking about astrology and it was really interesting.
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And I felt like I saw a pattern.
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And then my grandmother passed away.
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She passed away.
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She loved astrology, but she really loved to read.
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She loved romance books, and I inherited that from her.
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I love romance books.
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And the day after my grandma died, there was something in me that just shifted.
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And it wasn't this big shift, it wasn't anything crazy.
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It just was like something clicked.
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I don't know if it was her soul being able to pass on and then make me wake up or something.
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I don't know.
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Um, but something clicked where I realized that I wanted to start writing romance novels because that's all I did was read romance novels.
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It was my I just, it was like once I realized I could write them and that was even a future and a possibility, it just was like, well, there's no other option.
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So I started writing, dropped out of grad school because I couldn't even stop writing to finish my grad school work.
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Um, and I was just, you know, working on different creative projects, writing, working, thinking, working on this one book.
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And then about three months into creative writing, I got hit with the idea for a book where I just got hit with this idea of like a witch and a wolf.
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And it sent me into this long spiral of I truly believe that like I was given the idea for this book from something up above.
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And I don't mean like God, I just mean like I felt like this idea for this book came to me, and I realized it was gonna have to be a fantasy book where the magic system was entirely based around the 12 zodiac signs.
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And I'll be honest with you, I really didn't want to do that because I felt like it was a book that was really just based in one of the signs, and I was trying to keep it as like not creating an entire magic system around astrology.
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But very quickly into writing the story, I mean like a day, I realized I was gonna have to build an entire world based off of astrology.
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And it's it's a paranormal romance astrology book, so it's not, you know, it's on Earth.
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Um, I just mean an entire world as in like 12 different, you know, I had to understand the 12 energies on a really deep sense.
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So, my what I did was I created a fantasy novel where each of the 12 astrological signs represent a god or a soul that have lived on Earth.
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So, like the fourth sign, the sign of the moon, Cancer, represents the fourth soul who then created the wolves and in every lifetime was like the god or goddess of the moon, whether it's the Egyptian goddess of the moon, the Chinese goddess of the moon, um, you know, whatever it is, a Native American god of the moon.
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It's all the idea from my book was that it was all the same soul being born again and again and again and again.
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And then my idea was that all of those 12 souls left Earth.
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And when they left Earth, they left behind a descendant, a magical descendant that is one of the magical creatures in our, you know, everyday lives, quote unquote.
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So, like the vampires were created by the soul of Scorpio.
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So, this is all along, which if you are interested in any of what I'm saying, I really beg you to go and look at my book, Taken from the Sky, by Hannah Hughes, The Founding Soul series.
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Taken from the Sky is the title.
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Um, because it basically led me down a path to be able to then really understand and talk about astrology.
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And it was just kind of this melding of word worlds of like my interest in astrology, my interest in romance novels, and then it came together and I busted out this book, the first part of the book, taken from the sky that I'm talking about, the first part of the series.
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And then I realized I needed to have an audience because I tried to promote my book on TikTok.
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I got on there and I said, you know, I have the best book ever.
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But the issue with that is that there's a million authors on there that think that they have the best book ever.
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And so you you aren't a credible source as the author of your own novel.
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And that was kind of debilitating to me because I realized, oh my God, there's work in creating and writing and doing all of that.
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And I happily did that work.
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But then the work of marketing the book, it was genuinely debilitating to me.
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Um I basically have spent the last like two years kind of, I mean, every day writing, but it's like, I don't want to write my books anymore because it's like I'm realizing that I have to get people to read it and I have to like market it.
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And there's this whole other, you know, attention game, entertainment game of like trying to get people to be entertained enough to even hop over to the book.
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Well, then I, you know, sat with it for a long time.
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And through these two years, I've been really loving astrology and all my friends know I love astrology.
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I love to give people, like, you know, reads of their chart, random people.
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My friend will always text me random birth times, and I'm giving them, you know, an explanation of who this person is based on their astrological chart when I don't even know who I'm talking about.
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So I've just been keeping my interest in astrology.
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And then it kind of dawned on me that I should start an astrology podcast because every morning I um have multiple outlets where, whether it's my calendar, Instagram pages, a Substack post that are people that write about astrology and the astrological forecast of the day, particularly usually the moon.
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And what I found was that there's not really um an auditory version of this, like a version that's a podcast.
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Maybe there is um like some YouTube videos of it.
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I could see that being more common.
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But when I would go on Apple Podcasts Spotify and I try to find just like a daily update, astrological update, I felt like it almost didn't really exist.
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Um, so here I am.
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I realized, oh, because mostly because I love to listen to podcasts, it's how I get most of my information.
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Even reading now, I'm a busy mom.
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I've got a 10-month-old, even before then, I've got an attention span of negative zero, I'm a Gemini moon.
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So I like to be talked to and to be told things orally.
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So that's why when I was going to look for these podcasts and I was like, well, I want somebody to tell me what's going on in the sky today, and I feel like it didn't exist.
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Well, here I am creating it.
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So that's why I'm here.
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Um, that's why I feel like I have enough knowledge to be able to speak about the 12 zodiac signs, is because um, even though it was just born out of like complete and total, you know, interest and like nothing that I thought would ever be, I don't know, a career.
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Um, it led me to all of these paths.
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It led me to this path of writing a book.
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It led me to this path now of being able to do this podcast, which in theory, I could use the audience that I have for the podcast and translate it over to the book.
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And so the second I realized that I should do this podcast, I've been working on it and here I am, and I've been waiting for the Taurus full moon to do it.
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The last thing I'm gonna say in this introductory is that I started this podcast during a retrograde, a Mercury retrograde.
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Crazy, extremely ballsy, genuinely borderline insane.
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When Mercury is retrograde, it's like the most common planet to go retrograde because um it's the planet that's closest to us, so it moves the fastest and it goes retrograde the most often.
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Retrograde means that from the viewpoint of Earth, it looks like the planet is spinning backwards.
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Is the planet actually spinning backwards?
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No, it's not.
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But from the viewpoint of Earth, it looks like it is.
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So the idea is that whatever planet is going backwards is gonna have this energy with it of like, okay, we're retracing our steps.
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So Mercury, when it goes retrograde, you'll hear people say, Oh God, don't do anything important.
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Don't start this, don't go buy a new car, don't buy new technology during a Mercury retrograde.
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Um, you know, maybe your ex is gonna come back, somebody from your past will come back, you'll go back and work on a project from a long time ago.
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So that's what a retrograde is.
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The reason I am purposefully starting a podcast during a Mercury retrograde is because I want the retrograde energy to actually be in this podcast.
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When something is retrograde, you get to retrace, you get to go back, you get to relearn, redo, not always redo, but like rethink about things.
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That's what I want this podcast to be is a rethinking, a retelling of astrology in a way that is less male-centered, less white-centered, a little bit deconstruct, a lot of it deconstructed in a way that we're rethinking about each of the 12 signs in a way that is hopefully more honest and more accurate, um, whatever that may be and whatever that may mean.
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So while I am crazy for starting this podcast during a retrograde, and while there is going to be technical difficulties and there already have been technical difficulties because I am not a technical person, A and B, retrogrades, particularly Mercury retrogrades, are known for like technical difficulties.
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I know I'm crazy.
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Also, if you feel like some of the podcast episodes this week have a whole bunch of like um like noises like this, is because I Mercury was in retrograde when I started this podcast.
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And the first like three episodes I recorded, I had an earring on.
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It was stupid.
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You live and you learn.
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But if you're listening this early along, you're probably, and you're still here at the end of this introductory podcast, you're probably one of my good friends or my mom or my sister or somebody.
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So I hope as you listen along, there's something new that you learn every day, whether it's because you're brand new to astrology or whether you're a professional astrologer, there's always something we learn from each other.
00:19:57.039 --> 00:20:00.319
And by learning about the signs and thinking about the signs and talking about them.
00:20:00.480 --> 00:20:11.039
So thank you guys so much for joining, and I hope you enjoyed.
00:00:05.599 --> 00:00:07.440
Thank you so much for joining along.
00:00:07.599 --> 00:00:11.439
This is an introductory episode to the Planetary Update podcast.
00:00:11.679 --> 00:00:15.119
If this is your first time ever listening, good job with starting here.
00:00:15.279 --> 00:00:23.039
I really implore everybody to start with this introductory episode just because everybody's understanding of astrology is a little bit different.
00:00:23.359 --> 00:00:28.640
And the way that even everybody who knows astrology and explains it is going to be a little bit different.
00:00:28.800 --> 00:00:30.320
Astrology is like a song.
00:00:30.480 --> 00:00:32.240
Everyone's going to sing it a little bit differently.
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Maybe some people are going to use a guitar, maybe some people are going to show up the drums in the background, but you should still be able to recognize the song.
00:00:40.159 --> 00:00:51.520
So I just wanted to give in this episode a little bit of an explanation of like not only the basics of astrology, but more so where I'm coming from with my viewpoint of astrology.
00:00:51.759 --> 00:01:00.159
Because I think there's a lot of different ways that people can look at astrology or think about it, or they might have a lot of preconceived notions.
00:01:00.399 --> 00:01:17.359
One of the biggest preconceived notions that I want you to forget while you're listening to my podcast and when I'm talking about astrology is this idea that the planets, the stars, the signs, whatever it is, has power or control or rules us.
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So, like if I say, okay, it's a full moon in Aries, then that is going to control how we're feeling.
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Or if I say, oh, you know, you're born as a Libra, so that means that that's what made you be a people pleaser.
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I don't believe astrology or the planets or anything has power over us.
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I believe that astrology is a reflection of what's happening down here.
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I don't think it causes it.
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I think it's a correlation thing.
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Um, which leads me to my next point, which is that I'm coming to astrology from a place of wanting to deconstruct it and specifically wanting to deconstruct the Western astrology from the patriarchy, because I think even this idea or sentiment that like the planet's rule, how we feel, is an inherently patriarchal way of looking at it because it's not about dominance.
00:02:09.120 --> 00:02:16.000
It's not about me causing this and me forcing the planets forcing you to be, you know, somebody who's X, Y, and Z.
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It's a reflection.
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I think it's a mirror, it's a tool, it's something that can help us.
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So I just want to say that.
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I'm probably gonna say that multiple times throughout the podcast, but especially early along, because I don't like this idea that, and I think it's something that puts a lot of people off, this idea that the planets rule us, that they're the ones that, you know, predetermine everything.
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I just think it's a mirror.
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It's just a tool, it's something that's interesting, it's a reflection.
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So that's my viewpoint of it.
00:02:42.479 --> 00:02:48.319
Um, and as I mentioned before about the Western astrology, there's two major forms of astrology.
00:02:48.800 --> 00:02:56.400
There is tropic Western and there is Vedic and or Eastern astrology, Western and Eastern astrology.
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The main difference is the type of calculations and the math they use, which leads me to my next point, which is that anytime anyone tries to tell you that astrology is not math and science, they're lying.
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Sure, you can say that it is, you know, us trying to make interpretations and translate things, and maybe that's where the water gets a little muddied, blah, blah, blah.
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At the end of the day, though, the very basis of astrology, of any form of astrology, is math and science in numbers, because I can tell you what where the moon is going to be, where the sun is going to be in five days, five years, 50 years, 500 years.
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So long as I have the calculations, I can do it.
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So Western and Eastern astrology use just a little bit of different calculations.
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It's really not anything that crazy.
00:03:51.919 --> 00:04:03.520
I believe that Western astrology still comes to the same consensus and still end up at the same place, still arrive at the same destination, just using a little bit of a different um format.
00:04:03.680 --> 00:04:11.520
So, Western astrology, in an essence, Western astrology doesn't account for the Earth's axis and the earth's tilt.
00:04:11.759 --> 00:04:13.120
Eastern astrology does.
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Western astrology is very sun-focused.
00:04:15.919 --> 00:04:22.560
That's why you, if you're in the United States of America listening and you say, I'm a Libra, I'm an Aries, I'm a Gemini, that's your sun sign.
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Western astrology is very sun sign focused.
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It's very ego-focused, very individualistic, which is all more quote unquote Western culture.
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But it's really important to me that we also understand that where we get Western astrology from is not from the white man.
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It's from the Babylonians and the way in which they calculated astrology.
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Um, so I just want to throw that back out there.
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But it is all Western astrology in and of itself has been entirely co-opted and is incredibly um westernized.
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Whereas Eastern astrology, which is incredibly popular in India um and other countries as well.
00:05:01.920 --> 00:05:10.079
And even if you think about like there's the Chinese zodiac, there's different versions of um astrology and all of these things.
00:05:10.160 --> 00:05:12.639
But to me, we all arrive at the exact same truth.
00:05:12.720 --> 00:05:13.920
So I want to just say that.
00:05:14.000 --> 00:05:19.439
But with Eastern astrology, it's more so focused on your rising sign and your moon sign.
00:05:19.920 --> 00:05:31.839
If you're even remotely interested in astrology, which I'm assuming you are if you're still here, you have probably heard these three terms at least: your sun sign, your rising sign, your moon sign, especially in like pop culture astrology.
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Um, like growing up, all I ever heard about was my sun sign.
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I didn't really know much about astrology, which I'll get into my own personal history in just a second.
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But then I started hearing about rising, moon, your Venus, your Mars, all of the things.
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Um, so it's interesting to me because where Western astrology is very ego-focused, sun-focused, individualistic, Eastern astrology tends to be more about your rising and your moon, more about your karma, your familial history, what's happening on like a more collective sense.
00:06:02.879 --> 00:06:10.560
Um, once again, I think that both of these calculations arrive us to the same truth.
00:06:10.800 --> 00:06:27.759
And I believe personally that astrology, whether we're talking about Western or Vedic, whether we're talking about the planets, whether we're talking about the constellations, or they're talking about the houses in the physical chart, the astrological chart, we're talking about the same 12 energies over and over again.
00:06:27.920 --> 00:06:29.680
This is my very firm belief.
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It's something that I've arrived to, not by myself, but you know, other people agree.
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But it is something that is kind of my stakehold in astrology, is that it's not so much about this planet, that, but it's about the same 12 energies, which brings me to where I wanted to come next, which is how I got here as somebody who's sitting here talking to you, thinking that they know it all about astrology.
00:06:52.000 --> 00:06:57.040
So my background with astrology um is probably very similar to most of yours.
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I didn't really know that much about astrology growing up.
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It was just in the pop culture, oh, you know, I'm a Libra.
00:07:02.639 --> 00:07:04.079
So that's why I keep saying Libra.
00:07:04.240 --> 00:07:06.240
Um, you're a Libra, this, that, whatever.
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And then they would read me the description of Libra.
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Oh, you know, you're a peacekeeper, you're a people person, you're very graceful, all the things.
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And I remember kind of thinking, well, I think people kind of see me that way, and I do want to be seen that way, but just feel like that's not really me.
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Like I uh my sun sign, and I think a lot of people will feel this way, and they should, because I think reducing astrology down to horoscopes and your sun sign is really, really, really limiting.
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And as a result, probably not going to make you feel very understood or make you feel like you're reflected in your astrological chart if you're just looking at your sun sign.
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Because I know for me, when I was looking at just Libra, I was like, well, this is, you know, maybe me and partially me, but uh there's a lot more.
00:07:53.759 --> 00:07:54.879
It's a lot deeper.
00:07:55.120 --> 00:07:58.800
Um, so that was my understanding of astrology for almost all of growing up.
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And then, coincidentally, in 2020 of all years, while I was on a podcast of all things, somebody brought up um co-star, and we looked up everybody's charts, and then all of a sudden somebody was telling me, Okay, you're a Libra sun, but you're in Aries Rising, but you're in Gemini Moon, but you're a Leo, Venus, and Mars and a Virgo Mercury.
00:08:18.480 --> 00:08:21.839
And I was thinking, well, what the fuck does that all mean?
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Um, I had no idea what they meant.
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And I just kind of was like, okay, you know, 2020 me.
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I thought it was interesting.
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I love to do self-reflection because being a Libra with a Gemini moon, the idea, my idea and sense of self is forever a theme for me in a way that it is for like more than most people.
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Like, who am I?
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What am I doing here?
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Like, yeah, how am I presenting versus who am I really?
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Of course, we all have those questions.
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Genuinely, I feel like I'm somebody who struggles to have a sense of self, not so much as I've arrived to the age of 30, but especially growing up, I was like, well, I don't understand who I am.
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So I'm always drawn to self-reflective things like astrology, where it tells me, okay, because you're an Aries rising, you're um really brash.
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Well, maybe that's true, maybe that's not.
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But either way, I'm gonna have to reflect on that.
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So I enjoy any sort of platform or modem where like I can reflect.
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And that's what astrology was.
00:09:16.080 --> 00:09:18.960
So I took that, I took COSAR and I thought, this is interesting.
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And I kind of sat with it for a little while and I got more and more interested in it.
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And I felt actually, especially when somebody described my Gemini moon, um, I felt very understood.
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And this is another part of this that I really want, as you're listening along, if you're not an astrology person, or maybe you are, please memorize just you don't have to memorize your birth chart.
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That's not what I'm saying.
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Just your sun, moon rising, just memorize the three signs that those are in.
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So sun, moon, rising.
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So I'm, you know, Libra, Aries, Gemini.
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I want you to just remember the name of the three signs in your big three, especially if you're somebody who's not a big astrology person as you listen along, because it will help you understand and help you learn the signs because you'll think about yourself and think about different things.
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So I implore you to do that because that's what happened with me.
00:10:13.759 --> 00:10:18.159
And then I just kind of kept, you know, thinking about astrology and it was really interesting.
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And I felt like I saw a pattern.
00:10:20.320 --> 00:10:23.440
And then my grandmother passed away.
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She passed away.
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She loved astrology, but she really loved to read.
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She loved romance books, and I inherited that from her.
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I love romance books.
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And the day after my grandma died, there was something in me that just shifted.
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And it wasn't this big shift, it wasn't anything crazy.
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It just was like something clicked.
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I don't know if it was her soul being able to pass on and then make me wake up or something.
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I don't know.
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Um, but something clicked where I realized that I wanted to start writing romance novels because that's all I did was read romance novels.
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It was my I just, it was like once I realized I could write them and that was even a future and a possibility, it just was like, well, there's no other option.
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So I started writing, dropped out of grad school because I couldn't even stop writing to finish my grad school work.
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Um, and I was just, you know, working on different creative projects, writing, working, thinking, working on this one book.
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And then about three months into creative writing, I got hit with the idea for a book where I just got hit with this idea of like a witch and a wolf.
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And it sent me into this long spiral of I truly believe that like I was given the idea for this book from something up above.
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And I don't mean like God, I just mean like I felt like this idea for this book came to me, and I realized it was gonna have to be a fantasy book where the magic system was entirely based around the 12 zodiac signs.
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And I'll be honest with you, I really didn't want to do that because I felt like it was a book that was really just based in one of the signs, and I was trying to keep it as like not creating an entire magic system around astrology.
00:12:03.360 --> 00:12:10.960
But very quickly into writing the story, I mean like a day, I realized I was gonna have to build an entire world based off of astrology.
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And it's it's a paranormal romance astrology book, so it's not, you know, it's on Earth.
00:12:15.679 --> 00:12:23.919
Um, I just mean an entire world as in like 12 different, you know, I had to understand the 12 energies on a really deep sense.
00:12:24.080 --> 00:12:34.639
So, my what I did was I created a fantasy novel where each of the 12 astrological signs represent a god or a soul that have lived on Earth.
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So, like the fourth sign, the sign of the moon, Cancer, represents the fourth soul who then created the wolves and in every lifetime was like the god or goddess of the moon, whether it's the Egyptian goddess of the moon, the Chinese goddess of the moon, um, you know, whatever it is, a Native American god of the moon.
00:12:55.279 --> 00:13:00.639
It's all the idea from my book was that it was all the same soul being born again and again and again and again.
00:13:00.879 --> 00:13:05.120
And then my idea was that all of those 12 souls left Earth.
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And when they left Earth, they left behind a descendant, a magical descendant that is one of the magical creatures in our, you know, everyday lives, quote unquote.
00:13:15.600 --> 00:13:19.679
So, like the vampires were created by the soul of Scorpio.
00:13:19.840 --> 00:13:29.200
So, this is all along, which if you are interested in any of what I'm saying, I really beg you to go and look at my book, Taken from the Sky, by Hannah Hughes, The Founding Soul series.
00:13:29.360 --> 00:13:31.039
Taken from the Sky is the title.
00:13:31.279 --> 00:13:39.120
Um, because it basically led me down a path to be able to then really understand and talk about astrology.
00:13:39.519 --> 00:13:53.360
And it was just kind of this melding of word worlds of like my interest in astrology, my interest in romance novels, and then it came together and I busted out this book, the first part of the book, taken from the sky that I'm talking about, the first part of the series.
00:13:53.600 --> 00:13:59.200
And then I realized I needed to have an audience because I tried to promote my book on TikTok.
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I got on there and I said, you know, I have the best book ever.
00:14:03.360 --> 00:14:07.600
But the issue with that is that there's a million authors on there that think that they have the best book ever.
00:14:07.759 --> 00:14:12.799
And so you you aren't a credible source as the author of your own novel.
00:14:13.120 --> 00:14:22.639
And that was kind of debilitating to me because I realized, oh my God, there's work in creating and writing and doing all of that.
00:14:22.799 --> 00:14:24.320
And I happily did that work.
00:14:24.480 --> 00:14:30.320
But then the work of marketing the book, it was genuinely debilitating to me.
00:14:30.639 --> 00:14:44.960
Um I basically have spent the last like two years kind of, I mean, every day writing, but it's like, I don't want to write my books anymore because it's like I'm realizing that I have to get people to read it and I have to like market it.
00:14:45.120 --> 00:14:55.279
And there's this whole other, you know, attention game, entertainment game of like trying to get people to be entertained enough to even hop over to the book.
00:14:55.840 --> 00:14:58.480
Well, then I, you know, sat with it for a long time.
00:14:58.639 --> 00:15:03.600
And through these two years, I've been really loving astrology and all my friends know I love astrology.
00:15:03.919 --> 00:15:08.080
I love to give people, like, you know, reads of their chart, random people.
00:15:08.240 --> 00:15:17.679
My friend will always text me random birth times, and I'm giving them, you know, an explanation of who this person is based on their astrological chart when I don't even know who I'm talking about.
00:15:17.919 --> 00:15:20.240
So I've just been keeping my interest in astrology.
00:15:20.320 --> 00:15:41.360
And then it kind of dawned on me that I should start an astrology podcast because every morning I um have multiple outlets where, whether it's my calendar, Instagram pages, a Substack post that are people that write about astrology and the astrological forecast of the day, particularly usually the moon.
00:15:41.600 --> 00:15:50.159
And what I found was that there's not really um an auditory version of this, like a version that's a podcast.
00:15:50.320 --> 00:15:53.360
Maybe there is um like some YouTube videos of it.
00:15:53.519 --> 00:15:55.519
I could see that being more common.
00:15:55.759 --> 00:16:04.879
But when I would go on Apple Podcasts Spotify and I try to find just like a daily update, astrological update, I felt like it almost didn't really exist.
00:16:05.360 --> 00:16:07.200
Um, so here I am.
00:16:07.519 --> 00:16:13.200
I realized, oh, because mostly because I love to listen to podcasts, it's how I get most of my information.
00:16:13.360 --> 00:16:15.360
Even reading now, I'm a busy mom.
00:16:15.440 --> 00:16:21.039
I've got a 10-month-old, even before then, I've got an attention span of negative zero, I'm a Gemini moon.
00:16:21.360 --> 00:16:27.360
So I like to be talked to and to be told things orally.
00:16:27.600 --> 00:16:35.519
So that's why when I was going to look for these podcasts and I was like, well, I want somebody to tell me what's going on in the sky today, and I feel like it didn't exist.
00:16:35.600 --> 00:16:36.799
Well, here I am creating it.
00:16:36.960 --> 00:16:38.480
So that's why I'm here.
00:16:38.720 --> 00:16:56.639
Um, that's why I feel like I have enough knowledge to be able to speak about the 12 zodiac signs, is because um, even though it was just born out of like complete and total, you know, interest and like nothing that I thought would ever be, I don't know, a career.
00:16:57.039 --> 00:16:59.440
Um, it led me to all of these paths.
00:16:59.519 --> 00:17:01.600
It led me to this path of writing a book.
00:17:01.679 --> 00:17:10.960
It led me to this path now of being able to do this podcast, which in theory, I could use the audience that I have for the podcast and translate it over to the book.
00:17:11.519 --> 00:17:19.440
And so the second I realized that I should do this podcast, I've been working on it and here I am, and I've been waiting for the Taurus full moon to do it.
00:17:19.759 --> 00:17:27.279
The last thing I'm gonna say in this introductory is that I started this podcast during a retrograde, a Mercury retrograde.
00:17:27.599 --> 00:17:32.559
Crazy, extremely ballsy, genuinely borderline insane.
00:17:33.039 --> 00:17:43.599
When Mercury is retrograde, it's like the most common planet to go retrograde because um it's the planet that's closest to us, so it moves the fastest and it goes retrograde the most often.
00:17:43.759 --> 00:17:47.519
Retrograde means that from the viewpoint of Earth, it looks like the planet is spinning backwards.
00:17:47.680 --> 00:17:49.279
Is the planet actually spinning backwards?
00:17:49.440 --> 00:17:50.079
No, it's not.
00:17:50.160 --> 00:17:52.079
But from the viewpoint of Earth, it looks like it is.
00:17:52.160 --> 00:17:59.119
So the idea is that whatever planet is going backwards is gonna have this energy with it of like, okay, we're retracing our steps.
00:17:59.279 --> 00:18:05.279
So Mercury, when it goes retrograde, you'll hear people say, Oh God, don't do anything important.
00:18:05.440 --> 00:18:10.720
Don't start this, don't go buy a new car, don't buy new technology during a Mercury retrograde.
00:18:10.960 --> 00:18:18.559
Um, you know, maybe your ex is gonna come back, somebody from your past will come back, you'll go back and work on a project from a long time ago.
00:18:18.640 --> 00:18:19.920
So that's what a retrograde is.
00:18:20.079 --> 00:18:30.240
The reason I am purposefully starting a podcast during a Mercury retrograde is because I want the retrograde energy to actually be in this podcast.
00:18:30.480 --> 00:18:38.960
When something is retrograde, you get to retrace, you get to go back, you get to relearn, redo, not always redo, but like rethink about things.
00:18:39.279 --> 00:19:00.400
That's what I want this podcast to be is a rethinking, a retelling of astrology in a way that is less male-centered, less white-centered, a little bit deconstruct, a lot of it deconstructed in a way that we're rethinking about each of the 12 signs in a way that is hopefully more honest and more accurate, um, whatever that may be and whatever that may mean.
00:19:00.640 --> 00:19:16.400
So while I am crazy for starting this podcast during a retrograde, and while there is going to be technical difficulties and there already have been technical difficulties because I am not a technical person, A and B, retrogrades, particularly Mercury retrogrades, are known for like technical difficulties.
00:19:16.640 --> 00:19:17.920
I know I'm crazy.
00:19:18.240 --> 00:19:30.799
Also, if you feel like some of the podcast episodes this week have a whole bunch of like um like noises like this, is because I Mercury was in retrograde when I started this podcast.
00:19:30.880 --> 00:19:34.559
And the first like three episodes I recorded, I had an earring on.
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It was stupid.
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You live and you learn.
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But if you're listening this early along, you're probably, and you're still here at the end of this introductory podcast, you're probably one of my good friends or my mom or my sister or somebody.
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So I hope as you listen along, there's something new that you learn every day, whether it's because you're brand new to astrology or whether you're a professional astrologer, there's always something we learn from each other.
00:19:57.039 --> 00:20:00.319
And by learning about the signs and thinking about the signs and talking about them.
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So thank you guys so much for joining, and I hope you enjoyed.
