ZZL 9 Laura Sanger Watkins | Reading Your Stars

 

The sun, moon, and stars have more of an effect on our lives than we realize. This is because we are all connected with the stars, and reading your stars can help your daily life. Join our host, Tesa Baum, in this conversation with Astrological Counselor, Reiki Master, Crystal Healer, and Cross-Cultural Energy Healer Laura Sanger Watkins as they discuss reading your stars. Laura talks about how she got into astrology, learning the different forms of astrology, and how people are all different. They also discuss how people are connected with each other and how the stars affect our lives.

Listen to the podcast here

 

Laura Sanger Watkins On Reading Your Stars: A Conversation About Astrology

Ithis episode, I’m so excited for you to know one of my spiritual buddies, Laura Sanger Watkins. Laura has been studying astrology for many years. She has twenty years of experience as an Astrological Counselor and has been teaching the annual Intro To Astrology class at Twin Star Herbal Education in New Milford, Connecticut for the past five years. Laura is a Level III Reiki Master, Crystal Healer and a Cross-Cultural Energy Healer specializing in Core Shamanic and Andean practices. A passionate and continual student of astrology, plant medicine, world mythologies and goddess traditions, Laura is your typical Ninth House Sun in Gemini. It will be a lot of fun to know her zigzag stories. How are you? 

I am okay. It’s a sunny day. 

[bctt tweet=”You can have your own personal practice which is super sacred, but as a community or a group, what new rites of passage can we create?” via=”no”]

It is a sunny day. It’s still cold and I’m looking forward to the warmth to come through and everything takes offIs that the way you feel it like we are tiptoeing now? 

I feel like spring is getting a later start in 2021 because it has been chillier but at the same time, seasonally, we are getting into that part where the days are getting longer and the mornings are getting brighter. That always cheers me up. 

I’m definitely in a good mood. I’m excited to talk to you. I know it is the New Moon so I wanted to pick this day, especially to speak with you. Laura, I know we have talked about the theme of the ZigZag of Life and I know you have so many stories to share. I’m putting you on the spot but anything you want to share now? Do you have an impactful zigzag story that you want to share or your philosophy about that pattern of life, the zigzag? 

Can I do both? 

You can do anything you want. Yes. 

I have had a lot of zigzags in my life. I often have said to peoplemy mother had this idea. She used to call it the plan and she was always upset that I didn’t follow the plan, which was college, job, marriage, kids, raise them forever and dieI came from a family of educators. I have educators on both sides of my family. Several principals, a couple of high school teachers, various other forms of teachers. My sister was in charge of adult education at the college that she worked for. The fact that I went to college three times and dropped out 2 to 3 times was horrifying to my family. My main zigzag, the first one was, I was raised Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, which is a very conservative branch of the Lutheran church. I went to the parochial Lutheran school that my father was the principal of from kindergarten through eighth gradeI did dip into public school, but then I was sent to a Lutheran University. That is where I lost my faith in God ironically. 

It was the God that I was raised with that I suddenly began to question. When I started to question that, it made me question everything and then my foundation fell apart. I ended up turning to alcohol and became an alcoholic. A long time ago, I read once Carl Jung, the famous psychotherapist says that “Alcoholism is a lowgrade spiritual quest, your drinking spirits. I was trying to seek something that I had lost. Alcohol filled that bill for a little while, then it turned on me and did not. You enter a recovery program and the first thing they suggest you do is to find a higher power. That was hard for me because I thought I knew what my higher power was and I did not like it. 

Do you see it like a little man? Is that what the vision was, this judgmental, allknowing? 

I saw the dude on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. The guy with the beard, pointing his finger down. There was a lot of spitting in the Old Testament so I was expecting to be smote for being bad. lot of Lutheran theologians would tell me that I definitely missed the message because one of Martin Luther’s main messages was, “It wasn’t by good works that you go to heaven but by grace.” I didn’t get that message. I’ve got the message like you’ve got to be this and that and you’ve got to deny this and thatI was like, “That didn’t sound very fun to me. If God is going to count me out, then I’m going to count God out. Screw God.” It became aboutI don’t believe in anything but a good time. Fun became my higher power. My idea of a good time worked and changed except after a while, it wasn’t as fun as I thought it would be. I had to find a higher power again. Getting sober was a huge zigzag because If you want to do a vertical zigzag, I was on the way down and then I had to zag backup. 

It’s funny because I always think of it as the zig is the up and the zag is the downIt’s fun thing to think about. 

I usually think of zigzags as being vertical. There are a lot of ups and downs images in sobriety like bottoming out and then pulling yourself back up. Part of my lifelong quest then has been trying to find out what this higher power is for me. That has been keeping me sober for 25 years. When I’ve first got sober and I was talking to a spiritual advisor, my spiritual advisor was raised culturally Jewish but on the atheist intellectual tip, he had a big white light experience and became a bornagain Christian. When he first started talking to me about what God was, I was like, don’t know. 

What he suggested was, “What kind of a God are you comfortable with? If you could pick a God, what would it be? It was funny because my first thought was a woman like a motherVery motherly energy, which is so the antithesis of conservative Christianity, there’s little feminine energy in the Judeo-Christian Pantheon. Every time they mentioned a woman in the Bible, she’s either held up as this example of purity or she’s being fed to the dogs that are thrown out of a window. It’s tough. I’m back in the Old Testament again. The thing I was seeking this motherly feminine energy and there weren’t a lot in my religion of origin, which is another zigzag. Over the last several years, doing a lot of nerdy reading and studying, I’m finding myself very drawn to the Mother Mary, the Black Madonnas like Our Lady of Guadalupe. A lot of this motherly energy is also very revolutionary and a protector of the downtrodden. I’m drawn to this fierce mother energy. 

When you mentioned grace, the spiritual aspect of things when things seem to magically happen, you can do so much. It is that co-creating energy and putting out the wishes. It used to say the universe. 

I change it around. The way I look at itto use the phrase in the recovery program that I attend, a God of my own understanding. Understanding is very fluid. I don’t understand God. God is a great shorthand, but when I think of God, I think of all that is, the great creator that created everything. For me, I was Lutheran but if you were going to define what I am now I’m like a pantheistic animist with Buddhist leanings that has a crush on Jesus but I would rather talk to his mother. 

That is hysterical. I love the way your wording it and the visions of all of these different ideas coming through. 

The way I was raised was the God that I was taught about was told, “There’s only one right way. If you don’t do it this way, you are going to go to hell. I was like, “Hell sounds like it sucks but your way is also such a narrow tight path. I can’t do it. I’m too loud, big, rebellious. I don’t fit in that good submissive. I’m not, I’m just a big obnoxious ball of whateverI can never be that. 

I feel there was a loss of translation. I liked the idea. You and I had come through with a lot of contemporary shamanic, crosscultural teachings but it’s more of the rituals. It’s keeping the culture and storytelling over the year. It keeps it together and it turns into rules. It was meant to bring people together following a structure. 

ZZL 9 Laura Sanger Watkins | Reading Your Stars
Reading Your Stars: Astrology is a language of energy. There are so many possible combinations of energy signatures that show up in our natal charts that can help describe our gifts, challenges, and what we’re here to do.

 

It gets codified into some dogma and then it becomes rigidIf you don’t do this, you are doing it wrong. I get it. It’s fear-based. I have a touch of that myself, I’m constantly unpacking my own fears but that whole thing of if I’m doing it this way, what if I’m doing it wrong? If I’m doing it wrong, then I’m wrong and that’s bad. Some people were doing it differently. 

You and I are around the same age. I feel that I have changed over the years. Even when you learn a lot of the practices that we have learned, you learn a structure first. You learn the traditional way of doing things. How it has been written originally and how it works. As you go into your practice, intuition comes through, you can the bones of a thing and then make it yours. Everything turns into that where it’s good to learn the original way, then put a little of your own spices into it, just like cooking any recipe. 

We have to be careful because there’s a way of keeping the heart of what the practice is while throwing our own little Schmackity on it. For example, if you are making curry but you are not putting any curry powder in it, is it even curry anymore? You maybe throw a little bit of extra thyme, lime or leaf in there. As long as it still maintains the structure of curry, then it’s still a curry. 

Some people like the purity of the thing. Sometimes, you don’t even need to add your thing and you want the exact dish. 

There are certain prayers that uncertain Sanskrit chants that the word is so powerful that by saying the chant, you are calling that energy into your world. That’s something we don’t change. My favorite chant is, “LokaSamastah Sukhino Bhavantu, which I am going to horribly paraphrase what it means but it’s along the lines of, “May all beings be free from suffering. May all beings know happiness, and may my life in some way, help alleviate the suffering and enhance the happiness of others.” I love that chant because I’m not just chanting for myself. I’m chanting for everything. 

There’s an energy and everyone knows the same chants. 

That raises the energy. That’s why certain prayers that have been said for hundreds of years stay the same way because not only do you have the energy of the prayer that you are saying but you are saying a prayer that your ancestors have been saying thousands of years too. It’s a connection to the ancestors as well as honoring whatever deviates issue you are praying to. There’s something to it. The ritual staying in its own form but I also love the idea of we have to adapt and change to the modern world. Those are some of the problems that I’m having with this particular branch of religion I was raised in. They have not adapted or change to anything. Women are still considered inferior and their not allowed to speak in church. They allow them to get up behindI have a lot of problems with their attitude towards the LGBTQ plus communityI feel very distant at heart from it. I’m grateful for the foundation it gave me but I have zigzagged away from it. 

Their morals are different than your morals. I was raised Jewish and my older daughter wants to have her bat mitzvah, which is so nice. As you were saying, it has changed. In my generation, most people think, mitzvah autonomous, however, the generation before it was mostly for boys. It has changed. My parents said, “It’s your choice.” For my children, they wanted to. It’s nice that the songs and the feeling like you sing your original feeling of that rite of passage. 

I did the rite of passage through my church, which happens around the same age, 14 or 13. Being confirmed in your faith is a rite of passage and you are considered an adult in the church. When I told my mother, If I’m an adult in the church, does that mean I can stop going now? She was like, “No.” I still had to go. That was something you looked forward to. Our world is becoming increasingly more secular. How are we going to find community and common rites of passage that feel sacred? 

I feel it’s a good thing when things change. Not everyone feels that way but for me, I always feel it’s getting better. 

One of the teachers that I have studied with always talks about sacred every day and some of the personal stuff too. You can have your personal practice, which is super sacred but as a community or a group, what new rites of passage can we create? 

I feel like it’s the spiritual part of it. You and I have been practicing for a little while now, learning about indigenous cultures and their practices but we take something that calls us and that’s where it’s going into what I want to discuss the cosmos with you honoring the male energy, honoring the Earth and moon. 

That’s the reason why I love lunar cycles so much because if we are going to honor both the new and the full moon, that’s every two weeks. 

That’s a huge ritual, which brings me to ask you, how did you start getting into astrology? How has it changed your life and your being? I feel there are so many rituals when you are connecting to the stars and it’s so ancient. 

Sad to saymost major catalysts in my life, a boy was involved. I hate that but there was this particular gentleman I was dating in my very early twenties, I was always curious about astrology. I remember blowing allowance money on a Sydney Omarr book when I was about 10 or 11 and my mother took it away from me because it was a tool of the devil, which made it that much more interesting to me. My ex wanted me to read deeper because he kept telling me, he was like, “There are so much more to you than your sun sign than you know.” I’m like, “What do you mean? I started reading this book he gave me. It’s so cheesy too. It’s called Write Your Own Horoscope. I can’t remember the name of the gentleman that wrote it but it’s from the late ‘80s, early ‘90’s, it’s a little outdated as far as their tables in there. I remember reading it and reading about how my moon is in Cancer and my Jupiter is in Leo, I’m like, “What?” I identified with what they said in the book. I was like, “That is partially true about me.” When you combine them allthere are so many millions of combinations. 

Astrology is a language of energy. There are so many possible combinations of energy signatures that are showing up in our natal charts that can help describe our gifts, challenges and what we are here to do. If I believe in reincarnation, I believe we choose our time and place of birth. I believe that we come back here for a reason. As our souls are passing through, we drink from the river of reason and we don’t remember why. We are born a baby and we have to learn everything over again. Astrology is a great tool to help us figure out why we are here at least this time. How it changed my life but maybe it was a control issue, I always love to understand or define things that I have to learn to be like, The mystery. I have to allow the mystery. Astrology is very helpful if you are somebody that likes to figure things out and give everything a label. That’s my Virgo rising. 

Sometimes, I’m not necessarily in the mood to pay attention. There are so much written now. Everyone looks to bring up everything that’s happening in the stories and how it affects us. 

More people are aware of it these days than they were when I first started out. Partially, it’s the internet but it’s also this younger generation that has found and embraced astrology and is using it. There are a lot of young astrologers, few of them blow my mind. One is Chani Nicholas, but then there are a couple of these younger astrologers that know their stuff. One of them is Aliza Kelly. She’s really good. The other girl, her name is Kirah Tabourn and her website is TheStrology.com and she’s got a fabulous podcast. It’s almost like they have such wisdom for someone so young but I believe they found astrology so much earlier than I did. I took a pause. One of my zigzags was I was into astrology in the early ‘90s when I was living in New York CityI was doing chart readings for people back then, we didn’t have the internet as we do now. I had to do it the hard way with an ephemeris, a calculator, a protractor and all that fun stuff. I’m bad at Math so I’m grateful for computers. 

[bctt tweet=”Astrology is very helpful if you’re somebody that likes to figure things out and give everything a label.” via=”no”]

I moved back to Connecticut after a series of events that I wasn’t expecting and I ended up meeting the man that became my husband. He was a widower with two small boys so I was very busy with them. still loved astrology. People would still call me and be like, “What’s going on? I would look it up and we talk about it like good friends of mine stuff. I stopped doing it professionally for a while. Another little weird zig-zag, a complete series of events because on a whim, I went to an open discussion about herbalism. I met the owner of the Twin Star Herbal Education school here in New Milford, Connecticut. started taking some herbalism classes. She’s into astrology. She and I started talking about it and she was like, “Would you consider doing chart readings in the shop that they had opened. I was like, “Sure.” As I was doing readings, then we decided, “Why don’t we teach an intro to Astrology 101? I have been teaching that class. We have been offering it for years. 

I babbled in plugging in my information for the human design. Are you familiar with it? Is it similar to astrology? 

I have heard of it. I’ve got to be honest, I haven’t got into it but there was a friend of mine who’s a numerologist too. She was the one that was saying that there were a lot of similarities in human design. You can do that with a lot of different things too. One of the big things on astrology Facebook groups, everyone was like, “What’s your Myers-Briggs plus what’s your big three, your sun, moon and rising?” Mine don’t mesh very well because I’m a Gemini sun but I have a Virgo rising and a Cancer Moon, so technically, you would think I would be slightly more introverted. I’m an ENFP, which is free spirit weirdo. It’s the same thing with the Enneagram. 

I do love initially hearing about myself every month. Every day, it changed. 

The moon changes signs every 2.5 days. As it does, it’s going to aspect the planets and your natal chart. They always say the worst day of your year is always going to be when the sun is the exact opposite of your sun at that degree. For example, my sun is ten degrees Geminiten degrees Sagittarius, don’t expect much from me that day. 

It does put us in touch with nature. 

Astrology was more based upon the changing of seasons and the growing society. Granted, they use constellations as their touchpoints. You’ve got to go way back to Egypt and Sumeria but to them, they were not using it so much as a way to understand the human soul as they were to be like, “Is it going to flood? Is it safe for me to plant my crops right now? When is it more fertile than not? When do I start needing to harvest? That’s why the entire Zodiac starts on the Spring Equinox with the sign of Aries and all the Cardinal signs. Each Cardinal sign starts at the change in the calendar. We start with Aries with the Equinox then we are going to end up with Cancer being the first day of the summer solstice. It’s always going to be that. Same with Libra, ushering with the Fall Equinox then we go to Capricorn. The first day of Capricorn is the winter solstice. It started with nature. It started with the growing seasons and stuff. 

I was just wondering when we mentioned constellations and orbitI had never experienced family constellations. Are you familiar with that work? 

Yes. Our mutual friend, Wayne Cina, does the family constellation workshops. I did one with him. It was powerful. It’s very different. It’s intuitive and shamanic as well, although it’s hard to describe unless you do it. 

I have heard many teachers talk about it and every time I was part of a group but they did it, unfortunately, I wasn’t there that day, I heard the stories and how powerful it was. It’s so coolI’m bringing it up when you mentioned constellations. When we talk about astrology, it seems so far away and we can always bring everything into our life, the inner depth. It’s not based on astrology and constellations. 

Not at all. The only reason why I think they use constellations is that if you are the sun, the members of your family are orbiting you. There’s a relationship there. In astrology, the relationship of the way we set up our natal charts in Western astrology is Earthcentric where all the planets with the Earth. Back in the day, they thought everything is around the Earth. There’s the other branch of astrology, which is the Hindu astrology, Vedic astrology, which is heliocentric or everything is around the sun. That changes everythingthat’s not the kind I practice and it can get confusing. I stick with the Western but the way the constellations are more like an image or an archetype that gave the name to each of the signs but what matters in astrology are the planets and the luminaries. The sun and the moon, and a couple of mathematical projections. 

It’s so interesting how this has been passed on for so many generations. We are learning about it and it’s accurate. 

It’s weirdly accurate. The thing too is we always have to remember free will. Not everybody is going to perfectly enact the way their chart says they might and there are a lot of moving parts. We can’t discount the environment. There are several placements at Oprah Winfrey and John Wayne Gacy have in common, except one is Oprah and one is a serial killer. They both had terrible upbringings but their charts aren’t 100% aligned but they have a couple of placements in common. The thing is we have the free will to live our lives the way we want to. We make choices every day, which affect our future. 

I don’t like to do too much predictive astrology for worldwide stuff. That’s not my thing. I’m much more of personal astrology. What I can do is I can tell you or these are the energies that are coming your way either grab a boogie board and ride them out, or you could fight them and understand that it’s going to be a little bit if they are at cross purposes with what you want. Don’t give up because you might feel like, Everything is against me. It’s not. Maybe this is a way for you to show yourself how strong you are if you are going to wait. 

We are here to learn. We picked it all. We picked who our families aretalent and beliefs. 

I have had people say to me too. People would have been like, “Why I picked an absent father, narcissistic mother or an alcoholic family. A lot of people have said to me, I would never have picked consciously these people. I’m like, “No, your ego would not have, however, your soul is the one that did the choosing. Now, you’ve got to get past that ego part to get to the part that is eternal soul part,” whoever we call our higher power. Again, I’m just going to say, God, because it’s easier than for me to constantly say, “The all that is is the universe, nature and love. When we trust our higher powers guidance and we leave things up to them, our higher power loves us, wants us to be happy, to be fulfilled, always wants better and more us than we want for ourselves. I’m glad that our ego shouldn’t drive the bus or that sometimes things don’t work out the way we want them to because sometimes, there are something so much better than what we think we want because we don’t think we deserve more but we do. 

When something happens that charges me or upsets me, I never take the victimsy. I’m always saying, “The question is, what is it here to teach me? We don’t always know why this is happening. 

Sometimes, I’m too in it. That’s where I eventually go to the what can this teach me. Sometimes, if something is hard, I think I’m here to experience the depth of this to enhance my own empathy for others later. 

We have to be in it. That’s a good point because if we are always in an objective place, we are not living things and we are not human. We discussed earlier, it’s fun to speak to an astrologer because you are like, I’m feeling X, Y and Z, why.” I know the new moon is coming up. I was excited to speak with you and that’s manifesting, writing down your intentions and all that good stuff. For some reason, I have been wanting to get into a fight. I have been very irritable. Now, waking up this morning was great but I’m not having any patience for small stuffI’m like, I can’t  have small talk right now.” I was in a different place and also wanting to be by myself because I think often if so many people that are around us that we have brought into our lives but there are times when you just aren’t in the mood for people because you just want to be by yourself. 

Earlier that you have an Aries rising, I can tell you that Mars is in Cancer, which is probably on the cusp of your fourth house. If we are going to do whole sign houses, it’s in your fourth house. There might be some irritation around home and family but there are also might be some very serious motivation and energy towards like, “This is the physical house and you are getting things in order as well. Cancer has a lot to do with maternal relationships but also relationships in general. 

Out of all the people, I have been happiest with my kids. I’m driving with them lately, tremendously. It was so great. I have had that feeling of being home and organizing. I’m not at that adventurous feel now. I just want to get tidy with the house. That’s how I feel, which is amazing. 

ZZL 9 Laura Sanger Watkins | Reading Your Stars
Reading Your Stars: There are certain prayers that the word is so powerful that by saying the chant, you’re calling that energy into your world.

 

Mars usually indicates our anger style or what could be irritating. Usually, it’s the dance that Mars makes with things like our moon or our own Mars even Saturn. We feel like we might have testy periods in our life. Mars is a very quickly moving planet though when it does circle around an aspect of our natal planets, it’s pretty quick. You don’t have to worry about being in a long, drawnout bad mood. 

It was Sunday, yesterday and it’s over. I’m not feeling that now at all. It was so interesting because how in the world is this affecting us? It’s something that is so far away. 

Certain things are always nice. When Jupiter, the sun or Venus was cruising through our first house, we are a little extra charming. When Venus goes through our seventh house, our relationships tend to be good or if we are not in a relationship, we tend to meet people. 

Are we from the stars? 

Of course, we are. We are made of starstuff. We are carbon-based life forms. Even atheist scientists like Neil deGrasse. He’s the one that said it, “We are all pieces from the Big Bang. We are all connected.” That’s the thing. Talking back to the indigenous cultures, I love the mythology of the grandmother spider that has woven this web of life. We are all connected. Everything is connected. We are connected, the stars are connected to the Earth. We are all in this dance of energy together, whether or not we believe in it, we feel it. Someone is plucking the little thread that’s connecting us. Sometimes, you get that weird feeling like someone needs to talk to me. My husband likes to call himself even if you are a little metaphysically dense. You still feel what you feel. 

Sometimes, I have this urge, “I was thinking about so-and-so,” and then they show up. What do you call that? SynchronicityGod link, coincidence or whatever you want to call it. We have all connected the biggest illusion that we have as human beings is that people are so very different from us. We all believe in the same color. We all want our kids to do well. We all don’t like to feel alone. We all hate waiting in lines. We are so much more alike than we are different and this illusion that the way we pray or the way we vote makes us so fundamentally different from each other like they are alien beings, that’s when the dehumanization comes in and we forget. That’s the illusion of separateness. As somebody that loves to compartmentalize things, I’m constantly being pulled into the Piscean view of it, which is we are all connected. That web is there. We are all related. We can forget it every day and that’s where all this atrocity comes from. 

As much as you are saying this because I’m coming off that little irritable mood, I am for making sure that everybody is the theme of being united and all the same. There are those human moments where you just don’t have the same ideas. 

We are the same but obviously, we are different too. It’s so hard to remember that, especially when we are in the middle of it. Even in our own families with very different beliefs, both of my parents still believe the way they always have. I’m the one that’s changed. That’s definitely caused some friction. My mother is very concerned that she’s not going to see me in heaven. My father said he will so I’ve got one yes vote and one no vote. 

He’s already there so he knows. 

He said it on the way out. I believe in him now. 

My father who was not spiritual, I would say metaphysically, when he passed in January 2021 said, “See you down the line. It’s a nice concept. It helps us trust and believe there is something bigger than us. I do feel it’s always fleeting or it’s temporary when we have irritation with people, we are not the same, we are different or we think differently. We get so annoyed. Everything stops. It’s so interesting. Remember, we are human. It’s difficult in those moments when you are frustrated or you are annoyed. 

I make up silly nicknames for people all the time. One of my favorites nicknames for people is star baby. We are all children of the stars. One indigenous culture that we both have studied a lot. The Kero believes that we are descendants of the Pleiadians. 

That was my question. Coming off of this. I would love to elaborate on that. We are all descendants of the Pleiadians or some people? 

I think we all are but I don’t know for sure. I can only tell you what I guess. 

A lot of the newer age conversations or certain people that are from different star systems, they named different stars. 

[bctt tweet=”We have the free will to live our lives the way we want to and to make choices every day.” via=”no”]

I find that along the same lines of what’s the benefit of being different? Is it like when my star system is better than your star system? That’s so human and egobased again. I love going to UFO conventionsI have been to a few. My husband and I both love the whole alien UFO thing. We go to the one up in Exeter. We were sad to miss it this year because of COVID but it’s fascinating. They get all these experiences that have been experienced and close encounters. They don’t call themselves abductees, they call themselves experiencers. Most of them have been abducted. It has been interesting to hear the similarities in their stories and also some of their differences. A lot of the folks that get up and speak are talking about how there are the tall Nordiclooking ones, and then there are the grays and there’s this and this. Everyone is going to look a little bit different but I don’t think there’s any kind of particular hierarchy and I don’t necessarily think there are any kind of star system hierarchy. 

One of the things that fascinate me a lot and that’s something that I’m studying as part of, I love studying World Mythology. It’s one of my favorite thingsI have loved it since I was a little kid and I love all the different creation myths. There are so many and some of them are so different. I can’t remember the name of the tribe but one of the native indigenous tribes of North America has a goddess they call Changing Woman. She starts off as an old woman, she walks East. As she walks East, she gets younger. They believe that she brushed cornmeal off her breasts and that is where the humans came from. Some people think that we are from the stars and some people think we have been brushed off of big mama’s breast with cornmeal. 

We also have the breathing into the soil, which was the Judeo-Christian bringing. They created a man of the soil and put breath in their bodies. The Norse, one of the Japanese goddesses was chopped up and her different body parts, different life forms sprung up from them. A lot of it does come from a body of a woman though because there’s a lot of that. That was funny because of the Judeo-Christian tradition, it’s a dude that made everybody, wherein so many other world traditions, it’s a woman because a woman is the one that gives birth. 

That’s why when we meditate or we receive messages from spirit, I feel that information is so true just by making themselves down and then getting a hit with a message. A lot of it sounds woo-woo when we talk about these different things. 

You and I both have experienced drum journeying a lotI have got some powerful messages during drum journeys, which I would love to tell everybody, except I know that half of my family would probably throw a butterfly over me if I did. It was funny because I wanted to talk to Yahweh. I wanted to be like, “What is going on around here? This world is so screwed up. What do we do? Yahweh was like, I’m not about that. I didn’t deal with it. Let me get Yeshua in here.” He called in Yeshua, Jesus who stood in front of me. I was like, He was beautiful. One of the main messages that I’ve got from that particular journey was that there’s not one thing that we can do to make that energy of Christ stop loving us. He also said he didn’t care what name we called this particular energy, it’s all him, her and everything. It’s all that is. 

It’s the purity of consciousness. We have labeled things and then people take their spot with what they resonate with. 

Each culture made God in their image rather than God. Certain gods, the angry ones, there are so many water goddesses because water is life. 

It’s a representation of essence. That’s how I feel. When we do close our eyes and we do a drum journey or anybody that has a different type of meditation, it’s the quietness you feel. I used to have a lot of visionaries information coming through, colors and everything was from my vision. Now, it’s involuntary and I feel. It’s all feeling and hearing. Often when I get out of sleep or if I’m in meditation, that’s when I’m about to wake up. That’s when I hear it. 

I hope you have a notebook by your bed. Write all that down. 

I wrote it down. It’s always bleeding and it could be a little bit of a premonition. That’s why I find time to be so interesting and I want to get to that with you. I know we were talking about the concept of time but it’s not what we think it is. This calendar, and then the number of hours, it’s so interesting. There are times when you feel you are moving so quickly and you are getting so much done than other times you are not getting it done. 

When someone told me 1980 was 40 years ago, I’m like, What? 1981 was 40 years ago because my husband’s 40th anniversary from high school is coming up. I was thinking, “Forty years ago, how can that be? I remember what I was doing in 1981, I was in seventh grade. It’s so weird to me, because I’m like, “How am I this old?” When I still feel like seventeen in my brain. My body knows I’m old. My hips think I’m 70. 

Physically, we are going along with everything. I do like traveling in my mind in that meditative based on, whether or not I have experienced past life progression and the drum journey. 

Time is so weird. Back to astrology again, the lunar cycles were one of the first ways to mark time. In the lunar calendar, there are thirteen full moons. We are doing history of astrology, there used to be only three very long months in Egypt. Those were all based upon growing seasons, the flooding season and the bearing season. Eventually, everything got shortened to the way it is now. Even they had it calculated down, they had the years at 366.14 days or something like that. Wcheck up and we throw that extra day in every four years to balance it out but their days were 2 segments of 13 hours. It’s so weird. 

ZZL 9 Laura Sanger Watkins | Reading Your Stars
Reading Your Stars: The constellations are more like an image or an archetype that gave the name to each of the signs, but what matters in astrology are the planets and the luminaries.

 

I follow things online but harmonic convergence and there are a certain group that believes that we should be changing our calendars to the lunar calendar and it should be 13 months versus 12 months. Are you familiar with that? 

I’m not but I already lived by a thirteen moon calendar as it is personal because I pay attention to the lunar cycles. 

Explain this to me because we are in a rhythm. We are all going in the same rhythm now and we follow this calendar. There are a few people that are saying it’s off. I find it to be interesting. It’s difficult to step away from the mold of what everyone is going through but to just be aware of this other rhythm of life. 

The way it was taught to me was that we start with the New Moon of the lunar cycle. That is when the moon is completely dark, it is aligned next to the sun, we are coming up on that nowThe New Moon will happen at 21 degrees Taurus. You can’t see it at all. That’s going to happen while the sun is out. We will not see a moon even if it’s cloudless. It takes about two weeks for the moon to then turn to become full when it’s going to be exactly opposite the sun and it reflects the fullness of the sun. We can see the whole thing then it’s another two weeks to come back to the new. 

In the parlance of a lunar cycle, as the moon is increasing in size as we can see it, as it goes from quarter to half to full, it’s waxing and increasing. Whereas when we get to the New Moon it’s full, and then it decreases or it wanes until it comes down to the New Moon. It’s a lovely cycle if you think of the menstrual cycle. The New Moon is usually when some people bleed, some people don’t, depending on where they are with their cycles. A lot of people bleed with the full moon. If you wanted to get beautiful, the full moon is when we would be the most fertile. It’s when we would ovulate. That’s how that would work but that’s not always how it works with chemicals and the way things are but the old way, that’s how it worked.  

When things are increasing to fall, if you’re talking about manifesting and using the energy of the moon to manifest, you want to set your intentions on the new moon to increase your vision and what you want. When you get to the full moon, that’s a great time to celebrate, relax and enjoy. A lot of people love to charge their crystals and make moon water and stuff. From the moon, if you want to release a habit and let go, you want to do that in the two weeks as the moon is coming and is waning from fullback down to new. 

Many books that we have read especially in Peru when people will feel the spark of the moon. They are bringing the moon into your being. It is cool, even getting up with the sunrise. 

Other folks still aren’t living with the modern conveniences that we have. They are still very much more into it than we are. My circadian rhythms are all screwed up. I stay up too late. It’s bad. I know that our ancestors woke with the sun, did their work, and then when it got dark, they were probably up for an hour or two with candles. They then went to bed. They were healthier and better sleep. They didn’t have penicillin. 

I’m hearing people say, I love nature.” Being connected and idea when we have done our meditations, we can receive informationnature communicates with youYou just have to quiet your mind and listen. 

One of the first things I learned when I was taking classes in herbalism is that, if you don’t know what kind of medicine a plant has for you, you talk to the plant and find out. It will tell you. 

I’m talking about this because I love meditating on individual plants and receiving information from them. It does come through. 

[bctt tweet=”Sometimes, things don’t work out the way we want them to because there are things that are so much better than what we think we want.” via=”no”]

I believe in everything and nothing at the same time. I’m someone that needs to experience it for me to understand it. I jokingly say I’ve got those two old guys from the Muppet Show, Statler and Waldorfthat back into my head telling me everything is bullshit. It’s like, “Sit in front of this plant, ask what it does and it will tell you.” I’m like, “Yeah right. I don’t believe it but I will try it” I sit down there, I think I told you that it blew my mind, it was a plant called Fleabane, it’s part of the Astro family. They are little tiny daisies. We are sitting in front of this. I was very skeptical but I’m like, It’s very nice to meet you. I was very polite to the plant but I was like, “Please tell me what your medicine is?” I just waited and I started getting these feelings, impressions and the word that came to me was like innocence and purity. I went and googled it. Back in the day, the lore was people used to give that plants to people for them to remain chaste and it’s cleansing. 

I did it with Iowasca without consuming it. I think I have mentioned this before. I saw the floor opening up. It was like a suction cup and everything was pointing into the Earth. I’m thinking, “It was a cleansing. If that’s what it does, it cleans you out. It’s so wild. 

Thats a very transformative plant. I stay away from the heavy and plant medicine just because of being sober and not wanting to alter my mind. At the same time, I could still benefit from the energy of that plant by doing what you just did. I can turn it to the plant, I can communicate with the plant without actually having to ingest it. I won’t have that same experience. Our mutual teacher would say, “That’s not my medicine.” My medicine might be something else. A lot of my medicine is star medicine. I do a lot of pulling in the white light of the cosmos and find that very soothing, healing and helpful. 

I have been feeling so much from the Earth. As you know, I have been loving these cacao circles. You are drinking the cacao, and then doing the work, meditating and receiving messages. It is interesting how often people in a circle when you see it being the same thing, whether or not we are drinking cacao or enjoying a cup of tea. 

That’s happened to our drum circles tooI find it fascinating that at least 2 or people have a very similar vision while they are drumming too. I think that is because our energy is connected and sometimes it‘s part of a collective that we are exchanging that. 

It is a journey, that’s why it’s called journey, anyway. People were like, “Everyone seems to have gone to Arizona, everyone has been around the campfire that day.” 

Everyone is seeing Hawks. 

It’s wild. Certain people saw a Jaguar and that is representative of cacao, which is so interesting to me. I didn’t know that nobody knew that but they were seeing the Jaguar. It is all so real. I used to worry about sounding too out thereI wanted most people to understand that as you say, I’m just skeptical beforehand. I won’t give it either but it’s taking the time, but then you do it. 

I often tell people too, there are other things I have tried that haven’t worked for me and I don’t do it again but the stuff that does, I’m going to do it again. Talking back to zigzags, I was trucking along. I’m in perimenopause, all this stuff is going on. Western medicine can only help me so much. They couldn’t deal with a lot of my emotional stuff, except they tell me to go to a therapist and I’m like, I have been in therapy so many times I have graduated. It’s my old stuff, I know that but this is something different. I’m dealing with something new. My body isn’t acting right.” I was googling like, “Alternative medicine help.” I ended up seeing this thing about Reiki, which back in 2013 or 2014, I didn’t know much about it. I was like, “What’s this all about? I googled a little further and I found that there was a practitioner in my area. I was like, I will go. I figured, “What’s the worst thing that’s going to happen? Am I going to lay on a massage table for an hour?” I felt it happening as she was doing Reiki on me. It was almost like a RotoRooter energetically. I felt like something that was blocked in me and cleared away. I was like, “What is this? 

I love that you are mentioning Reiki because I have been practicing so many different energy healing practices over the years but Reiki was my first. 

It’s amazing what Reiki led me to because I was like, “This feels so great. I started getting a couple more sessions then the practitioner I went to told me, “We are offering training if you want to learn how to do this for yourself and others.” I was like, “Sign me up.” I ended up becoming two and I’ve got up to level three. At that point, I started taking some more herbalism classes and getting into different energy healing modalities. I took a Plant Spirit class, which was my intro to shamanism or at least core shamanism, modern shamanismIt was taught by a Mohican elder, which was brilliant because I’ve got it from a source. Eventuallyeverything has led me toward the holistic shamanic practitioner training.  I’m a crosscultural energy healer on top of doing astrological counseling and that’s led me to where I am now, where I’m in training to be a community priestess. I can also help facilitate other life passages for other people as well as teach hopefully or create circles of the community. 

That is what it’s all about. I love that you are bringing that up. In 1995, most people didn’t hear of itI went to a Cosmo City and person said, “Somebody is offering Reiki.” I said, “What is that?” They said, “It helps you get through this life faster and some things that are holding you back faster.” I thought, “How cool is that? I did go to this one woman. That was far out in Brooklyn, not at all transit area. The way I described it was aluminum foil was around me and I felt myself opening up and my auraIt was the physical sensation that I was rising because we are energy. The lights were so intense I felt very meditative. The things that are in our minds that we operate on, I was able to let them go. That’s great way for me to meditate because I couldn’t meditate on my own. 

I have a hard time with that still. My brain is just like, blah, blah, blah all the time. 

I’m very passionate about Reiki because I feel it’s pure. We mentioned finding your own and creating your own practices but I do find Reiki to be very pure. The teaching hasn’t changed after all of these years. I love teaching it to people. I love having people have a foundation for it. It’s such a great practice. 

It’s funny because I use it so often and other healing methods without even realizing that it’s the foundation of all the other healing that I do. People want to ask me, “Why are you studying this shamanic practitioner stuff? I’m like, “It’s like Reiki on steroids.” 

It’s also history. 

It’s getting more of the spirit involved as well. 

Laura, I’m going to finish and wrap it up with you now. Anything you want to share with the world, how you feel everything is going now? You are always filled with so much information and I love it. Sitting in your seat and seeing people nowany words of wisdom you can offer people or do you have found theme for many people coming through your doors? 

2020 was hard on a lot of people. It’s made us look at ourselves because we are forced to spend so much time with ourselves and we didn’t have the distraction of busynessI know that was a big part. I struggled with not having a loaded calendar and I didn’t know what to do with all this free timeBeing open to the present moment, being open to what happens, and not freaking out about things is something that I’m still practicing and trying to learn how to do. I don’t know if you would consider that philosophy but what I’m seeing is that more people I believe are coming to me asking me what they should be doing. What I’m seeing is that we already know. 

I almost feel like half the time people come to me, they just need to hear someone else tell them who they already know they are. In a way, it’s a gift because I can help empower people. What I love the most is giving people affirmation. They already know deep down inside. Maybe they are afraid because culture tells them they need to be something different. A lot of times, people come to me to ask me what they were supposed to do for a living, right away, I look at their chart I’m like, “You are not supposed to define yourself by what you do for a living. That’s not why you’re here.” You are here to loveteach, experience or a million other reasons. In our culture, the first thing they ask you is, “What do you do?” I would love people to start asking each other, “What do you love? 

“What do you do?” That’s not who we all are. 

No. What do you loveI love baby goats, astrology and my family. I love to travel, weird antiques and flea markets, aliens and UFOs, baby animals, laughing with friends over drinks, tea and fun things like that. 

I just want to say one more thing you mentioned because you do consult and people to come to help them find their purpose or even on understanding why they feel a certain way. 

They come to me to try to figure out why do they have the same repeating pattern of bad relationships or what is my creative purpose? “Why am I blocked? I get a lot of these questions. 

I feel it’s very validating because even when you said it, it’s very fleeting this mood that you are in. That is true. I don’t know if you have heard of a computer programmer. He helps us tune in to a better frequency. I think that’s a good way to define them, but listening to him, you feel yourself shifting. It’s super cool. He did have two neardeath experiences and I thought, very tuned in. He’s all over online. You could always check him out. What he mentioned was like the end of the mentorship. I forgot the title of show that he mentioned the mentors. I think a lot of people do seek mentors, gurus, and I feel that is going away. It’s more horizontal now like we are mentioning circles. It’s often like we give up ourselves when we go to another to seek advice. It’s something I see shifting in the world now. 

There’s something that another teacher has taught me that I believe that most of the time we already know. It’s deep inside, we just have to quiet the ego, fear and noise in our head to tap into what’s true for us. A lot of it too is, we come here and culture affects us, the expectations of our society based upon what we look like, what our gender is or the religion we are raised in. We internalize this directive, then when it doesn’t align with our soul, we are like, I’m, wrong. I’m bad.” That’s not true. One of the things that people keep seeking is that there are so much more than this limiting idea of what we are supposed to be. We need to permit ourselves to tap into the truth of who we are, then we need the courage to act it out. 

Having someone sit with you, not so much that they know more than you but it’s more of, “Let’s sit together so you can listen. It’s hearing what you need to hear. 

Astrology helps with that because your chart is like a blueprint of your soul. It’s like your cosmic thumbprint. All the energy of the planets and the sign that they are in or impressed upon you at the moment of your birth. If someone can help you translate that language of energy for you, it helps you realize like“Maybe I am supposed to be the leader because I’m a woman and I can stand forward and be a strong tenth house sun.” 

Once you get that hit of “possibly I can do this then the opportunity comes. I feel then magically, it begins to show up for you. 

ZZL 9 Laura Sanger Watkins | Reading Your Stars
Reading Your Stars: Everything’s connected. We’re connected to each other, we’re connected to the earth, we’re connected to the stars, and the stars are connected to the earth. We’re all in this dance of energy together.

 

I think one of the greatest gifts ever given to me as I did a reading with somebody once and she told me I was going to her for the reading. She was looking at some stuff and she was like, “You already have the goods. I did do this. She goes, “Walk out the door, stand in the parking lot, turn up towards the divine and say, I’m ready.’” I do that. “I’m ready.” The thing was, I was scared to do that but I did it and once I did, within the year, I was doing readings, teaching and getting back into the groove. I’m still a student myself. I’m still perpetually learning. There are so much to learn. 

We always have to be curious. 

If you are curious about astrology, go see an astrologer. It doesn’t have to be me. It could be anybody. Get your chart done. used to jokingly say, “You can save yourself two years of therapy. Get your chart done, and then go to your therapist on what was uncovered. Work on that or even better. Step into your own power. It’s not about making something happen. It’s about allowing yourself to be who you already are. Allow it, say you are ready and embrace it. 

Thank you. It’s so much fun. I love chatting with you. You are such a boost of energy, it’s such a pleasure. Even just talking to you, your creative juices start. You began to think, “How can we create now? I’m sending you lots of love. I’m looking forward to chatting soon. Thank you. 

Big kisses. Thank you.

 

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About Laura Sanger Watkins

ZZL 9 Laura Sanger Watkins | Reading Your StarsLaura Watkins has been studying astrology for over thirty years and has 20 years of experience as an Astrological Counselor.  She is a Reiki Master, Crystal Healer, and a Cross-Cultural Shamanic Energy Healer specializing in Andean practices.

Laura is a member of the Astrological Society of Connecticut and the Organization of Professional Astrologers.

Currently studying herbalism and aromatherapy, Laura loves to combine energetic healing modalities to heal herself and others. Laura has been making jewelry since 1986. Back in the 90s while living in Manhattan, Laura would read the natal charts of friends (and friends of friends) and would recommend crystals based upon what she saw in the charts. A “crystal prescription” to balance and enhance the person’s elemental energies. One of her friends said, “I’m not going to carry all those rocks around, can you make me something I could wear?” and the light bulb went BING! Since then, Laura has been combining her love of the planets, stars, and crystals to create a very personal piece of jewelry based on each wearer’s specific natal chart.

 

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Astrology Signs, Connecting To The Stars, drum journeys, Spiritual Journey, Star Signs, Western Astrology


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