🌚 The Weekly Vibe: week of June 23-29
We’ve got a week full of all kinds of water, so expect emotions to surface (yeah, I know, again or still). This week though, especially the early days, they can act as creative fuel for anything that requires you to pour your heart into. There might be some emotional bumps mid to end of week and swinging from fearlessly expressing ourselves to stuffing feels down in order to please others, which all leads to overall dissatisfaction with where we are in our relationships with others. Fear not because by weekend there’s some extra support to move us from wanting to doing. A biggie toward the end of the week is Saturn stationing retrograde, which will get us contemplating boundaries - more on that next week!
Back in my college days, I’d have a pile of easy ‘beach’ reads awaiting me before the start of every summer. That ‘reading for pleasure’ pile never saw the light of day during a school year because of all the ‘reading for class’ items. These days, my summer reads are the nerdiest astrology books that require the luxury of reading the same sentence twice or thrice. The types of books where I have to pause every few sentences and play around with my charting software before moving to another page. Whether it’s reading for fun or education, to me, summer books are always about indulging - in deep thought or mindless stories.
Marking the official beginning of summer, I cracked open my read of the season -Bernadette’s Brady Predictive Astrology, which came highly recommended by one of my astrology professors. Before getting into the weeds, Brady offered a beautiful interpretation of what exactly predictive astrology is - something I’ve never found as eloquent of words for before and would love to share here.
Perhaps, the biggest misconception I find myself debunking time and time again when it comes to astrology is the fact that it is not about predicting the future but rather identifying possibilities.
Brady acknowledges that humans across centuries and settings have always needed a seer - “to explain the unexplainable,” to predict the good times and the bad times, reducing the fear and maintaining an appearance of control and stability for themselves. Back in the ancient days, those were the shamans. Now - they’re all around us from weather forecasts to economists, to astrologers and practitioners of spiritual modalities. No matter the times and circumstances, it is an innate human trait to know things.
Yet, as much as we want to rid of uncertainty, we’d feel too anxious if the ability to lay down our path was taken from us. What fun would it be to lead a life with no wonder and surprises?
This poses a natural question - where does faith end and free will begin then? The juicy question that, fortunately, or unfortunately, does not have a black-or-white answer. The fact is, one does not exist without another.
I absolutely love how Brady defines the ‘faith’ part of astrology as ‘raw material.’ Just like a cobbler works with leather as their raw material, astrologers work with fate as the starting point. Raw materials are a beautiful blank canvas, without which a creation would not be possible, however, just like milk won’t churn into butter on its own, faith alone is not enough to determine and define someone’s journey.
In this case, faith is the combination of innate elements - from the temperament we’re born with, to the conditions we’re brought in to the patterns that are more natural to us to go through based on our temperament and conditions around us. Each one of us has a handful of challenges and strengths that are unique to us and which we didn’t actively choose for ourselves.
Faith is those repeated lessons, obstacles, and experiences that lead us and allow us to live a life that is uniquely ours. Faith may place the lessons in front of us, but it’s up to us how well we choose to master those lessons. As we pass the tests and learn the ropes, we go up the spiral of one life’s level to another.
Fate presents us with options, like a multiple-choice quiz, and with our free, we choose the answers that seem the most correct for any given moment. By use of our free will we determine the types of lessons fate will present us in the next round. Essentially, free will is playing within the guardrails of faith.
“Thus, astrology can predict the timing and style of the forthcoming events, but it is the human part - the part not shown in a chart - that chooses the exact expression of the event,” writes Brady.
Aka, astrology can help us pinpoint an area or nature of the lesson we’re due to learn, but the outcome will depend on how we, as sole humans, interact with the lesson or an event. Astrology doesn't dictate our future but rather equips us with the knowledge to navigate life's journey more consciously. As we interpret the ‘raw materials’ life presents us with, we get to exercise more and more free will in choosing how to respond to each lesson life throws at us. This interplay between faith and free will is what makes our human journeys so unique and meaningful.
As Brady so eloquently puts it:
Faith is life’s demand for wholeness, or, put more simply, it is our role as a human being to strive for wholeness.
How Might I Support You?
What’s your life’s raw material? Allow astrology to offer some ideas and interpretations. Having someone reflect what you’ve sensed all along is an incredibly insightful tool to further connection to yourself.
What do you want to focus your free will on? Where are you falling along the way? I love how crystal clear coaching allows you to get, and it would be my joy to discover that with you.
🌝 On a Lighter Note
🤓 I’m a big believer that just like every therapist needs a therapist, an astrologer needs their own astrologer. We can know and understand a lot of things intellectually, but we always need the support of someone else to experience a shift. This week I had such a productive personal reading with an astrology colleague, and it doesn’t stop to fascinate me how impactful it is to have someone else reflect back the things you sense or even know yourself. Anything that gets you out of your own head and bubble, even if it’s not groundbreaking, is such a push forward. This is also how coaching works!
📊 Every few months I get curious about an Ōura ring (despite the fact that my Apple Watch has been collecting dust on my nightstand for a few years now). This post came at the right time to remind me I don’t need anything scoring the way I literally just live and breath, especially as a recovering perfectionist (I know that’s not the term to use either, but blanking on a better alternative).
🥐 Idk if you’ve ever gone to a bakery to share a pastry with a partner/friend…and then have walked over to another bakery to do the same, instead of each of you just getting your own in the first place?… But highly recommend.
Not Retrograde is a newsletter about the beauty and complexities of life on Earth, from an astrological perspective. Questions or topics you’d like to see covered in the future? Hit reply to reach me directly.
Another incredible post Olga! I'm inspired by your consistency and the depth of information and wisdom you share:)