Recently, I was interviewed by MysticMag.com

How did you get into Astrology and what sparked your interest in it?

I feel like it’s been a part of my life from the very beginning. Even though I grew up in a family that wasn’t particularly spiritual or religious, we had these antique celestial maps my parents had collected, which were very graphic in regard to the constellations and creatures they were trying to portray. They had them framed in the living room, so I always had a sense of the stars, the heavens, and the story they were telling. That was something I grew up with, and it made me aware of astrology.

As a young adult, astrology was something that I had a casual interest in. I would check my horoscope and sometimes flip through astrology books at the bookstore. So, I was always interested in it and believed in it, but I wasn’t ready to invest myself until I got to my early 30s. At that time, I was in theology school to get my Master of Divinity degree while also trying to get over a difficult breakup.

During that time, there was a spring fair in my neighborhood park. I went to the fair and there was a woman with an astrology booth who was charging a dollar a minute for astrology readings. I gave her 20 dollars and said “Tell me what’s going on.” In those 20 minutes, she wrapped up issues that I had been wrestling with in my personal life and seeing a therapist for. She touched on all of it and we reached a place within me that was much deeper than I had been aware or that anyone else I worked with before had brought up to me. I was amazed.

It turned out that this astrologer lived two blocks away from me, so I made an appointment with her, and then another one. After three appointments of just like getting deeper and deeper into the story based on her interpretation of my chart, I thought to myself “This is great, but I can’t afford to pay for it anymore. However, I have to go further on this journey.” She then told me a couple of books and authors to check out, and I went to a spiritual bookstore and bought them all.

I got a basic astrology chart-making computer program and that was my “official” beginning. After that, I just dove in. I graduated magna cum laude from Emory and was in theology school at Emory. In my life, I studied a lot of things, but astrology was the first thing that my brain just embraced like a sponge. I just got it. I understood it. It made sense to me, and I couldn’t get enough of it. That’s basically how I got into astrology.

What is Human Design and how does it work?

Human Design was a spiritual download or visionary experience of a Canadian man who was living in Ibiza, Spain. It is a synthesis of a lot of different spiritual systems, including astrology, the Hindu Chakra system, the Kabbalah, and the I Ching, which are all systems that fold in together to create Human Design.

It is basically a language of differentiation, a language of understanding your particular energetics, and how you are aligned to operate energetically through reality. It puts you back into the driver’s seat of your life by giving you information about your inner authority. It shows what the energy feels like in your body when something is right for you and how it feels when something is wrong for you so that you can start to navigate your life and make choices based on what’s authentically correct for you and who you are, as opposed to needing to rely on outside authorities.

It puts people like astrologers out of business a bit because when you have your Human Design, you then have the power to just know what is right for you and what is not, who’s a good person for you to connect with, and who’s not, etc. It’s a very complicated synthesis of many spiritual systems that take you to a very simple place of knowing how to navigate your life with clarity and accuracy in order to get the best results for yourself.

Can you walk me through one of your Activation readings?

With a huge background in astrology of over 15 years, I’ve done hundreds of astrology readings. Then Human Design came into my life. I often say that it knocked on the door of my life three times before I answered, where people in my life started talking about it or offered to give me readings. However, my initial reaction was “No, no, I don’t need that. That’s a new system and I have this tried-and-true old system that works great.” However, I then went on a retreat with a couple of women who were studying to become Human Design coaches and that’s all they talked about, so I gave in.

When I had my first Human Design reading from one of them, my reaction was amazed. It became the next chapter of my work. Now that I have expertise in both astrology and Human Design, it only makes sense for me to bridge them together. That’s why in an activation reading, I am looking at both your astrology chart and your Human Design chart.

Your astrology chart is going to tell me the storyline of your life. If your life was a movie, it would tell me all of the plot twists, characters, settings, etc. The timelines of that movie are sort of laid out in the astrology birth chart. It has an incredible amount of information in it. However, what your Human Design body graph is going to tell us is how you show up in that movie as the Oscar-winning actor instead of a B-level actor who’s just thumbing through it.

Human Design tells you how to get the most out of that experience and navigate it as effectively as possible and not get hung up on all the roadblocks. We all have challenges and areas of growth, as life is challenging, but with the combination of understanding your story line, where you’re meant to shine, what areas of life are most important for you, and how to navigate through, everything becomes clear.

Our lives are unfolding from moment to moment so even if we know what the big picture is, we still live it out in the now – in the moment. That’s where Human Design comes in and gives you that clarity on the moment and what you should do in that moment and in that situation. It really gives you a very in-depth blueprint of how to be a human being extremely effectively and how get the success you’re seeking. We’re all seeking some sort of success, whether in the form of happiness, satisfaction, peace, and/or joy.

That’s why an activation reading is. I combine astrology with Human Design and try to give the client the most in-depth blueprint of how to make things happen for them.

You are also a Tarot Oracle. What can you tell me about that part of your work?

I love doing Tarot readings. I use the Thoth deck, which is the deck that Aleister Crowley and his followers created. It was the second majorly commercial deck after the Rider–Waite–Smith deck, and it has graphics that are inspired by the “Art Nouveau” movement in Modern Art.

Tarot is a series of archetypes. There’s Major Arcana, and then there are the four suits that are very reminiscent of a regular deck of playing cards where every single card in the Tarot deck has its meaning. So, what Tarot is really about is looking at the oracle of whatever you want to know and getting an overview of what’s happening in relation to that through these very colorful archetypal cards.

The thing that’s different when it comes to Tarot, compared to astrology and Human Design, is that I can do a very thorough reading in 15 to 20 minutes. In contrast, astrology and Human Design readings not only take a lot of preparation on my part but also last much longer. Tarot is a quick way to get an answer to a question or a concern that’s on your mind, whether it’s related to your relationship, work, or anything else. We just lay out the cards and interpret them according to the symbols, and you get clarity on the matter.

What’s important for me in my Tarot work is my relationship to the sacred sites of Avalon in Glastonbury, England, which I consider my spiritual home and where I feel the most at peace, centered, and connected. So, when I do a Tarot reading, I put myself mentally in the place of being in Avalon, at the sacred Chalice Well, and ask for the wisdom and clarity that I experienced from there to come through into the reading for the client. That’s the way for me to ensure that I’m not being interfered by my own ego or my own thought process and that I’m channeling something that comes from a place of groundedness and peace.