Category: Uncategorized

My interview on The Haunted Road Trips Show with Tracy St. Croi comes out tomorrow! I am really excited to be on her podcast! She asked me about my spiritual experiences growing up and how they got me to where I am today.

Inspired by that conversation, I thought it would be a good idea to dive a little more specific on a particular quirky interest of mine and how it evolved from my experiences being Christian growing up to now being enthusiastically spiritual but not religious.

---

Many of you who have been keeping up with me for any length of time are aware that I grew up in the Christian Church. In fact, I grew up in many churches within the overall Christian Church. For astrological purposes, I will put dates below

• United Methodist (Birth – Summer 2016)
  • Location 1 with my mother & father (Birth – Fall 2010)
  • Location 2 with my mother & father (Fall 2010 – Spring 2012)
  • Location 1 again with my mother (Summer 2012 – Summer 2016)
  • Location 3 with my father’s parents (Summer 2013 – Summer 2016)
• Southern Baptist with my mother (Summer 2016 – October 2017)
• Non-Denominational with my father (Summer 2016 – April 2017)
  • Same church as Location 2 but they withdrew from the UMC
• Presbyterian Church U.S.A. with my mother (October 15, 2017 – November 23, 2023)

This timeline is reflective of the evolution that I went through in my childhood, which I have talked about before on the In the Stars podcast streaming on all popular platforms.

I share this timeline because not only does it reveal the amount of church experiences that I have had solely in my childhood, but it also has everything to do with my own spiritual journey, self-discovery, and a unique interest of mine that I am about to share.

My Scorpio Mercury remembers me being very little at Location 1 and attending the contemporary services. My father was a youth minister, and I went to pre-school there, so I was literally at Location 1 six of seven days of the week, sometimes all seven if there was an event.

I never really felt anything in the modern worship environment. In fact, I would have been completely happy if I never had to go to church again. I remember feeling that people just regurgitated popular prayers and phrases and had no idea of the substance behind them. I remember particularly when it came time for the ever so popular Lord’s Prayer. I remember cringing whenever I heard the monotone voices in the congregation with no excitement or zeal, with no enthusiasm, and most likely no idea of the actual meaning of the words.

I did not make the connection until when I was writing this article, that many people probably gravitated towards Location 1’s contemporary environment because all of the songs that were sung had a beat and all sounded the same with very similar meanings. Every song could be boiled down to three words: Jesus, God, and holy. The songs lacked nuance and were very surface level and most people like that for some reason. Now that I am a metaphysician, I can validate childhood-me’s experiences with being annoyed and frustrated in that environment.

My parents were in the process of divorce in 2012, and I had gone to my maternal grandmother’s house just outside of Nashville, Tennessee for two weeks. She was Presbyterian so I had gone with her to church one Sunday not because I wanted to, but because she took me!

I am so grateful that she took me to her church!

I remember walking into that environment and immediately feeling my spirit just light up. It was truly magical because I never got this feeling before at church back home.

I remember particularly feeling spiritually energized when singing one of the first “real” hymns I ever had sung: Open My Eyes, That I May See.

I am not going to lie; I was excited to go to church with my grandmother the second week because I absolutely fell in love with hymns. It was the words! It was the tunes! It was the substance! It was the organ! It was not cheaply sounding! My Capricorn Venus was yearning for more!

Keep in mind I was not even in first grade yet!

That second Sunday was just as magical as the first. It was that second Sunday where we sang the hymn Love Divine, All Loves Excelling set to the tune BEECHER (not HYFRYDOL because my grandmother’s church does not use the official Presbyterian U.S.A. hymnal).

BEECHER was my absolute favorite tune growing up, I would even go as far to say that it is THE sound of my childhood. That is how much of an impact it had on me. I would get so excited when I would go to church with my mother or my grandparents and see in the bulletin that we would be singing Love Divine, All Loves Excelling. The lyrics were “meh”, but the tune was one of my connections to spirituality. Below is a recording of the tune:

Many more church experiences occurred, many of which I talk about on the In the Stars podcast or the Patreon, but it was not until the Fall of 2022 where I began writing my own hymns. I was becoming more and more dissatisfied with a lot of the hymns in Christian traditions because I felt like they were not very empowering, in fact they were more “put yourself down and God can save you” if you know what I mean. They were lacking the spark of God, Source, Spirit, or whatever you want to call it, present in everyone and everything that exists or will exist. I was also really going headstrong in my metaphysical studies at the time as well so that definitely encouraged a lot of my skepticism and criticism of theologies and spiritual dogma.

As it happened, I had the first hymn I ever wrote sung in church with the enthusiastic support of the church’s interim pastor at the time, Jody Welker. Nobody in my community would have really known that writing was a talent of mine if it wasn’t for him!

I set my first hymn to the tune GENEVA (the tune of Swiftly Pass the Clouds of Glory).

This was also around the time when I found my astrology mentor, Laurie Rivers, on TikTok. Little did I know then that I would be professionally practicing astrology three years later.

Even after I decided to leave the church all together in 2023, I still kept up with hymn writing. My hymns were never about “praise God or you will go to hell” or “Jesus died for your sins” (which by the way, did you know that Jesus dying for your sins to be forgiven is not even in the gospels? He died because of human power structures and egos).

My hymns were always about self-empowerment and locating the divine in everything. Everything is divine because the divine is not a power structure to divvy up limited resources. You cannot apply economic principles to spirituality and the divine, however I saw a lot of that when I was a part of the church which was one reason of many why I decided to leave.

I want to share with you all a hymn that I rewrote. I did not write it in its original form; in fact, it is an old Irish poem. Because it is a common practice in Christian tradition to rewrite outdated language into more progressed terminology, I chose to rewrite it because the original lyrics were not only archaic but felt kind of martial. I thought to myself, how can I update the lyrics, which were actually really beautiful at their core, to lyrics that people can understand today without getting caught up in the narrow and myopic language originally used (mainly for a very specific demographic). I also wanted to show people how even though I am not a practicing Christian, I can still appreciate the value that Christian art has on spirituality in general. With that, below is my revision for the timeless hymn Be Thou My Vision and a recording of the SLANE tune that accompanies it.

I was inspired to write this article based on a phenomenon that occurred recently in a science course of mine.

Here is the scenario: The course is an undergraduate requirement. The course has a total of 92 students. Significantly more than half were caught plagiarizing a virtual lab assignment. The professor was shocked.

When the professor acknowledged what had happened, most students simply did not have any reaction at all, including myself. We honestly did not really care. This wasn’t a shock to us, even to those who were not involved in the situation at all.

Now, I can hear you readers saying to yourself, “WHY WOULDN’T YOU CARE! THIS IS A BIG DEAL!” and you are right. This is a big deal but only because of the system of education that we have established, particularly in the United States.

---

Before I get any further with my thoughts and theories, I want to establish three main points:

1. It is not my intention to justify or excuse plagiarism.
2. The purpose of me writing this article is to expose the flawed paradigms in our education systems that no longer serve students or educators.
3. This and related phenomena that we see in education is a microcosm of our larger societies that can serve as pointer signals as to where we need to evolve.

First, let’s talk about the phenomenon that is mass plagiarism. I went to a virtual high school, Stride (originally K12). I saw mass plagiarism go down all the time, almost daily. Because the course curriculums were so standardized by company, state, and national requirements, to the point where a student in a Stride school in California will be taking the same Biology 1.12 Quiz on the same Thursday as me in Arkansas, Quizlet or Brainly was a hub of sharing answers and thoughts. I only had two teachers that sought to get approval to customize the quizzes and/or assignments instead of the pre-programmed automated Stride lesson plans and units. As you can imagine, those two teachers were my favorites. Also, those two teachers had discussion-based learning, meaning that there were not too many quizzes or exams, if any.

These two teachers of mine went the extra mile to fight plagiarism because they knew that mass plagiarism was rampant in Stride schools because of the pre-programmed and hyper-standardization of courses. Even though their intentions were to fight plagiarism, their solutions ended up being for the betterment of the students and themselves because students enjoyed class sessions more, created stronger bonds, and were less likely to share answers on individual activities. Also, most of these students still hold relationships with these teachers post-graduation as compared to the other teachers. It is disconcerting to me, however, that it took fighting plagiarism for teachers to realize that students and teachers deserve better and customizable education suiting the individual interests and educational aspirations of students.

For those of you who know about me and what I stand for, it will not come as a surprise that I am an outspoken critic of education systems as well as government systems. I make myself very clear that I am against letter and percentage grading and for an alternative approach, specification grading. Specification grading is a grading system which focuses less on the grading aspect itself and more on the actual mastery of skills. Laurie Rivers, my astrology mentor uses specification grading in her Align Network International program (also known as the Mystery School). The “grade” you get is the mastery of those skills, and that’s really all there is to it. You keep going until you have mastered the concepts and skills. Schedler Honors College, which I am a student of, also uses specification grading. You only receive a zero on an assignment that you do not do, A 4/5 does not mean an 80%, and you get an A in the course if you meat the specification requirements such as writing your course essays, participating in class, and demonstrating that you are mastering the concepts and skills learned through in-class discussions and conversations with professors. This is what education should be like universally as compared to the hyper-standardized, quiz and exam, single age-group design we see in the States currently.

You could say that I am for a Montessori-style education system that encourages people to explore their individual interests versus what they are told to learn by some governing body or set of standards. It upsets me that at least in Arkansas, we only really have Montessori-style schools for elementary and younger. Why is that? My theory is because there is a stigma that Montessori education is lazy and not disciplined. As a person who was not educated in a Montessori school and instead was a product of public schools, I can say that that is extremely untrue. Montessori education encourages students to form their own disciplines and not have to have an authority to tell them what and how to do things every step of the way every day and all the time. There is guidance and facilitation at the beginning of a process, but the ultimate goal is to create independent individual thinkers.

I like to think that Schedler Honors College is what Montessori education would be like on a university level. It is a successful model and I truly wish that all university classes function and run that way instead of our current system. Most people who I know are a part of the Schedler Honors College would for the most part agree that this is how college should be universally. This raises the question, why is it not? After all, mass plagiarism isn’t a thing in the Honors College, there isn’t really any cheating, students tend to have a higher morale. This is not because of higher GPAs because Grade Point Averages are not a main qualifier for the Honors College as to demonstrating through a selection process of the intense desire to learn and better communities.

My theory is that this is because our education system is a product of the larger society in which we live. America’s pro-corporate culture and obsession with wealth and money creates systems in which the education systems become hijacked by money and corporations, therefore leaving education as a side-effect of a larger business model. We see this in healthcare too with insurance companies: the only healthcare that is covered by insurance companies is what the insurance companies think they can profit off of, even if that means leaving people to die in debt to cover their behinds. The DSM is a product of this as well. It tells people if symptoms are problems even if it is already very clear that there is a problem and the DSM may not acknowledge it.

What is the obvious pattern here? American society uses standards to make and secure money come hell or high water or screwing people over. Insurance companies have standards (explanation of benefits or policies based on actuarial data, not based on genuine humanitarian paradigms that would actually better communities). Psychology has standards (DSM which is out of touch with true psychological phenomena due to its use by insurance companies). And then there is education which has standards set by the Department of Education both state and federal (for accreditation of universities or curriculums for K-12 education). I am not arguing against personalized standards, also known as educational goals set by an instructor and/or student, because there has to be some sort of structure for a quality education, however what I am arguing against are these mass structural standards that are out of touch with the personalized educational aspirations of individuals.

Case in point would be my astrology education with Laurie Rivers. I could argue, and have done so before, that my astrology education with Laurie is more personally rigorous than what my university could ever accomplish due to our current system. Why is it that my education with Laurie, despite it being more informal, would not be accredited compared to my university education even though I am clearly learning a whole lot more through Laurie than what I am through college courses? Why is it that my personal educational aspirations are not accredited by a governing body even though I have proven time and time again the benefits I have gained through my astrology education compared to college education?

This, my dear readers, is exactly why people plagiarize. They do not actually care about the course or assignment itself. They are simply seeking to check off that standard to qualify them for approval by a governing body, thereby sacrificing their confidence in the education system and their personal educational work. This is a sad truth that is covered up by universities and schools because it would be exposing the fact that it is a fault of the system and not solely on the individual. After all, the individual would not plagiarize if they were truly passionate in what they are learning or if they feel confident that they can be a productive member of society by doing what they are passionate about and identifying in what they do.

When people plagiarize, I do not blame them 100%. There is always a legitimate and valid reason why and it most certainly is not laziness (in fact, I would even go as far to say that true laziness does not exist). That does not mean I agree or support the action itself. I place more value in the deeper reason why people feel compelled to make that decision instead of the act of trying to stop an inevitable truth from emerging.

Because I like to leave my articles off with a zinger to get people thinking, I want to address a common counter argument that I have heard from people who overly-identify themselves with our current systems: “Plagiarism cheapens a degree or education.” Well, my lovely readers, I would like to argue that degrees and education are already cheapened in America (but not monetarily) because of our current systems of checking boxes for credentials that society tells us will get us ahead, thereby devaluing the actual process and zeal of learning. We are simply fighting for two bread crumbs instead of one.

Ethics is a word that gets thrown around a lot in day-to-day conversations. Have you ever stopped and asked yourself how you would define ethics? What even are they and why do they matter? Maybe ethics is one of those words that you intuitively know what it means but when it comes to practical application or if anyone asked you, you probably wouldn’t even be able to give a definition (that is unless you have sat through any sort of ethics training for a job or work closely with them daily).

I am a person who prides myself on having good ethics. My teacher, Laurie Rivers, immerses her practice in ethics. I have seen the benefits of ethics through her and realize how important they are to clients and readers of any modality. I have also seen quite the majority of readers online, especially on Facebook and TikTok, who may not value morality to the same extent as Laurie, myself, and many other ethical readers I communicate with. I will discuss all of this in this article.

Before we get started, I would like to give you a definition that I will work off of. This is my personal definition of ethics:

Ethics are the moral principles that guide a person’s behavior with the intention of serving others in a positive way.

I know that my definition is a little bit more complex and specific than the ones you may find on the internet or in dictionaries. I personally believe that ethics encompasses the “intention of serving others in a positive way” a lot more than what a lot of the common definitions lead on. The reason I tack on this gem to the end of my definition is because if the universe just consisted of you and yourself only, there would be no need for ethics. Ethics specifically deals with personal behavior in relations with others.

What are some examples of ethical behavior?

• Asking your client how to properly address them (e.g. pronouns, nicknames, etc.)
• Being trauma informed (e.g. not mentioning the worst possible scenarios when reading a person’s natal chart unless the client brings up the situation)
• Knowing and following through with scope of practice boundaries (e.g. referring clients to specialists on topics that are not of the practitioner’s expertise)
• Being honest about experience in a particular field of study (e.g. not publicly making false statements about who you took classes with and for how long)

As you may already know, ethics is not just incorporated into metaphysical fields of study. They are incorporated into business, medical sciences, and many other fields as well. Each of the examples I mentioned above about good ethical behavior can be applied to any field of study that entails working with other people. The same can be said for any ethical behavior that is incorporated in another field of study into a metaphysical field of study.

Before I conclude, I would like to give an example of an ethical dilemma that is common amongst many astrologers’ experiences. This dilemma involves someone wanting to book a reading to find out ways to get their ex back. For those of you who have never met me before, I make it very crystal clear that I will not do love/relationship readings for just anybody. I can do them—and I am quite successful at them—however the reason why I will not open them to the general public is because of situations exactly like the one I just mentioned. About half of the time, people will not come to me as an astrologer in good faith; good faith being increasing self-awareness, broadening horizons, or well-intentionally seeking guidance. As an ethical astrologer, I do often turn down requests for readings for people who I know are coming to me to manipulate other people. This is exactly what happens when it comes to love readings: people come to me trying to make somebody love them or turn someone into someone they are not to avoid working on their personal trauma. I absolutely do NOT and will NOT tolerate this and want absolutely nothing to do with someone’s manipulative activities, even if that means taking a pay cut. However, there are times when I am willing to do relationship readings for people and that is usually reserved for people I am close to or repeating clients who I have a sure understanding of what consciousness they are bringing to the table. This one example of ethics in action as it concerns my astrological practice.

If you take nothing away from this article, I hope you take away this: ethics concerns your intentions in relations with other people. Are you going to strive to be a person who holds themselves to the standard of ethical behavior or are you going to bypass the welfare and rights of others to raise yourself up? It is up to you to decide.

How much do you think you know about astrology? Where did you get your information from about the subject matter? Perhaps Twitter (I refuse to call it ‘X’), the newspaper, other tabloids, friends, family, etc.? You may know your ‘star sign’ or how all your exes were Libras and therefore you should never date a Libra again…ever, or else you will find yourself eating out of a tub of mint-chocolate-chip ice cream on the couch watching Sex and the City for the umpteenth time all over again. Do you believe that this is truly what astrology is? Do you really believe that the reason why your ex cheated on you is because she/he was a ‘star sign’ that was the same as your annoying next-door neighbor? I am writing this article today to reveal to (or remind) you what astrology actually is, what ‘pop-astrology’ is and why it sucks, as well as introduce you to the type of astrology that I practice.

Before I get into what astrology actually is, let me preface with what astrology is NOT:

• Fortune telling
• Talking to demons
• Talking with dead people
• A religion
• Witchcraft
• Anti-Christian
• A party trick

If I got a penny for every time I was asked by someone who knew I was an astrologer, “guess my ‘star sign,’” I would be richer than what Donald Trump claims he is. Astrology is not a guessing game. It is not a penny-for-a-prediction machine.

There is no definition of astrology that I have found that I feel accurately encompasses what astrologers actually do. Therefore, I have created my own:

“Astrology is the study of the correlation and reflection of planetary and celestial bodies with events, people, places, things, and collective behavior on Earth.”

You read that right! My definition of astrology does not claim that the planets and celestial bodies CAUSED you to forget to turn in your homework last Tuesday. In astrology, the planets simply are a reflection of what is happening on Earth, within each person, or whatever point of view a chart is being cast for.

Because astrology is not a standardized subject as is biology, history, statistics, etc., each astrologer creates their title based off of what their purpose in astrology is. My astrology teacher, Laurie Rivers whom I have studied under for two years, titles herself an Observational Applied Progressive Evolutionary Western Tropical Astrologer. This title was created by her to convey to others a general idea of what type of astrology she practices. My title is Academic Observational Applied Progressive Western Tropical Astrologer. This is not to say that Laurie is not academic in her astrology or that I do not view Jeffrey Wolf-Green (Evolutionary) as an astrologer I learn from, I simply do not apply the same title to myself because I am not a clone of Laurie’s and neither is she a clone of Robert Hand’s or Joanne Wickenburg’s.

You may have noticed that Laurie and I, as well as myriad other astrologers, consider themselves ‘Western Tropical Astrologers.’ You may be wondering what the hell Western Tropical Astrology even is. There are two main types of geocentric astrology (from the Earth’s point of view): sidereal and tropical. Both are valid, neither one is incorrect. They are just different methods of measuring the correlations of heavenly movements with earthly happenings. Sidereal astrology uses the exact placements of the zodiacal constellations to measure their correlations. Tropical astrology uses the cycle of the seasons to measure their correlations. Within each of these main branches, there are many subbranches. Western is the subbranch of tropical astrology that I practice. For the sake of simplicity, I will leave this particular complex subtopic off here but will write more about it in future articles.

Now that I have given a broad and general overview of what astrology is, let us now get into some of the myth busting. One of my favorite myths about astrology is that astrologers talk with demons. This is quite literally the most insane thing that I have ever heard. First off, usually this argument comes from a fundamentalist Christian-centered point of view that has no shame in calling everything they disagree with demonic. Not all the time does this come from that particular demographic but me being living in the American South, this is the kind of bologna I have to deal with on a regular basis. Astrology is not a science because it is interpretive, however it uses scientific principles and data to arrive at conclusions (i.e. Sarah, Josie, and Mark each have Venus and Uranus conjunct in Pisces and they share X, Y, & Z in common). Nowhere in this process did I ever summon a demon to conversate. Another myth that I hear often from people is that astrology is talking with dead people. This is also quite ludicrous because there is a completely different practice that does, which would be mediumship. If you come to me asking me to talk to your cat that died when you were four, I’m sorry for your loss but I cannot help you. Go find a medium (not a psychic, an important distinction that I will direct you to a supporter of mine from Australia and friend of Laurie’s, TheRealMediumMatilda). Astrology is also not anti-Christian. I know more astrologers that practice Christianity than I know that do not, however every single astrologer that I know respects and cares about the words of Jesus (or Yeshua). One astrologer in my local area who practices sidereal astrology is an active member of a church and sings in the choir. Many astrologers, including myself, have separated themselves from the church because we did not feel like the church collectively was in alignment with the nature and intentions of Jesus. It has nothing to do with the fact that we wanted to be anti-Christian and wanted to talk to demons.

Before I conclude, I also want to address my sarcasm at the beginning of this article about ‘star signs.’ I actively avoid using the term ‘star sign’ because there are twelve star signs in the tropical zodiac and all twelve are present in every single chart. Yes! You heard me! EVERYONE HAS ALL TWELVE SIGNS IN THEIR CHART! Remember your exes who just so happened to be Libras? Well, their sun signs were Libra. You too also have Libra present in your chart. Below is a picture of a natal chart that shows that all twelve signs are present in every chart.