Chapter 12: On Divination - Who Is Wellness For?

I don’t know why certain people get pulled to (and by) the esoteric. I might explain it astrologically—how if you have eighth or twelfth house placements, you (potentially) have a void or darkness or openness (or all three) that seeks the depths of the occult and beyond. These placements in traditional astrology perhaps also point to desiring information in a nontraditional way. As someone who lives and reads between the lines, I want to hold all interpretations possible. This has meant that for most of my life I have struggled with authority and people telling me what to do. I hate rules, but I also endeavor to understand them.

As a Muslim, I struggled with what parameters God had ordained restrictive. I knew as a young child that “fortune telling” was a big no-no, but everything felt cast in this weird moralistic perversion that I find religious doctrine often spills into. Everything has become dogmatic, and the fluidity of the divine is now assigned to a fear-mongering God. As an adult, I find it quite interesting that a faith and culture that has a concept such as nazar (evil eye), and has built an entire industry around protection from evil, doesn’t do more to cultivate good, positive energy and divine magic as spiritual praxis toward Allah.

Even still, I found grace in the word Muslim and how it meant “to submit to God,” which I believed meant accepting the tide. In moments of spiritual loneliness, I clung to the concept, especially during the pandemic, feeling there was something sacred in learning how to be, how to simply be and embrace it all without fear. To become a Muslim was to morph closer toward God. Yet the journey to God is such a personal experience. Something that’s always moved me about Islam is that there is no mediator between you and the Lord, and that only you, or God, could determine that question. No one has the right to determine who is of more faith, and to me stories of the Prophet Mohammed always revealed the value in accepting people’s diversity. As a result, I’ve come to understand spiritual practices as a way of cultivating self-awareness and self-compassion.

I’ve been studying astrology for roughly fourteen years, but my interest really piqued in my twenties when I began to revisit my astrological chart. When I was eighteen, Alia, a Turkish Australian Muslim astrologer, was the first person to read mine by a tableside ripe with dried apricots, spongy halloumi, green pitted olives, and a variety of baklava. My sister was with me, my buffer back in those days, as we drank bitter Turkish coffee (mine with a slurp of honey) and listened to Alia tell me some of the most devastating truths. I remembered, after beginning (and finishing) the process of writing Like a Bird, that by eighteen I was worried that what I had sworn to do with my life (become a human rights lawyer) was not possible given my temperament, and what I really wanted was to write. Even at that age, I realized I was not tameable, meaning: I didn’t want to be. I refused to be what anybody expected of me, and I was beginning to realize that I had no other recourse but to completely unleash. I had started feeling this defiance move through me, a new factor of my personality, and I was fashioning myself as a person who said no, who made choices for herself—even reckless ones. I wanted to be free from my mother and from this peril of living a half-life when there was a whole-ass person bursting at the seams from deep within me, a person, I knew, who could easily die given the right opportunity. I knew there was enough velocity running through me to swing me into the ocean.

I remember Alia explaining my Cancer Rising, Cancer Moon, Chiron in Cancer in the First House—thereby expressing my extreme emotionality, as these positions were in complete opposition to most of my other planets in Capricorn in the Seventh House—including my Sun, Mercury, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus—which made me, to say the least, ambitious but very obsessed with connection, communication, and cultivating higher relationship. I was stunned. My Venus Aquarius in the Eighth House finally revealed my aloofness but deep passion, my Scorpio Lilith, Juno and Pluto explained the sexual undercurrent that I had long awaited an explanation for. Then, the seal: Three different placements pointed toward writing as the best profession for me. It was the sign I needed. Something I’ve never expressed before is that astrology gave me the strength to pursue my writing career.

It’s strange how things can strike such resonance, but I guess in a way I had needed something higher, something indisputable as the stars, to bear witness to my heart’s desires. If I didn’t have a parent to validate me, maybe my chart would. I had not known it was possible to listen to that part of me, but understanding my chart gave me courage. It made me realize that I had a dynamic sense of being and that I deserved to pursue what I knew myself to be. I could finally see that there was a future ahead. The stars made me go on; they were a road map to my becoming.

The older I got, the more I learned that there was a lineage of this spiritual quest, as my paternal uncle, my father’s youngest brother, was a numerologist and used crystals and gemstones to help direct people’s particular callings. It made sense that since my early teens I had been thrust into a world of auras, Reiki, and other alternative healing modalities because of my sister, who was now becoming a coach and healer in her own right. My closest friendships were also representing these quirks, with friends channeling aliens as a means of healing, others exploring the teachings of gnosticism, and some the dharma.

So, astrology started to become a template to understand not only myself, but my parents and other family members. I began to chart lovers and friends, and through the years of understanding my own placements, I have seen that there’s a deep correlation between the stars and who I am instinctively. I know naysayers and skeptics will question astrology without really understanding how deeply scientific and mathematical it is, and like all sciences, astrology ensures evolution through literature, through ongoing peer reviews documented through dynamic conversations that span history, cultures, and faiths.

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I had always known of Muslim ties to astronomy, but in an abstract way. Under the colonial gaze of the West, it is presumed that the master is the ultimate seer and knower, that objectivity is the ultimate test of legitimacy. This is why it’s so important to look at the margins of history, to ask why it is that some knowledge is prioritized and other knowledge demonized? Who is served by those decisions?

The word astrology comes from the early Latin word astrologia, which derives from the Greek ἀστρολογία—from ἄστρον astron (“star”) and -λογία-logia, (“study of”—“account of the stars”). So, it makes sense that Muslims, like other civilizations, were in the business of self-discovery. When I found out about Queen Buran—a Muslim who was reportedly one of the first known female astrologers—I felt something click. She was married to Caliph Al-Ma’mun, the second Abbasid Caliphate, who was also a student of astrology, and suddenly a lost history was shown to me, a path to understanding myself. “We must remember that the early Arabs regarded astrology as a branch of legitimate Greek science rather than mysticism or magic,” historian Kenneth Johnson writes of Buran. “As a member of Baghdad’s intellectual elite, she was involved with the creation of a famed astrological academy, and she was roughly contemporary—and probably acquainted—with the best known astrologers of the Arabic period.”^[1] It took me well into my thirties to excavate the Muslim history that was tethered to my own reality, one of spirits and jinn, one of portals of energy that I couldn’t explain. From a young age I was immersed in another world, another dimension completely. As an adult, I struggle with how much time was lost believing that I was wrong, that there were things I didn’t understand when the answers to my own human existence were right in front of me. Now I didn’t need to convince anyone—I had Queen Buran’s legacy to resolve me.

As someone who has been embedded in astrology for well over a decade (before this recent astrology boom), I have been on the receiving end of obnoxious comments from those who scoff at it and question my intelligence as a result. I resent that so many people I love have contributed to my smallness by criticizing this practice, as if being an intellectual, a writer, meant that my proximity to what was deemed spiritual loftiness somehow made me a less reliable researcher. This book, in many ways, is a response to those critiques. I believe not only that our obsession with the Western sciences is a disservice to the lineages that many other systems and spiritual sciences are rooted in, but it’s also deeply paternalistic and racist to assume that Western resources are somehow impenetrable just because they’re the status quo.

As Jessica Dore writes in Tarot for Change, “While the framework of evidence-based practice is built on the assumption that the only legitimate evidence is that which has been gathered through the scientific method, I’d argue that when something stands the test of time, as symbols embedded in the tarot have, that’s proof of a certain kind of efficacy, as well.” Dore explains that though tarot is seen as a spiritual practice more than a psychological one, psychology is inherently spiritual. Speaking of Carl Jung, she explains his theory of the collective unconscious, which is really about a “shared psychological inheritance” that is experienced through dreams, myths, symbols, and fairy tales across cultures. “Today, Jung might have been seen as more of an artist or philosopher than a scientist,” explains Dore. “His exploration of mystery through the fields of philosophy, anthropology, myth, religion and spirituality informed the development of his style of analytical psychology. And he genuinely believed that the symbols found within old stories, astrology, and even the tarot contained keys to understanding the psyche.”^[2]

Why is wanting to understand yourself by utilizing methodologies that aren’t purely clinical, that rely on your own intuition, your own conceptualization, without just wanting or allowing someone else to determine how you feel, why is that so disconcerting to so many people? Energy healer Donna Eden writes, “Becoming civilized is, to a large extent, learning not to do what your body wants you to do.” Dore adds, “In our culture we are conditioned to prize intellectual knowing and neglect intuitive or body knowing. We are taught that science alone is real and that other ways of knowing are fantastical or unreliable.”^[3] Referencing tarot reader Rachel Pollack, Dore explains that “the root of our dualistic thinking is a fear that we don’t know ourselves. We see things as either this or that because we don’t trust ourselves to flexibly navigate the contingencies and the in-betweens and the constant flux that is life and to still be okay.”^[4]

Knowing how to decipher who you are, by looking at it all, by developing spiritual practices that help you decode yourself and the information that rests in your body, helps you actively show up as a whole version of yourself. By making it a priority to avoid projecting onto, hurting, triggering, and traumatizing others—because you’ve identified all of that in yourself—you become more aware of your actions. Naturally this means that there is more room for accountability. “Stories unshared don’t disappear; they return in relationships, silently taking prisoners. If the trauma remains unknown, unspoken, and unconscious, it does harm,” writes trauma expert Laurie Kahn in Baffled by Love.^[5]

Coming into my own spiritual power, being able to fully see my power in moments of quietude, woke up all those things that were long dormant. Recently, I’ve found solace in the Vedic scriptures’ depiction of kundalini energy. Swami Satyananda Saraswati writes, “By activating kundalini you may become anything in life. . . . And when total awakening occurs, man becomes a junior god, an embodiment of divinity.”^[6] I think of the preparation and dedication it takes to live a deeply spiritual life, and how cultures that were corrupted lost not only entire spiritual ontologies but practices, stories, lineages, and rituals tied to them as well. Who retrieves that information? I’ve always found it absurd that we live in a world where it’s normal to suppress your magic; in fact, it’s preferred. What does it say about a society that wants its citizens to keep their hands tied behind their backs, casually trusting that the powers that be have their best interests at hand?

Johnson writes about Queen Buran: “According to the historian Ibn-Khallikan, Buran ‘used to lift the astrolabe and look at the horoscope of the caliph al-Mu’tasim.’ One day she noticed that the ruler was in danger through some sort of wooden instrument. She sent her father to the palace to tell the caliph what she had foreseen. Mu’tasim may have been a fundamentalist, but astrologers were still taken seriously; when his servant arrived shortly thereafter with the caliph’s comb and toothpicks, al-Mu’tasim ordered him to try them first. No sooner had he done so than his head or face swelled up and he fell dead.”^[7] Reading it, I mourned all the lost power of where I come from, where Muslims come from, and what we once were. In my mind, my journey is to help restore this information. It is to inch closer to something that has been denied to me, to my brethren. I find my liberation through these spiritual compasses. I’m gaining back my lost power.

Symbology was prominent in the culture of ancient Egypt. The Mayans had a supreme connection to the land and therefore the divine, and through that there was a conceptualization of something greater. Indigenous peoples in North America have spent thousands of years contextualizing connection to the sacred elements of Fire, Water, Earth, and Wind. This correlates to the signs in astrology^* as well as the suits in the tarot (wands are fire; cups are water; swords are air; pentacles are earth). This also has crossover in both Chinese medicine (with the addition of a fifth element, metal) and Ayurveda, proving that a number of cultures were elementally constructed. If we all had a better understanding of the elements that govern this Earth, we might have more compassion toward ourselves. What else are these divination and alternative practices but a way to engage with ourselves more intentionally, deeply?

Astrology has taught me so much about self-love and self-care by giving me a foundation to examine myself on my own terms. I’ve learned about my quirks through studying my chart, and accepting my contradictions (which the planets explain) has been paramount to my self-healing. It has become the entire template for how I engage with the world. I see both humans and this planet through an astrological viewpoint. Conjunctions, oppositions, and trines in your chart can shed light on the intricacies or nuances of your personality, about why you hold trauma, or who your parents are and how that’s affected you. Spiritual people are too often relegated to being woo-woo, as if we all just sit with a crystal ball with no scope of rationality. Why is magic seen as an interpreter of lies, instead of another context that can offer value, judgment, and credible, resourced explanations of self? We have to question why we negate everything that we don’t immediately understand. I think about Cartesian philosophy and the voices of white Christian men who determined separation as opposed to holisticim. We need to reinterpret what wisdom, knowledge, and expansion of thought truly is.

In ancient Greece, the Oracle of Delphi was said to be established as early as 1400 BCE, and was the most sacred shrine built around a holy spring. The Pythia, the high priestess of Apollo, was known for interpreting divine messages and providing prophecies under possession. People, including intellectuals, would come from all over and debate the messages, as inquiry was common and a part of the ritual. This reminds me of the Muslim salons held in the House of Baghdad by Buran and Al-Ma’mun, where dialogue was encouraged and deeply valued as a site of not only spiritual but also intellectual discourse. Yet the divine is seen as a hoax, now everything far from God is revered, sanctified. Now capital is God.

Every day I meditate, pray, and pull cards from my three separate tarot decks—the Rider-Waite deck, the Thoth deck, and my Medicine cards—to bring clarity over my own psychosis. This practice always connects me to God and spirit. Jung understood how powerful symbolism was, whether in dreams or in tarot. He was able to gauge how we think, how we feel, through symbols. Looking at the art of Ithell Colquhoun and Niki de Saint Phalle, I understand how deep this legacy of the esoteric is for humans, how comprehensive and attuned our societies once were, and how so much of who we are exists in the stories we tell ourselves. The art of divination are the relics of those lost histories. We were once far more connected. To each other, to source. All this was once lost, but the archive is declaring itself again. In Space and Place geographer Yi-Tu Fuan writes, “Man is the crucial and central term in the astral cosmos. He contains within him the distillation of the whole astral system. The union of astrology with the body arises out of the need to unite the multiplicity of substances in the universe and out of the search for parallel wholeness.”

There’s something big about unlocking untapped power and believing that the future is possible. And it starts with us naming who we are, by stating the things we know to be true about ourselves. But it’s also about situating yourself in the cosmos, it’s about understanding how you are participating in the ecosystem of this great galaxy, of this huge human saga that we are all in together. We are a part of something big, isn’t that extraordinary? It’s to remember the big and the small of it and hold those realities both together. Imagine if we could all live with that awareness all the time. Imagine if that’s all it took to be present—to sit with the awe of being alive. No matter how painful and hard it is at times, there’s beauty. In nature, on this planet, in the vast galaxies that separate us, the legion of stars and asteroids. There’s immense profundity in our human experience that is an inherently spiritual experience just by being alive, and here. Right now. We’re here.

There’s a bigger mission that’s asking for you to unlock your own magic. It’s asking you to find your spiritual powers and prowess. If you hear the call, I hope you’re listening and taking note. The revolution needs your spiritual evolution.

Footnotes

* The fire signs being Sagittarius, Aries, and Leo; Water being Cancer, Pisces, and Scorpio; Air being Aquarius, Gemini, and Libra; Earth being Capricorn, Virgo, and Taurus.