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The Astrology Podcast

Ep. 139 Transcript: Is Astrology Becoming More or Less Popular?

The Astrology Podcast

Transcript of Episode 139, titled:

Is Astrology Becoming More or Less Popular?

With Chris Brennan and astrologers Dayna Lynn Nuckolls and Jessica Lanyadoo

Episode originally released on January 11, 2018

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Note: This is a transcript of a spoken word podcast. If possible, we encourage you to listen to the audio or video version, since they include inflections that may not translate well when written out. Our transcripts are created by human transcribers, and the text may contain errors and differences from the spoken audio. If you find any errors then please send them to us by email: theastrologypodcast@gmail.com

Transcribed by Mary Sharon

Transcription released June 15, 2021

Copyright © 2021 TheAstrologyPodcast.com

(intro music)

CHRIS BRENNAN: Hi, my name is Chris Brennan and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. This episode is recorded on Monday, January 8th, 2018, starting at 11:19 a.m. in Denver, Colorado and this is the 139th episode of the show. For more information about how to subscribe to the podcast and help support the production of future episodes by becoming a patron, please visit theastrologypodcast.com/subscribe. In this episode, I’m going to be talking with astrologers Dayna Lynn Nuckolls and Jessica Lanyadoo about a recent discussion in the astrological community about the question; is astrology becoming more popular or less popular? So, hi Dana and Jessica. Welcome to the show.

DAYNA LYNN NUCKOLLS: Hi, thanks for having me.

JESSICA LANYADOO: Hi. I’m glad to be here. Great to be with you guys.

CB: Yeah, I’m really glad to have both of you on. I hope that I pronounced both of your names correctly. Was I close enough?

JL: You did a great job with my name, Jessica Lanyadoo. That’s not easy. And I feel like you stepped up to the plate, [Dayna laughs] you knocked it out. Good job. [Jessica laughs]

DLN: That is a courageous thing. I would agree. And yeah, [Jessica laughs] you did it just fine, Chris.

CB: All right. Good to hear. Okay, I’m excited to have both of you on the show and excited about this topic today. Part of the genesis of this was that about a month or two ago, I was contacted by a reporter named Ida Benedetto who said that she was writing an article for courts on the growing popularity of astrology, and then there was a New York Times article that came out earlier this month that was actually on a similar topic. And both of those topics started getting me thinking about this question of, is astrology actually getting more popular in society? Or is it becoming less popular? Or is it both? Are there areas where there’s growth and areas where there’s decline? And when I posed this question to some people in the community, it seems astrologers overwhelmingly think that it’s growing or that it is becoming more popular, but I wanted to have a nuanced conversation with both of you about your views on that and if you feel like it’s becoming more popular or less popular in certain areas of society. So maybe let’s start with you, Dayna, because you were the first one I was talking to last night about this where you felt some of the coverage of astrology recently was positive and indicative that it was being taken more seriously by people in the media, right?

DLN: Yeah, I always think it’s a positive thing when astrologers are being invited to comment and offer their expertise in a way that’s not limited to horoscopes. So, the idea that you would be interviewed or asked for your expert opinion on astrology, I think is saying something about how people situate that in their mind and the collective and that horoscopes are not just these things that appear in online publications. They’re something that comes due to someone’s study and expertise, which is of an astrologer. So, I know you, Jessica and myself have all been contacted by publications recently in our capacity, specifically as a professional astrologer and not as some oh, I don’t know. Yeah, that’s all I’m going to say about that. [Jessica and Dayna laugh]

CB: Sure, and maybe that’s actually a good starting point that I should have begun with, which is just what’s your background, or maybe I should introduce to my audience. So, how long have you been an astrologer? How long have you been studying astrology? And where are you from?

DLN: So, I’m from Chicago and I have been studying astrology going on 11 years now. And as you guys were talking before we started recording, when I started learning, astrology, the internet was there but I went to the library and got every book off the shelf and kept them until I was able to piece together the building blocks of astrology. And it wasn’t really until later that I guess at the time that I was studying the online information was just beginning to be put there. So yeah, I’ve learned from books and I still learn from books. [Dayna laughs]

CB: Sure. So, you’re at that middle stage where it’s all the internet resources were becoming more and more prominent, but books were still probably the primary resource for you in your early studies?

DLN: Absolutely. Going to the library, I remember I went to Harold Washington Library, which is this huge library in the loop like the center of downtown and they had a whole bookcase full of astrology books. Now, of course, at that time, I didn’t have the discernment to know what was what, but I just picked all of them off. And I haven’t been there in a while. I would wonder if those books are even still there. Like you say, it’s waning, but I think publishing is waning in that sense in general, so I don’t know. We’ll see.

CB: Sure. And what about you, Jessica? How long have you been studying or practicing astrology? And where are you from?

JL: I’m from Montreal, Quebec, Canada although I live in California now. And I started studying actually got my first astrology book for my 12th birthday. But I have been I guess, more formally studying since maybe ‘91 or ‘92. I’m really lucky because I went to an alternative college where there was a Jungian astrologer who was a Jungian psychologist and a Jungian astrologer, and he taught in college coursework, he had astrology classes, and I started practicing professionally in ‘94. And yeah, the internet had been invented, [Jessica laughs] but it hadn’t been something that people used yet. So, all of my education with astrology is through books, and I learned how to cast a chart by hand and all that stuff because that was the only thing I could do. I didn’t even get an astrology program until, I guess, the later ‘90s. And I really, really love astrology and I’m so grateful for how accessible it is, but I do feel that reading whole books on topics [Jessica laughs] is really, really useful instead of just blog posts, which is something we can get into more. But that said, it’s so great that there’s so much astrology in the world. Yes, I do think there’s more astrology. But anyways, I perhaps digress.

CB: Sure. So, both of you mentioned, and I think we’re all in a similar space in terms of having books being our starting point or our initial foundation in our astrological studies. And that’s actually brings me to my first talking point, which is this question I have where one of the areas where I almost feel there’s been a decline is in astrology book publishing, where it seems like 10-15 years ago, you could go to a bookstore or metaphysical bookstore, something like that and they’d have a few shelves worth of astrology books. And sometimes, they’d be published by major publishers like Penguin or other major publishing houses like that. But nowadays, over the past 10 years, when I go into a bookstore, it seems like those shelves have shrunk and shrunk so that you’re lucky if there’s one shelf or even half a shelf of astrology books. And I’m not sure if that’s due to a decline in interest in consumers purchasing astrology books, or if it’s just a byproduct of the decline in book publishing in general. Do either of you have an opinion on that?

JL: I think it’s a really about the decline in publishing. Personally, I actually know several people I think I can think of right now five different people who have booked deals, astrology book deals right now. So, I do think we’re going to see more astrology books, but I think it’s probably more about the decline in publishing that specifically, the decline in interest in astrology. I also think there are emerging voices in astrology and I think we’re about to see some very different kinds of astrology books. That’s my sense, anyways.

CB: Sure. And Dayna, have you because one of the things I think you’ve released things online and that’s an interesting shift as well where astrologers used to be that in order to establish yourself in the astrological community or put yourself out there as a professional astrologer, you had to publish a book whereas nowadays, you could write a successful blog or you could become known through publishing, even tweets on Twitter or something. There’s a lot of people that have developed followings there. What avenue have you taken over the past decade in terms of establishing yourself as a practicing astrologer?

DLN: I’m the same age as you Chris, born at ‘84 just a few months before you in February. And the special thing about our generation is that we really straddle this idea of a Millennial and then a Gen Xer because Millennials are supposed to not have a memory before the internet and cell phones and all of that thing, but I’m sure Chris, similar to me, you very much remember dial up phones, rotary phones, pay phones, all of these other things, or getting your free AOL trial and this being this huge thing, right, the beginning of this door opening. So, I think that we find ourselves in a really interesting place. And for me, it’s interesting to have both an immersed and detached connection with social media. I think there’s something to be said for, who are the traditional gatekeepers of knowledge and information? And how has social media democratized information? And I think that’s at the crux of the conversation that we’re having is that now that information is democratized meaning that you don’t have to go to a college or university or even a library in order to get information, you have this explosion of various types of astrology, like Jessica was saying, emerging and various gatekeepers and social media tends to be how many followers you have. If you’re authority then that means you have 10,000-23,000 followers on Twitter, or Facebook or YouTube as it were.

But for me, personally, I’ve definitely been able to use Twitter. My first astrology blog, I think was in 2010 and I wasn’t on Twitter, I was on Facebook at the time. And now this is my second go round with astrology, having a blog, and tweets, and I actually just published something this past weekend. So, like you say, it’s definitely more about the decline of traditional publishing. And I have some opinions about that because I feel we do need gatekeepers for information and that anarchy of information is not [Dayna laughs] what’s best for us even though some people would have you think that.

CB: Sure, yeah. That seems to be a point that often comes up in this conversation about yes, maybe everyone seems to say that it’s getting more popular, but then sometimes there’s a question of, is it just bit pop astrology that’s becoming more popular or is advanced forms of horoscopic astrology with advanced natal chart, and transits and progressions and everything else is that what’s becoming popular? But before we move on to that topic, that’s a really interesting point that publishing books is no longer, there used to be like you’re saying the gatekeeper method of establishing yourself as a professional astrologer or a leading astrologer in the community, but it seems that’s not necessarily the case anymore because there are people establishing themselves without publishing books, or before they’ve published a book. I established myself originally writing blog posts, and then eventually doing this podcast. And it was only just last year that I published a book, which I had been working on for 10 years, but it was almost as an afterthought, in the sense that it wasn’t necessary in order to establish myself at that point. It may help in terms of long-term things, but it’s no longer necessary. Jessica, do you feel that’s the case at this point? You mentioned at least five different people who have booked deals, but they’re basically people that are already established at this point because it’s not like people aren’t usually starting with a book and then they get popular, it’s more like they’re popular and then they get a book deal at this point, right?

JL: Well, actually, it’s mixed actually, I think. So many thoughts about it. But one of the things that I think is happening is with the internet, there’s so many pros, and there’s so many cons of how the internet is affecting astrology and astrology is affecting the internet. But one of the cons is, within capitalism, we have astrology as clickbait, right? And so, there are astrologers that I know that have book deals. I would say all of them are 30 years old or younger [Jessica laughs] which to me exactly, is a little complicated. And it’s not bad and it’s not good, but as somebody who’s been actively practicing for more than 20 years, I feel like, “Well, how many years can you have?” I don’t know. I guess what I want to say is that some people are getting book deals because they have a social media following and having a social media following is something that you can develop because you are accurate and engaging and have a deep breath of knowledge or because you’re really good with fun sayings.

To be an astrology writer does not necessarily mean you are an astrology expert. It means you are a good writer with astrology expertise. And I personally hold them as quite separate, hear my Uranus in the night coming out, but as a self-taught astrologer, I don’t think that writing necessarily or being able to organize information in writing form is always the greatest way of gauging whether or not somebody is an excellent astrologer. And I think that the thing about what we see online is so many people are writing effectively, they’re reaching people about astrology, but they may really be beginners and not really have a deep grasp of astrology, but they have a working grasp. And I think that the internet really wants a quick run through data instead of a deep run through data. And I think that books are a deeper run through, so I think some of the books that I’m expecting to see come out are fun and easy as opposed to super deep, which gets at the part of your question which is, are we compromising depth and quality as we have maybe this democratization of information? That’s the negative of it. I’m very for the democratization of information, but there is some complication because companies are running a lot of this, right? Companies are offering opportunities for writers to have jobs and platforms, so I don’t know. It’s complicated.

DLN: I would have pushed back just a little bit because I think it’s a little bit deeper. Yes, the internet does what the short, consumable tidbits of information. But I think we also have a really big issue of people not knowing what astrology is. And when people don’t know what astrology is, they do stuff like write articles and lead it with astrologist, right, because they just assume that’s [Jessica laughs] what it is, right? But also, when we talk about people who are consuming astrology like our Twitter followers, or Facebook followers, or even corporations who are looking at seeing who are the influencers and who have large social media followings, I think a really big issue is that people don’t know what astrology is. They think astrology is your sign. And so, if someone is able to package that part of astrology into like you say, these little pieces, then I think that they end up gaining this popularity seen as an authority. And this is not to toot my own horn. This is only to say that I think that we underestimate people. Because I just started my Twitter account in November of last year and one of the things that I take great pains to do on my account is create these long in-depth threads that introduce concepts like sect, that introduce concepts like essential dignities and abilities and I got almost 6,000 followers in less than a year. So, I’m not giving people these little itty-bitty things. I think what is happening, at least on my end, is that I am opening up what astrology actually is for people. And I think that if we took more risk as those of us who are more seasoned and well-studied to really figure out how can we take these complicated and complex topics and package them so that people can really understand and really develop the discernment to say, okay, that person doesn’t really know what they’re talking about, or this person really is a well-studied authority. I think it’s always up to the astrologer to educate the public because they just don’t know, they just don’t know and it’s not their fault.

CB: Yeah, that’s actually really impressive if you have 6000 followers on Twitter and you’ve only been doing it for a year. That’s a good example of somebody very quickly building a relatively large audience just by putting out quality astrology. And that actually raises the question then or leads to another question which is, are astrology consumers becoming more savvy when it comes to astrology and when it comes to their own astrological knowledge so that astrologers, even if you’re just doing a horoscope column or able to mention more advanced or complicated concepts than just the Sun sign and the basic characteristics that go along with that? I know, Jessica, that you do a column, right?

JL: Oh, I have three monthly columns and a weekly column. And I would say absolutely, yes. People are much more educated about astrology because of what you’re talking about, Dayna. There are astrology seasoned astrologers explaining things and giving data around it. And I think also people are willing to learn about it, which is really new, I think. How many people are willing to learn about it? I’ve been giving readings for my full-time living for many years now and nobody ever really wanted to know about the astrology behind what I was saying until the last year and a half. And now, people are really hungry because they’re studying online, or they’re following different astrologers on social and they’re learning these terms, and they’re wanting to figure out how to understand them so that they can go deeper than just what someone’s telling them which I think is excellent. And it opens up Pandora’s box because there is so much out there. There’s really amazing astrologers out there and there’s not, right? Just like with every industry. But yeah, people are much more willing to study I feel than I’ve ever seen before.

CB: Sure. And it seems there’s certain concepts from astrology that are starting to get more mainstream recognition like Mercury retrograde [Jessica laughs] or the Saturn return. It seems like those are starting to actually get some general currency outside of the astrological community at this point, right?

JL: I would say so. Yeah.

CB: Do you feel that’s the case, Dayna? Have you seen those concepts or other concepts that have gained more mainstream understanding beyond just Sun signs?

DLN: Oh, absolutely. I think that people are slowly but surely becoming aware of the depth and complexity of astrology. And like Jessica said that even readings with clients, people are trying to acquire their own tools to understand their own chart. Just wasn’t last week or week before, Jason, who goes by Sagittarian Mind, there was this thing going where people were doing an Astro roast, and it was paste your chart here and I’m going to roast you based on your chart, which is ridiculous in my opinion. But Jason decided to flip it on its head. And he said, “Here, I’m going to give you an appropriate copy of your chart. So, he went to Solar Fire and created copies of 85 people’s charts who inboxed him. And then he did in, what did he call it? He called it something the opposite of Astro roast, where basically, he looked at your chart and gave you this short tidbit of who you are, or maybe who you’re becoming based on your chart. And I think the fact that people even know what a birth chart is, is really fascinating to me. Because how would they know? How would they know that? Where would they get that information from? It’s not going to be in a Sun sign horoscope column because that’s just not what that stood for. So, I think that people are really at the very least becoming aware of their rising sign and their Moon sign, and starting to understand their own complexity through the complexity of astrology, which I think is awesome. [Dayna laughs]

JL: I agree. I would add to that as well that when I, back to us talking about books, when I bought astrology books, all my first astrology books, I went through with a pen and everything was he, he, he. They were referring to the native and they always referred to the native as a he and I went through and I put an S in front of it because I couldn’t read it. And I definitely feel like all of these older books are written for straight, white, Christian-background [Dayna laughs] people, right? And it’s so limited and it is limiting. And at a certain point within my development, and I’m older than the two of you, but a certain point of the development of my astrology practice, I stopped going to astrology meetings, I stopped reading the books. And again, this was pre internet stuff, right? But I did it because I needed to develop my own body of knowledge based on the actual people that I worked with and that were in the world and in my world. And I feel that I’m not the only one who is interested in more of a dynamic and inclusive, I almost don’t like the word inclusive in this context, but a more dynamic and inclusive application of astrology to the human condition. And I think that with the internet, we have more and more people from diverse backgrounds telling how they experience and understand astrology, and from their perspective, and it’s not just that specific voice that I’ve mentioned.

And I think that as that happens, as more and more of these voices are amplified through the internet, I think it’s speaking to more individuals. And I think that’s part of why people are more interested because it’s a way of being like, “Oh, that’s me.” And for me, I have followers on a couple different platforms, but on Instagram in particular, I have 21-22,000 followers and 97% are women. And I think that’s partially just because of my voice and my values, but I think it’s also because a lot of women are really interested in astrology and I think the more that astrologers speak to women and not just men, we see more people that are really engaged and actively wanting to learn because they’re learning about themselves, right? An astrologer wants to know about astrology, but an astrology fan or an astrology enthusiast wants to learn about themselves. [Jessica laughs]

CB: Right. Yeah, I think that’s a really, really super important point because in reflecting on this question, myself over the past month or so, some of my initial pessimism about feeling like it’s not that maybe there’s areas where it’s actually declining in interest has been from looking at the things that I focus on, for example, Reddit, for example, as an example it’s one of the internet’s largest websites and astrology does not outside of just very specific cordoned off areas like the astrology subreddits, astrology does not do very well on Reddit. And it tends to be the people, the greatest demographic for that site does tend to be white, younger, middle class, men with science education, especially people in the STEM areas. And experience of that over the past several years or best decade of being on Reddit has given me this impression that a large swath of my generation is not into astrology or actively rejects it because science education and the promotion of skeptical efforts have been so successful in inoculating people against even considering astrology as a possibility of even entertaining the idea that there’s just a whole generation of people in that demographic that are not into it whatsoever, or may never be open to it in any way. But then I realized that in reflecting on this over the past month, that’s just one demographic and that it seems there are other demographics where astrology is opening up and they’re becoming more diverse in some sense. Do both of you feel that’s the case?

JL: Absolutely.

DLN: Oh, absolutely. Sam Reynolds, he’s this professional astrologer. And he and I talk a lot about black people in particular, our complex relationship with things that are not Christian, right? On the one hand, we have this cultural tradition of making addendums to what would otherwise be institutionalized or gatekeeper religions like Islam or Christianity. But what I mean by addendum is the use of hoodoo and other traditions of folk magic that have been added to Christianity to the point that they are conflated as being Christianity itself. For example, in the charismatic tradition of Christianity, there’s this thing of catching the Holy Ghost, and it being this really communal thing that happens. Well, that has roots in African traditional religions of the Orisha and this idea of you take on the Orisha or you take on the deity and wear it. It takes over your body and your voice, right? So as far as astrology is concerned, there really is I think, some ancestral not to be too rude, but I really do think that there is this ancestral calling or resonance with astrology because it falls outside of those traditional gatekeeper religions and I think it provides language and context for something that not even just black people experience, right? Because Christianity and Islam and Hindu and these, I’ll take you out of that, but these other more institutionalized religions generally don’t make space for the individual and the individuals becoming and the unique ways that this individual’s life manifest. It tends to blanket individual experience with doctrine or dogmas. It’s like, okay, despite what you may individually experience, we’re going to apply this thing as truth to it. But I think astrology blows all of that out of the water and it actually says, okay, I can look at your chart and see the circumstances around your birth. I can look at your chart and tell you about your parents. How do you know this stuff, right?

Christianity and Islam, there is a tradition of dream interpretation and there’s a mention of astrology in those traditions, but not in the sense of being able to get intimate with your becoming and who you are in a really individual sense. And I think that that’s the power of astrology and as Jessica was saying, why people are attracted to it at this point, it’s like, wow, you can actually tell me something about myself that rings as true or I can learn something about myself that rings as true, that doesn’t require for me to see myself through patriarchy, through Christianity, through Islam, through capitalism, right, all of these gatekeepers of knowledge in the structure that upholds how we even see ourselves as individuals. So, I think that we’re going to see more of that. I think that we’re going to see more different populations of people attracted to astrology. I’m just going to be honest, most of my followers on Twitter are black.

CB: Right. And that’s huge because that’s been a question for decades in the astrological community which is, why aren’t there more black people basically, in the astrological community? And over the past decade, seeing the number of not just black astrologers, but people that are astrology enthusiasts of color that are on Twitter and that are taking part in that conversation or helping to generate it has been really amazing, and has been a really interesting development over the past few years.

JL: I think, absolutely. Oh, sorry.

DLN: I was just going to say, absolutely. There is this thing of reckoning with the conservatism that is often attributed to black people reckoning that with the progressive or quote liberalism that is often blanketly applied to astrology. But for black people, we’ve always barked against the trend of patriarchy. If you ask my peers who were raised in two-parent homes, there was always an equal division of labor, right? There was never this sense that women needed to escape from that particular form of patriarchal oppression. So, when you introduce the idea of something like astrology, like I said, I think there is this space carved out that fits into ways that we see the world and not to make black people out to be a monolith because we definitely aren’t. There are definitely people who still think that astrology is a sin, and that they’re going to go to hell, and its fortune telling and all of that stuff, but that’s not [Dayna laughs] up to black people, so I’ll leave it at that.

CB: Do you think that that’s by and large the primary issue or has been the primary hurdle for many black people in getting into astrology is the religious component and the potential for or the belief that it might be against their religion with that being at least in America, a bedrock of large parts of African American society?

DLN: I would say yes. But I would also say that…. No, that’s a bad example. I’m not going to use that. I’ll say this, that representation matters. And number one, the astrological community for most of the past century has been white and male. And so, when you don’t see yourself represented, you think that it’s not for you, right? So now that there are black astrologers who are competent becoming more visible, it becomes a viable option for a course of study, or to become an enthusiast like Jessica said, where you can learn about yourself. But representation matters. And the black power brokers that we see are not astrologers. So, yeah, yeah. How else would they know about it? Do you know what I mean? How would black people know about it? It’s not necessarily a tradition that runs through black culture or any form of black culture. It doesn’t run through it. So, religion is definitely part of it, but just the old America sees things that are American and worthy of academic study, or even religious legitimacy, it’s white and it’s male. And so, as some of those walls are coming down and you see more women and you see more people of color, various backgrounds, I think that you will see more black people and all of those other people becoming authorities in the field because now it’s a viable option. There’s representation. They can see what’s possible for them that they couldn’t see before.

CB: Sure. And that idea of representation also speaks to a community that you’ve worked more with and what we were talking about earlier, Jessica, in terms of also greater representation over the past decade or so or growing representation of other voices and in the queer community and in terms of sexual orientation and other things that where there’s been a broadening of the scope of who astrologers are attempting to speak to and greater consciousness about how they’re trying to do even basic things like interpretations, right?

JL: Absolutely, yeah. And I just I love everything you just said, Dayna, [Jessica laughs] I just want to say that. And I feel like I would add a couple things only that people of color are not getting published by the old up until very recently. So also, there was no room for voices to take the center stage. And the astrology community has, in my experience, the old school astrology community has been very white, very straight and not just not black, but just straight up white, [Jessica laughs] as white as it gets. And I think the internet has allowed us all different kinds of people to have a stronger voice and to find each other. I would say, for my use of astrology, when I’m looking at a birth chart, I’m always looking at immigration patterns, I’m looking at family history of societal standing within the natal chart, and I’m always looking at how the natives experience of class and safety is related to their experience in the community that they were raised in. And it’s impossible to look at those things and to not consider ethnicity, religion, class, all of those things, race, religion, all the all of these things. And I think that, I’ll say it this way, is that my experience in working with clients is that when I’m able to speak to those specific things that are very personal to them, but they’re also acknowledging the community that they come from or the background that they come from, it does something that religion can’t do [Jessica laughs] which is acknowledge that there is something of a symmetry to their own experience, if that makes sense. And I think that whether we’re talking about sexuality, or ethnicity, or gender, or any of these other things, if the astrologer trains themselves to seek these things in the birth chart, they’re there. And if the astrology writer is invested in exploring these things, then the audience is there. Because people really care [Jessica laughs] about their own experience and the experience of where they come from. So, I think this is a very exciting conversation to me and it’s a very exciting change in the world of astrology and the world of astrology fans.

CB: Sure. And I think one of the things then that we’re getting to is perhaps the removal of some of those barriers to entry in terms of how professional astrologers or astrology enthusiasts can have a voice in the astrological community which used to largely be either you publish a book, and/or you get speaking positions at conferences, the fact that some of those have fallen and now anybody can have a voice in the astrological community through a number of different ways like Twitter, or Facebook, or a YouTube channel or a podcast or what have you that’s allowing for more voices and more of a diversity of voices. And as a result of that, that’s probably then drawing in more people and creating more diversity in the community as a result. So, there’s this interesting cascade effect that’s happening.

DLN: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. America has always been multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic. But when we talk about the gatekeepers of knowledge and information, it exists within a caste system that dominates every other area of life economic and all other fields, religion and things like that, in general, disenfranchised groups of people tend to break off and create their own when they’re not accepted by the gatekeepers. And so, I think we’re seeing a lot of that in astrology and I think that that’s a good and bad thing. It’s introducing a lot of people to the subject that would have never had access to it, or really would have never know the complexity and capabilities of it. But on the other hand, there really does need to be some standard for what astrology is. Otherwise, we end up with things like a particular person on Twitter who posted in their profile that they offer death readings. And when someone went and bought a natal chart reading from him, they copied and pasted from Cafe Astrology. [Jessica laughs] Yeah, so this idea [crosstalk] it’s terrible. Yes. So, it’s like, “Okay, this is so great. Wow, everyone has access to this information.” But who’s vetting the information. And not to say that the internet should be scrubbed of astrology information, but I think it’s important for those of us who are ethical and who do have professional accountability with our astrological peers that we establish and really take time to define what astrology is so that other people aren’t defining who we are. If that brings up the topic of astrological organizations, which again are white, so [Jessica and Dayna laugh] you run up against the same problem.

But with that being said, Sam and I have been working on establishing our own astrological community for black people, and there’s some other people who are doing that as well. So, I think we’ll be a great Nexus at some point where either these paths converge, or we lived, for lack of a better word, validation to each other for the greater good of astrology. That’s my idealism speaking, fingers crossed, hopefully.

JL: I’m glad you bring that up because I definitely, know a lot of astrologers who have had their stuff copy and pasted. I’ve seen people do that with my work. I post something and then, 20 minutes later, it’s vaguely reworded. [Jessica laughs] And I also know astrologers who’ve told me, “Oh, I don’t really understand transits.” And then within a year, they’re booking clients and calling themselves seasoned astrologers. And so, there is that. But again, part of me is my Uranus in the ninth starts showing, but I’m a little allergic to accreditation [Dayna laughs] programs. And this is something I see in the astrology world a lot is astrologers talking about these systems of how to check other astrologers and how to maintain ethics. And I think it’s really complicated as a self-taught person who I don’t know, I don’t want to have to conform [Jessica laughs] to a group or to a group standard. And also, I have really high ethics and really high standards. And so, I want to see what you’re talking about. And also, I am personally allergic to it. [Jessica laughs] So, it’s complicated. And astrologers are often very Uranian, I’m not the only one, and we can be very idealistic or individualistic and these groups are complicated. And is there a group that can really encompass everyone? I’ve certainly never seen one. So, it’s complicated.

CB: Right. This is the direction that this conversation always goes, which is there’s a discussion where there’s an acknowledgment that astrology is getting more popular. There’s a concession though that, in some instances, the quality is slipping, it’s becoming more popular, but that sometimes, it’s not necessarily great or very high-quality forms of astrology. And in some instances, there can be some more sketchy stuff going on than there was, let’s say 10 years ago or at least maybe let’s say it’s more visible than who knows what was happening privately 10 years ago. But then it then leads into this question or this very difficult and it has been a long-standing debate in the astrological community about certification and standardization where there’s always a desire generally to want to have greater standardization in the field, or at least some baseline of what it means to be an astrologer and what ethics or other types of things that astrologers can at least agree on as a baseline. But then, there’s always a pushback and a hesitancy to go all in on that because astrologers tend to be very independent and everybody tends to have their own approach to some extent. And so, there’s a resistance to full-fledged certification or standardization in the field.

JL: I would say that my greatest skills and proficiency with astrology happened because I for more than 10 years had my head down. I wasn’t part of any astrology community. I was just doing readings for people. And I am a medical astrologer and I thought everybody was a medical astrologer. I didn’t think there was such a thing as medical astrology. I just thought it was astrology of the body. I look at immigration patterns and class and all kinds of things like this and I just thought all astrologers were doing it. And I’m so grateful that I didn’t come up during the internet because then I would have known that not everyone was doing it, and it would have limited my ability to investigate and really be curious about the chart and how it interplays with humanity and through individual human experience. And so, that’s my vote against standardization because it can really limit innovation. I could talk just as passionately about my feelings for standardization. [Jessica laughs] But for my personal experience, I’m really grateful that it doesn’t exist at this time.

CB: Yeah, one area though, because I understand you might resist it from a technical standpoint, but I think you probably do have some pretty strong feelings about certain ethical things about what would be crossing an ethical line for an astrologer versus what’s okay, right?

JL: For me, yes. To be fair, I’m a Sun, Moon and rising and Capricorn, so I’m really a hard ass about ethics. And I’m very intentional. And I’ve created all these ways of preserving boundaries with people and with myself with the work, and one of them that you and I have talked about is even I don’t look at famous people’s charts. I just feel it’s not my business. Politicians are different, but actors and musicians and stuff like that. So personally, I’m really uptight about that stuff. But also, I came to all of it on my own, and I am so Uranium that way. I just want [Jessica laughs] my ethics to be my own. But it’s complicated. I don’t have an answer.

CB: Sure. Yeah. How do you feel, Dayna?

DLN: I am a big proponent of accountability and I think that we can be more innovative in coming up with the form that that takes. Accountability for me as an astrologer doesn’t mean that I have someone policing my knowledge as much as it is that I have relationships established with other astrologers. And that if I do or say something out of line, I’m like you, Jessica, tropical, I am Capricorn rising Jupiter, Neptune, Venus, and Mercury. So, [Dayna laughs] the whole epic thing, I am with you. However, I don’t apply that to everyone. And I know for a fact that there are people who don’t subscribe to that. And I think that accountability is what’s going to undergird astrology as something legitimate so that we can all really make livings from it, right? We all make a living in our different ways, but I think that accountability and being able to say that if I say something out of line or out of pocket that someone’s going to hit me up in my inbox and be like, “Yo, what was that about?” Right? And I’m open to that. I’m open to being able to say, “Oh man, you were right.” It’s like, “Well, what are you talking about?” Right? We could have that discourse. I think we need to be courageous in being able to have that discourse because otherwise, you have people getting book deals who really aren’t astrologers and they’re doing us a disservice. And personally, I care too much about astrology in order to let charlatan ne’er-do-wells malign it with their lack of knowledge on the topic.

The woman who wrote the article in The Times that mentioned your name, Jessica, I just felt like she had at the bottom of the article that she’s like a fellow, right? So obviously, she’s researching PhD level. And I’m thinking to myself, any other field would have required her to at least do a baseline level of research before writing an article that’s being published in a huge publication, right? But because as astrologers, we have not come together and stepped up and said, “This is what astrology is. This is who we are. And this is what is expected of us.” People get away with stuff like that. People can say whatever they want about it. And I think that if we want to see this grow in a way that we control the narrative in some way, I really think that we have to approach accountability with courage. And Jessica, you’re on this call, you’re on this show. So, I think that you’re a little bit more open to it than [Dayna laughs] you’re feel inside.

JL: I am very open to it and I’ve been a part of astrology communities here in the Bay Area since ‘94. I am very open to it. I’m allergic to standardization and that’s really the point that I have. And I think what you’re saying, which I again agree with all of it, but something that always comes up for me at this conversation is there are different kinds of astrologers. I think this is part of where we have a hard time coming together with an agreement. There are people who practice by giving readings to other people, right? And then there are people who write about it and research it. My experience talking about the concept of charlatans is that some of the astrologers that I have listened lecture and I’ve read their work, that are amazing at writing and talking about astrology, that doesn’t necessarily translate to having the counseling skills and the ability to synthesize a chart for an individual to be something constructive and helpful and healing. It’s not a conversation I’ve had very much with other astrologers, but it is a really relevant and important thing because for the scholar, the astrology scholar, researcher or writer, they have different objectives than the astrologer who is counseling people for a living, right? It’s different objectives. I do both forms of work and they’re really different. And I think that that’s part of we’re figuring out well, what is astrology and how can we come together? There are these very different fractions, right? And I don’t really hear people talk about it as being really different and maybe that’s just because I’m not part of that conversation. I wonder what you think, Chris?

CB: Right. Well, you had a great piece. In the first, it was a lecture that you presented with Barry Perlman at the first queer astrology conference that was then included in the published papers for that conference that was about that topic, and about how you talk to clients, and how you are sensitive to what their background is so that you’re not approaching it in a way that’s inappropriate or alienating to them in some way, right?

JL: Yeah. Yes. My first talk of that conference was about that. But also, I think all of my lectures, I lecture a fair amount are in a way about that because I’ve been meeting with clients for my full time living since ’99 and that’s just all I do. And as much as I write, I do way more client work and I have for all these years. So, my view of astrology is absolutely as a counseling practicing astrologer. And that’s the primary way I relate to astrology as a tool for facilitating strategies and healing and insights, context, all that stuff into an individual’s experience.

CB: Sure, yeah. And like you’re saying, that is always the biggest stumbling block to standardization just because there’s so many different, not just traditions of astrology, but even within a specific tradition, different approaches or different branches in terms of some people are natal astrologers, and some people do horary, or electional, or mundane, some people do relationship analysis or medical astrology, others do Astro cartography or something. And so, what’s appropriate from an ethical standpoint or even a technical or procedural standpoint, can really vary widely depending on what your approach is, and that’s one of the reasons astrologers really resist standardization, typically.

But one of the things to bring it back to our main topic about popularity of astrology, one of the things that I’ve seen is that it seems like sometimes there’s even declining attendance in terms of local astrology groups. And I don’t know if you guys have seen the same thing, but it seems there’s not as many people attending local astrology meetings in given cities each month than there might have been 10 or 20 or 30 years ago, and I’m wondering if, again, it’s one of those things where I’m not clear if that indicates a general decline in the number of people interested in astrology or if that’s just, again, a byproduct of things moving online so that because that’s not how you have to get astrology or how you have to learn astrology or connect with other astrologers, the fact that you can use Facebook or go online and watch a webinar from Mark Jones from the UK or from either of you two from your websites that it removes the need or the necessity to go to a local astrology group. Do either of you have an opinion on that? Are you connected Dayna with your local astrology group in Chicago?

DLN: Nope. And I’ll tell you why. [Dayna laughs] So, the local astrology group that is or was meeting here last I checked is all the way on the north side, which automatically tells me that it’s white, older. And while I don’t have anything against that per se, it’s not something that makes me want to say, “Oh, wow, let me go hang out with these people and do this meet up with people who share something with me.” The flip side of that is the black people in Chicago that I tend to know of who practice astrology are very, I would say New Age plus, how do I say? Pan-Africanist, I’ll put it that way, which is a line of thought that unifies black people all over the world as descendants of Africa and having some unified heritage and a unified goal towards liberation, which in general, I don’t have a problem with, but it’s often historical. So, it’s just this conflation of these different things with astrology that don’t quite line up with my own thought pattern and use of astrology. Again, I tend to be like Jessica. When I look at charts, I’m seeing these genealogies in charts and I’m seeing the stories that have been passed forward, I’m trying to help my clients with the tools of how they can work with these stories or change the story. What does the promise hold for them? And there’s this wide variance in how people use astrology. We’re all coming to astrology with this same different heritages and different cultural and religious upbringings. And I think that that does make it hard for people in person at least to join these groups, whereas online, you’ve got the world at your fingertips.

I truly was the only astrologer I knew until my Saturn return. At my Saturn return, I met Sam Reynolds and another astrologer named Aaron Brown, both older black men. I met them both on Facebook in Facebook groups. And that was really my Saturn return wish because I’ve gotten an 11th house Saturn and my Saturn return wish was really to make connections with other astrologers. You just don’t know what is going on in the community and you’re not able to make connections and challenge your studies of your brain when you don’t know other people, so yeah. And now Jupiter is where Saturn was and I’m making even more connections, which is just totally awesome. I’m excited. I just had to add that piece.

CB: Yeah. And UAC is actually about to happen in your hometown here in a few months. [crosstalk] You’re about to have about 1000-1500 astrologers are about to show up on your doorstep.

DLN: I’m [crosstalk] so excited about that. Jupiter’s 11th house. So, this is totally, I’m ready for it. [Dayna laughs]

JL: I would also add if I can that I agree with all the things you said. The demographics, who go to astrology groups, they’re not different than what they were 20 years ago when I started going, [Jessica laughs] it’s really the same people who are going which is not necessarily who I am. And so therefore, not exactly what I resonate with. But I do think also that people don’t like leaving their house and they don’t have to. [Jessica and Dayna laugh] And so, I think of all of the astrologers and I am who myself so all the astrologers and witches and people who are spiritualists that I am connected with, and they’re all over. They’re not just in the Bay Area. And so, personally, I have a really rich life connecting with people who are in my field or are in similar fields, and I don’t have to go to the meeting, which would require me to go across town also and take time off of work and all those kinds of things. And so, I think it’s just evolving. And my hope is that there are more astrology conferences and conventions that are developed because when the queer astrology conference was first developed, what is that now? Three or four years ago, it was really amazing. It was really amazing to see queer voices all have a space and not have to explain what we were saying and just be able to talk about our experience. And I think that that’s needed. More and more people of different backgrounds need more voices. And so hopefully, there’ll be more conferences that are developed or groups that are developed that are more specified, but also more inclusive. I think we need both, right? So that everybody can be a part of the conversation. But I think that this is part of what’s just happening in the world, and not exclusively what’s happening in the world of astrology.

CB: Right. And one of the things I’ve always noticed with local astrology groups, one of the issues is just that because there’s going to be a limited number of astrologers in your area, you’re not going to have as many people that have the exact same approach or interests as you. And so, when you attend a local astrology meeting just out of out of necessity or just necessarily, you might connect with people and you might make some friends or some connections, or attend some talks from time to time, but for the most part, they’re not going to be all people that are on the same page with you necessarily. And versus, if you’re online, you can find a Facebook group that matches your exact approach to astrology and you can talk with people that have the same approach all the time. And I think that’s one of the reasons why people are attending local groups less and less and because they can get everything, they want in the exact approach that they want online. The drawback, though, is as a result of that, if that keeps happening with the younger generations and they don’t ever connect, then the local astrology communities are going to dry up, and then that’s going to have a cascade effect, with the astrological conferences and things like that. So, I actually encourage people, even though I understand that it can be not that much fun or you can sometimes not connect with people in person and local astrology groups as well as you could with people that have the exact same interests online, to still try to attend those meetings if you can, or if not, do what I did in Denver, which is just if you feel the group that’s local to you is old and not doing the type of astrology that you are interested in or is out of date or something like that, instead of trying to go in and change those existing power structures yourself, just start your own group and start meeting up once a month.

And sometimes it can be a labor of love, but you can then create the change that you want to see and you can also help to give other astrologers in your area a platform to give them experience giving talks and stuff. So, for example, one of our local astrologers here in Denver, Vernon Robinson, he gave some of his first talks here at our local group in Denver, and then he spoke at NORWAC last year, and he’s going to be giving a talk at our group in February, which he’s doing is a test run for a talk at the queer astrology conference in Portland at the end of February. So sometimes, having those local groups or astrologers expending the energy to try to bring some new energy to them can be necessary and helpful if you want to see greater diversity in the field and see a place for all sorts of different voices. Unfortunately, it can be a hassle, but sometimes it’s worth it or necessary to do in terms of helping to ensure that the community goes in the direction that you want it to go.

JL: Yeah, I think also, this thing we’re talking about with checks and balances, having in-person connection with colleagues and fellow astrology enthusiasts, I think it has great value. And when our whole lives are online, that’s not great for the craft. It’s not great for the brain [Jessica laughs] or whatever, so I agree with that. Barry Perlman, when he lived in the Bay Area, he used to run astrology salons. And that’s not the exact same thing as what you’re talking about, like a traditional astrology group, but people would come together and they would share their knowledge and talk about charts that they were interested in. And I think that those really resonate for people. They’re closer to an online discussion in a way than the old lecture style which doesn’t work for different people. So, if you guys are listening and you’re like, “Oh, that’s a great idea that Chris has. I should start my own group.” You can. It doesn’t have to be in the traditional old style. When I first started going to the San Francisco astrological society, Linea Van Horn, who’s a fantastic astrologer in San Francisco, she hosted them in her living room and we sat in a circle and we talked about a theme or about charts and it was really engaging to have a smaller group that was intimate, and we could really share all of our different varied levels of knowledge. I really enjoyed those.

CB: Yeah, definitely. And I think some people are using meetup.com in order to sometimes host those middle ground meetings where it’s somewhere in between a tiny group and not quite as big as a huge local astrology chapter, something like that, but can sometimes just be more for informal meetings and discussions and things like that.

JL: Yeah.

CB: All right. So, in terms of circling around to our topic as we start getting towards the end of this discussion, I guess we’re all more or less in agreement that astrology is getting more popular in society that sometimes that can have drawbacks, but is generally, otherwise probably a positive thing. Are there any other areas that we haven’t talked about where astrology is perhaps growing or becoming more popular, or the opposite that you guys can think of that we haven’t talked about or brought up yet?

DLN: Yeah. I sent you an article as the precursor to this discussion about teenage astrologers on Tumblr.

CB: All right, that was a great article. Yeah.

DLN: Yeah, I thought that that was so interesting. First of all, because I came across the article, I subscribed to Ingpen reviewing blogs because I like Ingpen. And he’d compiled these articles that were his faves over the past. And the first one was this article on teenage astrologers on Twitter. And I thought that that was so fascinating because we tend to think of astrology as something that older people do, which I think is fair, because it really does take years and years of study in order to really become competent in a way that would make you an authority of the field, or someone who can prove what they know, which we expect that of anyone who studies anything. But I think that there’s something to be said for younger people really being attracted to astrology and I’m so curious about where they will be in 10 years. Will they still be interested in astrology? And will they be at the next UAC? Do you know [Dayna laughs] what I mean?

JL: It’s interesting to your point as you mentioned that because I didn’t see that article, but I have been in the last two years contacted by I don’t even know how many high school students asking if they can apprentice with me or interview me for their school paper, high school students. And to be fair, I’m in the Bay Area, where it is a bit more progressive and accepting, but I have just been really surprised by their ability to treat it like a viable path, which when I told people that’s what I was going to do as a teenager, they literally laughed in my face. [Jessica laughs] And they were like, “Good luck with that.” [Jessica and Dayna laugh] But now, they can get school credit for their investigation into astrology. It’s really cool. It’s really amazing.

DLN: Yeah, I had a teenage student from Indiana contact me and her and her girlfriends contacted me and interviewed me for a class project. And I thought that that was so cool. And I’ve even been shocked at how many clients I’ve had who were bored after ’95. Oh, my God, you’re like a baby. [Dayna laughs] And it’s like, I’m reading the baby’s chart. But the fact that they are interested in learning about themselves in a way that I don’t think that many people in generations past had that sense of self-discovery, or even the tools to really dig deep that way. And maybe I’m just misreading it because I believe 33.

JL: I think that people have more access, so I don’t think it’s just that. [Dayna laughs] I think everyone has more access than they used to, right? Because they can read all three of us and they can listen to all three of us whereas, 20 years ago, we wouldn’t have been published by a major publisher, then nobody would have access to our work except for the people in our immediate community, so it is different.

CB: Right. And that is a great article. So, it’s titled it was on the website, The Ringer. I think it was published around January 2nd. It was titled, The Coolest Teen Astrologers Are on Tumblr. And there is just a huge amount of activity. That’s what’s so weird is that these little groups or subsets that have their own ecosystem or their own astrological community going on in these communities. There’s one on Tumblr, there’s one on Twitter, there’s one on YouTube, and they’re almost a little bit self-contained. And that’s going to be one of the interesting challenges in the future is that none of the astrological organizations have figured out how to deal with any of these. There’s people that are part of the astrological organizations like Sam Reynolds or Demetrius Bagley, who are active on things like Twitter and Facebook and are making attempts to reach out to bring some of those communities into the more established or the “establishment astrological community”. But for the most part, there’s still things that are operating out there in their own new astrological communities in a sense. So, it’ll be interesting seeing how that’s integrated.

And then also, Dayna, you mentioned, the fact that astrology is becoming more of a viable career path because there’s more tools through technology for astrologers where it’s a little bit easier to be self-employed, and some of these technologies are making it easier to actually make it as an astrologer, whereas it’s still a risky career path and it’s not easy, it can be tough to support yourself doing astrology, but it’s a little bit becoming more viable perhaps than it used to be. And that in and of itself may be part of the reason why astrology is growing in popularity, like places online because there’s more people who are making that their primary focus like you have. That’s been part of your story over the past few years as well, right?

DLN: Yeah. I had a blog and was building a following back in 2010. But then I got pregnant with my son and that took me into the gates of hell of my Saturn return. [Dayna and Chris laugh] But on the other side of that, I continued to study and found your work and Ben Dykes and some other people who were really instrumental in connecting the modern tradition with the ancient tradition. And that just really reinvigorated my study. And last year, really when Donald Trump got elected, I had really begun deep study of mundane astrology. And that’s how I started back reading professionally and starting my blog. And for some reason, it’s just really resonated with people. I think I just jumped on to the moving conveyor belt because it was starting to pick up speed and I just happened to be prepared. So, I think that, like you say, there really is opportunity for all of us to make a better living than some of us have been making and establish ourselves in new values because people are hungry for it. And I think that if we can take advantage and use this system to our advantage, we could really do some good work. And my work, I say I do Divination for Liberation because I really do believe astrology is a tool that can be used to dismantle patriarchy. But first, we got to dismantle patriarchy in astrology

JL: I agree with that. And I would just add as the elder on this podcast [Dayna and Jessica laugh] which Lord, I don’t know when that happened to me, but here we are, is that I used to always have to explain to people what astrology was and what it wasn’t. That was a huge part of my career. And in the last five-six years, that stopped being true. And since Trump was elected, that is completely unnecessary. And I think that when you mentioned Trump, he his presidency has radicalized so many communities and so many people. And part of that process, I think, is people seeking answers. What’s happening? What’s happening for me as a person? How can I handle my anxiety? Because anxiety is really spiked for people. And I think that this is part of where astrology is really resonant for others and because it’s a useful tool. But also, this thing that you’re mentioning, it’s like not having to explain to people what astrology is as much as I used to, it allows me to do more of the work that I’m actually here to do, which I think is great. I think that astrology is really, you ain’t seen nothing yet. I think it’s growing. I think it’s really growing and I’m really excited to be a part of it and I’m really excited that this conversation is happening because it buds, I think, a bunch of other conversations that need to happen.

CB: Definitely. Well, awesome. Well, thanks, both of you for joining me today. I think that’s a good point to stop on or to start wrapping up since we’re running out of time. I did want to mention in terms of plugging a few things. Dayna, you have some events coming up pretty soon, right?

DLN: Yeah, I have an event here in Chicago on January 12th and 13th, that’s this Friday and Saturday at North Park University and there is a spiritual practitioner conference happening called the Mystic Soul Conference. And I will be doing astrology readings in a healing practitioners’ salon at this event and I will be there Friday from 10:00 to 1:00, and I’ll be there Saturday from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. So, if you want to come out and get a quick 20-minute chart reading, I will be there. I’d love to see your face and interact with you in person. There’s going to be a lot of other really awesome things happening there. So, come out if you’re in the Chicagoland area. I would really love to see you guys.

CB: That sounds great. And what’s your website where people can find out more information about your work?

DLN: Yes. So, you can find me online at thepeoplesoracle.com and I am on Twitter and Instagram @peoplesoracle.

CB: Okay, perfect. And Jessica, where can people find out more information about you, and what do you have going on?

JL: Okay, you can go to my website at lovelanyadoo.com. And I am a genius who decided to name my website something that no one can spell or say, so [Jessica laughs] let me spell it. It’s love L A N like Nancy, Y A D like dog, O O lovelanyadoo.com is my website. And you can read many horoscopes that I write there, or you can read them at other publications and something I have upcoming next week which I’m really excited about is I’m going to be on Girlboss Radio. There’s a new podcast coming out called Self Service, and you can listen to a teaser for it and subscribe to it. And I will be every Sunday talking astrology for the week ahead. And so yeah, so subscribe to that on iTunes Girlboss Radio Self Service podcast, and I will be speaking at UAC which I’m really excited about and a bunch of other places. Actually, this year, I I just redesigned my website, but I have not yet updated all of my events calendar for 2018, but I do have lots of stuff coming up. So, if you are interested in my work and want to get to hear more from me, then sign up for my newsletter and follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, what ifs.

CB: Awesome, great. All right. So, all three of us then will be in Chicago in May for UAC. So, people listeners hopefully, can say hi to us there at that conference if they run into us in the hallway or in some instances, at one of our lectures. There’s another conference. Actually, I just got an email from Ian Waisler to let me know about the fourth Queer Astrology Conference is actually happening next month in Portland from February 16th through the 19th. It’s being hosted by the Portland School of Astrology this year. So, you can find out more information on their website at portlandastrology.org. And let’s see… last piece of news and announcements. For my 2018 astrology calendar posters, I’m available to do international shipping, finally. So, you can find out more information about that at theastrologypodcast.com/2018posters. And I think that’s it. All right. Well, thanks a lot both of you for joining me today. I thought this is a great conversation and I look forward to hopefully, we can reconvene at some point to continue it again at some point in the future.

DLN: I would love that. Thanks so much. Can we also commit to a group hug in Chicago?

JL: Absolutely, [Dayna laughs] I’d love that.

CB: Definitely, I will hold you to that and I’ll see you. That’s going to sneak up on us like really fast. [Dayna laughs] I think it’s in May and that seems far away, but I know these things go by really quickly. So, before you know it, the three of us will be there hopefully having a drink or something at UAC. And we hope to see everyone else there.

DLN: Sounds great.

JL: Awesome.

CB: All right. Well, thanks everyone for listening today. I think that’s it for this show. So, thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time.

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