Lyn Goldberg, Bayfield astrologer, claims daily horoscopes are probably correct 40 to 50 percent of the time. She lives in an intentional cohousing community she helped create 20 years ago, and from the comfort of her own home provides natal readings (studying where the planets were located at the time of your birth), transit readings (studying where the planets are today in relationship to your natal chart), synergy readings (looking at how two people blend, or don’t blend) and more. Goldberg records these conversations, so her clients can listen back on them later. Many doctors actually used to take astrology seriously, and the season of your birth has been linked to increased risk for a number of diseases (a branch of study known as “medical astrology”). But whether you’re skeptical about the stars influencing life on earth or not, most everyone at least knows their “sun sign” (one of the 12 Zodiac distinctions). There are two additionally-important but lesser-known signs you need to worry about (the moon sign and your ascendant/rising). Free charts for calculating these can be found online, but it’s a lot more fun to learn about it in person. We chatted with Goldberg about her astrological readings and why it all makes sense.
What is astrology?The way I explain it at every natal reading is that we live in a vibrational universe. Science teaches us that in fifth grade. So if we understand that we’re vibrating, and then we take it one layer higher, to our solar system, the planets orbiting the sun are also vibrating. They come into different alignments. They might be traveling together, they might be traveling opposite one another. With each different alignment, the planets are creating a different harmonic. And at the time of your birth, there was a very specific harmonic that was being created by what’s larger than us. So we can look at that point in time and see where the planets were. Since we’ve been studying it for so long, we know the archetypes of the planets, and we know the essences that were expressed by them at that point in time.
The natal reading carries with you forever. But to do it, I need the exact time of your birth. Some hospitals aren’t writing them down anymore, which is very distressing. It’s an important thing to know! One of the reasons astrologers want the exact birth time is because the “ascendant,” or what’s happening on the horizon at the time of your birth, changes one degree every four minutes. So over a period of two hours, we’d have a different “sign” on the horizon for you. We can tell at least 60 percent more if we have the right birth time, but a good astrologer can do what’s called a “rectification,” to find that out if you don’t know it.
How did you learn about astrology?I was 24 and a boyfriend was into it. I was coming out of a very confused teenage time. When he looked at my chart, he said, ‘Oh you have a unique signature that’s very tuned into astrology.’ And indeed, that was the case. I had a career in Durango where I worked as a vocational rehabilitation counselor for the state of Colorado for 25 years, which gave me counseling skills. But I was always studying astrology too. It was my passion. When I retired eight years ago, I decided I would do it full-time.
I’m studying right now with the Shamanic Astrology Mystery School. Shamanic astrology is about how we on earth connect with what’s above us. It brings in the night sky; a lot of astrologers, especially western ones, don’t really pay attention to the sky. It’s important to be out there, knowing where the planets are and watching them. We’ve lost something huge in our connections; our ancestors lived under the stars, so they were connected to what was going on in the heavens. With the advent of our home structures and electricity, we stay in and watch TV at night instead.
What’s the difference between a sun sign and a moon sign? A lot of people say the sun is the soul. It’s the fuel that we burn. So in reading about your sun sign, that’s very important. But in shamanic astrology, we actually start with the moon. It’s the energy we come in with, the energy we know and can fall back on. Before astrology became so popular, the moon sign was introduced before the sun. If you are watching the night sky, where the moon is during a birth is pretty obvious. Sometimes more obvious than where the sun is, because you can’t see any of the constellations when the sun is out. If you don’t know your moon sign, you can look it up in an ephemeris, which is kind of like an astrologer’s bible [it gives the positions of naturally occurring astronomical objects in the sky at a given time].
— Anya Jaremko-Greenwold
